She Thought ------ poem by Koon Woon

She thought

She thought maybe she could love me

But she was caught between comfort and chaos

She thought she could have it and eat it

In both ways she could affirm and also assimilate

But the upshot was not what it seemed to be

The invisible constraints keep one in place

She couldn’t decide to be Alice or to be the Queen

But no matter, the importance of it all unraveled at the seams.

Julie A. Dickson -------- three poems

Moose  [A True account]

Standing still three feet deep,

with river at low tide,

head dipped as he ripped

weeds, and then he chewed.

The town from each bank

viewed an unusual beast

enjoying his feast from the river.

But then they came along,

those from Fish and Game,

we all nodded and agreed

our young moose bore no blame.

He [the moose] was made to go,

tranquilized without much bellow,

taken far up north to graze,

hoisted, as we pondered

it this the best way to raise a moose?

Julie A. Dickson

Exeter, NH

---------

Hand-in-Hand

The outline of an older man

shadows across a chalky sidewalk.

A young boy stands atop the shadow,

looking up, his small fingers clasped firmly

but softly held in the age-mottled hand

of his white-haired grandfather.

They cross the street hand-in-hand

on their special weekly excursion,

the boy brightening when approaching

their favorite ice cream shop.

Grandfather always orders a Spanish sundae,

enjoying each salty red-skinned peanut;

in contrast to the boy’s pink-hued

strawberry shortcake, mounded whipped cream

and a cherry, saved until the last.

The boy savors each bite in

the shadow of an older man.

Julie A. Dickson

Exeter, NH

-----

Misalona Smile     [Anagram – Mona Lisa]

Misalona, a solitary jewel -

uncut stone, in precious diamond dark.

Possesses a deep tonal fortitude;

inside her dwells a well-hidden spark.

At times her dark brown eyes have glittered

with vast propensity of visions viewed,

her solemnity seems almost stoic,

although she’s quite resolved in attitude.

Watches from a wide- angle stance,

witnessed images seen as phrases;

words structured into free verse and prose,

compiled silent questions she raises.

When he enters her field of vision

Exquisite jeweled clarity does release;

somehow scene changes to fill her void

Misalona smile exemplifies her inner peace.

Julie A. Dickson

Exeter, NH

Shannon P. Laws ----- three poems

Death’s Dip

of Confession of a Mattress

            by Shannon P. Laws

FREE mattress. A queen size pillow top

Took it home, laid it in the frame

First night—I rolled into a dip

a body shaped dip

on the left side

A person taller than me, wider than me

created a dip that I roll into

a bedridden, sickly person

left a death dip

No problem, I think, I’ll just sleep on the right

every night to even things out

Yet, every morning I wake in the dip

My bed, now a metaphorical display

divides my psyche down the middle

The dip is comfortable, soft, form fitting

It feels like a hug in my lonely bed.

It is as comfortable as my father’s depression,

a heavy-known feeling of failure,

like a person reluctant to leave their bed

Successful people are not children

Few people achieve success

Those that do are vain and far from God

My familiar spins tires, set on park.

This I confess to you:

            I sleep with death

                        —and I like it

Skin Suit Sewn Too Tightly

          By Shannon Laws

As a doctor sucks poison from a bite

the red rock of Bisbee calls out ghosts

The dead come back to walk again

Reincarnation of secondhand spirits

as secondhand furniture

The dresser is painted now

The couch new cloth

The set of chairs split apart

The headboard used for vines

In your years of living

the painting under the painting

a past covered over and over

with false stories of forgotten moments

Moments made to fill the gap of time

the hungry use between reading

the menu—ordering the meal

Fat of the present melts off

dead blood returns moisture

to the air, dries your muscles tight

Tight as new couch fabric

White as the dresser

Your sets of ribs pull apart

Your head a plot of vines

 Leaf Tattoo

          by Shannon P. Laws

You can you feel it

in my city

the change of air

as wind folds in

fall’s weather.

Orange leaves appear on

the sidewalks of Holly Street.

No worms to dance them back to soil.

