Susan Barry-Schulz

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​

Pearl in the Shell

 

               —after Diane Seuss

 

say open dorm room windows say 

warm wind say sunlight pouring 

through pear-yellow leaves say 

snare drum & horns & Howard Jones 

rising up from the quad below say 

it’s 1985 say washed-out green 

& yellow tie-dyed t-shirt 

from the Salvation Army on Rt 13 

 

say a small balcony with a view

of Cayuga Lake say head half-shaved 

& sweaty just back from a run 

say hours before your next class 

say ecstasy say equanimity say 

you want it all back 

 

say decades later you try 

to replicate conditions: 

 

     loose cotton t-shirt        

     proximity to a body 

     of water        fresh air        

     new music        time alone

 

say the modern poet (your favorite)

cautions against the tendency to linger 

too long in the weeds of the past 

say she counsels memory 

as instructional if anything

not dwelling

 

say the experiment fails

neglects to account for pivotal missing 

& impossible ingredients

 

say you can’t help but linger in the sweet 

weeds longer than you know 

is good for any one 

soul.      

 

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I am a mostly self-taught poet and because of this I always feel like I am missing out on some mysterious trove of Secret Poet Knowledge. I read poetry to feel less alone in the world and I think maybe the reason I write it is the same. My work usually centers around the concerns of identity, chronic illness, loneliness and the search for home and is almost always in conversation with other poets. I have a sustained practice of reading one poetry collection a week. I just finished reading three separate collections (by Lauren Camp, Brian Teare and Victoria Chang) all informed by the work of the artist Agnes Martin. I am grateful for the work of Diane Seuss, Linda Gregg, Chen Chen, and Ada Limón, and so many others, which keeps me company and forever inspires me. Shout out to the public library system!

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—Susan Barry-Schulz

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Doraine Bennett

 

 

Elegy for My Husband Lost to Covid         

 

We stand silent in the field 

behind the old Antioch church,

the vanilla scent of Joe-Pye weed 

filling our senses, until a shooting star 

loosed your tongue and I said yes.

Only you remember the tortured patience 

required to woo my untaught body 

as open as my heart. 

It was only you and I 

on the dirt road in Highlands

when encircled in my arms, 

your tears finally washed away 

a father’s neglect and abuse. 

Back home in Fortson, 

you guided our little ship

with the mastery of a seasoned captain, 

and when I was unsure 

I clung to your belt loops 

and when the baby died, 

you kept us upright.  

Every Christmas you decorated the house. 

We watched It’s a Wonderful Life, 

me tucked into your side,

the kids piled in blankets around us, 

all of us believing you. 

Until the last Christmas, when breath

came hard, until it came no more. 

No more laughter so compelling 

you fall to the floor. No more 

meandering antique stores searching 

for the perfect trinket for friend

or grandchild. No longer 

will you lie in my bed,

your body a comfort 

as you cup my face with your hands.

Now you comprehend the things 

we could not explain nor understand. 

You loved well, offered yourself 

freely, and the fruit of your life 

speaks for you. 

Now 

you dance with the mysteries.

​

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​

One of the first books of poetry I bought for myself was Theodore Roethke’s The Far Field. I was simply stunned by the way he conveyed so much emotion with the specific images he chose: “I learned not to fear infinity, / The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,” (“The Far Field”), and “Before this longing, / I lived serene as a fish, … / But now– / The wild stream, the sea itself cannot contain me:” (“Her Longing”).

 

I came late to writing poetry, though I had always loved reading it. As I began to formulate my own poems, I was deeply influenced by poets like Roethke, Richard Wilbur, and Mary Oliver. They took words and created images that touched such deep emotions in me. 

 

I have always believed that images are the language of the heart. In my writing, I try to find my own way of touching a reader’s heart in some way with my words. I have found that my strongest poems come from places of great pain or great joy. “An Elegy for My Husband Lost to Covid” is one of those poems that comes from deep pain, after losing my husband of 46 years to Covid. It has been almost four years since his death, and I can finally write it.  

 

Besides writing poetry, I also teach yoga. I love the practice for many of the same reasons I love poetry, and I use poetry often in classes. There is a sense of union between mind, heart, and body–the essence of yoga–that poetry captures with beauty and power. There can also be a wonderful sense of play and curious exploration captured in both practices that brings me joy. 

 

—Doraine Bennett

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Isabelle Bohl

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​

I Fancy My Hands as a Thoracic Surgeon’s

 

                            cœur: nm: heart

                                     –Merriam-Webster’s French-English Dictionary

 

 

I slice through pectorals lean and mean,

enter the cavity where the real work begins.

 

Your core, I leave untouched,

unwilling to dissect

an organ I poorly understood.

