Issue 13 - Spring 2022
poetry
Memories of the Hawthorn Tree
We were drinking light beer by a river,
There were ducks in the river,
The ducks were followed by an endless stream of baby ducks,
And light passed over the lace-woven cottages.
My friend near me, his green coat of years,
It lingered like a scent, a smell not of age,
But emptiness, and beside us, a stranger slept,
As butterflies do,
And the steady melody of her soft snores
Reminded me of my father’s chin, his pastel orifice,
A tobacco stained tempest,
Yet it was also a prayer.
And today, my feet are wet and dirty.
The dust road: my prayer.
And each morning I gather stones.
Then throw them to the water.
And each morning,
I remember history is merely a menagerie
That soils my favourite coffee cup
With Zen symbols on its side,
And the apostolic stars
They grin, as I crack
Thrushes’ necks
Beneath the hawthorn tree.
—Oisín Breen
My Heritage
I was born of bloodstone, drawn
to rock; drawn to red.
My ear was bent toward birds
in a row up on a walnut limb.
I bolted early from reality,
tethered the imagined pony.
I polished spurs. Stirred apples,
made butter in a copper kettle.
I treasured Adam’s rib along
with others in my body.
I ran. I danced. I climbed mountains,
swam in the old stone quarry.
The current in my brain ran fast.
It leaped and sparked.
I’ve lived my life―reveling in smoky
red and golden autumn dreams.
—Mary Lucille DeBerry
What's To Fear
Listen to the hawk's plaintive call,
the wind whispering to the river,
breath becoming breath
becoming silence becoming
memory becoming no thing.
It is as natural as a summer day
with the grasses bathed in light.
Remember the barefooted days decades ago
your body, a thoroughbred
itching to run?
Now it is an old mare with a lame leg.
Soon you will grow tired
of the terror that grips you in the night.
Pain is part of the great mystery
and you must hold it with
the tenderness reserved for
fragile beauty.
A dragonfly, translucent on your wrist,
a newborn folded into itself,
the deepening blue at day's end
before it lets go
into night.
—Pamela Hill Epps
Three Aubades
When the sun rises the sun
washes the hills studs the sky
with new violet transfigures earth
and the old green rich with celebration
of myriad seasons rekindles desire
when bird and insect and all the cells
leaf and flower you long thought dead
join the palpitant pulsing
parade, and day once more
dawns unused vigorous
as the first morning as reveille
then bones and blood the old verities
know tide pull again emergent
north star burning lighting
its last red embers your one choice—to rejoice
—Connie Jordan Green
Curriculum Vitae OR I Know Everything (after Kendrick Lamar’s “Momma”)
I know everything.
I know Black people. I know white people.
I know everything. I know how to talk.
I know how to write. I know
everything. I know history. I know culture.
I know your history better than you
know mine. I know everything.
I know rhetorical shit. I know everything.
I know Socrates. I know Aristotle. I know
Plato was a genius with a grudge. I know
everything. I know literature. I know classics.
I know your definition of classics don’t resemble mine. I know
everything. I know DuBois. I know Hegel.
I know Richard Wright. I know Dostoevsky. I know
Ellison. I know Baldwin. I know Foucault. I know everything.
I know Toni Morrison. I know free birds sing
just as good as caged ones. I know intersectionality.
I know Kimberlee Crenshaw’s greatest hits is a remix
of Anna Julia Cooper.
I know everything.
I know collegiality. I know politics.
I know academe is just intellectual
capitalism. I know everything. I know
“the ways in which.” I know abstract shit.
I know everything. I know theory can explain all
until it can’t. I know everything.
I know “Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion.”
I know race is a social construct. I know
so is everything else. I know the master’s tools
will never dismantle his house. I know
you’ll pay me to try. I know everything.
I know I’m just a token
of goodwill to the students protesting outside.
I know everything. I know intellectual integrity.
I know my worth is non-negotiable
(but, for the record, starts at $80k). I know dignity.
I know the price of admission. I know my salary
won’t make a dent in what it cost me to get here.
What I do know, and paid dearly to never forget,
is that ultimately, like you, I don’t know shit.
—Gabriel Green
Other Worlds
Constantine, sleepless at the Milvian Bridge, steps out for air to inspect the stars. He sees a miracle in the sky, one flaming star with six points.
Stacey, with her glorious strawberry-blonde crown and a different therapist, chooses not to hang herself, or does it later and her roommate cuts her down in time. She pulls herself together, with help, and fulfills her promise as a writer. Or I accept her invitation to dinner with her friends, and somehow change her life, and mine.
Judy G., turning down my invitation for a weekend alone at my place in the woods -- what was I thinking? she never liked me that way -- suggests (as she did) that I ask Monica instead. And I do. And then what? All those dreams fulfilled, perhaps, and maybe some of hers. She doesn't meet Martha, or after we have parted, or we stay together and my two failed marriages evaporate as in a dream, undreamt.
Or they turn to three.
The software startup convinces me to come in one more time, and offers me a job, stock, options, the wealth of the Indies, and reasonable working hours. I take it. The company succeeds with my help, and my options are worth a fortune. Kate gets half in the divorce, which still has no reason not to happen.
So I bind others to my dreaming will.