Cement laden, laid on

the roadside in random patterns

leave a tattoo, imprinted on the stone.

Five pointed stars tree hand

pressed by feet and rain

bleed orange ink for all to see.

By winter the marks wash away

By spring, bright green babies wave

at us from their mother’s arm

born back into our memory.

Two Prose Poems by John Olson

Seesaw

The sky leans over the water and rides the meaning of the waves. The windows are splattered with rain. An angel of the morning throbs with apprehension. I continue my research on the harmonica. The silk of listening necessitates the sparkle of words. No thought is so obscure that it doesn’t in some fashion flirt with description. My sad green desire swarms with expectation. How many sounds fill a single day? One of them is the sound of a cat eating, smacking little gobs of wet food chicken or turkey against his upper palate. There is warmth in prayer. The day is without precedent. It’s time to gather up all the shadows and make something blaze into reality. Something like thread, or need, or a pain suckling the headlight of a jaguar for the milk of paradise. Isn’t that why people go fishing? There’s a treasure in your eyes called seeing. Can you see it? Can you see seeing? Seeing is easily seen through. Sewing is different. Sewing is more like seesaws. I saw myself see a seesaw and sagged into prophecy with the burden of my testament. Life is often sticky this way. Sometimes I just ramble on for hours saying whatever comes into my head. It’s a lot like swimming. I have to keep moving to stay afloat. Meander. It’s what rivers do. Ripple and riddle and rupture into resplendent aqua. The light is swollen with color. There is so much more to a chair than a chair. Is that a door in your head or just an epiphany? There is so much more that I would like to show you. But the words don’t exist. They smolder like mirrors at the bottom of a swamp. Infinity goes around in a brass hat going on and on about language and how it smells of consciousness and weighs as much as a mathematical logic teased into eighty three eels and a football. The hotel lobby crawls with meat. The air is warm. The incongruities are raw and the grapes are delicious. What more can be said? When it comes to a seesaw there is up and there is down and up and down are interchangeable. What does not exist exists in its non-existence. And that, my friend, is a suitcase. Let’s pack it with whistling and go. Travel the highways make fun of the law. Make memories out of pins. Mythologies out of straw. 

Reality Is Hard to Describe with Bicycles

Reality is hard to describe with bicycles. But why even try? There’s so much of it around. There’s as much reality as there are people. Everybody’s reality is unique to them. But doesn’t that sound glib? I mean, we have to agree on some things, or there wouldn’t be any reality at all. There’d be nothing but sloppy solipsistic anarchy. Crazy people. Morning would arrive every morning in a sweat. You’d never know what to expect. Maybe that’s why some people need jobs. It helps to structure the day. Sometimes I like to run water over a fork. Hold it under the kitchen faucet. It fascinates me. I see a little reality happening there. The reality of water. The reality of a fork. Stainless steel. Tines. And then along comes a religion and it all unravels and becomes a fantasy again. Darkness at the break of noon.  Some religions are helpful. They’re full of singing and glories and deliverance. Fat men in sleighs. Reindeer. Angels. Peculiar attitudes toward money. Me, I believe in the religion of incongruity. Things that don’t fit. Or look like they don’t fit and then you discover holy cow they do fit. If you look hard enough you can always find relations between things. For instance if I imitate a cardboard box it isn’t long before someone comes along and tries to put something into me. An extension cord or sweatshirt. Can I do a metaphor for you? Personality is eye spice. Writing is propagation. Reality is a hatband. Or schnauzer. I don’t know. Let reality be reality, said Lao Tzu. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. Right now nothing is flowing, except my mind. My hands. My wife’s hand as she draws a wolf. The cat as he stares at the floor. Ok, that’s not flowing, I know, but his form is flowing, the form of the cat is flowing, trust me, it’s flowing. Like I said. Reality is hard to describe with bicycles. So why not use hands? Cats? Metaphors? Asian philosophers? Western philosophers? Hungry philosophers? Any kind of philosopher you can find that isn’t drunk or horny. Desire can skew one’s sense of wisdom. That which is wise and balanced and sensible and sane. Or what? Get on a bicycle and go for a ride. That’s what. 

