FIVE MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION

by Rachel Landrum Crumble

It’s easy to pull weeds from damp soil, 
to power down my front steps and break
a spider’s web and not know the little guy
is hanging on me like a kid grasping 
a kite string, trying not to blow away
on a windy day. 

My point is: we should have done more,
sooner. The weeds have taken over,
yet we topple lesser kingdoms without knowing
by just walking around in the world.

In one neighbor’s house, the TV news
frets the play-by-play of a trial
that’s just concluded. In another house,
the camera’s eye bears witness to the same event, 
except the one on trial is the opposing party.
We have fashioned the media into our own ugly image. 

Truth is on trial, and must sequester
for the duration. We can’t remember whether or not
this is standard fare. We gulp the wind from giant goblets,
still parched. We are too discombobulated to know
we are lost. 

Let’s huddle together. Let’s find communion.
Sure, the wafer is thin and tasteless, but it symbolizes
something we can’t do for ourselves.

Rachel Landrum Crumble retired from twenty years of teaching high school, having previously taught kindergarten through college. She has published in The Porterhouse Review, Typishly, among others, and recently Poetry Breakfast, Humans of the World, and forthcoming in Euphony Journal. Her first poetry collection, Sister Sorrow, was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2022. She lives with her husband of 43 years, a jazz drummer, and near 2 of their 3 adult children, and two adorable grand twins with another on the way.

YOU ENTER HIS HOUSE

by Nathan Porceng

U.S. Roman Catholic bishops are due this week to discuss whether politicians, including President Joe Biden, should receive Communion while supporting abortion and LGBTQ rights, a debate that has divided the clergy and laid bare internal cultural rifts. —Reuters, June 15, 2021

and his air smells funny

and his art looks funny

and his wine tastes funny

but you try not to offend him,

for you’re dining in his house.

You exchange pleasantries.

You catch up a bit.

You ask about Gabe,

and Michael

and all the other boys

from yard days past

and he tells you they’re

fine,

even made a bit of money,

though they don’t come

around as often as they should,

and you try not to offend him,

for you’re dining in his house.

And it’s Eastertime,

or Christmastime,

or all another holy time.

He asks if it’s been a rough year?

“You don’t look so well.”

“You used to be so giving.”

You swill your wine.

You swallow.

“Yes, it has been a rough year,”

you spit,

but you try not to offend him

for you’re dining in his house.

He tells you

he likes you 

better in person.

You tell him

you like him 

better by mail.

He nods.

He appreciates your candor.

He makes a little joke.

He tells you he has it on the BEST of authorities

that this is FINALLY the year

that your team

(Panthers, Pirates, Penguins... )

will win it all.

In years past,

you’d fake a smile,

and try not to offend him,

but you can’t even manage

that.

He plays you a song.

He ushers you out.

You leave his house,

feeling emptier for it.

Nathan Porceng is a Washington-based poet, songwriter, and submariner. As part of the band Bridge Out, he won first place at the 2014 Northeastern Songwriter Festival in Brookfield, CT. He firmly believes Joe Strummer gave us all the tools we need to save the world.

RUN-UP

by Rachael Stanley






little girls in
communion dresses
Dublin city awash
with marriage -
equality posters


Rachael Stanley's poems have been published in various print and online publications. She also has an interest in shorter form poetry such as Haiku, Haibun and Tanka. She is from Dublin, Ireland where she currently lives.

FOR THE REPOSE OF SOULS

by Carol Alexander

A Berkeley, CA vigil held to remember the victims and families of the Newtown, CT, massacre. Photo: Jeremy Pollack/Creative Commons

A pair of peafowl floats down from the trees,
the wan hen and florid cock picking their way
while the river slowly slips back in its banks.

The boy in his tall wading books creeps after,
licking rust from the muzzle of his gun.

The juddering of a turquoise fan perhaps will be
as close to flame of phoenix  as spirit will draw.
But we were born in fire, and to fire will come.

The woman with the small communion dress
rocks in her chair in her ordinary room
room with its proportions rudely skewed;
shocked feathers of the peafowls gently float down.

With their saintly calendar of woes,
country men and women walk in sober twos.

Still the shops stay open; trees blink red and green,
children dash across the street, cars swerve,
we hear the Morse code of the coming snow,
birds in starry park all the news that we can bear.

A pallid smoke in its helix twists and frays,
as if to question who to go and how to stay?
You mummers in a masquerade of death
shoot off your pop guns, begging cakes and ale.

Neither the country nor the quiet grave where we lay
our old ones down in the lightness of their years,
is this cold town where we have just begun to pray.

But unicorns and little maids remain entwined
(in sable trees an archer waits and strings his silent bow).


A writer for trade and educational publishing, Carol Alexander has authored numerous children’s books, served as a ghostwriter for radio and trade publishing, and taught at colleges around the metropolitan area. In 2011-2012, her poetry appears—or is scheduled to appear-- in literary journals and anthologies published by Avocet, Boyne Berries (UK), Chiron Review, Cave Moon Press, The Canary, Danse Macabre, Earthspeak, Eunoia Review, Fade Poetry Journal (UK), Fat Daddy’s Farm Press, Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Mad Hatter’s Review, Mobius, Numinous, OVS, Red Poppy Review, Red River Review, River Poets Journal, Sleeping Cat Books, The Whistling Fire, and Write Wing Publishing.