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Isaiah 54:5 (A Self-Portrait)

Isaiah 54:5 (A Self-Portrait)

by Kari Ann Ebert

Kari Ebert_A Turn in the Path

He packed up the years in one suitcase

at summer’s bloom    left everything undone

I stood    still & wooden    in the empty yard

exhausted by the sudden drought

 

The grass is too high now

Midsummer sun paints its lacquer

on my temples    on my lip and neck

I’ve waited until tall blades bare their teeth

snap at my kneecaps

The anyone-can-do-it-

just-start-her-up-and-go instructions he left

fester under my tongue like vinegar

I turn the key   flinch at its growl

 

The rider    all rusty & rife with demons

lurches down the lawn    chews out a row

so straight    so sure of itself

until the sputter & grind wind down to a stop

refuse to budge another inch

The heat rises      overwhelms me with its tide

Fury crawls up my spine     I take a swing at the sky

 

My Maker    My Creator

You promised to be my holy husband in his stead

yet it is I alone who pulls at the sludge    wrestles with the ancient blade

slices my finger open like his mother’s cherry cheesecake

You promised to redeem the time    to make it mine once more

yet the moth and locusts return each harvest

all that remain are weeds & serpents’ nests

all that remains is this rage

 

Hearing no response I fall to the ground

Clippings & sweat form a sheen     cover my skin like jade

I sit in the lotus position    as still as stone

listen as the breeze rustles across the short path I made

Winner of the 2018 Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest, Kari Ann Ebert’s poetry appeared or is forthcoming in Mojave River Review, Gravel, The Broadkill Review, and Gargoyle among others. She is working on her first poetry collection, Alphabet of Mo(u)rning. Kari lives in Delaware and has two children who also write.

The Epic of Senge

The Epic of Senge

by John Wall Barger

John Wall Barger_The Epic of Senge

We moved to Philadelphia from an Indian village

& shipped our big old tomcat, Senge.

We tried to keep him inside our row house,

tempting him with toys & snacks,

but he longed for village life:

fighting cats, hunting rats, walking the roofs

of the huts. He cried his lungs out:

“Freedom!” he cried. “Liberty!”

Sleepless, defeated, we opened the door:

Senge padded out in triumph.

He walked the sidewalks of West Philly,

manifesting all the lavish beauty

& violence of the village. Every day

he got lost. Today Tiina & I comb

the misty late-summer streets, searching.

Tiina—whose love for that cat

is fugitive & powerful—is so worried

she can’t talk. As we step into Clark Park

I joke, “Maybe he caught a boat

back to India!” She emits a small,

dry laugh. We scan the park.

Dogs: fourteen. Cats: zero.

But it’s nice. We sit in the damp grass.

Someone strums a woozy guitar.

Soft, distant singing. The sky, opening.

Under a maple tree: a pile, a form,

it is a body, an opossum. Twisted, seeping,

torn like a bag of rice. I say nothing.

Everything is wet. Record rain this year.

Even the kindness hovering in the high branches

is wet, glittering, pretty. Almost unbearable.

And familiar. The peaceful men

playing chess on fold-out tables.

The children blowing bubbles of light.

Like attending a warmhearted funeral,

which just happens to be your own.

John Wall Barger’s poems appear in American Poetry Review, Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry. His fourth book, The Mean Game, is coming out with Palimpsest Press, spring 2019. He lives in West Philadelphia and is an editor for Painted Bride Quarterly.

Clawing

Clawing by Holiday Campanella

         8/19/2017 – Greensburg, Indiana

Holiday Campanella_Clawing

I’m surrounded by you, Indiana.

You’re heavy in the trees tonight.

The black asphalt,

back roads through corn fields, unlit―

the broad shouldered men,

blond and square-headed.

 

There are two boys

hanging around the claw machine

at the “Indiana-only” Pizza King.

They could have been you, once.

I ask them how much it is―

give them a dollar.

“Here,” I tell them, “play.”

They laugh, inserting the money

into the slot.

They could have been ours.

 

My pizza is ready.

“Bye,” I tell the boys.

“Happy birthday!” one says.

“Adios,” says the other.

 

I sit in my car in the parking lot,

more me than a moment before.

Tomorrow I’ll be in St. Louis

leaving you with them

in loose metal grips,

suspended.

Holiday Noel Campanella was born and raised in South Philadelphia, where she still resides. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and PAFA, where she studied painting and creative writing. While her art has been sold and exhibited at the Smithsonian, Anthropolgie, The Clay Studio, and The Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, this is her first poetry publication.