Nhattaleah Nichols ------ four poems

Together

You only like me when you’re drunk

And I only like you when I’m lonely

But when we sleep

Our hands reach like branches

Pulling us up

Past the Brownstones

Soundly together

Magical Realism

I’m just going to say it now in

the season of bare branches

Just how I wanted to say it then

In the season of spiders and promises and leaves

You are not the first to not love me

I called that story magical realism (the one with the snow and the conditions that I read to you while balancing the book

hot tea

and myself in your lap)

Your long face opened and laughed, said:

You think two people in love is magical realism

I looked down

to the right

sloshing hot tea on bare skin

as if to say

How Foolish

How could I have implied that in the snow

your big hands wouldn’t support my spine in the spiraling flakes?

Your big hands and long face are not the first to not love me

And in the snow

What could be more magical

And more real

Than love

Today

I’m going to sit here

on these rat ridden concrete slabs

in a city that smells like feet

all summer.

waiting for work

and imagine that you are here

Saying those words to me:

Skykomish Snohomish Snoqualmish

And telling me about the Joy you felt

The first time you had a Huckleberry

After leaving the lands of our people

And I’ll tell you about how I didn’t know that Salal

Was the name of a plant and not

All low-lying shrubbery

We can say Kalakala

And talk mountains and

Forget about our exile

The one that brought us happiness

Hay Fever

I woke up at 5 AM alone

My face swollen

 from every scrap of flora the world over trying not to be lonely

I know! It's awful, but it's also ok

It's just spring, and I know that myself

and the rest of the known world

want to smell dirty hair

Too warm skin

And be slightly disgusted

And completely in love

New poem by Mary Nielsen

"Receipt for a Scarlet Begonia"

found on the ground today

a receipt for a scarlet begonia

a phrase that has a poetic ring to it and

I really must look into iambic pentameter

and other patterns of human psyche

which we share a common thread of thankfulness

or thanklessness as they are two sides of the same coin

a begonia is a waxy flower of a genus species

often given as a gift for those so inclined to purchase something

for a sick relative who is not so close

and for whom one would not go out on a limb for

whose thoughtfulness or thoughtlessness we carry as banners

of our fancy notions with either wistfulness or sadness

emanating from the montage of our sincerity

"The Snow Man" ---- by Koon Woon as homage to Wallace Stevens

“The Snow Man”


One must have a bottle of Gallo in this cold alley
And to shake the cops and other winos
And be on the look-out for some sucker to roll

It has been a long while since my abode
Was taken from me not because of ice or lice
But because of the drive for condos

That in this high rise reaching town
Where all the Californ Dreaming has lost ground
To the sound of broken bottles

Which is the brittle psyche of fife
Which leads the rats from places bare
To places that don’t any longer sustain life

For the dweller of the alley, who is on dope,
And nothing, I mean nothing, beats a quick fix,
Nothing that is pure nor is impure.

Stephanie Peirce ----- five poems

I return to you

The jasmine had bloomed

in my absence, your presence.

Nasturtium, tomato, sunflower, sweet pea, morning glory

had all sprouted, twining up in green

to meet the sun.

When the plane sunk down in Newark yesterday,

slipping through the violet air,

descending to the flat line that was the earth

leaving the sun and clouds above,

You were there on earth to meet me.

My head full of clouds and heart full of seeds,

I burst like a piñata

who had been stuffed with only happiness.

Dulce de Leche

Went to see Cookieman at the bakery. The café Tavolo Pronto opened this Spring and it was like having a little outpost from Italy land in the neighborhood. Giant cheeses hang from the ceilings. Cookieman’s real name is Dan but I call him Cookieman because he has always given me something sweet for free. It began the first time we met. A lemon drop, a pignoli cookie, some chocolate bark. Without even knowing it was my birthday, that day he chose to make little personal sized dark chocolate cakes, some topped with raspberry preserves and some with nutella. I bought one of each. He always asks where I have been and sometimes I have to say nowhere but this time I said Rhode Island. He was making a new kind of cookie. Alfajores. Chilenitos. A South American cookie, two round scalloped butter sugar cookies held together by dulce de leche and dusted with powdered sugar. His ex girlfriend’s recipe, he says. I say “Oh you should make a cookbook of recipes of ex girlfriends.” He says “Oh it would be very short, only two pages.” I tell him that his café is my church. He says I should come there more often.

