all – Mark Goodwin

 

all

 

washed from

land-rim through

 

sea’s miles

 

-high-sky &

fathoms-deep

 

en

 

twined

 

light

 


Mark Goodwin is a poet-sound-artist, and speaks & writes in various ways. He is also a walker, balancer, stroller, & climber. He has a number of books & chapbooks with various poetry houses, including Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, Nine Arches Press, & Shearsman Books. His poetry was included in The Ground Aslant – An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry edited by Harriet Tarlo (Shearsman Books 2011) and The Footing edited by Brian Lewis (Longbarrow Press 2013).  His latest chapbook – a compressed mountain travelogue called Erodes On Air – was recently published in North America by Middle Creek. Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat just north of Leicester. He tweets poems from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced poetry is here: https://markgoodwin-poet-sound-artist.bandcamp.com.

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Fissures – Jayne Martin

 

The new people had rebuilt from our ashes, from the scarred land to which we could not bring ourselves to return. The foundation had weakened over the years and the house had begun to sink on one side. Spider web-like fissures had creeped silently across the wall above our headboard as we slept.

We stood in only our robes, our feet bare on the cold pavement. The heat of the flames blew out the window of the second-story bedroom we’d planned as a nursery for children never born. The chimney collapsed onto your study where you buried your disappointment in work, while I buried mine in the kitchen growing larger with food that never filled the void. I may have reached for your hand. They said the fire was caused by faulty wiring. It’s true we had let things go. So many things.

I sit in my car across the street from the modern new design; all glass, sharp angles, and promise. No bicycles hastily discarded in its driveway, no toys forgotten from play on its pristine lawn. A gentle psst-psst-psst of a rotating sprinkler the only hint of life.

I wonder about the people inside and who they will become when the first cracks appear.

 

 

Jayne Martin 2Jayne Martin is a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfictions nominee, and a recipient of Vestal Review’s VERA award. Her debut collection of microfiction, Tender Cuts, from Vine Leaves Press, is available now. Learn more at www.jaynemartin-writer.com.

Arizona Spring – Linda Rhinehart

 

all around us are spots of red

like measles over a face that

is only now healing, cloaks

draped in wild abandon over the

sun-baked rocks, sentinels peeking

from behind pink stripes and

distant canyon borders

and not a fence post in sight;

what freedom is ours, driving

mile after mile over this

violent sunset land, and our

constant companion temptation,

whispering in our ears that

we are never to return to

a land where there are no

fields of red flowers

 

 

IMG_1172Linda Rhinehart, 30, is a student, writer and translator currently living and studying in Cardiff, Wales. In the past she has lived in Switzerland, the USA and Germany. She has been writing poetry for around three years and reading it for a lot longer. In her spare time she enjoys playing piano, going for walks in nature and cats.

Rumble Rumble – Joe Albanese

 

I thought I lost a thousand years,

turns out I was just blinking

What I thought a ruptured volcano

is just what I’ve missed in aching

 

Hanging out the window sill –

is even half of me worth saving?

I never made it to the church,

but held my faith in breaking

 

Why rebuild this house when it’s the land that’s cursed?

I hear it, I hear it, I hear it

 

I got nowhere by acting low –

even my shadow overheated

What’s a rhapsody within myself

when all I did was stay seated?

 

Forge anything and hope it grows

to shed a weight only Atlas knew

I calculate I’m nothing special

because entropy does what we already do

 

There’s a wave so big I can’t see its crest

But I feel it, I feel it, I feel it…

 

 

JoeAlbanese_photoJoe Albanese is a writer from New Jersey. His work can be found in publications across the U.S. and in ten other countries. Joe’s novel, Caina (Mockingbird Lane Press), and his novella, Smash and Grab (Books to Go Now), were both published in 2018.

Wings – Arlene Antoinette

 

Driving home from the rehab center,

my mind filled with thoughts of my

father who was recuperating from a heart

attack, I watched as a buzzard attempted

to land atop a streetlight post. Oddly, his feet

missed the perch, I ducked while driving

afraid he would fall, splat, onto the roof of

my car. Of course, that result never occurred

to the winged creature who flapped his wings

a total of three times and landed steadily on

the post which was the goal from the beginning.

I laughed at myself, not believing how foolish

I had been to think the vulture could be grounded

so easily.

 

 

stillmyeye

Arlene Antoinette is a poet of West Indian birth, who has given her heart to Brooklyn, New York where she spent her formative years. Her work has been published in Foxglove Journal, Little Rose Magazine, Tuck Magazine, I am not a silent poet, The Open Mouse, Neologism Poetry Journal, 50-Word Stories, A Story In 100 Words, The Ginger Collect, The Feminine Collective, Boston Accent Lit, Amaryllis, Your Daily Poem, Sick Lit Magazine, Postcard Shorts and Girlsense and Nonsense.

Buried – Sara Comito

 

You can get a horse as soon

as you get a backhoe big

enough to bury it, Momma

told her. Likewise, she didn’t

have the smarts to bother

with college.

 

Down the pier a sailor smoked

and mended his net. Feeling her

stare, he pegged her for

lonely, took her out to sea.

 

Momma didn’t get a husband

til she had a big enough knife.

The net was big enough for this

new catch, but – Momma

will be missing me.

 

His face cracked with years

of salt like those sore, handknitted

knots. Swells made false islands

of horizon. Seven miles and you

lose the land, he says.

 

The distance she can’t

make sense of. It folds itself

into a wave she could ride

all the way back there and bury

everything. But she can’t

tell.

 

Is it big enough?

 

 

Bio photoSara Comito is a writer living in Fort Myers. Her poetry has been published at places like A-Minor Magazine, Thrush Poetry Magazine, and Blue Fifth Review. Her interests include a new love – fiction writing, plus experimenting with world cuisines, camping in Florida’s swamps, and watching her teenage son invent his future.

And Then At Times – Charles Bane, Jr

 

And then at times

the dips of our marriage are

no different than the falling

into love in Richmond Park

before we started home, and I

wrote every day until the motion

of the ship made me certain that

for every berth going out,

new souls put in, spit from

foam. If I could read Greek or

understand the errand of the

cardinal we watch for with coffee

in our hands, I could make poetry

on the tips of fence spears where

he stops and the fire of you would

go urgently from land to land.

 

charles bane jr - bustCharles Bane, Jr. is the American author of three collections of poetry including the recent “The Ends Of The Earth: Collected Poems” (Transcendent Zero Press, 2015) and “The Ascent Of Feminist Poetry”, as well as “I Meet Geronimo And Other Stories”  (Avignon Press, 2015) and “Three Seasons: Writing Donald Hall” (Collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University). He created and contributes to The Meaning Of Poetry Series for The Gutenberg Project. See more at http://charlesbanejr.com.

Another Thing – Danielle Dix

 

It is something to understand

you share the space between the sky

and the land

the time that falls from jumping

to standing

the beat of breathing

the peak and plunge of the sun

But as stone to grain,

from mist to rain,

It’s another thing to change

 

2016-11-13 07.13.17Danielle Dix is a poet with a tendency to focus on the challenges that people create within themselves. She is ruled by her impulsive nature, drools for travel, and is compiling a set of poems that she hopes will not fall prey to abandonment in a cardboard box. She tweets at @DanielleNoelDix.

The Time that Land Forgot – Ryan Quinn Flanagan

 

walking down by the plaza

the time that land forgot

walking in shoes and socks

and in a hurry

because everything closes:

the door, the laundromat,

the mind…

and everyone forgets

so I could hardly blame the land

for thinking itself an Olympic sized swimming pool

and no longer land

which made it very hard

to walk.

 

ottawa

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his other half and mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.