Congratulations to the Accepted Contributors to Fall Lines - a literary convergence, volume X

On behalf of the Jasper Project, we’re delighted to announce that the following literary art was selected for inclusion in Fall Lines Volume X, releasing in spring 2024. These contributions were selected from several hundred poetry and prose submissions, and we couldn’t be happier to include them in this milestone tenth volume of Fall Lines – a literary convergence.

In early 2024 we will announce via the same website where and when we will hold our annual Fall Lines reading and awards ceremony, as well as the winners of the Saluda River Prize for Poetry, the Broad River Prize for Prose, and the Combahee River Prize in Poetry and Prose for a South Carolina Writer of Color.

Until then, congratulations and thank you for sharing your talents with the Jasper Project and allowing us to share them with the world.

Paul Toliver Brown – Digging to China

Allen Stevenson -- Shep’s Story

Bryan Gentry – Some People Never Change

Ruth Nicholson – The Red and Blue Box

Suzanne Kamata – Community Building

Evelyn Berry – Home Party

Randy Spencer – Next Day Now

Liz Newell – Red Hill Fans

Debra Daniel – Eve Purchases an Apple Watch

Shannon Ivey – As I Went Down to the River to Pray

Eric Morris – Straight Down Shadows

Lonetta Thompson – The Differences

Napoleon Wells – The Court of Thieves

Tshaka Campbell – Pews

Ann-Chadwell Humphries – Urban Eagle

Jacquelyn Markham – The persistence of limited memory  & Storage

Brian Slusher – *Improv 101 & What else for you darlin?  

Worthy Evans – *Blue Song for Bringing the Body Home & Blues Song for Never Having What I am Relative to Everybody Else

Rhy Robidoux –*Whereas

Nadine Ellsworth-Moran – *Nasturtium grows lush

Susan Craig – Migration & Treating our mother's last living friend

Heather Emerson – Divorce & Ceilings  

Joshua Dunn – Clearing House

Candice Kelsey – Chainsaws  & Renewable Energy

Terri McCord – Following a Blast

Randy Spencer – *Reading Ann’s Poem & In Passing

Debra Daniel – *Studies in Reproduction

Loli Munoz – Liminal

Frances Pearce – Strawberries

Ann Herlong-Bodman – One More

Jo Angela Edwins – A Neighbor Calls a Cool June Evening a Miracle

Kristine Hartvigsen – What I’ll pack for the apocalypse  & Inagaddadavida

Al Black –*Meditations on the Lawh-i-Aqdas & Midnight Call to Prayer

Tim Conroy – Journeys

Jessica Hylton – Space

Amanda Warren – Divination Road

Danielle Ann Verwers—How was your day

Libby Bernardin – Ode to the Santee Delta & Ramble of thought as I read an article in the New York Times

Ellen Blickman --The Mystery of Pomegranates

Allison Cooke – Whippoorwill Elegy

Julie Ann Cook --  Into blue

Bryan Gentry – Hail, Fuse

Kelley Lannigan – Aubade

Gilbert Allen -- T**** IS PRESIDENT

Jane Zenger – Choices

Anna Ialacci – Ruined

Nicholas Drake – The Space Beside Her  

Graham Duncan --  Exceptionalism

(* indicates finalists for the Saluda River Prize for Poetry)

Fall Lines - a literary convergence is made possible through a partnership between the Jasper Project, One Columbia for Arts and Culture, Richland Library, and the Friends of Richland Library.

Poetry of the People: Amy Alley

This week's Poet of the People is Amy Alley.

Amy Alley is a poet, writer, educator, and artist who I originally met through Cassie Premo Steele. She hosts poetry and art events from Greenwood to Newberry. She is a quiet, nurturing, and generous connector of people and talents and is the keeper of the poetry torch in her corner of South Carolina  . 

Amy is a talented freelance writer, poet, author,  artist, educator, and solo mother of one son who somehow managed to make it to University (hooray!) Because that isn't enough, she is currently training to become a certified yoga teacher. A so-called ‘curator of sophisticated chaos,' she knows what it is like to strive for balance in the throes of a busy, hectic life - but she has learned to breath deep and embrace the flow. She has a passion for service and enjoys helping others express the story they wish to tell through writing and/or art as well as discover new tools for creative expression to promote wellness and wellbeing. She also loves fashion and style, like, a lot.

If You Reached Out  

If you reached out 

While children clamor at our feet 

And on our laps 

And people chatter all around us 

In a language I fall in and out of understanding 

I would take your hand 

If you reached out 

I would follow you into your world 

I would let you lead me 

All the way 

Because I’m so tired 

Of being at the wheel 

If you reached out 

I would let you teach me 

The language of your ancestors 

So that I could speak to you 

With the same words that 

You dream in. 

If you reached out 

I would let you into my world 

Where the solitude you’ve never known 

Bears fruit 

In color that swirls on the canvases 

That you admire so much 

If you reached out 

I would take you to a place 

Where you can hear the owls 

Call to one another 

Their ancient language one 

With the sound of night settling 

If you reached out 

Across this table 

And these children 

And these worlds 

And languages 

And all that seems to lie between us 

I would fall into a space 

That seems to be as vast 

As the night sky  

We both dream beneath 

Counting the stars 

In different languages  

Living in worlds 

We both fall in and out of 

Understanding. 

Shoe Fetish 

I’ve kicked off more shoes than you could imagine 

Wasted, wanton shoes 

confining 

shoes that fit only for an instant 

and never 

never ever 

let me dance. 

I’ve kicked off more shoes that you could imagine 

and ran barefoot instead 

through meadows of clover and freedom 

where nothing is too tight 

and I can dance as much as l like 

 to the tune 

of me. 

MYCELIAL 

I wanted to write about me,
but I am possessive
so it comes out as my
and my mind goes to mycelium
and mycelium is another name
for God, I have been told.
And God was possessive, right?
The source of what connects us all
and it runs deep underneath,
connecting everything to itself.
The fungi know this. There’s
communication down in the deep,
dark spaces where the gods really live.
There’s magic in my and mine and
maybe not so much shame
in wanting to possess something
completely. Mycelial networks
are so intrinsic, a worldwide
web of their own. We don’t see it,
just like we don’t see the internet,
but it’s there all the same, sparking
magical mystical connections.
And there’s magic in me and mine
and he and his and we can’t own
each other but we can think about it.
We can go down deep into
all the dark places below where
the mycelial hyphae of our minds 

run like strands of Ariadne’s thread, 

under all the layers of us,

and earth is this space where
we finally touch one another,
touch the magic, and watch the light
of it spread to all of our parts.

Black and White Dream

Spring came too early,

again. It seeped in 

everywhere, overnight. Dew

glistening on green like 

sweat on skin after

making love. Sunny and 

74, too early. March 3

is not Spring. A long

afternoon walk leaves me

like dew on green - 

anew - as though everything 

wasn't breaking down,

as though I'd spent 

idle hours with 

Wang Ming's Humble Hermit

of Clouds and Woods,

having stumbled upon him

in a black and white

dream, making love between

cups of tea in his

thatched cottage, hidden

by ink branches and 

boughs of pine. And 

why not, when everything

is breaking, broken.  At least 

once before, this scene, in a 

dream, waking up

like dew on green

leaves - anew - but not

enough. I have spent days

in woods, in clouds, in

meditation, trying to find

my feet back on that

jagged path. Hermits like

to make us think that they

are wise, but I take 

my gurus with a grain of salt 

these days. Fragile as me

they are, and just

as broken. Spring has come

too early, again. And everything

is breaking,  broken, except

the black ink branches and 

pine boughs that hide 

a thatched cottage where

lives the man who

prefers silence and solitude 

to the chaos of Spring. Who

prefers his loneliness

to my black and white

dream. Who doesn't see 

everything breaking, broken, 

who doesn't see me

blinded is he 

by a warm Spring sun.

Too early.

Last Night I Dreamt of Pow Wows  

Last night I dreamt of friends long past 

Divorced from one another 

And otherwise scattered 

Lost to the winds of time 

Lost to the miles between us 

Lost to themselves  

And lost to me. 

But for a moment 

Together again. 

Some long ago powwow 

Where we laughed and sang together 

And danced under starshine 

To a drum as familiar 

As the beating of my own heart. 

I wake up  

Wanting to reach out 

Find everyone 

And bring us all together again. 

But my heart says no 

It is a time long past 

They are lost to the winds of time 

Lost to the miles between us 

Lost to themselves 

And lost to me. 

I begin my day nostalgic 

With the memory of moccasins on soft earth 

Keeping time with a drum  

That fell silent long ago. 

Making War 

The way of the peaceful warrior 

is not my way. I fight. 

Against the grain, against 

myself. Against the oppression 

of cultural expectations and 

societal norms. What is normal 

anyway, the collected insanity 

of the masses? Peace 

is not achieved without a fight. 

Inner, outer, it doesn’t matter. 

You have to slay the demons, and 

they fight back, scratching and biting 

and you bleed and your blood flows 

to all the inner and outer places. And 

They don’t go down easily, no. Begging  

and pleading and willing them away 

won’t work. You have to fight back. That’s 

why it’s important that you know how.  

You, sitting on your velvet cushion with your hands 

folded, thinking “Namaste,” you better know 

how to throw – and take – a punch. Because 

the way of the peaceful warrior is not 

achieved through the bliss 

of meditation, no. It takes the screaming of war 

to get to that place, inner or outer, 

where peace resides. It takes 

making war on yourself 

to stop making war 

on the rest of the world. It takes 

fighting back. Hard.  

And you get stronger, scrappier. And 

wounded. But the bleeding 

stops. And scarred, you put away your sword, 

for now. You can only be 

a peaceful warrior if you put 

it down completely.  

