Five Poems by Lee Clark Zumpe

 

reservoir

 

brown snow in the gutters

ashen skies flagging over

the choppy waters

            her face will freeze soon

 

folded inside myself

jagged bits healing beneath

salt scabs hardening my cheeks

            the delicacy of icicles

 

London, 1940

 

the bombs fell into the shadowed places,

the darkened homes with black curtains drawn,

until the horizon caught fire;

 

underground the earth shook,

children wailed and mothers wept

as bits of London fell to flame;

 

St. Paul’s Cathedral stood amidst the inferno,

flickering orange colouring the underbellies of clouds,

while onward pressed the sombre Thames;

 

morning arrived with funeral grey austerity,

the newly homeless picked through skeletons

of smouldering neighbourhoods;

 

mourning victims and praising heroes,

waiting patiently for the smoke to clear,

the wounds to heal, the pain to subside.

 

 

Lillian

i.

 

had it, in fact, passed her by;

or had she

            folded it up for safekeeping –

placed it tenderly

between the pages of the family bible

            or some old Dickens volume

like the four-leaf clovers

she used to find skirting the meadow;

            no, no,

even if she had tried to preserve it

it would have eluded her,

            snuck out with that awful cat

or accidentally swept out the patio door

            one fall afternoon;

she collects her yesterdays, now,

            mindful of the fact she has forgotten

what exactly she is waiting for,

deteriorating a little more each day

until she does not recognize her visitors

            and time itself unweaves,

leaves itself frayed around the edges

 

ii.

 

Lillian left us long ago, now,

            and we had to gather up her belongings,

pieces of a puzzle that will never fit again;

the memory detaches itself as years accumulate

            and dust settles

the residue of life collects

in layers of sediment

            gradually forgetting everything

but the faded cues

 

 

Lautrec

 

You were Paris compacted,

made vivid and colourful.

You were provincial gardens by day;

frenzied cabarets by night.

In the Moulin Rouge,

in Chat Noir and the Divan Japonais,

you alone found humble dignity,

You alone captured unintentional elegance.

You divulged this equitable truth

in delicate brushstrokes,

in the composition of unique expressions

or in the uncanny depiction of motion

upon static canvas.

 

 

White Goddess

 

Outside,

            winter casts her hoary shadow:

            an early frost swathes

the ill-prepared earth,

and the dogwood berries are all too plentiful

on the slopes this year

 

The Oak Moon shivers,

            her frozen tears

            form icicles on balsam boughs

            bowing beneath the howling gales,

already she has grown weary,

and the nights keep getting longer.

Lee Clark Zumpe, an entertainment columnist with Tampa Bay Newspapers, earned his bachelor’s in English at the University of South Florida. He began writing poetry and fiction in the early 1990s. His work has regularly appeared in a variety of literary journals and genre magazines over the last two decades. Publication credits include Tiferet, Zillah, The Ugly Tree, Modern Drunkard Magazine, Red Owl, Jones Av., Main Street Rag, Space & Time, Mythic Delirium and Weird Tales.

Lee lives on the west coast of Florida with his wife and daughter. Visit www.leeclarkzumpe.com.

           

 

Four Poems by Damon Hubbs

 

Hawk Tree

 

The hawk rides the day’s last comet

     and perches high aloft a storm pale limb.

He watches. Waits. His oracle eye

     cast like a copper coin

into the bracken well of time.

   Wind rows the leaves

and the hawk sees from his bleached galley

     mighty boughs spread like cirrus clouds

where red deer gather dew in cupped horns

     to sow a river to the gods—

and then, farther still, beyond

     where the earth gears

and grates in the smithy of its axis, roots

 

trellis into a bone dance of mountains

     spitting flowered flames. Ash falls

toward fossil forests

    and patterns the ground

with crocodilian ferns.

     The hawk sees tectonic plates grind

like the chain mail spine of a stegosaurus,

     and shallow seaways crater red as orchids

where the ear stones of ancient fish quake 

      with memories layered like Saturn’s icy bands

 

and in the dilated

     blink of the hawk’s eye, they reel—

and circle like carved wooden spintops

     into future centuries, when island galaxies

are colonized in fingerprints of light

     and guild ships burn off the spiral arm.  

