You Are The Windchime / Now I Hold My Magic Near And Dear by Linda M. Crate

you are the windchime 

you haunt me,

lingering in the 

marrow of my bones;

and in the gardens

of my heart and soul—

your melody still comes

to me all these moons

and oceans after our last parting,

in pink sunsets and white roses;

and mentions of our old haunts

or movies and shows and songs

we used to watch and experience together—

some people part from us,

and we are okay and move on;

but you are the wind chime

always sending chills down my spine—

the faerie that refuses to be forgotten.

now i hold my magic near and dear

sometimes 

i am grateful for the

spells autumn has cast

because you no longer

have any control over my heart,

but sometimes your name

still inspires my ire;

but it is more hurt and anger than haunting—

would've never cast the dark magic

on anyone hat you did me but i guess that's

why they tell you that not everyone has your

same heart so don't expect them to treat you well,

and so i hold my magic near and dear

to my heart so no one can use it against me again.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian writer born in Pittsburgh raised in the rural town of Conneautville. In addition to writing her favorite things are: nature (especially flowers, trees, and bodies of water), books, music, anime, and crime shows. 

Stars by Michael Keshigian

He sought to deny the mystery of stars,
and the vast emptiness
between each blinking lamp,
but what might his mindset be
should these lanterns that delineated paths,
leading to answers so desired,
disappear, leaving dark, empty pages
and the sky’s black ink indecipherable.
The impenetrable shade,
would suffocate a summer’s night
when he might otherwise launch himself
toward the shimmering silver signals
to navigate extended black pastures
and linger to contemplate the many queries
the endlessness inspired.
This quizzical stare at infinity
unnerved him yet oddly instigated hope,
possibility woven amid
these barely perceptible balls of fire
awakening him to a surrealistic
yet contemplative awareness,
immersed in a longing to solve the riddle,
his dull pale pupils, reflecting a desire
to rise from the shadow of himself
into the refreshing breath of night
where chances twinkled
and telegraphed messages
into extended darkness,
as Earth embroidered it all
into comfort and a silent sleep.

Michael Keshigian was recently published in the Comstock Review, Smoky Quartz Anthology, California Quarterly, and Muddy River Review. His latest collections, What To Do With Intangibles, Into The Light, Dark Edges, are available through Amazon.  He has been nominated 7 times for a Pushcart Prize and 3 times for Best Of The Net. 

City Ways by Robert Nisbet

He hadn’t thought to be living in London
in nineteen-sixty-six, still less
to be finding things so exciting.

In recent past, the crowd, the club, Young Farmers,
even, for Heaven’s sake, square dancing.
The brows, the cheeks of the young were ruddied
with bright cold weather and a brawny humour.

Now the sophisticates. He so enjoyed
the bouffancy of petticoat and expectation.
The beehive hairdo’s had a gloss
you wouldn’t get after a morning’s milking.

And last night, leaving the espresso bar,
he’d walked those two girls home.
Young Farmers style, for sure, was one to one,
that was traditional, but these were college girls,
clever girls (they’d been to lectures on Free Love),
so when they asked would he walk them home,
the three of them, it sounded pretty cool.

Both were pale, were pretty, both were flirty, both
seemed to be laughing at him just a little
as he tried to kiss the other one good night.

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet whose work has been published widely in Britain and the USA, including regular appearances in San Pedro River Review and Third Wednesday. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. 

When Silence Blooms by Martin Willitts Jr.

There are quiet days,
when Emily Dickinson wrote
on scraps of found paper in her delicate cursive,

her pen was soundless with wonder,
her white sleeves wavering with her music,
hesitating only for the right word.

There are days when asters dream —
white bloom whispers, into long dashes —
the quiet hides inside the center.

The secret tentative voice
sews Emily’s poems into booklets,
messages given in the silence.

She keeps tuning the fretwork her heart,
the act of surrender
and it’s bright, sweet-tasting acceptance.

Martin Willitts Jr has 21 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021), “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022). His forthcoming book is “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022).

Inside Barn by Diane Webster

From inside the barn sunshine
paints vertical white stripes
between silhouetted planks
of wood nailed into a wall
rising like organ pipes
residing in a church alcove.

