and you are...? S Reeson

S Reeson

...and you are...?

Sometimes, lucky draw, protagonist first up, whilst everyone’s still sober might pay some attention to your cause:

except, of course, the folk they’d like to notice are still there, propping up the bar, waiting for their mate, the headliner.

The silence in this Zoom room chat so deafening, it is time to check making sure connection has not dropped:

perhaps it was stupendously amazing that clearly is the reason no-one ‘spoke’, whole room summarily stunned into shock.

In time, every performance becomes test less about what they consider fine and more around exhaling validation:

other poets smile, assure it’s coming that moment soon to celebrate and shine; protagonist waits, still, without a rhyme.

S Reeson

And so it goes

considered rude because of a refusal to engage within the rules

when those were made by her own kind and none of them provide

opportunity to stack a deck in any manner but to benefit

those who made the cards

and so it goes

every moment where a pattern

shows even the faintest deviation

TERF will call me rude because of the acceptance that nothing here must aggravate

already Different situation or else all hands are lost

and so it went

as the bank was broken

my punctuation

Bernard Pearson A new facility

I’ve noticed that When I close my eyes The lids have become thinner Like paper walls In a tea house I often now See two worlds one still in shadow, an under study If you will.

Edward Lee

Possibilities

Not all the stories begun when I was born are still being told,

but some are, some still are;

that is why I can still rise in the morning, the endings still unknowable, everything, almost, still possible.

Edward Lee

Living, barely

In a dream my skin melted, exposing wet organs and dry bones.

When I woke the bed was an ocean of failed flesh, and you were gone, a note on your dry pillow a confession of the deceit you had made me a part of, and the name I knew you by was not your own.

Edward Lee Beyond

She washed her hair in the moisture present in the air, and danced to the music of stars colliding in distances beyond sight.

I almost had the chance to love her, but failed in some way I did not entirely understand, her heart speaking in languages I could not grasp, though the words were decipherable, the emotions recognizable.

Decades have passed since I last saw her, a distance of time more felt than seen, and I wonder where I fit in her memory, if I fit anywhere at all, this man who wished to love her but could not, for reasons he still cannot understand.

Steve Brisendine

Absence

wild strawberries among clover;

birds come, land, cock heads and feed

but this is one more day without bees

(I dreaded them as a child, past all

points of pain – now I sit, wait, brood over

hearing only feathered wings around me)

Steve Brisendine Time again

Three years since your last breath, and still I hear echoes of the word gone, of the silence after.

Steve Brisendine

entrance/entranced

a suddenness of full moon

slipping from behind high clouds;

Selene comes fashionably and beautifully late tonight,

her silver set aside for gold

(and I am too beguiled to play Endymion, feign sleep, draw her down to me)

John Grey

The boy in his element

All the time in the world existed back then, in a field of white clover, or a forest, so dense, it could make me believe that the sun was the moon.

Air drunk on wild fruit, I could escape to a rock at the edge of a pond, toss my shoes to one side, dip ten toes in blue resin.

All the time in the world laid claim to my birthplace, the slow beat of summer, and a garden half-way wild.

It was there in the grass-tips, in the stalks, in the lilies. It didn’t require an intelligent face.

John Grey

The Earth

The flat is round. And the still is moving.

What begins as astronomy ends up as skewed perspective.

I’d rather live on a planet that made more sense.

But, without my knowledge, sperm fertilized an egg in the ampulla of a fallopian tube.

After that, my choices were limited.

John Grey Passerby

You do not live here. You know nothing about what goes on. You’ve never lain on the lawn. Nor rubbed the bark of the trees.

You’ve never heard my father say “yes” or “no” to anything. Or found my mother sobbing or totally mute or chuckling to herself.

You’re ignorant of everything this side of the gate, the front door. You haven’t sat behind the wheel of the car pretending you could drive it.

When did you ever sweep the stairs or play toy ferries in the bathtub, or hear the humming of the wind through the busted attic slats?

And you haven’t lived my life. You couldn’t. I’ve done it myself all these years, without a thought of abdicating.

You can only guess at how soft my pillow is, or the color of the rugs in the living room.

But guessing is what strangers do, people walking by, who might spy someone or something but go no further,

who, if they make connection, do it only with themselves, as a fillip for the moment, as a mystery to me.

W Roger Carlisle

Nature soothes my soul

When I opened the door I found the trees whispering among themselves in a harmonious rhythm, saw branches bowing to one another, smelled pheromones signaling danger, heard roots reaching and crackling underground.

