IMAGINE WANTING TO LIVE

by Kristin Yates

So much you break 

the windows of your home

with the blunt force 

of your will 

to live—

though the house treads water,

and devastation 

like a muddy choke surrounds you 

where your life, your loved ones, used 

to breathe—

imagine wanting to live

so much—

you crawl to the roof

and you hunch

and you hold

and you wait

and you watch

and you wonder

how many bodies

human

nonhuman

dead

almost dead

are cremated 

in the flood’s current

and you pray to your will to live 

and you pray to the storm

and you pray to tomorrow

to let you       live,

please

let me      live. 

If you look close enough 

on the roof of any storm, 

you’ll find 

someone who wants         to live. 

Kristin Yates is an award-winning poet, artist, cat cuddler, and work in progress from Lewisville, North Carolina. Her poems have appeared in Tiny Seed Journal, Beyond the Veil Press, Writerly Magazine, Unstamatic, Campfire Poets, Scavengers, Green Ink Poetry, Last Leaves Magazine, and others.

MY MOTHER IS SUING THE US GOVERNMENT FOR POISONING HER HUSBAND

by Bill Garvey

The government doubts his
cancer was caused by Camp Lejeune.
How do you know he was even there? they ask. 
We lived in New Bern North Carolina, 
she says, and every day Bill took the bus to Cherry Point 
or Camp Lejeune depending on his orders.
 
But even if he was at Camp Lejeune,
how do you know he drank the water?
It was hot, May to September 1952.
I'm sure he drank the water.
Were you with him at Lejeune?
Did you witness him drink the water?
 
Of course I wasn't with him. 
Of course I didn't witness... 
So for all you know he could have quenched
his thirst with an ice-cold Coca-Cola.
Or even a Ginger Ale. For all you know he was never 
exposed to the water at Camp Lejeune. 
 
I was madly in love with a Marine 
with crooked teeth and a cocky grin. 
Every day from May to September he came 
home to me seventy-two years ago,
clean and showered, so handsome 
in his crisp uniform, stepping from the bus 
 
into our tiny apartment, ready for me. 
Embracing me so close I forgot all about the heat. 
I'll always remember how good he smelled 
at the end of a long day, his hair still damp from 
your showers, not a whiff of Coca-Cola—
or even a Ginger Ale—on his lips.

Author's note: This is a true story. My mother is 93, still sharp, and she is suing the US government for my father's death from kidney and renal cancer in 1977, when the world was ignorant to Lejeune.

Bill Garvey's collection of poetry The basement on Biella was published in 2023 by DarkWinter Press. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Rattle, One Art, San Antonio Review, Connecticut River Review, Cimarron Review, The New Verse News, The New Quarterly and others.

CONTROLLED BURN

by Joan Leotta

 

One might think that in an area 

Used to the force of hurricanes, 

Uncontrolled forces of wind and water

That wreak havoc on the land 

Might better understand

The paradox of their mission.

Setting a “controlled burn”

That’s how it started, they say.

To burn four hundred wooded acres 

to lessen fire’s damage.

“They” ignited the flames, watched, and left, 

not realizing until the next day

embers had reignited, blazed hot

and traveled on the wind

in the night.

Now, as I write, 

a week later,

almost sixteen thousand acres of 

woodland are now ash. Countless

animals, birds have lost homes,

people not as yet,

but the flames are still unextinguished,

blaze still only partly contained.

Red suns at dawn and dusk are beautiful 

but terrifying at the same time.

Wind, fire, water, earth—

four elements have already shown themselves

to be beyond our ability to reign them in.

We poets have known since forever, 

that these are forces beyond our control.

The only true controlled burn is anger.

Forgiveness extinguishes those flames.

We wait now for heaven’s forgiving

soaking rain to quench these flames

to stop this fire’s spread.

Joan Leotta is an author and Story Performer.

WINTER MORNING

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Beyond the snow-laden hill and ice-covered

field, ancient oaks are raising their bare limbs

toward a sky marbled with clouds. Gilded by

a sun we cannot yet see, they look fixed to the

firmament, their shifting so subtle it seems as

if these clouds might never move again, as if

time itself has stopped and winter has come

to stay. I would not mind it. It is cozy here by

the fire, watching the day begin through panes

of glass, my hair busily turning white, my body

grateful for its rest. I never thought of growing

older, imagined I would look and feel the same

forever. But the decades fly by, and now winter

seems to suit me best. There is nothing I need

to do and no place to be. A good book is open

on my lap, and my husband of thirty years is

just up the stairs. I can see the little boy next

door already sledding with his mother. He will

remember always how it felt to zoom down the

steep bank with the person he loves best in all

the world—both laughing, faces red from the

cold. Meanwhile, oaks that will never again be

saplings, hold within themselves the memory

of spring. And the winter sky that was, only

moments ago, filled with gilded clouds, has at

last allowed them to drift ever so slowly away.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53), winner of the 2021 International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including "American Life in Poetry," Atlanta Review, ONE ART, Poet’s Market, The Broad River Review, The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Sport Literate, Verse Daily. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

A BRIEF GEOGRAPHY OF GOODBYES

by Mary K O'Melveny

"Red Composition" by Jackson Pollock

Everyone who knows grief as it settles onto chests,

humid as a jungle, thick as fog on a heath,

understands that goodbyes can be a gift. A brief

cushion to ease the long emptiness ahead.

