View Issue vol. 13, no. 9
ISSN 2369-6516 (Print)
ISSN 2369-6524 (Online)
Scroll down to read all poems, or select the poem title to go directly to that poem. Select the author’s name to view a short biography (if supplied) and all poems by that author.
Daniel Boucher – Quatrain for Ada’s Place
Oliver Cresswell – Swirls of Jupiter
Haley Dawne – growing up is weird
Harry Garrison – A Course You Might Take
Brian Harding – Christmas will never be the same
David Mac Eachern – Soul Searching
F. Arthur Ricane – Where’s Waldo in Apocalypto
Nathaniel S. Rounds – Sugar on Corpse
Elzy Taramangalam – Cassandra Words
Holidays!
Poem by Rod Stewart
Have you found yourself,
Somewhere in the middle of it all,
Wandering with lost thoughts,
Like fresh sparrow tracks
Upon morning snow,
Or perhaps dangling
In a yesteryear moment,
As an ornament caught
By the fireplace flicker,
Maybe with a touch
Of holiday congestion,
In the crush of honking traffic,
Among the anguish,
With the last bedside tissue,
Or just simply spinning,
Our tires and lives,
As families and seasons
Always merrily do.
Red Berries
Poem by Teresa Kilbride
You put red berries
In holes in big rocks
For animals to find
You never get to see them taken
But you take pleasure
In seeing them in your mind.
“For animals,” you say
As you leave a job well done.
There is a beam of light
Heading toward you
From my heart
As you walk with me then
And I take the small hand
That placed the red berries
The memory made.
Why I Wrote this Poem
This poem was written after one of the many walks in the woods I have taken with my two-year-old grandson.
Swirls of Jupiter
Poem by Oliver Cresswell
Eggnog plops
into the coffee black
and disappears.
No trace,
just depth.
Warm and pregnant darkness cupped
in hands that felt the morning chill.
Then a shift
of plates tectonic,
the chthonic eruptions,
of Sun-yellow dancing –
yin and yang.
And for a moment I am once again
a child
sitting at the breakfast table
on a pale sky Sunday morning
watching swirls of Jupiter in my hands.Grief
Poem by Janet Brush
They say time heals all wounds; they are wrong.
Grief lives in the belly like a dormant volcano.
When death comes, grief explodes in fierce waves,
engulfing all the senses.
It slowly subsides in ever diminishing spurts of lava,
until an uneasy calm prevails.
But subterranean rumblings continue, unnoticed, unfelt,
until activated by a memory –
a song, a place, the smell of an old hat.
Then grief erupts again, destroys your defenses, knocks you down
to depths of despair as great as when death first struck.
The time between eruptions cannot be predicted.
You get no warning.
But you know grief is always there, waiting
for a catalyst to burst forth once again.
These wounds will never heal.Where’s Waldo in Apocalypto
Poem by F. Arthur Ricane
World War III! Make sure the doors are bombproof!
Panic! Defenestrate the politicians and academia!
Paranoia! Stomp the phone! Magnet the computer!
Accidental escalation! Nuclear holocaust! All is lost!
Soul Searching
Haiku by David Mac Eachern
Down on the hotline
To the world of internet
Earth going viral
Why I Wrote this Poem
I believe those lines came to me in regard to how many people across the world have interacted on the internet. Thus becoming more internationally connected. People getting their confidence from such.
Sky Limit
Poem by Lorie Morris
Sky limit, is endless.
Sky limit, knows no, boundary.
Sky limit, is on going.
Sky limit, is where I want,
to be.
Why I Wrote this Poem
The reason why I wrote “Sky Limit” was that I was feeling very hopeful. I guess deep down I like to prove that I too could make it happen.
On time
Poem by Kasey Connely
Once upon a time
a second felt like a second,
a minute felt like a minute,
an hour felt like an hour,
and so on.
But at some point along the way,
the timekeepers became tricksters
mischievously trading places
to keep us on our toes.
Now one minute will fly by
in the blink of a second
and one day will pass
itself off as an afternoon.
This impish dance
and clockwork shuffle of
diminishing returns continues,
while we age on and on.
Only to wake one day
and find out with surprise,
in the final hours of our lives,
all we have left is this millisecond.
Cassandra Words
Poem by Elzy Taramangalam
Suddenly the wind
Is howling again.
Eight billion walk the earth
More men and women
Love and hate
Are at each other’s throat.