My abrupt entrance made them hush their emerald breaths, the way a homeless man disrupts a church service, everyone acting as if they were in a superior tribe, as if the sermon had ended just before he arrived.

I love the glimpse I had of their natural caring spirits, the electricity I felt in their wise community, the silent sound of their shared energy. Next time I’ll move like a cautious sunbeam, open the door by inches, stand silently in awe, listen.

W Roger Carlisle

Silence

We sat in stony silence in the restaurant, unable to find words for darkness, conflict, and arguments we were living in. Not even the weather was discussed.

Our exchanges came from rivers of dreams from different sources, no sharing of feelings, just angry repetitions of our unimaginative lives.

We drifted apart slowly, over time, in a snowballing pattern of blame. Each focused on what the other one was doing wrong, justifying our own ways of doing things.

Bewilderment engulfed our words, discontent became permanent, the marriage approached death or years of painful growth.

Actually, we had great wealth buried in our longing and need; we began a new journey by going inside, finding separate Selves, grieving vast continents of loss.

Pamela Hobart Carter Life meeting life

Before them, briefly, an insect—winged, enormous, noisy—hovers in their faces, reminds them of prehistoric dragonflies that spanned two feet, recorded in Carboniferous-era coal.

The father with his daughter—or maybe it’s a woman with her son— stop in their rain forest walk, say, in Costa Rica, at this buzzing blocking their way.

Glad for a corroborating witness, more for self-belief than for recounting later, the parent’s eyes meet the child’s when the creature leaves them in the silent moist heat.

Years after, when the child works, say, at Microsoft as a software engineer, they remember the encounter as a suspension of ordinary time, an intersection with truth.

Life meeting life.

How is it she—let’s just accept the parent is a mother, the child, a man now— is tearless, sun heating her back, as their sweet dog, deaf to the mail carrier, rests his unmoving head

against the iron table leg during the phone call to bring the animal doctor who will end the sweet dog’s life? Why, in the sweet dog’s last hours, isn’t she lying beside him,

encircling him in her arms, wetting his fur with her crying? She is now. She is now beside him on the floor. In a text she tells her son,

We are saying goodbye at noon, and he writes back, He is a good dog, say goodbye for me. She does. And she kisses his soft fur head.

Pamela Hobart Carter Reverberations

Yesterday, kyanite blue and black, a Leviathan — at least five inches long — flew over the rail, buzzed and bumped and bumped against the balcony glass before escaping again while I spoke on the phone to Aunt Bee who had just told me about her resident snapping turtle, her morning’s hawk sighting, the new legs on her pool’s pollywogs.

The reverberation of her voice in my life since my tadpole days, in my body’s smallest bones, amplifies our history of love, our longing to catalog wonders we witness, to make her imagination mine, to make mine hers. Of course, I tell her of the dragonfly, and the dragonfly buzzes permanently into her own intimate experience.

Pamela Hobart Carter

Do you play an instrument?

I am jealous of the syrinx, the ability / to sing two notes at once, / to harmonize with the self. Rebecca Hart Olander, “Avian Envy” from Hedge Apple

I take piano lessons to scare myself and I am scared

of the music today, also jealous of the 12-year-old at the recital,

the girl who sits so straight on her bench and smiles through everything. Syrinx pleaded

with the river nymphs to assist her escape. Their ability limited,

they transposed her from flesh to reed— no longer fleet. But they let her sing

like two women—or a choir, even— in synchronous notes when winds visit

at water’s edge. Her rhizomes journey through damp mud, once rock,

carried from upstream. To Pan, who stalked her, her hollowness a gift, to harmonize with breezes

in nearby thickets, with mountain gusts. The Bach, does it only look tough?

With my fingers, my self quavers suspended chords.

Patricia Walsh

The poisoned bride

Reciting the riot act, its first step backwards The impression of punishment lingers fine Rotted in money, the keepsakes infernal Occupation in hearsay, having heard enough The catchcry of failure blaming others.

Crying out the emperor, rolling in the fresh Loving where none right, rummaging in malice Rubbed in till it bleeds, ambidextrous argument Holding the nerve until absent notice Wanting too much, resigned to the shelf.

Needing feelings too, or at least, some sentiment Fighting for a full name is certainly not the answer Rummaging into debt a time rescinded Aborting for convenience a whistled right Feelings on both sides unwon, defeated.

