Tipton Poetry Journal #60 - Spring 2024 by Tipton Poetry Journal

Tipton Poetry Journal

Tipton Poetry Journal Tipton Poetry Journal

Editor’s Note

Tipton Poetry Journal, located in the heartland of the Midwest, publishes quality poetry from Indiana and around the world.

Statistics: This issue features 37 poets from the United States (21 unique states), and 3 poets from Canada and Ukraine.

Our Featured Poem this issue is “Diet of Prevarication” written by Michael Henson. His poem, which also receives an award of $25, can be found on page 2. The featured poem was chosen by the Board of Directors of Brick Street Poetry, Inc., the Indiana nonprofit organization who publishes Tipton Poetry Journal.

Barry Harris reviews Wally Swist’s translation (from Italian) of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s L’Allegria

Cover Photo: Butterflly by Brendan Crowley.

Barry Harris, Editor

All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual contributors and may not be used without their permission.

Tipton Poetry Journal is published by Brick Street Poetry Inc., a tax-exempt non-profit organization under IRS Code 501(c)(3). Brick Street Poetry Inc. publishes the Tipton Poetry Journal, hosts the monthly poetry series Poetry on Brick Street and sponsors other poetry-related events.

Tipton Poetry Journal Contents Roger D. Anderson ..................................................... 1 Michael Henson ......................................................... 2 Beth Kress ................................................................. 4 Farah Art Griffin ....................................................... 5 Arvilla Fee ................................................................. 6 R. Nikolas Macioci ..................................................... 6 Timothy Pilgrim ........................................................ 8 Timothy Robbins ....................................................... 9 Denise Thompson-Slaughter ................................... 10 Mark Vogel ............................................................... 11 Gilbert Allen ............................................................. 12 John Grey ................................................................. 14 George Freek ............................................................ 15 Richard Krohn ..........................................................18 Ellen Goldsmith ........................................................18 Kathryn Kimball ..................................................... 20 Liz Dolan .................................................................. 21 Craig Kurtz .............................................................. 24 Mona Mehas ............................................................ 25 Mykyta Ryzhykh ..................................................... 26 Norbert Krapf .......................................................... 26 Nancy Kay Peterson ................................................ 28 Jack e Lorts ............................................................. 30 Ruth Holzer .............................................................. 31 Dave Malone ............................................................ 32 Lylanne Musselman ................................................ 33

Tipton Poetry Journal Gloria Parker .......................................................... 34 Amy Ash .................................................................. 35 Bruce Robinson ....................................................... 36 Michael Strosahl ..................................................... 36 Philip Athans ........................................................... 38 Tony Tracy .............................................................. 39 Scott Waters ............................................................ 40 Anne Whitehouse ..................................................... 42 Mark Dunbar ........................................................... 43 Brian Builta ............................................................. 44 Terry Trowbridge .................................................... 46 Al Maginnes ............................................................. 47 David Hummon ....................................................... 48 Review: L'Allegria translated by Wally Swist ......... 50

Tipton Poetry Journal

The Two of Me

RogerD.Anderson

The long silver cord has been with me since I was a young boy keeping my two personas attached, yet allowing my other side to wander off on occasion when I have need to visit that other place. Having two is a delight, permitting me existence here one day and there another, but knowing I mustn’t stretch the cord too far else it would snap, and I would be left out there forever. Care must be taken not to become too foolhardy for too long, though it does tempt and beckon me to wander just a bit further. Yes, sometimes I believe I have seen the very edge.

Roger D. Anderson lives with his wife and soulmate, Judy, in Omaha, Nebraska. Each day is a new adventure in their journey together to somewhere. Credits include Fine Lines, Westward Quarterly, Nebraska Life, Cholla Needles, Chronogram, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Stray Branch, and Time of Singing.

Tipton Poetry Journal 1

Diet of Prevarication

MichaelHenson

He lied a year of lies for breakfast And each lie lied itself sixteen times. We hoped the lies would die like mayflies But they spread like lilies Across a flowering field.

For lunch, a half-pound lieburger deluxe With a double order of French-fried lies.

Each evening, he lied a daylong lie And ate it for supper with fibs for dessert.

He settled at night with a dreamlong lie Brushed the crumbs from his chest And woke in the morning to lie it all again.

Tipton Poetry Journal 2

Georgia on My Mind

MichaelHenson

Eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty peaches were plucked from the branches of a Georgia tree

Eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty needles grew from the branches of a Georgia pine.

Eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty votes danced on the head of a Georgia pin.

Michael Henson is author of six books of fiction and four collections of poetry. His poems, stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a number of periodicals, including Tipton Poetry Journal. Born in rural Ohio, he now lives in Cincinnati.

Tipton Poetry Journal 3

When Time Stands Still

BethKress

When you’re a child on a long car trip when your plane sits idling on the runway when you’re in line behind someone rummaging for cash or the car salesman leaves to confer with the manager ~ try to embrace the times you must wait.

When you wake up to another gray day in March when you’re nine months pregnant when your walking partner is a toddler or an elder using a walker ~ try to embrace the times you must wait.

When the baby spikes a fever when you’re the last one to be chosen when the one you’re waiting for hasn’t called or you’re holding hands with someone in hospice ~ try to embrace the times you must wait.

When the roads are icy and your child is en route when the test results haven’t come back yet or you can’t find your way out of a problem when you wait for someone who will be coming home when you wait for someone who will not be coming home.

Beth Kress grew up in a small town outside Chicago and lived in Camden, Maine before moving to the Boston area. She began writing poetry after careers in teaching and counseling. Kress is keenly interested in community, the natural world, our stories, and connections of all kinds. Her work has been published in the Snowy Egret, Spotlight, The Avalon Literary Review, Dreamers, The Red Wheelbarrow Writers’Anthology and recently won The Willow Review Prize. Her chapbook Taking Notes was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.

Tipton Poetry Journal 4

A Halcyon in Bucha FarahArtGriffin

I cannot shake the image. A long trench dug out of the Earth’s brown dirt. Black trash bag swaddling corpse of each human. The mud wall rises with ripples on each side. Mass grave. Lying in a town on the outskirts of Kyiv. Bucha. Named after a river.

II.

I am reading of a bird called a halcyon. Ancient, mythical in her form. Harbinger of peace who nests on water.

Lulling a sea to stillness. Able to drift dark clouds from the sun.

III.

I imagine the halcyon taking flight from the sea. “To Bucha, I go,” she says. “For I must float on the river of its name.”

Farah Art Griffin's work is forthcoming or has been featured in Pleiades, The American Journal of Poetry, Constellations, Storm Cellar, The Perch, Poetry South, Plexus, The New Verse News, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational, North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival, and elsewhere. She lives in the Los Angeles area and holds an EdM in Arts in Education from Harvard University and is a recipient of the Altman Writers of Color Scholarship from the Hudson Valley Writers Center and a grant from the Writers Happiness Movement.