Solstice Double Rainbow

Sometimes you think the earth cannot get any more beautiful

and then a double rainbow rises up out of the land and plunges into the ocean

and four Russian kids in New Jersey leap into the sea, fearless, riding the waves into shore, bobbing and tumbling like seals while their mothers stand watch.

And we two strangers look over them also

as the rain and sun falls all around us, and the sea sweeps in and out,

and into the deep gray sky are burned the colors

violet indigo blue green yellow orange red,

and on the other rainbow mirrored

red orange yellow green blue indigo violet,

Reflective twins, stunt doubles.

No one needs a promise, no one needs a pot of gold.

Everything we need is right here,

and side by side we sink our feet into it

as it rushes in all around us.

The Pear Tree    

Our ritual is this~

We run through the autumn rain

to the pear tree

which is so laden with fruit

we think of ourselves as almost charitable

relieving its boughs of the weight

which is threatening to crack it in two,

split its limbs from its body.

The rain is thick and chilly.

The dog’s body so golden running over lush neglected grass,

like a river of gold,

 rushing over a river of green.

We each grab a pear

and then turn and run,

fast as we can,

back to the house.

I am a child again.

Once inside the door,

the dog cheerfully greedily grabs at both pieces of fruit.

His smiling jaws leaving tooth marks in our quarry, he

steals mine while I am drying his paws with a towel.

What can I say that he will understand?

I say nothing and wait for tomorrow

when I will be quicker, when I will be smarter.

The Joke

I am kneeling in the Acme grocery store in Fair Haven, New Jersey perusing the dizzying assortment of chocolate chips on the lowest shelves when an elderly man leaning on his cart approaches and asks:

“Soup, down the next aisle?”

“Yes, I believe it is.”

“Making cookies?” he asks.

“Yes,” I smile.

“Small children?”

“Nope, just me. How about you?”

“Nope, at 94 I am on my own.”

His eyes are clear and blue and he looks really not even a day over seventy. Nice skin, straight posture. The only give-away is the very careful way he grips the cart’s hand bar. And the fact that he is relaxed, he seems to have time, unlike some of other shoppers who are so hurried we must dodge them like traffic.

“They had a big party for my 90^th” he says.

We continue to chat. He tells me a joke.

“You know what the inside of a tree and a dog’s tail have in common?”

I shake my head no.

“They are both the furthest from the bark.”

“Ok,” he says, “here is another one.”

There was a 90 year old man who went to his doctor and told him to give him a physical because he is getting married, and that to his surprise and delight he is marrying a 25 year old.

The doctor says, “I will do it but I am not sure it is a good idea, it could lead to death.”

The man shrugs and says, “Well, if she dies she dies.

What can you do?”

Shin Yu Pai ------- three poems

solids

simmered rice in bone
broth builds sinews

the first solids I feed
my infant son,

other mothers said
Cheerios sugared cereals

give him your word he’ll know
the taste of cheeseburgers,

cake – & yet the whole
family’s gone gluten-free

grueling, the first pablum
my father received

when his mother had
an abscessed breast,

a wooden stick dipped
in porridge what

he nursed  in the absence
of milk supply, powder

food shortages in wartime
no longer in a state

of famine,  I affirm
my own accord

plots

I don’t know the trail
to my grandparents’

