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Busy Night

The car alarm jabs the neighbors awake

every fifteen minutes when its bark

sets off the strays in their chorus

of call and response and the supermarket

down the block has an alarm, too; it throbs

like a synthesizer overlay on an old disco track,

but the neighbors don’t dance except for

the young couple across the street who hustle

out on the stoop to the rhythm of their

raised voices, the angry tempo of go ahead

and do it, of big man, of bitch, while

sometime traffic on Broad Street whispers

its wheels on asphalt to hush its roll

through streetlights’ amber cone before the siren

song of the EMT’s carting someone in the truck

to the ER on the other side of town while neighbors

wish, maybe, that they were in one of the planes

overhead, the belly-lights sly wink like

saying, You know this is all bullshit, right?

before it screams down onto the runway

at the airport across the river – or perhaps it’s

the ringing they hear borne in the brief quiet

of their own bedrooms, the brazen scurry

of blood through their ears’ capillaries, the rattle

of breath only they can hear like a dream

they can’t quite rise from, a song almost recalled,

its ancient refrain on a loop they can’t shake,

in the mystery of sleep, awake, a puzzle, impossible,

like how, after all, day breaks without a sound.

Chris Ritter is a Philadelphia native living and working in a South Jersey suburb.

The Elements

 for Delaware City Oil Refinery

 

From here I promise you will see it all —

 

those clusters of towers

their various diameters and heights

lifted into cloud-clotted sky

 

bespeckled by summer sun

grounded by a low plinth

composed of wide shallow domes

 

grounded by marshes clotted with nests and lairs

clusters of golden phragmites

rising up there

 

then water, lapping

where eels unscroll, abiding in the dark patches

on their way to the Sargasso Sea

 

not a sea as you’d imagine it, just

the ragged floating place they dream of —

 

a falling sequence of materials

from solid to liquid to gas, a game

of animal vegetable mineral —

 

old cast-iron composed of scraps of dying stars

grounded by a burning fall

torn caterwauling out of the ground

 

casting fire and steam into that floating sky

while within, the compression of life forms —

fern bones and beetle wings from long ago

 

transformed to gasoline and other gases, or lighter fuel

diesel laced with hydrogen, or propane —

gases, liquids, steam, fire — fluid forms

 

in drifted tatters lapped by sky and water

smithereens unfurled, swarming

toward some remembered place.

Anne Yarbrough’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Delmarva Review, and Gargoyle. She lives along the lower Delaware River.

The Color Absence

The color absence is yellow and blood

red, bones of glass shattered on the floor

with no broom or dustpan in line of sight.

 

Did you see me walking the other day?

I was delivering you in the flex of my arms,

sleeves folded back to conceal the rips

 

of laughter. I wonder if you still hold

the last words you spoke to me in your

pocket like a brand new set of car keys.

 

Don’t you worry that I forgot my jacket

in the freezing cold rain? Or maybe the wind

rubs its hands together on the front porch

 

waiting to come back inside. The color

absence glazes its palette in the summer

fallow, knocking sugar skulls against pine

 

doors, brittle to the touch and slapped with

salt water. If endings spring forth like a geyser,

then let me catch the steam on the way down.

Ezra Solway writes in Philadelphia where he received an MFA in Creative Writing at Temple University this past spring. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured in The Jewish Literary Journal, North of Oxford, and Small Leaf Press, among others. You can follow his writings on twitter at @SolwayEzra

What Our Fathers Didn’t Tell Us About the War

To read What Our Fathers Didn’t Tell Us About the War, click HERE.

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

Dear Renee

We used to sit together every day, the dusty bus, those long dirt roads.

Your father, old when he was young, hobbling to the barn at milking time.

My sister keeps embroidered pillows in the closet with her holidays, hums

all through the house, long and slow. Are you that kind of woman now?

Renee, my dumb heart cannot remember If I ever played with you in school

or if I left you by the swings for those girls who only let me be the monkey.

