Dwindling Knight by Michael Keshigian

Life loomed large in childhood,

an acre, easily a mile, the apple tree, 

a spectacle of gigantic dimensions,

germinating fruit the size of melons

amid grass and wildflowers higher than a house

and alive with as much mystery 

as the imagination allowed,

infested with long legged creatures and flying predators,

confronted by a brave soldier, 

possessing stout heartiness,

armed with broken branch sword,

trash lid shield and brown bagged helmet gear

precisely slit for covert surveillance

against an enemy constantly plotting 

to overthrow the king, to rule the kingdom,

were it not for the worthy defender

daily engaging danger to insure security

and safe passage for those nesting 

within the domain,

though the threat diminished with passing years

as did the proportions to a mediocre backyard, 

displaying a frail fruit tree

in grass no taller than ankle height

with no visible reminders of intense conflicts.

The enemy had disappeared,

deployed, no doubt, to younger battlefields,

accompanied by the imagination 

now desperately clinging to creative output

to preserve a degree of youthful enthusiasm

for an aging warrior.

Michael Keshigian had his fourteenth poetry collection, What To Do With Intangibles, recently released in January, 2020 by Cyberwit.net.  He has been published in numerous national and international journals, recently including Pudding Magazine, Sierra Nevada Review, Oyez Review, Bluepepper, Tipton Poetry Journal, and has appeared as feature writer in twenty publications with 7 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)

Her Fields by Robert Nisbet

A March breeze was cutting bitterly

across her father’s fields, the farm,

her recollections, as she, new graduate,

prepared to leave, soon to marry

a lecturer in structural linguistics.

And of course she would, she should.

She was in love.

(History will tell us how, forty years on,

the professor, widowed, spent all his money

and borrowed more, to buy the farm,

to save it from being built upon,

and how new family of his and hers

set up a farming-holiday tourist place).

But that morning she was aching

with her sense of place and loss.

She could see them there, the hedges, furrows,

sheds, byres, milk stands, stabbed by the breeze,

leaving her with just the cruelty of departure,

for a haze and a beauty yet to be realised.

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who once read for an American President, when ex-President and poet Jimmy Carter was guest of honour at the opening of the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea in 1994. Nisbet is a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2020.

The Pink Lady's Slipper by Peggy Turnbull

In the sunlight where you don’t expect me,
I quiver. Beyond the ferns on a lakeside dune,

mingling with the daisies and the hawkweed,
I relax in their sturdiness and cheer,  

a swollen orchid unnoticed until a through-hiker
steps over me. On a moonless night, he lies nearby,

sunk in the soft grass, and listens to the night’s heave 

and cry. I think  I am ordinary as the cattails 

that gather in the swamp with their brown spikes 

and green blades. With him, I am a sunset, in colors 

that shift and flame. My green arms embrace him until

the robin’s song. When he leaves, I wonder

if I’ll bloom again. "Stop crying, Lady’s Slipper,"
I hear the daisies tell me, “Your life is long,

with more chances ahead.” They are happy
and so easy. But that is not me.  

I bury myself into the loam, remembering.  

Peggy Turnbull is a retired librarian from Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Her poetry has been recently published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Quatrain. Fish, and Bluepepper.  Her debut chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness was published by Kelsay Books in July 2020. 

Waiting Out the Storm by Terry Tierney

Lightning flares my windows,
carves the edge of darkness
with storm clouds of agony,
low groan of rock on rock.

Broken stumps line the road,
stripped of bark, roots clutching dirt
like corpses gripping dry sheets,
the death rattle of fallen branches.

Sparkless cables lie uncoiled,
drained of voices, words lost to wind
dropping vowels like thankless gifts,
my lips gritty with sand.

Door swings on rusty hinges,
spilling a fingernail scratch of sky.
I have something more to say
before it slams shut.

Terry’s collection of poetry, The Poet’s Garage, was published by Unsolicited Press in May 2020. His poems and stories have recently appeared in Typishly, The Mantle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Front Porch Review, Jersey Devil Press, The Lake and other publications. Lucky Ride (Unsolicited Press), an irreverent Vietnam-era road novel, is set to release in 2021. His website is terrytierney.com

The Promotion by Rachel Taylor Geier

I reached for the moon and landed in the stars,

Just like they told me to.

But the stars were full of broken promises.

And lies.

My confidence has been shattered.

It wasn’t that long ago when I felt I had things together,

Moving gracefully and swiftly into the sunset.

An arrogant yet determined breeze at my back.

I was captain of the boat,

But now find myself shipwrecked.

Be careful what you wish for.

I am in over my head.

Drowning at sea without a lifeguard in sight.

I don’t even know how to swim.

Fleeting compliments seem like mere passports

Issued by others in order to ask for more.

What is more?

What is less?

