ODE TO THE HONEY LOCUST

by Therese Gleason

With a line from “All Hallows” by Louise Glück (1943-2023)

I want to write a poem about autumn 
that doesn’t decay 
and stink on impact.
I want to write a poem about the beauty
of small children (whose shoelaces flap
and sneakers slap 
asphalt) that doesn’t reek 
of sweetness. 
All I can offer is a dispatch
from a mid-October recess in central Mass., 
the sky scrubbed squeaky
by an overnight rainstorm,
where kindergarteners skip and whoop
as the wind picks up, pointing to heaven
as the tall honey locust drops
its shower of gold: spiraling eddies 
that drift slowly, softly onto cracked concrete.
The bulky apartment complex next door peeps 
between ragged bushes and chain link
as I holler at a child to come down the hill, away 
from the edge of the dark wood
where scattered syringes linger 
in the barrenness of harvest or pestilence:
our playground tree a site of life
and death, both honey and locust, feast 
and famine. We found a dead mouse 
beneath its fraying canopy
last week. I stood astride the carcass 
swatting curious fingers seeking to probe
its torn side buzzing with flies, its tiny 
bared teeth—and in an instant 
I remember the sickening bump 
under my back left tire, a raccoon
on a dark road, how I honked and swerved,
too late… I can’t forget its wobbly tromp, 
its eyes blinded by my headlights 
before I rendered it dead meat—
I feel a tug like grief, like a small hand
at my sweater’s hem, and look down
into cupped palms brimming 
with tattered gold leaves.

Therese Gleason is author of three chapbooks: Hemicrania (forthcoming, Chestnut Review, 2024); Matrilineal (Honorable Mention, 2022 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, New England Poetry Club); and Libation (co-winner, 2006 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Competition, selected by Kwame Dawes). Her poems appear in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, New Ohio Review, Notre Dame Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. Originally from Louisville, KY, she is an adjunct creative writing instructor at Clark University and an ESL teacher in the Worcester Public Schools.

CLOUD COVER

by Mary K O’Melveny

At first, there was just a single cloud.

It wasn’t even very large. One might 

have missed it altogether. Like a cataract.

But it grew bigger, began to darken.

Before long, it had multiplied into

several cloud patches. Each shifted

to a different corner of the sky,

staked out a position. Refused to

move. Dared other clouds to approach 

at their peril. The once-azure sky

vanished. Instead, shadows loomed

overhead like prehistoric birds of prey. 

At first, we did not worry. We knew

shadows needed some light to survive. 

But the shade expanded. Umbras were

everywhere. People queried What can we do?

Thoughts were exchanged. Silhouettes

were measured. Statistics recorded. Talks

faltered, flailed, failed. Prayers met silence.

Candles were lit. Flashlight sales grew.

Batteries grew scarce. Campfires flickered

throughout day and night. Their smoke made

it harder to breathe or see. Night vision goggles

were issued to all eligible households.

 

Soon, the sky was so thickened that memories

were numbed.  Books picturing seacoasts,

flowers, forests sold out. Libraries had

waiting lists for stories of people whose lives

were bathed in sunshine. We struggled to

recall days at ocean’s edge, feet splayed

in wheat-colored sand, a beloved’s hand

dappled with light. Sunburned shoulders

from garden parties and protest marches

soon paled to ghostly reveries. Last to fade

was a vision of a playground filled with

children, sneakers aglow with sparkling lights.

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 most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. 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.

PLAYGROUND SNAPSHOTS, 2020

by Melissa Balmain

“NYC Playgrounds Reopen with Social Distancing” —ABC, June

“Word of the day is 'sorry-go-round' (19th century): a repetitive cycle of depressing actions or events.” —Lexicographer Susie Dent, August

June
The slide that’s so fast it feels buttered,
The swing set and bouncy-horse ride,
The seesaw where toddlers and dolls sit astride—
Unshuttered!

August
The parents and nannies (masked, wary)
Wipe down every bench, toy, and snack,
Still praying the sorry-go-round will go back
To merry.

Melissa Balmain's poetry and prose have appeared in The American Bystander, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She edits Light, a journal of light verse. 

OFF DUTY

by Ann Neuser Lederer

Photo by Carol Dorf 

A man crawls
into his own bedroom
window.

It's already night.
He might be contagious.

Soon, a tone—a lone violin—
seeps through the shut room's door.

A grandma nudges—you
can join in with your dad.

A few bars, back and forth.
An unseen whispered conversation.

In the dark of the morning
he descends.

Instead of the bus he walks.
Invisible birds announce it is day.

All playgrounds are locked, the schools deserted—
the children still safe in their sleep.

Ann Neuser Lederer's poetry and nonfiction are published in journals such as Diagram, Passages North, Brevity, 2 River Review, and UCity Review whose "noteworthy" section presents ten of her poems. Her work is also honored in Best of the Net and Ohio State University's Vandewater Poetry Award; published in anthologies such as A Call to Nursing and The Country Doctor Revisited; and in her chapbooks Approaching Freeze (2003), The Undifferentiated (2003), Weaning the Babies (2007), and Fly Away Home (2019). Ann was born in Ohio and has worked there and surrounding states as a Registered Nurse.

SEESAWS AT THE BORDER WALL

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Two architects in the San Francisco Bay area are responsible for the installation over the weekend of the three seesaws that briefly graced a small stretch of the nearly-2,000-mile swath of land where the United States abuts Mexico. . . . Virginia San Fratello,  a professor at San Jose State University who designed the project with fellow architect Ronald Rael, said that the pair had made a conscious choice to combat the heavily charged politics of the border with a simple emotion: the joy of a child’s playground. . . . The seesaws were up for about 30 minutes on Sunday, San Fratello said, on a small stretch of border fence in the Anapra neighborhood of Sunland Park, N.M., about 20 minutes northwest of El Paso. The Washington Post, July 30, 2019

let there be pink
for play
and playground recess
where children are most themselves
let there be pink
people   look
at what make us great
again   look
imagination’s grace
to see grace
even here


Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in the anthologies The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker, and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published by Press 53 in 2015.

A CHANGE OF PLAN

by R.G. Jodah

Henley Homes, a property developer, markets Baylis Old School, their 149-home London development on the site of a former school, as “an education in living well.” It’s turning out to be an education in inequality in modern-day Britain. The development, completed in 2016, has a large green play space for children belonging to well-off families in the development. But kids who live in the “affordable” section of the development aren’t allowed to come play. (UK developments typically have to allot a certain portion of their projects to affordable housing because of a massive shortage in London.) —Quartz, March 27, 2019. Photo: Salvatora Rea looks out at the communal play area and garden his children are not allowed to use. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian, March 25, 2019.

With a flourish
he produced a key.
     —“Ta-da!”—
Turned an open gate
to whips and walls:
secured their playground,
made a prison
of the whole wide world.


R.G. Jodah lives in London, enjoying metropolitan anonymity. Appeared in: The Lampeter Review, Typishly, Dream Catcher, Southlight, LightenUp Online. London Grip, Three Drops from a Cauldron (forthcoming).