The Advent of Spring

How do you describe the way
a river flows into the sea? You could

hold a mouthful of water
in your cheeks, to taste it back

to the melting of a single snowflake.
The advent of spring and its ability

to spot a pair of bulging eyes bobbing
above the surface of a murky pond.

You could spit the water through the wood
where the marble players shine flashlights

onto trees, as if the light divides
the bark from its trunk.

The fishermen grab tackle and bait,
then salt the rods for fish and fortune,

luck at the crux of hook and lip.
They know how they’ve dipped their lines

and stared at every branch, raft, and in
that distant town, we hear the fish sing.

Brian Chander Wiora is a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow at Columbia University, where he teaches poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Literary Review, Rattle, The Florida Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, and other places. Besides poetry, he enjoys listening to classic rock music, performing standup comedy, and traveling.

Making

He pressed the leaves into my skin
and watched them dry 
over the years,
asking me
if the rain knows what it’s doing.  

How many times have you counted the sun? 
going down,
down,
down 

“The rain knows what it’s doing.”

Jason Hockaday is from the Karuk Tribe and Happy Camp is his family’s village. He is a graduate student in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis, where he is enjoying teaching Introduction to Native American Literatures. Jason wrote “Making” in Lithia Park, where he was inspired by the visitors, water, hiking, and weather. He is an Indigenous language reclamation activist and has forthcoming fiction in Yellow Medicine Review.

Banner photo of Lithia Park by David Wood : CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Dear Vulture

Pennsylvania: I 81

Corona: 19

You: Shoulder Deep in a Warm Deer

the happiest vulture

the happiest creature

I’ve ever seen

Surpassing my dog

Henry the 8th ‘s supreme indulgence

Cannot approach yours

You burrow your head

in steamy ribbons

of pulsing pink

roll your shoulders into it

feathers soaked

Like Mae West

Dripping wit

of course, I feel sorry for the deer, but she had nothing to do with you

By the time I drove by

By the time you dove in

She lay dead and the blame

Passed with a truck or car

Of which there were few on the road that day

This being a plague

And good luck for you!

A full lane to yourself!

I ask where are the other vultures?

(Busy on other highways?)

Is it better for a car-killed deer to twitch under flies?

Why are lions who, auto-like, leave so much waste, noble?

The deer doesn’t care

And I

Seeing you deep in glory

Am lifted up!

Look! I cry to my kid, Ecstasy!

For the first time in days, my shoulders relax

Why constrict happiness to a pig in shit?

Dionysius knows

You are no pernicious lawyer, slumlord, preacher

But a reveling charge of vivified cells

So, Metaphors not be with you, Bird

But my love

And Henry’s? and Mae’s?

Always

MFC Feeley lives in Tuxedo, NY and attended UC Berkeley and NYU. She wrote a series of ten stories inspired by the Bill of Rights for Ghost Parachute and has published in SmokeLong, Jellyfish Review, Brevity Blog, Liar’s League, and others. Feeley was a Fellow at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and twice received scholarships to the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Winner of the 2018 Raven Prize for Creative Non-Fiction, her work appears in Best Microfictions 2020. She has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and The Pushcart Prize, and was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinalist. She has judged for Mash Stories and Scholastic. During the Viral Outbreak she reads favorite public domain excerpts at https://www.facebook.com/QuarantineStorytimewithMFCFeeley
More of her writing at MFC Feeley/Facebook and on Twitter MFC Feeley @FeeleyMfc

