Four Poems by Arthur Turfa

 

Göring in Captivity

 

Loudly sang the Reichsmarschall,

first to arrive in the makeshift chapel.

 

An incongruous sight in the first row

morphine-addict, in his mind reliving

 

dog-fights from long ago, recalling the

plundered works of art. Once the

 

second-in-command to pure evil,

now ingratiating himself with charm.

 

He saved the Jews who tended his

wounds after the Putsch., but ignored

 

the cries of those from ghetto and camp

facing underserved death. What were

 

the thoughts in his mind as he sang

the hymns he had scorned for so long?

 

All a façade- in the end he refused

the Host and swallowed hidden cyanide. 

 

 

Before I Lived in Cities

 

Before I lived in cities

I remember the exhilaration

riding through the Liberty Tubes

in the backseat of a station wagon

and beholding the city wedged in

between the rivers resplendent in sunshine.

 

A few years later and for longer

commuter trains to another city;

the Reading Terminal awash in

sawdust and food of all kinds,

winos teetering on Market Street

vending soft pretzels three-for-a-

quarter as  pedestrians and SEPTA

busses passed by.

 

At the discount eyeglass store

Dad summoned small-town ethnic

charm Eddie, this is my son!  I

smiled as Eddie said Ah! Your son!

as it probably happened in

towns back in the Old Country.

 

In time scouring newsstands for copies

of Der Spiegel, head shops on Sansom

Street for Rolling Stone and things I

never would use, cheaper LPS than

they had in the mall.

 

Decades pass, I came and went, fascination

turned to frustration, then to flight. Then

unexpectedly occasional return, showing the

sights to our son, recapturing the wonder,

wounds healed from the time I lived in cities

 

The Second Hometown

Distances were so much closer between

the villages. Resemblance among the

 

houses (no basements- a shock) different

though in size and curbing, looping streets that

 

connected new-found friends to me as the

years passed and remain in memory though

 

others live in them now. Behind me stretched

the quarries, kilns, colonial relics,

 

perfect for hiking or contemplation

as I pondered options for the future,

 

vague ambitions slowly taking shape as

vagaries swirled within and around me.

 

Tesserae I gathered, some discarded,

finding others far away, later on

 

marveling as they fell into patterns

more resplendent as I imagined then.

 

Blessed was I to show their colors to some

from those village that became my home.

 

 

Winding River: The Susquehanna

The stream that falls towards the south, stretching

across three states in a zigzag pattern

 

is a fickle force. Wide and beautiful,

forests and towns dotting the riverbanks

 

with stunning views. Green in spring or summer

aflame in autumnal splendor, bare-branched

 

in cold winter’s grip, twice in my memory

creating chaos. Once overflowing

 

banks in Agnes’ June catastrophe

(I was 100 miles to the south then),

 

Two decades later almost within sight

as snowmelt reinforced the surging stream.

 

Guardsmen and civilians sandbagged near

the bridge, downriver some of us waited

 

news of disaster or deliverance.

The levees held, the waters surged to the

 

Chesapeake. Once again the river was

lovely to behold, its waters calming.

Arthur Turfa is a Lexington, SC-based poet/writer active in the South Carolina Writers Association. His poems have appeared in The Petigru Review, the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and one was in the Top Ten for the 2019 Poetry Prize of The Pangolin Review, as well as in other publications. His most recent poetry collection is Saluda Reflections from Finishing Line Press, © 2018. The Botleys of Beaumont County on Blurb, © 2021, is his first novel. Epiphanies, his short story collection, was released in March 2024 from Alien Buddha Press. He is a Poetry Editor for the Eleventh Hour Literary Review, reads poetry for The Petigru Review, and is a Fiction Reader for the Northern Appalachia Review. He also reviews books for the Tupel Press and other publishers. Currently, he is working on more poems, a second novel, and a second short story collection.

Four Poems by Myrna Stone

 

How Else to Love the World

 

How else to love the world but to rise

each morning from the bed of your making

 

into the addle and dross the hours devise.

How else to love the world but to rise

 

as though order is the ardor that drives

this life between waking and waking. 

 

How else to love the world but to rise

each morning from the bed of your making.

 

*This poem first appeared in The New Orleans Review

Epistle to the Dear Departed

 

First to you, Sister Josephina, my sincerest

greetings and regard. I pray this finds you

 

well and in full command of your senses,

and humbly report, on my part, no perplexities

 

of spirit, no lapses of conscience, no slippage

into the body’s sensual instruction

 

but the most abbreviated and occasional.