And you might. 

But I fought too long 

and too hard for the right 

to hold mine 

to just let it go. I’ll 

put it away, though. And I’ll sit 

on a velvet cushion, with 

my hands folded and think “Namaste” 

all day. I will 

be peaceful.  

I will. 

You should know, though… 

in a moment’s notice 

I can be armed  

and ready for war 

in the event 

that you choose 

to wage it. 

Poetry of the People: Jerred Metz

This week's Poet of the People is Jerred Metz. Jerred found and befriended me a decade or so ago and is my irregular lunch partner at Arabasque. We talk of poetry and prose, family and friends. He challenges me to become a better writer without losing my voice or becoming derivative of what I read; he is a gift to the poetry community of South Carolina.

Jerred Metz has had seven books of poetry, three non-fiction, and two novels published, and over one hundred poems and stories in literary journals. He taught creative writing at the University of Minnesota, Webster University, and Coker College. For fifteen years he was poetry editor for the Webster International Poetry Review. He has degrees from the University of Rhode Island (B.A., M.A., English) and the University of Minnesota (Ph.D., English and Philosophy.)

        Honey, My Muse

Her wild shadow wakes, rises, and

comes toward me. I love her,

frightening as she is, her eyes

the color of water,

her wings

battering the air.

When she flies the world unfurls

like a backdrop

behind and beneath her.

Benevolent bees

fill her hollow body

with hive and honey.

She tells me,

never minding the calendar,

“In 1929 I had to leave school to marry the banker who holds the mortgage on my poor mother’s homestead since we could no longer meet the payments. Believe me, life was no picnic, me only twelve and missing all my friends and my teachers and what if the townspeople learned that the banker had a twelve-year-old wife? I learned to cook, keep house, and please my husband in bed. Believe me, that was no easy task, me only twelve and him well into his fifties, his hair and moustache still shining black. There were no sex manuals then. Those few who had them considered themselves lucky to have books of etiquette. And this banker had been around and was particular about his sex. Oh, where could I turn? Who could I ask for help?”

           She brings me visions. 

In return, I show her

a new place to press

or kiss,

a new position,

a fresh phrase to

utter.

Muse, 

whose sacred body—

hive for queen and drone,

worker and larvae,

and honeycomb

rich with sweetness,

comes toward me

holding another poem. 

____

I created these “overheard” snatches and snippets of a private detective in Newark, New Jersey in the 1890s. Accounts of incidents in his career, each hinting at a “before” and an “after.” They are from Sad Tales and Sordid Stories: Interruptions. There are about 30 of them.

What was Not Her Astonishment 

Harland was a friend of Hattie's

of whom The night before Hattie had written to

 Charlotte of Harland, who was a friend—

"a very fine, spirited man

whom Charlotte would like,"

she thought and believed.

What was not Charlotte’s astonishment

when she found he was nothing

like the man Hattie described.

The Air was Unusually Mild 

Harland strolled out

with Charlotte before

going to the office.

The air was unusually mild

for this time of year,

such days being part of

the recent past

or far in the future.

Strange to say,

he was empty-handed.

The manuscript—

its worn wrapping

exposing some

of the contents

to public view,

which I expected

him to be carrying—

was nowhere to be seen.

I felt safe now;

I knew the lady’s name—

“Hattie the hat”—

an old schemer—

and proceeded to her boarding-place,

had her summoned,

introduced myself, mumbling

a name that sounded like that of a con

from Newark who she had heard of,

and began talking to her

about literary matters,

favoring the popular writers

over the serious ones.

Harland’s Henchmen in the Restaurant

Had they hunted her

or were they acquaintances of Harland's

who found her there by accident and

simply followed her down?

I wanted to speak with the proprietor,

but they might be customers

who always spent as much as tonight,

and clearly Charlotte was charmed by them.

I was a stranger here— 

why should the owner listen

to my meagre dribble of coin

against the music of

their smiling wallets?

“She is an Angel,” or,

"Her Eyelashes are Harpstrings Angels Thrum" 

In spite of all the assurances

I offered her Charlotte

would not single out

any of the men as her attacker.

She claimed not even to be sure

that any of them had been on

the trolley that morning.

But when I saw their shy glances

in Charlotte’s direction

I was certain she had made

An impression

upon their minds,

and now they wished

they were not thieves and murderers,

but pleasant young men

who might sit beside her and say,

"Your eyelashes are harpstrings

angels thrum.

Come with me to tented Elberon

and stroll the boardwalk,

sipping lemon ices,

sit in the breeze

at the edge of

the sea."

____

I call these epigramatics, by definition concise, clever, and amusing

1
             Homo Sapiens

       An
               Invasive
                               Species.
2

Technology
Every day
     I learn something
          I wish
               I didn’t
                    Need to know.
3
Our Quietest Meals
Are when we
eat fish.
Not that fish
makes us
more serious,
just more
careful.

4
A Simile on Free Writing
Like looking
For something
In an empty attic.

5
Catastrophe
—the Great Fuck-Up—
is Mother
and Father—
the Hermaphrodite—
of Invention.

____

Positano

Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone. 

                                                     John Steinbeck Harper's Bazaar, May, 1953 

I

In Ancient Days

Vesuvius’ razed Pompeii and Herculaneum

A rain of burning ash buried Positano.

Before then, on westward treks Greeks and Phoenicians

traded at Positano, so history says.

Named for the Sea God,

Poseidon in quiet and wrath—

the old cosmology still alive.

Or is this what happened?

Pirates stole  a thirteenth-century  

Black Madonna icon from Byzantium. 

When they reached the bay,

in anger at the theft, Poseidon

tore the waters in storm.

The thieves heard a shout, "Posa! Posa!”

“Put down! Put down!”

The storm-struck ship crashed,

a wreck on the shore.

Still alive, the pirates hauled

the Madonna up the steep cliff

to the village, delivered Her to

Santa Maria Assunta’s priest.

The storm stopped, the sea quieted, the sun smiled.

Good citizens of Positano ever after—the reformed pirates.

Posa. Posa. Positano

II

The Plate of Clay

Whole, then broken, buried,

unearthed, repaired with reverence.

The beauty of the broken,

The marvel of the restored,

marking its own perfection.

The border—geometry, repetition, variety,

the shapes of flowers—holds all the universe. 

The border beyond, before Chaos, its own beauty.

III

Praise Invention, Praise Conception

The artificer,

whose brush followed hand,

whose hand obeyed mind,

whose mind embodied the muse.

How much beauty can a wall contain

before bursting forth in song?

IV

Seven Sisters

The single band of cloth twirling, and breeze

 lifts to its own dance, tying sister to sister.

What song do they chant?

“Who are we?

Seven sisters, Pleiades

dance, dive,

divide and gather.

How are we called?

 Maia,

        Electra,

       Alcyone,

                            Taygete,

                           Asterope,

                Celaeno

Merope.

Seven daughters of father Titan Atlas, who holds up the sky,

and mother Ocean, Pleione, Mother to Sailors,

whose Fate she governs.

Zeus, Poseidon, and Ares fathered children

upon us, made us a small dipper

of stars in Taurus.

See us twinkle and nod,

sharing our songs in code.”

“Who are we? Half-sisters to the

seven Pleiades and the Hesperides.

We, the seven Hyades,

sisterhood of nymphs,

the rain-makers,

who fall as rain,

our weeping, rain.

When a wild beast killed the hunter Hyas we wept,

became a star cluster in Taurus’ head,

a dipper to hold our tears.

V

Perched Positano

Thanks to its location, Positano’s climate is mild—

winters warm, the summers long and sunny,

refreshed by sea breezes, and

by the landscape’s beauty.

Long, steep stair link the village high above

with the valley beneath, the sea beyond.

A hard walk down, a hard climb up.

Below, the happy throng at Positano, blissful,

bless the sea suspended in ecstasy,

bless the patient town,

the happy villas above which become

beckoningly real after you have gone.

Poetry of the People: Ed Madden

This week's Poet of the People is Ed Madden, Ed Madden is a gifted poet and a generous mentor and nurturer across a wide range of our community of poets. He consistently models how to be relevant and present in both the town and gown communities and we are richer for it.

Ed will be reading Sunday at Poetry Church and Tuesday at Historic Columbia 

From Ark (Sibling Rivalry, 2016)

Ark
Christmas 1966

The small box is filled with little beasts—
a barn that’s a barge, a boat—the ark’s

ridged sides like boards, a plastic plank,
a deck that drops in fitted slots, but lifted

reveals that zoo of twos—heaped beasts
to be released beneath a glittering tree,

its dove-clipped limbs. Dad’s asleep
in his reclining seat, and crumpled waves

of paper recede as Mom circles the room.
The humming wheel throws light across the walls.

How to lift him

Don’t pick him up by the pits,
which seems easiest. You risk

broken bones, bruised skin.
Instead, once he’s eased up, sits,

shoulders hunched, fee slung
over the edge, lean down for the hug, 

your arms under his and around,
hands flat against his back, his arms around

you. This is what you do. Then lift him,
his feet between yours, this timid

dance around, this turn. Tell him
to bend his knees as you ease him

down to the chair, its wheels locked,
set him in slow. Kneel in front

as if to receive his blessing.

Lift each foot to its rest. Wrap
a blanket around him—you’re going out.

Stop at the old flat-front desk,
last hiding place for his cigarettes— 

why he wanted up, after all. Stop
at the edge of the porch and lock

the wheels. Make sure he’s in the sun.
Stand silent by, he won’t talk much,

though the lonely cat will,
rubbing its back against the wheels.

Thirst

The nurse said, your father really looks at you
when you walk into the room—

he stares at you,
she said, he must have something to tell you.

But he never tells you.