Throwing Ice at Bolton Landing

The lake is thawing in slabs on the shore.
March, and we’ve come here on a whim to see
what it’s like in an opposite season.
No one here, the playground like a widow,
the restrooms locked tight, but water and sky
are one blue, in counterpoint shades.
It’s a hard shine on this small flat of muck,
after months of loss after loss, turn
upon turn, when we have not often
“been ourselves,” none of us. Like others, this
is slow to change, its temperature steadier
than air’s, and like others, this ices over
from perimeter to center. Our edges,
fragile in the days, also froze first.
I am not one for displays, but I am
one for “To hell with it.” One of me
takes a palm-sized chunk and sidearms it east,
quick-spinning fragment sliding along span.
Another me does the same, another,
another, our motions like chants: stoop, rise,
sling. The thinnest ones shatter before going
far, but they are transparent layers
on top of a vast opacity,
and there might be a lesson in that.
When I move to the big slabs, I feel them
in my gut when I throw. They stay solid
when they fall, wider revolutions,
accelerating upon impact (and we
smile at all that) out to the center which will
stay frozen longer, more deeply, floating
on itself. It’ll take a little more time
than here, as we keep throwing. It just takes time.

Andy Fogle is the author of Across from Now, and six chapbooks of poetry. Other poems, co-translations, and a variety of nonfiction have appeared in Blackbird, Best New Poets 2018, Gargoyle, Image, Parks and Points, and elsewhere. He was born in Norfolk, grew up in Virginia Beach, and lived for 11 years in the DC area and now lives in upstate NY, teaching high school.

Entrenched in Cold Harbor

Remembering the two-hour ceasefire during the Civil War in 1864, at Richmond National Battlefield Park in Cold Harbor, Virginia.

As we walk, leaves crackle 
and the sacred grounds reveal the last moments 
of hidden men in historic trenches frantically dug with cups
plates and even bayonets. 

How difficult it must have been, after two hours 
of ceasefire, for these men to climb back
into their pits and resume firing at one another.
What futile words had they shared before refilling their guns?

Was there a jokester in the group, making light?
A failed prophet warning, “Thou shalt not kill”?
An insurance salesman offering pro-rated life policies
before death folded too many casualties into blankets of soil.

The battle left the war-torn-land with a tree line 
separating life and death, Rorschach clouds 
blurring the consciousness of each grieving family
left to interpret their loss. These national forests show 

a different sort of beauty that needs to be seen 
and remembered, a land resilient and mended
determined to display its scars even as it reshapes
the Jason-Pollock earth painting left behind by war 

and invites us to learn that when fighting temporarily ceased,
and Confederate and Union soldiers shared ciggies, outdated 
newspapers and cordial conversation, for that brief time,
they were granted permission to stop hating one another.

David and Annie Newcomer reside in Prairie Village, Kansas. David, a navy veteran, has been published in Veterans’ Voices, several professional journals, and photographed and compiled his ship’s cruise book, The USS Winston Westpac, 1966, He supports his wife’s love of poetry by editing, suggesting titles for poems and being the first eyes on her work. Annie’s poetry has appeared in publications in Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Uruguay and the US. She teaches poetry and playwriting classes at Turning Point, a Center for Hope and Healing, connected to the University of Kansas Medical Center. Annie is also in the Key West Cigar Factory Writers’ Group. The Newcomers also recommend checking out the song “Cold Harbor” by The Outlaws.

Human Concerns

News feeds, social media streams, and airwaves
incessantly transmit pandemic panic.
Sequestered after stocking up on supplies,
I watch life in wetlands outside my window.
The ducks and geese swim placidly in the stream
diving for tasty morsels of fish and frogs.
A deer wanders through, chomping on the tree leaves;
nutria gobble grass; and birds devour bugs.
The finches adorned in their bright spring colors
sing love songs and flit about seeking their mates.

F.I. Goldhaber's words capture people, places, and politics with a photographer's eye and a poet's soul. As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, they produced news stories, feature articles, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now paper, electronic, and audio magazines, books, newspapers, calendars, broadsides, and street signs display their poetry, fiction, and essays. More than 160 of their poems appear in 65 plus publications, including four collections. http://www.goldhaber.net/

Early Autumn at Owen Beach

Tacoma Washington rains
a foggy mist I breathe
in cadence
with soft whispers
of Puget Sound surf
heard front row center
sitting on this sand-locked log
all to myself at Owen Beach.

