Alberta Bound by Michael Lee Johnson

I own a gate to this prairie
that ends facing the Rocky Mountains.
They call it Alberta-
trails of endless blue sky
asylum of endless winters,
the hermitage of indolent retracted sun.
Deep freeze drips haphazardly into spring.
Drumheller, dinosaur badlands, dried bones,
ancient hoodoos sculpt high, prairie toadstools.
Alberta highway 2 opens the gateway of endless miles.
Travel weary, I stop by roadsides, ears open to whispering pines.
In harmony North to South
Gordon Lightfoot pitches out a tune-
"Alberta Bound."
With independence in my veins,
I am a long way from my home.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, DuPage County, Illinois. Mr. Johnson is published in more than 2033 new publications. His poems have appeared in 42 countries; he edits and publishes ten poetry sites. He is the administrator of six Facebook poetry groups; he has several new poetry chapbooks coming out soon.

The Thin Branch by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal

I keep an eye

on the thin branch.

The bird stands on

it. Go away.

Its ear hears me.

The bird flies off

like an arrow.

Unexpected,

I snip at it.

The bird snips back.

The roses blush.

The thin branch bends

as the bird comes

back to stand on

it and break it.

Born in Mexico, Luis lives in California and works in Los Angeles. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press. His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, Unlikely Stories, and Venus in Scorpio Poetry E-Zine.

Learning Process by Frederick Pollack

Someone has said that at the core
of your personality all you want
is to be left alone and hurt no one.
You consider this, walking a street
long and straight, its vanishing point
impressively nowhere, at the edge
of town, the center of something else.
Time itself has vacuumed
in and around the empty factories
behind their miles of fence; time
is another city. Tall weeds own
the margins of the sidewalk squares,
themselves still mostly whole. Symbols,
language on window-boards
fade across the street. There are people,
but you’ve decided not to be afraid
of them. Could learn from them;
are in training, perhaps,
for what they already know. From
the junk beside the fence
a lizard skitters toward the curb.
The heat has brought these up and out.
Bright blue, which seems poor camouflage;
will it change? It moves too fast to tell.

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press), and two collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Many other poems in print and online journals.

View from Ferryside by Byron Beynon

History oozing into pores

invigorates the past;
there's the castle for instance,
high on a humpbacked hill
reaching out from Llansteffan's
sand-ferrying shore.
The eternal language of seabirds
regional accents
in the warm rain
as they dive and soar,
sudden shifts in scale and tempo
recording the deep tales
from the journeying sea.
A landscape navigating
through the syllabus of days
that have vanished
onto the skin of time.
The air pure with thoughts,
clear with water-music
occupies this space
entering the cartographer's
coast of memory.

Byron Beynon lives in Wales. He is the author of 11 collections of poetry including The Sundial (Flutter Press), Cuffs (Rack Press) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions). A former co-editor of Roundyhouse Poetry Magazine.

Chiricahua Afternoon by David Chorlton

It’s a slow afternoon with the books
leaning gently, one
against another all along the shelf
where chronicles of wildlife
and gunfights spend
their dusty lives waiting for a hand
to take them down
for study. An old wooden rocker
creaks on the sunlit floorboards
on the porch facing all weathers
and the peak
on a mountain whose slopes
have borne every sky from fire
to blue frost. The mice in the walls
are resting. The snake beneath the bedroom
waits for the monsoon to break.
Turn the page and thirty
seconds later the smoke clears
on the Clanton-McLaury gang
and the minutes pass
on deer steps through the grass
and mesquite shadows.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems often reflect his affection for the natural world. A new book, Unmapped Worlds, is out from FutureCycle Press. He recently took up watercoloring again, after twenty dry years.

Fairy Godmother by Jennifer Novotney

Maybe one day, I will have a fairy godmother
who will wake me with the comforting aroma
of freshly baked muffins, the windows thrown open
on the hazy morning to dissipate the sweet scent
that always gets me up just a little early
like opening presents on Christmas day.
Her blue, checkered apron around her waist
a bit of flour powdered across her cheek
she’d sing under her breath quietly
as if she thought no one else could hear.
She’d take sips of her magical morning brew
out of her rose covered mug with the pink handle
and vines that wound around the base, the red petals
at the top where she’d place her lips, the hot steam
of the liquid fogging up her glasses.
She’d laugh, play it up, pretend it was the fog
that rolled in at night, covering the ground
with its thick clouds so sometimes, we couldn’t leave
the valley’s basin, and all that was visible
were the roses climbing up the trellis on the back patio
their red lips singing through the cool morning breeze.

Jennifer Novotney holds an M.A. in English from Northern Arizona University. Her poetry has appeared in Buddhist Poetry Review, Poetry Quarterly, and The Vignette Review, the latter for which she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2014, she won the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for her debut novel, Winter in the Soul. She grew up in Los Angeles, California and lives in North East Pennsylvania with her family where she teaches English.

The Fourth Child by Eileen Patterson

I was 4th out of his bag of tricks, born with an arctic
sorrow that made every step I took guarded like a cats as if
I was frozen in ice trying to break free.

At the age of 5 I brood cautiously into the camera
asking with dark grieving eyes,

“What is it you want of me?”

“ I want you to love me,” Daddy will say.

And I did, all those years after he left us,
I loved him like a dangerous secret.

Eileen Patterson was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She now resides in Cudahy, Wisconsin and belongs to The Southshore Poets.  Along with her fellow poets she has read her poetry at the Cudahy Library several times. She is moved by the poetry of Anne Sexton, Marge Piercy, Sharon Olds and many more poets.

Two Pages Sent by Aftab Yusuf Shaikh

A letter has arrived
in an envelope
dark beige in colour
that smells of the sadness
in her apartment.

She has sent along two pages,
one- a message for today
two- an obligation till eternity.
‘Fair love,’ she says on the first page,
‘have we anything to fear
when they have announced
the death of our love?' 

Have we now anything to lose once they
finalised our separation till death?
We wondered how to reach
the doors of eternal life together
hand   in   hand.
And yet these people have
arranged a simultaneous death for us.
'Walk along, pride of Arabia,
I am with you in this long tiring journey.’

Two pages in an envelope-
on one she wrote with ink,
the other she soaked in tears.

Aftab Yusuf Shaikh is based in Mumbai. He has been writing from the age of eight and has since then published a large number of work in journals and anthologies. He published two volumes of poetry, namely Tehzeeb Talkies [2020] and Mominpura [2021]. 

The Nestling by Eira Needham

Hunched over the breathless body
tumbled from its sycamore
cradle, her mind takes flight.

He arrived quietly, entwined.
Voices hushed, they rushed
him away in a hospital blanket.

One glimpse
no caress
no goodbye

The attic keeps her secret
for forty years, a white shawl
folded in a dusty crib

Laying the naked hatchling
in a tea carton, with marigolds
and rosemary, she hums Rock-a-Bye.

Earth to earth
poppy seeds
scattered

As buds bloom crimson, she
wonders where he lies and what
he might have looked like now.

 

Eira Needham is a retired teacher living in Birmingham UK. Her poetry has been published in print and online. She was chosen as Featured Writer in West Ward Quarterly and once won 1st place in Inter Board Poetry Contest with a sonnet.