 

Did I forget you, your long braids in that wet field of grass? I was the one

who swallowed all the knives, key tied round my neck with a grey ribbon.

Today, I brought out the flour bowl and rolling pin, the salt and baking powder.

Habit you’d do without. Kitchen quiet, emptying, its low deliberate light.

Renee, I didn’t use the wheelbarrow. Nor stripped the chicken from the bone.

Can you understand my lumbering, my rusty hands?  Do you miss our home?

Ellen Stone grew up in the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania.  She advises a poetry club at Community High School and co-hosts a monthly poetry series in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ellen’s poetry collections are What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020) and The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013.)  ellenstone.org.

Just Before

In a hospital room

I stand next to your son,

watching you drift

in and out of consciousness.

I give you flowers,

their stems clipped.

You drop them in a pan

of shallow water.

 

Outside, I can see the bus station

near the last stop on the subway line.

 

Remember when you moved to Mount Airy,

on the second floor? We talked all night

about politics. Then Watergate broke, and

you foresaw that Nixon would fall.

You always drove me home

pounding your palms on the steering wheel.

 

Kamal takes a napkin and wipes your mouth—

“Are you hungry Mom, do you want a drink?”—

while I keep asking if you know my name.

You raise yourself and say it once,

just before you fall back.

Since 1990, Robert Coles has published over one hundred poems in various literary journals, anthologies, and magazines. His most recent poems have appeared in Peregrine (Spring 2017), Mudfish (vol. 20, 2018/vol. 21, 2020/vol. 22, 2021), and Cura Magazine (Fordham University, Spring 2019).

Freeze All Blue & Black

Should I just leave you in this frozen night

since you’re no help? Go there and plop that heart

in the gut bucket. We’ve packed the fridge tight

with cabin food already, so for the parts

we’ll keep, we’ll pack some snow on them. Your deer

should make decent venison jerky. Look,

it’s just dead meat. There is nothing to fear

about a dressed deer. Now, down past the brook,

Dad leaves the organs deep in the thickets

and then he wipes the blood off his hands.

Here’s his rag for that. Take that gut bucket

then go dump it in the snow like a man.

But that heart, I always chuck it far back

where it can wait for spring all blue and black.

Having grown up in Chester County and worked in Philadelphia, Andrew Weller has a deep connection with Eastern Pennsylvania. He just graduated from The Pennsylvania State University with a Masters and Bachelor’s in English. He continues to write in his spare time while starting his career as a technical writer.

The Time on Dali’s Watch

To view The Time on Dali’s Watch, click HERE.

Nick Cialini lives in Lancster, PA where he teaches literature and is a PhD candidate at Temple University. He adheres to Joy Harjo’s principle that “life begins at the kitchen table” by sharing food and games with those who matter most to him. This is his first poetry publication.

A Stranger’s Time

I’ve never been less than an hour early for my train. I don’t know if it comes from a sense of heightened preparedness or an ongoing current of anxiety that doesn’t even let me sleep in on weekends. Years of sitting in an airport two hours before another passenger arrived ingrained this practice into me. For so long I hated the limbo of traveling yet sitting still. I ended up counting the seconds as they strolled by to occupy my brain. I don’t mind the time now. It’s a moment to pause. It’s a moment to observe the world around me I take for granted every day.

I walked into 30th street station at 1:15pm. I gazed at arrivals from the entrance way trying to find my train to Connecticut. I took note that it was harder to read this sign now than it was last year. It seemed constantly staring at a computer screen for the last ten odd years had started to wear away at what was once 20/20. I walked towards gate three which housed tracks three and four as my Acela never left from anywhere else. That never stopped me from matching up the numbers on my ticket and the ones on the sign about twice every minute. Look down, 2170. Look up, 2170. Gate three, track four, as usual. It was 1:20 now. I had seventy minutes to kill.

