A Poem from Andrew M. Bowen

In Green

In green, there is peace
and stillness deeper than the seas.
The leaves filter the sun's fierceness
and damp the rains into
softly falling motes of life.

In green, there is love:
A man must kiss a maid
and the child will grow--a human acorn.
The birds and bees and trees and tigers mate
in splendid strength.

In green, there is wisdom
of peoples and of butterflies,
of the Voice that sings in all,
and of distinct songs that sum
into a chorus of the many.

In green, there is strength.
The futile wars will come and go
and none but tenured professors
remember the dates and names.
The trees outlive the cannons
and feed the birds and squirrels and wasps
after generations feed the worms.

In green, there is solitude,
a place to stand aside and feel
the roots of Earth give birth
to coal and cucumbers, to deserts and daffodils,
to martyrs and maggots, to cats and cretins.

In green, there is God
and His hand traces the veins of maple leaves
and shakes the foundations of mountains.
His breath blesses the baby robin
and births hurricanes to vex the cities.

Andrew M. Bowen works as an insurance salesman in Bloomington, IN.  He has published 71 poems and recently submitted his first two novels for publication.  He is also an actor who has appeared in eight independent films, seven stage productions, and two radio teleplays.

Three Poems from Ken L. Jones

Never Before Seen

The newborn river leads a very monastic life out by the farm bunkhouse
that is a figment of its imagination and the trajectory of its hallelujah is so heartfelt
while storm clouds that rumble with midnight pan flutes coagulate about like caged animals circling warily.



I Dreamt Often Of

The frozen reefs remind me of peacock feathers.
The quick limed air seems misty with ant hills
while I listen to the forest's melodies on this foggy morning.
Gazing down into the roiling rainstorm that slowly creeps in from the sea.



Picked Like Ripe Avacados

Midnight's glow upon the meadow makes it look like a seafloor
and the ghosts who haunt its poetry are burnished blackbirds.
Yet this blue ice nightscape is a withered harvest of abstracted found and recycled objects
and its soundtrack is a mandolin long evaporated.
Yet till dawn arrives in a golden kimono shivering dilated and copper hot.
It will murmur low a long lonesome sonnet
more poignant than the brooding weathered strains of As Time Goes By.

Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published writer for nearly forty years.  At the beginning of his career he became well-known as a cartoonist and had such work appear at Disney Studios and for the New Kids On The Block singing group.  In the last ten years he has concentrated heavily on writing poetry in various genres.  He has appeared in Kind Of A Hurricane Press' many anthologies and blogs.  His poems have also appeared in Phil Yeh's Uncle Jam Magazine, Dual Coast Magazine, Red Ochre Press, Poetry Quarterly, Circle of Light, and Tulip Tree Review.  His most recent achievement was a poetry chap book called Dreams of Somewhere Else published by Prolific Press.

A Poem from Richard King Perkins II

Out of Nowhere

Into the skirt of the woods
we skip and shuffle and spin

lengthening the lit hours of evening
into something

more breathtaking than a yellow flower
rising out of nowhere

Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities.  He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA, with his wife, Vickie, and daughter, Sage.  He is a three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.

Three Poems from A.J. Huffman

Arctic Butterflies

Portraits of fragility echoing definitive

definitions of strength spread

their darkened wings, gather sun’s warmth.

Dorsal basking, lateral basking, mid-flight V,

every move is designed to harvest heat

as they flutter and dance their way across

summer fields, becoming, in visitor’s minds,

flash-bulb moments of nature’s possibilities.

from Flamingo this Vision

of self-containment, internal

flight.  Movement stifled, re-routed,

released in flutter of pink

feathered eyes seeing beyond

sky.  Balance

can be extended.  One leg

bending between two planes.

Hosak’s Cave

A crack of light,

of life, brown but not out

of the cycle. 

The walls are breathing,

breeding

a carpet fit for the king

of beasts.

