A Poem by Iftekhar Sayeed

Ferryboat on the Chengi

you can't walk across
the Chengi river
in monsoon

the ferryman
finds his coin
this season

a shuttling black
hyphen
in the second
bend
of the river

connecting
the disconnect

conveying his cargo
from paradise to
paradise

Iftekhar Sayeed teaches English. He was born and lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has contributed to The Danforth Review, Axis of Logic, Enter Text, Postcolonial Text, Southern Cross Review, Opednews.com, Left Curve, Mobius, Erbacce, Down In The Dirt, The Fear of Monkeys and other publications. He is also a freelance journalist. He and his wife love to tour Bangladesh.

A Poem by Cherise Wyneken

Hawaiian Parable   

 

Fogged in

muddling through the mountains

we wiper through wet mists

struggling to the summit.

 

Inexplicably

the clouds may lift.

Wait – you might achieve your goal

   grand view of Grand Canyon

Kokee Park, Kauai.

 

Below the puff of breeze

deep cliffs appear like magic

   saddle-backed and red.

A gold-green frieze of velvet

slopes the sides.

 

Fogged in

muddling through the mountains

we press with patience

for a glimpse of heaven’s crest.

 

 

 

Cherise Wyneken is a freelance writer whose prose & poetry have appeared in a variety of publications.  Her book publications include:  prose:  Round Trip, Freddie, Spaceship Lands in Africa, Stir—Fried Memories/ poetry:  Touchstones, Seeded Puffs, Old Haunts, Things Behind Things.  Plus a children’s cassette.  Her poem, “Borne Again,” was nominated for the 2013 Pushcart Prize.

A Poem by Richard King Perkins II

No Hour

Droplets of water on petal and sheaf
so clear that this may be the winter of ancient winters.
The air is frozen,
tree limbs so cold they cannot shiver.

Night is antediluvian--
a pomelo frog is slightly warm,
buried and nearly impossible to find,
so quiet I can hear him breathe, know his dreams.

I captured him months ago,
until he became a tadpole,
undoing time and the clasp of my fingers--
no hour will be like this again.



Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities.  He has a wife, Vickie and a daughter, Sage.  He is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications including Poetry Salzburg Review, Bluestem, Sheepshead Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Two Thirds North, The Red Cedar Review and The William and Mary Review.  He has poems forthcoming in Broad River Review, Emrys Journal and December Magazine.

A Poem by ayaz daryl nielsen

Where are you going?

 

Assess the density

of rising mist

as sunrise

embraces

early morning’s 

dampness 

once more?

 

The wild blueberries 

and toadstools,

their moment

 

A crow stretching 

stiff wings in 

first light,

his, too

 

Cawing

 

the sound

is canny 

and 

everlasting.

ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs) and x-hospice nurse, is editor of bear creek haiku (24+ years/116+ issues), his poetry’s homes include Lilliput Review, Yellow Mama, Verse Wisconsin, Shamrock, High Coupe and Shemom, he has earned some cherished awards and participated in worthy anthologies - his poetry ensembles include Concentric Penumbra’s of the Heart and Tumbleweeds Still Tumbling, and, in 2013, released an anthology of poetry titled The Poet’s of Bear Creek - beloved wife/poet Judith Partin-Nielsen, assistant Frosty, and! bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre)

A Poem by Sy Roth

It Comes Like That

Like fat crystalline flakes
It skitters across the darkling sky
like staccato flatulence
it melts the red dawn that comes to greet it

it is a petrified sun
broadcasting wolfish yelps
it crackles in the harbors of men
where odoriferous igloo men reside

it bends its head to peek at itself
amenless
burying angst in the budding branches of long-dead lilacs
floats like corn flakes
in a bowl of almond milk

they genuflect and wait
peep out at the ones who take out the garbage
scoff at the tepidity of the crocuses snuffed out
interred beneath to await resurrection

in the melting deluge of feather-down snow falls
daffodil satyrs prepare to stand erect,
born in yellow lakes of a drowning world
it comes like that.

