6 – Poetry

By Erin Bennett

In the beginning there is chaos.
Alarms and running and pressured orders. 
A conglomerate of people with a shared goal.
Tireless efforts to revive and restore the previous harmony
Of life. 
Hurried conversations of what might have been, of what could be. 
Old remedies and new technologies discussed and employed.
Persistent efforts to revive and restore the previous harmony
Of life. 

A pause.

Look into the face of Death.
Pain. Surrender. Peace. 
The words hang like ice crystals – fragile and mysterious. 
Death is an enigma.
Death can be a welcome visitor or a tremendous foe. 
Its unexpected nature almost always comes like a force.
One can prepare for Death, but not really. 
One can try to understand Death, but it still stings. 
Death can bring comfort and agony, separate or simultaneously. 
It can equally connect and disconnect people. 
Grief comes, or maybe it has been there for awhile.
Look into the face of Death. 
Pain. Surrender. Peace. 

By Eleanore Lee

They still call it that
Even though now it’s all just screen time
Of course it is day
Definitely.
That glitter of sunlight
Streams through the front windows
Blurring my screens
Making me look gutted and washed out.

Now back into the Zoom Room.
How do I feel about all those tech people
Staring into my bedroom?
Can you read that woman’s book titles
Hanging behind her?
They look most scholarly.

(I’d better get rid of those old beer cans.)

Takes a lot of patience to adjust and tweak—
To work this way, day after day
Takes the patience of that old prophet.
Yes
That was his name:
Job
(Rhymes with globe and probe)

And wasn’t that one of our century’s
Great creators? Plural, of course.
Rhymes with blobs and sobs.

---

Eleanore Lee has been writing fiction and poetry for many years in addition to her regular job as a legislative analyst for the University of California system. Her work has appeared in a range of journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Avatar Literary Review, Carbon Culture Review, Existere Journal, Flumes Literary Journal, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Portland Review, and Tampa Review. She was selected as an International Merit Award Winner in Atlanta Review’s 2008 International Poetry Competition. She also won first place in the November 2009 California State Poetry Society contest.

By Alison Hicks

I could have used the set of traveling colors,
the brush with its barrel of water.
Winter hues: 
ice-covered shallows, 
dry stalks, ragged heads of phragmites,
sparrows that flew back and forth in the grove.
Plank bridge across the neck
where ice gave way to deeper water.
Quiet, considering the highway, 
the train tracks, the airport, 
walking here after drop-off.
Squares of color arrayed, 
shifting with sunset,
paper holding the rinse.

---

Alison Hick’s third book of poems, Knowing Is a Branching Trail, received the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Books. Previous books include two full-length collections of poems, You Who Took the Boat Out (Unsolicited Press, 2017) and Kiss (PS Books, 2011); a chapbook, Falling Dreams (Finishing Line Press, 2006); and a novella, Love: A Story of Images(AWA Press, 2004), a finalist in the 1999 Quarterly West Novella Competition. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Fifth Wednesday, Gargoyle, Louisville Review, Permafrost, Poet Lore, and other journals. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose Prize from Smartish Pace, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern. Other awards include the 2011 Philadelphia City Paper Poetry Prize and two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships. She is the founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

By Sam Byrd

Under the dresser
a small plastic button
uncovered as if 
all of the sudden,

Uncovering thoughts
of your burgundy sweater
wrung and pressed, to make   
it seem better,

Uncovering dreams
of planes next to this
with sweaters untouched
no buttons amiss.
Alas, on this day
as sun fades to taper
so I fear memories become
evanescent vapor

---

Samuel Byrd is a medical student at UAMS.