Seeking similes for birds
behaving like birds
as I float a morning prayer
toward the Tahlequah ferry
crossing for Vashon Island
from Point Defiance Park
sailing the horizon between
gray water and gray sky.

Carl “Papa” Palmer of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia, lives in University Place, Washington. He is retired from the military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) enjoying life as “Papa” to his grand descendants and being a Franciscan Hospice volunteer. Carl is a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Micro Award nominee. Papa's MOTTO: Long Weekends Forever!

Sawtooth Mts

The day after our wedding I sold my car
to one of my best friends for 800 bucks and
said goodbye to Denver. We packed up Sam’s car
with our clothes, books, pots and pans and drove
900 miles to western Idaho. After the shock, high excitement
and sleepless daze we finished unpacking and looked around
at our new place knowing we had changed our course for the better.
The following morning we elected to do something familiar
so of course we went camping. In our half torn up
1993 Road Atlas that we refuse to replace
we decided on a spot north up in McCall along Redfish Lake.
Didn’t find this out until afterward but we stayed
at the same campground where Richard Brautigan wrote
two of his books while on a honeymoon in the 1960s.
The newlyweds thought the location so beautiful they stayed for a month.
We made it home for two nights. We swam, canoed, fished,
cooked over the fire, napped in the hammock, read, etc.
On the third day I tried out our new camera gifted for our wedding.
On our hike I took a photo of the Sawtooth Mountains
and later framed it in our living room. When I look at it now,
it fills me with both joy and sadness.
Not break your heart level sadness but emotionally sad.
Joy because of taking a chance, trusting a decision
and knowing there’s beauty everywhere.
Sadness because the mountains remind me of Colorado
and when I mean it reminds me of Colorado
I mean it reminds me of The Rocky Mountains
because it is The Rocky Mountains. And when I see
those beautiful peaks rising to the heaven of space
it reminds me of my friends and how we made a pact
when we first all met that we didn’t want to be apart for long
so in agreement we would all someday move west
together like a band to a place like Colorado, and never leave.

Jack C. Buck currently lives in Boise, Idaho. He is the author of the collections "Deer Michigan," "Gathering View," "will you let it send you out." He is currently working on his fourth book of poems to be published later this year.

Some Half-Imagined Scene

The melancholy sound of taps
rolls across the Parade Ground,
coming from way back
when this military base heralded
the clarion call and response
of marching men full of strength
and harshness. When time threaded
country to country and the big guns
went to Europe during World War I.

Now a state park, Fort Worden’s
empty bunkers over-flow with visitors
who scramble to explore secret tunnels
descending into darkness, their shrieks
of laughter rise into the sky
with no apparent trajectory.

Today on Searchlight Road Trail,
my steps slow amidst dense trees.
Staggering to think of their roots
entwined with soil for hundreds of years;
branches—tongues carrying more secrets
than they can bear.

At the clearing, I begin with a deep breath.
Open myself to red cedar and ancient
Douglas fir up on Artillery Hill
and what they hold: an old language
spoken into the pines, carried on wind
across time. Their intimate moans
need no translation—peace
floats out over the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Pat Phillips West’s poems have been published in various journals including Haunted Waters Press, Clover, a Literary Rag, San Pedro River Review, Slipstream, Parks & Points & Poetry 2019, and elsewhere. She is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee.

Banner photo by Rick Gordon : CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Salt Marsh

Watch Hill, Fire Island National Seashore

Sober, I see this island
for what it is. I have always
been able to be still
here. Tonight at dusk
the mosquitos were thin
so we ventured out to the marsh
on the bay side
and watched fish jump
in the small clearings
of marsh grass. Animals come
and go; populations swell
and plummet; dominance
is always passing along. This
is a healthy, moving
ecosystem.

