Blog | Mid-Atlantic Review | published by Day Eight

Dancing Daughter of Daughters by Maryhelen Snyder

Literary Arts

-

July 14, 2017

0

Dancing Daughter of Daughters by Maryhelen Snyder

This morning we stand at the seawall,

my dancing daughter and I. As I circle her

with my arm and lean my head against her,

I know gravity in my bones. My body

is shortening itself earthward, and

friend death seems as close as the sea

which is wild today, swollen and loud,

and dependable as the stars for those

who learn its rhythms. The wind

messes our hair. The sun is a hint

of sun, a faceless god with pale electric

fingers. Oh my, we are so blessed,

she says as though singing, to . . .

exist, I finish our sentence as she bends

her head now down onto mine.

Yesterday she carried home a shell

from her snorkeling out there where

the blues are reddened by reef-bed,

an old conch covered with hardened

sea-life, holy with having been eaten.

My daughter’s daughter is waiting

for her up north of here where later today

she will be held and gazed at.

Mellie, granddaughter, dancing daughter

of daughters dancing back into time,

will touch her mother’s face

in the way of infants, her hands saying,

you are there.

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 —”

Two Poems by Alexander Olesker

Gregory Luce

-

June 30, 2017

0

Cape Cod

Peace rumbles in the distance like thunder

then flashes in your window like lightening

to hang heavy in the air like the damp

so the boards of your old home moan under the burden.

But how can I keep hope alive

when I cannot even maintain a houseplant?

By tomorrow it will pass, leaving droplets in the morning

so that only grass remembers.

In the crisp sea breeze blowing

down from gray skies at sunrise,

who could blame us for forgetting

that it might still be alright?

Requiem for a Wolf Pack

To Denali’s East Fork wolf pack, current status unknown, and the indigenous peoples of Alaska

I’ll miss you most, the ones I never met

and cannot know, all fur and fangs and spirit I project.

Just sense of loss and something else I can’t replace

that tugs along the web of life

now tangled with my heartstrings.

We studied you one hundred years,

wrote books and papers, now one poem,

then tracked and trapped and shot you from above.

It was not mercy, it was not sport.

When glaciers melt they weep,

now even caribou cry out

and Denali, the Tall One, regrets

that it could not watch over you.

Alexander Olesker is active in the Washington, DC, area spoken word community, including performing as a featured poet at the La-Ti-Do spoken word and musical theater series, and has been published in AmLit, American University’s literary journal. He writes at a standing desk facing a window.

Image by Juan José González Vega – handed over by the author to the Project, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3156154

Seeing by Holly Mason

Gregory Luce

-

June 17, 2017

0

I.

“Koi,” in Japanese,

is homophonic for the word “love.”

Koi fish can recognize

the person that feeds them.

Circling your mother’s pond,

they open their wide mouths

to vanish the pellets.

II.

Klimt’s ladies in gold

Flowers in their heavy amber hair

Subject of the female body

A hunger

III.

“Don’t look directly at it,”

you say, “I know it’s hard not to

because I was doing it, too.”

“I’ve never seen it so close,”

I say, “and so bright orange.”

“It’s pink,” you say,

“I think we see colors differently.”

Holly Mason received her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University, where she taught and served as the blog editor for So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art. Her poems have appeared in Outlook Springs, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, The Northern Virginia Review, and forthcoming in Foothill Poetry Journal.

Image by Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63604

One Step Down by John Huey

Gregory Luce

-

June 2, 2017

0

Toward the New Year, that late December,

we parked the car near the old Sealtest Plant

just off Pennsylvania a block down from

Washington Circle where, since 1860, the

General has sat, always astride his mount,

determined in his slave holding gentility,

as the world spun out and

away from him.

And in that block the world was spinning

away from us as Joe, the proprietor, gruffly

welcomed us with an icy stare as we descended

into the gloom stepping down that small increment

to the One Step Down which was jazz and junky

central in that part of town and, accepted there,

hippie juicers, we sort of fit in without the

peculiarities of those habits related to a

noble musical profession so filled with

prophets and fallibility.