Less air, less space, less water
Less compassion
Less of anything good
To go around: Beware
ocean
Poem by Janelle Levesque
we spoke in murmurs and felt in waves
we took turns magnifying ants with our retrospection
licking the salt from our skin where the ocean
had left its breath like a heartache
forcing us to feel the weight of past storms
the insatiable desire to devour all living things
searching for signs of life we turned over rocks
their underbellies hardened with barnacles
instead we uncovered carcasses
weathered relics discarded by the sea
the fossilized tears of past lovers
it was then that I realized skin is just decomposable matter
that even our bones would decay with the froth of the tide
until not even the archeologists would recognize us
it was then that I realized love is not enough
that the ocean would swallow us whole
growing up is weird
Poem by Haley Dawne
My friends are having babies
Proposals will happen this year
Houses are being bought
And although it’s all exciting
These milestones fill me with fear
Everyone is growing up
Everyone is settling down
I’m certainly getting older
But I still prefer the unknown
Quatrain for Ada’s Place
Poem by Daniel Boucher
Thank God for cheap red wine and faithful friends:
Wine, which gayly spills us into our beds,
And friends, who pull us right back out again,
For this old healing-house in the North End.
Shattered
Poem by David Du
You used to be in bloom, the color as if
A red glow,
But right now the wind blows you toward
The other world.
You’re extremely unwilling to go with the wind,
You know this is not a sweet date,
You know this is a death journey,
But you also know you cannot stay in the sunshine
Hugging the tree and ground,
So you start your journey –
Lake, mountain roof or even the dirt.
When you touch the earth where you’d bloomed
A warm stream runs through you …
You understand this is your graveyard,
So you lay down there to begin
Sleeping, sleeping…
Why I Wrote this Poem
Life is like shattered elements: even though they dislike leaving, when the Karma of leaving is ready they all start traveling. Finally they all return back to the earth peacefully!
Christmas will never be the same
Poem by Brian Harding
Where did Grand dad go.
Has anyone seen our Grand dad?
Does anyone know?
He was part of our Christmas for so long.
Please tell us where he is.
Dressed as Santa Claus, he wandered past our house
Every Christmas Eve.
Oh as if we did not know.
He did not have a sleigh
Instead he towed a four wheel buggy.
All aglow with Christmas lights
Filled with a stuffed puppet of Santa Claus.
He jingled bells, and shouted Ho Ho.
We watched from the window, Grayson and I ( Evelyn)
There goes Santa, Mummy and Daddy we shouted
Then to bed we went happy as can be.
Please someone tell us.
Where did Grand Dad go.
Why I Wrote this Poem
Memories of Christmas Past, when my two Grand Children saw (Father Christmas) from their bedroom window on Christmas Eve. My gift to them that will last a lifetime, I hope. Sadly Grand Parents do pass on, and only memories remain of their sometimes short journey on this Earth. Children must wonder why they have to leave them, and ask the inevitable question: where did they go. Rarely would one answer I do not know….
A Course You Might Take
Rectangle Poem by Harry Garrison
A Course You Might Take
It’s named, officially,
“Andrew Wiles’ Proof of
Fermat’s Last Theorem,”
but all the pupils know
it as “Math Cathedral.”Why I Wrote this Poem
Fermat’s Last Theorem states that there are no whole number solutions for n>2 for this equation:
A to the power of n plus B to the power of n
equals C to the power of n.
I admire Andrew Wiles for doing what so many thought was impossible, proving the theorem. I imagine students also being admiring. The course, as far as I know, does not exist. The nickname, “Math Cathedral,” is my own invention. Wiles compares his experience doing mathematics to bringing light to a dark mansion, but “Cathedral” implies beauty. The two papers making up Wiles’ proof are, together, 129 pages long.
Polyps
Poem by Bill Jones
Sweet Root Sarsaparilla,
Ginseng, Ginger, Gold-Thread
Remedy from old Sparrow-Hawk
For Ailementary Cytoplasms …
Squeamish, membranous intruder
Extracted, cauterized, suture … Sessile
Subcutaneous contractions – Famished;
Ruddy, Cedar Shingles
Sugar on Corpse
Poem by Nathaniel S. Rounds
Adjunct sepulchre
Of cooked books &
Annulments
How did you become
The faded city of industry
Turned greased pit of meth?
The countryside adjoins
The marshland
The sandstone bank
Kisses food bank
And yet
The silver spooned progeny
Contra dances with the poor
Cousin
May the old dams fail
And the floodgates rise
Open Heart Forgery 