—David M. Harris
City of Memory
In pictures it looks like something we’ve seen before, it’s not that different from the solid state except for the lacy edges. Turning around or turning back, as if we’re sewing up the holes in our pockets, not taking anything out like an album in a drawer—when you don’t know what you’re leaving out is it worth finding out? The light stays in the interior of the beam, like the story of the light, or the page it’s written on, the walls are soft enough to stick things into. Parking isn’t a problem. When we need to do something it’s often because of something else we’ve done or something that happened to us, as if the difference between what it was and what it is is just what we want it to be. Cupping our hands as if they’re starting to leak, reminding ourselves to back everything up—if something’s in the way it’s probably because there isn’t any other place for it. We often think there isn’t anything that hasn’t already happened—I believe Kierkegaard knew what he was talking about when he said life is only known backwards, as if we need to keep turning around in order to find out where we’re going, honestly I don’t think we don’t remember enough to be forgetful. Not putting anything down that we need to pick up later on. Nothing is plowed under or evicted, we still have soft spots, when there’s nobody in front of you you turn around and hold onto the person behind you, letting your chins touch, opening your mouth and pressing your lips together: under the tongue it’s always the same temperature.
—Peter Leight
Instructions For How to Live My Life
if I should die.
Use resistance as formaldehyde.
Refuse to accept the fact of change.
Reserve the right to refuse,
and refuse the right to be reserved.
Stop eating when you’re upset.
Burn off the rest in punishing workouts.
When you hear about emotional eating
or exercise addiction, don’t identify.
React to every word or change like it’s a harpoon.
Pump your cortisol day and night ruminating on safety.
When you have to set your alarm,
forget to turn it off.
Believe you can remember everything else.
Resent always being called upon for miscellanea.
When you read—and read everything,
save acting on it for later.
Make mountains out of marginalia.
Believe the dark is made of bears.
And if you should die…
—Megan Wildhood
Cthulhu
Over the course of one April Sunday, my neighbor
Culled the grapevine between our yards.
Tentacles wound forty feet through chain link,
Obscured the weedy corner behind the garage,
Protected my woodpile
Under a cantilevered awning of suckered arms,
Succor to Japanese beetles.
Gone now, beast and perhaps, beetle.
Oddity in a grass ocean. The crabapple
Dances farewell, its flowered branches wave in the snow.
Keep It Between the Ditches
Blind Abo Olafsson lost his white cane
And is taking his walks without it.
A Korean War vet and 93, forgive him
for leaving it, like a cup of Starbucks,
on the roof of his pickup before
driving south down County Road 3.
He had been picking corn all day for his nephew
and was distracted by dreams of
uncountable light.
—Sara Dovre Wudali
contributors
Irish poet, academic, and journalist, Oisín Breen’s debut, ‘Flowers, all sorts in blossom ...’ was released Mar., 2020. Breen is published in 71 journals, including in About Place, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, the Seattle Star, La Piccioletta Barca, Reservoir Road, and Dreich.
A retired public television producer in Morgantown, WV, Mary Lucille DeBerry has had poems published in Appalachian Heritage; Appalachian Journal; Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine; and in the 2022 anthology: I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing. She has published three collections: Bertha Butcher’s Coat (2009) (Revised 2020); Alice Saw the Beauty (2014); and She Was the Girl (2020).
Pamela Hill Epps’ work has most recently appeared in the anthology, 101 Jewish Poems For The Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press) as well as in other literary publications such as The Sandhill Review, Poetica, Wild Violet, in Writing Motherhood (Scribner), and has published A Last Glance, a chapbook published by YellowJacket Press. She is a psychologist, poet and jazz musician living in Tampa, Fl. with her partner and cat. She spends a great deal of time looking out at the river.
Connie Jordan Green lives on a farm in East Tennessee where she writes and gardens. She is the author of award-winning novels for young people, poetry chapbooks, poetry collections, and a newspaper column that ran for over forty years. She is a retired educator and frequently leads writing workshops. website address is conniejordangreen.com.
Gabriel Green (he/him/his) is a Poet, Musician, and Scholar (in that order, depending the day) from Pontiac, MI. He currently resides in State College, PA where he is a Dual-Title PhD candidate at the Pennsylvania State University, studying English and African American/African Diaspora studies. The following poems are his take on some of the documents many institutions require as part of one's application dossier.
Until 2003, David M. Harris had never lived more than fifty miles from New York City. Since then he has moved to Tennessee, acquired a daughter and a classic MG, and gotten serious about poetry. His work has appeared in Pirene's Fountain (and in First Water, the Best of Pirene's Fountain anthology), Gargoyle, The Labletter, The Pedestal, and other places. His first collection of poetry, The Review Mirror, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2013.
Peter Leight’s poems have appeared in Paris Review, AGNI, FIELD, Beloit Poetry Review, Raritan, Matter, and other magazines.
Megan Wildhood is a neurodivergent writer from Colorado who helps her readers feel genuinely seen as they interact with her dispatches from the junction of extractive economics, mental and emotional distress, disability and reparative justice. She hopes you will find yourself in her words as they appear in her poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017) as well as The Atlantic, Yes! Magazine, Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more at meganwildhood.com.
Sara Dovre Wudali is a writer and editor from Saint Paul. She grew up on the plains of southwest Minnesota, where the wind blows strong and box elder bugs rule the earth. Her work has been published in North Dakota Quarterly, Creative Nonfiction, Sweet, Saint Paul Almanac, and as part of a public art project in Mankato, Minnesota.