Surely, since your departure, you take pleasure

 

in knowing that neither the Prince of Sullage,

nor any one of his million minions, transforms

 

himself anew in the environs of St. Denis

School, not in the kitchen or the restrooms

 

or the hallways, not in the dark beneath

the stairs, not even in the hands of boys

 

probing their long pockets, does he dare

submit himself for your purview. Yet, dear

 

teacher, how your hickory rulers persist

in their brisk percussives. And now, kindly

 

convey to your elder, Sister Ambrosia

(who, even above, I am sure, clarifies

 

her wishes with action) that her reputation

grows, exceeding the notoriety it enjoyed

 

in life. Inform her that each of us

who occupied her sixth-grade classroom

 

speaks of her in the most vivid terms;

her crack methods for provoking veracity,

 

her military penchant, her brawn, her brash

are, quite simply, impossible to forget.

 

And to you, Sister Epiphania, our Mater

Dolorosa, a few words, I presume, of comfort:

 

male and female alike, we duly credit you

for our virginal disposition. Who among us

 

now succumbs, with any degree of rapidity

or ease, to the inducements of the fleshpots

 

abounding in and out of wedlock? Who

among us stood before you and did not imagine

 

the body’s daily sufferance of disgrace?

To you we owe our weightiest recompense

 

though it can never be dispensed. Finally,

Sisters, I ask your forgiveness for this abrupt

 

conclusion, and remain, as ever, your faithful

student who wishes you your just and proper due.

 

*This poem first appeared in Poetry Magazine

 

 

The Alewife’s Account

 

    Each morning I wake

to the season’s thin gruel of light,

    glad to be abroad in it,

 

    glad that the man eventide

delivered, a tinker, a smith, Jack

    the brewer, or his strapping

 

     son, has risen, a goat

still ruttish from my bed, a dullard

   whose presence lingers

    

   malodorous in the yellow

flux brimming in my chamber pot.

    It’s ale I barter for,

 

    Jack’s kettle on the flame,

his infusion of malt, his wort astir.

    I’ve seen him put a plum,

 

    blue-black as a raven’s

eye, whole into his mouth, the blood-

    flush in his cheeks as he bit

 

    deep to the stony pip. 

The heart is a pip, I say, my flesh,

    I say, and a yard of ale

 

    for him and every loose

windlestraw of a man, my post rate

    a tuppence, a pittance, less

 

    than you’d pay for a stale

cob-loaf or a posy of Michaelmas

    daisies. In my house I offer

 

    brown ale, pale ale, light

ale, mild ale, and thick cakes of rye

    moist with ale, such spirits

 

    as animate or subjugate.

In my house I entertain neither debt

    nor death, but this living.

 

*This poem first appeared in Margie

The Spirits at Thornton House Are Preferable After All

 

for they are stubborn and marked by a distinct sincerity

which renders them refined while we are patently

 

crass as we veer into madness and conflict and likely 

our own ongoing destruction. What then may endear

 

us to our neighbors in the cosmos? What can we trade

for their good will? Our bodies, our brains, our bravura

 

rhetoric in the face of danger, or our ample-minded

ability to concoct our future and drift blindly 

 

into its foreign possibilities? All is well, darlings, we tell

our children and their progeny, our dreams embellished

 

with lies. Still, young or old, spirits may gather 

here, for I welcome now each one who happily shelters

 

in Thornton’s house. And if I misjudged them I shall

ask their forgiveness. Perhaps, in light of that, they will 

 

take us with them when they leave this plane for surely

the heavens are vast and can harbor us all. We can breathe

 

and sup and drink and never find ourselves alone again, 

tethered as we are to our human kith and our haunted kin.

Myrna Stone is the author of six full-length books of poetry: The Resurrectionist’s Diary (Dos Madres Press, 2021); Luz Bones (Etruscan Press, 2017); In the Present Tense: Portraits of My Father (White Violet Press, 2013), a finalist for the 2014 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Casanova Chronicles (Etruscan Press, 2010), a finalist for the 2011 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; How Else to Love the World (Browser Book Publishing, 2007); and The Art of Loss (Michigan State University Press, 2001), for which she was named 2001 Ohio Poet of the Year. 

 

She has received three Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in Poetry, a Full Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, the 2017 New Letters Poetry Prize, and the 2002 Poetry Award from Weber, The Contemporary West. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, River Styx and Southwest Review, among many others. Myrna's poems have also appeared in sixteen anthologies including Flora Poetica: The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse.