Poetry Corner

Section Editor: Mare Leonard

Mare Leonard lives and works in the Hudson Valley where she is an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT programs at Bard College. Her latest chapbook, The Dark Inside My Hooded Coat, was published in 2018 at Finishing Line Press. Find reviews on her Facebook Page: Mare Leonard Poet  and message Mare for a copy.

"When was the last time you selected a book of poems to read or ordered one from the library? Poetry is dismissed in our culture. With Poetry Corner, we are hoping to share a taste of poems that will make you think, laugh or wonder. We will also post monthly readings, events, and classes in the Hudson Valley Region of New York and beyond." 
                                            ~ Mare Leonard

Attention Readers:
If you would like us to post a nonprofit or FREE community event in Poetry Corner,
please send a note to:
seniorstaff@sanctuary-magazine.com

For-profit events will also be posted for a small fee. Please inquire.

EVENTS

PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR VIRTUAL POETRY EVENTS or for IN-PERSON EVENTS ONCE THE PANDEMIC IS UNDER CONTROL.

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
Poetry Night
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY

CAPS Calendar
Hudson Valley, NY

Bowery Poetry: Open Mic
(see calendar listings)
​New York, NY

Poetix Calendar
Southern, CA

Poetry Near You: Poets.org
​Poetry Events throughout US

Poetry Open Mics
Find poetry in your local area
​in the U.S. and Canada.

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SEPTEMBER 2020: Selected Poetry
​Poems this month by Sharon Marshall and Crystal Snoddon

Blues India 
by Sharon Marshall
 
Viewing Petah Coyne’s Everything That Rises Must Converge and other works
 
1
Plumage eyes
Flight interrupted
 
A peacock stares
I am its shadow
 
Out of the ash, iridescent trains, black coal dust
A woman’s laughter
 
Beneath the blue/green of the peacock’s spiky comb
An old man pauses, leaning on a cane 
 
2
Message on the interior of a fan:
Your iridescence reflects my essence
Masses of feathers tumble in flight
The red-rimmed eye closes
Death rushes up like pavement to break the fall
 
3
Bramble bouquet
Blackened rose
Waxen petals
Cirrus of feathers
Twigs that sprout tender tentacles 
 
4
Amid the rubble, the ramble
The tangle, the beady glory
The flat open frankness
Of a cosmos without a stem
Hot wax gone cold 
 
5
In the wake of a waxen rose
The bruised and ruffled detritus of blindness
 
6
On this day the turkey’s head burst
Into bloom again.
Whoever knew that a flightless bird
Could possess such gorgeous feathers?
Or that peonies are the product of spontaneous combustion?
 
7
If I didn’t know better,
I would believe
That the cloth covering the periodic table of the elements is velvet
That lava is a Ripley’s trick (believe it, or not)
That Harold’s purpose crayon is a discourse on Descartes
That coal is a rose, that a rose is a pinecone, that feathers
Are scrolls
And that death is the name of a liquefying virgin
Possessed of many pairs of wings, many strands of pearls
 
8
If you were alive, would we notice the streaks of scarlet
In your plumage?
The bumblebee pattern of black and yellow in the collar of short feathers
Around your neck, spread out like a fan of tarot cards that predict your
Doom?
Your eye is an ebony bead, your beak a yellow pincer
How vivid the colors! How showy your death!
 
9
Lightless candelabra,
Pendulum of avian bodies and abodes
This is the paradox: the tethered are flying
Massed en masse
Their wings articulate
They speak with feathered tongues
 
10
See saw see saw
Up and down, dark and light
The wild éclat, the hilarity of weightless puffery
The galloping tonality of a rising sun
See saw see saw see
 
11
It will not be necessary to consult the gypsy,
Lay out the cards, or decipher the pattern
Of muddy leaves at the bottom of a teacup.
The folds of this hem are creases in the brain
And they alone predict destiny.
 
Soot pixels collect on the smooth still feathers of doves.
The dark cave at the fold’s apex is not so
Much an omen as a given.
Night is downy.
Dawn is rosy.
Time passes.
In the interval,
We learn the difference
Between marriage and a wedding.

What Worry Is
by Sharon Marshall

After Philip Levine’s “What Work Is”
 
It’s 2:45 a.m. and you lie in bed, cradling your pillow
like the newborn infant your troubled teenage son used to be.
 