Tipton Poetry Journal 5

My Conversation with an Earthworm

ArvillaFee

As I was digging through the soil to plant my beans in rows, I almost chopped an earthworm with my garden hoe. I apologized immediately and took him from the bed, but when I turned him end to end I forgot which was his head. “Excuse me sir,” I said to him, “I can’t tell head from tail.” It would have been much easier if I’d been talking to a snail.

Arvilla Fee teaches English Composition for Clark State College in Ohio and is the poetry editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

Emily Dickinson Delineation

R.NikolasMacioci

She resists lure of the spring afternoon the way her hand resists thorns when she snips roses from the rosarium,

Tipton Poetry Journal 6

pulls down the blind to shut out sexless sun. Below the bay box sash window of the two-and-a half-story, brick house, Austin's adolescent children, Ned, Martha, and Gib have settled on the grass, chatter to each other. Her brother has warned them not to bother their aunt, yet Emily thinks the children wait for her to lower love to them as if it were on a string. Sometimes, their aunt reads to them from Grimm's Fairy Tales or the family Bible, but she prefers silence and solitude.

Though having a penchant for browns, wools, and calico prints, now in her thirties, she wears only a white dress. Townspeople joke about her attire, call her the myth.

This evening, she bends over her square, eighteen-inch table, retrieves ink bottle, paper, and pen from a deep drawer, and in her unique style of extensive dots, dashes, and unconventional capitalization, scribbles “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me…"

She turns up the wick on the oil lamp. Shadows hang on walls like black draperies. She continues to write, a scribe of the soul, self-imprisoned by imaginary bars.

R. Nikolas Macioci earned a PhD from The Ohio State University. OCTELA, the Ohio Council of Teachers of English, named him the best secondary English teacher in the state of Ohio. He is the author of eightteen books. Cafes of Childhood was submitted for the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. In 2021, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net award. In 2022, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He was nominated for a Best of the Net award for 2023, and City of Hammers was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Hundreds of his poems have been published here and abroad in magazines and journals, including Chiron Review, Concho River Review, The Bombay Review, The Raven’s Perch, The Main Street Rag, and West Trade Review.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Scattered

TimothyPilgrim

A heron stands gold-eyed amid leaves, the water below rippled green. You say sunlight turns its gray feathers more blue, like sky this time last year as we scattered dad’s ashes amid lupine in the meadow nearby. You say you felt wind swirl them up, lift each gritty gray bit into mist. And that your grief still has an odor like dank logs half-sunk near shore can almost taste the decay. You natter on, don’t seem to notice I hear loss taking off across the pond.

Timothy Pilgrim, , a 76-year-old Pacific Northwest poet in Bellingham, Washington, has several hundred acceptances from U.S. journals such as Seattle Review, Hobart, Red Coyote, Tipton Poetry Journal and Santa Ana River Review, and international journals such as Windsor Review and Toasted Cheese in Canada, and Otoliths in Australia. Pilgrim is the author of Seduced by metaphor: Timothy Pilgrim collected published poems (2021) and of Mapping water (2016).

Tipton Poetry Journal 8

Float

TimothyRobbins

Some people will see us floating three hundred yards out after the waves have tired or died.

We will be black, without features, and they will take us for seals or sea lions.

Most will not notice. They will be lost in worries of the sunset or the tension of the long bridge or traffic’s unhappiness.

Still there will be a few comprehending glances at the peaceful, playful, wise creatures distance enhances.

Timothy Robbins teaches English as a Second Language. He has published six volumes of poetry: Three New Poets (Hanging Loose Press), Denny’s Arbor Vitae (Adelaide Books), Carrying Bodies (Main Street Rag Press) Mother Wheel (Cholla Needles Press), This Night I Sup in Your House, and Florida and Other Waters (Cyberwit.net). He lives in Wisconsin with his husband of 26 years.

Tipton Poetry Journal 9

Observations in a Cape-Cod Parking Lot

DeniseThompson-Slaughter

The shadow of the Earth lies upon the moon, leaves a pared fingernail of pearl.

The young men have started to sag into middle-age responsibility

while the middle-aged women mature into crone-ship, tired, mourning our lost beauty.

Shrink-wrapped boats, shuttered sails, gulls retiring into autumn-crisp evening.

Denise Thompson-Slaughter is a writer and retired academic editor living near Rochester, New York. In addition to journal publications, her published work includes three volumes of poetry, a mystery novella, and a book on the paranormal, which you can see listed on https://www.denisethompson-slaughter.com. A book of her collected memoir essays, Since You Weren't There & other memories, will be published by Running Wild Press by Spring 2025.

Tipton Poetry Journal 10

What it takes

MarkVogel

Never a small talent, knowing what it takes to keep the machine running, sensing ahead what could fail, hearing the moment running. Never a small talent being the dog awake in the night, sure how to run, the creek to leap, darting to the plan. Never a small talent seeing (again) the living text unsaid, the possibility of perpetual motion how a refurbished washing machine runs forever, even as you tiptoe through karma’s vibrating collection, enough to unsettle a fragmented house the dark open out and beyond. Never a small talent getting real, not just becoming, absorbing God’s breathing presence bigger than narrow scripture. Never a small talent being solid as a boulder with ancient lichen alive. Never a small talent taking in a whole larger than what was, surprising, intuiting the invisible, clear-eyed. Never a small talent accepting the temporary, in the fog the gift of knowing when to act. Blinking at the fox’s ruse mixing in the human crowd. Never a small talent in comic dishabille tuned to strange frequencies, a surprising smile playing according to today’s refurbished rules.

Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and two foster sons. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals.

Tipton Poetry Journal 11

These Seven Liter Leviathans

GilbertAllen

are surrounded by seas of asphalt, bays of garages, oceans of concrete, gulfs of choppy macadam.

Schools of such behemoths once bearing fins slowly learned to grow spoilers Barracudas,

Marlins, Stingrays now fishtailing impatiently, waiting their turn at Credit Islands.

Even the mammals among them have mastered a slow crawl. Impalas, Cougars, Mustangs

approach the Mother of Making Life Easier. The Great Spinx asks them to solve the simplest riddle, then extends the longest

nipple in the known world thanking them in plain American whenever they're full.

Enormous infants on all fours, they're headed back to the playpen

of Classical Muscle to the glory that was Grease and the grandeur that was Chrom

Tipton Poetry Journal 12

LSMFT

GilbertAllen

In the 1950s, tobacco ads metastasized inside our TV set.

Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch intoned beneath black semicircled eyes. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should with two claps from a bifurcated box. A tagline soon admonished schoolteachers: What do you want, good grammar or good taste?

Most memorably, LSMFT.

Glove in hand from a pickup baseball game with bigger boys, the ones in the first grade, I told Mom I’d learned what it really meant Loose straps make flabby tits.

She took a moment to inspect my unsuspecting face and then she smiled, and hugged me to her hip. “Nice boys will never say that to a girl, and you’re a nice boy.” Of course, I agreed.

My mother smoked Pall Malls, not Lucky Strikes, although my brother smokes them to this day. And truth be told, I’ve never spoken those five words to any girl or lady, boy or gentleman, for sixty some-odd years. It’s time to let the letters have their say: Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.

