View Issue vol. 8, no. 7
ISSN 2369-6516 (Print)
ISSN 2369-6524 (Online)
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Bethany Rose Artin – Dance Card
E.M. Campbell – The Blue Heron and the Octopus
Lesley Choyce – A Promise of Sun
Ella Dodson – Fanfare for Fall
Charlie Friesen – Immersive Understanding
Scott Lynch – Manifest Destiny
David Mac Eachern – Time Will Tell
Harry Wayne Mah – I.C.U. i.e. luv hrtz
Georgia Mills – La Vie En Rose
SarahEllen – Hidden In Your Eyes
Graym Stewart – If Walls Could Talk
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Hidden In Your Eyes
Poem by SarahEllen
Let me look
Just a little longer
Blues and greens
Flecked with purple
And colours unnamable
How have I never
Noticed
The stars you carry with you
The suggestion of worlds
Yet undiscovered
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The Blue Heron and the Octopus
Poem by E.M. Campbell
Could I plot my feelings on a graph
Do they, would they, decline by decades
Or are you a dot on my map of stars
A pinhole through the darkness
Are you my Leonard Cohen lyric
?
Do I want those arms to hold me
Or do I want to remember them
Sitting across from me at the table
At brunch, once
?
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Immersive Understanding
Poem by Charlie Friesen
Why do we feel the need to immerse ourselves?
Dive to understand depth
Drown to know density
The way the sea smoothes a stone
Is how your name is spread across my body
Skin gleaming pink like a sunset on water
I slip beneath the flickering ocean
Thinking to myself
Oxygen must taste sweeter in broken lungs
Seaweed wraps itself around my throat
Your voice is in my mouth
(sweet like cigarettes)
You left ash on my lips
I left salt at the end of your breath
And a touch of bitterness on your tongue
I sink to the surface, marveling
In a world where stars like these exist
We must be immeasurably insignificant
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Fanfare for Fall
Poem by Ella Dodson
Clicketty clack, stiff brown leaves turn
Tumble on points, snap and trip lightly
Like stiletto heels on cobblestones.
Brisk breezes brush whispering leaves
Which cha-cha and sashay across my path.
Leaves, gold and red, play peek a-boo,
And hide amid the fringe of Pashmina shawl.
Fringe and leaf flick softly on my ruddy cheeks.
The lively puffs of music played at this tea-dance,
Herald the arrival of fall
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Dance Card
Poem by Bethany Rose Artin
Fourteen dances on my card
Fourteen dances this hot night
Elliot three times, Doyle twice
Others just one sweet delight
After each dance men still chat
Long as decency allows
Learning what they can of me
Wond’ring if feelings aroused
After last dance, night is done
End of evening back to home
Only notes of thanks to do
Always heading home alone
Once I’m caught there’s no more cards
And likely no more dances
Wife and mother shoes to fill
And lust reduced to hidden glances
The cards will be put away
The memories always linger
Elliot three times, Doyle twice
Others just one sweet hunger
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Time Will Tell
Poem by David Mac Eachern
Rock sit back, so receive each day
No dinner, no chore, nothing to say
Part of the scenery, seeking not fame
For sake of it all looking tame
Be nature your molder, evolving in décor
Being solid, holding weight, changes you
endure
Work of art unframed, complaining to none
Free, sitting still, no need to run
Never thirsty for comfort, filling a hole
Feeling not age though time taking toll
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La Vie En Rose
Poem by Georgia Mills
when I miss you
and your voice, clear
I sit coldly, lonely, sadly
sweetie
and turn on the song of memory
with it I flick the switch to pink paper skies
smoky fry
trumpets high
of days gone by
but did you
did you really
dance?
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When ?
Poetic Question by Jim Hoyle
Pterodactyl………………… … ……… 100 million
Australopithecus……… . …………. 1 1/2 million
Neanderthal man…… .. ………….. 40,000
Wooly mammoth……. …………….. 3,800
Masada zealots………… ……………. 2,090
Dodo………………………………………….. 450
Great auk………………………………….. 187
Beothuk…………………………………….. 164
Passenger pigeon……………………. 102
Yahi native Americans…………… 100
Queen of Sheba’s gazelle………… 65
Guam flying fox………….. …………… 45
Pyrenean Ibex……………………………. 15
Vietnamese rhino……………………… 5
Eastern cougar…………………………… 1
Right whale………………………………… soon
Homo sapiens……………………………. When ?
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If Walls Could Talk
Poem by Graym Stewart
The writing on the wall
Appears rather daunting.