Later, another hospice worker listened to this story.
She said, no, you know,

sometimes, as we’re leaving this world,
our world contracts to the small space of the room,

to the few things we love.

Your father wasn’t looking at you because he had
something to tell you, no,

he was looking at you because he loved you, she said.
It was near the end, she said,

he was drinking you in.

---

Poems from A Pooka in Arkansas (Word Works, 2023)

[untitled]

What has been omitted
from the history we learned?
The stubble was plowed under,
sometimes burned.

[untitled]

Sometimes when it’s cold out,
I pull on my dad’s old denim
shirt, warm, worn, the past
a thin jacket, what I have left.

Psalm
after Psalm 23

Tim is my therapist;
I’m learning to trust him.
He motions me to the green sofa;
there’s always bottled water on the table.
He leads me to talk about things
I don’t want to talk about.
If I make my way to the top
of the dark stairs,
he makes a space for talking
and for not talking.
Sometimes the room gets crowded—
my dead father, my distant mother,
all those messages from my brother
I can pull up right there on my phone.
In their presence, he asks,
“What would happen
if you stopped doing your family’s work
of shaming you?”
That question follows me the rest of the day.

---

From A Story of the City: Poems Occasional and Otherwise (Muddy Ford, 2023)

Postcard: First Baptist Church, Columbia, S.C.
Justitia Virtutum Regina, motto of the City of Columbia

This is where they decided
to divide US, where they said
all men are not equal, where
they pledged allegiance to
the divided states of America
and to the secession for
which they stood, a nation
broken, divisible, with liberty
and justice for some.

Something to declare
July 11, 2018, after William Stafford

The president is overseas this week, that’s the news,
and we’re reading William Stafford in a chilly classroom
and trying to write about where we live now, and how.

Important people are gathered around a big table,
but we sit at our little desks. Sachi talks about what it means
to declare something when you cross a border.

Back home, I know my cat is dying. She’ll amble
stiffly to the door when I return, her blind eyes
wide and bright with what she cannot see.

They say that history is going on somewhere.
Zoe describes her story as a scrap of paper swept
by the wind, litter snagged in a tree.

This is only a little report from a summer arts camp,
where Makenna and Maya and Eva and Micah are writing
about their small, rich lives. We’re here. You can find us here.

A new year

Bert’s outside taking down the strings
of lights, this winter sun bright enough
for a new day, new year. Colleen sent
a thick heart made of seeds—we’ll hang it
in a tree today for birds, for the winter
that persists despite the sun. Last night’s
firewords were gorgeous, though Barry ran back
and forth with his torch to relight them—
the way, sometimes, we have to do for
our little resolutions, for our glorious
dreams, for our tired hearts, when it’s
dark, when it’s still so cold.

---

UNPUBLISHED POEMS

Epithalamium, backyard wedding
for Mahayla, 20 June 2020

Bert mowed the yard and we spent
some time tidying up, though I know
after next week’s storms there will be
more to do, before the weekend, before
your wedding, before the small service
you asked to have in our backyard.
The mockingbird who takes up a post
every day on the utility pole will sing
for you I’m sure, and I’m certain too
he’ll work in his latest riff, his perfect
soft mimicry of a car alarm going off
in the distance. I will get the words
ready. I’m sorry there’s a big hole
in the yard where we hope to put in
a pond later this summer. But maybe
that’s okay. We’re always trying to make
things better and sometimes that means
a big muddy hole in the middle of it all,
sometimes that means a simple service
in your uncles’ back yard, everyone
standing apart, except for the bride
and groom, maybe your mom and stepdad.
Nathan got the day off, despite the police
being on call right now. I hope he stays
safe this week, his dark skin, his uniform
and gun. I hope I get the words right.
I know you’d hoped for something lovelier,
that wedding in the mountains in October,
but maybe this is best, we don’t know
what things will be like then. May it be
clear and sunny on the day, may the
magnolia still be wearing its perfume, may
the yard be good enough, may this be good
enough. I will ask him to take your hand.
I will ask if you have a ring. I will ask
you to repeat after me. You said no
prayer because Nathan is not Christian,
but I may offer up a prayer anyway.
Maybe this is that prayer.

Poetry of the People: Catherine Zickgraf

This week's Poet of the People is Catherine Zickgraf. Catherine, aka Catherine the Great is a mother hen of poets of all ages, educational backgrounds and genres and is a force in South Carolina and Georgia that reverberates throughout the spoken word and written poetry community. If you don't know her you have resided too long in your little office listening to your own voice or parrots who sound a lot like you.. I am honored to call her friend.

Two lifetimes ago, Catherine Zickgraf performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. Her work has appeared in Pank, Deep Water Literary Journal, and The Grief Diaries. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Kelsay Books.

 Find her on twitter @czickgraf. Watch/read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com

Poem to Lost Poems

At the riverbank, she writes

while her letters stretch wings,

slip wind, skim away.

So she shelters her words,

nails wood without hinges to the floor, 

singes the threshold and corners.

Groundwater carves the chalk rock.

She’s learning to find the darkness

in the humid chill of earth’s stone web,

in moss-floored pools that shadow-shift

with a breath of candlelight.

Still the arch outside connects the riversides,

brides of the rapids flow home to sea

with the surfaced words of she who

sees now with mind, not eyes. 

Where rivers scoop lakes at their estuaries,

a marble she holds encases the oceans. 

Seeking the self inside,

she polishes the sky’s eye.

Pulling rope up the riverside,

she swings into the long line of horizon.

 Yasou! A Celebration of Life, July 2020

In the Dilation of Eye

We chilled for three days.

But when you started staring

out my back windows into the woods,

I knew I had to return you to the wild.

You have eyes that can mirror earth or sky,

that hide in your environment.

You are oak leaf and grass, aqua and azure.

Take me with you.

Let me swim in your iris

and the well of your pupil

toward horizons and the trees.

 Vita Brevis, August 2020

Saving a winged animal 

that gets lured in by the porch light

requires at least three human hands:

mine to catch/seal creature from escape

and my helper’s to kill lights/open door

so I can release it into the night. 

It’s always been my job to rescue

beings that don’t belong inside

(unless its slithery, bitey, or stingy).

The cats help by gently delivering

me tiny, living lime-green lizards— 

so mostly all these complex little

things get returned to roam the earth. 

 Savannah Dusk

Now is the hour

when cypress trees dim into shadows.

The river is lingering along the bank

in puddles caught among braided roots.

Ageless sky deepens, wavelets go still,

the water seems to slow and fall silent.

This is the ceremony of sinking dusk—

when our reflections turn dark and

dim blues fade in the calmness of night. 

 Goodnight

Kira and I decided one evening before I had to go in

and get a bath that after bedtime we would call

out our windows to each other from across the alley.

First grade, I was still crazy awake when they’d

tuck me in, the sky so full of daylight. But having her

to talk to at night would be like double-dutching the

telephone lines that crossed the canyon between

our streets—I’d never be bored again. Yet from my

row of homes in my treehouse bedroom two and

a half stories up, the only word I heard was goodnight.

 Neuro Logical, January 2021

Somnambulant                                                                     

When they sleep down deep at night,

she tunnels out the powder room window     

into drizzle and mist, hops fence.  

She kicks through currents along the curb,                            

crosses street, descends the bank

toward the creek’s down-streaming sounds. 

Twelve and barefoot all summer,

she’s unafraid of treading the pebble beds,

leaps cold rocks to boulders,

splashing the stars of the water.

Breeze moves through the woods,

the moon-lattice shifts around her.

Though curtained with night and still invisible,

she slips back in through the bathroom window—

almost ready come pain of day

when they’ve opened wide their eyes.    

Overnight

Into my window fall stars long as dreams, I slip through the screen.

Night grows a poem stretching prima toes to cross street then creek

stepping soft on the forest floor. Over shivering beds of dark stones,

the sparkle-moon follows me home.

Even through moon and drizzle, the train plumes billowing into the

clouds navigate my backyard valley. They vibrate my candle flame

until its last breath sifts out the window, when whistles trail off and

tracks flow into the starlight horizon.      

The pines don’t drip with shadows behind our house, out of reach

of the streetlight. Past the creek line bordering our woods, the oak

leaves close their eyes. The creatures of the low sky hush us calm, 

I’m returning my mind to its dream.

 Origami Poems Project, April 2020

Minimal

In the fullness of summer, mowers decapitate green necks

            of dandelions and red clover,

            slicing their flowers between matted blades. 

We stop gashing our lawn as it’s shocked with October frost.

            When the winter wind spreads arms down the valley,

            my garden zinnias turn to death and skeletalize. 

On the back porch tonight, I reach through the atmosphere,  

            lengthening glowing arms into space. I ease the moon

            from its netted cradle, an egg nested in my palm.

I am minimal, though, under the sky’s dark quilt.

            I’m a speck in the weeds of my acre yard

            on a tiny rock rounding its ancient orbit.  

Visitant, October 2017

Poetry of the People with Kimberly Simms Gibbs

This week's Poet of the People is Kimberly Simms Gibbs. She is South Carolina upcountry poetry. She sees with an eye of southern cornbread sopped in pork drippings gravy. If you want to feel the Carolina hills and mountains read Kimberly Simms Gibbs.

Kimberly's literary voice is rooted in the Southern tradition of storytelling. Her passion for poetry from both the page to the stage has led Kimberly to garner titles such as former Carl Sandburg NHS Writer-in-residence, National Poetry Slam ‘Legend of the South’, TedX speaker, co-founder of CarolinaPoets, former Southern Fried Poetry Slam Champion, and award-winning teaching artist. In her first full-length collection from Finishing Line Press, Lindy Lee: Songs on Mill Hill, Kimberly chronicles the lives of textile workers in the Carolinas with historical accuracy and imaginative insight. Ron Rash, the award-winning author of Serena, says about Kimberly: "she writes with eloquence and empathy about an important part of Southern history - too often neglected."

