Old Man Jacobs

 

By Alan Bahr

 

A weed-covered field was all that passed for a community park, with shops on either side that begged for a coat of paint and paying customers. We were visiting my father’s hometown accompanied by my Uncle Doug, who was regaling me with tales of his youthful indiscretions. The stories were hilarious and told with the shit-you-say flair of a prison confession. They little resembled my father’s sober recollections, which made me wonder why Dad couldn’t be more like his older brother.

Doug nodded toward the park and said it had once been a ballfield. He chuckled and pointed to where the backstop had stood.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“How I blew up second base.”

I laughed, recognizing a prelude to another good story. “How’d you do that?” I asked.

“Got my hands on a stick of dynamite and a long fuse. Lit it and ran like hell. Hid over there.” Doug turned and gestured toward a building across Main Street.

I tracked his gaze and imagined him at my age, a teenaged boy cowering behind a shop wall, hands over ears, waiting. “What happened?” I asked.

“Made a big hole.” Doug let out a loud guffaw.

“I remember that.”

My dad whispered the confirmation in a way that told me what would follow: another dousing of cold water onto our day’s entertainment. Earlier that morning, he’d exchanged words with Doug that were as close to an argument as I’d ever heard pass between them. He told my uncle to be careful of what he said around me, which prompted a terse reply. It’s a free country, little brother. All my dad could do then was sigh in a powerless way and speak what had sounded like gibberish to me at the time. You think freedom is doing whatever the hell you want. Which is why apprehension follows you everywhere.

My father stared at the site of the old ballfield, then at the sad storefronts on either side of it. “Blew out nearly every window,” he said.

My smile disappeared. “You were there, too?” I asked.

Dad shook his head. “I knew better than to follow your uncle out at night. It took a month to replace the panes and clean up the mess. That’s what I recall.”

Doug looked down and kicked at the dirt.

“And there was that other thing, too,” my father said. “Remember, Doug?”

My gaze went from father to uncle, then back again. “What?” I asked.

“Tell him,” Dad said. “Go ahead. It’s a free country.”

Doug put his hands in his pockets and jutted his chin toward the second-floor apartment over a hardware store. “Old man Jacobs died that night,” he said. “Fellow didn’t make it out of bed. Not my fault. Heart attack, they say.”

We eyed the building, not saying a word, when the double doors opened and a chime sounded. We watched as an elderly couple stepped outside and walked away.

Alan is a recovering investment banker and former commercial fisherman. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Midwest Prairie Review, Circle Magazine, Banyan Review, Contra Costa Times, and others. He lives in the San Bernardino National Forest with his wife.

 

The "Sky Above Clouds" Just Looks Like the Sea

 

by Jamie Benner, After Georgia O’Keeffe

 

All lines are liminal

at rest on the horizon.

The sienna sky

leaves glaciers

like neighbors

dissociative expanses

cuffed in unfamiliar hues.

A ship’s corpse sinks

just out of sight.

Beneath, slip shapes

of pitch—

a mother, a calf, a sea

filled with strangers,

faced with a choice:

to splinter or stay.

Jamie Logan Benner holds a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi and works at Acadian House Publishing. She previously served as Managing Editor at The Pinch, Product, and BreakBread magazines and Associate Editor at Mississippi Review. Her writing appears in Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere.

 

Magenta

 

By Miles Liss

 

The sky’s an orange river in this city of thieves.
Gray or blue, the clouds trail overhead.


This is no doomsday scenario
even if the world is slowly fading.
Everything’s rich with life, except maybe us.


Try not to think too much—
just listen—a drop of honey.


The clouds are heavenly silent. They pick up
the magenta of the sun and carry it with them
like a command across the sky.

Miles Liss is the 2021 winner of the AWP Kurt Brown Prize in Poetry. A collection of his poetry and art is forthcoming from Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers Press at https://www.deathofworkerswhilstbuildingskyscrapers.com. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, the poet Zakia Ahmadzai.

 

The Barred Owl of Tree Hollow

 

By Janay Garrick

 

“You here for the owls?” the man flings open his Ford truck’s white door, his accent, southern. “Damn things. Up all hours of the night. Goddamn neighbor,” he points across the street at three old oak trees where them damn things live. “She puts out half a rotisserie chicken every night on her back deck. Keeps ‘em around.”