Gilbert Allen lives in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, where he is the Bennette E. Geer Professor of Literature Emeritus at Furman University. In 2014 he was elected to the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the state's literary hall of fame. For more information about him and his work, see the interview at https://slantbooks.org/closereading/interviews/belladonna-beautifulbut-deadly-qa-with-gilbert-allen/ .

Tipton Poetry Journal 13

Rain Dance

JohnGrey

A rain dance is required –the fields are brown as toast.

Some shouts to draw the clouds, much stomping to fill them with moisture.

Grimace with every shake of your bones. Let God know you’re angry with him. It’s better than doing nothing, letting another summer roll by as loveless as the one before. You have a dance floor as wide as it is searing, so shiny, you can see the dead in its reflection. And maybe not energy but an overflow of resolve, wiry legs, and feet like hammers. So go to it, wear yourself down as thin as this year’s crop. It’s what the land’s in need of.

An emaciated optimist under a useless sky.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident now living in Rhode Island, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Covert, Memory Outside The Head, and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

Tipton Poetry Journal 14

Why I Read Poetry

GeorgeFreek

There’s a vacancy in my chest, where something like a clock should be, but its mechanism is faulty, and as dead as leaves falling from a tree. The stars blink faintly like fireflies in a sky as vast as the bottomless sea, where microbes live and die joylessly, and they mean nothing to me.

George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, Illionois. George Freek's poetry appears in numerous journals and reviews. His poem "Night Thoughts" was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poem "Enigmatic Variations" was also recently nominated for Best of the Net. His collection Melancholia is published by Red Wolf Editions.

Tipton Poetry Journal 15

Quotidian KenCraft

1 Instead of morning meditation, morning papers, the ubiquitous facade of orange igneous under blowaway broomstraw, the jowly, pore-pocked face, the mouth, mouth, mouth that won’t stop. And, somewhere, hanging closer to him than it seems, the tannined mirror of sad little dreams.

2 Soon you will wake for your 8 o’clock oatmeal. Before I cook, however, distraction from the basil on the counter. The one you cut in medias res as part of our Italian meal last night. The way you put extra stems in a jelly jar of water. So leafy. So green. It doesn’t even know it’s dead.

Searching for online bargains. Tracking the movements of open orders. Why is there so much “I shop therefore I am?” What hole does click-to-cart fill, and why do cardboard boxes muster unopened on the cravings of our front porch?

Tipton Poetry Journal 16

To Dolors, Who’s Worried What Tomas Tranströmer Might Think KenCraft

Writing your book review, you worry he might take offense when you call his poems "spiritual"

but you can make like Shakespeare and “set your heart at rest” knowing spiritual is a word that means what you want it to mean: your gift to give, Tranströmer’s to open. Wherever he is. Whatever form he has taken.

Maine poet Ken Craft ’s poems have appeared in The Writer's Almanac, Spillway, Pedestal Magazine, and numerous other journals and e-zines. He is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Reincarnation & Other Stimulants (Kelsay Books, 2021).

Tipton Poetry Journal 17

Calm, Cool, and Collective RichardKrohn

A climb of ivies, a foyer of ferns, A tar of highways, a crumble of berms.

A pen of hogs, a future of bacons, A litter of pups, a pack in the making.

A dead of possums, a cower of sheep, A hop of rabbits, an inherit of meek.

A row of murders, a murder of crows, A cower of terrors, a bash of woes.

A weary of jobs, a callus of chores, An axe of battles, a crotch of wars.

A spiral of hams, a rack of lambs

A ponderof brains that think I am.

Richard Krohn has spent most of his life up and down the East Coast, but he has also spent many years in the Midwest and in Central America. He currently teaches Economics and Spanish at Moravian University in Pennsylvania. In addition to TPJ, his poetry is most commonly found in Tar River, Poet Lore, I70, Rio Grande, Concho River and Paterson.

Leading the Discussion for Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad for my Temple Book Group on Sunday January 21, 2024

EllenGoldsmith

Right afterwards I have a workshop on creating tension in poems

I’m nervous about the discussion. Tense.

A book from the Palestinian perspective at Books and Bagels. Someone there for the first time said she came because she likes them both. I do too and admire this book (which the new person didn’t read).

As I drive to the temple on a day of strong snow flurries but cleared roads I interrogate myself. Where in my body is the tension?

Tipton Poetry Journal 18

Tipton Poetry Journal

Enter Ghost, the last words of the novel, invite in King Hamlet’s ghost who will command Hamlet to seek justice in his rotten kingdom. In this play within a play within a novel, actors perform Hamlet in classical Arabic in the West Bank. It’s set in 2017 when two Israeli police officers were killed at the Temple Mount. Now it’s months after the horrific events of October 7th. I’m afraid it will be hard for some to open the doors of empathy.

Leaving the house I had a back and forth on whether to add grippers to my boots to protect or not to protect…

Questions hide under my coat. What was it like for my grandfather growing up in Palestine? Do flashbacks to history illuminate anything? What are my ghosts concocting?

Ellen Goldsmith is a poet and teacher. Her books include Left Foot, Right Foot, Where to Look, Such Distances and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect, which won the 1997 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition and was described by Dennis Nurkse as an “incandescent collection.” Her poems have appeared in many journals and in aanthologies. She earned an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, has an M.A. in English from City College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Queens College. She is Professor Emeritus from the City University of New York. In 2006, she relocated to Maine, where she enjoys the rich literary landscape of the Midcoast as well as the always changing views of Broad Cove from her home in Cushing. For her, poetry is essential, a way to explore and discover, uncover and recover.

Polina & the Pomegranate

KathrynKimball

When the hammer and sickle no longer topped the Kremlin she came to visit had packed a snack hidden in her handbag asked if she could eat it though I’d offered cake.

After slipping on a thin pair of rubber gloves over her still girl-like hands she quartered the pomegranate scooped up the seedy pulp with a spoon hunched over the plate and ate alert, ravenous like a dog jealous of its bone.

What I learned was this: she grew up starving. I say grew but not much. She’d made good in a traveling circus limbs just the size to be flashed from a cannon hired for nothing but food she a tender spoon of flesh.

Kathryn Kimball grew up in Alabama, has a Ph.D. in English, taught nineteenth-century British literature, and lives in New York City. Her published work includes poems and French translations in various journals, a 2021 chapbook, and a book of poetry to appear in 2025. She won the Columbia Journal 2023 translation prize.

Tipton Poetry Journal 20

Detroit du Lac

LizDolan

Like a strumpet spread-legged on a bentwood back chair she teases you with her leather-strapped hips, her high-pitched come hither.

Stripped down to her bones you can see her calcified heart her lucent gold turned brassy. Early morning under a weak sun wild dogs shred the fat cats feasting in her garbage-strewn lots. Abandoned cars rust by her curbs. Over crushed glass, a graffitied bus stumbles. Siren-startled, an albino squirrel squats by a windowless wall.