 

I aim to excise exotic, festering tentacles

that have left us undone,

their ablation the condition for my pardon.

 

I will not suture the cicatrix,

choosing instead

the ancient art of Sashiko,

at once mending and aesthetic,

to reinforce the fabric beneath.

 

Now rest, love.

I must try to staunch the bleeding

 

when all I really know to sew

is a simple button.

 

൪

 

Many poets offer that they write poetry to help them make sense of the world. I’m no different, and life is indeed puzzling! My poems typically begin with the germ of an idea born of a fleeting situation, a chance encounter, or an off-hand comment that gives me pause. I mull it over until I get to the bigger picture, the theme, so to speak. Then the work begins in earnest. It is in that stage of deep thinking that clarity often seeps in, a percolating that cannot be rushed. It is a wonder, really, this poetry thing. Just as reading a good poem, mouth agape, transports you to an enlightened place, writing can free you from turmoil.

 

In my reading stack is Billy Collins’ new collection Water, Water. Can one ever tire of Collins’ clever poetry? I go back to it time and time again, envious of his deceptively easy style and irresistible humor. In a different vein, Denise Duhamel’s chapbook In Which has brought me much joy recently with her unapologetic, strong female voice. She has given me many a “go on, sister, with your bad self!” moment and a few chuckles along the way. I’m also enjoying Alessio Zanelli’s latest collection The Invisible in which he explores the unseen tethers we have to the natural world, our past, and each other. What is it that can be so powerful in life, and yet cannot be seen? That is, in a sense, what I also tried to dissect in this poem. And because it is poetry, I had free rein to be whoever I wished to be, for a moment.

 

—Isabelle Bohl

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Rita Rouvalis Chapman

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If we are to hope; it will be as water

 

and if I spill that water on the ground; the sky will lick it up; from me; the only question; being

in what form it will be returned.

 

If we are to have water

 

it will approach from the sky; it will spool; what it will come down to; is our wettest moment;

the puddles leaking water like abstract wounds; water seeping up from the black hills like black blood; whole water valleys where water coalesces; where it transubstantiates from soil and rock;

it is fat in a field of red clover; my boot steps through it in a field fat with frost; no wonder the

rain is sky incarnate; no wonder; it is what my desert heaven is full of.

 

If we are to bear water

 

it might be; as puddles do; full of waves; we will bear it; upon our backs; the thin muddy path

around the pond carries the water by its edges; clinging in early morning fog; it will be as a

stream burdened with stones; who says the water can be borne. 

 

If we are to be water

 

then we will always be falling; from clouds from ledges; rocks; until we are stopped behind the

dam; the buds are stuffed; with the rains they are hurt; into their own birth.

​

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​

I’m a voracious reader of poetry, probably reading fifty or so volumes a year in addition to my subscriptions. Even though I have very definite tastes, I will read work that does not necessarily appeal to me just to see what is going on with it. As a result, I really cannot point to an overarching influence, even as I love all the usual suspects. That said, at the moment I am doing a deep dive into Rilke and his relationship with Rodin, having read both Rilke’s essays on Rodin (the William H. Gass translation) and the very good biography You Must Change Your Life by Rachel Corbett. I am fascinated by the idea that poetry writing (not ekphrasis) can be influenced by visual art, that Rilke incorporated the process of sculpting into his process of writing. I am also studying the art of the turn in Structure & Surprise by Michael Theune.

 

My latest project is a hyper-local poetry newsletter for the St. Louis metro region. Recently I noticed that it was hit or miss whether I knew about readings and open mics, figured others had the same issue, and decided to collect all the listings in one place every month. There has been a real wave of interest by different clusters of St. Louis poets to pull us together into a supportive community. The newsletter is my contribution.

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—Rita Rouvalis Chapman

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Flint

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​

The Trouble with Double Vision

 

My eyes are in my mouth

in between my teeth

 

and my tongue glosses

over them as truthfully

 

as vodka dresses the ice

in the highball sulking

 

its way down my throat.

Throat wide as hunger

 

in a lark orphaned in the closed air

of the opened fist of its nest, but 

 

not nearly as deep

not nearly as deep.

 

If I tell you the room is spinning

plates and you part your teeth

 

to speak

your sight

 

will your song look like

the lark fluttering in my throat?

​

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When I was 20 years old, I audited a poetry class at Florida State University, and mid-way through the term, the instructor pulled me aside after class and pressed a copy of The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds into my hands. That book changed my idea of what writing could do, and what writing could be. For the rest of the year, I carried The Dead and the Living around like a baby bird I was cradling, carried it around like a bomb I was ready to throw. The Dead and the Living—and all the Sharon Olds’ books that came after (including the one that was published before The Dead and the Living)—taught me that everything I believed was unspeakable about being a girl and being a woman was just waiting for me to find the words to unwrite those silences that had been imposed upon me, and the silences I had imposed upon myself. All thanks to Mary Jane Ryals for putting Sharon Olds in the palm of my hand and changing my life.

 

—Flint

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Katherine Gekker

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​

Erinnerung

 

 

A few blocks from where I was conceived, 

            I descend DC’s Spanish Steps. 

                        A sanctuary of shade, magnolias. 

 

                                    Someone’s following me, 

their shoes clattering against blacktop. 

                        But it’s just a dried magnolia leaf 

            rattling along in the wind’s gusts. 

 

                        Every time I turn a foxed page 

in my father’s scores, edges flake onto the keyboard.

 

                                    My mother mixed 

our canary Chirp Chirp’s bird seed into gesso 

            to prime her canvases.

                                                Then painted 

                        huge abstracts — lines, shapes.

            Brushes dipped into mountains & chasms — 

 

On the radio, a katzenjammer piece. 

            My father’s term for music he didn’t like. 

 

Cezanne’s self-portrait at The Phillips Collection. 

                                    His face illuminated. 

                        Everything else, 

            except the light on that face — abstract, dark. 

                        In the background, I search for my mother. 

 

                                                (Her light now as feathery as cobwebs.)

 

I’m learning “Erinnerung” from Schumann’s 

                        Album for the Young. Searching 

                                    for my father, any sign, in his scores. 

 

                                                (All his notations in pencil — fading.)

                        

                        In the garage — my mother’s paintings 

propped against cinder block walls. 

            Shrouded in heavy duty black plastic. 

                                    (Her oils craquelure-filled.)

 

                                                            (The sounds of my mother’s heels — kitten, Louis XIV.)

 

Their solitary pursuits — painting, music. 

 

                                                (Without them, I disintegrated.)

 

            What I wore: first, my father’s flannel bathrobe; 

                                    later, my mother’s. 

 

                        My parents returning after a night out, 

leaning over to kiss me good night. 

                                    Stockholm’s frigid air, cold silk, 

            my mother’s perfume, 

                                                snow beginning to melt on their coats. 

 

൪

 

Last year, I began learning Robert Schumann’s piano piece, “Erinnerung,” which means memory in German, taken from his Album for the Young. Something about that piece stimulated my own memories: my parents’ legacy for my brother and me — art, music, love. In Washington, DC, where I was born (in the old Providence Hospital), every street, every corner, aligns my past and present. Often, I feel as if I’m meandering in a dream state. And, when I was a child, we lived in Stockholm for several years. As I was beginning to draft this poem, I remembered my parents coming home from an evening out, their coats still cold: yet another gift from my parents. 

 

I’m currently assembling a collection that explores time, memory, language, music, art. “Erinnerung” opens the book. “Egg / Lion / Stone,” which appeared in Quartet Issue 1, Volume 1, is also included in that manuscript. I’m grateful to Quartet’s editors for publishing these two poems.

 

—Katherine Gekker

 

Devorah B. Harris

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​

Over Easy

 

I woke late, grabbed two of the eggs

you had just hard-boiled

still warm because

you don’t like the extra step

 

of making for them a cold bath.

I tried peeling them,

then came up to you

my utterly butterly croissant

 

to say "you are fired from egg duty."

But you gave me this sloppy kiss

which reminded me

of the first kiss

 

that began it all. 

Our love has always been liquid.

Even before we were a pair,

broken yolks yielding into one another.

 

How good it feels

coddled into fluffy heaps 

sizzling shallots, garlic and spinach

to become some new cheesy, scrambly thing.

 

Now with grandkids we parade

as perfectly poached or deviled eggs.

 

You, my good egg, better half-

benedict, starting tomorrow,

 

you predict,

you’ll show up like the eggs you make in the morning,

with cracks! Hard-boiled!

Hard-boiled?

 

Nah! I will crack you open,

track that molten gold. 

​

൪

​

I love poets who leave a door open so I can linger in their world.

Some of my earliest poetic influences were Wanda Coleman, Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, and more recently I studied with the truly great poetry teachers Ellen Bass and Edward Hirsch. 

 

“Over Easy” is a messy love poem about my husband and our shared love of eggs. 

When I discovered there was an egg contraption by Cuisinart making hard boiled eggs perfectly, I surprised my husband with it. Over the years the machine has been reconfigured to also make poached eggs and omelets. My husband now has a full repertoire. 

 

We both love our days on Coastal California’s Elkhorn Slough, reading, writing

and eating devilishly good eggs.