The blinded pantomime, growing into a better shape Parking the likelihood of a matrimonial disease Philosophical retirement won’t do a disservice Working into disturbances, feeling pretty good Scribbling at night to uncover the righteous flaw.

Longing for deliverance, meted all year round Corrosive dissention rises above the acrostic Stalling at preference, marriage co-starred The next violin swings on its hallowed hours Music for the denouement, a cause less likely.

Patricia Walsh Recyclable

Wanting to be caught out, not helping itself Not able to, screeching the brakes supreme The solemn sunlight courses through wind-ups The settled matter relieved of its costly duties Stripped of this privilege, fitting in obscurity The bated anticipation goes forth like a lamb.

Growing into spite the innumerable cashier More plastic than fish a scourged reality Minding nets, waiting for the Lord to assuage them None being indispensable, got up and left A rock on the church to stand on gracefully Looking back not fit for glory, as advised.

Looking out for signs, close cousin of information Gotten away to the bitter end, joyously sick, The unnerved flirting over extreme drinks Revealed by the gift, you strain at intellect Slipping through frosted windows from the outside Desperate hours covering a multitude of sins.

The world is already on fire, solitarily said A song for the deaf in an attentive episode Where the next meal is coming from, cannibalised for food The employed self-esteem runs foul of tenacity The pet-name riots through speed and efficiency The average bolt-hole on a capsized entity.

Patricia Walsh

The generous gene

Not always writing, at the end of a smart phone Hijacking the email at a diffident time Cracked for marrow, siphoning the bone Future queens of content, poisoning conversation Cutting through silk, mumbling on the quiet.

This mark is good for you, like it or otherwise Picking ou husband’s on a father’s free will, The essential bowing down to the break of dusk The hungry minion basis in its own cold Hitting gibes at the less fortunate, a date sealed.

What to give for another leeway! This substance abuse, Flying in your own hands above a universal slob, To cease and desist from the potential snowflakes Crying out scandal, at least before time Inferno in a heart wiping out transgression.

A place for the self-absorbed, true, it is, Right time for repentance, paying through the nose, Growing in stately fear, a port in a storm Home truths of hell measuring precious deeds Expelled at midnight through the wedding feast.

Rippling through good, the stately mansions bleating Gone through sarcasm in a classroom brawl Lies and conjectures roving through desertion Falling in hate a growth more than cancer burns Not returning ever, evermore aged and foolish.

Jason Ryberg November

Though not the first or last in the order of the circular march of

the musical chairs of the months, through the slowly whirling carousel

of the seasons, still, November just may be the oldest of them all,

with the most dense and complicated lineage, the most pure but most

misinterpreted of motivations and the deepest, most valid

reasons to drink too much whiskey and sing the blues late into the night.

Jason Ryberg

Help us help you

A wish that grew from egg to tadpole to bird to the story behind

the bigger story with the opposable thumbs and opposing truths,

and all the lights on in its caves like a hive where even your phone or

a very old map won’t help you locate a clue or footnote, even,

concerning what you may have done or not done to help us help you to

decipher the dreams that you say -quote- “you barely remember dreaming.”

Jeff Gallagher

Climate change

It was strange weather for the time of year.

There was no chance to store provisions for the winter Or make good repairs for the short cold days.

There were pallid grey clouds hiding the sun.

A warm wind shook the rhododendron bushes.

Darkness fell and we thought it was time to sleep.

Then the earth seemed to uproot itself Vomiting gravel and worms and dead roots And everything we had carefully planted.

Weeds flew by their coat tails on lifted clods Landing clumsily, randomly, like overfed magpies.

We patrolled our familiar boundaries, mad sentries Besieged on all sides by the sky’s artillery.

After the storm came the unfamiliar rumble Of deep-throated birdsong and the distant glow Of something erupting on a far horizon.

We hurried to a temporary shelter, and waited.

Later the sun emerged from behind a new mountain.

Then we saw the Virgin in a yellow shroud, With head bowed, speaking into her heart.

Jeff Gallagher Medusa lip

It rested like a tear upon the rim Of your sour frown, a blank grey eye observing A kingdom of fools: those who sought to win Your cold hand, but found themselves deserving Only your spite, your icy gaze, each word A laser aimed at every so-called friend.

Then something froze in you, and nothing stirred Except your eyes that willed our lives to end. Now, in your stroke-bound silent cave, you wait For demigod or hero to arrive And break the spell, releasing all the hate And jealousy that keeps your heart alive.

I see your old mute features full of fear. But rest in peace. Your Perseus is here.