Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

Two Perfect Prints

The sand echoed with the stamp of takeoff.  Success
driven deep into the grains.  I paused to capture
the moment (as if such freedom could ever be
contained).  Taking in the light, the subtle tones
of the breeze and the resonating chitter of wings
both flighted and still

fighting, I found myself

frozen.  In that mysterious moment
I was another world
of motion and momentum.  Building
bridges with my eyes to cloud-filled dream worlds
raining silver lined gowns.  And I wrapped
myself in its folds.  Stepping
forward, finally, with the eye-opening will to ripple
[inside] my own wake.

Snail Sits

on a rusting grill.

He is not searching

for remnants of food,

forgone.  Rather, he is reflecting

on the day’s travels, a lifetime

in inches, as the moon showers

his shell in cool white

light.

Not All Wings Are Wax

Eagle.

Balding royal

attains mythic stature.

Icarus’ mimic, soaring

for sun.

A.J. Huffman has published twelve full-length poetry collections, thirteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses.  Her most recent releases, Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink), A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press), and Familiar Illusions (Flutter Press) are now available from their respective publishers.  She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2500 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, The Bookends Review, Bone Orchard, Corvus Review, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com.

Three Poems by Dah

Myth

The sea does not call
Myth
Another
Low tide is food
Air caresses
Pliable

A ripple knows nothing
dissolves
The thinnest puddle of clouds
reflections

Tracing sand with a finger
I wish upon a secret
Truth
Always
Nothing else



Empty Seat

Along the deserted coast
very little lingers:  shells, tortured rocks
sand dollars of no value
Light shrinks inside the breakers
where waves come to shore
to loiter in the sand
to hold the flickering light

A web of wind tangles the mist
into clouds,
rustles the feathers of sleeping gulls

I am silent, the sea thunders.
My solitude, filled with memories
of things that cannot be repaired.
A crowded emptiness
comes out of hibernation,
a storm brews in darkness.

Late afternoon wears gray scars,
the sky is soiled with thin smog
I am silent, listening for the wind
There is nothing but the snap of waves
against the comatose cliffs

I take an empty seat in the sand.
Nothing changes.  Even here
sitting along the beginning of life
nothing changes

The routine between waves and wind
is their habit, their hope
yet both need different directions

still, it is hard to feel alive
while the world suffocates.
It is hard not to notice
when earth clutches my feet
and the air is speechless.



Forgotten Cattails

I enter the solstice
to hear snow falling
where winter leads the way
to a short-light-distance

Along a childhood memory
snow labored painfully
sweeping the landscape
with heavy shoulders
of white surrender

It seemed a great distance
from Grandmother's house
to the barn
where the icy sky
bellowed a deep freeze
over shivering fields
of forgotten cattails




Dah's most recent book is The Translator from Transcendent Zero Press.  His first three books are from Stillpoint Books.  Dah's poetry has been published by editors from the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, China, Philippines, and India.  His poems recently appeared in Lost Coast Review, Recusant, The Cape Rock, River & South Review, Acumen Journal, Sandy River Review, Stone Voices Magazine, The Linnet's Wings, and Diverse Voices Quarterly.  Dah has been nominated for the Pushcart by the editor of Transcendent Zero Press.  He lives in Berkeley, California where he is working on the manuscripts for his fifth and sixth books.  Visit:  www.dahlusion.wordpress.com

Three Poems by John Grey

Birds at the Feeder

Birds gather at the feeder
during the short days of February,
mostly brown, some gray,
and occasionally the striking blue
of the chatty jay and the
cardinal's blood red.
They peck at sunflower seeds
or the mix in a tray.
Woodpeckers cling to suet cages,
drilling the good white fat,
black and white but
for the red dot on the forehead,
like an Indian bindi.
Doves poke and plod
at ground level,
among the husks,
the unintentional spill,
their slate heads bobbing
like old men agreeing
with what they do not understand.
Sometimes, a stranger alights,
a grosbeak, a towhee,
even an escaped cage bird,
passing through
but, like all the others,
leaving something of themselves
with our eager faces at the window.
It's winter, far from summer's bounty,
and we can't help being in their lives more.
But they pay us no attention.
Survival is too busy to give thanks.



The Eel Run

Flesh passes beneath me
in a slither of eels
or a skeleton does for skin
in the cockeyed creep of a crab.

Water flows as peace
but beneath the surface
my hands are at war
with the wildlife.

