Five Poems by Meg Freer

 

Final Petal

in memoriam Bob MacKenzie

 

you a wild, wild rose, already bedraggled

lost petals one by one, faster at the end

so many poems and stories not written

photos not taken, trails not walked

at least you won’t have to avoid

goose poop on the river path anymore

and I won’t miss your photos of the geese

 

I’ll miss sending you updates on my milkweed

the two I planted from seeds gathered by the lake

that got eaten each spring by some hungry animal

and the third that grew this year unexpectedly

a few inches away but not tall enough for flowers

 

you would love my photo of garlic chives

their simple lacy beauty, each blossom

a burst of tiny white stars

 

you never made it over the new bridge

across the river, never saw the view

of Belle Island’s north shore

but you crossed another bridge

dropped that final petal

a whole garden of words

ascends with your last breath

 

Voices for Whom All Is Dark

 

A voice blue over wind, over wave,

high as a moon-slice in the sky, a holy fool

weeps bitter tears for the poor, the starving,

deplores the longevity of items we covet

long past their usefulness, wraps himself

in a page from the book of the future.

 

A voice high and kind, heart

and mind bathed in ice fog,

she walks with shopping bags all day

in long black skirt and tights, wool coat,

felt hat, all in black down to her gait,

ponderous as blackstrap molasses.

 

Thwarted at every turn, they hear

no answers in the darkness.

 

June Blues

 

June erupts, too much, too soon,

shoves Spring off the train

like the conductor evicting the passenger

who didn’t listen when he yelled,

“If you are caught smoking on this train,

the next stop will be your last stop!”

 

Overgrown bushes and weeds appear

out of nowhere, an over-eager horn section

busting out all over before anyone

has time to make a plan for the show,

but Spring had dawdled along for the ride

and June just wants to get going

with all summer’s colours and lush harmonies.

 

Give me less drama—just a slow accelerando

through several shades of cool green,

pink and mauve, a bit of eye-popping white,

to the deep sunset tones of marigolds and nasturtiums.

 

Wanting Times of Anticipation

 

When six percussion players

walk onstage and stand

behind the orchestra.

 

When you listen to a piece

with so many horns you feel

like you have June bugs in your pants.

 

When you wait for that single ting

of tiny brass cymbals

during a lull in the clamour.

 

When you let your mind add the music

left out when the needle

passes over each groove on an LP.

 

When you slip into and away from each note

with fine-tuned style

and comb out the lullaby seeds.

 

Note: Composer Richard Strauss’s father told him his music had too many horns and made him feel like he had June bugs in his pants.

 

Tag Team

 

ENVY and CAILS

ERON and REMOS

tags on the wall

graffiti today

on a hot summer day

grab your best buddy

drive up in the van

unload the gear

scatter spray paint cans

across the grass

do a test patch of buff

your new pocket can

paint a background of red

or silver or blue

how ’bout a tribute

to Mother’s Day too

pickles and tentacles

ghosts and some teeth

never out of ideas

just give us some space 

 

Meg Freer was woken up one night in 2015 when text that looked like a poem flashed in front of her eyes, even though she had never written poetry and didn’t want to. Since then, poems have arrived less aggressively, sometimes like musical phrases, but still with a strong visual component. Her photos, poems and prose have been published in various North American journals. Meg grew up in Missoula, Montana and went to school in Minnesota and New Jersey, where she later worked in book publishing. She now teaches piano in Ontario and enjoys the outdoors year-round. 

The Feast - Flash Fiction Story by Ryan Borchers

 

The Feast

Flash Fiction Story

by Ryan Borchers

Mortadella and yams. Pineapple soda. Artichokes missing hearts. Rabbit stuffed with potato chips. He’s poisoned one of the dishes at this feast. I’ll find it and then see what happens. Maybe I’ll vomit when I make it back to my apartment and I’ll need to stay in the bathroom for a few hours.

“Do you like the food, big brother?” he says. “Are you having a good time?”

“Of course,” I say. He has my left wrist handcuffed to the picnic table’s steel frame. I’m not too uncomfortable, so long as I let my elbow rest on my thigh.

“It’ll be fun.” That’s what he said an hour ago, rattling the handcuffs in my face like I was a cat and he was showing me his keys. “I’ll have a better time if you let me.”

I sip that Indian beer he and I like, the one that’s crisp when cold, sour when warm. With chopsticks, I snag a piece of sushi with avocado that looks a little too green.