​

—Devorah B. Harris

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Jackleen Holton

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​

When They Tell You He’s a Tool

 

You might think loser, 

and you would not be wrong. In the end, 

he will lose in some crucial 

and devastating way.

 

And they are older girls 

so, they would know 

a tool, the way it leans against 

 

a wall, slack-jawed, maybe a cigarette

casually held between two fingers.

The tool doesn’t care if you have any use 

for it. But you’re the new girl, 

so maybe that slouched

 

shovel moves a bit, snakelike,

you almost think, before you see 

his eyes. He mumbles something just 

loud enough so you’ll wonder if you heard

what you heard as you walk by. 

 

When you heard he was a tool, you didn’t 

think, he knows how to do a thing 

with skill. Like this: it seems that you’re the one

who collides with him in the hallway.

In a low voice he says Whoa, 

 

Nellie, chuckles as he picks up your books. 

And you’re nervous because he’s caught you 

off-guard, flustered because there he is,

and though you don’t know it then, a tool

is something that can harm, and you feel

 

a little danger in this quick exchange,

your heartbeat registers it. And as you

sit in math class, your face cooling, your pulse 

slowing to the drone of Mr. McMillan’s voice 

 

calling out integers, you remind yourself 

that you’ve been warned 

about the tool, the one you’ll walk by 

on the way home, the one you don’t 

know waits there purposefully,                                                           

                                                                                                   

who will speak softly, and start to walk 

alongside you. And you, in your newness, 

your innocence, won’t realize 

that the deft spade has already 

begun to break ground.

​

൪

 

My first experience of poetry as a relatable art form was a copy of Sandra Cisneros’ Loose Woman that I found on a friend-of-a-friend’s coffee table in my twenties. But I didn’t start to write it until almost a decade later when I discovered Steve Kowit’s book In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop, and subsequently began attending his classes. Steve was an encouraging teacher, a great humanitarian, and a brilliant poet in his own right. He introduced me to the work of many other poets that I’ve come to admire such as Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, and Lucille Clifton.

 

“When They Tell You He’s a Tool” was written in response to a prompt in Molly Fisk’s Poem-A-Day workshop, and after I read an article about online predators and how they groom their victims. I grew up in a simpler time, where most of this insidiousness happened face-to-face, and usually under the guise of romantic courtship. Though the details may differ, every woman has a story like this one.

​

—Jackleen Holton

​

B. Fulton Jennes

​

​

Alice believed she was a horse

 

so she neighed extravagantly at recess, dashed full-tilt, leaned far back, 

paddled her outstretched arms.

 

When Alice jumped off the bus, she trotted up the driveway

to a nice house we all knew was not her own.

 

Alice’s real house was across the street, a dingy place set far back 

from the road under bare elms.

 

If Mrs. Flubacher called on her, Alice only stared straight ahead, blew

a fluttering burst of air through her lips.

 

On the day Mr. Hargrave announced that the president was shot, dead,

Alice forced the plastic horse she carried

 

everywhere into a low bow on her desk. Its front legs snapped off. 

Alice bowed her head, wept. 

 

Later at recess, I helped Alice bury the horse and its broken legs 

in a big sandbox. After that, 

 

she greeted me near our lockers with a nicker and head toss, circled me 

with a snort before galloping on.

 

I don’t recall riding to Alice’s house when she invited me to sleep over

or who opened the door for me. 

 

I remember a black-and-white Zenith with rabbit ears set on a wobbly 

TV tray table, a beagle that humped my leg,

 

a mustached man in a gray sweatshirt, his black hair oiled back, his eyes 

gentle, gentlest when he looked at Alice.

 

Her mother clasped her hands in front of a stained apron, smiled, listened

to Alice laugh, scolded bad dog.

 

I remember pretzels in a torn bag that leaked salt crystals into the bed 

between us. Like sharp snow one of us said.

 

We whispered about the girls who mocked us, the monster on the plane wing

in the last Twilight Zone.

 

Alice opened the window behind our heads. Autumn air filled the room 

with the smell of wooly bears in jars.

 

The transistor radio played "A Whiter Shade of Pale." The echoing organ 

filled our church of dark.

 

The dog curled at our feet. Loud snorts rattled under her parent’s door.  

Moonlight buttered the yo-yo quilt.

 

I don’t remember Alice’s wallpaper, or if she had a shelf lined with plastic 

horses, or if the dog or her mother or the sun woke us. 

 

We had pancakes for breakfast, syruped from a bottle shaped like a woman,

hands clasped in front of her apron.

 

I don’t remember going home. I remember wanting to stay. I don’t remember 

when Alice stopped being a horse.