But like an angel dragged down by soot-soaked wings, somehow she will rise transfigured, strut in her stilettos will trumpet her loud tattoo.

Who cares if you weary of me, she says, the hip, the jackals lust for my scent eager to erase your face. No matter where you go, my memory will wither you into a wraith.

Watch how late-afternoon light shimmies, gilding my steel-girder bridges.

Tipton Poetry Journal 21

How to Fix a Second Floor

Clothesline

LizDolan

When it snapped Mama yelled across the yard to Mrs.Mac who pulleyed the new line tied to the old back to Mama, who untied the flittered and secured the new. Then she parted the sea of clothes, light from dark, into the steaming water tossed in a cube that blued it, such alchemy blanched my soul.

On the ribs of a board she scrubbed til her knuckles bled and lower back yodeled. After a cup of tea and a biscuit she ferried the washed to the window in a willow basket, leaned it against the S-shaped iron guard.

Like a shoemaker tonguing nails, she teeth-snapped clothes pins and flapped my father’s shirt, pegged it until it floated on Bronx breezes. Our lives swung from that line: cabbage rose aprons, Hopalong tees, railroad overalls.

From my classroom window, I could read my family’s story writ against a witless sky and knew Mama was safe until the weight of our daily lives rent the line again.

Tipton Poetry Journal 22

The Boy Who Swings on Our Line

LizDolan

My cauled eyes open to the fluttering sheets fanned by my brother's ansty five-year-old soul. From the open window I see as he swells my father's overalls, crooks the knees and bellows as though with Dad he flags the six a.m. from Darien. He puffs up breasts in my Peter-panned school blouse. Luciferous boy. He snuggles in my mother's tea-rosed housecoat, twists his v-necked Yankee shirt about the line, now worn by his relief, a baby brother. Beware of trucks, I whisper, much too late. Does anyone know he is here? He grasps my mother's sage-scented hands as she snaps each piece of bleached laundry and pins it to his trapeze. I am not sure if I want him to stay and play. I lie. Go, release us all from your awful presence, airborne shape-shifter, powerful child, so we can smell fresh cotton against our pasty cheeks, then melt crayons into bottle caps to shoot scullies on the hard Bronx pavement again.

A nine time Pushcart nominee in both prose and poetry, Liz Dolan has published two poetry collections. Her ten grandchildren pepper her life. Liz lives in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.

Tipton Poetry Journal 23

Pied Piper

CraigKurtz

‘Pied piper, play your melody and we shall pay thee gold specie; you know the problem of this town a million rats that you must drown.’

He played a melody so weird and, then, the million rats appeared; he led them to the docks where they all perished, willingly, that day.

The Council who had employed him dismissed his wages on a whim; ‘He’s done the job, now let us save our coffers, and turn out the knave.’

The piper in his outfit odd said ‘Gents, you will repent this fraud; a generation will ensue, then I’ll collect from each of you.’

These are the days of magicks made available for retail trade; a button pushed, a world appears and plays a tune not heard in years.

These are the days of miracles, of technological idols; we have the power to know much but what’s that sound beyond our touch?

Listen, children, to that sound when ye awake, ye won’t be found; the piper will be paid in full a generation, swallowed whole.

Craig Kurtz led the postpunk Philosophic Collage to cult status in 1981. Many of his poems are in print and online. A recent novel Surviving the Dream is available through the antichrist of retail. New short stories online at Litro USA, Maudlin House and (scheduled) Stand. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Tipton Poetry Journal 24

Calling to Shore

MonaMehas

if overwhelmed, and tears burn holes in our cheeks when our howls split into fragments and spiral call to shore, anchor in the tall grass thank the ones who came before glaciers on the gray horizon hold secrets the fault lines in our heart threaten to expose sunrise illuminates a promise for daybreak across the flaming sky

resplendent rays punctuate a pale pink morning wispy clouds dance in unison call to shore those who passed before us rest our tired feet on holy ground

Resolutions

MonaMehas

I resolved to walk every day, but the temperature is freezing blue of sky fades into gray, tree branches hide in the clouds my cup of steaming hot tea welcome in my hands, the book I started last night on the table begging to be opened the footstool empty of my feet.

Dreary, cloudy January days influence my existence movement slows to necessity; naps more important than life itself, waiting for the Winter sun to peek from behind the clouds, and when it does, brightness burns the dew from my heavy eyelids.

Mona Mehas lives in Noblesville, Indiana and writes poetry and prose from the perspective of a retired disabled teacher. Paddler Press nominated her poem “In 1920”for a Pushcart Prize in November 2023. Her work has appeared in over 70 journals, anthologies, and online museums. Her first chapbook, Questions I Didn't Know I'd Asked was published by LJMcD Communications in 2024. Her second book of poetry, Hand-Me-Downs, is due out in July and her book Calling to Shore will be out next year.

Tipton Poetry Journal 25

my mother counts the amount

MykytaRyzhykh

my mother counts the amount of lead and uranium in the earth’s soil the earth is round like the earth the sky is black like a mining night my mom takes the button out of her stomach father is eloquently silent the father is not sure that he is the father Mary is not sure about anything either and only the baby puts his feet on the milky ground the Magi bring gifts to the baby Jesus – gills and a gas mask

[This poem was first published by Pegasus]

Mykyta Ryzhykh lives in Ukraine and is winner of the international competition Art Against Drugs and Ukrainian contests Vytoky, Shoduarivska Altanka, Khortytsky dzvony; laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik, Lyceum, Twelve, named after Dragomoshchenko. Nominated for Pushcart Prize. Published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, on the portals Litсenter, Ice Floe Press and Soloneba, in the Ukrainian literary newspaper.

Reflections on Silence

NorbertKrapf

Silence is never fake, but is a nothing that speaks without something to say in the usual words we know.

Silence upsets some people, makes them uncomfortable, frightened because they don’t know what

Tipton Poetry Journal 26

to say in return. Some of us love to listen to silence because it pulls something about our inner lives into our psyche from somewhere beyond and speaks a language that knows no words but is full of feeling and spiritual depth. Yes, the best silence comes from somewhere deep that lifts us high and beyond our daily chatter. Do you know what I mean? When we share our silence with someone it means that we are comfortable in speaking a different language not taught in schools. It’s as though we can share something that is beyond everyday vocabulary that we respect and long to put into words that we don’t always or often use. Silence is communication that avoids dictionaries and text books and comes to our tongues only when we open ourselves to the dark. Silence and darkness are kissing kin. They bloom like Moonflowers at night.

Norbert Krapf, former Indiana Poet Laureate, has recently published Homecomings: A Writer's Memoir, which covers the fifty plus years of his writing and publishing life, and his sixteenth poetry collection, Songs for All Souls. His Ida Hagan of the Pinkston Freedom Settlement is now in production. For more, see http://www.krapfpoetry.net/.

Tipton Poetry Journal

The Newcomers

NancyKayPeterson

They slowly settled in learning the bartenders’ names leaving good, but not overgenerous tips, not pushing things.

