My childhood collections stamps from every country placed neatly in a book tiny porcelain cats in a box and stories about their lives that made sense
Fifty years later, I started collecting again when the Fog descended, because of it beautiful music to make me feel beautiful things or just anything a basket of photographs of places I’d like to be instead of here and a list of every good memory every joy and pleasure from my life that I could think of
I would say in case I need them later but of course now is later in fact now has become where time, instead of ticking by steadily pools and sloshes and drips Plague Time
We’ve entered the Triangle where the clocks and altimeters go wild and entire planeloads of people disappear and if there is a story at all we’re in the thick of it and the author has gotten stuck and is now gazing out some train window at passing cornfields for inspiration
Some people say this oozing and sloshing is because we’ve entered a great global bottleneck and are being squeezed through to a new, higher-order paradigm while that may be so, it’s too soon to tell but also, those people could have just made a list of things to think of when they get scared like I did
I know you feel this too and maybe some days we can even talk about it maybe even face to face other days when the Fog is too thick and my clocks have all melted I take out my list and I remember my father on summer evenings smelling of sweat and dirt and cut grass clipping three peach roses—apricot nectar damp with dew from the garden carefully selected to all be of equal beauty and giving us each one in a small white vase to enjoy.
Gail Atwater is a therapist living in Dallas, TX who attended Duke during the Precambrian era. She enjoys exploring the power of artistic expression for personal transformation in her therapy practice, her Artist’s Way group, and her own life. She also loves taking photos, singing harmonies, and growing tomatoes.
Two men come, With man-built instruments; They laid on the ground Tarps, big, blue, stretched Canvases collect what was left of this year’s trees.
Brown blankets break Wet as gusts push threads Debris flying heavily; Cherry bombs pulse, Pine needles, hardened Crab apples.
Vibrance bled dry, Fallen colors sapped, Yellows spewed, seeping reds, Sinking soil chokes The green from where they grew.
Until two men come, With their wish to be wind, Blowing off life lost and leave When we pay what the price costs.
Garrett Souliere is a professional writer and editor who lives in Virginia with his girlfriend and their four four-legged friends. Founding Editor and Publisher of Quibble, he’s also worked as Head Fiction editor atplain china, and previously been published in Rebel.
Image by AnnaS58012, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
To a Lover, Foolishly Abandoned Years Ago, For Her Birthday in Early April
What I wish for you: sunrise, with just the right number of clouds, at just the right altitude, to tint and refract slanting rays onto your garden;
air, mild, moist; a breeze strumming the new leaves like a harp, and slipping through the open bedroom window like a stealthy lover,
stirring you from magical dreams. Coffee’s brewing aroma; cat brushing your bare ankle, or maybe a grateful dog; chores,
light and familiar, that await you, and no more; a walk to be taken, redbud for color, mock orange for perfume, and a patient
slender heron stalking shallow water; redwing blackbirds, too perched on swaying cattails, singing for a mate.
Back home, books to be read, really, too many of them, stacked on end table and nightstand, one of them splayed open on the seat of your chair, and maybe a story,
anxious to be told, just waiting for evening’s soothing silence and your pen. More than any of this–someone to share these treasures with.
Now that his beard is white and his back is bent, Alan Abrams has forsaken a remunerative career in pursuit of Erato. Once in a while he catches a glimpse of her before she scurries away. Even so, a smattering of his poems and stories have insinuated themselves into publication, in such varied journals as The Hare’s Paw, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, El Portal, Autumn Sky, and The Black Boot (which alas is no longer afoot). A novel is in the works.
Image: By Sofig (Sophie Grail) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47320342
A friend sends A picture of three chickens Standing in a kind of Formation On a road where The snow has begun To retreat
Funny I tell her I was singing the theme from Green Acres Last evening,
And thinking About people Who move to rural places In search of serenity- While also thinking “This village could use a Trader Joe’s “
As for myself I am smitten With mountains –
Majestic but Unpretentious
And the way The silence calms me Like Miles Davis Playing a muted, tender ballad – which my friend says he mastered after two years singing the evening sky
Sunday in East Glover
Two lane roads twist Like an awkward boy At a house party.
Chamber of Commerce Autumnal breezes whisper
“It’s ok to be an October smitten brother in a corny plaid jacket which screams I too fell in love With travel agency fairy tales About this place!
