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Complicity by Carol Poster

Gregory Luce
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Complicity by Carol Poster

Caught in the gusting wind,

a swallowtail flutters ahead.

The lights are red

for eight lanes in each direction,

leaving a vast emptiness

at the heart of the intersection,

except for a few left-turning SUVs,

and the butterfly,

buffeted by monsoon winds

from feeding on golden bells

in the median

to this oddly desolate space,

wings beating ineffectually.

Soon, the light will change

and I will drive forward

with the rest, complicit

in an ephemeral death.

 

Carol Poster is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, most recently Returning to Dust (Finishing Line Press 2017), and verse translations from Latin, Classical Greek, and French.  She has also published three books of commercial nonfiction and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona where she works as a freelance writer and photographer. Her books can be found at: https://www.amazon.com/Carol-Poster/e/B001JRUYTA

Image by B137 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Shared Bed by Maryhelen Snyder

Gregory Luce
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Shared Bed by Maryhelen Snyder

Grandgirl, you are in my bed now, and in all of it.

You are horizontal and your soccer feet are planted

like oaks on the far side. Your head wants me,

 

wants to root itself like our over-sized pet pig

whose snout found its way in and out of all

hitherto assumed confines. Unable to sleep

 

because over-accustomed, I know, to sleeping alone,

I get up and half-circle my larger than king-size bed,

only to discover your immovable legs. So I learn

 

that seven is old enough to be stretched across all

my space and erase me from the chronic familiar.

Next day, over our strawberry smoothies at the Mall,

 

you watch me withdraw into reverie. Grandma,

you ask, what are you thinking? Bringing me back

to you. I tell you about our bodies in bed. This night

 

when it is dark and we’ve finished our chocolate and game,

you will climb in beside me again and read aloud

while I become child and drift to the edge of dreams.

 

You will turn out the light, then cross the distance

between us and place yourself gently under my arm.

We will sleep. Will you, grandchild, till death do us

 

hardly part, remind me how our bodies need each other’s?

Maryhelen Snyder (Mel) has been writing poetry and prose for over 75 of her 85 years of experiencing the joy and complexity of being alive. She was named the 2016 Poet of the Year by Passager which also published her most recent book, Never the Loss of Wings. Among the poets she carries in her heart is Emily Dickinson who could express the inexpressible in lines such as this one: “A perfect — paralyzing Bliss —//Contented as Despair —”
Image by Eve Drewelowe (Curiator.com) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Two Poems by Jacqueline Jules

Gregory Luce
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Two Poems by Jacqueline Jules

Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving

My mother framed the Rockwell painting.

That image of matriarch in white apron

setting down white platter

with turkey large enough to feed

all the smiling faces at the table.

 

Everyone’s eyes gleam with affection

anticipating a meal as delectable as manna.

 

Every mouth is happy to heap praise

as generously as they spoon mashed potatoes.

 

No one longs to be anywhere else

with anyone else.

 

“It’s the way it’s supposed to be,”

my mother often said with red nose

and wet handkerchief

as year after year

her dining room bore no resemblance

to Norman Rockwell’s painting,

particularly the pleased patriarch

standing behind his wife.

 

The picture hangs on my wall, too,

as I sit at an undressed table

to eat cold cereal with a book

written by a family therapist

happy to explain

why idealized images

damage self-esteem.

 

Dry Needling

If you stick a needle

in a hyper-irritable spot,

taut muscles will relax,

my therapist says.

 

I laugh at his silly plan.

Better to tease a tiger

than poke the pain.

 

My therapist insists.

 

Find the trigger. Stick

a needle in the spot.

Push till you feel

your grief twist

and twitch.

 

Disrupt the spasm

pinching the nerve

tighter and tighter.

“Dry Needling” appears in Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press.

 

Jacqueline Jules is the author of three chapbooks, Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press), Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications), and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String (Winner, Helen Kay Chapbook Prize 2016). Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Burgeon, Gargoyle, Beltway Poetry, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Little Patuxent Review, and The Broadkill Review. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com where you will see that she is also the author of 40 books for young readers including the Zapato Power series and Never Say a Mean Word Again.