They’d ask for best places to buy do-it-yourself things, hardware, lumber, letting ‘em know physical labor was alright by them.

They’d stop for happy hour, eavesdrop on stories, join conversations by asking about history, shared their fishing stories, rented a Boozie’s boat slip.

Let those who asked come cut firewood, let neighbors hunt morels, joined the Walleye Club, came to Packers pot lucks.

They contributed to causes, were invited to wakes. If one came in alone, they were asked about the other and, at the end, they were missed.

Tipton Poetry Journal 28

American Bald Eagle

NancyKayPeterson

An eagle perches on the highest strong branch of a tall river oak. I can see the curve of his breast, the white tail feathers brushing black bark. His silvery head turns in profile to face the wind, hooked beak dark against gray Mississippi waters. He watches the waves, intent on finding fish. Crows land on nearby limbs, then, quickly move away. If he turned from where the walleye might be and looked slightly east, he could, through this window, see the movement of my hand, the shape of my pen, the color of my eyes when I glance to see if he's still there, but I’m not prey, and I’m not danger. I am much less than the crows. All that matters is the limb he grasps, the promise of food in open water, and the wind’s direction if he chooses to spread his wings. He lives in terrible simplicity, heedless of my rapt attention, my longing to fly free.

Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry has appeared in print and online in numerous publications, most recently in The Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, HerWords, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, One Sentence Poems, RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticket: A Third Coast Review, Three Line Poetry and Tipton Poetry Journal. From 2004-2009, she co-edited and co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine (Winona, Minnesota). Her work has been included in two anthologies: Haikus for Hikers (Brick Street Poetry, Inc.) and Play (Outsider Press). Finishing Line Press published her two poetry chapbooks, Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021). She lives in Washington State. For more information, see www.nancykaypeterson.com.

Tipton

Journal 29

Poetry

There’s a war in Gaza JackeLorts

And meanwhile grass grows in Wichita, and the Hollywood actors seem to have settled their strike. It’s also apparent the Phillies won’t be playing in the World Series this year, and meanwhile there’s a war in Gaza, and the grass will continue to grow in Wichita.

Ohtani Signs with the Dodgers JackeLorts

Shohei Ohtani signs with the Dodgers For $700,000,000.

There’s got to be a poem in there somewhere. Enough money to run a small country: American Samoa? Liechtenstein?

To feed all the homeless in Portland for several years? To build homes for all the homeless in Chicago? To solve cancer? To solve the global warming crisis? To support the arts the world over. Or cure muscular dystrophy. Or to support one baseball player for one baseball team? Unfortunately, it ought to be the Los Angeles Angels, certainly not the Dodgers.

Shohei Ohtani signs with the Dodgers for $700,000,000. There’s got to be a poem in there somewhere.

[This poem was first published in March 2024 in Verse Virtual]

A retired educator, Jack e Lorts lives in rural eastern Oregon. He has published widely, if infrequently, over the past 50+ years such places as Arizona Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, English Journal, Rattle, Tipton Poetry Journal, Verse Daily ,and other places. His most recent book is Ephram Pratt & A Space of Ignorance, from Kelsay Books.

Tipton

Journal 30

Poetry

Until It’s Broke

RuthHolzer

The new boss was determined to fix our dysfunctional work unit, as she called it. She had already sacked a bunch of my longtime colleagues and reduced a recent hire to tears. At weekly meetings in her office she vented her displeasure: we had no fire in our bellies. We failed to meet expectations, let alone exceed them, as she had hoped. Our skill sets were behind the curve and as for innovative thinking, we were a lost cause. She was here to tell us that she was the long overdue new broom, precisely what we needed. Afterward, we’d shuffle out, motivated or mutinous, according to our natures, and at the door, shielded by others, I’d pour my cold coffee into her ficus.

Ruth Holzer lives in Virginia and is the author of eight chapbooks, most recently Home and Away (dancing girl press), Living in Laconia(Gyroscope Press) and Among the Missing (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared previously in Tipton Poetry Journal as well as in Southern Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Slant, and Freshwater among other journals and anthologies. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations.

Tipton Poetry Journal 31

Scent of Lilac on a Spring Day in Albuquerque

DaveMalone

The divorcee showed us the rental. A ranch-style adobe centrally located. A plumber lived next door and a professor on the other side of her. A fence buffeted our patch of grass from neighbors. Here on Sundays, my lover and I took our religion, set our naked feet in the sun even in February, pruned hedges like monks, drank wine on Saturdays. We played house and god for an entire year. So right. And those lilacs. How they covered the side lawn. I loved those lilac bushes, how they smelled, how they snuffed out traffic and our broken love. Those lilacs. I remember when the woman showed us the rental. I remember that smell. And I thought that’s how the rest of life would be.

Dave Malone is a poet and playwright from the Missouri Ozarks. His poems have appeared in Plainsongs, Midwest Review, and San Pedro River Review. His most recent poetry book is Bypass (Aldrich Press, 2023). He can be found online at davemalone.net or on Instagram @dave.malone.

Tipton Poetry Journal 32

Observing Osprey

LylanneMusselman

It was a surprise sighting near Prairie Creek, on a telephone pole close to the water but near enough for me to observe and snap some photographs. This “fish hawk” that usually is off in the distance in its nest or in flight, stayed still long enough for me to contemplate what this visit meant on my birthday, as I grow forever older, spending quiet time alone, seeking out nature and its beauty on a sunny September day. I notice its eyes, focused and searching. Its burnt sienna feathers flowing in the breeze, marveled at its size and balance. Later, I investigated the meaning of seeing an unforeseen osprey.

When this raptor appears, you’re coming into your power, changes will put you out of your comfort zone. It teaches the art of moving outward and upward.

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist, living in Indiana. Her work has appeared in Pank, Flying Island, Tipton Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, Indianapolis Review, among others, and many anthologies. Musselman is the author of seven chapbooks, and author of the full-length poetry collection, It’s Not Love, Unfortunately (Chatter House Press, 2018). Her seventh chapbook, Staring Dementia in the Face from Finishing Line Press was published in July 2023.

Tipton Poetry Journal 33

Recess

GloriaParker

She blossomed at ten. The fifth grade boys took notice surrounded her at the far edge of the playground, squeezed mud into little balls and flung them at her chest.

The poked her with sticks, chanting tits, tits, as we stood by, immobile, as in a dream.

When the end-of-recess buzzer sounded, everyone ran to the side door and lined up... even the girl with mud on her shirt filed in to the classroom without a word.

Worse stuff gets reported every day now, so it's hard to know how many girls still line up and file in without a word.

Gloria Parker is a retired primary school teacher living in Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Margie, Slipstream, Paterson Literary Review, Rattle, North Dakota Quarterly, Nimrod, Black Coffee Review, Loch Raven Review, Gyroscope and elsewhere.

Tipton Poetry Journal 34

Alzheimer’s in Indiana AmyAsh

We know how language leaves, the way love never does.

The mind may be muscle of memory, but the heart has its own kind of knowing.

