Three Poems by Emily Strauss

One Hundredth Meridian

 

Where the West begins:

mountain slope frontier

where the tall grasses end,

the first rise of red maples

after the treeless death plains

they walked through for

months losing cows and

children, the old and weak

 

and inland there is no beginning

or end

there is only light, dust and red

rock in endless mazes

invisible rivers below,

wooden fences wavering

into a heat-warped distance

the center of the West

doesn't know its boundaries--

 

cold deep waters

      warm shallow seas

                  the small creeks draining

                  the bluffs eastward.

 

Where the West ends:

at the ocean's lip scattered

with driftwood, sheer cliffs

brooks alkaline from the redwoods'

roots hiding under sword ferns

and alders in the dim mists,

sea stacks and natural bridges

elephant seals sleeping

in a bright sun, dried kelp

before a deep canyon in the bay,

harbors facing only toward sunset

the sand reflecting a setting moon

leading off the edge of the earth.

 

 

 

 

Redwood Summer

 

We climb from the ridge

over 1600 feet down

into the redwood canyon

to the stream still flowing

in late summer

down to the cool ferns, the last

columbines and larkspurs

beside the pools in deep shade

through the mid-day glare,

heat eddies redolent of native

square-stemmed mint, past

Pearly Everlasting like warm

honey swirling around our feet

 

then back up

laboring as we transcend

the same redwoods

back into the sun, marching

slowly past dusty oaks now

spider webs caught among dry

leaves, sweating, breathing

carefully, sips of tepid water

not counting the steps, dirt

lifting at each foot fall, we

ignore everything now, just

walking

hot.

 

 

 

 

The Wind Hits

 

The wind hits in tight fists

like a boxer, circling, quiet

then suddenly striking from

the north, now the east

 

it fools me when I set a cup

down, unfold a chair

it doesn't like cups--

that's in the bush--

 

or chairs-- that's knocked

flat, or dish towels drying

or wash basins-- the soapy

water flies into my lap.

 

If I were more patient

I could out-wit the wind

dodge its icy punches

eat warm food, watch

 

the full moon rise over

the dark desert. Instead

I retreat, let the gusts bow

my tent like an accordion

 

a cold bellows, not for fire

but a sub-zero night.

I wear four layers to sleep

and hope for daylight.

 

 

 

 

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry. Over 100 of her poems appear in dozens of online venues and in anthologies. The natural world is generally her framework; she often focuses on the tension between nature and humanity, using concrete images to illuminate the loss of meaning between them. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

A Poem by Deborah Guzzi

A Stream of Laughter

The sunlit water frolics

over a stone-strewn base.
Chattering waters,
playfully tumbling like children
on a high hill, rolling down.

Both translucent and opaque

the blue and greens magnified
by reflection and refraction,
the silky wetness laves the colored stone,
beginning where,
ending where
I am not to know.

High mountain waters

strained of impurities by crystalline sand
purveyor of bountiful imaginings,
leave boats with twig masts
brilliant red-purple beetles
floating like lost sailors.

The sunlit waters dance

smile breeders
laughter seekers
The water falls
ever
on.

 

Deborah Guzzi was first published at the age of sixteen, she has continued writing for the past fifty years. She as been published in the literary journals of Western Connecticut University and self- published two illustrated volumes of poetry, The Healing Heart and Heaven and Hell In A Nutshell. At the present, she write articles for Massage and Aroma Therapy Magazines. Since 2003 she has traveled to Nepal, China, Japan, Egypt and Peru. I was studying in Nepal during the last civil war and was in Egypt two weeks before the Arab spring uprising which over threw Hosni Mubarak, much poetry came out of these memorable experiences.She owns and operate Empathic Touch, acting as a healing facilitator, specializing in the Eastern Arts of Shiatsu, Lomi Lomi, Thai Massage, Feng Shui and Reiki energetic healing.

A Poem by Jonathan Butcher

 

The Morning Journey

 

Over cast white skies, offer a blanket

that connects both clouds and ground,

and offers this fragile cocoon, as I pass

the rail side gardens littered with rusted

beer cans, over turned tables and Union

Jacks flying at half mast.

The muddy bankings sprayed with rabbit holes

like a field of eyes, that seem far to shallow

to hold any kind of life, offer little shadow,

over the empty green bottles that are piled

up like old ruins.

Those extra two hours, that stretch out my

shift, like a stubborn thief upon a rack, they

force me to avoid the faces still incased in

the vastness this place offers, despite its

limitations, their hands just as idle as ever

form fists, that still remain as brittle as ever.

And the slight breeze here, that carries

any yells away from me, allows that keyboard,

dusted with dead skin and boredom, to fade to

the back of my head, and lets me walk just that

little bit lighter.