 

൪

 

More and more these days, obscure memories from my childhood burble up when my brain is in theta mode - those moments when I allow myself to drift into a daydream or when I'm deeply relaxed, just before sleep. I imagine it has something to do with how an aging brain does its housekeeping, asking Do you really need this memory, or can it be flushed? I welcome the memories, relive them with a clarity I find astonishing. They reveal so much about what shaped me as a person and as a poet. Even back then, I noticed things others might have ignored or have long since forgotten. I even wonder if Alice remembers that year she believed she was a horse.

​

—B. Fulton Jennes

​

Hilary King

​​​​​

​​​

Spouse for Scale

 

I pose my husband:

next to enormous Portland roses, 

in front of grand castle doors in England, 

tall and grinning before waves exploding

on the shore during the California king tide. 

 

We could all use a yardstick:  

a partner, a dog, a mortgage,

a mother alive to spite or father 

long gone to overcome. 

 

Measurement’s both container for hope 

and warning that something goes

too far with itself, the way some do 

with hobbies or conspiracy theories,

soccer teams or healthy diets, the way 

he does talking politics, the way

 

something dark inside me swells, rises 

behind the innocent man standing on the beach.

​

൪

 

This poem is a true story that began at the beach. My husband and I have a ritual of driving to a nearby beach every Sunday morning to get coffee and walk on the shore. California experiences the king tide, a time when the tides are very high and the waves absolutely enormous. My husband is six feet tall, so one day I posed him in front of the breaking waves to show their height. As I began asking him to pose next to other objects–trees, art, dogs–I began to contemplate what role our partners play in measuring or containing our own nature. Is it a constraint? Is that constraint helpful, or harmful? By what other people, living or dead, are we measuring ourselves?

​

—Hilary King

​

Laurie Kuntz

​

 

Reaching for the Mango

 

In the fruit bin

there is one mango left

and my husband reaches for it

its sunburst skin of pinkish hues

announces its ripeness

the skin still firm, yet soft

enough for the knife 

to make a perfect cut

halves he will not share

he reaches for that last mango

almost secretly as he once

reached for me.

​

൪

 

Every poem is a journey, every journey a poem. My poems begin in journey format--whether it be listening to a child cajoling her mom to buy her a lollipop, watching my partner reach for the last mango in the fridge, or witnessing displacement of war-torn peoples --the journey and the destination are the makings of a poem.  

 

My work is a result of living as an expatriate in Asia and South America. Much of that time was spent working with displaced people from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia who were living in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines, while waiting to be resettled in America. My expatriate existence, cross-cultural experiences, and assimilating back into my own American culture as an aging woman, parent, and partner are reflected in my work. I write about finding a place of safety and acceptance while grappling with societal and personal issues of dissension, alienation, and an assimilation into one's own personal strength and identity.

 

I love to discover new poets every day, and I love returning to poets who I have learned so much from, one is silver, the other gold. I have been fortunate to study with Sharon Olds, Dave Smith, Yusef Komunyakaa, Bruce Weigl, David Wojahn, Lucille Clifton, Lynda Hull, and Galway Kinnell. In these turbulent times, I turn to my poet teachers and the lessons they have cemented through poetry. I lived in Japan for many years, and I find that the haiku poets, Issa and Basho, influence my tastes and my own writing style. The elements of the haiku, haiga, and haibun inform my work. I love that in all of these forms human nature is reflected through nature.  

 

I try to write my way through the turbulence and noise.  When I resist the noise, the words come.

 

—Laurie Kuntz

​​

Cora McCann Liderbach

​

​

Estrangement
 

Before you were a mom,

you wept easily,

all night sometimes—

 

Now you haul 

this schism with your son 

up aging peaks, 

dry-eyed—

long for sweet, salty 

release. 

 

Where did the tears go—

do they drip down 

a time-hollowed well, 

form stalactites 
in your heart’s 

cavern? 

 

Or evaporate

with each exhalation,

collecting in clouds 

to rain down

birth rivulets 

 

and fuse with streams,

merge with rivers—

chasing gravity to dive 

headlong into rocky 

froth?

 

Earth—a mother 

like you—

embraces her wandering 

tributaries

even as they chafe,

deepen, divide 

her.

​

൪

 

I took creative writing classes after retiring from healthcare communications and was smitten with poetry. Poetry is so challenging I knew I could spend the rest of my days immersed in its craft. 

 

Last year, at age 75, I was thrilled to have my first poetry chapbook, Throughline, published by Finishing Line Press. 

 

I enjoy so many poets. Some favorite poems that I return to are Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Burning the Old Year,” “Spoon,” by Ross Gay, “Poetry” by Pablo Neruda, and “The Raincoat” by Ada Limón.