                                  Trespassing after the Hysterectomy 

The Lily-of-the-Valley 

           pearly bells tremble 

            the way a child’s mouth brims 

                                   with laughter. 

Daffodils 

          headless green arms gesture 

          split-hearts subterranean 

                                leaves blackened. 

Mole, 

          how sweet is your tongue 

           after your feast of bitter 

                                 tulip daughters? 

Dark earth, 

           how do you embrace the emptiness 

            of your bloomless womb 

                                  your crumbling tubers? 

Lady Slipper, 

           my gloved hands long to plant 

            while your tendrils more exotic 

            unfurl sharp leaves, pregnant blossom 

                                   beneath the last living hemlock.  

                                                  Homestead 

                                 But nothing is solid and permanent. 

                       Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. 

                                   – Ron Rash, One Foot in Eden 

A bolt of barbed wire, black with age,

hints the way, jutting from the undergrowth 

like a wizened digit— the post long since decayed 

and lost to the crumbling host of litter. 

This sunken corner is a garbled message 

till we catch a tree pierced with another barb. 

A stone pile murmurs, entangled with the metal. 

This forest expands in every direction. 

Our eyes can see no horizon beyond it. 

Mountains surge as we weave 

up and down valleys, creeks, and ravines. 

Eighty years: a forest has fallen and regrown. 

Homestead cleared, tilled, planted, harvested 

then reclaimed by this hummocked beast. 

We follow the ancient line back to a single 

hearthstone and the outline of a foundation. 

A toppled stone wall, a brown bottle. 

All around us: a forgotten fence, an outpost of the past.

Wild Green Soup

          Newberry Cotton Mill Village

           South Carolina 1924  

Fingers of frost stretch across the windows.

Seasoned wood crackles in the wood stove

while I stir the last salty pork knuckle

with a handful of beans, wild greens

into a stock pot just off the boil.

Fall's harvest now a collection of empty jars;

the cupboards breath -- dust, dead moths.

Each stir is more a wish as the day considers

getting warm, sweet herbs summon cravings.

Morning casts its pink sap over frost-risen clay

as I shepherd this thinly-feathered brood

towards the cotton-strewn spinning room.

Today we will piece broken strings, weave

cotton scraps to make them something whole.

Liddy Lee Songs on Mill Hill (Finishing Line Press, 2017)

       Machine Tool Salesman

Bill run that grinder fo ten years

Machine bigger than a brown bear

in Manny's stretched machine shop

in the flats of South Carolina.

The metallic cold milled slack snow

big sloppy flakes. The guys put on

their coats and stuck out their tongues

for the rare southern crystals.

Scraping together snowball heaps,

they watched the yard go dark and drank

black coffee. They stomped their feet

and left their coats on cause the shop

was so cold. That year so metallic.

That's how it happened, the coat.

Bill knew better, but ten years

you get so easy. The machine caught

him-- metal grinding machine --instant.

I sold them that grindernew.

Just horrible, he had two little babies too.

Took a week to get him out of the wheel

but it still ran. Can't keep a machine

something like that happens. I sold

it down the coast. Just horrible, two little

babies too and that year so metallic cold.

                                                     Summer Swagger

Late August, we are still free summer children.

We run over the rocky banks laughing in some

chase game; muscles flex, tense, stretch, climb

the steep --- dig fingers into cracks, wrench ourselves up.

Mountain expanse of water calls to us. My skin

tingles with nervousness as I look down thirty feet.

"Take my hand," you tender, "We'll jump together."

Wind races around my feet! We send out seagull wails,

steal breath for the plunge. My body is a scream!

Down, down forever in bubbles, then buoyant, silent,

We are carp pulling ourselves up through the water.

We burst back into heat, hollowing out triumphant bellows.

Poetry of the People with Loli Molina Munoz

This week's Poet of the People is Loli Molina Munoz. Loli openly shares her otherliness and in the sharing becomes one of us.  Diaspora of a Spanish Tortilla (Recipe and Poem); is exquisitely simple in telling complex emotions.

IT’S THANKSGIVING AND I AM NOT AMERICAN

It’s Thanksgiving and I’m not American.

I have cooked turkey, mashed potatoes, 
collard greens, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. 

My husband has dressed up the house
with fall colors and he is not American. 

A friend has come to share this rainy
day and he is not American.

The dog is staring at us hoping to
get some table food and he is not American.

We have toasted and remembered some
old friends who are not American. 

We are thankful for having each other 
and we are not American. 

---

I HAVE AN ACCENT

I have an accent

When I go to the grocery store
and they ask me if I found everything I needed 
I answer “yes”
they say: you have an accent!

This accent is my grandmother’s sewing for the rich 
and waiting from my grandfather to return from Venezuela.

When I order a tall decaf coffee with milk 
and I spell my name
they say: you have an accent!

This accent is my mother’s cleaning houses
so I could fly abroad and improve my English.

When I read a poem 
and your faces change trying to understand 
what I say and 
you think: she has an accent!

This accent is their braided hands delivering the fruit
that I will place in your still empty basket. 

---

THE GOOD DISHES

“But they are grounded
in their God and their families 
they are grounded in their hearts and minds.”
-Nikki Giovanni

my mother keeps the
good dishes in an old
cabinet after fifty 

years hoping I have 
them someday, she also 
holds onto a coffee 

set and a quilt she
made before she got 
married, your dowry

she says while she shows 
one of her few smiles 
buried in a deep wide

hole digged by my father
covered with her dreams
and my nightmares

long lasting nightmares
my mother possesses 
the first and the last 

of my days, the 
first and the last of
my nights, the fist 

and the last of 
my 
thoughts. 

---

ON ALL SAINTS DAY

Don’t leave me.

Those were your last
words. 

And we left you.

We closed the door
and we went home. 

Your eyes were begging for more 
time with us, more time alive.

But we left you
abuela Lola.

And the morning after
you were gone.

And the memories became 
a attempt to order the chaos.

My chaos. 

---

Diaspora of a Spanish Tortilla

(Recipe and poem)

I
Ingredients for 4 people
2 cups of Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound of potatoes
6 eggs
Salt

II
My mothers tells me it’s time to go to bed before the Three Wise Men come with the presents. I have to cook the tortilla for them, she says, and I think it’s not fair I don’t get to taste the mixture before being cooked. I close my eyes and I think about the smell of the potatoes and the eggs before jumping into the pan. 

III
Heat 2 cups of olive oil in a medium pan, slowly fry the potatoes until beautiful golden brown. Drain the potatoes on a paper towel. 

IV
It’s 1997 and I am an exchange student in Coventry, England. The first week someone organizes a party at our house. I don’t remember who. It wasn’t me. Everyone brings something for their countries. I cooked tortilla the same way my mother taught me. We eat, we drink, and we sing songs that we all know. 

V
Beat the eggs in a bowl with 1 teaspoon of salt. Add the cooked potatoes to the beaten eggs and let stir for 1 minute. 

VI
Last night I went early to bed as my mother told me and this morning Melchior came home with a present for me. It was the doll I wanted. Her tortilla must have been really good this year. 

VII
Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a 6-inch pan over high heat. Once the oil is hot, pour the egg-potato mixture and reduce the heat to low. 

VIII
Last week I cooked a tortilla for lunch and he smiled when he saw it. This is so good, he said. You are even better, I thought. 

IX
Once it begins to set and the edges turn golden brown, place a plate over the pan and flip the pan and the plate so the tortilla ends up on the plate, uncooked side down. 

X
Wisconsin was cold, too cold for a Southern Spaniard used to the sun and the scent of the Mediterranean. Someone asked me to make a tortilla but this time it didn’t flip right. I had to go back to Spain. 

XI
Once the tortilla set, flip the tortilla again and transfer to a platter. Season with salt and cut into wedges to serve.

XII
In 2006 my mother confessed that she never cooked tortilla for the Three Wise Men. I was so disappointed that I cried. I was 32. I was 32 and I cried. And I never stopped making tortillas. 

---

 Bio

Loli Molina Muñoz is a Spanish teacher in Lexington, SC, with a Phd in Modern Languages. Her poetry has appeared in different Spanish and American publications and anthologies like VoZes, Label Me Latin and Jasper Fall Lines. In 2019, she published an essay on gender and sex identity in feminist science fiction as part of an anthology called Infiltradas. This anthology was awarded as Best Essays Anthology by the Spanish Science Fiction Society Awards in 2020.

Poetry of the People with Cassie Premo Steele

This week's Poet of the People is the indomitable Cassie Premo Steele. Cassie is an Earth mother to many poets and writers. Her poetry invites you to take a walk with her in a forest to her safe place for an intimate poetry salon with the denizens of nature. A Daughter of Light, she leads you back to the city refreshed and remade.

~~~~

Cassie Premo Steele is a lesbian ecofeminist poet and novelist and the author of 18 books. She will be reading from Swimming in Gilead, her seventh book of poetry, at Simple Gifts on November 7, and the launch party for her third novel, Beaver Girl, will be at All Good Books on November 16. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the Archibald Rutledge Prize named after the first Poet Laureate of South Carolina, where she lives with her wife. She is currently running a Kickstarter project to fund the Beaver Girl Book Tour:

Poems from Swimming in Gilead, Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023

~~~~~

Let Us Begin Again

Be very quiet. Make it dawn.

Rise from bed. Walk on the lawn.

Wait for it. The sun is coming.

It’s a new one. It’s beginning.

You don’t believe me, you say

this happens every day, there’s

nothing new under the sun and

certainly not the sun itself.