With telescopic sight he reads the tidal features

     of a collision course

and glimpses rings of dust

     in the heart of Andromeda. 

 

We tried to tie the falconer’s knot

     only to have the earth

slip through the loop

     like an acorn

falling from a tree.

Strawberry

 

You are worshipped and adored

and perhaps you are too perfect.

The finch fell in love with you. The robin and the squirrel, too. 

Stonemasons carved your shape into the pillars of cathedrals.

The sun’s watchful eye makes you blush.

 

Your leggy stalks

wade the rows like redshanks in a flood meadow,

and hold a solstice crown of serrated leaves

as we kneel before you

gathering the last of the day’s picking. 

 

Your reign is short

and already you are growing old.

Summer’s feral children ring their mouths

with scarlet-speckled fruit and find their tongues

tangy with lesions and velvety-grey mould.

Did you banish your daughters from home

run them to a reedy patch skirted with barbed wire,

or did they run away from you, flushed

and fearful of the way you clung to their beauty.

You were once loved and adored

 

the perfect berry of the heavens,

now your heart-shaped mouth hounds the fields

and snaps the necks of rabbits,

like our claret-stained fingers

when we pull and twist you from the stem. 

 

 

The Red Squirrel

 

A rodent eye ringed with white, a bushy tale

coppered like dried blood, he is territorial

     the red squirrel,

and nimble-footed as he scurries a wooden balustrade.

The tree is a staircase he knows too well.

 

Up and down he carries messages

between the worlds—

from the steepled rafter where the eagle perches

to the cellarage where the dragon gnaws

on coiled roots.

 

But he is mischief-mouthed

     the red squirrel,

and fond of rumours and rot.

He meddles, stirs feuds

and with each branched step

the messages turn more malign.

 

His chatter is merciless, a drill tooth

drawing dark resin from the tree’s shingled coat.

The order of insects is blighted,

fairy-struck before the earthquake

of a rat-toothed tusk.

The tree trembles and knots.

 

The birds call him shadow tail

because a red shadow is all they see when

he thieves eggs and nestlings

and bores coffins to cache his tithe.

 

But he doesn’t pay that tithe

to the eagle above or the dragon below.

The grace-giving is to himself,

     the red squirrel

and himself alone.

 

With each egg and nestling

he casts his horoscope,

and razes his home with gossip and rot

rather than host the craven-winged interlopers.

 

 

Witch’s Ladder

 

I should have realized something was rotten

     when the oracle I invited to tea

failed to see that the almond cake

     baking in the oven was already burning

 

or maybe I failed to see

     that an oracle is a prehistoric beast

dragged down by its own weight,

     and that predation marks   

are signs of eternal recurrence.

 

When I’m having tea with the oracle

     I notice that my neighbour, Bill, 

is on a ladder cleaning his gutters.

 

At the first sign of neglect nature stakes its claim.

     The valley darkens with fallen trees. Stone walls

collapse like a quarry hall of dinosaur bones,

     and then the route home becomes unrecognizable

lost in a filigree of bur and moss,

    and secretive little black birds slip and caw

among layers of foliage cobwebbed tight as scars.

 

Bill climbs the ladder

      and takes the cords of braided hair

and opens each knot like a cabinet of curiosities:

     coral, feather, fossil, pocket mirror

locket, specimens of fish and birds—

     the disparate contents like a constellation.

 

It’s a vision 

     distracted only by a summer dragonfly

serving its bulbous green eyes

     into my windowpane, again and

again.

Damon Hubbs lives in a small town in Massachusetts. He graduated with a BA in World Literature from Bradford College. When not writing, Damon can be found growing microgreens, divining the flight pattern of birds, and ambling the forests and beaches of New England with his wife and two children. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Book of Matches, The Chamber Magazine, Young Ravens Literary Review, and Eunoia Review.