Charles “Yard-Bird” Parker wailed from the jukebox

and we could never figure out where those ancient

45’s came from that never seemed to wear out as

generations of drunks poured in their quarters and

“Strange Fruit” came with a bitter crop defined as

the place peeled back all assumptions.

The secretive white Georgetown addicts filled the bar

stools most nights while the student types, sitting in

the ancient wooden booths along the right wall, got

pitchers of beer for $2.50 or so and nodded sagely to

the always lovely waitresses who sometimes had what

you needed for exams in one of the beer apron front

pockets where those essential study aides, the “black

beauties,” were kept, two or three of those waking

a kid up for a day or two, this joint being known

as sort of a “one stop shop” for this sort of thing.

Philosophers all we raged far into the night till last call

touching the dreams of those real hipsters from the 50’s,

they still an echo that we just caught, some of us skeptical

of the bright colors and vague assumptions of our age,

attracted to the darker hues down here,

just that final step, that last step, those

few steps down that might penetrate

the fog and make the world

clear at last.

And just before the lights came up I sat there

with a brilliant friend, later to succumb to

religion, who for now was as gloomy as a

Russian poet fresh from Gulag, giving me

that old Mandelstam look of doom while

pronouncing life shit as I took issue with

his threats of self-harm based on a violent

passion for a woman far advanced in maturity,

if not years, someone he just could not handle.

In the end Old Baby Jesus saving him,

he settling for that as slowly,

from that night,

we drifted apart.

But for then, in the listless light of the early

hours we ventured out, covered by the

infernal glow of an all-night fire,

braced more for action than for

more words, working out the

dangers as we, ever carefully

calibrated and backlit,

stepped into the city

and continued to

mark our time.

John Huey’s student work of the 60’s-70’s was influenced by teachers in Vermont such as John Irving at Windham College and William Meredith at Bread Loaf. After many years he returned to writing poetry in 2011. Recently he has had poems presented in two issues of Poetry Quarterly and in the Temptation anthology published in London by Lost Tower Publications. Work has also appeared in Leannan Magazine, Sein und Werden, In Between Hangovers, and The Lost River Review. A poem regarding the Trump inauguration will appear shortly in an anthology to be published by Poets For Sanctuary (formerly known as Poets Against Trump). Perfume River Poetry Review will soon feature a piece in an upcoming issue regarding Vietnam. His first full length book, The Moscow Poetry File, has been accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press and it will be out in October 2017. Email jhuey92@yahoo.com

Image by Freimut Bahlo – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9065073

Statue in the Shallows by Rebecca Leet

Gregory Luce

-

May 18, 2017

0

Odd. Just plain odd. No other word for it.

It’s hard to see, against the backdrop

of beech and brush at the edge of the river.

Fisherfolk stare across the water—pondering

why a statue would be planted in such a spot.

Two reedy posts for a base, a torso in the mold

of a bloated football, the top an L-shaped pole

slightly angled. Odd spot for artwork—waterfowl

are the area’s main visitors. Mallards fly low,

leapfrogging each other. An osprey jets down,

hooks a fish, leaves. Every 30 seconds,

a cormorant slides feet-first to a watery landing,

like a baseball player trying to beat the tag

at third. Sounds are few, faint: plop of a lure

breaking the dull green surface, soft rhythm of paddles

as kayakers mosey downstream. In two bends

they‘ll spy the iconic obelisk of the Washington

Monument. The only other urban inkling,

now and then, is a silver Boeing 757 lumbering

toward a landing—like the cormorant, feet-first.

The statue is tiny compared to bronze equestrians

who inhabit parks and traffic circles across the city;

curiously, they include Joan of Arc. Someone

with a strong arm—and stronger conceit—might hurl

a rock across the Potomac at the statue; it would fall short.

That thought takes off instantly as frawk, frawk

breaks the stillness, the statue sprouts colossal wings

and, graceful as a ballerina, the great blue heron lifts skyward.

During a Washington-based career in politics, policy and news, Rebecca Leet has been widely published and quoted in newspapers, magazines, and books. She turned her pen to poetry in 2015 after 40 years as a journalist and author. Her first poem was published in Passager in Winter 2017. She lives in Arlington and draws much of her inspiration from nature, whether in her backyard or idling along the Potomac.

Image: By Walter Siegmund – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=706818