Three Superb Poems by John Doyle

You

 

If Camus said so,

I'd leave my fingertips in the furnace,

a mimic of my pencil’s failure;

 

if Hemmingway said so,

I'd arm wrestle sharks and rattlesnakes,

and Arendt like a devil on the dole-queue corner

 

saying sniff stardust, rye, and dead dogs’ ashes.

If Elvis Presley said so,

I'd eat, drink 

 

and be his final footprints -

painted by a Mississippi dusk burning soon after 1973.

Charles Manson stood facing me;

 

I used his spleen to hang him

as stallions came home at dawn 

to nihilists’ petticoat sermons.

 

But you couldn't,

could you? 

waiting 

 

by Dick Jordan’s farm in a pick-up truck,

jagged and rusty,

still strumming your guitar.

Anton Chigurh Passed His Driving Test

Absence of identity or resemblance does not exist in the real; only a subject can perceive it

Gilbert D. Chaitin 1988

 

The year is like a skeleton,

the land an eager compass

that takes you miles off-course from your peace,

hiding underneath its glassy dome;

 

the clock is like a witch,

a boy who hides inside a man,

a hole choked in greasy-bones

each time we see him driving off from this widowed motel.

 

That engine’s like a broomstick,

the chassis like an emptied Marylin Monroe,

that docket on his dashboard

makes him a man, largely relatable.

County Cork, Summer 1994

This odd benevolence,

that wraps time around me, shields me in space,

lets dusk and dream 

moisten me -

always benevolent, high-summer

and the fields a patchwork

of discarded railway lines

and corrugated circles farm-life feeds from -

this odd benevolence

and its drowsy haze,

making a sharp turn for Clonakilty

and Aerosmith softened on the radio.

It’s not dark nor light,

lie nor truth,

it’s of itself, and comes for me sometimes.

I give myself 

willingly

and watch others dream.

I met a Sufi pilgrim today, he gave me his clothes

when he gave me his heart.

John Doyle is from County Kildare in Ireland. He returned to writing poetry in February 2015 after a gap of nearly 7 years. Since then he's had 6 poetry collections published, with a 7th collection, "Isolated Incidents" due to be released by Pski's Porch in Summer 2021.

 

Two Sublime Poems by Lilija Valis

 

SUN DAY 

 

It is Sunday, the sun

spills into empty streets,

I stop by the beach

on the way to the hospital,

a volley of laughter

cuts the reggae beat of a radio,

shouts hover over crowds

          like invisible birds,

boats drop sails to linger

in their own reflections

 

I walk through the hot silence

of the hospital corridor,

take the stairs to the second floor,

your room is still

          the flowers in the vase

are curling at the edges 

you are burning in another sun

the cool water I give

          you are unable to swallow

your chest is heaving    

          whole body resisting

my hand closes over yours

I call for the nurse

then insist on a doctor

 

I watch through the window

as the doctor takes a side path

six-year old daughter in hand,

he enters your room without her

his feet in thongs,

his actions are abrupt,

he hardly touches you,                

‘What’s the point?’ he asks me,

glances at his watch,

I notice sand stuck to his feet,

know his daughter is waiting for him,

and that he can’t see the soul

of the dying man

 

the sun strikes a window

                   across the yard

and for a moment I go blind.

THE PROMISE 

 

When you died

I could not look

at the lights across the bay,

the white skyline wavering in water,

I could not sail through the colours of the strait,

or sway to the conga drums on the beach.

I hated the beauty that once held a promise.

 

Now I understand.

The promise was kept after all,

in the way mountains rise above clouds

and the sky comes down to the sea,

the way daffodils light up dark windows

and people shed clothes in the sun,

in the way we hugged each other for joy.

 

The promise was not that of a future.

