SWINGING ON WINGS OF FLAME

by Mary K O’Melveny

There's a house somewhere I know where the fire's burnin'

All night long… 

And even though the wind may now be howlin'

The stars are bright and they push me on and on

—“Half Moon Rising” (Yonder Mountain String Band)

  

We keep exploring outer space for answers.

Out there, we learn that black holes make sounds

of music as they swallow everything

around them. Celestial destruction

to the tune of string band melodies, as if

the Osborne Brothers or the Red Clay Ramblers

had booked a cosmic venue where eager stars

do-si-do around dark matter’s edges.

 

Sit still and you will hear creation’s story

spelled out with mandolins, fiddles, five-string

banjos. On Earth we are orchestrating our

own demise. Everything has turned extreme.

Our hottest week just past will not be last.

The burning air tastes like barbeque.

Put an ear to ground, hear it singe, smolder,

sear from simmering smog and haze.

 

Far better to harmonize and tap our feet

as Earth’s axis shifts and we wobble, weave

like drunken sparrows. Saharan sands might

land in Kansas while floodwaters choke New

Jersey highways and algal blooms poke out

from Florida’s rivers. Grab a good seat

at our cosmic amphitheater where smoke

rises from the speed of guitar picking.

 

If you listen closely, you can hear some scat,

nonce, argot. Go with the flow. Flat Foot Floogie,

Tutti Fruiti. Explosions of fervor, fury

unleashed by gas ripples in galaxy

clusters. Who can say this fate will not be

ours as well? One hopes we won’t be around

by then. For now, we can dance as glissandos

of sound drift from the heart of the Milky Way.

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.

IF I COULD

by Brooke Herter James

If I could I would
send you the sound
of brittle birch branches
tapping tiny buds
against my windowpane
this chilly March morning,
the silence of the solitary
bluebird sitting on top
of her nesting box,
the little snorts of the donkeys
as they make their way
around fast disappearing
islands of snow. I would
send you the sound
of sap dripping
into metal buckets,
of tiny blades of grass
pushing through ice.
Even as the lights are turning
off all over the world
I would send you
the sound of spring,
its quiet resolve.

Brooke Herter James is the author of one children’s picture book and two poetry chapbooks. She lives on a small Vermont hillside with her husband, two donkeys, four chickens and a dog.

NEWS HOUR IN DUFUR, OREGON

Original photo by Lynn Ketchum for Oregon State University: Flowering rabbit brush brightens Oregon’s rangelands and provides sustenance to a great golden digger wasp.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books are House of the Cardamon Seed and November Quilt. Dufur is a small (pop: 623) wheat-growing town in north-central Oregon.

I WANT TO WRITE A POEM FOR PARIS

by Bayleigh Fraser

A memorial at La Belle Equipe restaurant, one of the sites of the attacks in Paris on Friday night. Credit Lionel Bonaventure/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via NY Times, November 14, 2015

But I don’t want to hear its ragged shots
of reason, the uncertain billowing of its curtain.

No explaining an ocean rippling cracked glass,
where faces have vanished under a sun

only desiring to burn, or reflect itself
in each thing it touches. There is no poem

rising from the soundless terror of hashtags:
asking for God’s ear, an illuminated tower

searches for satellites. Prayers. Paused players.
Foot approaching the bass pedal. Gunmetal.

I want to open sounds so I can understand them.
The words only thought in my head as I read them.

Like fireworks, someone says, and he was gone
and so was she, falling into their own echoes.

And what can I say, showing up in the distance,
with only tremors in my hands, still warm with breath?


Bayleigh Fraser is an American poet currently residing and writing in Canada. She attended Stetson University in Deland, Florida and plans to continue her education in Canada. Her poems have appeared in A Bad Penny Review, Artemis Journal, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Hart House Review, The Lake, One, Rattle and other publications.