Tag: American Poetry

Susan Cossette: “The Persistence of Memory”

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The Persistence of Memory

If novelists die before they finish their stories
whole worlds evaporate.
Snowy trees at grey solstice sunset,
bare branches twisted with awful secrets.
Sad lines of cars inch home,
tiny ants high over the I-394 overpass.
Each with its own self-contained history.

Twenty or so mourners, some in person, 
others on webcam, gather for a pandemic-age wake.
Families open Christmas presents
in front of the TV Yule log instead of a fireplace.
Everyone stops existing.

I am not afraid 
because I write poetry 
and once I finish a poem it is done.
The next one is a zygote in my mental ovaries
that hasn’t found a sperm cell to coax it to life.

Left behind like overripe cheese,
or ice cream melting in the sun.

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About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be,Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press),and After the Equinox.

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More by Susan Cossette:

She Waits Behind the Drapes

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Image Credit: Marjory Collins “Washington, D.C. Salvage drive, Victory Program. Books and old lantern stored in District wholesale junk company warehouse” (1942) The Library of Congress. Public Domain

Jason Baldinger: “i remember the royal river”

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I remember the royal river

I remember the royal river
a bleached skeleton, bones
calloused and raw
these forever miles
the only skin left attached
vermont rain soaked halos 
glow dry in cold july sunshine 

I remember the royal river
mile long rutted driveways
a peninsula that breaks
into islands, black flies 
tall grass and hippie 
mansions lost to the grid
I shake rain tent flaps
drying out in turrets
as backgammon days 
passed picking ticks
off golden retrievers 

I remember the royal river
the maine granite coast
lone trees clawing
to hold the rocks along
the atlantic, ice cold showers
this gaunt face in a tide pool 

I remember the royal river
tequila on the docks
fortification for a last days boogie
gather these atoms south 
with notions of sacco and vanzetti 

I remember the royal river
as a skeleton 
with a compass
left in place 
of memory

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About the Author: Jason Baldinger was recently told he looks like a cross between a lumberjack and a genie. He’s also been told he’s not from Pittsburgh, but actually is the physical manifestation of Pittsburgh. Although unsure of either, he does love wandering the country writing poems.  His newest books include: A Threadbare Universe (Kung Fu Treachery Press), The Afterlife is a Hangover (Stubborn Mule Press) and A History of Backroads Misplaced: Selected Poems 2010-2020 (Kung Fu Treachery). He also has a forthcoming book with James Benger called This Still Life. His work has been widely across print journals and online. You can hear him read his work on Bandcamp and on lp’s by The Gotobeds and Theremonster.

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More Poetry by Jason Baldinger:

This Ghostly Ambiance

It was a Golden Time

Beauty is a Rare Thing

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Image Credit: Detroit Publishing Co. “Picnic rocks, Kennebunk River, Kennebunkport, Maine” (1890) The Library of Congress Public Domain.

Laura Grace Weldon: “Butternut Ridge Cemetery”

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Butternut Ridge Cemetery 

From the back seat my six-year-old asks
about the grandfather who died
when she was four months in the womb.
She wants to know about his favorite color
and what he likes to eat, correcting herself
to say “liked” to eat. She wants to know
what being dead means, for real.

I know children ask full force till
they get what they need, like the time
my oldest asked why people have skin
darker than his, and seconds into
my big-wattage answer
interrupted to ask
why faucets turn “this way”
twisting his hand, “to make it hot.”

But she doesn’t stop asking
and since we’re driving past
the cemetery that minute, I pull in.
She skips around his gravestone
as if in a park, touching dusty
pebbles and leggy buttercups, before
announcing to air and ground
and everything between,
“I’m sorry you’re dead Grandpa.
You would have loved me.”

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About the Author:  Laura Grace Weldon has published three poetry collections: Portals (Middle Creek 2021), Blackbird (Grayson 2019), and Tending (Aldrich 2013). She was named 2019 Ohio Poet of the Year. Laura works as a book editor, teaches writing, and maxes out her library card each week.  lauragraceweldon.com

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Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Small Sunflower” (2021)

John Dorsey: “Paul & the Trailer Park Tornado”

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Sign for the old Dreamland mobile-home park in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Paul & the Trailer Park Tornado

the door of our trailer flapping
my heart wide open
my mother says
not to stand
by the window
where my fingers
touched everything
for the first time

while a plastic pinwheel
in the shape of a rooster
takes flight
over our roof.