After my father died,
the ecology of my brain
became flooded with adrenaline,
and I am still trying
to rebalance the chemicals.
An animal bone
rests on the side of
the boardwalk—left
by a fox. I haven’t seen one
yet, but they are deep
in the dune foliage. Predators
are vital to the health
of this community. The bone
is curved—a lone, open parenthesis.

Emily Hockaday is a Queens-based poet and editor. Her newest chapbook, Beach Vocabulary, is forthcoming from Red Bird Chaps. She is author of Space on Earth (Grey Book Press), Ophelia: A Botanist's Guide (Zoo Cake Press), What We Love & Will Not Give Up (Dancing Girl Press), and Starting a Life (Finishing Line Press). She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and @E_Hockaday.

dreaming the land

a wanderer tramped through the hills
as of days of old
my name is Martin, he said to the chickens he saw
he said it to the lake
the lake turned away
the chickens pecked on and laid their eggs
the wanderer slept on a ledge
but nothing came to his mind’s eye
he dove into the lake
into the moon’s tail
he stared at stars from beneath the surface
flicked water at moon craters
he pricked his finger on a bottle cap
just some floating flotsam
and whispered
I am another’s dream


Inspired by Elephant Butte Lake State Park in southern New Mexico

Susan Melinda Dunlap is a fiction writer, playwright and poet. Bright Bones: An Anthology of Contemporary Montana Writers, included her short story, "The Haunting of Butte." The Piltsdown Review featured her as a poet and The Alexandria Quarterly published one of her poems in an anthology, End of Summer Poems. She has also been published by Word Riot. The Root and the Bloom and Eye/Land Institute have commissioned her to write plays. Orphan Girl Children's Theatre performed her play THE GOOD SLIPPER through Zoom. A maximum security prison outside of Los Angeles performed her play THE DOG GHOST, as did Montana Repertory Theater. Her work has also been seen at the Last Chance Gulch New Play Fest, the William Inge Festival, the Fringe Festival, 13th Street Theater, Dixon Place and performed by Project in Motion. MFA: Brooklyn College, where she received the Louis B. Goodman Creative Writing Scholarship.

Ten Days on the Water

—Voyageurs National Park

The leader is stuck with me as his canoe companion,
as I lack strength to paddle far. Noah slices
choppy water with an easy stroke. We are first,
a rag-tag group of canoes behind us, unable to keep up.
They are kids I went to high school with but did not know

because I was mostly alone. The biology teacher
and his wife are chaperones. Once in a while,
Noah pulls the canoe over, waits for everyone
to catch up, wants to give us all treats, like seeing
golden wildflowers climbing the edges of a rocky  

island or watching a group of floating loons. He pulls ahead
again, a gleaming god in our silver canoe, large pack
between us, me at the head, doing my level best not to
embarrass myself too badly. When we stop, we float, waiting
for the others to appear. He converses, and I answer

his questions about me going to college in a few weeks while
he tells me about Purdue. He enjoys my rapt attention. For lunch,
canoes gather. We eat peanut butter sandwiches and prunes.
Evenings we cook something instant over a fire, with Noah
later climbing the tallest tree to stash our pack of food  

away from bears. A tent for females and one for males,
though Noah has his own hidden away. I grow close to him.
I love his easy laugh and silences, his muscled body.
He is a tanned fantasy. One afternoon, when we turn a corner
far from everyone else, he says, come here. I carefully 

edge my way to him, shaky on shimmering water. Bend closer,
he says, and stands, pulling me in. It is my first real kiss.
I love tasting his warm tongue, and I tremble back to my post.
The loneliness of being with strangers slips away. I have a secret
now, something every female on this trip would like to have.  

The sky pops blueness over clear water. Here, he says,
smiling. He hands me a cup of water dipped from the lake.
Our hands meet and we reach for another kiss. I nearly
drop the silver cup into icy water, not anticipating his
wildly tender gaze as we float nowhere, nearly dinnertime.

