Last night I fell to dream
of Castle Combe,
Its shambling mists and tawny stream,
the holy pathos of its homes.
Wind-washed clouds, the lunar gleam
of cream-colored stone.
And there, somewhere between
drowsy dusk and day, I stood alone
In fevered dream,
in Cotswold cold,
Woke to air, moon-tide dimmed,
and the lulled hush of wool-
Soft hymns
with all hope gone.
Easy to envy
their erratic
exuberance
ascending with
scythe-like wings
in fevered flight,
rounding rooftops
and the crowns
of trees before
returning like
blind oracles
with a divine
purpose and
grim prophecies
to share. Their
delirious arrivals
and farewells
blend then blur
into fleur-de-lis
pivots and pirouettes,
chevron tails split
apart like lengthy
shears slicing through
charmed circles of
air moments before
their tiny throats
of glossy indigo
morph into embers
as daylight falls
upon the tongues
of tides just catching
the last wink of sun.
A resident of Connecticut, John is a graduate of Trinity College, Wesleyan University and the University of Connecticut. In the Lilac Hour, his first volume of poems, was published in 2020 by Antrim House, and it is available on Amazon. His poems have been published, or are forthcoming, in journals including Euphony, Moria, Penumbra, River Heron, Sheepshead, Third Wednesday, Amethyst Review, High Window, Poetica Review and the French Literary Review. John is also a two-time 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee.
It is not far, not far at all beyond
the city limits where the road ends,
even the tire tracks peter out amidst
the wild-grown grass surrounded
by trees, invisible from buildings.
Just enough room to park, lay out
a blanket, pitch a tent.
Off to one edge, a ring. I thought
at first of mushrooms. But no—
of snails, their variegated shells
ablaze in the afternoon light.
I read to them awhile, until the sun
was low enough that it was time
to gather wood. Whether they
enjoyed it I’ve no idea.
A fire just long enough to warm
ramps, mushrooms, beans, a chunk
of bread torn to pieces, then to bed
and dreams of snails who aspire
to write their first poems.
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Blood and Bourbon, The Stratford Quarterly, and Stonecoast Review, among others.
The night, this night anyway,
has requested quiet—
using an older, quieter word.
The owl complies, sounds one note
pianissimo on a marimba
with a soft mallet.
No crickets fidget.
No feral tom cats talk trash.
Even the hound over on the next farm
howls for only a few minutes
and then, whatever had been bothering him,
lets it drop
and drifts off to sleep.
Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. A San Joaquin Almanac won the Eric Hoffer Award for 2021 in the chapbook category. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.
blue goose road at night
cuts thru bog country
streams of leaves
flow the road
and moats dogs
aflight, all
of them. gray
light purpling
the air. vertigo
round cedar-lined
curves. watching
for deer –
there – the moon
shines over acid
water, pitcher-plant
relics, my brow.
jacob riyeff is a translator, poet, and scholar of medieval literature. his work focuses on the western contemplative tradition and the natural world. jacob teaches in the english department at marquette university and lives in milwaukee’s east village.
I am peering through raindrops, which are
washing away my memories watching the past
fade as I walk along an old path I have walked on
many times before.
I have walked this path before, in the springtime
when cheery trees were pink with blossoms,
giant maple trees were showing their pink buds,
and young animals in their new born freedom
loped along the river, carefree, and filled with the
excitement of new birth.
I have walked this path before when the summer
heat silently placed its warmth upon my
shoulders as I sat on a beach chair near a placed
pond thinking about the beauty of nature, and
listening to the sweet warbling of tiny songbirds.
I have walked this path before when autumn’s
slowly increasing winds started their polished
journey into winter with whispered hints of
fading time, and the sun was covered with dark
moisture filled clouds.
I have walked this path before when the chill of
winter blurred my footsteps, tiny birds took
refuge in bushes and I, bundled up in wools and
layered cotton, pondered on the coldness of the
season, and what I should etch onto the marble
face of my tombstone.
James is an internationally published poet, a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee. He has had four poetry books; Solace Between the Lines, Light, Ancient Rhythms, and The Silent Pond, 1500 poems, five novels, and 35 short stories published worldwide. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He writes poetry to maintain his sanity, and sometimes succeeds.
The milk sun combs uncombed fields
While
An atonal chorus of geese concert invisibly directly overhead.
All around
The illusion of softness
In the graceful curving hill-scapes,
Rust carpets of oak leaves,
Before it is broken by an insincere tittering of human voices.
Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.
Driving out west of town
There is a field, maybe part of an abandoned farm,
Filled with sunflowers.
There should be a name for a group of sunflowers,
Rank on jumble they stand
Lion-faced their ragged yellow manes roar in a June rain shower.
Their faces a cloud confusion.
This field of flowers could be called a landscape of sunflowers
A beauty of sunflowers
A Saint Francis of sunflowers
A van Gogh of sunflowers
A peal
A heart
A tender
A good grove of sunflowers.
Then it was gone
Somewhere behind me,
And the next thing comes into view
Between rain drops
Green and colorful and new.
Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.
Yes, you can call me a nymph. How else to explain that
my mouth is a river that never meets
the sea. Don’t be afraid. I understand how this thing
how the body
works. I know everything, all the names
of all of the places inside
of me. Watch. I’ll show you how to make it
more than a metaphor.
I know full
well that sex isn’t some
thing to play at, my valentine. You see this thing here
this immensity
between my legs. This is what turns day in
to night
light into dark. This is flesh of the
same silence.
I know you want to wrap your
self around it. I see the desire dripping down
your back. Do it now, before it is too
late. Do it before you turn into a poem
inside of me.
Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College with a degree in English and has a Master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann is the author of the chapbook The Bird Happened, and the chapbook perhaps there is a sky we don’t know about: a re-imagining of sappho is forthcoming in December. Her work has recently appeared in Riggwelter, Main Street Rag, Poet head, Cathexis Northwest, The Wax Paper, and The Phare, among others.
What is the body in the eyes of the body
is it nothing more than a translation
of water salt and air
an alchemy of blood and sand and lust
bones fragile anxious within
muddy flesh the nervous
desire of hips
bewildered
that you are still not here every
day I put my feet down one in
front of the other a child would
say that this should be enough
but the heavy box of the body asks
always for more.
Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College with a degree in English and has a Master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann is the author of the chapbook The Bird Happened, and the chapbook perhaps there is a sky we don’t know about: a re-imagining of sappho is forthcoming in December. Her work has recently appeared in Riggwelter, Main Street Rag, Poet head, Cathexis Northwest, The Wax Paper, and The Phare, among others.
My love is not here again today
Her image only lives in slumber,
Her essence has faded away.
My memory’s road is now a dull gray
My sad reminiscences do encumber:
My love is not here again today.
In the midst of another gloomy day
Silent footsteps increase in number:
Her essence has faded away.
Woeful visions are those that stay
Wretched hours the days do cumber,
My love is not here again today.
I no longer smell the roses’ sweet bouquet
Lonely visions then outnumber:
My love is not here again today,
Her essence has faded away.
James lives with his wife Sandy, a cat called Barny, and a pup named Scout, in a replica 1800s eastern farmhouse in the foothills of Santa Ynez, California. He was nominated for a Best of Web award, and three times for a Pushcart award. He has had four collections of poetry, The Silent Pond (2012), Ancient Rhythms (2014), Light (2016), and Solace Between the Lines (2019), over 1,485 poems, five novels, and 35 short stories published worldwide. He earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, and his doctorate from BYU.
sometimes it’s hard to remember/the names of things /those trees
along the side of the freeway/ I used to know what they are called
and then there are words I’ve never known /is there a word for
the lust bees feel for a flower /or the way his neck tastes /that moony
combination/ something like cyprus and salt and bone.
Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College with a degree in English and has a Master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann is the author of the chapbook The Bird Happened, and the chapbook perhaps there is a sky we don’t know about: a re-imagining of sappho is forthcoming in December. Her work has recently appeared in Riggwelter, Main Street Rag, Poet head, Cathexis Northwest, The Wax Paper, and The Phare, among others.
I bury their heads in peat and think of the day when
the sun warms the soil and the clouds bring the rain and the white
snowy fields that once seemed to stretch endless will
be a fuzzy memory of a cold and irrelevant past.
the seeds so carefully planted before the first frost will
unfold like origami and send thin furry roots tunneling
through the chilly dirt to find footholds in the earth.
I’ll wake to find a thin coat of green covering
the warmed soil surrounding the base of the old birch tree
in the back yard.
eventually, the thin frost of green will grow into a thick carpet, obscuring
the domed hills marking the entrance and exit of traveling worms,
the triangular footprints of excavating seasonal birds, even the
occasional fox footpad, preserved in wet mud. but
today, snow falls in soft clumps outside my kitchen window, barely
heard or felt by the tiny cocooned bodies of insects and plants
lying dormant beneath the soil. I stare past the snow
dream bright, grand dreams of far-off
summer days, imagining the crackle
of night crawlers moving beneath decomposing leaves, the way
the stars look so fuzzy in the sky on
hazy, summer nights.
Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Tampa Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, and her published books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, and Ugly Girl.
Strolling along a bark filled path in the woods the breath of summer gusts into my mind and the warbling of tiny birds enters my ears. Tiny colorful wildflowers, pink, yellow, and blue paint the face of the meadow across the way, and waft their honeyed scents into the breeze. I hear the whispering sounds of the tiny brook alongside the path, and watch small rabbits with blades of grass in their mouths hopping quietly across the field. Maple trees with their white and gray skin, and oak trees with their gnarled limbs reaching for ground and sky shade my path. A red-shouldered hawk soars to the heavens with a screech as I disturb its tranquility sitting in a tall pine tree. I hear murmuring voices of tiny animals under fallen leaves and twigs in the distance, as the soft balmy breeze hurries over the ground with its euphonious voice. My memories awaken, and I remember my happy treks to the woods when I was a young lad. I exhale my breath with a nostalgic sigh as I realize my walks in the woods will be ending soon. My mind is still young, but my body has turned old.
James is the author of four collections of poetry, Solace Between the Lines (2019), Light (2016), Ancient Rhythms (2014), and The Silent Pond (2012). He has had over 1,440 poems (four of which were nominated for Pushcart and Best of Web Awards), five novels, eight essays, and thirty-five short stories published. He earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, and his doctorate from BYU.
Ahrend Torrey enjoys exploring nature with his husband Jonathan and their two terriers Dichter and Dova. He works in New Orleans and is the author of Small Blue Harbor published by the Poetry Box Select imprint (Portland) in 2019. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University.
Foxglove Journal 