They slip through my fingers.
They bury themselves out of reach.
Then the stream calms.
My hand comes to nothing.

A tanager alights on a branch
where I cannot reach it.
A rabbit skitters away
at speeds beyond me.

Time to go home,
hug wife and children.
A good haul when
it's my own kind running.



Eye on the Shore

As above, so below.
on the surface of a lake.
matter makes good on its reflection.
The sun is twinned.
Mountains drift out as far as they are high.
My two faces keep to themselves
as I lean over from the bank,
take in a pebble, a darting fish,
a hundred frog leaps.

Looking up.
I arrange the prospect outward.
On an overhanging bough.
four turtles bask in order by size.
In far shore mud,
an egret marks the tracking of time.
In the marsh grass,
dragonflies snaffle mosquitoes.

The eye too is a lake itself small and placid.
The eye, with light at the helm,
floats serenely in its socket.
It does not go out into the world.
The scenery comes to it,
makes a finer sphere, interior.
In its watery humors,
anything can be represented.
But only the eye
chooses what is contemplated.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident.  Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and Sanskrit with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and the Coe Review.

Two Poems by Lily Tierney

Watching

Watching a squirrel climb a tree,
reaching the top branch.
All the while he was watching
me as I stood on the ground.



Lily

I could smell the flower as I entered
the room.  The fragrance danced around
and became a song.

It traveled through the air and into the night.
The moon and stars conducted a symphony.

A Poem by Lily Tierney

Leaf

When the last leaf fell from the tree,
I could finally admire its branches.

Three Poems by Linda M. Crate

October Rain

whenever it's a gray
october day
i remember your eyes,
and
i think of you and your torment
of the agony i never knew
was always too lost
in my own world
to save you,
but you were proud of me;
i'll never forget your
advice, uncle,
of finding my dream and fighting for
it relentlessly;
and i'm doing just that--
i think of you in the october rain
of your somber sadness
how it didn't stop you from being kind
to me,
and i'm sorry i didn't know you were
depressed and i'm sorry that you lost your
battle with depression--
one day i thought maybe you could teach
me how to paint
i always admired your artistry
you were a beautiful soul
i wish you could have know that,
and i know it's been fifteen years; uncle,
but sometimes i'm still that fourteen
year old girl
crying herself to sleep because you're
gone.



The Raven & The Hurricane

you are a hurricane
not caring
where the eye hits
you smashed
me into the wings of oblivion
had to create myself
again
whilst your memory tormented
and agonized my soul
it was all so
needless,
but you insisted on having me because you
only ever saw me as a possession;
but people aren't things you
can own and women like
me cannot be tamed
i am wild--
never shall i forget your trespass against
my heart or soul
i am a raven
when my wings don't burn at the mere
mention of your name
i will fly back to the heart of your storm,
and i will claw out your eye;
men like you don't deserve to be called men
you do not deserve the
force of the ocean.



A Better World

my heart catches in my throat
i feel most in love
when i'm standing in the wood
lone and tall
as the trees that protect me
in their loving
embrace,
and the crows caw and the squirrels scurry;
curious little chipmunks look up at me
before disappearing as quickly
as they appeared--
i could live in the forest forever
drink in the wild water
breathe in the sweetest, purest air
forget humanity
locked in their prisons of isolation and doubt
of apathy and anxiety and depression;
just jump into the rivers and creeks and listen to the
waters until i had no worries at all
find myself waking upon
rocks and sitting on the ledge of large tree roots
demanding to be by the creek's edge--
i don't have any need of humanity
and their cruelty
just let me sit by the river's edge and dream
and create and make a better world.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvania native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville.  Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print.  Recently her two chapbooks, A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press, June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon, January 2014) were published.  Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015.  Her novel Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015.

Three Poems by Bob Carlton

Circle/Upon Circle . . . 

Circle
upon circle

down
to the river's edge:

food chain among slime,
the taste of algae
and the dart
of the heron's beak.



The Grass Creeps . . .

The grass creeps
through cracks,
escapes the
paved limits
we try to enforce--

bees and breezes
weave through leaves
in unintended ways

in defiance of
a too rigid set
of lines.



Hydrocycle Freeze-Frame

A soft dripping signals thaw--
by mid-morning winter silence
dissolves in flowing water.

The snow is glazed,
sweating away
its bright body.

The sun shines through a chill
the constant melt
no longer feels.