“I had a hunch you’d be a whiz with those chopsticks, what with how many times Mom and Dad dragged us to Chinese restaurants,” he says with a Cheshire grin. He has one foot on the seat so his knee is up under his chin, in what I refer to as his grasshopper pose. Who knows where he learned it? Certainly not from our mother, who always sat so straight and erect.

“Promise me,” she said to me when he was eight years old. She had me seated at the dinner table, after I’d screamed at him for taking a steak knife to the heads of my plastic army men. She spoke with her hands folded, as if in prayer. “You will always indulge him. You will be patient with him. You will love him the best you can for all the days of your life. Promise me.”

He hopes he’s got me fooled, but the feast becomes less fun for him the longer I go without being afraid. I can tell because he keeps scratching his forehead. The only time he feels regret is when he isn’t having fun. 

A host of ants skitter across my bare foot, a wandering tribe thinking it’s found the promised land among the crumbs. I fix him with my steeliest glare and grab an apple slice covered in chocolate sauce. He’s sweating now.

“You don’t have to keep eating, you know,” he says.

I pop the apple slice in my mouth and chew it up without blinking.

“I don’t mind,” I say. “It’s not like I have anything to fear.” The sweat is running into his eyes.

“You must do your best to accommodate him,” my mother said. “Even when he is at his worst.” I wondered what she was picturing when she said “his worst.” What if he tried to kill me? I would have been wise to ask her.

“Remember that time I bought you a sandwich and you wouldn’t eat it because it had mayonnaise on it?” he says.

I grab a square of white clam pizza and squish it in my fist. His face is as pale as the pizza cheese now.

“Promise me, even after I’m gone,” my mother said, tears glistening in her eyes. “Please, please promise me.”

The ants crawling in paradise below probably won’t be happy if they find the wrong crumbs.

“Do you forgive me?” he says, tearing up.

“Always.” I take another bite. Chew and swallow.

 

Ryan Borchers is a writer from Omaha, Neb., and holds an MFA in fiction writing from Creighton University. His work has been published by The Rumpus, Flash Fiction Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Spelk, 50-Word Stories and other literary journals. He is also the author of three unpublished novels. Currently, he is collaborating with his sister on a graphic novel about adorable dinosaurs who discover the Internet.

Five Poems by Angela Hoffman

 

Welcome the Inevitable

 

The birch with legs all scabbed, skin no longer taut,

sleeves of leaves all gone, revealing arms of little muscle

stands with resolve under sheets of gray.

Destined to decline, it contemplates its future

under the wide shoulders of winter. 

I set my eyes on the impending for this faceless tree,

for it knows better than me how to be. 

Living abreast inevitable death, the tree is stirred 

to go on living as if it was waist high in spring.

 

I’ll Wear My Magenta 

 

Stuck betwixt and between, straddling two worlds

blood red fingers claw up from the grave;

arrows in reverse, piercing death, resurrecting back to life. 

It is primordial, this force, that invokes the emerging.

The bud at first is fearful, tight as a fist

but it’s rooted in original matter, pulsating with power, 

and so it galvanizes its inner strength, begins to open

with a new narrative of self-expression. 

The peony now is audacious, rebellious, exuberant, brave,

wearing its magenta in celebration of its newfound joy.

 

 

I’ll Be Your Brown

After James Crews, Cardinal

 

I consider how much I have loved, harmed, helped, or not, 

and a cardinal seems a bit lofty for me, so I think in terms of more

ordinary, say a really good stick for when the terrain gets tough. 

I could try to be a sunflower seed, scattering a smile or a kind word

among your blue days.

I might be a wren, that background noise that persists

until you can no longer resist, and you turn your gaze

at little old me, a tiny creature, making good trouble,

and you reconsider; perhaps you have disbelieved 

in your own loveliness, strength. 

Or how about that penny you think isn’t worth your effort, 

but you do lean, reach and see, 

In God we trust.

 

 

Wild Things

 

Those dainty white bells seduce the most stubborn

to stop and breathe their fragrance, 

and delicate fronds unfurl, dance with the wind.

You can’t help but smile, run your hands through their green. 

 

What if I left things a bit unchecked, a bit more carefree,

let go of a perfectly maintained life, yards of routines?

What would grow wild, rise up, emerge in its true nature

in the toughest of places with roots

thick and determined to be out of place,

to frolic and play games with my need for order? 

You’re My Window

 

Forged out of grit and heat,

I see through your openness, transparency.

I see myself reflected in the way you look back at me,

the way we survive off each other. 

I look for your glow in the dark.

Whether full of the outside world or washed clean,

you shimmer with warmth. 

You see me through.