Lilija Valis has lived on three continents, in some major cities, including Washington, DC, and San Francisco when there was music in the streets and strangers hugged each other, published in book, literary and e-zine magazines, as well as nine international anthologies, and performed in public libraries, parks, old theatres, pubs, among other places. Asked to step side by COVID until it finishes its performance..

www.lilijavalis.com

http://pursuitofmisery.wordpress.com/

 

Three Poems by Richard D. Houff

 

Shaking Hands with the Dead

    A childhood tale

   

The leaves are quite still

And hold dimpled moonlight in their folds

 

We are fearful of the dark

And the terrible silence beyond our path

 

Our footsteps fall in unison,

Moving forever forward without wavering

 

Shadows appear near an incline

And we lean into one another with ghost troubles

 

Now we can hear water bubbling over rocks

And a faint light appears

 

There is a gentle bend where we can wade

Through shallow spots to the other shore

 

Holding hands, we move into something new;

An adventure with no attached secrets

 

And again, a distant light flicks

Somewhere beyond the empty stars

 

 

Dancing Without Music

Darkness slips

Through empty hands

 

As we cruise and run wild

Through un-sacred streets

 

Dreaming in pastoral blue

We avoid puddles and cobblestone riddles

 

There are missing pieces in the puzzle

Like distant lovers from antiquated novels

 

The books litter my rooms

And we need a new game to play

 

 

Empty Rooms

   

He sits by the window

watching the rain fall

 

He remains silent above

all that would give voice

 

Turning the dial on the current

situation, nothing could be further

than the next aisle

 

Far beyond the cool, and broken

guitar picks, he remains focused

on letting go

 

Learning to move on

Richard D. Houff edited Heeltap Magazine and Pariah Press Books from 1986 to 2010. He is also a journalist that is comfortable in writing both poetry and prose. His work has been published in Academic and Arts Review, Big Hammer, Brooklyn Review, Chiron Review, Conduit, Louisiana Review, Midwest Quarterly, North American Review, Parnassus, Rattle, San Fernando Quarterly, and many other fine magazines. His most recent poetry collections are Night Watch and Other Hometown Favorites, from Black Cat Moon Press (2016), The Wonderful Farm and Other Gone Poems, from Flutter Press (2017), and Dancing on Rooftops, from Homage Press (2019) Czech Republic.

Three Poems by Jonel Abellanosa

 

Place

 

I knew the gloaming

before I was born.

Rediscovery beyond

my mind’s gray space.

My eyes closed, I visit

memory’s meadows

before I was born.

 

Mindful and aware of shadows

candles use to tongue walls.

Reflecting, I see lowland

minstrels, hear paeans

to my dimensional travel.

 

The moon a manzanita

in my ribcage. Pine groves,

dew dropped smells, in nature -

who I am. I sit on stone.

Grey shade a deer. I empty  

myself like a clay jar,

the river’s last song

trickling out my eyes .

 

Melancholia

 

I name my spiritual sloth

Acedia, apathy a soulful magpie

in my mind’s tree. Bedridden,

my body hosting bonfires, fever

tender to muscles and joints.

Sweat defying the aircon, nape

and forehead melting like ice

sheets, pain sunlight to my shins.

 

If I close my eyes the emerald

place reappears. Heartbeat loud

in my blank mind, ash on my tongue.

I’m at peace, a skeleton begging

my flesh release, longing

for the dug ground somewhere,

desiring sleep like water.

Erotica

 

Night’s temple -

dark, deep, damp.

 

Mossy, teethed

with stalactites and stalagmites

 

Raise your lantern

and enter

Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, The Philippines. His poetry and fiction are forthcoming in The Cape Rock and Poetry Salzburg Review, and have appeared in hundreds of magazines including Thin Air, Chiron Review, The Lyric, Poetry Kanto and The Anglican Theological Review, and nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars prizes. His poetry collections include, “Songs from My Mind’s Tree” and “Multiverse” (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York), “50 Acrostic Poems,” (Cyberwit, India), “In the Donald’s Time” (Poetic Justice Books and Art, Florida), and “Pan’s Saxophone” (Weasel Press, Texas). He is a nature lover, with three companion dogs, and three other beloved dogs who have passed on beyond the rainbow bridge. He loves all animals.