Wrapped in frigid air
earth warms, softening
to embrace cool trickles
in dark mysteries
where future flurries soak
roots of leafless trees.



Bob Carlton lives and works in Leander, TX.  www.bobcarlton3.weebly.com

A Poem by Brenton Booth

Alpine

Sitting by a small lake
on a mountain watching
the clouds barely pass
over my head
the last person I saw
was a hiker over an
hour ago
nothing and nobody
around
but everything I need
hearing only insects,
birds, and the breeze
all the usual sounds of
my mediocre life in the
city gone for now
hoping it will last
forever.

Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia.  He writes poetry and prose.  Work of his has recently been published in Chiron Review, Mas Tequila Review, Paper and Ink, Bold Monkey and Red Fez.

Three Poems by Michael Wynn

The River

River, I came for a poem but instead,
I watched your swollen muddy waters
Swill out the kingfisher's nest again
Massacring innocence and investment.

Downstream in the brown flow,
Electric blue future, halcyon tomorrow tossed
Mercilessly on your torrent,
The courageous flash of blue
Faded to empty carcasses of hope.

And after the flood,
Your water lay across the fields
Shimmering like newly mopped lino.
Pristine white gulls bobbed serenely on the cold surface.



Encounter

I slewed round the dark bend and screeched a halt.
Atop the verge, eyes flaring, an aloof
Fox paused, a precise paw raised
To cross the cold road for the temptations
Of fields beyond.  Taut body trembling distrust,
He stared defiance back at the harsh lights.
A stand-off; I offered him safe passage,
But what gestures correspond between us?

A sleek, russet spirit ever hunted,
Heir to primal knowledge, from a line who
Wound the first ways through ancient trees and lore,
Before venal mankind laid black metaled
Roads across sylvan order and verdant
Concord.  Invasion and vile suppression.

A nervous glance back to the haven of the hedge,
Weighing the danger from old foe.

I bore the shame of my kind, the guiltless
Fox slid unbowed to safety.  Other nights
I glimpsed him, until one cruel morning,
Matted fur and crow picked eyes, he lay stiff
And broken in the gutter, one raised paw
Twisted in pain and outrage.  I flung him
In the field to hide the crime and because
He belonged there, to decompose on the
Earth he'd roamed, and owned.  Aboriginal,
Oppressed victim of a voracious tribe
That denudes and lays waste the countryside.

Bones and sinew lay moldering;
The heart beat through still air,
It has always beat there.



Morning

Immaculate rising sun
Back-lighting trailing clouds,
Projecting images,
Deserted wet beaches,
Warming rock pooling memories.

The heavy, lumbering, early heron
Splits and languorous new sky,
A lonely daub on a sand painted canvas.

Skeins arrow across saffron leaching into lavender wash,
Synchronized pink signed wings glide down,
While rattling rooks like ink-spots on blotting paper,
Tumble to cold fields.

Michael Wynn is a published short story writer currently completing his first novel from his home in Northamptonshire, England.  Writing provides him with the perfect escape from the mundaneness of a life in sales.

Three Poems by Ruth Z Deming

The Kill

It was done in silence.
No one quite sure
what went down.
Black wings swoop
down from wintry
sky.  The train
moans in the
distance, an
elegy for the
puddle of
gray feathers
that flutter
with the wind.



Who's that Blonde in the Mirror?

Whoever she is, she looks a lot like her father
with the thin lips and worry-crease lines
between her brow.

Whoever she is, she leaves home and drives
to the nature center for a 10:30 nature
walk.  Where is the leader?  The tall man
with the beard?  It is not unthinkable he
has turned into a strutting wild turkey
or a proud antlered deer, rubbing his
itching antlers on some unprotected
bark of tree.

"I'm Ruth," she says to a short
slightly bent-over woman with
fire in her eyes.  Judy doesn't
notice the resemblance to Ruth's
father, who pre-deceased her
as phrased in the obituary ads.

Judy knows her way around the
park.  Where the trails split off
like a wishbone, she chooses
the one to the left.  Wherever
thou goest, Judith!

They stop by the banks of
the rushing creek, stop to
hear the splash of the waters
upon the rocks, timeless as
a ray of sun.

Then they hear it.  Squawking
that takes over the air.
Geese, Canada geese, come
down from Ontario,
Quebec, Nova Scotia, to
their summer home.  What
a view:  rushing waters,
huge boulders, tiny bullfrogs
with bulging eyes--and oh
the sounds the geese hear.