I found a seat on the aged wooden benches that offered lodging to travelers much more homesick than I. I put on my headphones and tuned out the sounds of the mostly empty train station but kept my eyes alert. I watched the people around me lug around their suitcases, make phone calls breaking the news of another delay, while a man filled out some form on a clipboard. A bird had haplessly flown its way into the building. It sat a mere three feet away from me. I took out my camera, but it flew away before the lens could shutter. Almost as if it was telling me the moment was not meant to be captured. Please, I wish only to be a fleeting memory, it seemed to say to me.

The man with the clipboard now stood opposite me. Using the top of his bench as a desk. I noticed his continuous glances and wondered if he wanted me to fill out his survey or sign his petition. Whatever it was, he was furiously working away at it.  He grabbed my attention with a wave of his hand and spoke. I couldn’t hear him. I took my headphones off and he repeated the words.

“Can you pull down your mask for me?”

I was confused but automatically obliged.

“Give me a smile.” He enjoined with one of his own.

I replied with a mix of confusion and amusement “Are- are you drawing me?”

He began walking over to sit next to me and motioned for me to return my mask to my face. He sat next to me and began to tell me about himself. Well, more accurately he told me to look him up on my phone. I obliged. I typed “Irving Fields Philadelphia” into the search bar and waited for the results to load.  There he was. The photos that appeared depicted him in nearly an identical outfit. The flat cap and scarf he wore perfectly fit the role of artist he was playing. His square frame glasses still hung over his nose, only helping him see the page below him and not my face. His dark skin devoid of wrinkles did not reveal his age but the rasp in his flamboyant voice and grey moustache did.

As if he was reading from a script, he began to recount his story to me, detailing the articles that appeared. He spoke in muffled words, and his story didn’t seem to come to him in chronological order. I did my best to listen carefully and closely as my eyes flickered back from him and the clock hanging on the wall. He wanted me to look at him for the drawing, but enough time had passed that fear of missing my train began to creep in.

As far as I could tell the story begins the day he was struck by a car. To put it bluntly he said the accident left him both physically and mentally fucked for a number of years. Almost to add validity to his story he lifted his left pant leg revealing his prosthetic leg.

“Say Ouch!”

“Ouch.”

Whether the medical bills or the unemployment during those dark years, he ended up living on the street. He spent a long time living without a warm place to sleep until he got an idea. He began going to the grocery store and asking women if he could draw their portrait or help them with their groceries for something to eat. No doubt the unusual nature of his request stood out to people, and he found himself with a new source of income and, more importantly, food.

“I would always ask women, and they’d say ‘well, I’m not wearing any make up’. I told them it wasn’t a picture! It made no difference to me. “

Eventually, Irving’s habitual workspace became Pat’s Cheesesteaks. In the same manner that I met him many people found themselves sitting across from a man with pencil and paper in hand sketching away asking them to hold perfectly still mid-meal. One of those subjects just so happened to be a journalist reviewing the restaurant. They began talking, having about the same conversation that I was now engaged in, only eight years earlier. By the end of the exchange Irving became a part of an article. As he told me the story, I could sense the pride and accomplishment in his words. Being written about adds legitimacy to one’s craft. I hope I’m doing the same for him here. When he asked me what I did, I told him I was a writer. I’m currently fulfilling a promise I made to him with these words.

“When I first started out, I only drew women and sometimes their boyfriends. It seemed to pay the best. But now I can draw whatever I want. Now I only draw pretty boys like yourself, but remember, I’ll always be pretty boy number one.” He joked with a level of sincerity.

The words did not really faze me as I had prepared myself for anything at that point, but I did take it as the unusual complement it was.

Being published helped him find a home, he told me. Irving continually reminded me that he used to be homeless. He wasn’t any more. I couldn’t help but feel sad about his constant reassurance, knowing how many people must have treated this incredibly friendly and eccentric man less than human. He no longer had to draw to eat, but it clearly meant a lot to him. I could tell he wanted the first word associated with him to be artist and not formally-homeless.