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About the Author: John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017),Your Daughter’s Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), and Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

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More By John Dorsey:

Anthony Bourdain Crosses the River of the Dead

Punk Rock at 45

Perpetual Motion

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Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Sign for the old Dreamland mobile-home park in Phoenix, Arizona.” (2008) The Library of Congress

Tohm Bakelas: “the end is near”

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the end is near

she maintained communication
by way of phone
sometimes she would write letters,
but she was best at the phone.
there were times she’d stop calling
and it seemed as if she disappeared,
but she never did
she was always there.
and then one day all the letters
and all the calls stopped,
everything stopped.
all her bills were paid through the next month,
she was always good at that
always ahead of the game
she never gave anyone a reason to
come looking for her,
but when the letters and the calls stopped
that’s when they went looking for her.
when they got to her house
the grass looked like a jungle
the mailbox was stuffed full of letters
all the curtains were pulled closed
and the front door was locked
but they found the key
inside a rusted out bucket.
when they went inside
they turned on the lights
the electricity worked
and the house was mostly clean
there were unopened medication bottles
neatly lined on kitchen countertops
the bills organized and stacked
checks undelivered addressed and signed
the calendar was stuck on last month
and the phone was off the hook.
when they reached the living room
that’s where they found her
sitting in her favorite rocking chair
facing a broken glass tv screen
containing four words written in dust:
“the end is near”

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About the Author: Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He has published 13 chapbooks. He runs Between Shadows Press.

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Image Credit: The Library of Congress: ” Historic American Buildings Survey, Stanley P. Mixon, Photographer, March 28, 1940 INTERIOR DETAIL, MIDDLE ROOM, MANTEL AND DOORS, WEST SIDE, FIRST FLOOR, OLD HOUSE. – Samuel Phillips House, Tower Hill Road (U.S. Route 1), Belleville, Washington County, RI”

Mike James: “Supporting Characters”

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Supporting Characters

Jill has the largest flea circus of anyone I know. She keeps them practicing in her spare bedroom beside her Winston Churchill mask collection. That’s another obsession I’ve never gotten into. I’d rather collect half-used candles, discarded matchsticks, and light projecting items of every variety. Though not every lamp hides a genie. I’ve learned that from years of rubbing. Jill says she scrubbed away whatever magic her hands held. She uses the harshest, discount soaps. Despite that, her bathroom smells like lavender. Whenever I visit, I go to the bathroom, lock the door, close my eyes, and imagine a charmed garden. On more than one occasion, both Jill and I have forgotten I was there.

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About the Author: Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee. He has published in numerous magazines, large and small, throughout the country. His poetry collections include: Leftover Distances (Luchador), Parades (Alien Buddha), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), and Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog.) In April, Red Hawk will publish his 20th collection, Portable Light: Poems 1991-2021.

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More By Mike James:

Grace

Saint Jayne Mansfield

Paul Lynde

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Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Desert Fence” (2021)

Ace Boggess: “End of the Fence”

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Extremely old wooden fence in the town of San Elizario, near El Paso.

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End of the Fence

Strong winds. A pillar leans.
A beam descends on one side,
angling toward a motorcycle ramp
for squirrels launching themselves
toward flimsy branches.
Wire mesh, loosened, waves
like a nationless flag.

Here is the ruin, lapsing:
all that’s built crumbles,
no matter words spoken,
savior speed-dialed on the phone.

What seemed sturdy all those years
shares news of broken lumber
while the boastful, constant sky
promises other storms, graceless
as madcap dancers in the mud.

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About the Author: Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, River Styx, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.

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More by Ace Boggess:

Rock Garden

And Why Am I A Free Man?

Why Did You Try To Sober Up?