You’re waiting for the phone to ring, or to hear the faint
metallic scratching, amplified by your heart’s sub-woofer,
of a key slipping into the gash and rotating the pins
below the part of the lock that’s called the bible.
 
You know that if he does come home
he will not re-lock the door, or
possibly even close it.
 
And you know that if you fall asleep, you will miss
the relief of his homecoming,
or be snatched from the Lethe of your dreams
by the shrill scream of the telephone, your nerves vibrating
like an oscilloscope, as you quickly herd the sheep of your slumber
back into their daytime pens.
 
You go over in your mind the many times
He has come back alive, albeit fucked up, reeking, paranoid and wild-eyed,
his words of explanation fading in and out of coherence 
like a distant signal on a shortwave radio.
 
Worry, doesn’t even begin to describe the emotions that possess you.
Every breath is a prayer and you can’t stop praying
And even though you no longer put your faith in Bible stories,
You still take comfort in the parable of a son who goes out into the world,
Squanders his gifts, breaks his father’s heart, but finally returns home
to claim his inheritance of love.

---

Sharon Marshall studied fiction, poetry and screenwriting at Columbia University, The New School, and NYU. She coordinates the First-Year Writing Program at St. John’s University in Queens, NY and has taught English Composition for over 25 years. She is an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. She is the author of the novels Water Child and the soon to be published Deep Rivers and is currently writing a teaching memoir and autoethnography: Pedagogy as Poetry, or How Teaching First-Year Writing Became My Life’s Poem. 

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PTSD song
by Crystal Snoddon
 
From my split hippocampus escapes a disordered craving for salt;  
             dripping mouth stuffed 
             by sticky guilt sprays Sorry 
 
             with each quick breath 
 
I heard myself say in chorus, depression resembles an inky well 
 
             Stygian Os splay onto temporal walls,
             the scent of rust on a downwind breeze, 
             shades drawn over silence, 
 
but I was mistaken -- depression is in tempo
with the flash of a swinging axe, 
singing in rhythmic stresses 
its glare splits the mind
 
homeless, I gnaw the crumpled halves 
hungrily, these discarded bread crusts 
             their gray-mold exhalations
             and poisonous revelations
             sting the tongue
 
like a disordered craving for salt. ​

​Wrapped in a Quilt of Protest Signs
by Crystal Snoddon
 
my child awoke to clouds in clamour, 
an atomic crash crumbling glacier walls 
 
tremble in avalanche my child, behold a constellation of gray 
plaster patch clouds slapped into holey azure ice; 
 
this poem is not a fable starring wolves
 
awash in tears, my child breathe seas into atmospheres freed
from justice my child, scream radio frequencies 
ghosting a boreal sky lime green, a twine of auras bind 
 
my child’s throat coated in beads of plastic drink
without consent my child engulfs North Atlantic right whales 
with creviced glass glimmering between baleen teeth; 
 
& in the morning the monsters remain 
 
unnamed my child swallows hard swallows chalk & lines 
swallows coins thrown into fountains & wells, wishing 
always & forever recede the shores abloom in salt 
 
my child fishing for fairy godmothers whose fins spatter 
magical redemption with a wave wrapped
in the protest of trees, an eddy of leaves, my child dreams.

---

Crystal Snoddon is a Northern Ontarian artist who is a member of the White Water Gallery, writer of poetry and fiction, lover of nature, and keeper of dreams both joyous and dark. Contributions of previous poetry can be found in various Canadian, American, UK and African magazines and e-zines. She is in the midst of compiling an artist portfolio on fineartamerica.com. 

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AUGUST 2020: Selected Poetry
(As part of our "Focus on Youth" special issue)
​Poetry this month by: Shannon DeGrave & Billie Morrison

Proudly sponsored by Ulster Community College Foundation:

Gendered Teeth
by Shannon DeGrave

pulling out my teeth
one-by-one,
 
I am casting
them as lots
 
for the garments
of androgyny,
 
a stolen sweatshirt
from all the boyfriends
I never had,
 
all the ineligible
bachelors
 
I loved, to keep me safe.
This sweatshirt
 
is an armor,
studded with teeth
 
like a bulldog’s collar,
studded so as to keep
 
me safe,
studded with teeth

pulled from my own
lying mouth,
my own mouth
formed to profess
 
the creed it was
born into,
 
professing
“male and female,
 
he created them.”
those teeth cry out: if
the Creator says
 
both/and
who am I to be
 
either/or?

Midwestern Gothic
by Shannon DeGrave

Ranks of soldier-straight cornstalks
are bedded down, half-eaten by the black dirt,
these empty fields a post-battleground.
Jammed forgotten into the earth
are skeleton arms sprawled at odd angles,
cradling a few golden teeth in a jaw.
A gaunt scarecrow towers
like a sphinx, lidless as ever-observer
of that which is yet to come.
 
The woods bordering looks on and knows things.
Pre-taxidermized deer huff steam
like parking-lot teenagers in the wee hours,
their leaf-brown eyes calm,
too calm, for a lifetime of running
from autumn-fated stars in sky
and scattered in seeds of bait-pile pumpkins,
their stringy, white organs spilling
like drawn-up bucks.
 
Turkeys gossip like locals,
gelatinous necks jiggling
like the fat of last summer’s
second-place pig prized
in a Tupperware container marked
two months ago. Geese fly
back towards the Aurora Borealis,
their formation spelling “L” as in “lost.”
Apples thud the ground, a heart murmur.
 
Dry, cracked highways pass by
lone mom-and-pop shops,
their bone-white shelves picked over,
naked under caustic fluorescent lights.
Vultures with dark hoods pulled up,
carry brown-paper packages, wounded,
leaving a blood-trail. Crickets harp,
never-seen, ever-near. Silence, an omen.
 
Leaves the color of a corn-roast bonfire
chase each other like squirrels
in the rusted-out ribcage of a truck on blocks,
totaled after a 2:00 AM run-in with an animal
unfamiliar that left nothing in the ditch.
Gravel roads of glass fragments
and broken vertebrae lead to nowhere,
empty bottles lining them like streetlamps.
A billboard reads: God is Watching.

---

Shannon DeGrave, a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, recently received a bachelor’s degree in theology and English from Silver Lake College of the Holy Family in Manitowoc, WI. They* enjoy hiking, raising chickens, and unleashing their Yooper accent. They have been published with Engage the Culture, The Novice, and America Magazine.

*Usage: gender-neutral pronoun

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Bin-love
by Billie Morrison

ours is a clean out the bin kind of love
maggots washed out with Dettol and commitment
 
its pain and fear
fear of pain,
you’ll stay safe, won’t you?
 
its mundane
not running through the rain
for an airport or a train; no, not that
 
it’s WD40 on the friction
and it sings Van Morrison in the kitchen
with Marigolds on
 
it brings you cups of tea in bed
 
as you lay your head
on my shoulder
and as we get older
I’ll savour this bin-love of ours

---

​Billie Morrison is a London-based poet who, after studying physics and math for five years, figured out that her true passion lies in manipulating words, not numbers. She is currently pursuing a degree in English literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, honing her skills as a writer. She hopes to pursue a career writing poetry and stories for children.  

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JULY 2020: Selected Poetry

Letter of Appreciation 
by Cathryn Shea

​I am no small giver to small charities.
In spite of “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”
on this ornate letter

with its flowery “thank you” for something
someone has imagined I’ve done or am about to do,
I am sending no money today.

Not even the reply I’m thinking: “Ink, paper, and postage
are terrible things to waste.”
And on behalf of every bright child, I am crumpling up

and discarding this misplaced praise with its machined
deckle edge and cliché in gold laser-printed lettering,
but I’ll keep the address labels that came with it.

My own children dropped out of college.
One, after he broke an ulna and had mono
and questioned the reason for living,

the other after she told me on the phone
she hated her roommate, her classes, and teachers.
Essentially, hated the whole world.

I went to college and worried
I wasted my mind but got a degree anyway.
I must have failed to teach my children
​
not to be afraid to waste their minds.
Or maybe they saved their minds
for some other time.

Where Stars Go Dim 
by Cathryn Shea

​Waiting-lists for veterans’ homes,
not for him no matter how much
his brothers worry he’ll drive into a ditch
or crash head-on into an innocent carload.
Cooped up in some cell of a room in Chula Vista
with curmudgeons blathering on
about the past and grandkids who don’t visit,
last thing he needs.

