Editor note

Issue 25

Reality is not always probable, or likely.
— Jorge Luis Borges

While reading submissions for this issue, I found myself drawn to poetry written by non-native English writers. “Summer Day” was written by Maria Barnes who writes mostly in Russian. “Fishing Magic” is a memory from childhood written by Wei Zheng who lives in China. “How to Be a Prism and Not Shatter” is inspired by the life-transcending Hebrew poetry of Yona Wallach, and written by Daniel Niv. “Preemptively to Parse” is written by Heikki Huotari, who is a retired math professor. Math is an alien language also.

I discovered through poetry an invisible string that connects us all, and spirals up toward the heavens or our consciousness. I read these poems over and over again and each time, a new glimmer of understanding slips through the veil.

I am so grateful for the all the poets who share their work. Even the poets who are not published. Because when they do they share their voice, imagination, and reality. And as readers of poetry we are gifted with another dimension of life.

All poetry is life-affirming. All poetry is magic. The magical string that connects us all is made up of emotion and language and art.

Here is another collection of poetry for you. I hope it opens a new door within your psyche.

Claudia Dawson, Founding Publisher & Editor
October 2021

Contributors: Robert René Galván, Federico Federici, John T. Leonard, Michelle McElroy, Casper Kelly, Serge Lecomte, Wei Zheng, Dennis Maulsby, Maria Barnes, Walter Weinschenk, Megan Cassiday, Oisín Breen, Daniel Niv, Heikki Huotari, Judith Serin

We were always falling

I was born falling from a great height. We all were. Mom. Dad. Sister. The beds, my toy chest, kitchen table, rugs. The wind roaring in my ears, whipping hair, drying my eyes especially if I chose to look down. You adjust. I could see neighbors falling, their falling rooms. I made falling friends. We went to falling school and had falling birthday parties.

Once there was a crash. Our old couch was gone, fragments flying upward. Dad said it was probably a branch sticking out from the cliff near us but it was too blurry to say for sure. He would die this way too not a year later. Everything I’ve ever loved is or was falling.

Now I have a daughter who asks, “Why are we falling?” I have to explain what a miracle it is. All the wonderful people and things and adventures falling with us. Falling is the best part. One day you will stop falling but do not worry the ground is very, very far away.

 

Casper Kelly is a writer and director of TV and movies. His work has appeared in MonkeyBicycle, Necessary Fiction, and The Cellar Door. His book, More Stories about Spaceships and Cancer, was published by Fried Society Press.

Sasquatch

You’ll never find me;

I inhabit the realm
between imagination
and fear,
denizen of the dark
world,
of vast pines
and Himalayan
climbs,
a shadow
in the timberline,
a ghost in the snow.

The First Peoples
knew me,
left offerings
at the edge
of the village,
but you follow
me against
my desire,
gather tufts
of hair,
cast enormous
footprints
in the mud;

I will retreat
deeper into
oblivion
until there are
no more trees.

 

Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His previous collections of poems are entitled, Meteors, published by Lux Nova Press, and Undesirable: Race and Remembrance, published by Somos en Escrito Foundation Press. His work has been nominated for Best of Web 2020 and twice for the Pushcart Prize for 2020. His forthcoming books of poetry are The Shadow of Time, Adelaide Books and Standing Stones, Finishing Line Press.

Orb-weaver, Sunset

We go to that place where the wind is ruined,
where the water is gone but roses still remain.
We cut our heels on rusted halos and piles
of yellow teeth. The hounds give up their dinner
to chase a shadow, quick bolts of darkness striking
through the underbrush. Your hand reaches out,
statues itself as the last thread of light mildews
across your face; green-ebony pulse of living color.
A siren breathes in the ether and I abandon myself.
Three miles outside of town, the scarecrows descend,
from their perches, they rustle the corn so knowingly,
and the boys who witness this never forget.
One will run for mayor of North Richland Hills, Texas.
The other will flatten himself against the street,
become a black ribbon of nighttime, pay money
for a masked man to chase him through a harvest field.
You have no way of knowing all of this, un-paused now
by the hounds’ return, one beast veiled in dry leaves,
loose webs dangling from her jowls like violent foam.
The other, at just the right angle, sprouting four delicate legs,
red eyes replacing the night, the quiver of your words
as you whisper Don’t let him touch your teeth.

 

John T. Leonard is an award- winning writer, English teacher, and poetry editor for Twyckenham Notes. He holds an M.A. in English from Indiana University. His previous works have appeared in Poetry Quarterly, december, Chiron Review, North Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, Punt Volat, The Windsor Review, Rappahannock Review, Jelly Bucket, Mud Season Review, The Blue Mountain Review, Genre: Urban Arts, Stonecoast Review, and Trailer Park Quarterly. He lives in Elkhart, Indiana with his wife, three cats, and two dogs. You can follow him on Twitter at @jotyleon and @TwyckenhamNotes.

