About the Author: Rocío Iglesias is a queer Cuban-American poet and multidisciplinary artist with a law degree. She lives, breathes, and works in Minneapolis, MN.
Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Rose Ripples” (2022)
Rocío Iglesias: “Dew Drops”
Tag: Nature Poetry
Christian Paulisich: “Whale Watching”
About the Author: Christian Paulisich is an undergraduate poet at Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, but is originally from the Bay Area, California. His poems have appeared in Neologism Poetry Journal, Orchards Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Monterey Poetry Review. He enjoys nature walks, drinking Yerba mate, and spending time with loved ones.
Image Credit: Original image from Icones rerum naturalium. Copenhague,Chez E.A.H. Möller, etc.,1805-1806. Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
George Freek: “Night Conversations”
NIGHT CONVERSATIONS (After Mei Yao Chen) I watch a chilly night arrive. Leaves die on the trees, unable to survive. Will I be afraid when it’s my turn to die? I tell myself words that are probably lies. Clouds solid as mountains disappear from the sky. Death is as mysterious as is life to me. I talk to my cat. He’s concerned with a worm. He’s incredibly wise. He pays no attention when I tell him my lies.
About the Author: George Freek’s poetry has appeared in numerous Journals and Reviews. His poem “Written At Blue Lake” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Image Credit: Alfred William Finch An August’s Night (1898) Image courtesy of Artvee
Jon Bennett: “Winter Apples”
Winter Apples The powdery mildew killed my eyes but I’d climb it anyhow an ancient Gravenstein with a pine tar patch in the vee of two trunks My dad’s friend was a jazz guitarist and a tree surgeon to my kid ears ‘tree surgeon’ was as good as Dr. he did the patch and later died of vodka poisoning in his mobile home I picked up the guitar myself and wondered what dad thought about it My dad and the tree look worse each year sooty blotch and flyspeck liver spots and basal carcinomas but big, sweet Gravensteins as if the tree knows these are the last they’ll ever have.
About the Author: Jon Bennett writes and plays music in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. You can find his work on most music streaming sites as well as here. His new chapbook, Leisure Town, is available on Amazon here.
Image Credit: Image originally from The apples of New York Albany :J.B. Lyon,1905. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
John Macker: “The Gentle Hours”
the gentle hours
⸺to John
a felt bluebird perches on the purple
orchid on my kitchen table
a broken heat wave
elixir for the skin
these are the gentle hours
at 6 am I’m up and around the place
shedding the shortened sleep
I haven’t yet grown into my windows,
the few flat bottomed clouds have
nested under my eyes, dawn is an
obsessive safecracker vault of blue
sky wide open dreams wide open morning
broken like an egg and opened no one at
this hour seems shocked at the sounds of life.
I think of my friends present and long gone
as interstellar rainbows, sun-kissed
children of beauty no one but everyone
ends up a stranger, they are my muses
my runes my river. When I think of them
I think every star inhabits the soul of a
desert flower, every soul a signal fire.
First news of the day will rattle some
empty cages, no doubt, it’ll take more
than imagining the contents of Thoreau’s
haversack to gentle the earth. At my age I
become something I’m not all over again
and it fits me like a glove. Fate is a direction
that won’t let me lose my way.
About the Author: John Macker grew up in Colorado and has lived in northern New Mexico for 25 years. He has published 13 full-length books and chapbooks of poetry, 2 audio recordings, an anthology of fiction and essays, and several broadsides over 30 years. His most recent are Atlas of Wolves, The Blues Drink Your Dreams Away, Selected Poems 1983-2018, (a 2019 Arizona/New Mexico Book Awards finalist), Desert Threnody, essays and short fiction (winner of the 2021 Arizona/New Mexico Book Awards fiction anthology prize), El Rialto, a short prose memoir and Chaco Sojourn, short stories, (both illustrated by Leon Loughridge and published in limited edition by Dry Creek Art Press.) In 2019, his poem “Happiness” won a Fischer Poetry Prize finalist citation, sponsored by the Telluride Institute.