A.J. Huffman has published thirteen full-length poetry collections, fourteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses.  Her most recent releases, The Pyre On Which Tomorrow Burns (Scars Publications), 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 2600 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 the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  You can find more of her personal work here:  https://ajhuffmanpoetryspot.blogspot.com/

A Poem from Susan Dale

Leaving to Promises

If mom left when spring was arriving
What does that say about life?
For while we were committing her to eternity
Violets were unfurling their purple capes

But how do we accept the thrust of blossoms
On bare branches
And the smiles of daffodils
At the same time
She was taking her place
On the top of a hill
Where the winds of heaven
Were meeting the promises mom could not break

Nor could we halt the jubilant feet of spring
Dancing into our collective sorrow

Susan Dale's poems and fiction are on WestWard Quarterly, Mad Swirl, Penman Review, The Voices Project, and Jerry Jazz Musician.  In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.  Two published chapbooks, The Spaces Among Spaces from languageandculture.org and Bending the Spaces of Time from Kind of a Hurricane Press's Barometric Pressure Chapbook series, have been on the internet.

A Poem from Heather Gelb

Under the Tree

Supine on a spherical covering
Of buttery flowery petals,
I gaze up through the feathery branches
Of a flowering tree,
Each twisting branch sculpted from a
Solid center and reaching towards a light
I can still see when I close my eyes to hear
The soothing hum of bees that fill the spaces
Between the ephemeral and the enduring.
Beyond the bee song I hear
The light tread of gazelle leaping through
A nearby field, finding space between
The stalks of golden grain . . .
And still the golden petals rain down,
Released by the light touch
Of dancing bees.
I am aware of a slow mounting marvel
That fills the spaces between
The holy and the mundane.

Heather Gelb grew up in Colorado and Ohio before leaping off to distant hills in Africa then Israel.  She is an aspiring writer, poet, yoga instructor, tap dancer, banjo player, holistic nutritionist, world traveler and long distance runner who is raising her five children among the Judean hills in a house that her husband built.  Heather Gelb feels most fulfilled leaping from hilltop to hilltop as she writes in her published memoir about her journey from Rwanda to Israel:  https://www.amazon.com/Hilltop-My-Path-Rwanda-Israel/1937623076  Her poetry has been published in such diverse works as Poetica Publishing, Deronda Review, Green Panda Press, Pyrokinection, Dead Snakes and NatureWriting.

Two Poems from Phil Wood

Snap

No zebra crossing, close-by a menace
of lionesses; flies swarm, wildebeest fidget.

And then the rain.  The river's rain-happy.
A flock of pink flamingos flight a sunset.

I take a photograph.  The guide and you.
A hippo yawns.  The crocodiles smile.



Forester

That canopy of russet forest
beguiles the crowd.  On Cannop Ponds
a cacophony of mallards,
moorhens and coots, a herring gull;
along the track the herds of bikes
and hikers, kids and dog walkers;
an oak, squat like grandma's clock,
dazzles, unthreads his hooded tale.
Her weathered cloth warms his morning,
the dreams of wolves whisper once more.

Phil Wood works in a statistics office.  He enjoys working with numbers and words.  His writing can be found in various publications including:  The Open Mouse, Autumn Sky Daily, London Grip, Ink Sweat and Tears.

A Poem from Lily Tierney

Frozen

A dust storm engulfed wind-carved thoughts
as a polar ice cap suppressed her most fiery desires.

She was forced to live life with a volcanic mountain of thought
in an unforgiving solar system.

Looking up at the two asteroids, she remembered a love song
that collided with the past, present, and future.