graves, knowledge the men
folk keep for themselves

secrets passed down from
fathers to sons where

the bodies are buried
behind the house,

on Ao Feng mountain
we wade through waist-

high grass my uncle
leading the way beats

back weeds with bamboo
pole, the path kept hidden

my aunts left out
of decision-making

when it came to gathering up
the bones of the family

ancestors, urns buried
deep in the earth to be

exhumed for a final
resting place, in reunion,

what they found, empty
plots robbed of their relics

stolen by an angry forebearer
to make fools, worshipping

dust, long gone

paper craft

folded cranes delight
my 9-month-old boy,

birds strung on red thread
circle the living room,

forms my mother fashioned
nine years ago for a wedding

blessings, I gave away to guests
not knowing until years later

embedded within hundreds
of origami bodies, my father

contributed a single bird,
the pattern of which he shared

with no one; I try to see
his hand, a shape folded

from common copy
paper embellished with

inked hearts proof of love

my son’s eyes brighten
when they float past his gaze,

awake in the early hush of
morning while his dad sleeps

I picture cranes, bald eagles,
double-crested cormorants,

& grebes filling the skies
around the manmade lake

my earliest memory: my brother
away at pre-school, my father

drove us to the foothills of
the Santa Anas each day to give

my mother respite from
tears, a time

when I couldn’t yet grasp
that my brother would return

home; washi relics crumple
in an instant in the fists

of an infant, my father waited
days to hold, citing allergies,

a cough, when what he feared
most – harming another,

birds supporting the frailty
of our feeling, an object

impermanence, a child’s
wonder yoking us together

The Beacon Hill Canto ----- poem by Koon Woon (unfinished)

The Beacon Hill Canto

I.

I will pay for the breeze, brief as it is,

rippling across the shroud of green leaves

over the ravine, on this sun brightened day,

in my Beacon Hill neighborhood,

where life is idle,

and Dylan Thomas would pronounce it good.

On rainy days even, it boasts of a solitary café:

[The Station],

as in a station of the metro,

“the apparitions of these faces in a crowd”

(a small intimate crowd it is),

“petals on a wet, black, bough.”

And would it have been worth it,

to order a tea, coffee, or cocoa,

marshmallow or orange marmalade

that will take you to another level of glad?

Like a walk from the house at a fresh hour of the morn,

inclined so slightly is 18^th Avenue South,

spritely I jaunt past houses with eaves and green paint,

past shrubs manicured and the variegated roses that grace

communal pledges that we made

to rescue each from days that are sad,

as the gardens were mastered by gardeners

who measure without malice and weigh without hate.

II.

Cross Beacon Hill Avenue with me to the Red Apple,

a house of plenty on this hilltop.

Take your sums from the Wells Fargo ATM,

go inside the store and give your eyes a feast,

and remember to purchase a book of stamps,

for letters to connect with Texas and Tennessee.

Let’s now continue past the branch library,

but we will not linger now, for there is time,

time for you and time for me,

time for the hope of the woman,

even though the principle has been hijacked

by the congressional corporations.

O Ezra Pound, where are you now?

Thou were the CEO of Modernist Poetry.

Why did you take up residence at Saint Elizabeth?

Oh well we won’t go see the Muse,

and even without a single glimpse of the Muse,

the walk must go on; we shall go on. 

III.

Inside his mind was the Muse.

And she moves on, as the river;

as the water, she moves on.

Stones will not impede her.

Shameless she provides,

in the estuary,

when birds rest from their flight.

IV.

That was another time.

He was on an island most of his days,

protected from unprivileged eyes.

V.

She called for the sky,

there came the sky.

She wanted rain.

She became fertile again.

VI.

As I walk now past the bicycle shop

again on Beacon Hill Avenue,

I am of this place and of this time.

There is another coffee shop,

but I won’t mention it by name when

the streets parade by with their designations

Horton and Hinds, Spokane at the Fire Station.

This is the loneliness of a long-distance intellectual,

the prelude with the pen that can enslave

better than an interminable sentence.

VII.

De la sierra, morena
Cielito lindo vienen bajando
Un par de ojitos negros
Cielito lindo de contrabando

Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores
Porque cantando se alegran
Cielito lindo los corazones

VIII.

We do not object.

We do not object to its price.

Jin tien wo men cher fan

Wo men do shih cher fan

“In the café the women come and go,

talking of Michaelangelo.”