Wind whistles through cracks
like a practice melody
until the sun sets
in a curtain-closing darkness
followed by a gasp
as pipes echo in surround sound.

Diane Webster enjoys the challenge of transforming images into words to fit her poems. Her work has appeared in "El Portal," "North Dakota Quarterly," "Eunoia Review" and other literary magazines. She will have a microchap of six poems published by Origami Poems Project later this year.

Touché by Keith Hoerner

I forage the forest floor for ways to kill you: Amanita Phalloides or Death Cap Mushrooms, Pokeweed Berries, and Ricinus Communis or Castor Bean. I find all three for a concoction triply sure to cut you down. But a cut in my own hand gives karma an open door. Touché.

Published in 100+ literary journals, Keith Hoerner (BS, MFA) is founding editor of the Webby Award recognized Dribble Drabble Review, as well as a Best Book and American Writing Finalist.

This Morning by John Sheirer

Running late again, Jack whispered curses when the driver before him didn’t speed through the yellow light. Jack sighed, then noticed in his rearview a man, gray-bearded, stained-hatted, lift an enormous mug and sip. Morning sunlight on that silly white soup bowl with a handle broke Jack’s annoyance and filled him with an unexpected burst of love (no other word for it), love for mug man, for yellow-light driver, for everyone on the road and at home around this oversaturated planet. But Jack watched for the light to turn green. Love this fragile could be shattered by one mistimed start.

John Sheirer lives in Western Massachusetts and is in his 30th year of teaching at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut. His latest book is the award-winning short story collection, Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.

Autumnal Sonnet by Pawel Markiewicz

The mist heralds a dreamy, tender Apollonian dawn.
I philosophize about wings of hawk or king – sparrow.
In amazing grove at the Blue Hours – was born here a fawn.
You should adore as well as praise charm such a moony morn.

The beauty of world is indeed so pulchritudinous.
The autumnal meek leaves, having danced, at fallish stone, lie.
The picturesque mist is shrouded in mood of a sorcery.
I muse about my bosom full of druidic light dream.

The nightingale is under a starlet bewildering.
Flights of birdies are the moon-like thankful melancholy.
The autumnal mood is never ending, sometimes dazzling.
I have fallen in love with wizardly-like fantasy.

The fall belongs to bright Morning star with the enchantment.
I love forever - the Moon in the dearest bewitchment.

Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poem. Pawel was educated in Warsaw (Uni – Laws) and Biała Podlaska (college – German). In 2007 and 2010 he was a participant  of Forum Alpbach – the village of thinkers in Austria. 

Nothing But Black by GTimothy Gordon

I no longer gaze at stars,
or outsized autumn moons,
bobcat, coyote, sometime cougar,
desert fault-line outliers,
hunt-up rattler, jackrabbit,
woke or slept scorpion,
reclusive toad out before light,
until deeper-in with all things
quiet and hidden, unsought, unknown,
until I’m one with them all
in the deepest clearing,
emptied out, being nothing
but black.

Gordon’s fiction and poetry have been published in numerous journals like AGNI, Cincinnati P, Mississippi R, New York Q, Phoebe, RHIN. Recent books include DREAM WIND (Spirit-of-the-Ram), GROUND OF THIS BLUE EARTH (Mellen), and EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE, awarded RIVERSTONE P Poetry Prize (AZ). EMPTY HEAVEN/EMPTY EARTH will be published Fall 2022. He divides lives between Southeast Asia and the Southwest Sonoran Desert Organ Mountains.

Moon Poem / Aurora Borealis by John Grey

Moon Poem

Out of fitful clouds,

gaunt horizon,

emerges a shiny core 

of spun looking glass,

 

that could be lifted

or slipped like a coin 

between the stars 

or worn, as a pendant, by the dark.

 

A crux of luster,

of stone, laminae,

of gleaming tissue,

with affinity to human texture.

 

Where awed breath 

meets cycle, sequence, 

where blood stirs

 

 

 

 

Aurora Borealis

Shimmering crystal bright
through the pores of the sky,
the northern lights
offer their shiny antidote
to endless summer days.

The dark, the cold,
are so bitter and obstinate,
but one window display
of delirious dancing green
and my blood switches
from shiver to heart-beat.

 

My horizon is of

brownish-red emissions,
glowing blue emulsions,
pink solar wind
with a dash of vibrant yellow,
like great silent fireworks.

Here, at the edge of the world,
the scenery tries much harder.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Red Weather. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Washington Square Review and Open Ceilings.

Softly, Now by Martin Willitts Jr.

The white noise of snow smooshes on the window,
splats of lace doilies — the stuff dreams are made of —
a piano playing a song we don’t want to hear
but hear when traffic stops, and the roads are closed.

The world soothes with this closure of noise
and frantic movement, nothing to do
except wait it out, burrow out later,
hope love keeps us warm in the white-darkness winter.

The snow knows the exquisite pleasure of drifting,
dangling its promises of huddling in
so that couples can spend time together,
sharing breath, breathlessly, finding the touch of love,
how it is never cold to the touch, and if done right,
can be as softening as the smears of snowflakes.

Martin Willitts Jr has 21 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021), “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022). His forthcoming book is “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022).

Magic is My Reward / The Vampire and The Fae by Linda M. Crate

magic is my reward

i am happy to say

you no longer haunt me,

whatever enchantment you

cast over my heart has

finally died;

autumn has come and i have

shed every leaf that carried your name—

there are no curling fingers

of desire or pain from the unrequited

love i gave you that you took advantage of,

just wild things whispering in the wood willing

to devour you should you ever think of coming

back to my cottage in the wood because 

i have finally accepted i am the witch not the princess,

and magic is my reward for leaving you.

the vampire and the fae

all these years later,

your name gives me pause;

for you are the faerie

that enchanted my heart when 

i thought the dreaming was dead—

and i am sorry i wounded you

with the talons of my temper,

i didn't know how to tell you 

that i loved you or if i even should;

you saw me as a sister and you always

had someone else to hold—

but i've had dreams where we're

holding hands in sunflower fields,

shining brighter than the sun;

wives unashamed: the vampire and the fae

shimmering for all eternity.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian writer born in Pittsburgh raised in the rural town of Conneautville. In addition to writing her favorite things are: nature (especially flowers, trees, and bodies of water), books, music, anime, and crime shows. 

Melody of Autumn by Yuu Ikeda

Fallen leaves are soaring,
as if they make a silhouette of you
who loves Autumn.

Your fingers playing the cello
always show me
the picturesque landscape
of Autumn.
Your tones resounding in the room
always teach me
whispers of Autumn.

Fallen leaves are soaring.
We soak in Autumn.

Yuu Ikeda is a Japan based poet. She loves writing, reading novels, western art, and sugary coffee. Yuu writes poetry on her website: https://poetryandcoffeedays.wordpress.com/. Her poetry collections “The Palette of Words”, “Ode To The Moon”, and “Feelings Like The Sky” are available now on Amazon and more. Yuu's Twitter and Instagram : @yuunnnn77

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 is a retired teacher.  He has had seven poetry books published in the past 3.5 years.

Swimming Through Shadowlands by Keith Hoerner

Deep below the lake’s murky surface, there sits—intact—a house. A two-story structure of Carpenter Gothic details like elaborate wooden trim bloated to bursting. Its front yard: purple loosestrife. Its inhabitants: alligator gar, bull trout, and pupfish. All glide past languidly—out of window sashes and back inside door frames. It is serene, and it is foreboding. Curtains of algae float gossamer to and fro. Pictures rest clustered atop credenzas. A chandelier is lit, intermittently, by freshwater electric eels. And near a Victrola, white to the bone, a man and a woman waltz in a floating embrace. 

Published in 100+ literary journals, Keith Hoerner (BS, MFA) is founding editor of the Webby Award recognized Dribble Drabble Review, as well as a Best Book and American Writing Finalist.

This Land is Full of Noises by Robert Nisbet

Ours being a small and rural region,

much of our noise will be ripples and shifts,

quirks, half-mutes and ghostly sounds.

 

Yes, traffic certainly, a few loud racers,

the odd blasting exhaust, but get a mile away

from the small towns and it’s more a grumble.

 

The jets to America are too high to be heard.

There’s the now-and-again light aircraft drone

and the gliders, lower, hinting at a wind’s rush. 

 

The sheep’s bleat can sometimes reach crescendo

but is often more a token of a stolid self.

The cow’s low is placid, stays short of the mournful.

 

The coastal winds can rise to a shriek, a pounding, 

which can quickly drift on down to stillness

and soon to the sinking hiss of sea on sand.

 

Two sets of footsteps, trudging a Preseli peak,

just a slight crunching, faintest puffs of breath,

then the one flurry of the spoken ...

 

Just .. well..  just want to say .. sorry ..

 

Few other sounds, just a slower breathing,

one long sigh, words of a kind ..  ah .. well .. yes ..

and above, just the piping of the buzzard.

  

* first appeared in 'North of Oxford' in January 2020.

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet whose work has been published widely in Britain and the USA, including regular appearances in San Pedro River Review and Third Wednesday. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee.     

113 Degrees by David Chorlton

The heat has folded its wings
and come to rest inside the shadows tangled
in a front yard lantana, holding
to a breath that ends
in orange flower where a few degrees take wing
and hover. It is the hour
sunlight melts
and the truth wears shades
as it passes by the campaign signs
arrayed like a hand of cards
for a game of deception. Last call
before nightfall
for the doves come to peck away late
afternoon, while air conditioned hearts
beat at the pace of Happy hour down
the street at Cactus Jack’s. And the eye
behind the mountain closes.
The moon dissolves
in a glass of darkness.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems often reflect his affection for the natural world and the way it occasionally overlaps with cities. He lives near South Mountain, a piece of desert that has been of interest and comfort to him for the past five years. 

The Rooftop by John Tustin

I summon you from the rooftop
of my post-midnight desires
but you never come down
from your hiding place
behind the moon,
never show yourself

and then I descend the many steps
back to the humid perspiration
of my bedroom,
open the book of my life so far,
place a bookmark of tears,
close the book.

I will climb to the rooftop
again,
when the same desires arrive
but you do not
and the book of my life
waits to be re-opened
at the bottom of those stairs,

so many steps away
from the back of the moon.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

Lightning Strike at Lafayette Square by Cheryl Snell

They argued for weeks about who would be the suicide and who would be the murderer. Neither could bear the thought of leaving the other alone, not after fifty years of marriage.

Remember when my uncle suffered a stroke?

Yes. He was rescued by his wife only to suffer for another eighteen months. He never forgave her. He glared at her whenever she came into the room and turned his face away.

Would you have the guts to just let me go?

You don’t trust me to be that tough? she asked as her fingers traced 911 on her knee.

We could go to a facility and let them starve us.

One of us might not be sick enough to qualify.

We better start stockpiling our pills, then.

Is it too late to take shooting lessons?

They couldn’t agree on a method. They stopped talking about it entirely, so as not to spoil their golden anniversary. They wanted a nice celebration at an exclusive restaurant near the White House, and a peaceful walk by the river after dinner.

But the sky had darkened and the storm whirled in on their footpath.

What’s that conventional wisdom about taking shelter under trees?

I can’t remember. 

Me neither. 

Alzheimer's? they worried as they stood under nearby trees, their arms wrapped around each other.

When the lightning bolt struck, it killed them both instantly; six separate surges of electricity hit the same spot within a half second. The air bloomed with the fragrance of cedar from a thousand hope chests. It was a better end than either had ever dreamed.

Cheryl Snell’s books include poetry collections from Finishing Line, Pudding House, and Moira Books, as well as her Bombay Trilogy. Most recently her writing has appeared in One Art, The Drabble, The Ekphrastic Review, The Café Irreal, The Ilanot Review, Pure Slush, and elsewhere.

Texture by John Sheirer

Diane touched her favorite photography award, the first of many, presented forty-two years ago. She stroked the deep grooves of her name etched in the metal. Her eyes moved left and found the photo that had earned that award. She leaned forward until her breath fogged the plexiglass. After three eye surgeries, all she could make out was the basic shape of the mountain range. Diane touched the glass, and, for the first time in her life, she wished she had learned to paint. Thick, brush strokes, coarse as the mountain rock beneath her fingertips, would have been a comfort.

John Sheirer lives in Western Massachusetts and is in his 30th year of teaching at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut. His latest book is the award-winning short story collection, Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.