March 28, 2024

Elegy / Blackberries by Martin Willitts Jr.

Elegy

Father died quietly —
a dragonfly over the glass-like water,
or lark-song in a red garden of intention.

Shaken, my prayer flies indirectly,
a paper kite butterfly.

Mourning has terraces,
revelations of love and grief,
striking lightning,
silent after-calm.

I believe my father taps on my window
when I hear ticking rain. It’s his pulse.
Memory becomes a skip-stone across a river.

And when my mother dies,
a murmuring of starlings
carries her soul over everlasting waters,
I am convinced —

love never ends.
It’s always beginning and reaffirming.





Blackberries

We picked the blackberries because we were wild,
reckless with youth,
wanting to swallow that dark wildness.

What’s the point of rules, when you’re kids
if we don’t try bending some of them?
We had too much curiosity and nowhere to use it
except with those blackberries, just beyond the warning sign,
pushing the envelope of curfew.

The news reported another kid was lost in those woods.
That day, I lost the taste for berries for days.
His face floated on the side of a milk carton.
Some boy wasn’t home, leaving a void,
becoming permanent when I saw the empty school desk.

It could have been either me or my friend
that went too far into the blackberry woods, never returning.
The point of rules was driven into me like a nail
holding the No Trespass sign.
I could get picked up by a stranger,
discarded without care, forgotten a newsflash, shredded
in that blackberry darkness.





Martin Willitts Jr has 24 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent book is “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023). Forthcoming is “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024), and “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024).

March 26, 2024

Double Moon Above the Sea by Stephen Jarrell Williams

When the wind eases into nothingness
alone
scent of sorrow
leaving you limp
in the low glow of darkness

distant sea of rolling waves
double moon
yesternight and this the last night
you're out of breath
stumbling for the sea

wading in
the cold press of death
water lapping as you stand still
tide swirling around your chest
licking salt on your trembling lips

tilting forward
into the deepening waters
loop around your neck
each eye seeing a moon
under you go

lighter in the ease of giving up
and down you sink
eyes open and blurry
ocean world
near and far dream filling

awakening hours later
lying on an island shore
coughing water burning your throat
lungs raw
heart of your will not to die

for there's something more in the living.






Stephen Jarrell Willams... Poet, writer, artist, dreamer, God believer, and man of many faces.  He can be found on X Twitter @papapoet

March 24, 2024

A La Fin / You're Only Dead Once by Jack D. Harvey

A La Fin

In the night of love,
in the light of love,
we repair the ravaged goddess;
tinkling bells, a ballad worn out;
love,
hanging heavy on the heart,
love,
like a sunken boat,
green in the sea,
love like a
delicate ivory contraption,
love’s body like a strong soldier,

stronger in battle.





You’re Only Dead Once
(Odyssey Book XI- Nekuia)

Farming not at all
we like,
the pasture boggy and
the day dirt-long with toil.

In the kingdom of the dead
Achilles’ flap
about working a live sharecropper
than ruling the death-house-
he must have been kidding.

He was.

Toil is lady luck’s backside,
unfurnished and smelly;
give me ghosts and
the rest of eternity.






Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. 

March 22, 2024

Car Crash / Death of a Bambino in a Plane Crash, Milano by Janet Butler

Car Crash 

Sky darkens
and night comes.
Stars glow, distant, indifferent.
Moon casts a cold light on open shutters
as Death enters and settles beside her.
The road home fills with shadows.





Death of a Bambino in a Plane Crash, Milano

The air flutters with "What if's"
as baby bird falls, too heavy to float
soft currents to safety, too tender in days
to flap feeble wings back home.
The wide room of air and space
holds no soft dark warmth of mother wings
the ground beneath a rush - 
a sudden something indifferent to
the quiet thud of death.






Janet Butler left the San Francisco Area with her dog Rocky to escape the nefarious US political situation. Unfortunately, even in Italy news catches up with one. Covid put a break on all things creative, but she is working her way back to poetry and homage to the beautiful. A recent publication is Tipton Poetry Journal, Winter, 2024.

March 21, 2024

The Fugitive by Brian Duncan

tired of running,
sick of himself, of it all,
sits on the slide of a swing set
and listens to the barking
of the dogs and men’s shouts
getting closer.

He looks at the little pinecone
he picked up in the evergreens
back before the cornfield
and the stream where he tried
to make the dogs lose his scent
but only managed to turn his ankle.

He likes the way the pinecone feels
rough in one direction and smooth in the other
and wishes he could keep it, but knows
they’ll take it away, like everything else.
As he waits, he rubs his swollen ankle,
his fingers sticky with sap.





Brian Duncan lives in New Jersey with his wife, Margie, and two cats. He worked in a virology laboratory for many years. He enjoys devoting his retirement time to poetry, gardening, and hiking. His poems appear in Whale Road Review, Passengers Journal, Thimble, Sheila-Na-Gig, ONE ART, and Elysium Review.

March 19, 2024

My Sky is Falling by Donna Myers

Someone says “Bum leg?”
and the rain falls.
I jump in my chair for no apparent reason,
and the rain falls.
I sit out of practice though nothing has happened,
I tap my foot to an imagined rhythm,
and the rain falls
                        and all else with them.

I want to speak of it, but can’t for fear of drowning.





Donna Myers is a mom and regenerative farmer who recently returned to America after raising Bretonne Pie Noir cattle in France. She has a master’s in writing and her work has appeared in the Penn-Union Journal, Socket Shocker Magazine, and the Murfreesboro Post.

March 18, 2024

Helvius Cinna Walks the Forum on the Eve of His Dismemberment by Eric Brown

With Ariadne’s crown gleaming sidereal,
Pitched in heaven by the god of wine, to twine
There with celestial ivies, I lingered last night
Passing your Forum, Caesar, where your steed
Stands stout, and down whose steps you came
Only last week for the Feast of Lupercal,
When I hosted you and we drank our cups clean.
Such sport beggars those whose debts lie unpaid,
Vitruvius, Moscius, and barren Hermia,
But for you the riches of the table are spent
With never a thought of impecunity.

Fennel-sweet ham hocks, no less proportioned
Than that Crommyonian sow, slain by the son
Of Aegeus and fatted on the flesh of Corinthians.
Nor were scant the salted eels, brined and basted,
And our grapes full of juice, pulpy and bursting,
With pan-fired breads and goat’s cheese. And we ate
Past satiety those honeyed butterflies you claimed
A delicacy in Alesia. Nor did the rubious wine
Fermented from the old vineyards of Oenopion
Mix with waters of Volturnus, but stained our lips
And garments a deep purple, as you told tales
Of many a cold Gallic battle, frosted stubblefields
Where crows huddled and gorged on barley grains
And the fat aphids that burrowed into the browning
Stalks, while Rhinish tribes brought tribute of gold,
Lest great Caesar like flame-robed Hyperion
Incandesce and put their frozen hovels to fire.

Such thoughts warm me now, sole wanderer
On this chill night: Aurora’s dull orange glow
Still hours away, and the city quiet as a snowfall.
Now in the shadow of Saturn’s star-bright altar,
On the fluted stones of mossy pillars, sluggish snails
Slime their oozy trails, and wait for the empyreal sun
To light their way.






Eric Brown is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maine Farmington and current Executive Director of the Maine Irish Heritage Center. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Mississippi Review, Carmina Magazine, The Galway Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and The Frogmore Papers (shortlisted for the 2023 Frogmore Poetry Prize).