Winter by Brian Duncan

The pumpkin sags softly over the porch rail.
In quiet corners, brown leaves huddle.

Black sheep winds probe walls for weak points.
Leaden sky hugs iron ground.

Hunched figures, arms drawn tight, search for warmth.
Squirrels make last-minute forays.

Pale sun leaves no mark,
no memory.

Brian Duncan lives in Kendall Park, New Jersey with his wife, Margie, and two cats. He worked in a virology laboratory at Princeton University for many years and is now happily retired. He enjoys devoting his time to poetry, gardening, hiking, and reminiscing.

Requiem for a Childhood Home / Braille Image by Laura Stringfellow

Requiem for a Childhood Home

House on a hill of thorns, columns of ash.
Inside, a carpet of crushed roses
attempts its blossoming. The back
yard is sharp with hair of palmetto,
brittle from the sun. Thistles

slide along the edge of the house,
brackish with grief. There are splinters
in the yard, I believe, which assemble
themselves into bones, even as shadows
disappear and the land

darkens. It’s all a dream
under which the cloud of reason
is shaken, broken to bits. Shattered—
like a mirror that tries too hard to see.

A woman strokes the remnants
of a dismembered photograph, the roots
of my mother's hand disheveling time,
alchemies of earth grown rough by wind.


* Previously published in the Summer 2021 Issue of Déraciné

Braille Image

I am my sad dream walking
the blind. Their hands and arms
vanish. At dawn, they disappear
down the dark road, scattering
mud from tattered shoes.

The blind belong to the roses
and the fields
which, cruelly, they cannot see.

In my waking, they think
nightmares. Without feet,
without maps, the eyes
of the swirling invisible storms
of their fingertips do see.

With our hands, we only touch.

Nightly, I dream for them
these blooming things--
the opening red anemones of hearts,
burgundy buds of tongues into roses,
rising continents of azaleas in spring.

Laura Stringfellow writes both verse and prose poetry, holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry, and hails from the muggy strangelands of the Southern U.S. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including Déraciné, FERAL, Right Hand Pointing, and Coffin Bell: a journal of dark literature.

Happy Halloween!

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Calling / Sugar Snakes by Stephen Jarrell Williams

The Calling

His cold hands

carrying flowers

upon the path

along the cliffs

up to the main peak

overlooking the sea

continual winds

he remembers yesterdays

sitting the flowers down

beside a handmade cross

bent by the years

when memories become alive

he senses her

loving presence

tears forming

rolling slowly down

with the far below

rush of the sea

he swallows hard

wondering if he should jump

but her voice comes

softly

Someday

We'll be together again 

her words

keeping his soul

and heart warm.

Sugar Snakes

Halloween candy

millions chewing

mouthfuls of stories

masks covering

grinning

sugar snakes.

Stephen Jarrell Williams writes at night, waking from his dreams, before they consume him.  He can be found @papapoet on Twitter X.

Beneath the Shadows / Loneliness Motel by Michael Keshigian

Beneath the Shadows

Blades of grass and wildflowers,

we scribe,

forever in the shadows

of great white pines and giant sequoias,

hovering hundreds of feet overhead.

Their literary majesty

dominates the garden

of earthly expression

though plants among us

occasionally reflect beauty so pure

to demand notice

for momentary flower

and sweet aroma.

As fleeting specters,

our distinction temporarily adorns

the abundant landscape,

though ultimately withers,

scattering throughout

the forest of memory

into the realm of lost paths

and uninhabited caves,

where with sun’s gentle grace

and fertile soil,

another seed may blossom

to deliver a sensuous

if not abbreviated message.

Loneliness Motel

 

His little hole in the Boston skyline,

one window lined with soot

facing an alley

behind Fenway Park

where he swore the ghosts 

played at midnight. 

In the room overhead,

there was a clarinet

that stalked Stravinsky’s Three Pieces

every evening.

During the day it was mostly quiet,

the crowd on the sidewalks

resembled the spiders in the room,

preying with thick overcoats

to catch the unsuspecting

in a web woven with smog

dimly illuminated with the little light

that penetrated that same alley,

so dark, he could only shave

with a lamp in his face.

Every morning at 7:30 A.M.,

students clamored on the staircase,

rushing en route to classes

at the universities

and colleges around the corner,

the clarinet player would flush the toilet

then turn on the shower.

Once in a while, a bird

chirped or tweeted, like a bell chime,

so close to his door,

for a moment, he believed

he had a visitor.

 

Michael Keshigian has recently been published in The California Quarterly, Chiron Review, San Pedro River Review, and Panoply as well as many other national and international journals.  He is the author of 14 poetry collections and has been nominated 7 times for a Pushcart prize and 3 times for Best of the Net.

A Man Returns to the Scene of Where it Happened / The Walls Speak by John Grey

 A Man Returns to the Scene of Where it Happened

A scream. 

He must have heard it.

Waves of anguish ripple through

a sky hemorrhaging orange. 

 

He, mouth gritted, 

clasps hands around

an invisible throat.

 

She is unseen but felt,

a roar in the wind, 

a shudder in the boards 

beneath his feet.

 

Does the scream fade?

Or echo endlessly going forward?

 

The bridge snaps

like the bones of a neck.

with or without his footsteps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Walls Speak

 

The walls make noise.

It’s not mice.

Since when do those creatures

whisper in perfect English?

And I’ve never come across 

a rodent yet

that spoke to me by name.

 

Mere rustling 

wouldn’t bother me.

Nor the occasional scamper

across the kitchen floor

in search of crumbs.

I can lay traps.

I can bait the nooks with poison.

 

But how do you trap the past?

How do you poison a memory?

When it’s the past that traps me?

And my memory is poison?

 

The walls keep repeating,

“I can’t forgive what you have done to me.”

They’re not referring to the cheap wall-paper.

More likely the bloodstains 

that pattern is pasted over.

 

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Spotlong Review and Trampoline.

Shadow Walker by Michael Lee Johnson

I walked into a shadow.
I found my mother there.
Age is no longer a factor.
Though memory leaves a feeling of 98.5 years.
But what do shadows, dreams,
and what fairies in the dust have in common?
She's no longer suffering from macular degeneration.
I can still see her as a 78-year-old son now.
But I'm not on Earth either, at least for now.
I follow her love and acceptance, her compassion.
But no human here is without the need of angels,
mother told me.
So, I must return, for now, a seeker of shadows.
On Earth, a confused poet in a jungle of branches.

Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he is a poet in the greater Chicago-land area, IL. He has 354-plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, a song lyricist with several published poetry books, and a nominee for 7 Pushcart Prize awards and 7 Best of the Net nominations.