I long for the island I left behind.

The familiarity of the palm trees.

The predictability of the tide.

The stability of the land.

They tell me not to be so hard on myself.

That I will learn with time.

But time is a shapeshifter,

Promising nothing more than an invisible net to catch fish that are not there.

Where was I sailing to? 

Why was I going there?

I am lost at sea.

SOS.

Rachel Taylor Geier holds a DMA in Flute Performance from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, an MM in Flute Performance from San Francisco State University, and a BM in Music Performance from DePauw University. Dr. Geier currently teaches and freelances in Davis, California.

Listening into the Silence by Martin Willitts Jr.

In the quiet, morning is unburdened

the sky’s hibiscus color.

Abundance cascades of birdsong —

just a heartbeat away.

Too soon, the moment is over.

Light understands

the unexpected, the lament,

the surrender, the cold unsettling

surprising force of wonder and loss.

I listen into the silence

for instructions, hoping

a voice will answer,

not from within,

but from otherworldliness.

Martin Willitts Jr has 25 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 20 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent book is "Unfolding Towards Love" (Wipf and Stock, 2020). 

The Kingdom of Winter by Dana Sonnenschein

Father Winter leans against herds of woolly mammoths, their undersong trembling in his bones, his chill pushing them closer together.  He wrestles polar bears.  He charges wolves, snorting as they snarl, before he moves on, hurrying the reindeer in among snow-laden spruce and fir—where his daughter whispers White, white, to hare, ermine, arctic fox.  She brushes her hands along the reindeer’s ruffs and beneath the chins of the brown bears; she holds geese to her breast and stretches out her hands to stroke frost-white every wing and tail she can reach.

*

When the first thin ice chimes on the lake, you know Father Winter is coming.  Rising from the Arctic Ocean, rime splashing from shaggy, rolling shoulders.  Lord of the Cold.  Some see a mammoth, some, a man crowned with tusks.  He who rules continents and floes, glaciers above and permafrost below.  Even when the tundra flowers and reindeer and musk oxen browse on scarlet and ochre.  Every winter, he walks the north.  The ground freezes beneath his feet, and rivers congeal between their banks.  His daughter whirls across the land, caught in the wind’s embrace.  A snow maiden who warms the lost, as their hearts slow and their fingers lock, at last, on what they cannot hold.  The arctic wolves cavort when the first flakes fall, lick her hand, and curl into nests of snow.  She lays her hands on the shivering pup, slashed by a reindeer’s hoof, and then moves toward the shaggy horse, pawing weakly at the snow, digging for grass and roots.  Hunger no more, she whispers.  Sleep where winter lasts always, where wild horses lie down with wolves and none have fear. 

When the Ob, the Yenisei, and the Lena break up in spring, she slips away, and Father Winter wades into the nearest river, follows it back to where the islands of ice never melt.  Every year, the thunder of his steps, the crashing ice. 

*

But the kingdom is melting, here three feet down, there mile-deep.  Cellar walls drip, roads flood, fields turn to bogs and lakes.  Along the rivers, cliffs collapse and ivory scavengers collect tusks from rotting hulks.  In Nalimsk, the sacred poles for tying horses tilt and cannot be righted.  In Yakutsk, buildings sink and crumple.  When Father Winter comes, he cradles a spindly, blackened foal and weeps.  Four hundred and fifty miles north of the city, where loggers clear-cut the taiga, the snow maiden spreads her eiderdown, warming the ground until it caves, opening what the Yakuts call a door to the underworld.  When she trails away, ancient trees see the sun again, and her frostbitten wolves bare their teeth and snarl.

Dana Sonnenschein is a professor at Southern Connecticut State University, where she teaches literature and creative writing. Her publications include Corvus, No Angels but These, Natural Forms, and Bear Country.  Recent work has appeared in *Into the Void*,  *The Matador Review*, *The Prachya Review*,  and Terrain’s *Dear America* anthology.

The Tourist by Mark Tulin

I look for strange memories 

to bring home to friends, 

buildings as high as Sequoias, 

people as odd as Martians 

I am always prepared to walk, 

my laces tied in a bow knot 

on my brown hiking shoes, 

bottled water in my backpack, 

my camera ready to take pictures 

of funny billboards or signs 

and strange names 

for seafood restaurants 

I bring an extra sweater 

just in case the weather changes 

and a tiny umbrella 

if the rain happens to fall 

I grab the front seat 

on the tour bus, 

hold tightly to the rail, 

and ask the driver questions 

that he’s answered before. 

Mark Tulin is a former psychotherapist who lives in California. He has two poetry books, Magical Yogis and Awkward Grace. The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories available at Madville Publishing. He’s been featured in Still Point Journal, The Writing Disorder, New Readers Magazine, among others.  Mark’s website is Crow On The Wire.