Virginia Chase Sutton's second book, What Brings You to Del Amo, winner of the Morse Poetry Prize, was recently reissued as a free ebook by Doubleback Books/Sundress. Embellishments was her first book, Of a Transient Nature was her third, and Down River was her chapbook. Sutton's poems have won a scholarship to Bread Loaf, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and the National Poet Hunt, among many other prizes, awards, and residencies. Seven times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughares, Mom Egg Review, Cortland Review, Glass Literary Journal, and many other literary poems, journals, and anthologies. She lives in Tempe, Arizona.

The Waterfall

“At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall...”

T.S. Eliot “Little Gidding”

Having lost my way,
I sought a forest
to lose encumbrances and find some light,
a luminescence, perhaps, within and without.

I could not find any path
nor could I hear any voice.
Birds chirped, not indifferently,
and the forest wind blew, gentle and at times with force.

Stilled, I gazed about at Nature’s continuity,
And peace calmed my un-tuned heart.
All about, the tall trees and darting animals.
I listened to birds sing, and
with a certain inevitability,
I found a waterfall.

There it was, hidden.
Waters forcing down, shining the rocks.
Music in loud accompaniment to punctuated bird song.
I stood still, and revered the waters.

I knew to give thanks,
and made for myself a path.

Rich Blaustein is a science, environmental, and legal journalist with an abiding interest in poetry. He contributes to publications such as Physics World, BioScience, Washington Lawyer, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Washington, DC.

Just a pinch of love

The river nearby my house is polluted. It has
all sorts of trash, plastic bags, bottles, handkerchiefs,
papers and chemicals. The water smells like rotting
food, perhaps like rotting relationships. Bottles of
concern, papers of love, the first handkerchief gifted
by somebody’s father and plastic bags of negligence
are all a part of this river now. Some have submerged
and some still floating for somebody’s attention and
just a pinch of love that can restrengthen the weak
bonds and make the river pristine again.

Sravani Singampalli is a writer, poet and artist from India. Her works are published and or forthcoming in Kaleidoscope, Parks and Points, Deaf Poets Society, Formercactus, Purple Fire Publications, Alban Lake, Nomadic Delirium Press, Treehouse Arts, House of Zolo, Blind Faith Magazine and many more. She is presently pursuing a doctoral degree in pharmacy at JNTU KAKINADA university in Andhra Pradesh, India. Apart from writing, she likes drawing and painting in her spare time. She is very fond of House Sparrows.

Globe Flowers

below western mountain ranges
lilac-colored globes curving for attention
cupped like hands testing spring rain
 
umbrellas turned the wrong way by wind
whispers of sprinkles
light as a cat’s footsteps stalking a bird
 
yellow offerings in wet heavy clay earth
after the prevailing storm
after I’ve held your hand
 
I do not feel this world spinning
but I know it does
like those merry-go-round globe flowers
 
if I had one story to spin
you would be in it
cupped in my hands

Martin Willitts Jr has 24 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 16 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent book is "Unfolding Towards Love" (Wipf and Stock).

A Valley Among Geysers

The humble valley sings a sweet song

burbling its gentle melody as warm steam

brushes the sky with conscious strokes

letting out an exasperated sigh

as passerby move along

to praise the mighty Geysir.
The humble valley boasts hidden treasures

teeming with life in colourful cracks and crevices,

boiling slurries that gurgle and pop,

venting out tensions held by Mother Earth.

The humble valley whispers

as frigid winds flow over the bumpy landscape

and tickle my half-numb cheeks, 

reminding me that the valley is a wild a place,

and that I carry the valley in me.

Vanessa Ong is a Teochew-Chinese-Vietnamese-Canadian woman of colour living and working in Kitchener, Ontario. As cofounder of Littlefoot Community Projects, she is interested in building a decolonized food justice movement, which addresses difficult topics like food security, land sovereignty, intergenerational food systems, and cultural resilience. She spends her time overthinking and curling up in bed when the too-muchness of life takes hold.

