Last Day

Blue suit, pressed

white shirt, red tie,

trimmed hair,

camouflaged lump

where the bullet

went in.

 

Mourners follow

the tearful track,

mother leaning

on father’s long arm,

siblings swamped

by the stark face

of death, young

men in dreads

as he would have been,

friends of the family,

one by one.

 

The church fills

with gray winter light,

dissolving faces

like spirits in air;

the color of grief is

the same everywhere.

 

There is no anger,

no vengeance in sight,

just acceptance,

defeat, despair.

 

Mary Hills Kuck

Having retired from teaching English and Communications, first in the US and for many years in Jamaica, Mary Kuck now lives with her family in Massachusetts. She has received a Pushcart Prize Nomination and her poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Hamden Chronicle, SIMUL: Lutheran Voices in Poetry, Caduceus, The Jamaica Observer Bookends, Fire Stick: A Collection of New & Established Caribbean Poets, the Aurorean, Tipton Poetry Journal, Slant and Main St. Rag (both forthcoming), and others.

Lapping the Lake in the Time of Pestilence

Autumn 2020, Lake Weeroona, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

 

Three kilometres of asphalted track surround the lake.

In early hours, if you go clockwise, a morning sun will

warm your back. Go anti clockwise and you’ll squint

 

most of your way. About 80 people circle the lake today.

Only two need not squint. The slow mow down shufflers.

The not-so-slow press hard upon the slow. The quick

 

storm past anyone in front of them. They bunch close,

plague-friendly close. Tyranny of numbers forces the

two who walk clockwise off the track onto the verge.

 

Gasping, sweating, heaving, the mob shoves and elbows

for spurious advantage, eager to hunt a vanished dawn,

frantic not to be overtaken by a runner they cannot see

 

but have learned to fear from reputation, an athlete

who glides with the long, lazy stride of the gifted,

a player who reserves their best for the finish line.

 

 

The aberrant couple stroll into the unfolding day, yet

a while before the sun descends, perhaps there’ll be

other sunsets, more seasons for leaves to fall from these

 

oaks and elms and plane trees, many evenings to watch

the light drain from the day, until, none knows when,

comes a caress of the gentling blanket of enduring dark.

 

 

BN Oakman

BN Oakman, formerly an academic economist, started writing poetry in 2006. His poems have been published in The Age, The Australian, The Canberra Times, Meanjin, Quadrant, Island, Antipodes (USA), Going Down Swinging, Mascara, Cordite, Tincture Journal, Australian Poetry Journal, Eureka Street, Acumen (UK), Poetry Monash, Famous Reporter, Arena Magazine, The Warwick Review (UK), Shot Glass Journal (USA), Best Australian Poems 2014 and 2015 and elsewhere. He has published two full length collections, In Defence of Hawaiian Shirts (IP 2010) and Second thoughts (IP 2014) plus two chapbooks. In 2016 the distinguished Australian actor John Flaus recorded 25 of his poems for a CD titled ‘What did I know? He has been a recipient of a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Second Thoughts was awarded best IP poetry book of 2014. He was a Pushcart Prize (USA) nominee in 2015.

The Most Zen Thought

a man…died

Unnoticed in the bushes off the 101 Freeway.

By the time he was found,

a wood rat had dragged his skull

some thirty feet off

to use as a nest.  – Dorothy Baressi, from “The Garbage Keepers”

 

I love this idea.

The mice’s fur, dry as straw,

bellies pink with milk. Their claws, curled

thin as the roots of an orchid, inside.

Think of it, your skull,

this thing you have carried from room to room,

library that housed all your angry love letters,

recipes for limeade, lists for what needed

to be done on the house. Now empty

as a temple made to honor a lunar eclipse.

The sockets of my eyes say nothing.-

still their gaze against the cold,

making their hollow, a window into trees.

O lordess of silence. I think of songs

whispered in branches. Sweetness in the leaves,

rustled by the feet of doves.

The long knives of green, coming through the earth.

The way they seem to be made of light.

The owl in his palace of feathers.

Eyes yellow as sonnets.

But why focus on the owl, or grass, or trees?

Look at the forest and the broken spines of leaves,

the roots lifting from the ground

and the city beyond. All your life

you’ve been trying to find

something to land on. Let us return

to the skull, which has carried so much

of its own shadow, now lying in the forest,

the mice, nestled skin to skin, filling

your bones with their contentment.

Like earth’s final apology,

and her prayer.

 

Tresha Faye Haefner

Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, The Cincinnati Review, Hunger Mountain, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle and TinderBox. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012 nomination for a Pushcart.

Listed at Duotrope
Listed with Poets & Writers
CLMP Member
List with Art Deadline
Follow us on MagCloud