By Howard Kuenning

We’re all Gatsby, always have been, standing lonely on our own pier, 
Looking for the certain future, rich as Croesus, really, in this world, 
Food, rent, man, and printed books online. It’s all on line!
Which line? Not really sure, when just a click in is a false fantasy 
Self-policed by Keanu Reeves algorithmic goggle-eyed, Google-eyed, 
Dr. Octo surge machines running their traps along the frozen tracks of 
Our pitiless dreams—Me. Mine. My thirst. My hunger. 
Feed this Dream, the American Dream, 
Hydrogen clouds of nano-fission uncontrolled accelerants 
Seeded and harvested in simultaneous and decayed extinction 
Beyond the reach of any kind of Archeology on this campus, 
This field, opposing teams faced off in this early moment of
A new Age of Hope, Build Back Better. Back, where? 
To some pre-pandemic Eden that rudely shoves our 
Rotten American Dream of white privilege back in line 
With the failed Utopias of dreamless sleep, where nightmares lurk, 
Ready to devour hope and promise, the staggering beauty of 
Young hearts and minds dropped like unarmed victims into a 
Turf battle for Truth, the flipped coin of Both Sides Now, 
Yes, Joni, now, Both Sides? Neither looks quite right, does it? 
No, it doesn’t. Yet we stand in this relative quiet, the Global Blowhard 
Silenced by a click out, his scuttling parasites panicked by deafening silence, 
Parched tongues thirsty for deception, unslaked. How does it feel? 
The great alibi turned out to have vacuum for a soul, and the deal is a Con, 
A Great Lie the bedrock on which all deals fail. At some level 
We’re all jugglers and clowns, and the tricks we turn don’t matter 
When we discover that he really wasn’t where it’s at, 
After he took all that he could steal. In fact, there is no where, here. 
It’s over there, marked in every domicile of hope and sanctuary by 
The bright green gleam off Gatsby’s dock, the pitiless alien router eye of a 
Vast Matrix monster gazing from a billion feeds into our hopeless spaces, 
Only a click away. Go to him, now, you can’t refuse. You’ve got nothing to lose, 
Now you’ve lost it all. Invisible, no secrets, concealed.

---

After decades living as an expatriate in Europe, Rick Kuenning lives in western North Carolina.

Rick Kuenning translates lifelong writing and teaching experience into poems informed by a quick and innovative sensibility. His work reflects a keen interest in nature, art, culture, and religious studies. It also draws on a long career in international relations and national policy. He writes with depth and variety; cultural criticism and political censure are leavened with whimsical reflection and lyrical meditations on the natural world. He is stirred by rich language; words formed into beautiful phrases allow us to see in new ways and better understand ourselves. His poems seek to provoke and inspire!

His creativity is often sparked by dialogue with other poems. He is awed by nature, angered by injustice, and moved by the stories of those whose voices are not heard. Rick Kuenning is a versatile, caring, domestic man. He reads widely, enjoys cooking, and listens to classical and popular music. His poems are forthcoming in Perceptions Magazine, Slab, and Variant.

Boring Creds: B.S. United States Military Academy, M.A. (English) Duke University, ABD (English) University of Maryland; English and Philosophy Instructor at the United States Military Academy, English Instructor at the United States Naval Academy.

Colin Williams

You will care for them when it’s time.
With static eyes, pores firing off sweat,
you’ll milk the globes of blood
dangling like apples under their arms.

You’ll turn the bed into a foam-rubber redoubt,
roll out puppy pads, stroke skin where it’s intact.
You’ll cradle them like grandpa as he withered,
lifting without pulling, patient, strong.

You’ll make broth from whole chicken. You’ll scoop 
the cat shit, you’ll wash shirts stiff with plasma.
You’ll squeeze clots from the lines like jelly. You’ll
turn your house to a stall and muck it out,

Patient farmer, and when they’re whole,
devices back in their boxes, the tape stripped
like old wallpaper, the scars gleaming, your back
aching, you’ll forgive their body, and feel

Your own—whole only as a pound of beef
shining behind glass on plastic and air.

---

Colin Williams (he/they) lives in Pittsburgh and holds an MFA from the University of Florida. His writing has appeared in Hobart and the Northern Appalachia Review, and he covers heavy metal for outlets including Bandcamp and Revolver.

Laura Schaeffer

You could fly for an instant
whole body in separate hands
cupped and held hands
you could fly when they let you

but I made a mound beside me.
I kept your shoulder to my shoulder
to lean into wind to feel an updraft
in your paper bone.

