Poetry | January 2023

What if You
What if you were born a white-tailed deer?
I’d see you hanging around the lawn,
your bold stare when I came home late,
your blurred leap into the dark.
You’d take early, tender, delicious bites
of red tulip petals or bleeding heart
from the garden beside the garage,
then doze away the long afternoon
in the thicket by the compost pile.
Your rail-straight tracks in winter snow
would prove you were just passing through,
but in spring you’d come around again,
extending your cantilever neck
to nudge toward me a dotted fawn,
legs twig-thin and backwards bent,
and though I’d know somewhere there was
a pointed buck I’d never meet,
all��"everything we trampled, ate
fenced-in or sprayed��"would be forgiven.
��"William Keller
Vision
I want to write a poem
about the old, white house
on Butterville Road,
the one with the wooden porch
you said we’d sit on
to watch the days end
when we were older
and tired of running from the noise.
But the old, white hous
on Butterville Road
doesn’t want to be in any poem.
It doesn’t care
about the promises we made
or the ones that weren’t kept.
It just wants to look across the field
and watch the mountain grow
without any of us blocking the view.
��"David Lukas
Faultlines
I noticed that the bricks on the side
of my house were cracking when I
disassociated one
night for long enough
and resolved to not
do anything
about
it.
��"Deirdre Alpert
Upon Walking Out of the Hardware Store
With a Plunger and Ice Melt, Mid-January
A man in the parking lot sees and says to you,
“There’s always a situation, isn’t there.”
You, who has slipped on the front walk
and spent last night calling upon YouTube like a divinity
know this, and so does everyone else who has
submitted and searched and asked��"
(toilet broken, stuck, help)
and like you,
received.
Why do so many people not already own a plunger?
Why are you one of them?
There’s a purity in it,
that one exhilarating moment of
asking. The vulnerability of
that moment of single-minded, urgent purpose��"
what did Kundera say again about kitsch?
The first real freeze of winter
and there’s months still to the end,
depending on who you ask. You’re not sure anymore
about belief. What to put it in, if anything.
But everyone’s taken down the decorations
weeks ago and you miss the lights.
And admittedly,
despite everything,
despite or maybe because of
years of wide-ranging situations,
you’re still not yet inured to
to the sight of bright against the dark.
It’s a miracle, say the comments,
You saved my life, over and over.
We never stop looking for it��"salvation,
or whatever resembles it.
��"Nikki Barnhart
To Whom It May [Not] Concern:
I, [state your name],
was nothing
short of mortified
by the wasteful void
at the bottom
right corner
of p. 62
in November’s
tidal issue.
I clipped the poems
apart with scissors
that cut me once
and rearranged
them in five ways
that preserved space
for an even longer
spilling of one’s guts
than the one-ninth
of a page
which your design team
deemed unfit
for local souls
to purge.
I’m keeping this plea
short and unsweet
for the sake of brevity
in the hopes
that it takes up less space
in your Trash email folder
since it won’t adorn
your publication
but please
for the sake of those
who need this catharsis
and validation
in order to survive
keep this in mind
when laying out
what’s more than words.
Sincerely,
Everyone Who’s Bled on Your Pages
��"Mike Vahsen
In Memoriam
for Lynn; for Lionel
Jagged inscribe, but word abandons word;
even rare written inters in its line’s
time. But who bereaved us meant us music��"
their stricter breathing, their touch of tomb as tones
descant death, resonances unresolved
in airs they rose remembering, languageless.
��"Robert Charles Basner
Dry Tears
In the September morning fog
caustic clouds of smoke steamed up,
from the exhaust pipes of family minivans,
cars stretched along the side of the road,
column, similar to a playful domestic snake.
The birds became silent, stunned,
a leper projectile flew in with lightning
remains smoldering in the abyss,
the devil cooks a proud cauldron.
The destinies of hundreds of people have been ruined,
life forever broken,
took away the enemy’s fluttering lives,
whose souls have gone to heaven.
Blood runs like ants through the body,
and saliva is not swallowed,
feet get cold, language is taken away.