Birds of every variety--the cow bird,
the cuckoo, the scarlet tanager in
its bright Red Riding Hood
feathers.

The two short women
one in Keds, the other in
hiking boots, are drawn
to the three-tiered wood fence
by the warlike sounds,
the raving bellicosity,

This early spring day
dawning with daffodils and
lesser celandine, the geese
play out the millennia-old
mating game.
The whole world turns
upon who mounts whom.
We look up at the sky
and soldier on.



The Miracle of the Cyclamen

You, darling, whose name I can never remember,
you, darling, whose green heart-shaped
leaves are every bit as
lovely as your upturned faces,

Your species, like ours, has drifted from
the Mediterranean over the Atlantic
to be sold for a pittance at the grocery store.

I buy you as a gift for others.  As I was
leaving the store, you called out from your
table.  I heard you as I approached my car.

You reside now with me.

At home you delight me in the kitchen as
I sip my coffee, you dappled blossoms
a satiny blend of purples--I love you
with my eyes, with the gentle water
I pour over you, and touching your
queenly faces, cold to the touch
these wintry morns.

If all goes well, you tubers should
live a long while.  Mayhap till the end of
my days.

This is why you greet me first
thing every morning.  Beauty,
like God, has a way of reaching
our inner spirit we're unaware of
and floating us onward
'til the end of our days.

Ruth Z Deming is a psychotherapist and mental health advocate, has had her poetry published in lit mags including Mad Swirl, Leaves of Ink, and Haunted Waters Press.  She is founder/director of New Directions Support Group for people and families affected by mental illness.  See www.newdirectionssupport.org.  She runs a weekly writing group--the Coffeeshop Writers--at a local cafe.  She lives in Willow Grove, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia.

A Poem by Heather Gelb

Into the Winter Fog

Following the tracks of gazelle
Imprinted on slices of snow
Alongside rivulets of
Icy water trickling downhill.
Eyes down,
Stepping over thick wads of frozen mud,
Boot crunches small pebbled coated with flakes.
Vibrant yellow flowers poking through
Crisp snow absorb my thoughts
Of winter deer until
A distant whispering rush
Tingles my spirit and lifts my eyes.
Beneath the emerging almond blossoms,
Bounding gazelle vanish into the fog.
I follow,
Leaving behind my own tracks.

Heather Gelb feels most fulfilled leaping from hilltop to hilltop as she writes in her recently published memoir about her journey from Rwanda to Israel:  http://www.amazon.com/Hilltop-My-Path-Rwanda-Israel/dp/1937623076/ref=sr_1_52?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441007298&sr-1-52&keywords=rwanda  Her poetry has been published in such diverse works as Poetica Publishing, Deronda Review, Green Panda Press, Pyrokinection and Dead Snakes.

A Poem by Marianne Szlyk

Maryvale Park after the Solstice

On a warm day for January, pond
water clouds over weeds and oak leaves,
ghosts of all I see in summer.

I expected cold, crisp, lifeless water, even
a skim of ice that a glance
would shatter.  I imagine silence, not birds.

Five ducks cluster in a space no
bigger than a puddle.  One duck dabbles
for fish she cannot see.  Others paddle

in place.  The mallards' green heads bring
color to this landscape.  Hidden birds chirp
from the trees.  Above us, a flock

swoops through this park just before dusk.
Today the sun stays past five o'clock.
The new year inches closer to spring.

Marianne Szlyk is a professor at Montgomery College and the editor of The Song Is . . . Recently, she published her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, with Flutter Press.  Her first (Listening to Electric Cambodia, Looking Up at Trees of Heaven) was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press.  Her poems have appeared in Long Exposure, Poppy Road Review, Of/with, bird's thumb, Cacti Fur, Snapping Twig, Contemporary American Voices, Jellyfish Whispers, Napalm and Novocain, Silver Birch Press, and other online and print venues including Kind of a Hurricane Press' anthologies.  She hopes that you will consider sending poetry or flash fiction to The Song Is . . . at thesongis@gmail.com

Three Poems by Ken Allan Dronsfield

Cardinal of Red

"Welcome Poet," said
the Cardinal of Red.
Wind softly stirring,
pine branches swaying;
leaves soaring down,
piling to and fro,
here and there,
upon the ground,
where will they go.
Debris and fodder crunch
loudly under heavy boots;
following paths and trace
as the sun bids us adieu.
Twilight now appears;
at the edge of the Pond;
the Cardinal of Red says,
"Goodbye Poet, til sunrise
whispers upon a new day."