His neck stiff as if welded in place
he sits at the helm of his ’79 Ford Econoline,
the powder blue van
fitted with solar and air.
Perfect for Burning Man
he’s never planning to attend.

He can’t give it up
(even though the engine seizes,
shocks are shot).
Retrofitted with third party
after-market parts.
His home not away
from home.

Social Security and a small pension
from years teaching business law
ebb and flow with the stock market,
keep him afloat.
​
Final destination:
Borrego Springs
via Walmart parking lots.
Seeking endless night sky
with its glow of galaxy light,
his one good eye
cataract-clouded.

---

Cathryn Shea is the author of four chapbooks, including most recently “Backpack Full of Leaves” (Cyberwit, 2019), “Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree” (dancing girl press, 2019), and “It’s Raining Lullabies” (dancing girl press, 2017). Her first full-length poetry book, Genealogy Lesson for the Laity, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in September 2020. Cathryn’s poetry has been nominated for Sundress Publication’s 'Best of the Net' and appears in Typehouse, Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. Cathryn is a fourth-generation northern Californian and lives with her husband in Fairfax, CA. She served as editor for Marin Poetry Center Anthology. Follow her on Twitter.

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JUNE 2020: Selected Poetry (As part of our "Celebrating the Men in Our Lives" special issue)

Relationship 
by James Fowler

She wants to do a jigsaw puzzle. He doesn’t, not wanting to assemble anything else today: two-by-fours, plywood, linoleum. He thinks they should play Yahtzee. She doesn’t, not wanting anything else to do with numbers today: 2 for 3 dollars, 4 for a buck, 50c each. He tries the puzzle, but she tells him he’s trying to put ocean in the sky. She tries the game, but he tells her she’s shooting for fours when her fours are filled. He goes out to the garage, cleans and greases the snow thrower. She showers, puts on her pajamas and watches tv.
 
            kitchen table
 
            two ‘Be My Valentine’ cards
 
            back to back

---

For 20 of the 25 years that James Fowler was in the U.S. Navy, he was stationed in or on ships homeported out of Japan. Many newspapers in Japan, including those in English, publish haiku weekly or daily, so Jim tried his hand at haiku writing. Jim privately taught poetry writing for 13 years. Over 250 of his poems have been published in journals, including Bitter Oleander, Worcester Review, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, RatsAss Review and many others.

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MAY 2020: Selected Poetry

The Music of These Worn Down Ozark Mountains
​​by Sheri Gabbert

​The Music of These Worn Down Ozark Mountains
 
Summer nights we sat in a lawn chair circle,
the pickers together, the rest of us
on either side.  We sang inherited harmonies
as we told the stories of generations
lived in the Ozark Mountains. 
 
I could hear those voices singing as she bid farewell to me
Far across the fields of cotton my old hopes I could see
As the moon rose in its glory, then I told my oldest story
Of that girl I left in sunny Tennessee
 
and songs from the War Between the States,
but never damned Yankee tunes, and songs
the old folks grew up with or danced to while
they fell in love and the music stories of the
Big War and the one that followed which was
even bigger and more terrible.  The old folks
told once again how their brother, Tom, was
awarded a silver star for taking charge of his
platoon on one of Normandy’s beaches when
his commander panicked at the carnage, weeping
over what remained of a soldier’s torso. 
 
We sang history as August heat lingered
long after Missouri breeze had gone to bed,
cicadas and lightening bugs and an army of
crickets repeated every note, each summer’s
symphony performed by that night’s orchestral
insects as if Fall and Winter did not exist,
as if the music belonged to them, not us,
genetic coding of  an ancestral past, the unconscious
collective memory of bugs and mountain families.
 
How many August evenings I have sat alone listening
to the past and wishing just one more time to be
in that circle, the chairs all filled.​

What I Did Last Summer
​​by Sheri Gabbert
 
I watch the old woman next door,
her sheets flying kites
tethered to a wire clothes line.
 
She leans against a rusty pole,
single clothespin in her mouth,
pauses to consider linens hung to dry
on summer afternoons.
 
Dripping air in dry skies, sweat,
iced watermelon, banjo and fiddles
on a front porch, old men in overalls,
kids with no shoes, the growl of a lawn mower.
 
I never hang sheets out to dry
they smell like dirt
dirt smells
like a fresh-dug grave. 

---

Sheri Gabbert is a substitute teacher living and writing in Southwest Missouri. Her work has been published in several literary journals, including Serving House, Nature Writing, Communicators League, Rat's Ass Review, and Moon City Review. Other works have been published in 417 Magazine and The Lawrence County Record. Sheri seeks sanctuary within the soothing atmosphere of her home which is filled with loving memories of family and of her son, Joseph Roderick Brennan, deceased. 

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APRIL 2020: Selected Poetry: It's National Poetry Month!

Poetry this month by: Bettina "Gold" Wilkerson, Ingrid Bruck & Meg Freer

WHERE I GREW uP
​​by Bettina "Gold" Wilkerson

I grew up with the clack clack of dominoes
landing on make shift table tops
that sat upon milk crates
bodegas filled with the sweet smell
of white cheese and salchichon...who knew
a fifty cents piece please
the corner icy man shouting "piragua piragua"
​Yeshiva University and yarmulkes

I loved it just because I knew I belonged to something greater than myself
I was living amongst historical giants like George Washington and Malcolm X
whose lives were resurrected from the concrete beneath my feet
bridges and buildings built to honor their name
so when I stood next to the four tall buildings that seemed to touch the sky
I imagined I could leap them in a single bound because my mind was never bound
they were the bridge to connect me to the rainbow
and I would grow up and tell stories of these days…
 
there were no white picket fences, but there were plenty of dreams
my friends were like fat albert’s and bebe’s kids, little rascals, charlie brown and peanuts
all rolled up into one, but we were called “The Bridge Kids”
we were being flavored by salsa, merengue, afro centric Cubano groove, good soul music,
cadillacs, gangsta leans and all that-
the Heights, this is where I grew up
 
In my hood
most folks gave a damn about someone else’s child
because they gave a damn about their own child
the word ‘village’ was more than a seven letter word
or a catch phrase
and poor meant that you were born rich with a sense of ethics…
we were strong back then--built with courage
& fists fights never turned into guns fight that turned into pact fights
viewed on you tube Saturday nights-
we were never somebody else’s fool
and our assets were not where our ass set
we were taught 
it was where our mind set
amongst art deco buildings with a view
this was the neighborhood
where I grew
Between two currents, the East river and the Hudson
my thoughts flowed like a stream into an ocean
entrepreneurs, I was influenced by
drug dealers kept the streets clean of robbers, rapists & thugs
cops made deals to catch kingpins
and I and I
I became a little hustler
my product, my imagination
I grew to become a distributor of dreams
because I lived amongst fathers hanging at the number hole, with the library and the church
all residing on the same block
so you can learn math, read, and pray that your number hits
this is where I grew up
my experience, my life
en un lugar pequeno que se llama
Washington Heights!
 
The above poem is part of the poetry collection in Poet Gold's book When My Soul Speaks, I Scribe...Poetry.

Click Book Cover for More Information on Bettina's Book or to Purchase

Interview with Poet Gold

September 13, 2013 ~ Live at The Falcon
Video Recorded By: Betty Gennarelli

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Bettina "Gold" Wilkerson (a.k.a. Poet Gold) is a poet, author, performer, songwriter, community “Artivist” and speaker who is pushing the boundaries of poetry and the spoken word. Appointed the 2017 and 2018 NYS Dutchess County Poet Laureate, Poet Gold is the recipient of numerous awards. With countless recitations, she has opened for Grammy-nominated artists and has spoken at renowned organizations, such as Omega Institute and Self Employment in the Arts. Currently, she is the co-host for the iHeart Radio podcast “Finding Out with Pete and The Poet Gold.”  Her distinct voice will be heard, playing the role of God, in the upcoming animated short film “The Creation,” poem by James Weldon Johnson, directed by award-winning, animated filmmaker, Steve Leeper. Find an interview with Poet Gold HERE.

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Red Moon
​​by Ingrid Bruck

Jersey shore kids play a game called first one to see the moon,
I never played it until tonight at Stella Maris.
“There,” a woman cries, and points to the eleven o’clock position.
All around me, the cry is repeated,
followed by the silence of a lightning bolt without thunder.
 