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Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Extremely old wooden fence in the town of San Elizario, near El Paso, Texas” (2014) The Library of Congress

Jenna K. Funkhouser: “Chihuly’s Baskets”

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Chihuly’s Baskets

How carefully we preserve the emptiness
      in these theaters of light

how the man spins silken robes
      of turquoise and pebbled gold
            from the hot mouth of the kiln
and clothes oxygen in its fragile gowns,
            now
drawing its tensions away
   from the point where there must be
nothingness

cupped in its pale, deep hands

and the prayer he breathes is nothing but
good, good. 

To remain filled is
      to remain heavy

to resist your capacity to hold
invisible things
                          to grow lucent
lose everything
even your darkness

let the fire touch you

it whispers 

this bright shell husked
from the seed of eternity.

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About the Author: Jenna K Funkhouser is an author and nonprofit communicator living in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has recently been published by Geez Magazine, the Saint Katherine Review, and the Oregon Poetry Association, among others; her first book of poetry, Pilgrims I Have Been, was released in October 2020.

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More by Jenna K. Funkhouser:

Persephone

Gerald Friedman: “A Race of the Red-tailed Hawk”

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A Race of the Red-tailed Hawk 

Audubon shot a hawk,
mostly black-brown.  Painting it
while it still lived, he said,
he chocolate-covered its white marks,
tidied its tail pattern,
not thinking both were typical.
He wrote tall stories:
his specimen bred in Louisiana,
feared him only when he carried his gun.
He baptized it in Latin
after his friend Dr. Harlan;
in English, “Black Warrior”,
maybe something good to have
dying or dead
to be depicted as he saw fit.

Morning frost by the Rio Grande.
All summer Harlan’s, black or rare white,
glided down from Alaska
in my mind.  Now
a red-tail screams. At me?
I sneak, a commando,
to capture it with my camera,
barely disturbing
fragile cottonwood leaves.
By some occult sense
it feels me, flies, straight
as limbs slip by.  Out of view.
But I’ll call it a Harlan’s,
tail white constellated in black.
A stereotypical birdwatcher,
I’m already checking my pictures.
One shot caught that tail,
so I’ll get an accepted sighting.

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About the Author: Gerald Friedman grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and now teaches physics in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  He has published poetry in various magazines, recently Rat’s Ass Review, Entropy, The Daily Drunk, and Better Than Starbucks.

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Image Credit: Plate 86 of Birds of America by John James Audubon depicting “Black Warrior Falco harlani” Public Domain

Julene Tripp Weaver: “Precious Little Sister”

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Precious Little Sister

Born days before I turned eight
she arrived September 8th—
my birthday September 11th—
I’ve no memory of a party,
of her entry, but pictures—
she’s in a stroller on trips with Mom
and Dad. Soon father started
getting sick, disappearing for weeks
under observation, mother moves us
to the city—our Grandmother
in a hospital with cancer. Life
distorted with change, I walked
alone to school feeling lost
on the streets in Queens.

Now her diagnosis, multiple myeloma,
wheelchair bound at retirement—
chemo, radiation for a blood cancer
like our father’s—facing a stem cell transplant,
the next and only option to extend her life.
Six rounds and there is no remission.
She has her partner, a wife, their son—
in college—a few friends with busy lives,
and me, three thousand miles away,
she’s not asked for my presence.

After Uncle died—she did it all—
a lawyer, she sold three houses,
buried him, later buried Mom,
no more family to die but us.
If the doctors are right she may
stick around with that wheelchair.
My baby sister walked with me
in Paris, New York, Bermuda,
Mexico, Seattle, Portland, and her
home, Philly. She wants to live,
says it’s okay if she can’t walk.
I dread seeing her enfeebled
like our mother after her stroke.
Injustice to retire into this disabled
door—to wheel up the ramp made
for mom. My precious baby sister
so agile raising her son, her final
goal, to see him graduate.

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About the Author: Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, WA. Her third collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and won the Bisexual Book Award.  Her book, No Father Can Save Her, is now available as an Ebook.

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Image Credit: George Frederic Watts “Head of A Young Woman” (1860s) Image Courtesy of Artvee