I, myself, am pleased with the goddamn neighbor, whoever she is. A Barred Owl baby above my head just now. Black-eyed, close-set, mottled gray peeping down at me. The baby moves her head elliptically right, then left. Clockwise then counterclockwise. She’s hip hop, she’s feather and flow—she’s got some bounce to her ounce. Delightful! How could anyone possibly call her, Damn Thing?

Baby Owl practices the short sprint, the fly-hop from oak to oak. She lands, at times, too close to a vertical branch and hasn’t the room to retract her wing. It’s clear: she’s no idea how long those things are, nor of what they are capable. Her wing scrapes the branch, she tilts left, tilts right, but does not fall. She wobble-walks, she side steps like a country-line dancer. Look at her feathered down! Her silver ballet skirt made of tulle.

From the family of Typical Owls, Barred Owl’s call is commonplace, a loud “who-cooks-for-you” most frequently heard at night. No wonder the man can’t sleep, Who-Cooks-For-You carrying on like she does—all night—like some 1960s, bra-burning feminist. I picture the man in the thralls of two a.m. pillow-plumping sleep, thrashing, kicking straight then jackknifing, then straight-as-a-board and cursing. Lots of cursing. This pleases me enormously. Barred Owl, she’s done her do. Sometimes birders say her call sounds like this: who-cooks-for-you-all. She’s real southern.

I strain my neck, tilting toward the treetops. It’s dusk dark. Where are the rest of them? I wonder. He said this was a family of seven. The no-see-ums pinch, yip, irritate. I swat, smack, ignore. They persist.

The Barred Owl is nocturnal. She hunts at night. When agitated, or defending her territory or her babies, she sounds like a French Bulldog. Her bark ascending, rising into a hoo-wah, loud and drawn out. This is a Big Old Deal. Ruckus raising. Her big, flat-faced, blunt-headed bark; her blunt-tongued, bar-breasted feathers in a ruffle. Do not invade her territory. She is revved up.

I look up to her.

Lightning’s heat has vaporized the water inside the oak tree, but the steam does not blow the trunk or the limbs apart. There, Barred Owl sets down wing and pulls up perch. She grafts herself into tree and limb, homemaking where wind has done its damage and lightning has flung its fiery tail. She is strong and resolute. She thinks outside the box, the bars, and barriers—what the oak tree calls disaster, Barred Owl calls home.

Janay Garrick writes from her grandmother’s pink secretary desk in Northern California. Influenced by the poetry of witness and resistance writing, Janay desires her art to speak back to the centers of power. Her work has appeared in Narrative, TriQuarterly, Eclectica, and Memoir Land among others. Connect with her: janaygarrick.com.

 

We Took It All

 

By Laura Rockhold

 

We went mid-morning, under a clear sky,

to walk and listen as we do in the woods.

 

First, we saw two trumpeter swans gliding on the lake,

holding themselves as sacred as their other, we said, loves for life.

 

In the marsh, we saw four great white egrets wading,

each on their own path.

 

And three garter snakes sunning

their creative sides in the tall, yellow grass.

 

We saw six bass spawning by the bridge, giving up

something they think they love, for something they really do love.

 

We saw one bald eagle ascending

from the lowest to the highest point.

 

And on the lake again, we saw two loons and their reflections

as still as reawakening dreams.

 

We started on the path for home, and took it all

as a sign of something good.

Laura Rockhold is a poet and visual artist living in Minnesota. She is the inventor of the golden root poetic form and 2022 recipient of the Bring Back The Prairies Award and Southern MN Poets Society Award. Find her at: www.laurarockhold.com.

 

Copper River

 

By Faith Allington

 

I wasn’t born here,

I still remember hours of gold

I traded for the pine-pitch

of forests, for basins

of rainfall and snowmelt.

 

This far north, the fog 

is furrow-tongued 

and the mountains hem 

the dusk into place. 

 

This far north, the blue silk 

of the Pacific Ocean 

turns grey with longing.

 

Each year the salmon return 

to the place they were born,

orienting themselves on stars,

magnetite in their bodies

calling them home.

 

I watch from the shore

and feel the ache of them 

fighting the currents

to find the heart of their longing,

emerging at the last 

into no recognizable form.

Faith Allington is a writer, gardener and lover of mystery parties who resides in Seattle. Her work is forthcoming or has previously appeared in various literary journals, including Crow & Cross Keys, The Fantastic Other, The Quarter(ly), Bowery Gothic and FERAL.

 

Slowly Lightening / Yavaş Yavaş Aydınlanan

 

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, translated from the Turkish by Aysel K. Basci

 

From a mossy emptiness,

A slowly lightening

Underworld universe

Is pulling me to itself.

A star distance away,

Hazily and timidly,

Shapes dividing the time

Are awaking one by one.

 

Oh, crystal chandelier, lit instantly

By a single breath of silence!

In this mysterious trinity

The sky is getting closer to us.

 

The light's geometry

Is your garden of eternity.

Listen and you will hear

The voices of the beetles and the bees.

 

I know, no one can take

Successive drinks from the same fountain.

Every breath is like a farewell

From these familiar shores.


Against all odds,

Which dove’s wing

Built this palace

With its frothy flutter;

 

And which hand extended

This golden cup from an empty night,

As the days’ red fruit

Leaked from a thought?                                 

 

Oh, constantly changing things

At the doorstep of a moment!

This lightening is waiting to play                                                                              

At the bedside of every dream…

Yavaş yavaş aydınlanan

Bir deniz altı alemi,

Yosunlu bir boşluktan

Çekiyor kendine beni.

 

Bir yıldız uzaklığında

Uyanıyor birer birer

Ürkek bulanıklığında

Zamanı bölen şekiller.

 

Ey sükutun bir nefeste

Yaktığı billur avize!

Bu esrarlı müselleste

Gökler yakınlaştı bize...

 

Aydınlığın hendesesi

Sonsuzluk bahçendir senin;

Dinleyin geliyor sesi

Arılarla böceklerin!

 

Bilirim kimse içemez

Üst üste aynı pınardan,

Bir veda gibi her nefes

Alışılmış kıyılardan.

 

Hangi güvercin kanadı

Köpükten çırpınışında,

Bu sarayı tamamladı

Her tesadüfün dışında;

 

Ve hangi el boş geceden

Uzattı bu altın tası,

Sızdıkça bir düşünceden

Günlerin kızıl meyvası?

 

Ey eşiğinde bir ânın

Durmadan değişen şeyler!

Başucunda her rüyanın

Bu aydınlık oyun bekler…

Aysel K. Basci is a writer and literary translator. She was born and raised and Cyprus and moved to the United States in 1975. Her work has appeared in the Columbia Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, Adroit Journal, Aster(ix) Journal, Tint Journal, Bosphorus Review of Books and elsewhere.

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901-1962) was a Turkish poet, novelist, literary scholar and essayist, widely regarded as one of the most important representatives of modernism in Turkish literature. He was a professor of aesthetics, mythology and literature at the University of Istanbul. Although he died more than 60 years ago, his writing and poetry remains very popular. 

 

Seasonal Memory

 

By Paul Ilechko

 

So many of my memories

     are tied to a specific season

perhaps as simple as a trip to the grocery store

unshakably linked to the coldness

     of the weather as we walked from the car

the young maple trees already nude

 

or a late spring day at the hospital

a day of intermittent clouds and sun

an IV improperly inserted into a vein

clots of blood on the torn away dressing

an old man in the room next door

     is unconscious

barely covered by his sheet

     his naked legs exposed

     his panic finally quietened

 

there are steps leading down to the wide river

     that separates New Jersey from Pennsylvania

where a boat sits on the flickering flame of sunlit water

you will leave beneath the spreading flowers of spring

     and arrive as the last leaves fall yellow

the ripples from your passage

     taking such a long time to dissipate.

Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, deLuge, Stirring, and The Inflectionist Review. He has also published several chapbooks. 

 

Suite for the Evening Herald

 

By Emily Murphy

 

“We saw a man eat pie for breakfast this morning.

Still, nothing happened.

Lots of unusual things occur and nothing happens.” The Evening Herald, Ottawa, Kansas, 9 June, 1904

 

1.

Pigeons lined the cornstalks again

fenceposts gray & wobbling in the breeze      late June & ragged lawn.

Clover came in thick last month          now dots

like the towering clouds           billow shade                 purple & pink blush

 

on spare trees & ripening fields & red-roof toyota

wedding ring tapping on driver's door

storm feathering the radio & rendered

in chorus crackling with scattered gravel.

 

Single plate of sheet glass in the sunglare like an icon

on brick like swollen fruit mounted & in the sweat

cool still air      carpet like piled wool—two footprints

down to floorboards molded   & compressor kicks to life

 

with ptang of gravel shot.         A few dozen smudges of gray & white

against dark clouds illumined like         shadows

stretched to asphalt shoulder grow deeper                  until

as though striking flint from a spent lighter

 

fireflies embellish the corn       dark as

wet earth on a warm night & there is no wind only

wake & watery music.              Some miles ahead

lightning & rainfall polish pine needles to emerald glow.

  

2.

where chainlink fence grew into an apple tree

the wind wedged wrappers into wire

            & what once was yellow now snaps

            the air              not quite still                only

                        live más & pottery jagged coyote cast rippling shade

 

scars like old footsteps polished away the grass

five summers now & still the level dirt

broken only by anthills & roots like a running river

Emily Murphy is a poet living and writing in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Manzano Mountain Review, Inklette, and Garbanzo, as well as a very talented pigeon delivering hand-rolled poems to upper story apartments. You can follow her on Twitter @weightsandmeans.

 

Casting Forest Nets

 

By Laine Derr and Carolina Torres

 

Raised on plantains and fish

we knew our way through rocks.

 

Days by the river until our hearts

swelled, belts loaded with loss –

intestines thrown back to the blue.

 

Breakfast: scales picked from teeth,

soup washed wild swimming in skin.

 

Stealing awake, we leave tobacco

for Mohan, a night singer, limbs

like currents – strong, dangerous.

 

A long-haired god, like us, lifting

forbidden life, grinning spirit

casting forest nets, bounties tasting

of little ones raised on life, on death.

Laine Derr holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming from Full Bleed + The Phillips Collection, ZYZZYVA, Portland Review, Chapter House, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

Carolina Torres is a Biologist and Public Health researcher who enjoys the arts and literature. As a scientific author, she has published in peer-reviewed journals within the biomedical field. Her writing, mostly prose, is a practice for spiritual reflection.

 

Todd from next door hoses off his boat,

 

By Carol Krauss

 

scrubs barnacles from the hull. Every Saturday from May to September

he hooks up the book trailer and heads out with his spaniel,

his girlfriend, and her daughter for a day of fishing and exploring

Virginia Beach tributaries, back bays. I watch him fill his cooler,

check the lifejackets, and pull out of his driveway.

Dad would wake us bright and early. Hurry down our dock

and ready the Chris Craft for skiing and exploring Lake Norman

coves, inlets. As a preteen, I spent many hours sitting

beside my Father, soaking up his sun. As I aged, I opted

for sleeping in or lengthy friend chats on the phone rather

than our Saturday ritual.

My father has been gone for three years now. When Todd

climbs up onto the bow of his boat, and waves to me,

I can see my Father waving as he pulls out of the cover.

Telling me goodbye years before he left.

Carol Parris Krauss was honored to be recognized as a Best New Poet by UVA. In 2021, Just a Spit Down the Road, was published by Kelsay. She has work in Louisiana Lit, One Art, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Susurrus. she has been selected for Ghost City Press’ Micro-Chap Summer Series.

 

folding your laundry

 

By Brendan Walsh

 

if god is cruel, which they might be,

or god is merely the neutral arc

of the universe that bends towards

apathy, then the specific agony

of folding my laundry, piles & piles

of endless fabrics, makes cosmic

sense. but today, i fold your laundry,

left behind in the dryer on your way

out the door—let me not mention

the week we’ve had, both cars killed

in catastrophic flooding, two hours

trudging the waist-deep waters—,

the black pants which two nights ago

were soaked to the pockets with sewer

runoff, your pink pajamas which you wore

after our shower, before we collapsed

in the bed, our minds hurtling toward

the expensive, unknown future, little

socks which hug your little feet, silken

underwear, that cool afroed woman

graphic tee, her hair a bouquet of flowers;

i fold all of it. not once do i consider

the struggle, the devastation we own,

only that i love the things you wear.

Brendan Walsh has lived and taught in Laos, South Korea, and South Florida. He is the author of six poetry collections, including concussion fragment, winner of the 2022 Florida Book Award. He’s the cohost of Fat Guy, Jacked Guy, a podcast with Stef Rubino. He’s online at brendanwalshpoetry.com.

 

St. Andrews State Park, 1979

 

By Shelley Johansson

 

Old-school canvas tents scattered like children’s toys (don’t touch don’t touch in the rain, it’ll start to drip), smelling of oilcloth and dried leaves. A tarp my daddy rigged across the concrete picnic table, crisscrossing spider web of ropes draped with bathing suits and towels. Everything and everyone patched together improvised and coated with a light dusting of sand. We six cousins, three girls and three boys, slightly sunburned in a child’s paradise.

Cooler filled with cheap generic Chek sodas, ginger ale, cola, root beer, grape, orange (sure, you can have another one). Thick white goopy sunscreen (come here you’re getting red) on the soft white beach with the rhythm of the waves, riding the waves, do it again, salt in our eyes. Meeting the seagulls’ cold gaze. The unavoidable abrasive exfoliating grit of sand in everything, sunscreen sandwiches sleeping bags crunch crunch crunch (let me shake that out for you).

Flashlights flicking back and forth (turn that off, the battery will die). Insects in the bathhouses, moths swirling around the Coleman lanterns glowing with an ominous loud hiss. Possums sauntering through the campsite at night, raccoons in the garbage, salt breeze keeping the skeeters down. The firepit’s gentle crackles as flames like the wood (that’s enough s’mores, kids). Smoke making reality wavy, calling forth the monsters in the shadows, shadows everywhere, leaching from the branches of the long-needled pines.

We six cousins watched the monsters as they danced, safe in the warmth of the fire, our parents’ protection, our love for one another, safe in the ring of light we had created together.

We six cousins around the fire, innocent of the monsters we couldn’t see, the monsters yet to come, the monsters in ourselves that would have to be named, the monsters of the world we didn’t know.

Shelley Johansson lives, writes, and sews in western Pennsylvania. Her flash nonfiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, the Prairie Schooner blog, Rejection Letters, Transformations, and Schuylkill Valley Journal Online, and her essay “Sewing Lessons” for Salvation South was an editor’s pick for Longreads. Twitter: @shelleyjohansso, or Instagram: @shelley_johansson.

 

Flathead Valley

 

By Angie O’neal

 

It’s not hard for me to believe

in things I can’t see.

In whatever tells

 

the beargrass it’s time to bloom.

That snowpack on the mountain,

the source from which

 

a river rises. This valley, where meltwater

rivers made a way through

mountains long ago.

 

Father, who died an old man,

they say I shouldn’t

                        mourn your long life.

 

But I still look for you in places

            you’ve been.

                         In headlights

 

bright as twin moons

            lighting up a dark road.

                        A map smoothed flat

 

across the kitchen table. The neon

needle in your transistor radio

            finding the right station.

 

In this world, you vanish—

            new moon, cirrus cloud, the end

                        of a straight Montana road.

 

But I see you like the river

trusts the way forward, scrambling

through rock toward open waters.

 

The way I see a poem before I

            find the right words.

 

How I know this valley is where

an ancient mountain

once stood. 

Angie Crea O'Neal’s poems have appeared in The Christian Century, the Cumberland River Review, Sycamore Review, among others. Her first full-length collection, This Persistent Gravity, was published by Finishing Line Press earlier this year. She teaches English at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, where she lives with her teen daughters and three rescue dogs.

 

After the Lockdown: Dance Workshop

 

By Kathryn Kysar

 

We had not touched, seen faces up close

in fifteen months. We stand in a circle,

breathing in unison, our hands on each

other’s chests. Waves move through us.

In pairs, we open into each other’s eyes,

not the desperate online search for

meaning or message. Jose’s, deep brown,

tell of his journey north and north,

not forgotten or forlorn, just a bit sad.

We unfurl, like leaves, like the wind

in the birch. We ground our roots, lift

our legs high, point our fluttering arms.

Once, I was a dancer, tall and thin, stepping

to jazz on a worn wooden church floor,

no pews, only the worship of movement,

the chorus of bodies, my teenage

longing for expression, for connection.

Now we stand in a circle breathing,

our hands on our own expanding chests,

curating our internal dances, welcoming

our collective grief, our relief, our communion.

Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and editor of Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers. Her work has recently appeared in Defunct, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Mollyhouse, and Voicemail Poems. She lives on Dakota land near the Mississippi.