Angela Hoffman’s poetry collections include Resurrection Lily and Olly Olly Oxen Free (Kelsay Books). She placed third in the WFOP Kay Saunders Memorial Emerging Poet in 2022 and was a runner up in the 2023 Wisconsin Sijo competition. Her poems have been published in Agape Review, Amethyst Review, As Surely As the Sun, Blue Heron Review, Braided Way, Bramble, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Piglet, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Muleskinner Journal, Of Rust and Glass, One Art, Poetica Review, Solitary Plover, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Poet Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Museletter and Calendar, Whispers and Echoes, Wilda Morris’s Poetry Challenge, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, and Your Daily Poem. She writes a poem a day. Angela lives in rural Wisconsin.

Five Poems by James Croal Jackson

 

Operatic Pop

 

I have lived enough to knife

through precious indifference:

time to say goodbye, sang

Andrea Bocelli through my

childhood’s echoing eardrums,

banging through the baseball

game of stressful situations.

How I overcame my fear of

public speaking was when

I was believed in, once,

to deliver Wayne’s wedding

from obliteration (green

in the cleaved landscapes

I scampered fully across)

and the contentment rings

high in vibrato today.

 

Cashing Out

 

White plate spinning

on the head of summer

god: boredom

 

in the breath of grass

illusion, green

in brain, in wiles, wet-

 

rag fingertips pressed

against nose, sanitation

breath, crater of spirit, the

 

less mortal, the mightier

morals, if what you have

is less than you entered.

 

 

Megan Visits Pittsburgh

 

the south side emits strong drug vibes

the incline’s return line up is half-an-hour long

we wanted to catch a slow 7:30 sunset

we caught twirling spiders over fast traffic instead

 

we were supposed to go to Trace but they close

at ten we go to Cobra for the purple Saturday

night and everyone dances the best they can

 

except for us. we watch.

 

 

Wall-Pounding Street-Squawking

 

Lobe, hold this half-

life, last hole on par–

rot later. Protest now.

 

 

Forty Years From Now, This Poem Will Make Sense (Disregard if Forty Years Have Passed)

 

I am sentient

enough– half-

asleep at the

wheel

 

I already

miss you

if I miss

my turn,

 

misguide

my controlling

hands into

another lane.

 

I have a tote

of sorrows

lugged

into a luggage,

 

third floor closet,

plastic blue bag

crinkling

in the night.

 

I wish–

I want–

you never

to read them.

 

This is a message

to me

from half

my current age–

 

though revelation

is what

I want

to avoid,

 

it is now

(was?)

true.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems are in Stirring, Vilas Avenue, and *82 Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)

Two Poems by Snigdha Agrawal

 

Faith, Hope and Charity

Faith is losing its grip

slipping like sand grains

hourly

impacted by naysayers’

utterings

in dire need to be reinstated

through fair means

 

Hope hangs like a flimsy curtain

manipulated by

the wily breeze

losing credibility

promises unfulfilled

pulling the wool

over the eyes

of the gullible

 

In the name of Charity

who is benefitting?

Not the intended

beneficiaries

middlemen profiteering

through foul means

layered with caveats

widening disparities

 

Faith, Hope and Charity

is losing its sanctity

politics ruling each entity

acting as tectonic plates

pushing towards

destruction of the planet

 

Make believe world

 

It came gift wrapped

tied with satin ribbons

heavy on my arms

nearly fell on its weight

but then, gifts are gifts

always welcome and cherished

never mind its dimensions

Unwrapped

…taken by surprise

…just what I had wanted

…for a very long time

 

It was all there

pots and pans, skillet, teapot, kettle,

colander, peeler, chopping board

everything and more

than what mother had in her kitchen

she kept so spick and span

 

Next few years…

Cooking became a passion

feeding my teddies, rag dolls,

stuffed animals

to the exclusion of all else

unlike other girls of my age

interested in sports, dating

being centre stage

 

All this came

abruptly to an end

when mother passed

leaving a space vacant

in the real-world kitchen

 

I can no more take

up the ladle, stir pots and pans

without tears clouding my vision

dimmed further with advancing age

My kitchen lies in shambles

 

 

Snigdha Agrawal (nee Banerjee), has an MBA in Marketing and Corporate work experience of over two decades. She enjoys writing all genres of poetry, prose, and short stories.  Educated in Loreto Institutions (run by the Irish Nuns), and brought up in a cosmopolitan environment, she has learned the best of the East and West. She is a published author of four books, the latest titled TRAIL MIX, is a book of short stories for all mindsets, and is available on Amazon. in

A septuagenarian still on the learning path next to writing is her passion for travel. She pens down her travel experiences in her WordPress blog randomramblings52.