 

This year, my New Year’s resolution is to follow Tracy K. Smith’s advice to Brian Tierney, to strive to end poems by opening a door outward not closing one.

 

—Cora McCann Liderbach

​​

Kathleen McHale

​

​

Deaf people are known to use sign language in their dreams.

 

 

Do the quick, wingy words stay

in the night world? Or do the hands

of the dreamer actually move, so that

a wakened partner might feel the conversation and

decide to participate?

Do others in the dreams speak

sign language or is it foreign to them, thus

leaving the speaker unheard 

by his dream companions?

If the deaf dreamer’s partner is wakened 

by the eloquent hands,

will he respond, and enter the vision tent?

The wakened one may speak in the dark, 

with agile, practised fingers

into the palms

of the deaf sleeper. Perhaps throw a thread to the dreamer,

pull him back to what seems real.

 

What happens to all the words

undelivered?

In a dim purgatory, perhaps, waiting

for their welcome. 

​

൪

 

I feel a certain urgency to tell the stories I tell in my work. Stories that narrate small moments that, to my mind, are actually huge moments. Usually, these stories are lived by people who enter my life in a haphazard way. Seemingly random. Then they become part of my story. And part of a larger story. 

 

I occasionally struggle to remain convinced that what I add to the discourse is relevant or useful. Most of the time I believe it is. Why? I am still struggling, but the urgency moves me.  There is no time to waste.

 

Poets whose books are currently on my table include: Dorianne Laux, Louise Glück, Anne Carson, Franz Wright, Marie Howe, Lucille Clifton, Roger Reeves, Li-Young Lee and T.S. Eliot. 

Others are waiting.

 

Images rather than lines of poetry stay with me. Images and word combinations from Shakespearian sonnets, favourite poets and haiku have come to define life as I see it and feel it. 

As a young child, I read Robert Louis Stevenson and wrote rhyming poems in cursive lettering on lined paper, then assembled them into construction-paper books. A later Master’s degree in 

Writing shaped my work in ways I am still challenging and questioning. 

 

My writing has become more spontaneous and untamed; I like not knowing where the piece is taking me. The aim is to have no control over the poem. To try to open myself to what arrives. To trust my five senses along with my mind. Telling a good story in my poems is not enough; the work needs muscle and movement. A dynamic quality. An uncertainty. Something that causes a slight shift in our perception. Access to emotion. An almost imperceptible movement. Matches struck unexpectedly in the dark, to quote Virginia Woolfe.

 

—Kathleen McHale

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Kathleen McTigue

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​

Mockingbird

 

In a naked tangle 

of bush honeysuckle

a mockingbird tries to make  

thin breakfast 

of winter-withered berries. 

 

Hunger sends her 

to dip and sidle 

through thorny bramble

toward what hangs and beckons 

red at the skinny twig-ends. 

 

Hollow-boned she may be, 

but still her weight is a puzzle: 

her settling bends the small branches 

so the berries dip below reach. 

I want her to give up, 

to go for something worthy 

of that eye-bright appetite.

 

            All those times 

love sang its salty promises

only to slide away  

if I ruffled myself into ease.

 

So I learned not to follow 

those boys of shine and swagger

who wanted something 

light as feathers, 

who had nothing strong 

or sweet enough to hold  

this weight of woman 

this ravenous heart 

this wide open mouth.

 

൪

 

I go to poetry for insight, which is the same reason I practice meditation: both of them help me see myself and the world around me more clearly. Most recently, I've been reading Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley. It astonishes and delights me to read something written at least a thousand years ago, that holds so much music and tells a tale of the human condition still so recognizable. Among the modern poets I treasure and have learned from are Lucille Clifton, Wisława Szymborska, Jane Hirshfield, Joy Harjo, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Camille Dungy, and Ellen Bass. There are so many others! But I find I most need the poets who are trying to touch that ineffable thing we call "spirituality."

 

The earliest vocational aspiration I remember having as a child was to be a poet--no doubt influenced by my mother gifting me a child's book of poetry when I was four years old.  But early in my college years I got pulled into political organizing and activism, and then figured out how to merge it with my burgeoning hunger for spirituality by becoming a Unitarian Universalist parish minister. Poetry fed that ministry in ways both wide and deep, but most of my writing those years was channeled into sermons and liturgy (and I was also raising three kids and continuing my activism, so there was little time for writing poetry).  

 

When I retired in 2021, I plunged back into studying the craft via online webinars. These days, writing poetry is a spiritual practice: it offers a way to pay deep attention to the world around me and the history I carry--which is another kind of world, reflected in this poetry.

 

—Kathleen McTigue

​

K A Nelson

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​

Moya said a short story is a failed poem

 

            Apologies to RC; thanks to TH

            

It’s a nice idea—I’d like to think 
she’s right, but I read one last night
that’s simply perfect as it is.

 

Still, I will experiment with scissors and
black marker, see what can be done
to “Errand” by Raymond Carver. 

 

 

                    What Chekov took to be good health
                    turned out to be blood in his lungs.
                    What he took to be a mild infection
                    turned out to be severe consumption.
                    Still, he insisted he was well.

                    What he took to be a cure—cocoa,

                    buttery oatmeal, strawberry tea—

                    turned out to be a mild emetic,
                    which meant he needed camphor
                    in a hypodermic. But still, he wrote 
                    his mother, I am swell.

                    What he took to be another day of
                    plenty more, turned out to be his 
                    final hours & minutes. When the 
                    knowing doctor ordered Moët, 
                    three crystal glasses—one for 
                    the dying man, one for Chekov’s 
                    missus, Olga, one for himself—
                    what Chekov took to be a tipple 
                    with more to come, turned out to be 
                    just the one. What he thought was 
                    going to be a little sleep, turned 
                    out to be (according to Olga’s 
                    memoirs at least) beauty, peace, 
                    and the grandeur of death.

​

൪

​

Rather than lines sticking with me, it’s particular poems that resonate. “Botany” comes to mind from Tony Hoagland’s last collection. Surprisingly witty with a poignant ending, I have read it at an open mic in Canberra. I have all Hoagland’s collections. Hoagland keeps me writing—he gives me permission to be myself, use the vernacular and humour, and juxtapose different ideas in a line, a stanza or the poem itself. His essays on American poetry are particularly inspiring. In fact, an exercise in The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice helped this poem along.     

                  

I’m reading Linda Pastan again this week. I have two books open: The Five Stages of Grief and Almost an Elegy. A good friend died a few years ago and I haven’t been able to adequately pay tribute to her in my work. But Linda Pastan shows me a way, so I keep trying. Her insights into the impermanence of our existence; her feminine/domestic and intelligent observations, and her determination to endure, influence me. Imagine my surprise when I came across her poem, "Almost an Elegy: For Tony Hoagland"! Like Pastan, perhaps I plagiarise his spirit and hers!

                  

Writing poetry is an ongoing quest for me. The quest involves feeling satisfied with work after a wrangle; putting work out for comment to trusted others and getting critiques; and, of course, being published.

                  

I grew up listening to my grandfather recite Australian bush ballads and wrote in the same vein when I was young. University led me to great contemporary Australian poets such as Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood, Les Murray, and Bruce Dawe. My poetic community in Canberra and the absurdity of life keeps me reading new poets, listening to other poets, and trying new techniques.

​

—K A Nelson

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Kathy Nelson

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​​​

The Funambulist

 

A tuxedo minces 

along the half-inch ridge 

of the picket fence, 

not deigning to wet her feet

in melting-in-sunny-

patches white, 

an excruciation of blue 

drawing my eye upward 

then slapping it away

with its squint of bright.

 

One paw forward, a splinter

of ice released with a quick

twitch, delicate lift 

of a shoulder, trailing tail.

 

The rug’s edge before me

like a warning, I approach,

watch that my arch spans

the quarter-inch rise. Fear

of falling. Half-life of worry.

 

Through the window, rooftops,

then, in the distance, tectonic 

uplift (Pliocene), glacial 

erosion (Pleistocene). 

 

Eons of rising, collapsing.

 

The way she steps down, 

fluid, no hesitation,

one icy crossbeam to the next.

​

൪

 

“Poetry is not the transcription but the transformation of experience,” says Ellen Bryant Voigt in one of her many fine craft essays. I have posted this quote in my workspace, because it has been so foundational to my formation as a poet. (And, since I have an innate inclination toward storytelling, I need its constant reminder.) Voigt’s poems, especially those in her collection Headwaters, so powerfully demonstrate how poetry can transform personal experience into music that others can not only hear but resonate with. Recently, reading Diane Seuss’s Modern Poetry, I saw the same principle operating in her work. From her own personal experience, Seuss creates poems that invite the reader to recognize herself. The personal becomes the universal. 

 

I’ve been heavily influenced by Gregory Orr to see poetry as a means to survival, to see the transformation of experience into language as a way to move through and beyond trauma. In that context, I am currently rereading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, which offers short vignettes of microaggression, little stories of everyday racial violence that go unnoticed by the perpetrator but are deeply wounding to the victim. As the descendant of enslavers and perpetrators of outright racial violence, I am deeply interested in hearing Rankine’s experience transformed into language I can hear.

 

Among the poets I turn to most often are Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Boruch, Lucie Brock-Broido, Henri Cole, Wanda Coleman, Terrance Hayes, James Tate, Charles Wright, alongside the poets I’ve already mentioned. And if I could ever write a poem as fine as “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, I believe I could die happy. 

​

— Kathy Nelson

​​​​

Bonnie Stanard

​

​

FAILING TO YIELD

 

Arriving late after grinding metal 

has come to a halt, I’m one of many 

standing in shadows 

not far from the crossroads store

that’s well-lit though it’s not night.

A compact car is utterly amiss of the road,

its back end bent but not much

but more than the semi-truck

on the shoulder and forsaken 

except by the driver 

standing by the door with his hands in his pockets.

 

Our county rescue squad’s vehicle,

despite powerful, rotating red lights,

flatlines, its emergency equipment

as dead as its battery.

 

Inside the ambulance is a girl 

taken from the back seat of the car.

The driver of the car, the father, 

leans against a light post 

with his cigarette smoke. The mother

stands apart and watches the arrival

of a farmer driving an SUV with jumper cables.

 

The uninjured grandmother 

kneels in the highway

near the rear door of the ambulance.

Her prayer, pressed on those of us standing by,

is that there be mercy. Her steepled hands pull 

at the robes of heaven and plead with God,

offering whatever deeds she has left, 

if only He will save the little girl on the stretcher inside.

Her petitions come to rest on my neighbor 

who whispers the news that the medic says 

she's nine years old and already dead.

​

൪

 

The only books I remember being in my childhood house, other than school books, are the Bible and the Sears catalogue. Maybe this made for a literary wasteland but at the same time it allowed imagination to flourish. My thoughts gained many avenues of escape, but as I learned more in school, as language grew to describe me and my world, the unknown was tamed into textbooks. 

 

I write poems to try to figure out what I think and what I believe. I like to read poems that deliver unique meanings (“Spring and Fall” by Gerard M. Hopkins) or ones that are amusing (“One Perfect Rose” by Dorothy Parker). Among my favorite books is I Have More Souls Than One by Fernando Pessoa. I like Heather McHugh’s work. The drama and fantasy of “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll won my affection years ago.

 

—Bonnie Stanard

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Ellen Wright

​​

​​

THRIFT

 

Because all New Englanders saved lengths of string to wind around 

            an ever-expanding ball of more string

 

Because we saved cardboard boxes

 

Because we saved brown paper bags to wrap the boxes 

            and because we tied them with the string we saved

 

Because we saved buttons in one of the nicer boxes

 

Because we handed down furniture and clothes from relative to relative

 

Because we saved remnants and scraps of fabric in the button box drawer 

            of the hand-me-down dresser and used them

            to make doll clothes or to patch our own clothes

 

Because we re-purposed shabby high heels and purses for Hallowe’en 

 

Because we saved old curtains and bedspreads for dressing up as Greek gods 

            and then re-re-used them as blanket rolls for camping

 

Because we saved bacon fat in a Hellman’s jar on the back of the stove

            so we could fry everything in it, and saved Gerber’s jars

            and peanut butter jars and coffee cans to store nails and screws

            and nuts and bolts and washers 

 

Because we saved books to impart our fairy tales to future generations

 

Because we saved scrap lumber in case we needed shelves for all the books

            and jars and boxes we saved

 

Because we saved a whole half of a wholesale cow in an industrial-sized 

            freezer in the basement where, providentially, we also saved four 

            years’ worth of stewed tomatoes from the vegetable garden we fertilized 

            with old rotten leaves we saved in the compost pit

 

Because we tied the tomato vines to the poles we built from our stash of 

            scrap lumber with the string we saved on our giant economy-sized              

            ball of string.

​

൪

 

The prompt for this poem was a friend’s incredulity when I mentioned the ever-expanding ball of string that was once a staple of every New England household.

 

Unlike my friend, younger than I and raised in apartments, I grew up with attics, basements, porches, garages. Saving was a cultural enterprise. Among neighbors and families, our accumulated stuff was a common good, borrowed or shared or comingled to keep everyone’s children clothed, gutters cleared, cars running.  

 

Keeping it organized was a life’s work.

 

My parents began married life as youthful idealists convinced that love would provide for their needs. Over time, however, the zeal required to manage their stockpiled fat-of-the-land evolved into caricature. While, on the surface, we looked like a normal suburban family, we were secretly more like a commune of Transcendentalist hamsters seasonally circulating our leftovers and hand-me-downs in and out of storage. By dint of these rituals were we able to keep some vestige of love, if not alive, at least busy performing an imitation of itself.

 

—Ellen Wright

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