As your words, your world began to escape your grasp, neuron and synapse, that cruel disease slipped so much from you, softly, like the stream’s slow erosion.

Like the way we don’t notice the seasons changing. At first gradual, then in one instant, it seems, the fiery leaves have overtaken the trees.

By winter, there’s nothing left, just the bare pale sky between the branches.

Amy Ash is the author of The Open Mouth of the Vase, winner of the 2013 Cider Press Review Book Award and the 2016 Etchings Press Whirling Prize postpublication award for poetry. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Rogue Agent, SWWIM, Ninth Letter, and Moon City Review, among others. She is Associate Professor Director of Creative Writing at Indiana State University.

Tipton Poetry Journal 35

Mosquitoes

BruceRobinson

at times, mosquitoes are my only companions, at times lighting on a word perhaps a phrase, or if you're disposed to be punctilious, a punctuation, which after all is their proper persuasion.

Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Spoon River, Rattle, Mantis, Two Hawks Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, Maintenant, and Dreich. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and divides his time unevenly among several four-footed and sure-footed creatures.

The Darien Gap

MichaelStrosahl

This jungle has arms, the brush eyes for your daughters, vines that will wrap around her legs, creeps climbing up ankles, pushing open her thighs, deaf to her screams and the tattering of dreams, clothing left torn open to shame, the teardrops of a child awakened to terror, falling into a desperate soil soon to birth another twisted tree.

Tipton Poetry Journal 36

The jungle has knives, this ivy thorns for the weak, bullets for the strong you will bend, bleed as you are told, pay at the toll by the head the high price of hope, more than you could ever bring in your pockets, tuck in your shoes, hide in the weave of your wife’s hair.

Sixty-six miles from Turbo to Yaviza, this jungle will rape you, will shake you, take you if you let it, and if you survive to see the sun, the sea, another day on the other side it is only the beginning of this quest for the promised land, where you will be welcomed to live off scraps of the Americans, living in their shadows as they pretend you are happy and you do not exist.

Michael E. Strosahl is a midwestern river-born poet, originally from Moline, Illinois, now living in DeKalb, Illinois. Besides several appearances in the Tipton Poetry Journal, Maik’s work has appeared in Flying Island, Bards Against Hunger projects, on buses, in museums and online at indianavoicejournal, poetrysuperhighway and projectagentorange. Maik also has a weekly poetry column at the online blog Moristotle & Company.

Poetry Journal 37

Tipton

Today I Have To PhilipAthans

My to do list today includes items like

>Stretch and exercise

>Revise reading goals

>Change AMEX password

>Check Netscape mail

Which leaves me wondering if I should include more stuff like

>At least try to be happy

>Let go of your childhood

>Make lasagna more often

>Stop lulling yourself to sleep by imagining exactly what it would feel like to jump off a really high cliff

Oh, and there’s a bunch of work stuff on there too.

Editor and author Philip Athans has been a driving force behind varied media including Alternative fiction & poetry magazine and Wizards of the Coast. He lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.

Tipton Poetry Journal 38

Amazon’s Idea of the Maginot Line

TonyTracy

Just beyond the quay I can hear a marching band rehearse Bowie’s Space Oddity. My dogs snooze beneath

an automated pergola dreaming in quarter notes. There’s a tv speaking from somebody’s window. In the greater distance earth rumbles with earthmovers, grind of heavy machinery concrete walls of Bezos being erected,

hemming us in with Amazon’s idea of the Maginot Line. Thankfully, you can still swim & fish

the backwaters, lagoons near the Xenia water tower. They haven’t taken that, yet. On random evenings I sneak over & float on my back between the cattails. Under the thrall of the cicadas’ hum I stare dumbly into space.

Tony Tracy lives in Iowa and is the author of 3 full-length collections of poetry: The Christening, Without Notice and Welcome to Your Life. Work has recently appeared, or is forthcoming in ACM, Jelly Bucket, Rattle, Hotel Amerika, Poetry East, Briar Cliff Review, Tar River Poetry, I-70 Review as well as other magazines and journals.

Tipton Poetry Journal 39

Hoover Road

ScottWaters

Coming out of Hagerstown the land rolls and tilts our rental car like a marble between hills

down the chute of a narrow road tar and dusty gravel between waving arms of oak, elm, hickory leaves like green memories brushing the windshield

no one told me growing up my Indiana grandparents lived in a landscape borrowed from Virginia or Tennessee hedgerows, woods, hollows, ponds, streams, beavers dragging their flat tails across the road my townie siblings and I dreaded those Sunday visits the grown-ups nattering about the weather, new lawn mowers, so-and-so got married

while we ate black raspberries behind the chicken coop climbed into the hay loft

Tipton Poetry Journal

of the big old red barn and could not dream of going so far away

a thousand miles and more but now I’ve returned after thirty years with my wife and son to find a stranger living in the farmhouse

a new white picket porch creamy grey wood siding the garden gone barn leveled and my six-year-old Snow White-haired mother still hiding in the cornfield waiting for the olly olly oxen free.

Originally from Indiana, Scott Waters now lives in Oakland, California with his wife and son. He graduated with a Master's Degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Scott has published previously in Third Wednesday, Main Street Rag, Better Than Starbucks, The Pacific Review, A New Ulster, and many other journals. Scott's first chapbook was published by Selcouth Station, and his poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Poetry Journal 41

Tipton

Les Fleurs du Mal

AnneWhitehouse

I am trapped in a car with my bickering family, hurtling down familiar roads with no way out.

Against a background music of argument and complaint, my mother ridicules my father, my father builds up steam. It’s only a matter of time until he explodes and she retaliates their orgasm of sorts.

I tune them out with a language they can’t understand, repeating Baudelaire’s verses until I know them by heart.

Visions of voluptuous evil, grandeur and decay, capture and comfort me from my ordinary evil.

Anne Whitehouse lives in New York City and is the author of poetry collections: The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, Outside from the Inside, and Steady, as well as the art chapbooks, Surrealist Muse (about Leonora Carrington), Escaping Lee Miller, Frida, and Being Ruth Asawa. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love. Her poem, “Lady Bird,” won the Nathan Perry DAR 2023 “Honoring American History” poetry contest. She has lectured about Longfellow and Poe at the Wadsworth Longfellow House in Portland, Maine, and Longfellow House Washington Headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Tipton Poetry Journal 42

With a shim

MarkDunbar

I was drunk on my innocence, how my hammer rang so fine. Every day topping off the last, capture the pretty all that was on my mind. The dare was to walk widdershins in the dew, and so I did because your hair in the moonlight, because a voice like a careless grooming said there will be time enough for blushing after the curtain falls, after we’ve stomped the dancefloor to kindling just so they can behold our style.

Now I need to know who qucklimed the shine on the firmament I took for granted, what hairline molecular affair, what tiny-let-us-hope-unsanctified cataclysm unmoored the armature I’d swear swooned when I measured it twice but now wobbles and will not abide a level on its hide, squeaks and rattles, makes eyes at decay, some essential ungrounding with the upper hand, and me still swearing I can fix it with a shim and some glue.

