I Bend Like a Reed
When that cleansing wind comes
When that wave exceeds the shore
When that car enters the crosswalk
All that fragile metal and boards and bone
Is overwhelmed
Be the waltzing grass at the bottom of Pringle Creek
Green, alive, shelter and sheltered
All day vacillate back and forth
Sipping light
Waving oxygen to water
Everything is fine.
—Marc Janssen
A Tiny Hole
a radical sonnet
There’s a tiny hole close to your heart
And it sings a gentle, warning song:
What threatens you also threatens me
I’d much prefer to bear that tiny hole instead of thee
But fate is not so easily exchanged
I can’t take yours and you can’t take mine
To each of our lives, its burden has been chained
Circumstance is not a choice, nor always kind
Yet a tiny hole can be a gift of life
Reminding us our time is now, precious and so dear
Like the brilliant flash of early morning light
That quickly sheds its grace then disappears
With love comes tenderness, the kind that heals
Not the tiny hole that’s near your heart, but your fear
—Jim Savio
What Sustains
my light will burn the bushel down
bright as danger
and twice as taut
it flames the grass where smolder goes unnoticed
subterranean and fraught
ambition’s coal held over
from yesterday
catching in the dry brush
until that conflagration smokes the sky
daylight sees it
darkness holds its glow out in the orchard
where fireflies used to dance
now, it says
Now
—Elizabeth DiPalma
Fall Flowers
for Louise Gluck
I never knew you
When you found that door
Our suffering cannot pass through
It was years later
I scrolled my camera roll back
To that day in October
I’d been out in the garden
Bringing in the harvest
When I noticed by the edge
Where the field went wild again
Primrose, Milkwort, Coreopsis
Some flowers clung
To one more frozen morning
I snapped that photo
Not of their beauty
Though they were quite beautiful
It wasn’t their color
Vibrance or symmetry
But some stark perseverance
So soft in their sadness
So if we’re born to this world
In spring’s burst of birdsong
Do we leave having heard
What the trees were all whispering
—Cale Joao
Infestation
You bring the blanket, the cloth,
the table, chairs, dishes.
There are four sides to this table.
I bring the ocean, sky, sand, air.
I hand you the knife blade.
The thread that binds you
unravels. Be fruitful, multiple,
build new blood and bone
if you can. I feel everything.
There’s an infestation, countless
cuts of splendor. If I had been
a bird and you had been the same,
we would’ve built a nest, chirp
litanies to the dirt. I tell you what
I know of mercy. You could tell me
of shadows and other fetish-eating
monsters. There used to be a cave
beneath the house where I found you.
Those cuts! Were you made from
something evil?
You are transcending. Surrender
now to another plain at the edge
of this water, seep through—darkly.
—Patrick Hammer, Jr.
Expectedly and Unexpectedly Comes the Idiocy
Comes expectedly and unexpectedly the idiocy.
Comes it flying
And vanishes the healthy wisdom
And with the sudden disappearance
Of the wisdom
Gets nervous the wise
And does not know where to go and
When to go.
And getting confused picks up the hammer
As
Right at this blunt moment
He can save the span of life
By hammering the idiocy.
—Partha Sarkar
No Room @ The Inn
Walking.
Sweat pooling around my lower back
the pack pressing oppressively hot. The guidebook listed
Casa de Fatima. The camino app said just a little
further. I had to ask; confused
because it kept buffering.
She said keep going you’ll see it on the corner.
Oh, I found it. The gate was opened so I walked
through to register. It was festive;
Lots of young beautiful people; excited energy.
The decorations: streamers, balloons, banners.
He came out admonishing the teenagers. Oh, I thought.
He said, “I am so sorry we are not accommodating pilgrims
today, it’s my son’s birthday.”
He must have seen the worn, weary
deflation on my reddened face. He said, “Let me make
a call, there is someone I know.”
He came back, “Is 17 euros ok?”
Then drove me there, while I was in the plush BMW I
thought this better treatment than my holy whole family
ever received maybe some things have changed.
She let me do laundry; what more did I need.
—Tara Fitzpatrick
Shore Leave
Boats tied bow first
onto wooden pier—
sailors bellied up
to the bar.
—Diane Webster
Triptych
One.
A woman freshly showered
walks through the garden
and suddenly what joy all brings.
There is a sacredness—shhh—
in everything. Just now,
a lone bird sings.
Two.
Once, while hiding away in the sand,
how the wind caressed—
and rapturous flower
b l o s s o m e d
in my hand.
Three.
A simplicity
ever settling
in—
needs become
less—less,
less.
Source, and
source only—
suckling at
Its breast.
—Christopher Porpora
Upstairs at Someone Else’s House
We leave the windows open.
At dawn, there is birdsong,
The bells of Main Street keys,
Windchimes, distant traffic.
One breath could swallow the world,
So we breathe slow.
From here, I see finches in the garden.
Your sleeping hand reaches for mine.
For once, I don’t believe in ghosts.
When all of this is bone, it will still have been this:
The edge of summer, you, and I,
Curled ‘round each other, morning glories,
As time unroots itself from us and, laughing,
Flies to join the chorus outside.
—Emily Murnane
The Rose
The Petal of the Rose
is Soft,
So is Life.
The Thorn of the Rose
is Sharp,
So is Life.
I shall hold the Rose
And not Resist,
So the Rose
Can Assist.
—Linda Cohen
Blue Bird of Happiness
indigo bunting darts
from the birdfeeder
as I approach
and flees to safety
in the trees
a streak of color
across a canvas
of leafy green
my God, what blue
—Joanne Grumet
At Long Point
for Nan
Finished
with
all
farewells,
your
ashes
slide
toward
salty
dispersal,
riding
an
outbound
tide.
—Judith Saunders
Used to Be
The city isn’t what it used to be
Says a few old guys
Who aren’t what they used to be
—Ryan Brennan
Gaffney
He should’ve been a portly monk at Kells
Scratching the vellum with an inky nib,
But for Gaffney, the clatter of the El
Was all the vespers he’d hear in his crib.
As he stared a hole through his windowpane
And the wind-driven rain spattered and dripped,
He suddenly realized: that 7 Train
Is an illuminated manuscript!
Krylon frescoes. Put your mural on rails.
Gaffney’s calling hit him like the express.
He ditched his brush, ditched the weight weight entails,
And wielded a can, though no one would guess
That Gaffe-3, a tag seen on every line,
Was a chubby kid at Aviation.
He’d bomb Corona Yard, be home by 9;
He worked alone and loved his vocation.
—Patrick Walsh
August Garden
Dividends come due from matured
Springtime investments.
Walking past the spent strawberry patch,
Apples, cueing up on curved branches,
Waiting to ease their loads,
As grapes, Concord purple,
Weigh on sagging vines.
Locusts sing a familiar song of foreboding,
Warning of the day’s coming inferno.
Feet, wet with morning dew, now brown as
Turned soil cakes to shoes.
Reaching the towering,
Encumbered cornstalks,
Golden hair tangled, uncombed, unkempt
Swaying in the fading breeze,
Whispering a soft sigh, a knowing hiss,
A final exhale.
—Randy Sutter
initials in bark
carved in the heart
another ring
—John Kiersten