 

 

Sy Roth comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, head is bowed by reality; other times, he proud to have said something noteworthy. cRetired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace.   He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’ Kitsch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry, The Artistic Muse, Word Riot, Samizdat Literary Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Screech Owl, Epiphany, Red Poppy Review, Big River, Poehemians, Nostrovia Poetry’s Milk and Honey, Siren, Palimpsest,  Dead Snakes, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya, Wilderness House Journal, Aberration Labyrinth, Mindless(Muse), Em Dash and Kerouac’s Dog. 

A Poem by Zach Fechter

Morning

I walk in the wilderness of a morning undone,

As whispering wind through wheat;

The cawing of seagulls over gently cresting waves are

Coming to rest against fields of rye.

Zach Fechter lives and writes in Wilton, Connecticut. He has been published in Poetry Quarterly Magazine and Kind of a Hurrican Press. He is a graduate of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. 

Three Poems by B.T. Joy

Mountain Walk

You climbed here 

to make a mark on things. 

Now making your way down 

to river-tumble and low sequential hills,

grey chains in rock 

snake under floodplains, 

monoliths push, at earth-speed, 

chalky mole-snouts from black depths of clay. 

Somewhere above a kestrel turns; 

producing sound, 

whole-pitched, planet-round, vibrating 

in a treeless sky. 

Meant not to echo. Meaning never 

to stop; to snag on the world. 

Grampians

The hills spill with light

interminably along the landscape’s endless lines.

Standing in these highlands: their enormity, 

and their rivered roots rolling in gentle tides, 

give you the impression of being 

very weak and very small.

On each extremity  

the furthest mountains in the range 

are blue clouds wilting, partially-unseen, 

against the blue sky. 

You have no idea where the river is flowing 

or where the mountain raven will perch 

among the upper-stones. 

Sometimes it seems 

not even to matter. 

So you cried with joy in the silence above the town. 

So the electric burn of your constant mental questioning 

died away in the tireless answer of terrain that steeped 

its forested body in geological time.

What does any of that matter?

The wide Grampians are still as impassable to you.  

Nowhere did you solve the puzzle of your life.  

Ablutions

We were not simply washing 

but conducting ablutions.

The tumbling pool was deep and green 

under gold flowering cassias 

and tracks were muddy where rain 

had raced down from the hilly paths.

We dipped the limbs in water 

that had dipped the punters’ poles 

into the Chiang Mai’s soft, brown flow; 

and remembering the hot journey

we tossed cold light into the muggy air 

horsing around at wading depth.

We were not simply washing 

but conducting ablutions.

How the water stored outside a mosque 

cleans the face and arms, the head and feet. 

Or those water fights in April’s joy 

that scud their cleanness into the inner body. 

How after the coolness and the beating falls

we rose and wandered out of water; 

our clean feet greeting the undergrowth 

as though entering a holy place. 

B.T. Joy is a Scottish poet and fiction writer living and working in Glasgow. He has published poetry and short fiction in journals, magazines, anthologies and podcasts worldwide; including poetry in Forward Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Presence, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond and The Newtowner and horror stories in Static Movement, Surreal Grotesque, James Ward Kirk Fiction, Human Echoes, MicroHorror, Flashes In The Dark, SQ Magazine and Forgotten Tomb Press. After receiving his honours degree in Creative Writing and Film Studies in 2009 he went on, in 2012, to receive a PGDE from Strathclyde University and has since taught as a High School English teacher. He is also the author of two volumes of haiku In The Arms Of The Wind (2010) and The Reeds That Tilt The Sky (2011). His haiga have appeared with the World Haiku Association, Haiga Online and Daily Haiga. He was one of six writers nominated for The Ravenglass Poetry Press Competition of 2012; judged by Don Paterson. For further information on writing and publications please visit the writer’s website: http://btj0005uk.wix.com/btjoypoet

Three Poems by Patricia L. Goodman

Poem to Myself

Don't lament this old photograph --

you, ten years old,

in your homemade polka-dot

swimsuit. It’s your first time at the beach.

You’re trying

to please your mother

as you over-react to waves. Take a lesson

from the flock of goldfinches

playing musical perches

on your feeders—

unconcerned their winter gold is dull.

And look,

despite a swollen ankle, that deer
seems serene

as she searches for acorns beneath the snow.

And in that gaggle of geese up there,

the one missing tail feathers

still honks its way home.

When Winter Stayed

The geese look

like decoys, asleep

on the ice, not praying,

yet all facing west. You say

it is because

they are heading the wind.

I have other questions,

but I watch a hawk

land in a bare maple,

and when I turn

you are gone.

All That Remains

In startling desiccation,

           he lies

       beneath a pink peony

in my garden,

           no smell of death,

       no weight in my hands,

           only bones

and feathers,

black starling wings

           extended stiffly,

       dark feet

clasping emptiness,

       beak crookedly agape

from the impact

           that broke his neck.

Above him,

           the window

        to my studio,

cruel cause

           of a simple error,

real reason

           to question

        why we create

such fatal illusions,

           how man fits

        in this world.

Patricia L. Goodman is a widowed mother and grandmother, a graduate of Wells College with a degree in Biology and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Her career involved breeding and training horses with her orthodontist husband on their farm in Chadds Ford, PA. She has had poems published in the likes of Aries, The Broadkill Review, Sugar Mule, Requiem Magazine, Jellyfish Whispers, Fox Chase Review; Mistletoe Madness , Storm Cycle, Poised in Flight(all from Kind of a Hurricane Press)On Our Own (Silver Boomer Books) and The Widow’s Handbook. Her first book, Closer to the Ground was a finalist in the 2014 Dogfish Head Poetry Competition and she has twice won the Delaware Press Association Communications Award in poetry. She lives on the banks of the Red Clay Creek in Delaware, where she is surrounded by the natural world she loves.

                                                      

Two Poems by John Grey

Regarding the Hawk

 

The hawk plunges

into the crowd at the bird feeder,

grabs a mourning dove

in a wild flurry of feather and blood.

 

It had been waiting for just this moment:

the convergence of

my generosity with seed,

the hunger of the small birds,

the even greater hunger of the raptor.

 

I watch the hawk lift off,

the flapping gray bird in its talons,

shifting to another gear for uplift,

then settling on a wind draft

to calm its racing blood,

before alighting on the top

of a telephone pole,

to devour its catch

in full view of the neighborhood.

 

How can this sight not stay with me,

aiding and abetting death as I do.

 

The hawk will return to its aerie in the high oaks,

sparrows, finches, retreat to their nests in the thick brush.

mourning doves batten down in their loose bed

of leaves and twigs in forks of maples.

 

And I will fill the empty feeders, pick up the feathers,

hose away the stains.

That’s as close to nature as I get.

 

 

 

Crow Life

 

The crow sits on a throne of green

on the highest oak tree branch,

its heft, dark feathers,

lauding it over the surrounding landscape.

 

Not even we intruders,

superior as we think we are,

can match the black-robed beast

for haughtiness.

 

It offers a desultory caw

to announce our presence,

nothing more.

It has no fear of hikers

but sinks into its black satin robes,

beak on chest,

talons gripping limb.

 

But there's that whole issue of carrion

to be dealt with.

It can't eat until something dies.

We're so alive

we're more annoyance than anything.

 

And, unlike the raccoon, the skunk,

when we die

our fellows do something about it.

They don't leave us

to the pecking order of the crows.

 

The crow looks out across its empire.

And then down at humankind below.

The worst of us are on the trails.

The best of us are six feet under.

 

 

 

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in The Lyric, Vallum and the science fiction anthology, “The Kennedy Curse” with work upcoming in Bryant Literary Magazine, Natural Bridge, Southern California Review and the Oyez Review.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

Something Better Than Forever

Night like awkwardly scrawled

Handwriting withers in the wisps
Snake whips of storm clouds crackling
With lightning’s hiss
Like Zen koan
That show how
One hand would clap
The slow sad music
Of a life dried up
With the juicelessness
Of that which I once savored
Hard and fast and gulped down
Because I knew it
Would not last.

 

  

From Then On She Enjoyed Her Contact With The Aliens

 

My life like a melting wax statue’s

Dripping pigeon feathers to Icarus’ fall
Pounding of the surf in my mind like
The echo in a child’s ear from a seashell
Sea breezes eat through the pores
Of my clothes raising huge goose bumps
Which feel invigorating
To my long dead senses
So long ago I started to die
A slow death lost in dimensions
Of unfeeling alienation
And had a nauseating hunch
That something was missing
Voices fuzz out from the top of the cliffs
And I realize I am not alone on the beach either
A broken sea scarred doll
Floats in the tidal pool at my feet
Her hair tangled with seaweed
It is a kind of witchcraft
To be here now dead to wonder
Hanging on the end of
The North American continent
Quivering on the verge of
The final westward trail which
I am in no hurry to travel down.

  

 

A Scarcrow From Odds

I opened up the door this morning

Expecting everything to be in Technicolor
But evidently last night’s
Storm did not spirit
Our house away
Because I’m still in Anaheim
And the fog is but
The messenger of the gray
Choking sky
Of the noon day yet to come
Later on in the early evening
Riding up over the crest of
Signal Hill past the graves of
Thousands of dearly departeds
Our truck rolls forward
And father’s foot is hard on the brake
And I notice that Long Beach is dying
Its aged buildings smothering
Beneath spigots of invisible Zyklon B laced showers
The chimneys of the electric company
Puff out globules of smoke
Into the night time
Like a lunger smoking against doctor’s orders
Ejaculating a sour stench
Into the womb eternal
That is our atmosphere
And probably only rehabilated asthmatics like myself
Can truly savor the fine syrupy taste
Of a techno haiku like this
Coming as it does at this late date
In what we laughingly refer to as the age of progress

Ken L. Jones has written everything from Donald Duck comic books to dialogue for the Freddy Krueger movies for the past thirty plus years.  In the last three years he has gained great notice for his vast publication of horror poetry which has appeared in many anthology books, blogs, magazines and websites and especially in his first solo book of poetry, Bad Harvest and Other Poems.  He is also publishing recently in the many fine anthology poetry books that Kind of a Hurricane Press is putting out.

A Poem by ayaz daryl nielsen

Already Ours

Words lost in the forest

invisible behind closed eyes         

Green inspiration of mature 

blackberry and raspberry thickets, 

of wild marshes ripe with 

cranberries and blueberries,

unlit by mind-light’s crimson rays 

Above thicket and marsh, grey 

squirrel-forum and good, loose 

magpie’s black-and-white 

directions:  ‘the green inspiration 

of an out-breath as they’re spoken, 

words as they must be when 

they’re written - embrace them!   

They are already yours’

ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs) and hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (24+ years/118+ issues), poetry’s homes include Lilliput Review, The Stray Branch, Verse Wisconsin, Shamrock, Kind of a Hurricane, Shemom, has earned cherished awards and participated in worthy anthologies - poetry ensembles include Concentric Penumbra’s of the Heart and Tumbleweeds Still Tumbling, and, in 2013, released an anthology The Poet’s of Bear Creek - beloved wife/poet Judith Partin-Nielsen, and! bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre)

A Poem by Jonel Abellanosa

While the Crickets are Mating

 

The moon thinks the crow is firewood

So it splits the bird’s shadow from its sneaking. 

 

The bird thinks the moon is the fruit

Of contention that splintered the flock

So it tries to return its fullness

In the thickest crown it found. 

 

In the right tree, the owl might be laughing

If it hasn’t swallowed the wrong snake. 

The frogs have stopped complaining. 

The boy scribbling under omniscient stars,

Tending his mind’s earliest fire, Albert,

Who decades later will confound skeptics

With three letters and a number: e, m, c and 2.

 

 

 

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines.  His poetry is forthcoming in Anglican Theological Review, The Lyric, Ancient Paths, and has appeared in Windhover, PEN Peace Mindanao anthology, Star*Line, Liquid Imagination, Mobius Journal of Social Change, Inwood Indiana Press, Golden Lantern, Poetry Quarterly, New Verse News, Qarrtsiluni, Anak Sastra: Stories for Southeast Asia, Fox Chase Review, Burning Word, Barefoot Review, Red River Review, Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic.  He is working on his first poetry collection, Multiverse.