 

As I write this, my friend’s husband is dying

in hospice care in New York. He surrendered

after waging a fierce battle with leukemia that,

for a merciful time, he seemed to be winning.

 

Each arc of loss beams wider than celestial skies

on clear summer nights. His young grandchildren

gather at a grassy hospital garden to say goodbye.

Siblings fly from far-flung homes to do the same.

 

My sister and I stood at our mother’s bedside

watching lights on monitors fade and fizzle out.

Without evidence of audibility, we still sang to her,

believing emigration is aided by a sound track.

In Gaza, bereaved households are less blessed.

A fine whine of rockets the only warning before

a family’s cardamom tea and künefe splatters

like a Pollock canvas across living room walls.

 

In Delhi, breaths come to a close after failed searches

for oxygen – it seems there is no price that can be paid

for air though grieving loved ones would mortgage

their own lung capacities if currencies allowed.

 

In North Carolina, police kill a man as he tries

to drive away from death. His story forms a pattern

recurrent as an Escher etching. Each morning’s only

question – will this day mark memory’s final day.

 

COVID focused attention toward microscopic gestures –

the tensile strength of touch, the graceful creases

of a laugh line, the thrill of whispered thank yous.

Such gifts may allow us to survive our diminishments.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

YELP REVIEW: NORTH CAROLINA STATEHOUSE

by Jesse Bradley

Here, the sorest losers are a swarm
of wasps; they treat democracy
like a neck trickling with sweat.

With enough stings, your throat swells
until the protest dies
before it can leave your tongue.


J. Bradley is the winner of Five [Quarterly]'s 2015 e-chapbook contest for fiction.

THE THIRTEENTH MORNING AFTER

by Lyndi O'Laughlin

Image source: Loyal White Knights

Someone put an Amazon box
with a dirty bomb
under the Wizard of Oz’s throne,
blowing millions of barefaced replicas
into a blameless wind,

some lined-up right now
outside the local tattoo parlor,
needles buzzing over the raw flesh
of “Stars and Stripes Forever”.

The Victory Klavalkade Klan Parade is
planned for December, pale guys
and the women who love them
will wave from the beds of
pick-up trucks slithering down
a slick shiny boulevard in
North Carolina, and light will try to glint
off the gun metal barrels of dusty rifles
hanging on racks in back windows;
confetti and balloons will thrill
the children of the children and
maple trees along the parade route
will blow backwards into
the indifferent faces of crows,

and there is so much joy
around me that I turn away,
walk myself into the ocean,
breath salt water and fish scales,
stroll by anemones and sea stars
hiding under vast islands of
Huggies, Big Mac wrappers,
condoms and water bottles.

I’ll nap in a kelp bed, wake to
my own whimpers and howls
bubbling forth like the bays of
a three-legged red bone hound
tethered underwater to a coral reef,
head straight back, mouth an open gash,
seven billion balls of air bubbling forth.

It’s a comfortable enough seat,
this rocky outcrop, and I hardly
have to crane my neck at all
to see the soft underbelly
of that great white shark,
circling the shipwreck on my left.

Nothing to be done today
but keen bad poems,
let them rise in bubbles that
break the surface with a feeble crack
like the chipped edge
of a flat oar,
knowing I will never again
have to wonder—
how the Holocaust was
able to happen in the first place.

Lyndi O'Laughlin has a degree in nursing, but spends her time writing poetry from her home in Kaycee, Wyoming. As a progressive living in a rural, conservative area, poetry has become her way of expressing views that question the status quo. 

THE TOILET PROBLEM

Barbara A Taylor’s free verse poems, renku, haiga, haibun, haiku, tanka, and other Japanese short form poetry appear in many international journals and anthologies on line and in print. She lives in the Rainbow Region, Northern NSW, Australia.

A COMPASSIONATE JUDGE AT THE VETERANS COURT

by Phyllis Klein


   

   “It was more of a father-son conversation. It was personal.”

The Washington Post, April 22, 2016

And so, when the judge
gets into the cell
with the man he has just sentenced
to twenty-four hours in jail,
the man asks, “For the whole day?”
and the judge says,
“Yeah, that’s what I’m doing.”

Like a father who says,
“He’s my son and I won’t see him fall."
And a son who isn’t alone
locked down in the dark with his terror.

Because the judge has been to war, too,
and knows there are wounds
that aren’t visible. Because the man,
two decades in the military, knows
another soldier died for him in combat
and lives crushed under this,
and not only this.

And a judge can be a brother
to a man who has lost his way,
as two oak trees in a meadow
can be connected by their roots.
The way a man who has lost
his way can be a messenger
to remind us
there is so much more to know
about what’s on the inside.

Because we are so ready
to skate on the surface
of our minds. Because
we can do so much more
to be relatives in the fields        
of trees, beauty,
and devastation we call home.

Phyllis Klein believes in poetry. Her work has appeared in the Pharos of Alpha Omega Medical Society Journal,  Qarrtsiluni, Silver Birch Press, The Four Seasons Anthology, TheNewVerse.News, and is forthcoming in Crosswinds Poetry Journal and Chiron Review. She is very interested in the conversation between poets and readers of poetry. She sees artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area as a psychotherapist and poetry therapist.