Mother’s Day Trip To The Store (A Solo)

Squinting through fresh

joy I can see everything

the sun sees and like a

child full of new words

I wish to name all of us

who are here under this

upended periwinkle bowl

Tow truck! Convertible!

Cell tower! Foot bridge!

Dead raccoon! Another!

The steering wheel is a

warm gift in my palm

At a cellular level I am

aware of not being alone

At a cellular level I know

two raccoons now revel

somewhere having made

the most of embodiment

I am not too busy to

love whichever song

an algorithm chooses

as the sun loves all it

must touch. Today the

pines grow tall enough

to cast dark pools where

deer will graze a safe

distance from traffic

as the sun loves them

enough to feed the grass

and we are all still here

together boat trailer

ambulance red pickup

Even at night when a

tower of weathered logs

is consumed by a slow

controlled explosion

whose amber light I

receive in open hands

the sleeping cat makes

a long spoon of her body

and drinks every drop of

the tree that once held

her favorite red birds

Lauren Endicott

Lauren Endicott is an emerging poet who is grateful for forthcoming publications in West Trade Review, Duck Head Journal, SEISMA, and others. She is also a masters student of social work training in psychotherapy. She lives in the greater Boston area with her spouse, two children, and cat. 

Cliffhanger

Vincent Thomas Bridge, San Pedro Harbor, CA

 

The green bridge is a weighty suspension

of disbelief,

its angle of ascent firing my muscles,

a forced march in country

shadowing my climb up its short suspenders.

Hands heavy on the rotund rail,

its pitted touch flashes a pier railing,

my father demonstrating baiting a hook,

the wriggling body dangling over the side.

Night pulls up its blanket

veiling the wind-stropped containers

stacked like toy blocks below

while nestled in the standing army of alien cranes

a decommissioned battleship sleeps.

The watery bay beckons.

Below a siren wails to climb the rail.

Roger Camp

Roger Camp lives in Seal Beach, CA where he tends his orchids, walks the pier, plays blues piano and spends afternoons with his pal, Harry, over drinks at Saint & 2nd. When he’s not at home, he’s traveling in the Old World. His work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, North American Review, Gulf Coast, Southern Poetry Review and Nimrod.

Puzzle

Even during class, my sister

strummed chords, fingers

caressing frets or stretching

strings bleeding the blues.

Sometimes she’d pick

a country tune, wailing for lost

beers and pickup trucks,

mourning every orphan.

Now her fingers pluck

bibs and diapers

from laundry, her kids

a Greek chorus of woes

and triumphs. The guitar resonates

during birthdays

or under a beer tent.

My brother-in-law puzzles

at her frustrations. After beers

one night, he confessed

she hums in her sleep,

and taps her finger.

It’s weird, he tells me: sometimes

her hand finds a rhythm, as if

stroking our last dog’s head.

John Cullen

John Cullen graduated from SUNY Geneseo and worked in the entertainment business booking rock bands, a clown troupe, and an R-rated magician. Currently he teaches at Ferris State University and has had work published in American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, Harpur Palate, North Dakota Quarterly and other journals. His chapbook, TOWN CRAZY, is available from Slipstream Press.

Birdwatcher in Kyiv

They know before we do,

the birds. In the yard,

feeders swing on their chains.

If you think we don’t bury

our cash in the thaw

of the dark dicey frostbite,

you’re wrong. Trust God

or no one, I urge my husband.

Do not answer the door.

I pour vodka down his throat,

call through the cracks

to bring back the warblers.

Bird bird bird, where is your,

when will it, why why why.

What jumps faster

than blood from a vein?

If you think we don’t practice

the dash to the bunker,

you’re wrong. We’ve run out

of drugs and honey,

but we cannot run far,

railcars packed with

no more time. Before

the siren glass shatter,

we walked fine,

and the mistle thrush

spilled operettas

over the sunflowers.

The neighbors are hiding

their children in attics.

The absence of silvery

wings. Do it now,

begs my husband, break

the thermometer, inject me

with mercury, hollow

my bones before lark

and nightingale swallow

each other’s songs.

Jenny Hubbard

A former high-school English teacher, Jenny Hubbard writes full-time in her hometown of Salisbury, NC. Her work has been published over the years in various journals, including Hunger Mountain, Crab Orchard Review, Tar River Poetry, Nine Mile, Maryland Literary Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology. Both of Jenny’s novels, And We Stay and Paper Covers Rock, have earned major awards from the American Library Association. Represented by Jonathan Lyons of Curtis Brown, Ltd., Jenny is currently under contract with Penguin Random House.

The Dangers of Dancing So Close to the Sun

I was born under a fish-scaled star, a scar in my aunt’s

brother’s father’s eye. Is this a bone I see, or ash dust

inherited, a silent twin inhabiting my ventricles?

The prima-donna sky preens, sends us lightning sprites

red and too quick to capture. I was walking. I was a whole

lot of broken, and snap, there goes my ankle. The moss

spoke of spring-like January, but the camera didn’t

hit the deep-rutted trail, held close to my heart. My

mornings are voluptuous, my miscalculations disguised

as happy accidents. I believe in my grandfather’s third

kidney, the way he lived through the work of shifting

one pile of stones to another corner of the barbed

and electrified yard, and back again until the sirens sounded

the end of light. Today I discovered a new species

of beetle, a bee who loved my shirt and wouldn’t leave.

The wind issuing from god’s mouth was warm. The wind

issuing from god’s mouth chilled me to the bone. The grass

was god’s also, and Matisse’s cat dreamt of Marianne

Moore with crooked wings. The moon is in umbra, the moon

is menopausal, and time makes less sense than it did

five seconds ago. I will haunt the stars I can’t touch

right now. Every turtle galaxy, every swan-booted nebula

now my problems have been all but solved. I put my nose

to the sweet pea, to the whetstone, and learned something

of the extermination of the human race. I pray my father’s

father’s sisters, who flew through the chimneys, knit

their souls back into body when the stars call us away from here.

Ronda Piszk Broatch

Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Fugue, Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.

The Sun Is This Day’s State Of Affairs

                yesterday was no sun

anywhere but everywhere I can’t

know only my ken  my neighborhood

my house of cats and cashmere

pickled by moths

                          the little I see—

I can count the walls

and know I exist

                         but the sun never

asks about itself   it is not a god

who depends on its people

                                not all seeing

objects are created equal

                               every day my skin

sees more than I do  even muffled

in clothes its cameras see eye to eye

with the cat’s toes

                     my wet flesh envelope

posts itself on dog walks and sky chases

in city parks

                    I can’t vouch for you

my deep wide body  you know more

than I do

            What are you cooking in there

what conversation are you having

with the sun?

                   I tell your knuckles

to unbunch  yet there you go

spending your skin on everyone

Mary Buchinger

Mary Buchinger is the author of five collections of poetry, including / klaʊdz / (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021), e i n f ü h l u n g/in feeling (Main Street Rag, 2018), Aerialist (Gold Wake, 2015), and Navigating the Reach (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming). Her work has appeared in AGNI, Boston Globe, DIAGRAM, Gargoyle, Massachusetts Review, PANK, phoebe, Plume, Salamander, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and elsewhere. She is president of the New England Poetry Club and professor of English and communication studies at MCPHS University in Boston. Website: www.marybuchinger.com.

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