Weighed without a balance;
All I’ve found I’m wanting.
If only these walls spoke.
They would tell you things.
Like clarity I hope.
Like unforgiven stings.
I shall take the burden.
My back can take the weight.
Barely gets a word in.
It’s all proved to be fake.
As I paint these murals,
My words are never caught.
An incandescent world.
Where the “truth” is never fought.
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She says we are alike because others have taken
ownership of these vessels we call bodies,
Empties herself in my lap so that she can float again,
before hips dropping chest pooling with water
her torso sinks
We can only float when we are drowning
Underneath the surface our limbs grow golden,
rivers of liquid honey enveloping hands, feet and thighs
To breathe in is to remind ourselves what
purpose we serve on the surface of this mirrored water,
a reflection without a flesh and blood image
that our thoughts could call home
This is what we share
A small ration of emptiness
Of guilt
For what crimes have left our bodies here
We’d rather drown full of oxygen
Than bear these empty lungs
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For a man who depended on his hands for a living
The arthritis like a sneak, a liar, had crept in deeply
Hurting his joints, his pride, flaring
Into various hues of red, white and blue
When he worked too hard or overtime.
Over the march of years the arthritic hands
Had taken on the shape of the steel valves he turned
And twisted, demanded by his employers, engineers
To the nickel factory. Do you remember when you stare
At the craters between your knuckles – Dad did the same
Work as you – twisting and turning valves for 32 years?
You cried the loudest when news came from hospital
That he had died. The doctors weren’t sure if there
Was a connection between what was bothering his heart
And what was bothering his hands.
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Manifest Destiny
Poem by Scott Lynch
quiet and bright
coolly spectacular
shock after shock
of red of yellow
and orange
blazing solitary
in a field
beside the river, the orchard, the hill
leaching the landscape
a manifest destiny of
primary colour
glistening this early morning
dew accentuating the brilliant light
green backdrop now
having lost the status of spring
suddenly resplendent
this kaleidoscope of changing colour
like phoenix rising in rainbows
from morning fields
fleeting
fireworks the fall forest
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I.C.U. i.e. luv hrtz
Poem by Harry Wayne Mah
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Conceit
Haiku by Harry Garrison
Remember to break
The Eleventh Commandment:
Thou shalt not show off!
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The Astronaut
Poem by Rod Stewart
Levitating lost in absolute silence
Somewhere in the womb of midnight
My thoughts reach for you
Through the distance of infinity.
I imagine your warmth
Tight and full next to me,
Asleep, perhaps oblivious to all,
Except our twinned heartbeats
Muffled deep in the cocoon of slumber
Along a journey of tethered dreams.
My eyes close once more,
And I desperately yearn,
For another shared breath,
A feather wet kiss,
Bestowed beautiful between us
Savored as if it was the last
Sweet taste of my existence.
My fingertips stretch through the stratosphere,
Aching to wake you up, all over again
My Precious Star,
To tell you with a tearful caress
How dearly I love you.
How dearly I miss you.
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An Uninvited Guest
Poem by David Du
You slide it under the door.
Nobody gave you a wave,
Nobody wants you to come,
However, you come and
You sat on the floor
Make a scream.
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A Promise of Sun
(Carrickfinn, Donegal, April 15, 2016)
Poem by Lesley Choyce
I promised you bright sun this day,
both sunshine and love
but I can see from the pewter sky
I can deliver only one.
So ends our week of wandering
in the wilds of Donegal’s northern shores,
Rossnolough, Maghera, Derrybeg,
Innishfree Bay and Dunfanaghy,
the cliffs of Slieve League
in an Atlantic squall
and tramping the bogs of despair
below Mt. Errigal
to reach the eventual ascent
into the gloomy clouds
followed by
a hasty scramble back down
to the spongey valley.
Quiet moments we found
in the forests of Ards
among the exquisite “scourge of rhododendron”
and on the winding roads of Dungloe and Cloony
Ardara and Gweedore.
And finally this—
a quiet morning in Carrickfinn
the turf fire gone out
the kitchen table a celebration of crumbs
you settled and reading a book
as the sky spills its generous rain
from dark and dreamy clouds
as sad as “sad as silence when a song is spent”
but as soft as dream of summer.
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When I Call
Poem by Sarah Moore
late at night is when
I feel weak.
swept up in waves of words
that carry me, dragging out
knots and tangles
and tears until all that remains is
I miss him.
I know.
Open Heart Forgery 
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