 

 

 

Jonathan Butcher is a poet based in Sheffield in the North of England. He has had work appear in various print on on-line publications including: Underground Voices, The Rusty Nail, Electric Windmill Press, Black Listed Magazine, Dead Snakes, Turbulence, Gutter Eloquence, Dead Beats, Popshot Magazine, and others. His forthcoming chapbook 'Concrete Cradle' is to be published by Fire Hazard Press.

A Poem by Jon Bennett

3 Fish in a Pool

Walking the bike path

I stopped at Cordanesus Creek.
It emerges briefly from a storm pipe
goes into a culvert under a footbridge
then back into a dark tunnel.

Still, in the shade there

are ferns, trees, and a pool
though not more than 2 feet deep.
I went down the steep embankment
avoiding baby diapers
and decaying garbage
to peer into the cool shallow

and was astonished to see

3 fish in that pool,
and a crawdad, old and pale
missing an arm but still
a little lobster
amongst the filth and failing
of people people people.

Back on the path

an old woman was watching me.
“There's 3 fish in the pool,”
I told her, “and a crawdad!”
We both smiled
and the path seemed greener
and filled with a promise
that someday we'd find
the things that we have lost.

Jon Bennett is a writer and musician living in San Francisco. He has published poetry in Rattle, Rumble, Dead Snakes, The Blue Hour, and a number of other journals, and just finished his first novel, "The Unfat," a speculative science fiction story about autism.

A Poem by Michael H. Brownstein

This is the Strangest Sky

so blue it highlights her eyes,
the white sun,
and grass in dire need of drink strong green and full of itself.
This was the year winter did not come
and summer arrived before spring.
We cut the lawn for the first time in March,
watched a frenzy of honeybees in April
and harvested our first wild strawberries soon after.
By the time May arrived,
we had gone swimming in the pond outback,
the municipal swimming pool had opened,
and the first heat violence churned through the park.
The rivers of mud cracked,
the banks knee dropped into crumbs
and the worst part of all of this was the lack of any comforting breeze.
We sat on the swinging chair in the shade of the porch
and waited for the pause to fast forward.

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks includingThe Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

A Poem by Changming Yuan

Outer Spaces

the landscape is wildly wide

is thin-colored

conceptions loom above the skyline

impulses swirl near the hills

no wind of feeling is blowing
as the spirit sails on the sea

in the limbo

the whole outside is held
right at the tip of my mind’s tongue

Changming Yuan, 4-time Pushcart nominee and author of Allen Qing Yuan, holds a PhD in English, teaches independently and edits Poetry Pacific in Vancouver. Yuan's poetry appears in 629 literary publications worldwide, including Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite Corpse, LiNQ and London Magazine. Submissions welcome at yuans@shaw.ca.

A Poem by John Miatech

Sierras in May

These mountains are important

All their secret, lonely places,
Where the clouds drop their rain
Enough color happens here
To catch anyone’s attention

Where a black basalt ledge

Juts out above a meadow,
I let my dad’s ashes loose,
To chase his dream of being
A high country cowboy

Down below this spot, a river winds out from Independence Lake

A cool, cerulean blue line flowing east,

Where dragonflies hover in their helicopter bodies

And the grass grows tall

John Miatech has published three books of poetry, Things to Hope For, Waiting for Thunder and What the Wind Says. He currently is working on a new poetry collection, Stretching Into Evening. Miatech’s work has appeared in Anesthesia Review, BlazeVox, RiverSedge, Cellar Roots, Big River Poetry Review, Savasvati, Blue Lake Review,  Northwest Review, and Kind of a Hurricane Press.

 

Two Poems by Shelby Stephenson

ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI

Since you drifted away, taking your heart

And leaving me with your wavelets as part
Of longing to be with you, I shall go
Now, for we know life’s not art, but the slow,
High way of reconciliation, one
Space between separation’s craving bone
And the chill-healing drive
To see myself without the bride
These words fail to page, praying softly
As dreams break in floods arias
River into your voice I give away,
Seeing your face rescued in every wave.

BUBBLY ABSOLUTION

I quit my bottle of Angry Orchard.

My mouth seeped childhood’s tree.
You leaned into a willow
And knelt into our roots.
Your cider fuzzed my lips in vain:
You kept Love in fee-simple absolute.

 

Shelby Stephenson’s Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the Bellday Prize for Poetry, 2008, Allen Grossman, judge, and the Oscar Arnold Young Award from the Poetry Council of North Carolina, 2009, Jared Carter, judge. Shelby Stephenson’s Maytle’s World is forthcoming from Evening Street Press.

A Poem by Erik Moshe

The Cove of No Tomorrow

There’s no adjective for darkwaters worth choosing from;
You are rich, yet you live in a barren penthouse
How is it so?