 

Four Poems by Cornelia Smith Fick

 

GOD MYTHOLOGY CREED

new sins, old ones derived

from bankrupt mores.

Tenets to prop up

atom by atom,

a new religion

banded, nailed

to the coffin of dignity–

a new dark age ascending

ruled by gods of war

lemming-like prying off the poor

rising glory of evil

the broad path

peopled by silent dissenters

with back-packs,

peering at their feet

marshalling them against

toddling off the road

laid down by power.

 

Published in Fractured Poetics, CA: Social Design, Inc. 2018

HOTEL FIRE  

The Hotel hangs in the sky; it has lost its foundations. Should it be lowered it will skid off the sea sand choking the growth of plants, flowers and trees. The windows are blackened. The doors are red, the shape of hearts.

The roof like ebony graves. 

They came to the Hotel for rest, a vacation. The Hotel opened its door and welcomed the tired stranger.

The hungry. 

They connected in the sitting room, moved to the dining room. The table was laid out, damask table cloth, glasses, cutlery. They brought their own chairs, custom-made with carvings of their desires. One sat on pineapples he craved, another on diamonds, still another on gold. 

Tall buildings grew around the Hotel. Most of them were empty. The people who’d lived there had disappeared into the ruins. 

The barren landscape advertised for people to live there, to remove the sea sand, to scratch for fertile soil and plant trees and flowers. There was also a need for hangers, because every hotel needs hangers for clothes. Clothes meant travelling from this continent to that, in ships. Clothes meant belonging, identity, a scarf a meeting place for those who were like-minded. 

They wanted to fix the Hotel; its doors had fallen off. Its heat had disappeared. Who would be the receptionist? The Devil. God. Whoever won the fight to create wealth and taller buildings, taller people, taller poetry and discourse.

This Hotel had been sold to who you ask. 

The light in the passage is from the Hotel. The rest is dark, like you can imagine. Dark, like skins. The hotel serves bodies on plates, silver plates carried by taller than buildings. Men. Who sneak in the corridor, sliding on their shoes, breathing fire. 

The hotel is in darkness, just the light under the door. Eskom load shedding. What is in the lighted room? No one knows. We are afraid to find out; there is comfort in darkness, the contours of familiar furniture holding you, keeping you warm. What if we let go of the darkness to explore the light? Where would it lead? 

Most of us want the familiar, from morning to night, from the cradle to the grave. Darkness in the womb. Darkness in the grave. Nothing to interfere with a settled lifestyle, settled ideas, settled norms.

Suffocating familiar lines of knowing, of dreaming. 

A fire that is not of your making, but exists. You don’t need to check if it has wood and coal, a good fire starter. It can burn from stars, the universe.

(Eskom, loadshedding: an electricity company, a blackout)

SOMEONE IS WEARING MY CLOTHES 

In lockdown

A new dress faded like memory

A blouse blooms a scorched rose

A jacket stained like rust

Slippers soiled

Nobody here but us

A mystery

Jewellery broken in its box

Like my faith

THE WIND

 

Small humiliations

of day to day life,

each a stone, Heitsi Eibib,

piled into a mountain

to revere, obstructing our view.

Each stone stacked up, Heitsi Eibib,

a stone of greeting on every grave,

a mountain.

 

Standing to stand up, sometimes not,

a woundedness in our family,

from great pain comes great evil

truth uncomfortable

its brightness can blind you  ̶  if you want;

much better to take a stick

and tap in the darkness.

 

A fire wind

burnt blackness

not being able to see

a national blindness.

Don’t wake the sleeping titan

of wounds collected

lest it rears up

and incinerates everything in its path.