The full moon rises out of the great mixing bowl.
A red sliver of light etches the horizon,
emerges to giant fullness,
then pauses, reluctant to leave the sea and go alone into the sky.
 
Tide’s tug holds it in a watery embrace.
A ribbon of light shimmers on the surface,
the moon ascends, shrinks,
fades from bright to branding iron white,
climbs higher
and casts a river of beams.
 
That’s the only time I ever saw the moon rise from the ocean.
In the woods where I live, you see the moon after it clears the trees.
I long to see the back of the moon, wonder if will be blue.
Sometimes it takes one woman’s eyes to open another’s.

Before Night Comes
​​by Ingrid Bruck
​
​It happened on a hillside in Pequea,
we retired and burned the moving boxes,
the ones done traveling between jobs and houses. 
We sit here and wait for inevitable night,
refit the house, try to tame the land,
unpack books and mementos
of holidays, jobs and the children’s lives.
We set out few treasures to keep us company,
attack land tangled with thorns and vines,
establish a garden, plant perennials and fruit trees.
 
Each night before dark comes,
I stop whatever I’m doing
rush outside and look east
where deep shadows march towards night,
check for yellow light caught in tree branches,
on sides of houses and barns. 
Then I turn west for the light show of dusk,
a brilliant crone’s scarf that collects
the rich colors and words of the passing day
and put on my scarf before night comes. 

---

Ingrid Bruck, a Pennsylvania-based poet, grows wildflowers and makes jam when she's not writing poetry. In 2019, one of her poems was nominated for Best of the Net and two were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Ingrid has one chapbook titled Finding Stella Maris (Flutter Press) and is a monthly columnist for Between These Shores Books. Some of her current work appears in Otata, Failed Haiku, Halcyon Days, Red Fez, Quatrain.Fish, Communicator’s League and Leaves of Ink.

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The Significance of Snowdrops
​​by Meg Freer

​​My excitement upon seeing snowdrops
rapidly deflates when you respond, “Snowdrops?
What are snowdrops?” and I bite my tongue,
order hot cross buns, while sadness wells up
as if I have just unlit a candle by using its flame
to light a match, for I announce my first sighting
of snowdrops every spring, taste grace
in their blessing, and I consider whether you
should look where they grow beside the deck,
or whether I should retire my harps of joy,
agree with cosmologists who say the earth
gets more insignificant over time, or whether
my tongue has clung too long to my palate
and not made it clear that, during Lenten lengthening
of days, when fragments of ice still skitter across glass,
snowdrops will never be insignificant.

(Honourable Mention, Brooklyn Poetry Society

Small Story of Calm Space
​​by Meg Freer

I envision them in Victorian costume,
she in a silk gown and dainty shoes,
he in waistcoat and top-boots.
With poise and a certain diffidence,
she plays the complicated novella
of their lives on the grand piano
as he listens beside her, the scene
far from the outside world,
unspoiled as black coffee
on a moonless night.

---

Meg Freer grew up in Montana and later worked in book publishing in New Jersey. She now teaches piano, takes photos and enjoys the outdoors year-round in Ontario. Her photos, poems and prose have been published in journals such as Ruminate, Vallum Contemporary Poetry, Young Ravens Literary Review, Eastern Iowa Review, and Rat’s Ass Review. In 2017, she attended the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. Her poems have won awards and have been shortlisted for several contests in both the U.S. and Canada. 

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MARCH 2020: Selected Poetry

Moving
​​by Robin Wright
 
Winter lifts the hem of her dress, exposing
yellow roses, pink azaleas
as we deliver old life into new.
 
We set up beds, chairs, tables,
stack boxes with thirty years worth of
memories and marriage vows
in this solid house with a leaky roof, broken siding.
 
Sirens slay the air. From the yard
we watch fire trucks scream
from the station toward trouble.
 
When clouds cuss and threaten,
we scamper to patch
the roof, but the rain forces its way
in. Its tenure given over to us.