Mark Dunbar is a former teacher and writer originally from Columbus, Ohio, and now living outside Chicago. He attended Kenyon College where he was the recipient of the American Academy of Poets Award.

Tipton Poetry Journal 43

BrianBuilta

Waking up is always disappointing, your people still dead, Ukraine still invaded, assholes apparently still mandatory. Addled by histamines, I fixate on a fuchsia cheek smudge. Outside, some wet cement, a daffodil. In Topanga, the sun honeys the hills. Hangover, why can’t you play the flute instead of these constant bongos, or hangover Marcel Marceau style, only the silent semblance of pain. Hunched over a sidewalk splatter, a long list of fuck ups runs through my head. I put my boy in my pocket and walk through the day. Birds sing songs. I write poems the way a bird builds a nest. Building things out of things intended for other uses. Some guy with his right arm gone. Nice to have an extra set of ears. Somehow I’ve got Destin beach sand in a Mike & Ike can. Yellow stripes are the only thing keeping us from hurtling into each other. We should be fine, as long as we keep believing in the power of paint. A horse, napping like a champ. That’s another story. Everything seems to have happened.

Tipton Poetry Journal 44

Nest

Stuck in a Moment

BrianBuilta

After so many Tuesdays, lined up and shot, I’m merely delaying my collapse. At fifty-four my enterprise is shaky at best, delight in teething an olive off a stick. Small victories. On sunny days I see my shadow shaking her dark beauty, faithful companion. I’m not as brave as my son was, which is why I’m still here despite the tortuous titillation of life and the snarled spirit pooling at my feet. Or is that just my body’s ability to darken even the brightest day?

Hard to tell, even after fifty-four rotations. Most of my memories are talon-scarred and stained with dry beak blood. I have learned this: one moment you can be arranging hydrangea then clutched and carried skyward wondering how everything unfurled so fast. Perhaps half a jay flapping in the snow isn’t the best gift I’ve given, but it’s somehow good for the plot. Sinking your teeth into a posh plum obliterates something else, scatters some juice but makes you feel better. Then the sun sinks and everything is hungry.

Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. . His work has been published in North of Oxford, Hole in the Head Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, TriQuarterly and 2River View among others.

Tipton Poetry Journal 45

Cow and Raven

TerryTrowbridge

The wild forest cows of Manitoulin Island roam the Milky Way when stars glint the snow, hoofprints pace paths under constellations tracing tesseracts once tracked by Huron buffalo.

The domesticated raven on Manitoulin Island steps across doorsteps, leaves footprints on the floor, doesn’t fly inside, which is polite style, but doesn’t like gossip, so what does she visit for?

The cows look into windows, raven flies next to cars. Freedom for the curious takes some social grace, and patience from the happily housed who value their space, (even though they know how to tesseract and gossip with the stars).

Pushcart Prize nominee, researcher & farmer Terry Trowbridge’s poems are in Pennsylvania Literary Journal, MasticadoresUSA, Poetry Pacific, Carousel, Lascaux Review, Carmina, untethered, Progenitor, Miracle Monocle, Orbis, Pinhole, Big Windows, Muleskinner, Brittle Star, Mathematical Intelligencer, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, New Note, Hearth and Coffin, Beatnik Cowboy, Delta Poetry Review, Stick Figure, miniMAG, and 100+ more. His lit crit is in BeZine, Erato, Amsterdam Review, Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike, Seeds, and The /t3mz/ Review. His Erdös number is 5. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first two writing grants. Terry lives in Lincoln, Ontario.

Tipton Poetry Journal 46

After Arguing in Public AlMaginnes

No word or gesture can stitch what a few heedless words slice. Only time, that old tailor, has a chance of fitting us into the costumes we wore before entering the store where we unraveled over the purchase of a chair. In a month we will forget the color of the chair, even who wanted to bring it home and who wanted to leave it sitting. In a year we won’t know why it was important. Today, a fumy silence between us, a drive home unbroken by a voice from the radio or either of us. Just the frantic wish that everyone who heard us or saw our snarls might forget the spectacle we wove or spy us in a better moment and grant us the forgiveness we grant each other each day.

Al Maginnes’ tenth collection, Fellow Survivors: New and Selected Poems appeared in spring of 2023. Recent poems appear in Salt, Cimarron Review, eratio and many others. He is recently retired from teaching and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Tipton Poetry Journal 47

Homemade, 1939

DavidHummon

ink

Midwestern, true, and from the thirties, even a grown daughter and her father with wire-rimmed glasses and bib overalls –but this photograph is no American Gothic.

No tight dour faces, framed in carpenter gothic, no vertical board-and-batten siding, arched gable window, no backdrop of perfect trees from the woodland of sacred shapes.

Just a black and white snapshot with border, brother and sister close but not touching, their father, a body's width to the right, standing in front of overgrown apple trees, real trees, real men, farmers, at home in their bodies, sleeves rolled up for the heat of the day. Center stage this eighteen-year-old poses in her taffeta black gown –lace inset on the bodice, rhinestone spaghetti straps, not for church, not for the farm, not for the town –and smiles, pleased, 4-H proud, modeling her dress, her hair, her dream, gazing out to somewhere, singing and dancing all the way to New York, the same year Judy sang Over the Rainbow.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Aunt Jan. David Hummon, with watercolor wash

Everybody Knows Everybody

DavidHummon

Everyone called me Jake. I grew up just outside of town on a farm and lived here all my life, except for the war, Army, France. My shop was a good little place, red brick from Wabash clay, solid like the bank next door and Old Main at the Institute. Had a barber pole outside, windows, and two leather chairs.

I knew everybody around here, you do in a small town, from church, the Lodge, the Post, and the farmers who came in on Saturday morning, the young bucks before the prom. And everybody knew me, too: said I was a good man at my funeral. Of course, that’s all gone now, there’s an empty lot where my shop was.

I got to know some out-of-town folks, too, you do as a barber, salesmen passing through who stopped for a trim and a talk. In summer, some folks visiting the Institute dropped in, like that boy, maybe fourteen, who walked by twice, peered in the window before coming in. Told me he’d never been in a real barbershop. From up Chicago way. Seemed nice enough and maybe a bit pleased. He clutched a book in his hand the whole time: Antic Hay. I always wondered what that was about.

David Hummon is a poet, artist, and emeritus professor (Holy Cross College), living in Winchester, Massachusetts. He has long-term interests in family, place, and identity. His poetry has been published in The Bicoastal Review, The Connecticut River Review, The Naugatuck River Review, The Northern New England Review, The Healing Muse, and The Unitarian Universalist World.