Sweet Rosemary

I rest on a dandelion carpet.
I listen in the silhouette night to my own rooted mind.
My heartbeat crushes old leaves in the mulch.
And the once barren dawn bursts into flowers.

And I know now that most of us haunt the lives of our children,
Content to dwindle in cages of plasterboard and clay,
Idle, alone, and drifting.
Yet I know truth is the flaying of love on an open flower.

And I sleep on a dandelion carpet to watch the lilies bloom.
And I throw stones with the Captain, howling at the moon.

 

Oisín Breen is a 36 year-old poet, part-time academic in narratological complexity, and financial journalist. Dublin born Breen’s debut collection, “Flowers, all sorts in blossom, figs, berries, and fruits, forgotten” was released Mar. 2020 by Edinburgh’s Hybrid Press. Primarily a proponent of long-form style-orientated poetry infused with the philosophical, Breen has been published in a number of journals, including the Blue Nib, Books Ireland, the Seattle Star, Modern Literature, the New English Review, La Piccioletta Barca, the Bosphorus Review of Books, Disquiet, Universe, Mono, and Dreich magazine.

How to Be a Prism and Not Shatter

It is a feeling first, I think
outside of my body, circulating
in my space, touching not touching,
waiting. The feeling consumes
and I am restless for days. Sometimes,
much longer. There is even a feeling right there,
from a time I thought I forgot, and I know
soon it will come. Now it’s a different feeling
that knocks on my door and me out,
and it enters and breathes and moves.
It writes itself into something new. Then,
it’s out of me and to the world.
What is that source, that takes and takes,
I never know. I often wish it to be mine
but it won’t. I read a question once,
in a poem by Yona Wallach called “Cecilia,”
and I still feel the touch of her missing answer
in the chest, forcing itself on every cell.

 

Daniel Niv is a student of Tel Aviv University. She is double majoring in Literature and Creative Writing in both Hebrew and English. She got published in Caesura, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. She won the Bar Sagi Award 2021 for her poetry.

Quantum Many Worlds

Sleeping men lie scattered among desert scrub
Wrapped in camo blankets. Their lovers,
in 5.56 and 7.62 millimeters, held close.

It is a time of waiting — that time of morning
when nocturnal animals and spirits
are almost at rest. Yet, we day creatures
remain hushed, hidden, until slapped

by the hot Afghani sun. In the stillness,
I dream of multiple copies of me,
Acting their parts in alternate times and places —
our worlds stacked side-by-side

like an infinite deck of cards.
From their mirrored faces: flashes of gunfire,
Sour fume of adrenaline, and the smell
of copper-mist rising from cooling torn flesh.

The acid of dawn burns skin. Alien worlds
and madness spiral shut. Shadows
cut back-and-forth among Rīgestān dunes,
whisper in Pashtu. Black gunmetal rasps
against gravel and sand. My eyes
snap open, glass-empty.

 

Dennis Maulsby lives in Ames, Iowa. His poems and short stories have appeared in The North American Review, Mainstreet Rag, The Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Briarcliff Review (Pushcart nomination), and on National Public Radio’s Themes & Variations. His traditionally published books include: “Near Death/Near Life” (poetry—Military Writers Society of America (MWSA) gold medal winner), “Free Fire Zone” (short stories—MWSA Silver medal winner), “Winterset” (short stories—Eric Hoffer Award winner and Global Ebook gold medal winner), “The Fantasy Works” (collection), and “House de Gracie” (novel — Book Excellence Award and Reader Views Silver Medal). Maulsby is an associate member of the SFWA and past president (2012 – 2014) of the Iowa Poetry Association. Check www.dennismaulsby.com for further information.

Summer Day

it is a boat that lands
on the antelope of Athens.

run! unless he catches horns
of the sun, and then the wave
will break our fever.

come nearer,
to the parched steps of mausoleums
and drink sad cicadas
with sterilized beetles in their hearts.

 

Maria Barnes is an author based in St. Petersburg, Russia. She has been writing poetry in Russian since she was eight years old. Four years ago she began her journey through British and American literature and music. It has inspired her to create poems in English. Her work has been published in Sheepshead Review.

