POETRY: NELS HANSON – GUESTS

Guests

A lost dog and at his side

a lost friend are running day

and night across blue rivers’

bridges, down red roads not

clay but pavement, from state

to state each a map’s different

color. No time for rest or sleep,

to eat, only random wild root

or berry, quick short drink from

a cold spring. Each hour I hear

them growing closer, closer,

expect at any second one kind

paw scratch at my screen door,

the whisper of patient knocking,

muted, shy, polite but unafraid

no one will answer after their

long journey as I rise to greet

my two guests, the strangers

I’ve waited all my life to meet.

POETRY: ROBIN WYATT DUNN – NOT ENOUGH

Not Enough

not enough

now

or ever

after the rain wrought

wrinkled

wet

and worlded

the way out

it’s not enough

the way you held the standard poem

and read it out

the way the world loved it

and gave me the towel

to wipe you down

give the world all its bliss

and give me everything after

in the ruins

where I can make my home

POETRY: RICHARD KING PERKINS II – DODGY EDGE

Dodgy Edge

You’re out shopping
right now

for the room
we’re going to share
tonight.

It will be cheap,
somewhere
on the dodgy edge of town

but you’re looking
at the color
and pattern of the curtains

the quality of the artwork
on the walls.

I’m disappearing
in faint gusts of wind

lost in anticipation

wondering why
you expect to take away
anything more

than what
I put inside you.

Poetry: Matthew Heston – Dear Kelly

Dear Kelly

Some things exist only to be seen by

those that need them most. As a

child, I watched a young theologian

reduce the divine to a chalkboard

sketch. Time is a circle that we live

inside, he explained, and that the Almighty

exists outside of. How simple

the universe is, sometimes. I’ve driven

down enough country roads to know

what loneliness is, walked down enough

city streets to know the isolation of

crowds. Wherever you are, you are

small amidst the vastness of the unknown.

I am standing atop a bridge, surrounded

by strangers, watching an eclipse

overhead. One whispers to another,

“We are witnessing history.” It’s true.

In eighteen years there will be

another, and by then none of us will

remember each other’s names.

Scrawled on a Yosemite Park Map

To the couple from the orange tent

whose amorous shushes

crept around the campground

long into the night like a bear

looking for leftovers,

I’m sorry if my kids

happened to slam the car doors

a few too many times

on our way out to an early morning

Ranger-led flora and fauna walk.

Staring at a lineup of RVs

crammed with wildlife-gawking

selfie-stick swinging day-trippers,

he said: the valley

had become a petting zoo.

Better head for the high country

if you’re looking for something wild.

So we did, and found more people and cars

but also endless pine, something blue

called sky, and mountains rising up

with a shrug that said: if not wild

then closer. Maybe it was the thin air,

or not showering for five days,

but I’d recommend the ice-clear lake

I dove into, for once not wondering

how much time was left on the clock.

POETRY: Arushi Singh – In Between

IN BETWEEN

In between grandmother’s scandalous stories

and the little prints of thumb

in between Carol’s secrets whispered and the

Genesis of the long gone rum

in between howl and forgotten ancient words

and fickle minded dreaming sons

in between sand and time and life and wine

She breathed her last as a corpse

trapped-

in between.

POETRY: RITA ROUSSEAU – REMEMBERING

Remembering

I walk in the shadow of skeletal trees,

their fearsome, naked branches reaching out

in desperation, pleading for redemption

like ghostly soldiers back from war in search

of peace, an end to dreams

of screams and shattered flesh.

Scattered underneath, concealed among

withered, blood-red remnants of last year’s

flowers, lurk spiked seed pods,

tiny, inobtrusive land mines

set to detonate at slightest touch

exploding everywhere new seeds

prepared to sprout, to conquer, and

to dominate all lesser growth

exhibiting their red magnificence.

Until, again, the glory ends

in stark, bare desolation.

POETRY: LAURA MANARDO – Lemon Water in Lake Michigan

Lemon Water in Lake Michigan

Midwestern boys use tongue. And I’ve sprouted

from cracks in concrete. Midwestern boys use their fingers.

And I’ve used my hands

too. Trust me. I’ve used numb hands

to mold Midwestern boys. I know how they form words

in their heads before slapping asses

in beds that I’ve made.

I don’t wash my sheets anymore.

I used to know Midwestern boys, but they don’t bleed

with the vigor that I do. They don’t smack

ball of foot to earth the way that I taught them to.

And Midwestern boys use pretty words

like “only child” to water me,

make me grow, spread me

out, lick me clean. Midwestern boys borrow

my knitting needles and use them

wrong. Midwestern boys show me their photographs,

let me put finger to gloss. Let me put finger to mouth,

Midwestern boys. I’m stuck

between two slabs of planet

and all of the Midwestern boys are drinking

lemon water.

POETRY: Laura Manardo – Irrawaddy Dolphins and Casual Sex

Irrawaddy Dolphins and Casual Sex

Like the Irrawaddy dolphin,

I have sex for pleasure

and it ruins me

because I need you to hold me

afterward in the Mekong River.

I need you

to swim alongside me

and let me take a breath

from your blowhole.

It is estimated that 91 of us still exist,

still swim together.

Well, every time I leave

your bed I feel the dead

dolphins lining the river’s bottom. They lived

their lives trying to breathe

in each others exhaled breaths,

trying to buoy themselves to see

the sun rise and fall

on each others backs.

POETRY: ALLISON GRAYHURST – Exhumed

Exhumed Hello dead flower, for all time now you will be embedded inside of me. I will love you, dead as you are, withered like a left-out tomato. I will cherish you, your deadness, your smell and deep dead colour. There – the funny shadow on the upper wall – you killed my […]

Cacti Fur

a poetry high ground