TREE TRIPTYCH

by Beth Evans

 

Cuttings

 
I walked the yard recently,
Past the chickens,
You know them well by now,
The compost creators.
Walked until I saw the damaged Rose-of-Sharon.
 
A branch, several branches,
Hung bent to the ground,
Clinging to the center trunk
With shaving of themselves,
Like the first loose tooth of a child,
Hanging by a thread of flesh,
About to part company.
 
I ripped the clinging branches from their mother,
Threw them aside,
More compost,
Feedings for new life,
Leaving a wounded mother,
With one branch embedded, still,
At her side,
No sign of its leaving home.
The mother tree reaching up towards the sky,
Bare,
Bare of most of her branches,
Bare of most of the tender leaves
That the branches shoot out each year,
Year after year,
New every time,
The ever-changing interests and pursuits of her children.
But now they are gone.
As is their future.
 
I have heard,
That entire branches of families
Have been obliterated.
The mother, the father, the grandchildren,
The mother of them all, the grandmother.
Obliterated.
There will no longer be changing interests and pursuits.
There will no longer be their future.
 

Reachings

 
This tree,
This mother has wandering branches
That reach in an undulating choreography towards places,
Each other has never been.
They have their interests,
They follow their pursuits,
They live in their present
And towards their futures.
Not a single one has been cut down,
Though they all range far from the center,
Pilgrimage, the Hajj, Aliyah.
Risking annihilation in the
Moving winds of time and space.
The center holds.
I tell Yeats.
It is in their wandering,

Courage of exploration and redefinition,

That the core gains its strength.
 

Leavings

 
I woke this morning with a poem in my head.
                The black sheep
                Creep
                Away.
                They never fit in their flock.
                Do better in the outskirts,
                Do better where they find other black sheep,
                Or pink sheep,
                Or green sheep,
                Or no sheep at all.
                And find their home among the antelopes,
                Or the orangutans,
                Or even among the wolves.
 
My son has left me,
Gone to find his new home
In the mountains or the meadows or a desert,
Like the branches of the bush that now lie rotting in my yard,
Like the branches that leap from the undulating tree,
Like the sheep that leave the flock.
He tells me,
That when he has a daughter,
He will name her Rose of Sharon,
And he has not even read the Grapes of Wrath,
Or the Bible.
But he has walked in this same yard,
Past the chickens,
Past the wounded tree,
When in his day,
It grew strong and whole,
As wood should,
And he will still,
See a future,
And procreate.

The poet, Beth Evans, lives in Brooklyn, NY and writes with the Thursday Morning Poets. She holds a master's degree in English literature and works as an academic librarian. She is currently overseeing the care and maintenance of her son's 23 chickens in her urban backyard with her pitbull Chichi and her cat Shadow.

AIR QUALITY INDEX: 519

by Devon Balwit

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 12: A man wearing a mask walks along Kerry Park as smoke from wildfires fills the air on September 12, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. According to the National Weather Service, the air quality in Seattle remained at "unhealthy" levels Saturday after a large smoke cloud from wildfires on the West Coast settled over the area. (Photo by Lindsey Wasson/Getty Images via Seattle PI)

Take a deep breath, the meditation app advises—
I breathe in. I only cough a little.
I can’t see my chickens although I know they’re there.
The redwood’s ghostly one house over.

I breathe in. I only cough a little.
The front door gaps. We keep meaning to fix it.
The redwood’s ghostly one house over.
My usual view is lost to fog.

The front door gaps. We keep meaning to fix it.
Tendrils seep in, the smell of burning.
My usual view is lost to fog.
It’s like London in 1952.

Tendrils seep in, the smell of burning.
I wear a headlamp when I walk the dog.
It’s like London in 1952.
Thousands died. I don’t want to.

I wear a headlamp when I walk the dog.
I pray the coming rain will make a difference.
Thousands died. I don’t want to.
I worry for the mailman, the UPS lady with her dog biscuits.

I pray the coming rain will make a difference.
So many acres are aflame. The firefighters can’t be everywhere.
I worry for the mailman, the UPS lady with her dog biscuits.
The hummingbirds’ wings whisk smoke.

Too many acres are aflame. The firefighters can’t be everywhere.
I can’t see my chickens although I know they’re there.
The hummingbirds’ wings whisk smoke.
Take a deep breath, the meditation app advises—

When not teaching, Devon Balwit chases chickens in the Pacific Northwest. She has two collections forthcoming: Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats [Seven Kitchens Press, 2020] and Dog-Walking in the Shadow of Pyongyang [Nixes Mate Books, 2020]. 

ISOLATION

by Carl Mayfield





Slicing blossom rot off tomatoes,
we add the remains to the salad.

Loose chickens mill about the gate,
separating the dog from his mind.

Deep breathing keeps me busy.
News of the world replaces the world.

Scaled quail stay close to saltbush,
fearful of what the sky might send.

Carl Mayfield lives in the American Southwest. He doesn't want to jump his place in line so he washes his hands a lot, wears a mask, and stays home. He hopes this helps you keep your place in line right where it is.

CASINO CAPITALISM FARM

by Mickey J. Corrigan




The fields full of grazers
heavy hooved, fat with milk
stomp through the dirt
cudding the last of the green
green grass, bovine calm.

The world barnyard shakes
with squawking, honks
cacophony,
four-footed agents of history
remnants of a civil society.

Clucky hens scatter wildly
combed heads still intact
no wiser
than small goats in pasture
black horns rubbed smooth.

The last members
of the club
of nonclubs,
survivors
in the dark heart
of a mafia state.

Beyond the waste of farmland
the future
foreshortened,
the darkness
a tunnel
that ends
suddenly
at brass-knuckled  doors
bolted

from the other side.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives in South Florida and writes noir with a dark humor. Books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Poetry chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK. 

ROBERT FROST POSTS ON FACEBOOK

by Earl J. Wilcox

Sat down on back porch
This morning after feeding
Chickens, like yesterday.
Watched morning mist
Circle round apple orchard,
Listened long to lonesome
Dove coo its mate. Two lines
Of new poem came to me
During a long night. “Whose
Woods these are I think I know,”
But next line does not seem right,
Still I post it here for interest
To see if anyone likes it.
“His house is in the village
Though.” Now if only I had
A few more lines to go with
These two I might make a poem.
Probably won’t come to much,
Yet the Rhode Island Red Rooster
Liked the lines when I said them
To him. What do you think?
I will see if I can get more
Started while I walk around farm.
Cloudy and cold here in Vermont
Today. Could even snow. Rob.


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.

EATING BREAKFAST AT COLONIAL AND READING HARPER'S ON THE EGG WARS

by Joan Colby

Meme source: Twitter

Reading how the hens suffer
Crammed by the thousands in metal cages,
Stacked stories high,
The air thick with dust and feathers,
Beaks clipped, thin necks bloody,
The dying decaying beneath calloused claws,
Adhering like bathmats to the wire floors.
Forced to lay seven times the norm,
Until spent, to be seized
By the handsful, gassed and ground
For pet food. Never seeing sunlight
Or spreading wings or nesting in trees
Or taking dustbaths or establishing
The pecking order. Reading that to guarantee
A normal chicken life would mean
Paying triple or more for this
Scrambled plate, I tell you
I’d pay whatever it costs to let them be
Chickens scratching in the dirt, how maybe we
Should set up the nesting boxes
In our old coop and get some
Leghorns, though I know we won’t
Bother really, and much as I abhor
What I am reading, there’s the long distance
Between slick paper and the
Long, long barns and my fork.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.