9 - Poetry

In the Season of Hospice

By Stephen Johnson

Like Aspen leaves adrift on yellowed-cold,
we flutter, down from youth – to frailty.

Bone overlapping nerve, vision narrower,
niggling fire- in an un-stoked furnace.
A familiar name, muted in the downdraft,
gait- become a trudge deliberate.

We swirl, blown about upon Time’s whim,
conjugating in our similarities.

Wisdom, begotten by present sorrow,
consoles- as does hot tea in deep winter.
Retrospection, wrings itself out upon us,
our frayed rag, draped on clean plates.

In groups, proliferous and alarming,
we settle, onto the still and waiting soil.

knurled hands laced with peace accepted,
feet – content to have at last arrived,
hearts, at-pace with the scope of quietude,
we bequeath the bustle, to those we love.

Stephen Phillip Johnson is a Mountain Home carpenter. Writing is his itch. Within the halls of medicine, where he’s been (repeatedly) healed, reside flocks of muses.

The man whose wife is having a baby
crouches in his chair like a fetus,
can feel himself kicking.
Another woman’s husband is having a biopsy
of a lump on his back.
She swells from the couch like a tumor,
fights back her thought’s malevolence,
struggles to look benign.
Family of cancer victim can’t help spreading
from one end of the room to the other.
A young mother’s son was hit by a car.
Her mouth gashes like a wound.
Tears well in her eyes’ bruises.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert, and Memory Outside the Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa, and California Quarterly.

Quadriceps Tear While Carpentering

By Phil Flott

I pivoted on the balls of my feet,
to not fall off to the left or the right
but to sit me down on the flat part
of the roof.

My balancing muscle popped,
I fell atop a mound of soft dirt.
The torn tendon sucked blood to itself
then quickly dispersed it,

though I did not realize that.
I went to lunch, as if the sun in the sky
meant a blessing on my body
and not shining forth my injury.

Night descended; fever arrived.
Immobility was my way to love myself.
Fasting from supper felt like fullness.
I loved my leucocytes.

The doctor made blood seep out
in skank serum,
pulled my tendons back to overlap,
sutured the ripped parts together.

My healthy heart aided my healing.
Cortex contributed its part.
I ate meals to wholeness,
happy to receive back
my healed four-in-one quad.

Phil Flott is a retired carpenter. He has had poems in Passager, Sangam, Raven’s Perch, Mulberry Literary, and others.

Receding

By Christopher Fettes

Sometimes forgetting is willful, even hoped for.
How he carried himself as he walked across the yard,
Between one building and the next.
How his pant legs were cuffed,
But still grew damp from treading through the dewy morning.
How his eyes pierced your facade when he looked your way.
The way the smell of his sweat hung on him
Warm and intimate, not staid or dirty.
The way he walked past watching eyes, showing no sign he noticed.
The way he disappeared across the lawn.
The way you wondered if he knew your name.
The thoughts you kept to yourself.
It is easier to let the sting of memory recede
Into the past without wondering what
Might have been or revisiting what was.

Christopher Fettes was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he lives with his wife and their beloved pets. He earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from the University of Central Arkansas. He writes poetry and fiction. He serves as Poetry Editor for Medicine & Meaning and is a reviewer for Slant. He is the author of a chapbook titled A Loneliness in the Distance Between.

Sixty Nine

By John McPherson

Adrift on the Sea of Tranquility

“Dad, do you know what day it is?”
“Yes, it’s my birthday.”
“I never forget my birthday,”
“And how old are you?”
“Sixty-nine, of course.”
A repeated conversation we had each year as we celebrated his sixty-ninth birthday for seven years— until the crystal clear waters of his everyday madness swept him away.

John McPherson is the current president of Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas, president of Gin Creek Poets, and past president of White County Creative Writers. He writes poems, short stories, and letters to the editor, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.