“I’m drawing to feed the homeless now.”

He was about to ask the question I knew was coming from the moment we began speaking. But I didn’t mind.

“Can you pay for your portrait?”

“Sure.”

“Alright, that’ll be a thousand dollars.” He laughed.

“How about twenty?”  I countered.

“Yeah, alright, man. That’s beautiful, thank you.”

Art and money exchanged hands, and I saw his work for the first time.

“You like it?”

“I love it man, thank you.”

“Give it to somebody you love. And tell them they’re beautiful.”

“I’m going home right now. I will.”

An hour had blown by, and it was time for me to board.

“You know, before he wrote that article about me, I had no idea Philly was known for cheesesteaks, and I’ve lived here my whole life.”

I laughed and thanked him for making my wait infinitely more entertaining. I won’t lie. The likeness isn’t exact. But I really do love the drawing. I’d like to think the portrait was free, and I paid him for the story. I suppose, that’s why I always show up early.

Drew Kolenik is a creative writing student at Temple University. Since a young age, he has always had his hand in one creative endeavor or another. He has taken his passion for story-telling and daily journaling to begin the search for his audience. 

Something a Ghost Told Me at Dachau

I’m not the type to fall under the spell of a false religion. The lesson has been on the books for ages. The catastrophes supposedly done out of desperation are more closely connected to opportunism than conviction. It’s been irrefutably argued that even Hitler was not a true believer.

However, lies, particularly the Big Lie, have real world consequences. Moments after I walked into Germany’s first concentration camp in Dachau, a hand gripped my right shoulder. A voice rattled my cranium, ominously stating, “The whole of Dachau is guilty.”

I didn’t ignore its exhortation. But its meaning was sidetracked by overwhelmed senses. Waves of human sweat permeated the air of dirty stained wood barracks. Forty-seven years later and I could still smell the perspiration of condemned prisoners. I visited the memorial of Methodist pastors murdered for their faith. Dachau was not a killing ground for Jews alone. Nazi’s arranged high altitude experiments in sealed chambers for Russian prisoners of war, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and various Catholic and Protestant ministers.

I sat in the cinema and watched films of victims with shattered ear drums, suffering from hallucinations and brain damage stumble out of chambers and die. Their disfigured bodies hauled off to a crematorium on site. Once I saw the ashes of human remains float above the camp into the environs of the town, I immediately understood what the voice exclaimed.

The town of Dachau was regularly visited with ash raining down on its cottages and streets. After the liberation the townspeople told visiting journalists they had no idea what was going on at the camp. Security forces prevented them from asking questions. The Camp’s walls and four towers were not tall enough from many in the town’s buildings and elevation to block forced labor, torture, and the bodies of failed escapes hanging across barbed wire.

But the raining ash sticks in my conscience. The whole of Dachau is guilty. Each day walking to the bakery covered in black human ash. Each week walking to church wiping away the last remains of people utterly destroyed. How do you explain this? How do you answer your God when the time comes? Why shouldn’t Hell open its mouth and swallow this place like a rat eaten by a snake?

I left the Camp, and that hand left my shoulder. Many people were killed in that camp for being artists. Maybe one reached out to me to make sure I do not forget what I saw. I am no cosmic judge. How an entire town is morally weighed is beyond my understanding. I needed a drink and a good dinner. I did both in another town. Every so often, staring at the sky and wishing eternal peace for the persecuted.

Mark Antony Rossi is an USAF Cold War veteran, poet, playwright, and host of the literary podcast “Strength To Be Human,”
https://strengthtobehuman.podbean.com. His work has been published in Bombfire Lit, Earth & Altar, Lethe (Turkey), Leere Mitte (Germany) and Uncomfortable Revolution and has work forthcoming on Ariel Chart, Granfallon, Indian Periodical (India) & Route 7 Review.