Photo by Joe Mabel [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Two Poems by William Tinto

Gregory Luce
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Two Poems by William Tinto

Awakening in Poesy Town

This morning I rose from my bed,

as if from between the sheets of the New Yorker,

the world random as free verse.

Today the dog walkers are at their charges’ behest,

poetically pooping their pooches

balancing take-away coffee cups and canine crap.

Passersby smile tragically, the mailman nods ironically today

we’re all on one end or another

of a conjunction-there’s no punctuation

You might assume Gertrude Stein sits behind the bus driver

who challenges his riders by making no full stops no

one can ignore anyone and anyone can ignore no one.

I am a molecule in a stable compound

converted overnight to animism,

my age and fears transparent as a watch crystal.

A dog pauses to have a smoke with the bus driver,

the mailman studies a withered bloom.

Neighbors fling open their windows and shake their rugs,

waving the flag of the same beloved homeland

obverse and reverse.

 

Poem Kills Capitalism

This verse does the work of

two ordinary poems

for about the same price.

Nice. If you’ve read all this way,

I’d say that’s ten percent down.

You’re already invested-

these words are product-tested

go ahead – finish it up – make it pay.

By the way, this bonus line costs you nothing –

there, don’t you feel better?

Read, digest, repeat.

 

William Tinto writes: I am a visual artist who has written poetry, mostly in secret, since elementary school. I am also a self-professed grammar geek and (very) amateur etymologist. Poetry challenges my sense of rhythm and sound—I think of composing verse in the same way as composing a painting, or in the way a musician takes a solo. Arlington is home for my wife and me.

Image: Carol M. Highsmith [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Two Poems by Mike McDermott

Gregory Luce
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Two Poems by Mike McDermott

Pas de Deux

 

In our choreography, Dad and I

had three types of dance:

the shower, the stairs, and the car.

The shower’s dance was a slow kabuki-

 

like affair, where each movement

was punctuated with a certain pose

that had its own philosophy of alpha

and omega for each shifting limb.

 

The stairs required an ancient respect

where I, the younger, preceded

in descent and followed in ascent,

to catch the fall that would eventually come.

 

The car became a prop and barrier

to hold and skirt, target and leave,

enter and exit, like the hat and pouring rain

that danced with Gene Kelly.

 

In our dances, I provided the support

while spinning around his unending

juggernaut always heading for a rail,

a wall, “Some damn thing to grab on to.”

 

Hopper’s Diner Second Shift:

Reflection on the Mood of “Nighthawks” (1942)

 

For the waitress behind

the counter, there is a serenity

that pretends to come

with the end of the day,

 

when the sunlit crowds have left

and a few stragglers clack

heels down a dusky

film noir side street,

 

when the second sitting

dinner crowd has disappeared

and the guy at the end

of the counter sipping coffee,

 

hoping the waitress would bend over

in front of him, her puckered

blouse the only sex he’d get

for the night, finally leaves,

 

when late shift nighthawks alight

and the matte black of night

fills the background

behind the neon,

 

then her shift is done and she

says “G’night” to Cal the late guy,

goes home, undresses alone,

lets out the cat to prowl midnight,

 

and crawls into bed feeling

the end of the day settle over her body

like a flannel blanket of armor

against the bedlam of the day.

 

Mike McDermott has published poems in Minimus, WordWrights!, phoebe, Cabin Fever (Idaho), The Federal Poet, Frantic Egg 4, and Rustlings; a short story in Minimus;  various non-fiction, and, long ago, freelanced about frolicking porcelain frogs for catalogs.  He has an MFA from George Mason University and as president of the GMU Writer’s Club organized readings for Margaret Atwood, W.D. Snodgrass, William Stafford, W.S. Merwin, and others.  He has served on editorial boards of WordWrights! and GW Forum and is currently the Treasurer of The Word Works Inc.  He has been an active participant in Washington, D.C, area poetry readings for several years.

Image by Aude – Self-published work by Aude, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=525258

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