The Oldest Daughter Flies to Dublin

The Oldest Daughter Flies to Dublin

by Ellen Stone

Ellen Stone_The Oldest Daughter

Over northern Canada, she may feel most alone,

although it is the longest day of the year

 

and the sun (diffuse or beacon-like, depending)

will follow her over those low-slung mountains

 

that go on and on reminding her how big the world

is―boreal forest of larch, spruce, birch spreading

 

into bogs, fens, black marshy sponge reflecting sky―

pinprick of silver plane, no more than a sliver, really

 

like the germ of an idea.  She will look out the plane

window & think of who lives down there, what girl,

 

like her, is not sure, but goes on through her days

anyway―maybe surrounded by trees like woodland

 

caribou, shy & sturdy―who everyone will likely

one day depend upon.  But for now, the other self,

 

the one her body houses now, full of this nebulous

wonder. I hope she feels like cloud then, weightless,

 

unformed, with what she sees below―that spread

of nubby canopy―at once, both factual & dreamlike.

 

While she, full at the same time, of doubt & precision,

a shaft of thin sharp air, knifes her way through.

Ellen Stone was raised in northeastern Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in Passages North, The Collagist, The Museum of Americana, and Fifth Wednesday. She’s the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Ellen’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart prize and Best of the Net.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia

by Amy Small-McKinney

 Amy Small-McKinney_Philadelphia

Beauty was hard for me to find on a spare cot or in the back

of a truck, when I had no home. & then I did,

 

when beauty had bars on its windows & a Coleus sat on my sill

with its purple hearts & old Tony sold me necessities

& came to know my name & the butcher without a thumb brought a Thanksgiving turkey

to my front door & young Tony upstairs lost a finger in some war, or so he said.

I was happy to hike the flight of stairs to sit with him and talk.

He borrowed a glass vase, nothing more, &

 

at the nearby market, startled pigs & cheeses hung on racks,

women peddled chestnuts & nutmeg, their voices ancient pigeons promising no hunger.

 

A Vietnamese restaurant, the place for cheap soup with long noodles & airy leaves floating.

A boat, I could sit for hours & row away from loneliness.

 

No one knew what they meant to me then.

The green leafy soup stars or the nine-fingered butcher,

his attentiveness filled me like a luxurious meal.

 

To tell you I was hungry is beside the point, very young,

left home, no choice, love rationed like air.

 

Now I think I know beauty,

look up at stars, some have names,

are gifts for birthdays.

What I want to say: how little I know of anyone’s life.

 

We are a country, a world, a universe of division.

 

We imagine this must be beauty:

 

Doesn’t everyone love Evie’s homemade Nduja, her hair pulled back in a chignon?

Or this: A woman drinks morning coffee, mistrusts newly leveled fields,

worries for her seed beds.

Or: Summer & a man sits beside the stoop of his sweltering house playing checkers, waits

at least five minutes to move his piece.

& I have found it, at times, when the train rumbles under my window,

its constancy a parliament of beautiful owls, returning.

Amy Small-McKinney won The Kithara Book Prize 2016 (Glass Lyre Press) for her second full-length collection of poems, Walking Toward Cranes. Most recently, her poems have appeared in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and are forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review.  She facilitates poetry workshops and offers independent study in Philadelphia.

Oh This Route―Not 66

Oh This Route―Not 66

by B.E. Kahn

B.E.Kahn_On This Route

A chauffeured Jaguar, white, awaits.

For now I tend my own modest rose.

Poems at the door, early, late, gather.

A dream ladder climbs. Ten wishes rise.

 

The plain open road of life

crosses this country. Green hills shelter

song-filled home, walls all red and gold.

Sky windows

 

into my prayers. Two soft chairs

tea cups, tango moon, garden path.

A Pushcart Prize nominee, recipient of a CBE, Pew funded grant & other prizes; author of three chapbooks, the latest, Nightspark: The Zoe Poems. She has led poetry groups: interfaith, women’s, various others.  Her work appears in many fine reviews. (Visit www.bekahn.com)

Your Lucky Life

Your Lucky Life

By Ken Fifer

 

In your sailor hat and peacoat, you cross

the asphalt and see what you thought

was your home is an old wooden boat.

You stand on the prow and what was

a black locust turns out to be your Jacob’s ladder.