---

Laura Schaeffer’s poetry has been published in The Pitkin Review, Tidepools, Ars Poetica, Currents, Poetry Corners, Pif Magazine,Collective Visions Gallery, and The Far Field. She is a graduate of Goddard College’s MFA Creative Writing Program and received her undergraduate degree in English/Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Laura has taught workshops to alumni during the annual winter conferences and led a six-month poetry class for at-risk youths. She attended the Centrum Writers Conference on a full scholarship and recently participated in a six-week writing workshop led by a previous program director at Goddard 

Inspired by Elizabeth Bishop

Alan Swope

The art of sighing isn’t hard to master;
each day greets us with news of fresh disaster.

Yes, it is easy to sigh, too easy.
We sigh every five minutes, says science,
but unnoticed, unwitting, not well earned.
Shakespeare’s young lover “sighs like a furnace,”
unceasing groans from a gloomy suitor.
Sighs come cheaply to these moping youth. 

But the true art of sighing is refined by the old.
Aging tunes the pitch of the sigh, enriches its timbre.
Long years deepen the reach of the sigh, each heave 
conveying a lifetime of struggle endured.

My grandfather’s sighs released the weight of years
like bilgewater from a barge. Grandmother’s sighs,
a musical chord resolving when it reaches 
its home key, all dissonance sweetened.

Sighs comfort the old, 
like the bellows breath of the yogi, 
outpourings to recharge the soul.

---

Alan Swope’s poetry has been published in Fort Da, Front Range Review, Mixed Mag, Perceptions Magazine, Poetic Sun, and Roanoke Rambler. He is a practicing psychotherapist and an emeritus professor with the California School of Professional Psychology. Alan enjoys singing, acting, travel, cinema, and gardening

By Iris Litt

The guy in charge of the cemetery
said I would like this site.
It has a seasonal view, Mead’s Mountain in winter,
and you can hear the stream year-round.
We laughed because we were living proof
that most people can’t imagine being all dead,
I mean, really thoroughly totally dead.
So I wrote him a check for $700,
my rent for eternity.
Yes, I like it here
and I don’t have to write any more checks.
But, as you can see, I refuse to stop
writing poems.

---

Iris Litt, a lifelong poet, passed away this past May at the age of 94. She was writing up until the end, and would be very gratified to know this poem was being published posthumously.

Suzanne O’Connell

It was a fine Sunday morning
when I felt the first sign.

We were not the pancake-and-funny-papers
type family.
Mom wasn’t doing the crossword.
Dad wasn’t refilling the coffee cups.
No one taking turns reading Krazy Kat out loud.
Instead, there were three kids fighting
over the small boxes of cereal from 
the bargain pack of 12.
Everyone wanted the Frosted Flakes,
no one wanted Raisin Bran.
Sometimes I felt like the Raisin Bran.

Dad was getting dressed for golf.
He would be gone all day.
Mom was still in bed with another headache.

The sound of crunching cereal shook something loose.
I remembered autumn leaves underfoot,
me walking to school,
each leaf seeming so defeated and sad.
Walking, I would’ve been daydreaming about my usual reveries:

quicksand,
whales,
electrocution,
arithmetic,
my tonsils,
the tragedy of apples.

While thinking about the autumn leaves,
a stirring began in my stomach,
magma churning,
red rocks glowing with heat,

a volcano in the making.
A spanking-new thought occurred to me:
I realized I had clarity about nothing,
that my job as a seven-year-old was 
to define who I was and what I wanted.
Breathing stopped. Arguing fell away.
I stumbled with the gravity of this explosion,
and almost fell down on the kitchen linoleum.

---

Suzanne O’Connell’s recently published work can be found in Brushfire, Delmarva Review, El Portal, Good Works Review, Ignatian Literary Magazine, Midwest Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, The Opiate, Pine Hills Review, Silver Birch Press,Tulsa Review, Visitant Lit, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and others. She was awarded second place in the 2019 Poetry Super Highway poetry contest. O’Connell was also nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and received Honorable Mention in the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, 2019. Her poem “The Viewing” was included in the Finishing Line Press anthology Covid, Isolation & Hope: Artists Respond to the Pandemic. Her two poetry collections, A Prayer For Torn Stockings and What Luck, were published by Garden Oak Press.