Breathless Heart

Cherish the flamboyance of a chaotic festoon;
surrounded by the bloom of a December rose;
a final heaving exhale of the moon now setting;
the cries of the loveless sobbing out loud.

Lost within this lifeless, bitter cartoon;
vowing silence through weathered piety;
grounded by a charcoal black moving sky;
my impudent world of a shackled life

Following justice to the final bell;
shaving some ice for a tequila sunrise;
dances and glances circling lofty despots;
vulture of consciousness devours my prize.

Ravens working magic using pastel colors.
The insolence inspired by a day long since gone;
walk your pathway standing, never kneel or crawl.
Renewing a warm light within your breathless moan.



Reddish Haze

Nocturne of shadow
rising with a Flamingo
charm of darkness
turns a reddish haze
prone on the pillow
cherished teacup pouts
hushed morning sonnet
a gaze into life's window.

Ken Allan Dronsfield is a Published Poet originally from Hampton New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma.  He has been writing for many years and enjoys hiking, playing guitar and spending time with his cats Merlin and Willa.  His published work can be found at numerous print venues.

www.whispersinthewind222.blogspot.com/
https://leastbitternbooks.wordpress.com/
http://promanusa.wix.com/

A Poem by Kevin McCarthy

What Is And May Be

The ocean has integrity
without me--particulars
dissolve in cyan

Perhaps a craving for
unity makes this so--
in any case, glory
flees as I launch

Body and boat slice
coherence, focus filth,
drain color with too
telling intelligence

Senses and imagination
cannot be sated together,
said Ralph Waldo

Chatty data traps are
the rub--the murder
of the ingenious by
the visceral

So I stop to incubate
the shoreline dream, even
as I devour the organism
devouring me

Yes--puckering brine,
rotting musk, cresting
roar, sweep and drift
are still one, close-to

Then--wait--emergent,
as promise from beauty

Kevin McCarthy is a Colorado poet, dramatist, essayist, and geologist.  His poetry has appeared in various literary journals, including Neat, Common Ground Review, and Southwestern American Literature.  "Enough Sky" was commended in the Poetry Society's 2014 National Competition (UK) http://poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/enough-sky.  Please see locuto.com for funny stories and other info.

A Poem by Tricia Marcella Cimera

Nocturnal Urges

It's right before
true night
when I see them--
Mallards slick-sleek
slicing knifing
through water--
Drakes they number five
five boys on the loose
on leave
sporting colors
burnished and alive--
They swim
with purpose speed
surety
slashing flashing
forward as with one mind
fluid and urgent
like young men are
rushing
to somewhere--
In the night

Tricia Marcella Cimera is an obsessed reader and lover of words.  Look for her work (some forthcoming) in these diverse places and elsewhere:  the Buddhist Poetry Review, Dead Snakes, Foliate Oak, Fox Adoption Magazine, Hedgerow, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Silver Birch Press, Stepping Stones, and Yellow Chair Review.  Tricia volunteers locally, believes there's no place like her own backyard, and has traveled the world, including Graceland.  She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois/in a town called St. Charles/by a river named Fox.

A Poem by Connie Feng

They Sacrificed

Leaving the forest.
Firewood melted the cold hearts
ashes into dust.

Rice withstood torments
was ladled within each bowl--
died in stomach.

Oil splattered,
burned the hands for attention--
was poured into sinks.

Diffused granule
filtered from the broad ocean.
Salt melted into meat.

Connie Feng is a Chinese writer who moved to California at the age of thirteen.  Her passions are listening to classical music and taking care of animals.  

Three Poems by Carol Alena Aronoff

Moonstruck

Orb of bone and alabaster chants the sky
a cloud or two, paves nickel sea in platinum.

Swift as falcon, night spreads sable feathers
over drifting stars, cloaks tufted mountain from strangers.

Veils our reflections, bringing uneasy dreams.

Sand shifts and settles like an old crone,
then whispers up pebbles on rays of moonbow.

How far must night travel to claim the morning?
Open wings wide enough for sun to dream day?

For light to weave its way through innocent constellations?

And still leave shadows--shaped as fallen aspirations,
disowned dark rivers:  of greed, of desire.

Shade for seekers who find their gifts in the silent.



Bobcat Lament

I dream of chili ristras--
soft waxed fruit hanging
wrinkled garnets from each ear,
stems tied like cows going off
to slaughter.  Seeds of spice
and slow burning.
Coyote tracks past moonless
caves whose bones carve
memories into granite walls
of winter.  The hush of deerskin
moccasin, a hurried love
before slate dawn gives way
to morning's amber skin.
The skeleton of bobcat
who died while waiting
out a storm, who died
while waiting.



Ocean Voices

Some nights, I hear the ocean weeping
out my window down ti-leafed hill.
Long sighs, followed by sobbing soft
as wind's murmur at the end of summer.

Tears welling up in waves of sorrow
flood tide pools and turtle ponds,
brush shoreline's cheek leaving streaks
of wet sand and sea-licked rock.

When I walk the beach next morning,
the wounded are scattered like soldiers
along water's edge:  crabs missing
legs, stones with bullet-sized holes,

clams and mussels with only half a shell.
Among bits of brown and sea green glass
rounded by the pounding of waves, I find
shipwrecks and the power of solitude.

Carol Alena Aronoff, PhD is a psychologist, teacher and writer who co-founded SAGE, a psycho-spiritual program for elders, helped guide a Tibetan Buddhist Meditation center, taught Eastern spirituality and healing practices; imagery, meditation, and women's health at San Francisco State University.  She guided Heeling in Nature retreats in Hawaii and the southwest, and had a counseling practice in Marin County for many years.  She co-authored "Practical Buddhism:  The Kagyu Path" with Ole Nydahl in 1989 and edited five books and four meditation booklets on Tibetan Buddhism.  Dr. Aronoff published a textbook:  "Compassionate Healing:  Eastern Perspectives" in 1992.  Her poetry has been published in Comstock Review, Potpourri, Poetic Realm, Poetica, Mindprints, Dream Fantasy International, Beginnings, Hawaii Island Journal, In Our Own Words, Theater of the Mind, Animals in Poetry, From the Web, HeartLodge, Out of Line, Sendero, Buckle&, Iodine, Asphodel, Tiger's Eye, Nomad's Choir, Cyclamens & Swords, The New Verse News and Avocet.  She received a prize in the 1999/2000 Common Ground spiritual poetry contest, judged by Jane Hirshfield, and is a Pushcart Prize nominee.  She won the Tiger's eye contest on the writing life and has participated a number of times in Braided Lives, a collaboration of artists and poets as well as in SKEA's Art and Nature event, Ekphrasis:  Sacred Stories of the Southwest, and (A) Muses Poster Retrospective for the 2014 Taos Fall Arts Festival. She was judge for the 2008 Tiger's Eye Poetry contest.  A chapbook of Native American/Hawaiian poems, Cornsilk, was published by Indian Heritage Council in 2004, and her illustrated poetry book, The Nature of Music, was published by Pelican Pond in 2005.  An expanded, illustrated Cornsilk waas published in 2006, Her Soup Made the Moon Weep, in 2007 and Blessings from an Unseen World in 2013.  Currently, Dr. Aronoff resides in a rural area of Hawaii--working her land, meditating on nature and writing.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

Without Falling Apart

It is December and yet October still bobs
Like a message in a bottle on an unstill sea
Near a dead cornfield whose flapping wings call out to me
As words that have never been
Die in a sky that trembles like an easel
In the garden behind the speechless pool table
That in memories becomes mummified
Even as it snuggles up to the comfort blanket
Of the long and measureless hours



Bliss

The trees are nourished by the floating candles of the morning air and mist
But the detritus of feelings ragtag and lonely arrive in homeless shopping carts
And yet I remain underwater in a ground up honey that creates a new Garden of Eden
That renews my sense of magic and wonder as storm clouds dance through the learning palms



In Patchwork Baskets

My name is now the rolling hills that are near a whirly gig
Of a long untamed river where salmon jump clear to the moons of Jupiter
Above the jam and crackers barns whose chocolate studded ranch animals
Dissect the degrees of visibility in the belly of shopping destinations
That can exorcise all humans with their blurred and psychedelic semi stacked layers
Of unbreakable fall flowers whose bitter sweet beauty
Is asystematical and blunt as summer time butterflies
In the wire basket of a fifty-foot waterfall





For the past thirty-five years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of poetry.  

Three Poems by Carol Amato

Deliverance

Stiff and halting on the shore
she takes cautious
tentative steps wobbly
as a baby's

but in the sea
her locked limbs are fins.

As cartilaginous as a shark
she dives into the sorcerer's
crystal curls:  reborn.

She swims farther and farther
from the bars of bone trees,
rhythmically exhaling into the
charmed liquid air.

With faith in stillness
she floats beyond
the loops of the waves,
the sky reflected in her eyes;
murmuring ripples caress the
tips of her fingers.

The sinew of the water carries her
to where the humpbacks sing,
"Come, Come!"

Someone waves from the edge of
the locked land.

She treads water
deciding.



A Piece of Sky

He rises from concrete slab
and always
to the slit of window
three feet by four inches
of sky.

That first day years ago
a crow side-gliding in and out
of clouds
one flap and out of view.

In time,
a lifetime,
other birds.
He learned their names
(guidebooks from the library).
Once a peregrine
swirling the thermals,
Canada geese in a slowly widening V,
and gulls.  Always gulls
soaring him out-of-body.

He had to remember the sound
of pelting rain
thunder after the vertical bolts.
He learned the ephemera of clouds:
puffed piles of cumulus
their slide show of transient creatures.
Learned too, the sky's prognosticators from
dark descending to the high-flying
brush strokes of cirrus mare's tails . . .
even fog rising from the unseen land.

If never the moon
on clear nights the brightening sky;
when moonless, the cold glinting stone-stars.
He stared into that slice of night
willing one to fall and in all those years
one did fall briefly like a spent tear
done with wishes.

About falling,
he mourned most where snow fell
the slow-motion of it piling
on the back of the sleeping fox;
the first spring grass drinking the melt;
the creek over-flowing down the
sides of black macadam.

Sunrise.  So many
the peach glow to golden molten
surrendering to steely blue.
At day's end, the altocumulus
rippling waves ebbing like the tide
leaving miles of dusky flats.

His food appears in the slot.

He waits
until the last light leaves the
four corners of the day, his
piece of sky.

Later he dreams about
the tops of trees.



Choices

They find her in our woods
wrists slit
but alive.

I watch from the front porch
as they carry her into
our small town's ambulance.
I listen as the sirens fade, a sound
more often heard now that the
summer folks are staying longer.

This early September day
the heat tremulously touches the afternoon,
almost warm enough for a last swim and
I hurry since the day will cool by three.

I dive in this one time
and after the needed shock
touch the bottom with the palms of my
hands.

The easy peace is tempting:
to join the free-floating sargassum
the horseshoe crab who buries, then
is reborn again, again and
again.

I burst to the surface for air.

On the way home
taste the sea tears on my lips.

I see the glory in the few
flamboyant leaves
and wonder if she saw them dying.

Carol Amato's poetry has been published in several magazines and journals.  While poetry is her first love, she is also a children's author and natural science educator.  In those capacities, she wrote a series published by Barron's Educational Series, Inc.  (ten natural science titles) and Backyard Pets--Activities for Exploring Wildlife Close to Home, published by John Wiley & Sons.  She also provides natural science programs for classrooms in the greater Boston area with focus on the marine life and ecosystems.

A Poem by Inna Dulchevsky

I Am a Bird

a fire bird
white dove
bluebird
gray pigeon
red cardinal
tree swallow
silver lark
goldfinch
a purple sunbird
black starling
singing sparrow
hummingbird
a lonely swan
nightingale with
a voice above
the thorns



Inna Dulchevsky spent her early school years in Belarus.  She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.  She was awarded the Frist Prize 2014 David B. Silver Poetry Competition.  Inna's work has been published in numerous anthologies, books and journals including Pyrokinection, Jellyfish Whispers, Napalm and Novocain, Petals in the Pan Anthology, Element(ary) My Dear Anthology, Happy Holidays! Anthology, book Lavender, The Cannon's Mouth, The Otter, New Poetry, Calliope Magazine, Calliope Magazine Anniversary Issue, Aquillrelle Anthology 4th annual Lummox Poetry Anthology, KNOT Magazine, Antheon, and is forthcoming in Secrets and Dreams Anthology.  Her interests include metaphysics, philosophy, meditation and yoga.  The light and expansion of consciousness through the connection with inner-self and nature are essential in the writing of her poetry.