Image Credit: Image originally from “The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands”. Image courtesy of The Biodiversity Heritage Library
Rose Mary Boehm: “Sirocco”
Sirocco The hot winds blow northwards. Laboring hearts adapt to a slow-burning rhythm. Nights find you breathing harder, dreaming languid dreams dipped in Saharan orange. Snow melts into puddles, makes little rapids in the gullies. Shy bright green unfolds on hitherto barren winter stalks, like young girls succumbing to the whispered promise of swelter, not heeding either calendar or caution. Cars covered in red sand use the roads like go-cart runs. An early tulip pushes through heavy slush, a sense of unseemliness in the air. On a park bench two grey heads, woolen scarves undone daringly, galoshes protecting warm shoes. Old hands stripped of thick gloves, he holds hers and bends over them as far as his stiff back gives him leave. The Sirocco will hold a few days.
About the Author: Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fifth poetry collection, DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS, will be published by Kelsay Books in July 2022. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Dead Leaves and Landscape” (2021)
Hannah Bagley: “Stay A Spell”
Stay a Spell The cicadas kissed the curves of my ears, pale fingers fighting nothing but air and the thinness of wings. Chop, shift, I split the wood again chop, shift, the butterscotch chips catching in the frays of an old knitted coat. Skillet fried dinner blends to skillet fried dessert— What was that? A rustle of leaves yields sunny-sides filled with shell and the squirrel chuckles up his chestnuts. He picks his shells with ease. The warm fire deepens the orange of my hair and blushes the apples of my cheeks. Oxygen and black smoke trickle through my lungs— carbon dioxide bleaching the fumes clear. We need more tinder. My eyes meet a doe dancing behind the flame. Thin ankles locked straight to the left and chin whiskers quirked to the right; she stood firm. Who was I to stay a spell in her living room? I didn’t even take off my shoes.
About the Author: Hannah Bagley lives and attends the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega, Georgia. An English literature major and German minor, she has also been published in The Chestatee Review. Hannah draws inspiration from her upbringing in Southern Appalachia and its rich history. She plans to continue poetry in the pursuit of nature, life, and expression of the human experience.
Image Credit: Winslow Homer “Campfire” (1880) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
Carolyn Adams: “Forecast”
Forecast I’ve started to think in weather, to measure time that way. I don’t know what you’re saying if you don’t tell me it’s raining, or there’s snow coming, or give me the percentage of sunshine to expect. My friends tell me the frost is gone in Galway. Late-winter is moving through. These and other forecasts, accumulate all the news I need. Snow has softened everything in Santa Fe. Cold ventures in from the wilderness. Gusts roll in the Cascades, transient clouds obscure the summit of Mt. Hood. Rain is expected in Borneo. A heat wave in Sydney. Extremes mark every hour. Hello and goodbye are steeped in tempests.
About the Author: Carolyn Adams’ poetry and art have appeared in Steam Ticket, Cimarron Review, Dissident Voice, and Blueline Magazine, among others. Having authored four chapbooks, her full-length volume is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. She has been twice nominated for both Best of the Net and a Pushcart prize.
Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Albuquerque Stoplight Sunset” (2021)
Troy Schoultz: “Abbotsford Cemetery”
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About the Author: Troy Schoultz is a lifelong Wisconsin resident. His poems, stories, and reviews have appeared in Seattle Review, Rattle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Fish Drum, Santa Monica Review, Steel Toe Review, Midwestern Gothic, Palooka and many others in the U.S. and U.K. since 1997. He is the author of two chapbooks and three full-length collections. His interests and influences include rock and roll, vinyl LPs, found objects, the paranormal, abandoned places, folklore, old cemeteries, and the number five. He hosts and produces S’kosh: The Oshkosh Podcast. For more information check out https://troyschoultz.wixsite.com/website
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Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Crow on a Fence” (2021)
George Freek: “The Ear and the Eye”
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The Ear and the Eye (After Chu Hsi)
The sun appears
trapped like a fly
in a web of branches,
but it’s an illusion.
The sun will escape
from such confusion.
They say before he died,
Li Po tried to express
the sound of a sunset in words
or so I’ve heard.
I watch willow leaves
fall into a black river.
I hear the river carry
them somewhere.
I only imagine where.
I’ll never go there.
I watch clouds assemble
like an invading army.
I hear far off thunder.
It seems I know nothing.
I can only wonder.
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About the Author: George Freek’s poetry has appeared in numerous Journals and Reviews. His poem “Written At Blue Lake” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Sunset West” (2021)
As It Ought To Be 