There is no
wealth of knowledge on your cobalt walls
Sea salt was rarely garnished
for your yacht harbors
You are a non organic compound supervisor
bridge keeper to altars
You keep matchsticks to see through paradises’ murky underbelly
Cut diamonds are gashes to the collective forehead
chandeliers reflect broken constants
for token prospects
Room decorations fit for Constantinople’s frontyard
ordain the brain of a fool

Humble men often take the backdoor approach
sorting through the topaz, petunias,
piles of surplus gold bricks
carried by brigades of jellyfish pods
waiting in the sub-polar bramble

for rectification at the hands of a people’s ocean

You may ask for extra oxygen bottles
to breathe down here in this cerulean containment cell
A facility where wet stones market
the slippery blueprints of failed discovery

Over-nurtured manta rays flay in the pasteurized sun
You came to the wrong place, I'm afraid
A man finds no home here who holds his treasure dearer to his heart than his reservoir for goodness
Even Ozymandias needed critique, so why not you?

You’ve dug into trenches and mineslike a hyperactive dwarf
from ranges we don't speak of
places lit by amphibian torches
seldom illuminated by the mind
Your attempts at finding lifeblood had
lacked any sustenance -
never a substance worth fossilizing

Tourist traps rewarded predation
and tomorrow became a dark ravine.

Erik Moshe was born and raised in South Florida. He has been around the world, from France to Iraq and Afghanistan. His work has been published in Gloom Cupboard, the Broward College Pan'Ku , Spirit of the Stairway, Clutching at Straws, mad swirl, The Bactrian Room, DEAD SNAKES, and he has poems forthcoming in Poetry.Pacific and The Camel Saloon. He enjoys microwaveable organics and conversations about DARPA uncertainties.

A Poem by Dawnell Harrison

Dissected shadows

Dissected shadows linger

On the rock wall near

The sea’s edge.

The seagulls hover like

Grey kites.

Sparrows dissolve like

Rain under a dust of wings.

It feels like tomorrow will
Never arrive.

Dawnell Harrison has been published in over 70 magazines and journals including The Endicott Review, Fowl Feathered Review, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Vox Poetica, Queen's Quarterly, The Vein, Word Riot, Iconoclast, Puckerbrush Review, Nerve Cowboy, Mobius, Absinthe: A journal of poetry, and many others.

Three Poems by Cherise Wyneken

Why do sunsets make me stop and stare?

 

It’s not the only dab of brightness

    that I’ve seen today.

Yellow allamandas bloom profusely

    on my garden fence

the pool ripples shades of aqua blue

    my beach towel

drapes across the lawn chair

    purple, green and maize

cardinals flange the hedgerow

with brilliant tones of red.

Perhaps because a sunset

filters out the day

    in one last flare of color

telling me it’s over

in pomegranate hues

    watermelon pink, persimmon

leaving dregs of darkness

    in its wake

measuring tomorrow’s waterline

interring tints of blossom

    in its tomb. 

 

 

 

Pictured

 

A quiet spot

along the Oregon coast

where gentle waves

ripple toward shore;

a place of peace

with a weathered table

that beckons for a picnic.

Spring green grass

speckled with tiny

white and yellow flowers,

a hedge of unfamiliar shrubs

setting off a lone and

straggled pine,

and cotton ball clouds

melding like eider in a coverlet

with roiling skies above.

A quiet spot

where simple specks of life

portray the total spectrum.

 

 

 

 

Springing Forward

 

Flakes of white plum blossoms

fall like snow onto our yard

taking me back to winter fields

lying still beside our house

as I waited to see Santa’s sleigh appear.

I feel sifting snow creep up my sleeves

when frozen ruts

slipped me into cold banks.

I hear delicious crunchy sounds

when walking on thin iced mounds,

and recall the itch and sting of frozen ears.

I make a u-turn from my memories

and find spring spread across our lawn.

 

 

 

 

Cherise Wyneken is a freelance writer. Her articles, stories, and poems – adult and juvenile – have appeared in over two hundred publications, two collections of poetry, two poetry chapbooks, a memoir, a novel, a children’s book, a children’s audiocassette, and her recent collection of stories from her life, STIR-FRIED MEMORIES from www.whisperingangelbooks.com She writes a poetry column at: www.examiner.com/poetry-in-oakland/cherise-wyneken and was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize in poetry.

See also: http://www.authorsden.com/cherisewyneken

 

   

A Poem by William G. Davies, Jr.

Spring Contest

The tree extends

its bony hand
offering ruby buds
seemingly for the taking
as if no amount
of small print
could obscure
this truth

William G. Davies, Jr. lives in a town surrounded by dairy farms. He has been happily married for thirty-eight years. His work has apperared in the Cortland Review, Bluepepper, The Wilderness House Review, Gloom Cupboard and many others.