 

Cornelia Smith Fick was longlisted for the Sol Plaatje EU Poetry Award (2016), the erbacce award (2021) and highly commended in The Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (2020). Her debut collection Eye of a Needle: And Other stories, was published in 2017. Her stories and poems are in EXPERIMENTAL WRITING: Volume 1, Africa VS Latin America; Fractured poetics: a poetry anthology; Soho Square V, Bloomsbury; To breathe into another voice, a poetry/jazz anthology; Ladyboxbooks; Poetry Potion; Spelk; New Contrast and Atlanta Review among others. She is currently a PhD candidate at University of the Western Cape.

Three Superb Poems by Margaret Kiernan

 

Ashes of Cedar Logs

 

Hip roofed, low at front, bedrooms in the loft

dappled light , shade, sweet chocolate box

door of heavy wood above a spotless stone

looks south to the timber mill.

 

Maddie is in pain, her back,

A big girl calls to patch her up

fearful four-year-old watches

from beyond the door jamb

brought along behind a bike,

bribed with a moss green beret

to ease time in that house

encircled by trees.

 

A colossal Cedar of Lebanon stands outback

Cast its dark shade wide

Rose-beds boxed-in by privet hedge

clipped tight.

 

The woodshed holds secrets, like gin traps

pole rods to reel in giant pike

Trapper’s gear, un-used ferret pens full of rust

Bandsaws hang trapped upon a wall

above a chopping block, the axe stuck.

 

It will soon be dark

I watch the road to see Pappy going home-

I wanted to go too

he does not

I turn go inside

walk through the door

in that house, shushed.

Love Poem I

Heartbeats all I get what I cross the bay

I see your lights waver in the night light

Never wander.

 

Dreams in mountains of blue dissipate

In weaving grasses

The way you buckle your bags.

 

Like a rake in easy life

Last chance

Rings of gold, enough to hang myself.

 

Smelted to the big not-enough

See her in your eyes

I am a child again, watch the Constable print.

 

Wind soughs in the night

In my head

Patterns in the wallpaper are my pen.

 

Stories of American things, far away

Down the road, that one

I knew you’d go again

Alone.

 

Love Poem II

Promises slipped off your tongue

In warm salty fluid verbs

My head a silent hum

Walkaway.

 

Trapped between worlds

Dawns of jaded milky hue

Night Palms silhouette against dusky

Orange sky.

 

No space to believe

to breathe

It is all too real

I’m chasing down your green-light.

 

Age of love-letters gone, or

Traced fingered words,

Drop to lost omens

Silent unspeaking stars.

 

Margaret Kiernan writes fiction, non-fiction essay, memoir, and poetry. She has had poetry and prose published in e-book, in anthology collections, and literary journals and magazines - including, Black-lion Press, Pendemic.ie journal-C19 collection , archived at University College Dublin, The Blue Nib Lit-Journal , The Write Life Magazine, Unity Global Festival, Vox Galvia at the Galway Advertiser, A New Ulster Literary Press, The Burrow Lit. Journal, Poet-Head.Wordpress.com, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Galway Review and The Irish Canadian Cultural Newsmagazine, New Brunswick.

She writes with Over the Edge, Thursday writing/reading group at Galway Arts Centre, and, Ox Mountain Poets, Sligo.

She is listed in the Index of Contemporary Women Poets in Ireland, 2020. 

She holds several Educational qualifications, Including a Degree in Arts in Humanities, from Sligo IT.

Her background is in Advocacy in Human and Social Rights.

Margaret has completed numerous courses and workshops in writing, for prose and poetry.

Tutors in poetry includes, Annemarie Ni Churainn, Martin Dyer, Colm Keegan, Monica Corish, Moyra Donaldson, Noel Monahan, Kevin Higgins.

Tutors in prose includes, Claire Allan, Anne McMaster, Conor Kostick, Carlo Gebler, Malacai O’Doherty, Jan Carson, Ciara Doorley.

Margaret has four grown-up children. She lives in Westmeath with her dog Molly. She is a landscape painter. Is into Nature, walking, gardening, music, and heritage. She is working towards a First collection in Poetry.

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