Final Swim at Warren Dunes – Leah Mueller

 

The sun, unchained a few weeks,

direct and unapologetic.

 

Like me, ready to bloom.

 

Water surface tepid,

unfiltered rays against my cheeks.

 

Solar angle closes

one degree at a time,

until the heat extinguishes itself.

 

Wrap towel around my shoulders,

rinse my feet in water.

Cold gnaws spaces between toes.

In the distance, hills of sand

extend in all directions.

 

Earlier this afternoon,

I ran down the largest hill

amidst hordes of children:

 

more slowly than last year,

but still upright.

 

Swim one more hour

until the sand cools.

Place towel in the trunk,

turn ignition key. Listen

to the crunch of tires on asphalt.

 

Another August gone.

How many are left?

 

 

Leah Mueller is an indie writer and spoken word performer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of two chapbooks and four books. Her next book, Misguided Behavior, Tales of Poor Life Choices will be published by Czykmate Press in Autumn, 2019. Leah’s work appears or is forthcoming in Blunderbuss, The Spectacle, Outlook Springs, Mojave River Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, Barnhouse, and other publications. She was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival, and a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest.

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September 1, 2019September 1, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: August, bloom, body, creative, creativity, elements, heat, hill, Leah Mueller, nature, poem, Poetry, rays, sand, senses, summer, sun, swimming, time, US, WA, water, writing Leave a comment

The Welder’s Song – Len Kuntz

 

This is the sound of breaking

Then melting

A sort of soldering

Smell of burnt steel lining the nostrils now

Sparks from the welder’s flame

Shooting 4^th of July bright

Landing on tennis shoes

And cracked cement

Hitting skin

 

This is the sound of love

Fierce devotion

The kind of rapt attention lovers

Show one another when they can’t say

If they’ll ever see each other again

Noticing moles and blurred scars

Seeing it all again for the first time.

 

I wished he would show me that–

The love a welder has for his torch and metal

I wished he would solder me back into a boy

If only half of one

Watching him work I wished so many things

That by the time my father finished his piece

And held it up to the light with a smile

There was nothing left to wish for

 

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AND NEITHER ARE YOU, a story collection out from Unknown Press.  You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com.

June 5, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: creative, creativity, devotion, family, flame, humanity, Len Kuntz, life, love, memory, metal, past, poem, Poetry, scars, senses, skin, steel, torch, US, WA, work, writing 1 Comment

The History Of Their Handprints – Len Kuntz

 

It was the second fire

Years after the garage

Had burnt down

I came home from

Night church

The light switches

Wouldn’t work

I didn’t smell smoke

Right away but heard

My kitten Christopher

Mewling downstairs

The hallway door

Leading there was closed

And in the basement

The shell of my brother’s

Bedroom had become

Charred crimson cinders

Each slat of wood

Resembling red rebar

Or long stove coils

In the smoky haze

I scooped up Chris

Went to a neighbor

Dialed the fire department

They brought an investigator

Who grilled me

Out on the damp lawn

Until it grew so dark

I could no longer see

His expression and

Determine if he was

Actually serious

He pointed questions

Was I resentful my

Parents had left me

While they lived

Somewhere in Idaho

Did I want retribution

Were there issues

I had with them

That would lead me

To set my house on fire

I said

No

No

And

Of course not

I never said how

In those years

Each day was spent

Hustling the demons

That buzzed around

My shallow skull

Like a hive of

Angry wasps

Sometimes drilling

Their stingers

Straight through

My hippocampus

I never said I

Was actually thrilled

My parents were living

Someplace other than here

Where the history

Of their handprints

Still haunted everything

Darker than

The thickest smoke

Glowing brighter

Than any oven coil

Burning everything

To ash

Again and again

And again

 

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AND NEITHER ARE YOU, a story collection out from Unknown Press.  You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com.

May 28, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: ash, cinders, creative, creativity, darkness, demons, family, fire, handprints, history, home, Len Kuntz, memory, past, poem, Poetry, questions, senses, smoke, US, WA, wood, writing Leave a comment

Lotus Pond – Seth Jani

 

That menagerie of lost appetites

Comes through when the dream arrives.

 

Those hungers are deep as rain

In the forest’s centrifugal body.

 

You could drown there without

The black cord of awareness

 

To let you down. They are voracious,

Swallowing leaves and minnows,

 

The high-ether flowers

Of the gods’ most cherished gardens.

 

To be near them is to touch a limited fire.

They are like the multicolored fish

 

That dart through the nameless waters

On which we float our frail, constricted blooms.

 

Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has been published widely in such places as The Chiron Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, VAYAVYA, Gingerbread House, Gravel and Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com.

February 25, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, awareness, creative, dream, fauna, fire, fish, flora, forest, hunger, leaves, nature, poem, Poetry, rain, Seattle, Seth Jani, US, WA, water, weather, wild, writing Leave a comment