Fake Flying / Garden Fairies by Diane Webster

Fake Flying

Single crow lands on a fence post

and faces into the wind.

Wings spread

it pretends to fly

while still attached to the post.

 

Grandpa’s weather vane

dances in partnership

with Oregon wind

while on the ground

I lean forward to stand

on one leg with my arms

outstretched like a single crow

flying in air with talons

clenched on the fence post.

 

 

Garden Fairies

 

Garden fairies run cross-country

between stones and petrified wood

I place meticulously on my land.

Piles of dirt await my intentions

while wind whisks away tiny footprints

climbing to the top because it was there.

 

At night snapdragons 

turn into sleeping bags.

Johnny Jump Ups guard darkness

like lions scanning the savanna.

Crickets chirp lullabies until silenced;

eyes and ears attune to the world

until one by one a thousand crickets

resume their theme of tunes.

 

Garden fairies drink dew from tulip cups

and whir across the lawn to lie

in crabapple branches to inhale

blossom aromas, to listen to bees

buzz in and out of fragrances.

Diane Webster's work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Diane was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

Dove Bar Poem / A Willow Branch by Michael Lee Johnson

Dove Bar Poem

Ex-lover told me Dove dark

chocolate bars were good for lovers.

She ate dark Dove bars,

I ate light Dove chocolate.

She was healthy, I was sad.

We often go into fights over this.

She was manic and I was depressed.

Sex was a bouncing basketball affair.

She was healthy without knowing her disease.

I was sad, stealing apples

out of farmer John’s orchard.

Sleeping wherever

a pillow was found.

A Willow Branch (2)

Break in the rain.

The storm goes away.

A bitter family chat,

dicey, slicing

dagger of words—

they stand still—

a willow branch

cracks.

 

Michael Lee Johnson, a renowned poet from Downers Grove, IL, has gained international recognition with his work, which has been published in 46 countries or republics. His poems have received 8 Pushcart and 7 Best of the Net nominations. Join his journey. 

Member of the Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/ and Poets & Writers: https://www.pw.org/.

Wild Thing by Stephen Jarrell Williams

Running away from the starlight raid
searching under every tree and bush
for a glimpse of her

hoping a power beam might catch her
in the open for the chase to begin
where thousands join in disbelief

her beauty beyond their dreams
catching their breath
and almost fainting

struggling against the crowd
grasping at those ahead of them
pulling them back and down

the night sky magnifying
a chase quickly becoming
a grasping herd of maniacs

Wild Thing looks back
over her naked shoulder
smiling into a laugh

the earth shakes
grass fields waving in the wind
with the misery of all their jealousy

she jumps off a sudden cliff
down into a sea no longer calm
disappearing into dark waves

thousands follow her
realizing too late
Wild Thing is the demon

they all have become.

Stephen Jarrell Williams writes at night, waking from his dreams, before they consume him.  He can be found @papapoet on Twitter X.

Poppy Road Accepting Submissions

 

Happy New Year Dear Friends & Poets!  Poppy Road Review is accepting submissions once again.

Avery's Insight / A Slow Fullness by Anna Citrino

Avery’s Insight 

Avery, 1934, age 41
Chugwater, Wyoming

I look in the mirror and notice how small my eyes are. 

I could never make an engine like my brother Leith, 

am not good at math like Carson. 

 

Since I can remember, worlds have spun beyond what I

make sense of. Mr. Hubble recently announced he’s found

other galaxies. Ours isn’t the only one. 

 

Whirling stardust, giant holes in the sky, spacious gaps

between starlight. Worlds lie hidden inside what’s seen.

The stars on Orion’s belt could be galaxies. 

 

I know how to turn a plow to till. Focusing on one row 

at a time is the way I move through a pasture, as well as

how I make it through the world. Sometimes when I’m 

 

preparing a field in the morning beneath the bowl of sky,

the plow moving rhythmically through the soil, the world

turns into a kind of music, and I sense everything is dancing

 

to a melody just beyond what I can hear. I look at the horizon

and sense I’m a pebble in a field that can be turned by a plow.

Everything is larger than anyone will ever understand.

A Slow Fullness

Avery, 1952, age 59
Chugwater, Wyoming


"For cryin' out loud, you’re as slow as molasses in January.”

How many times had I heard someone tell me that? 

It’s not a secret. I’m not like others.
Never was good at school,
but I didn’t cry about being slow. 

While others burrowed into mines 
to cut coal, calculated numbers, or hauled stone 
for railroad bed, I’ve risen each day to light 
spilled across fields, clouds lazing by. 

Nearly sixty years I’ve walked this earth. 
Despite its drought and ice, despite a world 
rattled in war’s despair, and jolts from aging bones
as I bump along gravel roads, I inhale
the wheat’s slow, ripening as it rustles
in the sky’s blue arms. 

Every day the world ripples with wind. 
Grit mixes with cloud. 
There’s no need to forgive myself 
for what I couldn’t change. 
I’ve received my daily bread. 

I pick a few wheat kernels, 
rub them in my hand. 

It’s a good world to give myself to.

Anna Citrino has published in various journals and is the author of A Space Between, and Buoyant, Saudade, and To Find a River. You can find her going for walks near the coast or biking through the countryside where she lives in Sonoma County. Read more of her writing at annacitrino.com.

A Postcard from Milford Haven by Robert Nisbet

“O hear us when we pray to thee
for those in peril on the sea.”

Those stormy mornings, we’d sing that hymn.
The fathers of many of the school
were out there, trawlers taut against
the seas of Finisterre, Tiree. And,
as the singing swung into the heaves
and hollows of its verse, my blunt
neck-hairs tingled with the sharing of
fear. Those men would ship Atlantic seas,
hake, cod and herring, nets of fish, splash
prize in to the hold, into the dock,
and later drink, play dominoes, for days,
in the Alma, the Kitchener, the Heart of Oak.
Other times, during a trip, in Segadelli’s,
whose warm café tables looked out
across the dock and out to sea,
the women would scent storm, and,
like the clouds, they’d gather, cluster, mutter.


*This poem appeared in Roundyhouse in 2010

Robert Nisbet, a Welsh writer, was for several years an associate lecturer in creative writing at Trinity College, Carmarthen, where he was also an adjunct professor for the Central College of Iowa. His poems appear in Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes (Prolebooks, 2017). Frequently published in the USA, he is a four-time Pushcart nominee.

A Symphony of Movement by Michael L. Newell

Wildly whirling while backlit
by a fiery sunset, a woman invented
a loose-limbed dance, filled

with leaps, twirls, bends, and swirls,
as her long black hair unfurled

in rising and falling wind,
and I stopped some distance away
to witness and celebrate the woman's

ecstatic movement and marriage
with the elements, and allow all I saw

to become imprinted in my mind, to forever
remind me of how one person can both praise
and meld oneself to world's magnificence.

Michael L. Newell lives on the Florida coast. He has recently had poems published in Bellowing Ark, Jerry Jazz Musician, and Shemom.