��"Vyacheslav Konoval
Kyiv, Ukraine
A stumped and elderly man
sits frightened at vespers
by a similarly ragged cat
named Sneakers
Both are thinned out
Their sight dry and clouded
Tense and breathing hard
They smell used and greasy
They share pillows and packaging
And cigar smoke…a dim light bulb in a metal cage
adds shadows and little else
Sneakers limps on three legs and a short tail
And shares sardines from the man’s bowl
The man has been homeless; the cat feral,
Both have whiskers, both faded white collars
Their nails are long, untrimmed and dull
They both growl in their own way
Not at each other so much
As at all of time and place
which seems to be circling…like a predator
Water is another thing.
The old man prefers a bottle with a warning
The cat doesn’t mind a puddle
For neither does a bath hold prospect
much less shampoo.
Do they collect old newspapers?
How do they fare toward mice and men?
Dusk falls to dusk which yields only a clouded clammy darkness
Dawn remains dry and silent.
An empty tin
��"Jay Marshall Weiss
Cartography
I like to think of the poem
between us as a road,
not straight on to the horizon
and what is beyond
but so curved in its distance
there are too many bends
to see around.
Your only choice,
and the best one,
is to throw your maps away
and slow down
so you won’t miss
all the enchanting sights
you can invent and visit
along the way.
��"Robert Harlow
Seasonal Rapture
You can’t force euphoria,
an apple that just falls
into your hand,
sweet and delicious,
and so unexpected.
Happy is fine;
who wouldn’t settle?
Elation is life changing;
the thrill of seeing
an owl in daylight,
or a rainbow at night;
a guiltless dessert
offering a fruit unfamiliar;
when you gaze beyond reflection
and detect a gaze returned.
Spring surprises;
the first caw is the bud of blood;
the tingling roots
of Your thirsty heart,
quenched joyfully
by my showers.
��"Viola Norlander
There is a springtime
in this winter, and a choice:
love the loss; set shoots
��"Danielle Woerner
Windowing
Today I saw a man with a double stroller,
one kid in it,
and two large dogs pulling him forwards.
A moment later a father walked by
with his two sons on the way to school,
busy, looking at his phone, puffing on a cigarette.
The brothers did not talk to each other.
One of the village Lost Souls
was jaywalking, stumbling across the intersection,
ignoring the traffic completely.
I look at him warily.
Always wearing a blazer,
says hello politely.
I hesitate to start a conversation.
It might never end.
A lady I know got into the bakery,
says hello.
I smiled and nodded in return.
She leaves abruptly
without her favorite dessert,
no goodbye.
I spread crumbs for the birds on the sidewalk,
read the news,
drink coffee,
bite on a cheese danish,
and measure the day
with the help of others.
��"Ze’ev Willy Neumann
Something to Do with Your Hands
A boy is walking down the street.
His bookbag is slung over one shoulder.
He feels the car slow down before he turns around.
The boy wears a green and blue striped rugby shirt.
He knows better than to wear his hooded sweatshirt.
Though warmer, it does not suit his complexion.
The boy turns around.
He cannot see inside the car.
He makes his eyes big and shy.
The boy smiles.
He can’t not be tall,
but he pulls into himself.
The boy turns around, continues walking.
The car matches his pace.
The car follows the boy.
After a long block, the boy has an idea.
He reaches into the bag and takes out a book.
The book is a chemistry textbook.
The boy waves his chemistry textbook in the air.
He thinks: they’ll know that I’m a student.
The book will tell them that.
Though he’d reached into his bookbag,
the boy is not killed.
The car moves on.
��"Wendy Stewart
The End
As my mother’s body deteriorated and, with it, her mind, Now and Then bled together.
Past and present refused to stay put, like kindergartners too antsy to stand in line.
The dead sauntered back to life as the living shrank into dark corners of consciousness.
“I’ve been to the dentist,” my 92-year-old mother told me, lying in a hospital bed,
as she had been for weeks. “I was looking for my mother.”
In a jinxed game of Hide and Seek, names hid and, with them, the ties that bind.
But not Caring. Defying all forces of erosion or decay, Caring stood firm.
“That man there, he takes care of me,” Mom told a nurse who, unlike her, knew well
who Dad was. He’d been by Mom’s side for months.
Dad knew all Mom’s nurses by name as well as many of their own losses and loves.
In the end, even narratives shapeshift. Love stories become tragedies, and tragedies, love stories.
��"Sue Books