Three Poems from Linda M. Crate

spring's arrival

spring has burst open
with all her flowers:
daffodils, tulips,
flowering trees including
the magnolia
pinwheel phlox,
and many others arm the earth

winter faded the crocus
song long before
their time
should've been over,
but now spring has the upperhand
disarming winter
with all her flaming hands;

the sun is no longer
content
to play hide-and-seek
with the clouds
old man winter cannot creep in
destroying our dreams
any longer
he has been put to death.



no more snow

bumble bees
the size of my pinky
buzz
around the dandelions
i feel a peace
that winter is gone
sometimes sadness lingers,
but the seasonal depression
is gone;
flowers are good at making
me forget my sorrows
so is the creek
washing away all the ugly things
in me that keep me
up at night--
as i get caught up in the fragrance
of spring
summer is treading lightly
i know her song will be here, soon,
but as i was born of her flames
she means me no harm;
i smile thinking of all the lovely things
that will crest like ocean waves
where winter snow cannot pull me into
long white sad silence.



daughter of the flames

i have met
so many
thorns of winter

that thought their
cold and snow
would kill me,

but i've endured
showing them
my summer flames;

no will will hold me
back from the whispers
of my dreams

i will catch them all
and my roses have thorns, too,
they shall cut the coldness

until it stings my flesh
no longer
until winter realizes

he has no power
over my pretty little red heart
and stops chasing me--

i am a song of white suns
the lyric of golden moons
daughter of the flames.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian 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.  She has five published chapbooks:  A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press -- June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon -- January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), and splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January, 2018).

A Poem from Tim Gordon

Nature

La nature devrait tout dire ou rien . . .
                        -- Pascal, Pensees #72

Beyond the Latilla fence nothing to harvest
but gritty sand, bunchgrass, all prickly flora,
real failures to launch verdantly or in frippery,
as is their wont, until you breach the imaged coppice,
wild plum and crab-apple, mulberry maidenheads
taken by insatiable chatterbox silkworms, a veritable
veldt of desert beneath the widow's-peak shadow
mountain brow where fall almost ends, winter blossom
begins, back-channeling its Endless Summer trope,
color amok yet on front- and- up-range slopes, on the undreamt
an unloved, humpback butte and mesa, seamless plateau,--
gully, gulch, arroyo, ravine, dumb dry wash until every
evening prairie star torched just for them in the falling blue
half-life before the first blanched clutch of ice and frost
radiates everything and nothing with quicksilver white light.

Tim Gordon's Dreamwind chapbook was accepted by Finishing Line Press (April 2018), its full-length complement is concurrently under publisher review elsewhere, his seventh book, From Falling, was published by Spirit-of-the-Ram Press (Autumn 2017).  His work appears in journals like Agni, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Kansas Quarterly, Louisville Review, Mississippi Review, New York Quarterly, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Rhino, Sonora Review, Texas Observer, Texas Literary Review, and Baseball Bard, among others.  Everything Speaking Chinese was awarded the SunStone Press Poetry Prize (AZ).  Some recognitions include NEA &  NEH Fellowships and nominations for four Pushcart Prizes and The NEA Western States' Book Awards.  He divides professional and personal lives among Asia, the Desert/Mountain Southwest and coastal Maine.

Three Poems from Darrell Petska

Two Sticks

Two lean sticks
descend the muddy shallows--
the great blue heron is cloud and sky
above the water's edge.

Light languors at the surface,
lulling time and sense.
The great blue heron rides the earth
like a wispy wetland willow--

at a ripple in the murk,
light breaks the plane
to grasp and swallow in its flash
what swam in blue sky's shadow.



January June

Snow sun cannot melt.
The shaded trail white,
the creek banks,
the downy air.

White caps for the owl chicks.
Nest liner supreme.
Grand sport for children
turning with the breeze.

No gutter is immune.
Screens gasp for breath.
Leaf blower blizzards
spiral into lawns.

The Avenue of Cottonwoods
strews its watery course till
green's lush primacy rights
June's January lapse.



Porch Light Tango

On our mad dalliance
throw the switch,
oh pitiless light bulb
I once thought the moon.
My true destiny fades
against your searing tongue.
Must I throw myself upon you
till I drop, battered hull
spent at your feet?

I am Progenitor Rex.
Generations unfold within me,
yet time contracts, your glow
chancing the unborn.
How heartless your heat:
I falter, I fry.
The common toad of existence
eyes me for its meal--I beg you
snare some other wayward planet
with your blazing tractor beam.

Darrell Petska's writing has appeared in Mobius:  The Journal of Social Change, Chiron Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Star 82 Review, Bird's Thumb, Verse-Virtual, and elsewhere (see conservancies.wordpress.com).  Darrell worked for many years as communications editor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, leaving finally to focus on his own writing and his family.  He lives in Middleton, Wisconsin.

A Poem from Bernadette Perez

Running Free . . . I Am Weed

Rain feeds hungry plants
contender survives the storm
grows with a vengeance

spread throughout waste land
migrating from across regions
multiplying fast

carelessly blowing
appearing without a cause
why did they spring

In competition
cultivating plants fight for space
wild rooted left stranded

tumbling about
performing handsprings in fall
somersaults in meadows

In late summer broken
brittle and dry
dispersing seeds

no longer desired
I was weeding flower beds
weeping their return

Bernadette Perez is a poet possessing expression and creativity.  In 1990, Bernadette received the Silver Poet Award from World of Poetry.  Her work has appeared in The Wishing Well; Musings in 2010, Small Canyons Anthology in 2013, Poems 4 Peace in 2014, Fix and Free Anthology in 2015.  She is the President of the New Mexico State Poetry Society.

Two Poems by Sydney Peck

Winter is Coming

Dried leaf scratches its noisy way
Across my path.
Cat retreats deeper into the doorway
Out of the blistering wind.
Sky full of clouds, smell of snow.
Winter is coming.



Scavengers

Night sun buries his face to earth.
Slowly suspending his daily harvest--
Piles of tint and heaps of chroma
In oat house and warm barn.

Rays of darkness
Spread across the twilight
Sky stealing in small corners of the loft,
Scavengers ransacking the day.
Greens devoured by omnivores;
Black skeleton left.

Sydney Peck is a schoolteacher and ardent poet, and in his spare time enjoys singing and playing traditional folk music.

A Poem by Michael Lee Johnson

Saskatchewan Sky

Saskatchewan
sky,
just a preview of love,
chip off
an edge of
prairie
chip an edge off
winter--
and opening
multiple eyes
toward spring.
They--lovers, find themselves
near evening bush fire--
great seal fish and open lake,
cuddle together--
so wonderful together--
where she comes from,
where did she go to
from here.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois.  Mr. Johnson published in m ore than 1016 publications, his poems have appeared in 36 countries, he edits, publishes 10 different poetry sites.  He has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015/1 Best of the Net 2016/ and 2 Best of the Net 2017.  He also has 158 poetry videos on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/user/p_oetrymanusa/videos.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of the anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze: http://www.amazon.com/dp/15304_56762 and Editor-in-Chief of a second poetry anthology, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545_352089

Three Poems by Joanna M. Weston

On the Hillside

fog creeps
into my eye sockets
nestles against jaw
blankets my ribs
in damp comfort

I rest on the moors
hear curlews
a distant crow
touch dewed grass
an open daisy
feel the crawl
of working ants
a spider's thread
and know myself
at one with earth



The Remains

there's nothing I can call my own
not the slant of moonlight
through midnight trees
nor the rise of dawn beyond the hills
not the flight of siskins
nor gossip of crows
only the words that fall onto the page
which is only paper that can be burned
no more and then there's nothing
left of mine at all



The Qualities of Herbs

the dandelion returns
faithfully each year

to the glory of bay
perhaps inspired by
angelica's magic

to be preserved by dill
protected by garlic

to the praise of fennel
while lily of the valley
flowers contendedly

with the wisdom of mint
the long life of sage
the devotion of a violet
and the courage of thyme

Joanna M. Weston is married, has one cat, multiple spiders, raccoons, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen-houses.  Her middle-reader, Frame and The McGuire, was published by Tradewind Books in 2015, and her poetry collection, A Bedroom of Searchlights, was publish by Inanna Publications in 2016.  Her other books are listed on her blog at http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/