When you climb down you think

you’re in Washington Crossing State Park,

but really you’re on your own porch in Raubsville,

thanking Pat for the tuna on rye.

So you lean back, sip your Schlitz, look at the river,

shift your chair among the nine white pillars

which apart from being ornamental

hold up the second floor and roof.

It’s as if whatever comes your way

leaves your footprints. When the locusts hunch over,

when the noisy green maples dig in to grow

bored and restless along the pointless Delaware,

when the paint of banisters peels from your palms,

when the birds leave no tracks at all

you think they all must be your countrymen.

And when moles tunnel under your home,

smacking their lips, wrinkling broad noses,

cleaning their glasses, with the river this close

they must all be your relatives. Each time

you bite into your sandwich you know

the pleasure and pain of harvested grain

in silos where the light goes down.

You can taste the gaff in your cheek,

the fishy vicissitudes, the last moments

of tuna roused from the deep

which fit so exactly into your mouth.

 

Ken Fifer’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Ploughshares, The Literary Review, and other journals. His most recent poetry book is After Fire (March Street Press). He has a Ph.D. in English from The University of Michigan and has taught at Penn State (Berks) and DeSales University. He lives in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, with his wife Elizabeth, four dogs, two cats, and assorted other creatures.

 

 

When I Look Like My Father It Makes My Mother Cry

When I Look Like My Father It Makes My Mother Cry

By Lorraine Rice

 

I give up on wrestling my hair

into a limp, submissive, dead-straight

existence, tell my mother—Just

cut it all off, trying to get back

to the beginning, in the straight-backed chair

waiting for my mother

who’d been the one to fix my hair, wanting

her to see it never was

broken. Feet bare, sweat-stuck

to newspaper spread under the chair—

how many times, how

many, have I watched her cut

my father’s hair? Him

in the same chair, a frayed

towel-cape over shoulders and chest,

his ankles an X on the spot where

Dagwood blows his top over

Blondie’s new hat. Her over him,

cheeks caved in, brow ridged, the concentration

of years on her face, sharp

metal shears in hand. My parents always uneasy

sharing space and seeing them

close is bewitching and bewildering—

their fragile intimacy severed

by the cold crisp chastisement of scissors

as my hair falls in black puffy clouds. Confused

coils, soft and intricate, beg to be caught

again and again and holding them

begs a reckoning—Me?

Not me? In the straight-backed chair

while my mother cuts my hair, in the full bloom

heat of summer she freezes

then puts a mirror in my hand—

You look just like your father,

and because her eyes are damp

for once, I do not argue.

 

Lorraine Rice holds an MFA from the The Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College, NY. Her work has appeared on Literary Mama and in the anthology Who’s Your Mama: The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Soft Skull Press, 2009). She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Hypnagogia

Hypnagogia

By Robyn Campbell

 

On her 63rd birthday, Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to survive a barrel ride over Niagara Falls. When asked, she later said, “I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces, than make another trip over the Fall.”

 

In darkness, the descent.

You hold tight, fists

clenched and pray

for a good swift end.

 

As a child you opened

your eyes at night and trained

yourself to see

God, gave

a face to the thing

you loved most.

 

Is he here now

in the water’s electric

hum, in the

prickling beneath your

skin?

 

And then you feel the change. Something

nameless is pulled

out slowly from the middle of

your chest; it’s like an exorcism.

The care is gone, and the

worry—that old need to make

the future manifest

turns to breath and is exhaled.

 

From far away, you

hear it: “the

woman is alive.”

 

Born and raised in Eastern Pennsylvania, Robyn Campbell has been writing since before she can remember. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apiary, Stirring, and 1932 Quarterly, among others. Her time is split between writing, playing drums, fleeing to the mountains, and editing Semiperfect Press. She lives and works in Philadelphia.

In the Morning

In the Morning

By Robyn Campbell

 

two bodies resting

two bodies at rest, faces to the light,

all internal movement like plants

a floral type of narcissism

 

or, maybe they are not like plants

they could be like fish

faintly oiled, slick skin

shining

 

you say you think

death looks like life inverted

it is a turning

i say then that a poem inverted

looks something like truth

 

laid bare, as we are

 

picked nearly clean

marks left by the million

little teeth that time attracts

 

Born and raised in Eastern Pennsylvania, Robyn Campbell has been writing since before she can remember. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apiary, Stirring, and 1932 Quarterly, among others. Her time is split between writing, playing drums, fleeing to the mountains, and editing Semiperfect Press. She lives and works in Philadelphia.