Welcoming Night I’m learning to let the dark into my house, my body, my soul, to let trees show me night is a scouring strong enough to smooth rock. I’m learning to let the night in, the way it engulfs those cottonwoods on the hill across the pond. Sometimes darkness comes inside hungry, pulling a leash that’s tied to an oak. I try to welcome its growl and roar. On midsummer evenings as dark crawls up trunks to crowns, there’s a letting go, a slow reversal. Tops of old trees hold the yellow moon while around me roots quiver — silence, their talk. Tonight I watch fireflies weave across a…

Wall Lesson Sunrise leaked out of me once, bleached and frigid,ice milk, a kind of clorox, I was too much the child. Then came the time of crouching in small corners, nearthe furious wall heater, fearing winter, fearing thought. Not wanting anything was a way not to break mybones. Or so I thought. Always a terror of falling. Someone I couldn’t see asked what’s wrong with that boyof yours there in the corner, so pink and mountain ugly? But I couldn’t take words into me without shaping mybrain, in my mind, into a kind of army flame thrower. The wall heater took years to refine me. I knew myskin was…

Ode to the Egret in the 7-11 Parking Lot Oh, incongruous beauty, of sinuous neck and articulated legs,moon white against the rusted dumpster-my breath catches at the sight of you. I watch, coffee in hand, as you pick your waydelicately across the asphalt, an effortless glissade,you of dagger bill, of wary, reptilian eye. A pause, a contemplation, our lifted heads, your unfolded wings,tilting toward the cool morning sky,my talisman, my guardian, my miracle.   Shaun R. Pankoski (she/her) is a poet most recently from Volcano, Hawaii. A retired county worker and two time breast cancer survivor, she has lived on both coasts as well as the Midwest as an artist’s…

On WEIGHT The private language, which only objects speak, is weight. In a stack on my desk, there are six books I’ve left lying open, one upon the other, so I can easily find the passages I plan to read again. They sink into each other, letting gravity draw them into deeper conversations throughout the day. The shadows cast by my desk-lamp only seem weightless. As evening comes on, they increase in size until their densities speak fluently with the night. I watch a cockroach at my baseboard flick its translucent forewings. This minute of time listens to each wing’s nearly non-existent weight, then answers by moving existence forward five…

Of Glass Roses fragile we all are like figurines in a glass menagerie like blue roses ‘I’m sorry’ pleurosis like shy sisters and aspiring poets like absent fathers and spirited mothers like gentlemen callers who may or may not be gentle men like candles that flicker only for so long before they have to be blown out.   Joseph Powell is a writer and spoken word artist and the author of four collections of poetry including The Spirit Of Baldwin Compels Me. His poems have been featured in vox poetica, WORDPEACE, Marble Hand, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Blue Mountain Review, Trouvaille Review, the Santa Clara Review, The Freedom Papers,…

Mundane Wonder Somehow the magician inked an audience member upon her closed hand with- out her knowing, an X pressed inside her clenched fist, gentler than a kiss, and he jokingly insisted it was permanent marker. How could it not be for her, this impossible tattoo he tossed after acting as if he peeled it off his own hand? Even as his evening’s assistant, a supposedly psychic dove, stared blank-eyed, hoping only to return to its cup of seeds and cage.   George Yatchisin is the author of Feast Days (Flutter Press 2016) and The First Night We Thought the World Would End (Brandenburg Press 2019). He is co-editor of…

Limestone Bones below that summon us back. Creek-bed appearing overnight after rain, the field eroded till the stones emerged. Thick sheep fescue rimming the trench and the many eyes peering below the mane. The sparkling vast periphery of stone. The Our Father before bed and after sunrise, before all the glorious chickens pecking. An ambulance backfiring twice down the road. Black dirt at the center of a campfire ring. The song the deaf neighbor girl tries to sing pedaling her bike in a circle all day. The bald spots where stones begin to rise, trees finding no purchase in the field. The brush and scrap timber piles abandoned. Oak of…

The Glenn Miller Story I wasn’t beguiled by the music, but the story;specifically, the ending, because I knewhow it would end, seeing as Dadstated clearly at the outset, and with relish, Love, be careful, cos you see, Love,he Dies. His plane just disappeared, Love.Night-time. Fog. Planes in those days. I say, Whendoes it end, Dad? He says, In about 2 hours. And now James Stewart has glimpsed June Allysonand the orchestra is unfurling String of Pearlsand Dad is saying Enjoy this now, Love, cos you seehe dies at the end, only 40, such a tragedy. And now Glenn Miller has discovered His Soundand Dad says You see Love, it was…

Guilty Pleasure The smell of cut grass is the aroma of living things exuding volatile compounds meant to help them heal after attack. Call it a distress signal, call it the blood of the earth. Then ask yourself why you love the scent so much. Admit to yourself that, even knowing what you know, you always will.   Heart Failure is a phrase of the brain, that organ jealous of what cannot be understood. Do not mistake me: there is nothing beautiful in strangle and swell, in lungs heavy as moneybags. I am saying look past muscle. I am saying absorb what the deep heart never forgets, that this body…

December before Dawn The year is ending:early light in late season.I am pushing it along,impatient for its ending,awake before days begin:cycle in the pea-grit brainoff-cycle, cycle in lifeoff-kilter, waitingfor the future to kick in.   Kuan Yin in California To bring Kuan Yin to CaliforniaI did not need ghost money nor joss.Not altar cloths, sutras, silk embroideredshoes. The pure eye seizes the image,near set a heart that asks for images. Ask and it will be given. To lose,giving and losing bound like anything,like man and woman, and nothing,Zero and Infinite.                            Where the Goddessof Mercy born in China,…