Tipton Poetry Journal 49

Review: L'Allegria translated by Wally Swist

ReviewedbyBarryHarris

Title: L'Allegria

Author: Giuseppe Ungaretti

Translator: Wally Swist

Year: 2023

Publisher: Shanti Arts

In this bilingual edition of L'Allegria, Giuseppe Ungaretti's poignant and evocative poems come to life through this new translation by Wally Swist. The translation came about, Swist reveals in his introduction, through his annual, autumn practice of re-reading a writer he had first read in his youth. A visit to his local library resulted in an Italian version, which he was unable to read. Swist was inspired to attempt a line-by-line translation of L’Allegria in the tradition of Denise Levertov’s translation of the French poet Eugene Guilevic without knowing French.

Ungaretti's original work, written during the trench warfare of World War I, resonates with raw emotion and introspection. The poems convey a sense of melancholy, introspection, and a connection to nature and the human experience. Ungaretti's introspective style captures the essence of the human condition.

Tipton Poetry Journal 50

Tipton

The poems convey a deep sense of longing, reflection, and the human experience within the turmoil of war.

In Ungaretti’s “Veglia” which Swist translates as “Wakefulness,” we hear of the personal brutality of war:

A whole night hunkered close to a companion slaughtered his mouth clenched eyes looking up at the full moon the swelling of his hands penetrated into my silence

Ungaretti’s poems are sometimes most powerful in their brevity. In “Tramonto” (translated as “Sunset”) Swist conveys this 3-line poem:

Il carnato del cielo sveglia oasi al nomade d’amore

The flesh of the sky awakens an oasis to the nomad of love

In “Stasera” (translated as “Tonight”), we hear:

Balaustrate di brezza per appoggiare stasera la mia malinconia

Balustrades of breezes blow tonight to support my melancholy

The author's mastery of language and imagery allows the reader to delve into the emotional and psychological depths of the human experience, offering a compelling exploration of life and its complexities. Through Swist's translation, the essence of Ungaretti's poetry is preserved, allowing English-speaking readers

Poetry Journal

In “In Dormiveglia” (translated as “As I Doze”), an all too-familiar description of battle brings the war vividly to our minds:

The air riddled like needled lace with bullets some men caught in trenches like snails in their shells.

One of the more powerful poems for me is “La Notte Bella” (translated as “The Beautiful Night”) from which we hear:

I have been a stagnant pond of darkness

Now like a baby at their mother’s breast I suckle space itself

Now I am drunk with the universe.

The bilingual format invites readers to engage with Ungaretti's verses in both Italian and English. This dual presentation showcases the original language and also demonstrates Swist's skill in capturing the nuances and subtleties of Ungaretti's poetry in translation. For those who know a little Italian, I am sure it is intellectually satisfying to see and understand Swist’s word choices. For others, like me, who do not know Italian, it is still interesting to look at both languages side-by-side and wonder how well the translation has been rendered.

Ungaretti's poetry is characterized by its brevity and intensity, each verse a reflection of the poet's innermost thoughts and emotions. The themes of love and loss, memory and the passage of time permeate his work, offering readers a glimpse into the complexities of the human experience. Through Swist's translation, these themes are brought to life in a way that resonates with readers despite differences in language and culture.

52 to immerse themselves in the beauty and complexity of Ungaretti’s words.

Tipton Poetry Journal

In L'Allegria, Giuseppe Ungaretti's timeless poetry finds new resonance through Wally Swist's translation. This bilingual edition is a testament to the enduring power of poetry to transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries, speaking to the universal themes of joy, sorrow, and resilience. Through the collaboration of Ungaretti and Swist, readers are invited on a literary journey that explores the depths of human emotion with grace and sensitivity. L'Allegria is a meditation on life, love, and the enduring power of art to illuminate the human experience.

Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature (Ex Ophidia Press, 2019), the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize. His recent poems have appeared in Asymptote, Chicago Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain: Vermont College of Fine Arts Journal, The Montreal Review, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Poetry London, Scoundrel Time, and The Seventh Quarry Poetry Magazine (Wales). He lives in Massachusetts.

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and several anthologies by Brick Street Poetry. He has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center. Married and father of two grown sons, Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company.

He graduated a long time ago with a major in English from Ball State University.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Contributor Biographies

Gilbert Allen lives in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, where he is the Bennette E. Geer Professor of Literature Emeritus at Furman University. In 2014 he was elected to the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the state's literary hall of fame. For more information about him and his work, see the interview at https://slantbooks.org/close-reading/interviews/belladonna-beautiful-butdeadly-qa-with-gilbert-allen/

Editor and author Philip Athans has been a driving force behind varied media including Alternative fiction & poetry magazine and Wizards of the Coast. He lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.

Maine poet Ken Craft ‘s poems have appeared in The Writer's Almanac, Spillway, Pedestal Magazine, and numerous other journals and e-zines. He is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Reincarnation & Other Stimulants (Kelsay Books, 2021).

After 34 years with Eli Lilly and Company, Brendan Crowley set up his own consulting and executive coaching business, Brendan Crowley Advisors LLC. He helps executives grow in their roles and careers. Brendan is originally from Ireland and lives with his wife Rosaleen in Zionsville, Indiana. He has a passion for photography and loves taking photographs of his home country, Ireland, and here in Indiana.

A nine time Pushcart nominee in both prose and poetry, Liz Dolan has published two poetry collections. Her ten grandchildren pepper her life. Liz lives in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.

Tipton Poetry Journal

David Hummon is a poet, artist, and emeritus professor (Holy Cross College), living in Winchester, Massachusetts. As a sociologist, he has long-term interests in place and identity. His poetry has been published in The Bicoastal Review, The Connecticut River Review, The Naugatuck River Review, The Northern New England Review, The Healing Muse, and The Unitarian Universalist World.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist, living in Indiana. Her work has appeared in Pank, Flying Island, Tipton Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, Indianapolis Review, among others, and many anthologies. Musselman is the author of seven chapbooks, and author of the fulllength poetry collection, It’s Not Love, Unfortunately (Chatter House Press, 2018). Her seventh chapbook, Staring Dementia in the Face from Finishing Line Press was published in July 2023.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Denise Thompson-Slaughter is a writer and retired academic editor living near Rochester, New York. In addition to journal publications, her published work includes three volumes of poetry, a mystery novella, and a book on the paranormal, which you can see listed on https://www.denisethompsonslaughter.com. A book of her collected memoir essays, Since You Weren't There & other memories, will be published by Running Wild Press by Spring 2025.

Tipton Poetry Journal

Editor

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and several anthologies by Brick Street Poetry. He has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center.

Married and father of two grown sons, Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company.

His poetry has appeared in Kentucky Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, Silk Road Review, Saint Ann‘s Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, Night Train, Silver Birch Press, Flying Island, Awaken Consciousness, Writers’ Bloc, Red-Headed Stepchild and Laureate: The Literary Journal of Arts for Lawrence. One of his poems was on display at the National Museum of Sport and another is painted on a barn in Boone County, Indiana as part of Brick Street Poetry‘s Word Hunger public art project. His poems are also included in these anthologies: From the Edge of the Prairie; Motif 3: All the Livelong Day; and Twin Muses: Art and Poetry.

He graduated a long time ago with a major in English from Ball State University.

Poetry Journal 61

Tipton