I am a concrete-weary man En route to a tryst With trees and silence
I wave to blushing hills – Check the rear view mirror For police suffering from a drought Of quotas
But now The day is as calm as my blackness was unsettling for the woman in the General Store
Reuben Jackson is the Archivist with the University of The District of Columbia’s Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. His poems have been included in over 50 anthologies, and in two volumes—fingering the keys (Gut Punch Press, 1990), and Scattered Clouds (2019, Alan Squire Publishing) He also co-hosts The Sound Of Surprise on WPFW-FM in Washington, D.C.
I know you are cold, motionless under covers holding the warmth so that freeze won’t seep into your skin. I know you are cold, on the sofa under a blanket, trying to do a crossword puzzle by candle light. I know you are cold, standing with your back to the gas stove, hoping the flame will lift the chill from your body. I know you are cold, warming yourself by the fire, wearing ear-phones plugged into a laptop listening to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.
I know you are alone, trapped in your house by the charged power line lying like a snake slithering in your driveway. I know you are alone, waiting for your son or daughter to take you to their house where you can lay down in ease. I know you are alone walking through neighborhoods, eyeing empty houses, black filling the windows as if in mourning. I know you are alone, in a crowded restaurant after you finished lunch, wearing old clothes, a grimy self you want to wash.
I know you are in the dark, defiantly holding a candle, watching snow fall on the lawn sheeted by ice under crystallized trees. I know you are in the dark, silence alerting your body to danger as freezing rain pelts the roof and glass. I know you are in the dark, wondering if the distant train’s horn is one carrying lost hours under a midnight moon or bringing back time before sunrise. I know you are in the dark, gripping the comforter so you don’t lose yourself in the night or melt into the liquid black of God.
FOR SHARON: A SONG OF US
Obsidian colored hair and skin, dark as the soil of Illinois, smooth curves of fertile earth forever young, her smile the sunrise, her eyes the gentle night.
Sitting with friends at breakfast, she waves when she sees me. We exchange slight conversations; these bits providing nourishment for the week.
Her voice is a smooth velvet sound rippling through words, streaming through our laughter, music written by the infinite composer is measured to the beat in my chest.
I wish my hand could contour her cheek, our eyes closed, lips upon lips.
Song of Africa, I am song of Ireland. Let us stand on the same land and lift songs from of our united hearts in the morning, one soul rising from the altar.
SUNSHINE DIDN’T COME TODAY
The week has been under drizzling gray. So I bought some yellow roses, chrysanthemums, daisies, and lemon drops for you.
As you roll the drop on your tongue, you put the flowers in a vase and deeply inhale the smell.
I remember when we met. You wore a white blouse and yellow skirt, colors of spring days and young hope,
your hair dark as woods unexplored, eyes of earth nurturing virgin forest
that now look at me as you are smiling.
Sunshine has come today.
MARYLAND HEIGHTS
She stands at the precipice overlooking the bridges into Harpers Ferry, the armory and the houses. Then she looks to her right, upriver of the Potomac, at buildings along the river and trees descending from cliffs to the river banks, in the direction where the river came from, when clear waters passed over shallow stream beds, gathering itself from tributaries, in a hurry to find direction and flow, sometimes recklessly flooding riversides when it was born of a blizzard.
She extends her arms, as if she is going to embrace all the trees and lifts her head to give thanks to the clear sky.
I stand several steps back from the ledge, stare at people rowing boats and paddling kayaks at the union of the Shenandoah and the Potomac. I look southward at the river flowing through the gorge, notice the muddy and deep water progress slowly to the bay, then to the ocean.
I am aware of the disguise covering swift currents and turbulence cascading over boulders at Great Falls. I’m old enough to remember when the river was not full. Water ebbed from the banks during droughts, revealing sandy scars.
She turns around and look sat me, smiling at my quizzical expression. “You know, you are a very beautiful man.”
I am terrified of heights.
John Monagle writes: I reside in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Retired from working at The Library of Congress, I’m a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts with a MFA in creative Writing, specializing in poetry. I’ve had numerous poems published in a wide variety of journals including Minimus, Wordwrights, Bourgeon, and District Lines.
Image: Pub. by Nichols & Stuck, Pharmacists, Charles Town, W. VA. “Tichnor Quality Views,” Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Made Only by Tichnor Bros., Inc., Boston, Mass., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