Katherine Hepburn Garden, Dag Hammarskjold Park

When a young man in shorts
sat down at the piano marked
Here for you to play
and played Chopin 
impromptu en plein air,
the chords he made mailed
me back in time 
up into air’s space—
the leaves of the trees
above me aflutter
like the young man’s hands
full of affection
of the kind my dog was taking
from a couple close by
while I sipped from a cup
listening and gazing
in my favorite stunned
time-stopped state
lapping the moment up
the way the dog was the couple’s kindness.

(Dag Hammarskjold Park, New York City)

Joan Lauri Poole can often be found walking on Manhattan’s East Side with a black miniature poodle. Born and raised in New York City, she comes from a family of art, music, and book lovers. She worked for many years as an editor and writer in book publishing. Generous selections of Poole’s poems have appeared in the anthology This Full Green Hour and at ducts.org.  With one book of poetry (Bed of Crimson Joy) to her name, Poole is at work on a second. She lives most of the year in the city but in the warmer months escapes to a rental cabin in the Northern Catskills, where she spends glorious hours tending an ever-expanding makeshift garden.

White Bird that Lives by the Ocean

This garden is higher than mosquito flight
and still you have come,
traveling miles from the real sea
to dip your beak
in this hotel’s artificial blue.

You stand beneath the sprinkler
hunched up like an old man,
feet deep in green,
damp as your distant shore.

From the breakfast terrace
we wait for movement,
ruffle of feathers, twist of spindle leg,
anything to show you are still alive.

Returning from work we scan
flower beds, bushes to find you
fluffed up, roof-resting in the sun.

At night your head disappears.
I watch you shrink to a cotton ball,
drawing me to my window
time after time,
as if I am salt water
and you, the moon I’m tied to.

Fiona Ritchie Walker is a Scot from Montrose, Angus, who now lives in England. A former journalist, she worked for a fair trade company for many years, visiting producers around the world and helping them to share their stories. She writes poetry and short fiction, with work widely published in the UK and has also read on BBC radio.

Snakes

One thing’s sure,
people seldom see a snake but stop to watch
for several seconds as it
angles off into the underbrush, like
an arrow that barely missed.

Mostly this is misperception.
Snakes try to stay out of our way.
But we want portents.
And so on August evenings
when the air is calm,
a moccasin or a banded water snake
will cross the lake
the only way it can as we
count loose omegas
on the mirrored surface,
mouth a prayer
until it disappears.

Bruce McCandless is a writer and attorney who lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and two daughters. McCandless has published poems, articles, and features in a number of journals and magazines, including The Asian Wall Street Journal, Avenue, HK Magazine, Cold Mountain Review, Pleiades, Louisiana Literature, the Texas Observer, The Austin Chronicle and the Austin American-Statesman. When not writing, McCandless is probably out riding a bike or hiking along Austin’s Barton Creek.

where water has no skin

             no boundary, no bank or basin

where air is ambient water

            a saturate, a cloud

where mosses swim, tethered by fiber

            to the leafy canopy they populate

aerial dancers unlike the crouched tufts

            underfoot on the trail

breathe the forest in

            half-way up the mountain

where clouds press their wet mouths           

            to everything

where the dreamlike songs

            of orapendula and parrot

loosen from their point of origin

            to tint the air you listen into

the air that swaddles you

            and disarticulates your will

(Reserva Ecologica Los Illinizas, Ecuador)

J. C. Todd’s current work explores the traumatic effects of war on women, both civilians and combatants. She is author of Beyond Repair, forthcoming in 2020 from Able Muse Press, and The Damages of Morning, a 2019 Eric Hoffer Award finalist. Winner of the Rita Dove Prize in Poetry and a fellow of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and the Bemis Center, her work has been published in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Although urban cemeteries, parks and riverbanks are her most common wild spots, a recent remote wildness voyage was to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula.