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.

Ruby Slippers / Drywall by Alfred Fournier

Ruby Slippers

Before Dorothy tapped those shoes three times,
her world was askew with wonder.
Whether or not she believed
there was a powerful old man
who held the key to her return,
arm-in-arm she skipped along that golden road,
each friend flawed with God-given grace
ready to defend her innocence and hope,
going all the way to the emerald gates
through darkness, dreams and poppies.

When the world sends its flying monkeys your way,
remember who you are.
Somewhere on the other side of sleep
shines a dream more real than this one.
When the Good Witch says,
You’ve had the power all along,
dropping the prop of her wand to her side,
you’ll see your greatest strength has always been
the pluck you thought you were missing.



Drywall

If you knew your long-dead mother was sleeping
in the hotel room adjacent to yours,
not in the wind-swept hills of her girlhood,
nor some grim castle tower gnawed by rain
into a state of decay, but just beyond thin layers
of drywall where every sound you make
reverberates, 

                       would you step more tenderly
across creaking floorboards, lower the volume
on that 360 speaker you take everywhere,
keep the TV news to a whisper? When you wake
in the famine of night, residue of childhood fears
brooding like a dark forest inside you,
place your palm flat against the wall. Listen
for the bounty that lives within silence.
Let sorrow dip and rise like a nighthawk inside you.

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona. His poems have appeared in The Indianapolis Review, Amethyst Review, Third Wednesday, Gyroscope Review and elsewhere. His first poetry collection, "A Summons on the Wind," (2023) is available from Kelsay Books and Amazon. alfredfournier.com.

Room of Forget by Diane Webster

Rooster crowed … crowed … crowed; 

I dragged … dragged … dragged 

myself awake; forgot I had died. 

 

This room is not my room. 

Perhaps a motel room. 

Am I on vacation? 

Where’s my wife? The bed indents 

only one merry-old-soul form. 

Our picture hangs on the wall, 

but it’s not my wall -- white, 

too white like my skinny legs. 

My pants feel right; my shoes fit, 

but why am I here? Where am I? 

 

Someone knocks on my door and enters. 

 

“Time for breakfast, Riley. Are you ready?” 

 

Riley fumbles for his cane and shuffles 

down the hall to the dining room filled 

with residents looking at him 

for someone familiar. Should he know them? 

 

Rooster crows in the distance, 

but no one hears; no one remembers… 

again … and again … and again. 

Diane Webster's work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, Verdad and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022 and 2023 and was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022.

Leaving by Jennifer Nichols

                                                                     

I’m old

let me leave this world

before I forget the best of it

sunsets flowers waves crashing

the smell of tomatoes on the vine

picking blackberries eating peaches

the warmth of the sun on my body

friendship and the people I love

if I should forget all this 

it will be time to go

Jennifer Nichols is new to submitting her poetry. She is ninety two years old.

Grosbeaks / The Hours by David Chorlton

Grosbeaks

There were canyons that pulled
themselves free
of mountains that created them,
gravel roads that storms picked up
and tossed aside, black light

at pine-oak elevation when
lightning flashed the sky down
to claim its portion of the Earth.
There were deer who stopped
to listen to the ore beneath them sing

and there was wind
calling to the miners who had returned
to their own world
to stay there. Thunder tugged at the trees

before it all went by so quickly
the sun had time to shake itself dry
before setting. It was almost music
when water was an aria flowing
over rocks and cymbals flashed

a grand finale before the misty
silence after rain, broken only
by the grosbeaks’ calls.




The Hours

Nothing much to do today, just
walk along a desert path
to where the bees have made a darkness
of themselves behind
the honeycombs they work
inside a sheltered hollow the sun can’t reach,
then wait for the golden light
to return by late
afternoon when time moves alone
on the street with a shadow for a tail
until the minutes turn to finches,
doves and quail, while seconds flash before
a watching eye as hummingbirds.
There’s a world that works
by pressing buttons. Sunlight doesn’t reach
there. You need a password
to get inside it. And there’s a world
that never asks you
for your name: no records kept, no
deadlines. It’s where
the hours go when they grow tired
of being counted
and become leaves
that shine from within themselves.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix, having previously lived in England and Austria. This year saw the publication of "The Long White Glove," an account of the wrongful conviction of a family member in Vienna. He still produces occasional watercolors and is attentive to the local wildlife.

The Ancients Ride at Bon Time by Darrell Petska

The chill of their coming your neck hairs sense,
your eyes turning north, your ears perked
to a swelling airborne murmuration—

undulating waves of dragonflies, tails autumn-
nipped, cresting the horizon, dipping low to
the hieing of your ancestors riding their backs,

your greats-, great-greats- and greaters-still
crying from their mounts: “What news?
How do you fare? Do you think of us?”

They rush quickly by, familiars to life,
their feet once planted where you now stand,
eyes upturned in reverence and awe,

leaving you to swallow your answers as one
parting plea, like a frost-bitten leaf, falls to earth:
“It’s not too late to change!”

Distance soon reclaims their cloud,
and small pieces of you tagging along, until—
it must occur thus—

you awaken chilled some late autumn day,
beneath and all about you pulsing
the ancients’ gossamer multitude,

familiar adjurations springing now from your lips
as you ride time’s back into tomorrow:
“Remember us. Live your life anew!”


Note: The autumn migration of dragonflies coincides roughly with the annual Japanese Bon Festival and an old belief that ancestral spirits, riding dragonflies like winged mounts, return to visit the living.

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor. His writing can be found in Third Wednesday Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Muddy River Poetry Review and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five and grandfather of six, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

Paradise / At Maits Rest Australia by Anna Citrino

Paradise

We paused at the crossroad that cloud covered morning, 

debating whether the road would be what it promised,

“Paradise Valley.” We read the sign through the mist,

and decided to turn.

 

A long green path scattered with foxglove, 

buttercups, and tumbled with wild roses sauntered 

down tree covered hills to fall gently into a quiet stream. 

Bright blue-headed birds darted between branches 

to balance on long grass strands leaning 

over quiet mirrored pools.

 

Enveloped in spicy eucalyptus mist,

we wandered beneath swooping crimson rosellas,

leapt across steppingstones, looped through 

moss bearded tree ferns to the end of the path

where we stood between fallen logs below 

slick black stone, water sliding softly over.

 

Tonight when I look up into your face

amidst the room’s soft light, I think of that road

and the choice we made to turn down it, not knowing.

And yes, it is paradise—more alive with beauty

than we ever suspected.

At Maits Rest Australia

 

The myrtle trees

toss their confetti leaves

into the afternoon light’s gentle lap,

dot the misty air with a celebration 

of green pointillist delight.

 

Lifted out of the dry desert,

we shake the dust from our heads 

and drop into the cascading downpour 

of leaves falling into crevices, covering 

the faerie hollows and leprechaun dance floors.

 

Slowly, we wander deeper and deeper

into the canyons of color, happy 

to be caught in the wet world of life.

Anna Citrino 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 on paths through a forest where she lives in Sonoma County. Read more of her writing at annacitrino.com.