Fishing Magic

My father was a boatman on the Yangtze River.
One day he paid one Yuan to a nearby fisherman
to use his fishing nets that were tied to the shore at night.
It was a crane-style fishing device mounted with supports and a rope:
If bubbles or ripples emerge from the water in front of you
it means the fish is touching the small piece of bacon tied to the net,
and then you pull the fishing rope in like an old fashioned light switch.
But at night there was no light, not even a flashlight, to wake up the sleeping fish.
So instead my father brought an old hay rope from his boat,
and soaked it in waste diesel that had been used to clean the engine.
Joyfully, he lit the hay rope and turned it into a torch.
The torch opened its mouth wide and swallowed up a large patch of the black sky.
We had only wanted to wake the big fish on the mysterious river bed,
so that they would bite the godforsaken bacon tied to the net.
My father told me to hold the fishing rope and stare at the surface of river.
He grabbed the torch, fumbling his way into the cold water
and lowered the flame as close to the surface as he could, murmuring chants.
The fire grew brighter and the torch got shorter.
My father’s voice got louder and louder.
The ripples of his magic words grew wider and wider in the late autumn wind.
My mother, who was ill in bed, must have felt it.

 
 

Wei Zheng works for China Mobile. He has written poems since 1991, and his poems appear in Poetry Exploration, Poetry Journal, Stars Poetry, Poetry Monthly, and Green Breeze in China. He is also a contributor to Innisfree Poetry Journal, Third Wednesday, Whale Road Review, Apricity Magazine, Bracken Magazine, The Thing Itself, Hive Avenue, Lucky Jefferson, Fahmidan Journal, and The Rainbow Poems.

Heavy is the Head

They say heavy is the head,
But what if my crown isn’t made of gold?
Instead it drips disease and stains white robes.

Soaked in holy water and washed with raw hands,
There is no Hail Mary this time.

So I sit- head of the table
At a coronation where the only other guests
Are the skeletons of the people I wish I’d been.

 

Megan Cassiday is an English Education Major at Saginaw Valley State University. Her poems have been featured in Where is the River and she is the EIC of Dead Fern Press. You can find her on Twitter @MeganLyn_.

I Was Very Old That Day

I was very old that day;
Edgy I was, quite afraid
As I lay supine upon the beach,
My mind inverted like a sunken ship,
My arms, my legs, as still as ice
Absorbing heat as best I could
But then I remembered
An array of things
That I’d allowed to languish:
Things quite genuine,
Housed within my head
Yet scattered like toys
In the yard outside;
Things that live and die
Of their own accord:
Someone sitting in a chair,
Swirling curls of silver hair
Asleep upon her shoulder;
Porch light on a rainy night,
Crayon yellow in the dark,
Crazy moths in senseless circles;
People in the back-and-forth:
Reliable, rapacious,
Loving, loved and leery-eyed;
Winsome moon fading fast,
Lost in morning's winding sheet;
Arms that reach, hands that hold;
Tremble tears and heartache eyes
And then I remembered the so many times
I stepped into the living room
And I could see, as often as not,
A sprawling candelabra
Set upon a white credenza;
Winding silver arms
With upturned palms,
A candle rising out of each,
Dancing veils of yellow light
Like hooded priests in waiting.

 

Walter Weinschenk is an attorney, writer and musician. Until a few years ago, he wrote short stories exclusively but now divides his time equally between poetry and prose. Walter’s writing has appeared in a number of literary publications including the Carolina Quarterly, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Gateway Review, The Closed Eye Open, The Writing Disorder, Courtship of Winds and others. His work is due to appear in forthcoming issues of The Raw Art Review and Iris Literary Journal. Walter lives in a suburb just outside Washington, D. C.

Door to a Cloud

Door to a Cloud

Why not walk inside? Look for that white wool you can bounce on, flop on your back and watch cloud creatures as you did when you were ten. Or find a storm, whirl in its wind, crack off a piece of lightning for a necklace of spikes. Will a gray cloudfish float by? Can you touch its feathery scales?

Door to a Pond

There it is, just a few feet under the surface, floating in place. The water-weeds wave around it. Are there jagged rocks beneath it on the bottom? Or stone steps that lead you down to that startling place where you suddenly can’t stand? Is it an entrance to an underwater room with a fireplace of boulders, a hearth where you can sit? Watch watery flames?

Door to a Wave

Can you catch it? Jump just right through the wall of water? Don’t be scared; it will let you in. Then the view: the silver crested waves so high the sun is extinguished. It would take your whole life to climb them. So you turn around, push open the door, scrabble to shore before the next wave can pull you under.

Door to a Raindrop

Too small to enter. Leave it to the hummingbirds. No, to the gnats that harass your cat, his ears twitching. An opalescent world inside, but so short-lived. It will join the pond, the wave, the cloud.

 

Judith Serin is a literature professor at California College of the Arts, and her collection of poetry, “Hiding in the World”, was published by Diane di Prima’s Eidolon Editions. Her work has been published in over 50 magazines, journals, and anthologies including Columbia Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, Broad Street, Writer’s Forum, and most recently her memoir prose poems were published in the anthologies Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge (Grayson Books), and Impact (Telling Our Stories Press).