Secret Life
by Robin Wright

​Two weeks after my friend’s death, her husband calls, wants to get together and talk about her secret life. I know what he’s doing. He’s searching through belongings, studying pictures of her with large glasses, big hair, and a young son tethered to her neck. He’s reading letters from her life-long pen-pal, wondering what words are painted on the other side of the canvas. He wants to know the her before their five years together, wants me to share twenty-five years of tender gifts unwrapped in my brain. I can’t think of anything secret. He already knows about the stripper I hired for her thirty-fifth birthday. Best birthday ever, she always said. A night of steak, wine, a muscular man gyrating to a boom box and the squeals of several women. Maybe it’s realization that the shape of new memories has dissolved into sand or that the power of addition, five years plus another twenty-five, equals a life, that’s made him call. My secret: I want spring to bring more than sweet-smelling blossoms to my tulip tree, and deep-red berries to the holly. I want my friend to jump up, leave her cancer in damp dirt, wave her arms, and shout.

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Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Black Bough Poetry, Spank the Carp, Ariel Chart, Bindweed Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and others. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Panoply, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

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FEBRUARY 2020: Selected Poetry

Skate Me a River 
​​by Darcy Smith
"I would teach my feet to fly." ~ Joni Mitchell, River
 
River ice holds most anything
Ma’s station wagon, Dad’s tractor, the nasty
vacuum, your bed, a barge bound to break
 
mountains of their sheen. You know it 
only takes one thaw to end everything –
blue jeans, double layered and damp
 
they work like triple socks. Don’t ask why 
Dad comes home late most nights. You trust
 
knotted laces, used skates.  
Ice boats are dragon shimmer,
a skitter you can trace 
 
like your breath pushing itself
a white plum floating over – 
everyone is laughing like the sun
 
splashing a sweet-milk flurry. If he
doesn’t upend the coffee table,
don’t complain when you see
 
his gritting teeth, Ma’s clenched hands.
You know the winds will switchback sting
like an errant ice ball, clean shot to the thigh.
 
You shouldn’t, but you have to –
ask, it’s six o’clock. She hands you 
the phone. Call the bar again. Set the table.
 
He didn't see you half asleep, shivering.
You felt his eyes, his raised suitcase, 
as if to say     I can. I will.        Just watch. 
 
Just watch. You already know
         you’ll go to the river        you’re ready.
You can. You will. Just watch.
 
It’s not so hard to learn 
a one-leg lift. Find a smooth patch
              and        push.
 
Rivets pop if you    pull    worn laces too tight. 
Truss them just so. He packed his bag once.
When you skate on the river, you trust
 
you won't fall in because ice boats 
mean cracked white leather is safe 
even when your toes go numb.

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Darcy Smith works as a sign language interpreter. Recent poems have appeared and are forthcoming in New Reader Magazine, Sequestrum, Coe Review, Two Thirds North, January Review and River Heron Review. A Buddhist and a kickboxer, her current obsession is executing a six punch three kick combination with perfect form.  ​

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JANUARY 2020: Selected Poetry

Dismissing the Blues
​​by Mare Leonard

In yin yoga, we lie on our backs
            legs up the wall, arms stretched out
Someone shouts “Get the backhoe for my tush!"
            We laugh, shimmy closer, let go of doubts
 
Legs up the wall, arms stretched out
            The teacher says, Find your edge
I wonder, Is this too far out?
            Hold release into the stretch
 
 My mind says do it  Let it all hangout
 
 The teacher says, Find your edge
            dabs mint on our wrists
 Hold release into the stretch
            Breathe in and trust
 
I lift my wrists smell mint watch it growing
            Chopfortea chopchop forsaladFatoush
 
The teacher drops mint on my third eye
            Let go of loving the good, hating the evil
Press and push do not be attached
            Breathe in and trust
 
Mymindswingsback NannaNonni All refugees running
            thiswayandthat
 
The teacher says, Let go Let go
            of the present and the past
My legs slide down into fields of mint.
            She says, Press and push, do not be attached 
.
My mind says Stretch stretchyourarmsout Accept
I breathe in, let go, Trust thiswaythat

Proposal
by G.D. Burns

None other, I declare it
Affirming as negating
With words the wordless under-
tone
Of ever before, another lovely

Sweetheart, make sermons profane
Friends and family strangers
Afford this river crossing
From one life, to the
next
From one life – to the next

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G.D. Burns is a Western American poet and educator who currently resides in the village of Catskill.