Put your doubts on a shelf,

I say to you. Hush now.

Listen to the birds singing.

Watch the blue ones feeding

their babies. See the heron

heading south for fishing.

Look at the egrets catching

pink light in their white wings.

Faith is made of things like

these, everyday movements,

sights and sounds that you

usually ignore, and today,

since you’ve told me you’re

tired of life and wanting something

more, I’ve shown you how to do it,

and now that you know,

come, let us begin again.

The Woman Speaks of Bicycles 

I’ve known bicycles:

I’ve known bicycles new as my skin and older than my dried blood

from my womb.

I’ve known bicycles:

Reliable rubber and metal bicycles.

My body has grown strong like bicycles.

I rode along the Minnesota roads when constant motion was my freedom.

I got off my bike and walked the sugar bluffs, puffing with each step.

I looked upon the Mississippi and had a vision of finally flowing away.

I heard the wheels of my bike whizzing downhill at the end of the day.

I’ve known bicycles:

Reliable rubber and metal bicycles.

My body has grown strong like bicycles.

I rode in Carolina when children waited for me back home.

I got off my bike and walked the hilly edge of Covenant Road.

I looked upon the Congaree River and knew I would always stay.

I heard the music of my own voice saying I could live a different way.

My body has grown strong like bicycles.

This Is How We 

I once knew a Native woman,

Eastern Cherokee, who taught me

that in order to fix a rip in a basket,

you can’t just go in after it.

You have to unwind the fibers until

it’s pinestraw and sweetgrass again.

This is how we begin again.

I once injured my left knee

and the physical therapist,

a Latina from Texas, showed

me how a lack of stability

in my right hip had caused it.

The body crosses like this,

she said. It’s all connected.

This is how we heal again.

I once lay on my bed for hours

on end, as a child in Minnesota,

reading book after book while

my body disappeared, and so

did the pain and fear, until

I was just a mind in a story.

It took me years to invite

my body back into the party.

This is how we move again.

I once stayed in endless motion

of serving and cleaning, cooking

and feeding, wiping and washing,

drying and folding, until my mind,

always so strong, broke hard

and long, and for the first time,

I told the truth in therapy.

This is how we feel again.

I once heard a song that felt

like it was singing all that had

gone wrong, and I thought

it had been written just for

me, and then a pandemic broke

the globe and I realized everybody

knows the melody of tragedy.

This is how we begin to be together for the first time really.

Sun Loving 

Just before the day ends, I look up

and the sun is in drag, orange lipstick

and purple fingernails, red hair,

peach high heels, and I say, Hey, girl,

Where you headed? And she says,

Off to bed. Alone? I ask. You know

better than that, she laughs, and

as she sashays away, I see the moon

and stars take her by the hand

and lead her downstairs to a ballroom

for a final dance before kisses and

all the love she has ever deserved.

Under a Full Moon 

What must be done is a gathering

of women under a full moon,

each one holding in her hands

a leaf or bud or flower, blade

of grass, and together we say

the names of these plants,

and the list transforms into

a poem, a prayer, a spell, an

incantation, a chant and belief

in peace, peace, peace, peace.

And when our throats go sore

and voices tire, we take our

empty hands and make a chain

to keep the violence from crashing

into bodies any longer, and

dream that war will cease.

Seeds 

I spent years diving and digging

and bringing coral and diamonds

up into the light with my palms,

but the sun had dimmed so much

that my gifts were invisible, and I

mourned the bodies and voices

of women and girls I’d wanted

to crown with orange and bright

jewels who had all gone down

underground in a collective action

of mutual survival, and so I let

what I wanted to give away

drop to the ground and walked

so long up a mountain that I could

look back and see the seeds had

buried themselves back into the

earth to be trees. Tall were their

trunks and the leaves sang green

songs to bring the girls and woman

back to me and back into the castles

and courts we ruled over again in

this land where we’d always belonged.

Tuesday Afternoon 

I walk with my fingers on the page and

I dance with my hips on the stage I have

made in my room where bluebirds take

turns with me playing the parts of star

and audience and I hear the silence filled

with breath and electric hum and a neighbor’s

rake and I touch my dog’s fur and think

about origins and species and know that

nothing the mind does brings as much joy

as an animal can and I laugh while

remembering my grandson’s voice after he

knocked my chin with a stick in the garden

and asked me, Are you okay, Gaga?

and I wonder what would have happened

if God had been more like this boy in Eden

and instead of rules and banishment, we’d

been met in our mistakes and our pain

with a question and compassion.

Poetry of the People with Amy Drennan

This week's Poet of the People is Amy Drennan. To meet Amy is to walk into bright sunshine. She is Charleston's house mother of lost poets. She is a gifted writer and poet who feeds and houses poets who need a safe place to land and sacrifices her opportunity to shine to promote others. She is a gift and a treasure and my friend.

Amy Drennan was born and raised in Los Angeles CA. As a reluctant military spouse, she’s lived all over the states, and now calls Charleston SC, her permanent home. She is an advertising executive, an above-average wife, and mom to several exceptional humans, a scraggly dog, and anyone who finds themselves in need of some love. She enjoys writing, as her Irish heritage has rendered her impervious to traditional forms of therapy.

If You’d Tried 

It’s ok.

I’m a bit much.

Not everyone likes a woman

with a gap in her teeth

who cries

a lot.

Some can’t handle a bunch of words,

being fed all the time.

Some prefer hungry.

I’d just tell you

you’re beautiful every day.

You wouldn’t want to hear it,

couldn’t bear it,

already know and don’t need it.

Maybe you don’t have needs.

You may not like your name

when I say it.

I’ve whispered your name

into a few mouths.

Some don’t care for whispering.

Some don’t like their mouths.

There’s peach fuzz

at the base of my back.

It’s ok to dislike peaches

and my back.

The way I’d curl it into you.

The way I’d arch it in your honor.

Some prefer the front,

like to see what they’re dealing with.

I’d love you so softly,

so loudly,

you’d be sick of it by now.

Maybe heat isn’t your thing.

You’ve been burned,

had your fingertips singed off.

You don’t touch anything warm now,

you promised.

I have freckles on my freckles.

Maybe you don’t like freckles.

Maybe you’d learn to love them.

I’d have shaved my legs for you,

if you’d told me you were coming.

Do you like women in bathtubs?

What if they stay there

till sunrise,

writing and not sleeping,

writing about not sleeping?

Would you like to not sleep with me?

You wrote your number for me

on a notepad, a matchbook,

the back of my hand.

I didn’t keep it, it kept me.

I’m calling you from up North,

down South,

out East.

Somewhere you’ve never been,

have always wanted to go.

You might think I’m a firefly, a star,

Christmas lights in June.

From this distance there’s no telling.

We could be night sky.

Two blinks to navigate by.

Point A and point me.

The shortest distance between us,

a wish.

We could’ve found each other

if you’d tried.

 Kissing a man without lips

Last night I dreamt a tiny tooth

broken on your boyhood gums

sunk into the flesh

of my cellulite thigh,

my stretch marked hip,

my salt lick neck,

my all I have is yours,

if you’d like it.

The first time you planted in me

up came everything hardy,

hungry,

difficult to kill.

It’s peach season in the south.

You can travel there

without leaving the West.

You can wipe sticky sweet

from your chin,

eat till your belly hurts,

till Summer is an abomination.

I am a fire you set.

A sun plucked from its sky,

made brighter for shining

in dark places.

My memory is thick and unforgiving,

but yesterday you is forgotten.

I can’t recall you before you now.

Punch drink me,

and you a punch pourer.

A lover of your own reflection.

I make an awfully good mirror.

 What I will tell your daughter

who is old enough to ask

Your dad was maddening

and he was loved

He held his ear

to a glass

held the glass

to my chest

he listened

he listened harder than anyone

He heard pins drop

secrets spill

belly aches and butterflies

He heard pieces break

the push-pull

of stitching back together

He washed my hair once

I didn’t ask

but he heard me

always listening

He had the softest spots

the brokenest bits

he thought himself ugly

but he cried like music

when he cried

he was the bluest

most beautiful boy

 Not sorry

You are sorry not sorry

‘bout the fire you’ve become.

By the time you read this,

I’ll have flown the coop.

By the time you see this,

I’ll be blue eye disappeared.

I loved more

than either wing,

gave up flight for you,

stopped singing.

Each leaf I know

has turned color

and dropped.

Every leave I know

has left.

I’ve gone gone before.

Old news,

fresh ink,

ablaze in the end.

I wove you a bed

you’d never need,

stepped lightly over,

apologized never.

Don’t deliver the news of our deaths

Repeat after me.

We are ok.

It’s all ok.

We can breathe

don’t need to breathe

to be here. 

We don’t die,

we make room.

We are enough light

to fill a teacup,

a sky,

a memory full of here

and gone again.

Bushels of babies are born

while grievers grieve.

If we hold our ears

to them,

lay hands,

we can hear the whole ocean,

feel what made way.

We wish us

Hallelujah

each time we walk

through a door.

We wish us

a soft touch

a gentle goodbye

when it’s time.

Poetry of the People with Ron Digga Baxter

This week's Poet of the People is Ron (Digga) Baxter.  When Digga hits the mic it's all about lyric and flow  - word combinations jar and caress in alternating rhythms.  When it's over you ask for more.

Ron "Digga" Baxter is a native of New York, currently residing in Columbia, South Carolina. He graduated from South Carolina State University with a bachelor's degree in Professional English. Ron is no stranger to the Spoken Word community. He was Vice President of a Columbia based poetry club named Parallel World and a member of the Black On Black Rhyme poetry club. Ron is a student of the human condition, welding the written craft to enrapture the mind much like an artist wields a brush.

NERD POEM

The last of a dying breed

Evolution of a race that fought to be freed

I’m the dark elf ripped from the empire forest

Possessed by the chorus of a nymph

My story carved upon Egyptian hieroglyph

Drowned in the mystery of Atlantis history

And the fictional characters of Disney

Read only by Arielle & Triton

Resurrected by the Kraken

Reborn like the fallen phoenix

I’m a dark elf!

See, that’s knowledge of self

And this - this not a fucking fairy tale!

No board pieces but there are dungeons with dragons

I’ve seen the leprechauns potato famine & locked in jail

Robbed of their gold; stories still untold

The Cyclops clan prepared for death

Chased by ogres ‘til there was none left

Even watched giants gasp for breath

No bravery from a slingshot & rock

Just the Brothers grim with an automatic glock

Nobody lives happily ever after!

Life is a disaster filled with laughter

Mocked constantly by a crying jester

Cause he knows… there is no god!

Aslan is a has been

Ever since Caspian’s people spread across the land

My father was a dwarf obsessed with snow white

My sister sniped down by cupid’s arrow

Finally my epiphany when the industry

Began to manipulate my people’s chemistry

Turning Elves into Orcs

Willingly worshiping white wizards!

Forced my tribe to live in a hole.

My wife violently raped by a troll.

Her children bred into gnomes.

Forced to stab them in the chest w/ the horn of a unicorn.

After they were born

Watched as the druids got crucified,

Their halfling savior thrice denied.

Listened to the trees cry out in disdain.

The forest was the first to feel her pain.

Paved over by concrete & cement.

Turned our cheek as the world went Hell bent.

Watched the Smurfs become addicted to mushrooms.

Gandalf and Harry potter committed sacrilege.

While Ogres ban the fairies from marriage

Trembling gremlin eating after midnight.

Mischievous morphing members of the night 

And only I had the courage to fight

See, my mentor a centaur,

Primed for war like a Vietnam tour.

Taught me to pick up the broad sword,

Swing with all my might

Storm the dark castle

And defeat the Grand Wizard in battle

I am a dark elf!

LIVE-EVIL 

My soul is black…

Black as tar pit drowning a T-Rex

Witch’s hex, bird feather, dragon’s tooth

The TRUTH! You can’t handle the truth.

Jack Nicholson sipping gin in Eastwick

I give witches my ass to kiss

Playing Tavis’s cd backwards

I’m blasphemous.

Born of a jackal I cackle like a hag

Bay at the moon, gloom & doom

Your precious soul stuffed in a bag

Or maybe it’s just figment of your imagination

Dance in a circle speak in tongues like a Haitian

Yah meyjan pieces may bunga la dabbed

Scream when your voodoo doll gets stabbed

I’m Al Pacino playing Devil’s Advocate

Smacking Keanu around like Morpheus

But you… call me Morbius if you like!

Ask Yahweh he doesn’t really want to fight

He just wants to hang around… (sign of cross)

Saying daddy’s crossed at me

No wonder I set ablaze to the town

Singe my wings with needful things

Poured blood into the sea blending of chi…

Yang & Ying ending bending reality but actually

Free flowing, like the validity of the holy trinity

Ain’t shit to me- sin to be makes sense to me

                And I LOVE poets!

I’m the anxiety that makes it harder to breathe,

Tortured souls trapped in cages life on stages

Magic like mages wand waving words like wisdom…

Wise & dumb

Take a bite of my knowledge apple!

21st century I’ll blend it up call it Snapple

Crackle pop like dark elves feeding children a bowl

Serial killers is what I behold… toss a body n a hole

Let’s get really dirty… set off an atom bomb

WMD’s just ask Saddam; read the Quran

Temp you to smack a bitch, skinny-dip in my fire pit

Stare into the black abyss, dismiss your simple bliss

I’ll send you a telegram of a pentagram. GODDAMN!

You still want to know who I am.

I’m the Kennedy assassin, babysitter to Michael Jackson, shadowy clouds everlasting!

Acid rain, father of Cain. Trenchcoat mafia; call me insane.

And you still want to know my name?

To make my words clearer take a look in the mirror.

APOCOLYPSE

The worlds got to be coming to an end

Revelation told thru Nostradamus pen

Words bend the wind like they never did back then

Timeless tornados trample thru trees tearing & twistin the timber

This is the foretold December we’ll always remember

And why December, Just seems fit that the last days come in da winter

Natures picked up on what the humans don’t know

Ever wonder why the flowers don’t grow

Why bears bear the pretend death state when they hibernate

Why birds cross the border when they migrate

Enter the center of Hell’s gate.

Where the poisons are all in what we ate

Salmonella is known to kill ya

See, the birds knew about the bird flu

Ask me how; info came from the mad cow

And vegetarians ain’t got it so great

Eating tofu trying to escape

 Just take a look at what’s on your plate

Even the fruits are injected with a steroid

Everyone looking like I’m the one paranoid

And me! I’m just a mouthpiece but I’m here to tell ‘um

A cell phone can give you cancer of the cerebellum

And power lines can give you a tumor

Check the statistics this is more than rumor

And I feel like I’m ranting but that’s ok

Sometimes you need more than two minutes to say what you got to say.

And is it much of surprise, millions in Africa dying of aids

But Magic Johnson is on vacation in the everglades

Say the world’s going to hell in a hand basket

Makes sense all my role models are in a casket

Malcolm, Martin, and Marcus Garvey

Taught me to be proud of who I be

Biggie, 2Pac, and Bob Marley

Taught me to speak out lyrically

Hell you might laugh when I say there’s no hope

But you tell me how else can an ex-nazi become the pope

And heaven knows there can be only one conclusion

Prepare for revolution of evolution

As nature gets rid of the pollution of humankind’s institution.

The Preacher’s Poem

She says she wants passion

Heated eyes filled with lust and desire

I’m not interested in containing this fire

Usher in the inferno and let it burn

Pure pyromaniac perplexed by perfection

Like a prideful pharaoh

My goal is to sculpt precision

That mirrors a vision of infinity

Yes… I can give you passion

But I want to fulfill your spirituality

Because even in the dark I can see

My third eye never needed glasses

Always had 20/20 insight

Because I knew what I was looking for 20 years ago

My genesis includes restlessness of exodus

And I’ve been left searching

Seeking spirituality like whispered secrets of the universe

Let me read you a verse from Solomon

Where a solo man finds a true lover

Uncover the linear language of love

Complex yet simple like algebra and arithmetic

Because you plus me equal destiny

And I’ve never been good at math

Just be my divine denominator

Because I don’t think this eternal equation

Ends in X to the second power

It’s no secret I’ve been hurt

Hunted by deities and demons

Too many fairytale sleeping princesses

And clipped winged angels who ain’t

To pretend I’m a godly saint

Cause woman is holier than man

And I’ve worshipped your every hole

So anoint me with your kiss

Take the risk… hand in hand

Lead me to the promise land

And let me love you like you deserve to be loved

Poetry of the People with Bentz Kirby

This week's Poet of the People is local arts activist and icon, Bentz Kirby. His poetry utilizes self-examination with a dose of grace and humility and we are better for it.  Unafraid to grow, he will soon add MFA to his long list of accomplishments.

Bio: Bentz Kirby lives in the Rosewood area of Columbia, South Carolina. Educated first as a social worker and later a lawyer, he has been writing poetry since around 1969.  A survivor of a Sudden Cardiac Arrest, he is a big fan of Automated External Defibrillators. Other than enjoying life with his wife, May, their children and a brood of pets, he writes and performs music with his friends.

Failures

Failures from the past should
hold no sway in the
arena where missteps accrue.
Imagining us seated on a pew
with worshipers at Mass
or in a strict teacher’s class.
Chalise contains toxic brew,
without a promised breakthrough.
Behavior clings, bound fast
to patterns and fate cast by trauma.
Days of queued rolling rocks.
Absurd hero, false faces,
ingrained strife, prevents
pursuit of life.
These failures slice like the dull knife, or
live birth without midwife.

Infrastructure

Trauma creates defensive strategies to
Escape pain, unwelcome memories.
Strategies create mechanisms to layer
Protection on the frightened child
By forgetting unwelcome memories.
Eventually, coping mechanisms construct
An infrastructure to protect this child,
And for a while,
It works.

Eventually the child matures, but not
Beyond the fear.
This infrastructure becomes a jail,
Protection becomes an impediment
To the adult.

Yesterday resides within internal infrastructure,
Prohibiting today’s garden from growing
Unless the child can dismantle coping devices
Creating space for all desires — to blossom.

Ritual for Submission

I submit the following,
this mechanical world consumes all to
ensure your capitulation.
 
Stop, pause, listen to the magic,
whether you believe or not. Give thanks — grass, flower,
bee, hummingbird observe your response.
 
Faeries dance among stones on hillsides while you
believe in Santa Claus, but disbelieve in faeries.
Mushrooms, birds, dogs, and cats who
 
speak in the forgotten language.
Pretending you are not blind and
accommodating the unholy
 
calling you to obscure this one true language
we should hear. Religion assimilates imprinted rituals,
leaving you forever forgetting all you know.
 
until we no longer listen to the trees and
mushrooms who speak the one true language.

Theia
 
Sounds welled above labyrinth, breaking glass
Startled us, awaiting in the womb
Secured by fairies, like us, once chained,
By stunted hollow disbelief, a construct
Of Gaia, Uranus, twelve Titians and magic --
Dawn, sun, moon, gold, shining glass reveal Theia.
 
Blue-sky, wide-shining, fails to dim Theia,
She who reigns over silver, gems and glass.
Giving sight to those who seek her magic.
Eos, Helios, Selene from her womb
Reveal Titans blueprints for their construct
Obscured by disbelief and those in chains,
 
Blinded from birth and accepting our chains
Denying the glowing face of Theia.
Men attempt to create their doomed construct,
Science built to shatter myths into glass.
Umbilical torn, scattered from the womb
Blasphemers scoffing, denying real magic.
 
We obscure life, magicians lack alchemical magic,
Crafting spells while the abyss creates our chains.
Expunging knowledge existing before the womb.
We forget the Titans and gifts born by Theia,
Appropriating mirror images, breaking glass
Allowing illusions to replace the construct.
 
Illusion births illusion, we create false constructs,
Deluded generations deny unerring magic
Creating sight through a murky glass.
Leaden mental deception, conceals our chains
Restraining our eyes from perceiving Theia’s
Previous prophecies embedded within her womb.
 
Dawn, Sun, moon, children sprung forth from womb,
Light beams reveal destiny and unavoidable constructs.
Radiant intrinsic value issues forth from Theia.
Mortal men observe such light as magic

Believing removes obstructions, we are unchained,
Heroes see face to face beyond dark glass.
 
From this womb proceeds what we call magic,
From beyond this construct we are in fact unchained,
From Goddess Theia all light illuminates through glass.

Poetry of the People: Miho Kinnas

This week's Poet of the People is my friend, the poet, Miho Kinnas. Miho's poetry makes distant lands feel familiar… just around the corner, up the street and within reach.

Wildflowers

                        Northern Ireland

From the stone pier
young men jump
feet first
into the Irish Sea
white skin turning pink.
They weren’t around when 
the crescent moon rose in red.

Mackerels jump 
beyond the outer jetty.
The clouds
wispy and broken.
Wind directions shift.
Scales reflect the weak sun.
An old weather saying:
They make tall ships carry low sails.

Bouquets of wildflowers 
protect boundaries 
from evil fairies.
Bright yellow ones are marsh marigold.
Pale ones primrose.
However, says ancient folklore:
the night scent of buttercup
may cause madness.

Two girls on the pavement
along the shuttered shops
learn to roller-skate
and not to hate
but to ask, why.

---

Helsinki

The engine hummed all night
like a 3-D printer 
building the city.

In the darkest hour
of the white night
the ship jerked once.

Men in blue and yellow 
uniforms hooked 
the anchoring ropes.

On the pier a few workers 
dragged the covered cargo
on wheels slowly across.

The container trucks 
that had gone first 
in Stockholm filed out.

The ferry continues
the Baltic voyage 
the thick fog is lifting.

Seagulls reappear 
in the leftover sunrise
suddenly.

The maritime fortress
built in the eighteenth-century
Suomenlinna 

punctuates the history 
obscures the earlier times
and reminds of the present war.

Nearing the harbor
more gulls circle.
I approach Helsinki from the sea.

---

The Pitch

Five mornings in a row, my mother tells me about her dreams.
She keeps dreaming about her childhood in Manchuria.

Like the silhouette on the revolving lantern.
Kaleidoscopic.
The sun was stunning dipping into the horizon!
How thick the ice was on the lake in the forest!
Did I tell you about the stolen skates we found 
at the thieves’ market in the morning?

In one of the last dreams I heard
she was a thirteen-year-old entrepreneur.
She and her friends sold cigarettes to passersby
near the Harbin bridge.

Our sales pitch was in Chinese and Russian!
Choyan ma? Su-kirt?
Choyan ma? Su-kirt?

I may die soon.
If you leave now I won’t see you again. 

I didn’t believe her. 
I still hear her voice repeating the pitch
with a chuckle in between.

---

Yokohama

I am drawing a map  
to my parents’ house on the hill.
The scale is confused.
There are many inaccuracies.

A little corner fruit shop is now a pet store.
Time may be psychological.
My boyfriend was always late. 

Older taxi drivers know the tomb-stone cutter.
Young ones know it like a ghost story.
The road zips through the fire station.

The big chestnut tree
no longer there where all summer
cicadas spent their one week on earth.

They were so loud —we often gave up talking, listened 
to them rolling our eyes to each other and broke into a big laughter. 
That shut them up!  

One day coming home from school a concrete pole blocked 
our view of the hill. My mother complained to the electric company.
It is still there.

A boy threw a pebble at my window. I was on the phone 
with another boy. I draw a little heart.
All three hearts were broken.

My mother served bowls of ramen noodle for my friends
complete with pork, eggs, sesame seeds, scallions
seaweed and spinach.

My mother began taking rests
on the way up the hill
the way my father did in his late years. 

The day I saw my mother for the last time 
she staggered out of the house without a cane.
I am fine, I am fine, don’t worry, I ‘m fine. I draw a stick figure.

With her open sky smile she held onto the edge of the fence with her right 
hand, her left hand sparkled a little. I draw her waving hand.

She watched my brother drive me away.

---

The Difficulties of Open Water Swimming　

It was more turbulent 
than it appeared. But that 
was not the only difficulty.

Pelicans glide by
one after another
sometimes low.

She blends in, assimilates 
appears as an image
in someone else’s success.

Moon straight up.
Eastern horizon deep.
Red of a rose garden.
She discarded garlands.

Change of heart.
Nothing stays still.
The sky abandons every color.

Someone stepped
into the ocean as
she made up her mind.

It’s in the genes, we say 
as if she is a bag of tricks.
Did she think he was
a trick of light?

---

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Miho Kinnas is a poet, writer, and translator. Her poems, translations, essays and book reviews appeared in various journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry 2023. She leads creative writing workshops at various locations including writers.com, New York Writers Workshop, and local schools. Her third book of poetry Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias will be published by Free Verse Press this year. 

Poetry of the People: Elizabeth Robin

This week's Poet of the People is Elizabeth Robin. She speaks the past into the future with descriptive poems that engage the reader's memory and senses: there is a kindness that engages and you ask for more.

STEPHANIE ELLEN SILER MEMORIAL PRIZE

Omens

           The Alarm
The earth shakes me awake.
The fifth tremor in five days.

            Foul Warning
rain hastens the de-camp
and a knee-knock in the rush
replacement time

              lunch
coconut should feel exotic
aromatic and tropical, the grit-grain
slivers chew like shredded wood

              the commute
i follow the chicken truck
miles down I-26, baffled
jammed ten-high, box-huddled
feathers fly, shit sprinkles
behind the ride to slaughter
windshields grow snow-spots

              house call
cookie cutter cottages clutter
acres cleared for golfing clusters
club joiners locked into homogenized cells
white milk

               bland custard
down time
noodling a poem in the rain
a roofer’s nail-gun ruins the rhythm

               Tequila!
lick salt from the rim
slurp salsa from the chip
slam that shot

down

half moon dents riddle the bar

---

The Wedding Tree

after “Heaven and Earth” by Patricia Sabree

melding heaven and earth under
a Grandmother Tree, a family expands

in Sunday bests, not broom-jumping
but a rite recast with tree as witness, backlit

by spirits She captures in hanging blue
bottles among the moss: ghosts fire the sky
gold-orange to shock-pink, their dance
slow, save one livened ring-shouter, arms
raised in splayed finger joy, hands outstretched

wide hats shade the facelessness of their story
What do they mask? asks Mr. Dunbar. What
magnet draws them together, knotted
in a seedling branch, to a faceless love?

---

A Lesson in Sea Glass

tumbled in sea, salt, sand
random rubbish recycles

smoothed and pitted bits
transform noxema jars and skye
vodka, beer bottles, dead crystal
and french wines into shore search
and discovery, gleaning the beach
for the ocean’s spilled-out trophies

blue: slightly unique
well-worn, hard to find
and easy to treasure

everyday whites and greens and browns:
a rare vestige of print or rim or logo

proof some things, spent
old and odd-shaped
attract the discerning collector

---

The Nose Knows

On July 15, 2022 KRCC reports: Colorado Springs Man Becomes
Fourth Person to Push a Peanut up Pikes Peak with his Nose

if my quest seems silly, why, then, all the tourista
photo-ops? why the headlines: NPR, NBC

Colorado public radio, even? i did it, set a record
seven days up Barr Trail—thirteen miles, mind you—

don’t call me crazy. i planned it out, went through two
dozen peanuts and fought dehydration: life on the edge

how rugged pioneers and champions power-push
peanuts by the nose uphill, to fourteen-thousand one-

hundred fifteen feet: HA! ask me if i’m insane, or bored
or a cheater, pushing not really with my nose, but

a plastic spatula duct-taped to my face, used a CPAP
mask to affix—i am American ingenuity at work—no nut

here, just a man, Bob Salem, proving why i was born
not to solve a pandemic. or close ozone holes. not

to worry over fires floods famine
S U P E R B U G S

nitpick away, pass judgment, “the poster boy for human absurdity”
frivolous goals, you say? but i’m a headline now: who are you?

---

Elizabeth Robin, an award-winning poet, has three books: To My Dreamcatcher (2022), Where Green Meets Blue (2018),  Silk Purses and Lemonade (2017). In 2023 Robin established the 24-stop Hilton Head Poetry Trail and appeared at Piccolo Spoleto as a Sundown Poet. See her website.

Join Us Under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at Rosewood Art & Music Festival – October 7th

You’re invited to join the Jasper Project and some of your favorite local writers of poetry and prose under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at the 2023 Rosewood Art & Music Festival on Saturday, October 7th from noon – 5 pm.*

You’ll get to hear some of your favorite Columbia-based writers read from a selection of their works, purchase their books, and then meet the authors and have your books signed.

*Authors will read during the first half of each hour and then sign and greet friends during the second half of each hour.

901 S Holly St, Columbia, SC 29205

 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Noon – 1 pm

Carla Damron

Jane Zenger

Sandra Johnson

 

1 – 2 pm

Evelyn Berry

Debbie Daniel

Susan Craig

 

2 - 3 pm

Terri McCord

Ann Chadwell Humphries

Robert (Bo) Petersen

 

3 – 4 pm

Jo Angela Edwins

Randy Spencer

Kristine Hartvigsen

4 – 5 pm

Al Black

Ed Madden

Cassie Premo Steele

For more information about the performing and visual artists you’ll see at the Rosewood Art & Music Festival, check out the festival website!

Poetry of the People: Jo Angela Edwins

My seventh Poet of the People is Jo Angela Edwins. What impresses me the most about Jo Angela is her humor and ability to find the divine in unexpected places. 

Jo Angela Edwins is the poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina and a professor of English at Francis Marion University. Her collection A Dangerous Heaven appears in 2023 from Gnashing Teeth Publishing.

Parts of Speech

Verbs do the heavy lifting:
shoot, explode, weep, scream.

Adverbs tell us, mostly, how:
often, swiftly, wildly.

Adjectives describe:
fearful, mad, thunderous.

Conjunctions link:
armed and dangerous, dead or alive.

Articles define:
an ally, the enemy.

Prepositions direct:
over the wall, through the tunnel, across the killing field.

Interjections exclaim:
Stop! No! Help!

Nouns remind us
that earth is filled with places
where people turn persons
into things.

When Louis Armstrong Landed on the Moon

Quiz question: Who was the first person to set foot on the moon?
Student answer: Louis Armstrong
Picture his space helmet
specially equipped
to accommodate the trumpet.
He must have resembled
a Seussian cartoon:
that polished horn
sticking stiffly through the visor,
the aperture gasketed
tightly with polymers,
a protection against oxygen leaks,
for this man with elastic cheeks
needed all the air he could get
on that airless orb
to shatter silence across
the Sea of Tranquility.
His jaunty rendition
of “When the Saints Go Marching In”
bopped its best that day,
and those saints in their heaven
that hovered like a low ceiling
over his bobbing head
realized slowly
that their feet had gone to tapping
against narrow golden streets.
As he leapt from rock to rock
across that milky desert,
surely his heart skipped beats
in time to music. Back home,
Mission Control heard his gritty vibrato
crooning a capella
through the fuzz of the two-way
as he gazed backwards at the foggy earth:
I think to myself—
what a wonderful world.

(Originally published in Porcupine Literary, issue 2, Summer 2020)

The Lilies You Sent

were lovely for so many days,
and I cannot bring myself to throw them out.
They still offer sheen and a shadow of flair,
but the petals fall in a whoosh. Gravity
is brother to death, and all the green is blackening,
and the water that once held them firm goes brown,
and even a carpel comes tumbling down
here and there. I collect what falls,
dutiful steward to withered angel wings,
and my fingers stain with the glitter of each anther,
the pollen that would propagate what lived
had it not died for the sake of spreading kindness,
a better reason than most, I suppose, to die,
and for this killing that brightened my life, I thank you.

You're Invited to the 1st Launch Party & Reading of Ed Madden's new book of poetry -- Story of a City: poems occasional and otherwise - Saturday September 23rd, 6 pm, 1013 Duke Avenue

Please join Muddy Ford Press and friends and family of former Columbia city poet laureate Ed Madden for a launch party for his new book of poetry, Story of a City: poems occasional and otherwise, published by Muddy Ford Press.

Saturday, September 23rd

6 pm

1013 Duke Avenue

In addition to hearing Ed read from his new collection of poems written in his role as city poet laureate, Ed has invited some special guests to read as well.

And there will be cake!

Books are $20 and will be available for purchase at the event or, prior to the event at Amazon, Barnes & Noble dot com, Booktopia, and more.

Cover Artist is Steven Chesley.

1013 Duke Avenue is located up North Main Street by turning left on Arlington. Parking is available in the designated lot across the street.

Ed Madden is the author of five books and four chapbooks of poetry, most recently A pooka in Arkansas, which was selected for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection, and Ark, a book about his father’s last months in hospice care. He is a professor of English and the former director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches Irish literature, queer studies, and creative writing. Ed served as the poet laureate for the City of Columbia, SC, 2015-2022. He is recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and artist residencies at the Hambidge Center in Georgia and the Instituto Sacatar in Itaparica, Brazil.

Poetry of the People: Dale Bailes

My sixth Poet of the People is Dale Bailes. Dale is a long-time icon in the Columbia literary community and an encouraging mentor and friend to many. His poetry is expressive, and you feel his kindness throughout his work. Read his work and become his friend.

Bio: As a poet, Bailes helped design and participated in the Poets In The Schools
Program for the South Carolina Arts Commission. He edited seven anthologies of
student poetry for that program. His poems have appeared in journals and little magazines,
including SOUTH CAROLINA REVIEW, GREAT SPECKLED BIRD, and
CREATIVE CRAFTERS JOURNAL. The poems have been gathered in the
collection CHERRY STONES and in three chapbooks.

Recent publications include poems in Columbia lit mag FALL LINES and
Texas based AMERICAN WRITERS REVIEW.

Bailes holds an MFA in Professional Writing from the University of Southern
California, He has taught college writing and creative writing classes in such
diverse backdrops as state prisons, Navy aircraft carriers, community colleges,
and both USC east and USC west.

He continues his interest as an educator as a part-time Standardized Patient
at the University of South Carolina School of Nursing in Columbia.

____

VIGIL

First sunlight in tops

Of towering green trees.

How is there no music?

THE TRICK

Thinking of you in terms

of two-over-light was easier.

That way you shared

my morning rite and left me

to the idle pleasure

of my day. Now, having

seen you trundle from

a lonely man-filled bar

your shoulders slouched

against the weight of darkness

I know you more than I care 

to; know your crumpled

single bed and barren room

know why your ten-hour-day

is comfort to you.

Now instead of leaving me

to my own tight rare existence

you take me trembling with you

into your lonely night.

(from ST. ANDREWS REVIEW)

THE GENTLEMAN CALLER

No need to keep him waiting

fifteen anxious minutes; no stately

staircase has to frame her entrance.

Cordelia sits quite calmly at the table

saucered cup untouched and slowly colding

Her mind commands a sunny day, with horses

she smells the Spring and smiles

at mustached men. A storm can rage there

now, or suns go setting; white-haired

gallants still tip crisp hats and court her,

What matter if those days she lives

are twenty-five or fifty years divided?

This day alone will mean most to her heart

stout friend through all and keeper

of the great loves she has known.

Now he has come, the quietest caller

she has yet received. “Madame?” “oh yes.

I am quite ready. You are right on time.”

Cordelia, rising, bids a host of friends adieu.

Whispers gaily, “It was always you.”

(from MISSISSIPPI REVIEW)

THE JESTER

The Jester on your wall grins

at you. His hand has been, will be

poised to pluck the lute.

You pull yourself from sleep

or death, recall some sound

that scared you to the fading point

where sleep and death are one

and come or don’t come

as your left eye struggles open

and your right eye simply won’t .

He has waited while you slept

while you crept through

the other room of the dream

and out. He has grinned as

a black cat crossed the street

to avoid crossing your path,

as ladders crashed around you

that you wanted to walk under.

He will watch you tumble from

the bed, return from all that pain

awake, stumble to another room

to wet your trembling hands.

His hands will tense, prepare

to play the chord to match

the sound your pleading eyes

will make, as you watch the mirror

drop you and you shatter.

(from SANDLAPPER)

Poetry of the People Featuring Adam Houle

My fifth Poet of the People is Adam Houle. Adam's voice is nuanced and immediately relatable; he is refreshingly unpretentious in communicating what he sees.

Bio: Adam Houle is the author of Stray (Lithic Press), a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Shenandoah, The Shore, and elsewhere. He co-edits 12 Mile Review with Robert Kendrick and is an assistant professor at Francis Marion University.

Hearing About the Wreck

Now I’m off the phone and pacing while my wife,

seven states away, waits in the smashed car

to relay the incident’s specifics to a bored cop

at the intersection of two wide and busy roads.

It’s a sunbaked Texas town where, I imagine,

the woman who t-boned her sizes up

the grill guard with her pea-patch husband,

both of whom are already scum of the earth,

idiot scum of the earth. Inattentive texting

while driving scum of the earth, who were posting

driving selfies or twitter polls seeking counsel

on which fast food value meal they should shovel

down their maws, chewing with their mouths open

in the living room of what I’m sure is the saddest

half a duplex in all the republic of Texas

while SVU airs and they rubberneck a gruesome case.

In another world, my wife is dead, her body

wrecked in the wreck, and that world chaffs too close

and though she’s fine, alive, shaken but fine fine fine

I’m crying and say aloud, I’d kill them both,

and in that moment, when just moments before

I debated alone paint shades for our kitchen

and asked the dogs what would be the ecological fallout

if a barred owl fell in love with a red-tailed hawk,

I’m pretty sure I mean it, which scares me

in the way it must scare the tv star

who tilts a conversion van off a crushed friend

or rushes back for an heirloom when the foundation beams

have already burst, flames rising from the floor

like geysers, the expected feats of fear and rage,

who realizes there’s another self

that sleeps and, when it wakes, is more terrifying

and courageous and, I see, more cruel, with a drill bit heart

that turns faster and with more bite the more it hurts.

Is he a necessary self? Sometimes, love is the right spring

babbling, bubbling over moss, feeding meadow reeds.

Sometimes, it’s an errant left turn and the sun burning

down the westbound lane fracturing light through a windshield’s

sheen of dead bugs. I sat there a long time,

I made a fist, I released a fist. I breathed.

A fist. I breathed. This fist. My heart’s modeled after it.

Open, it’s to hold or offer.

Closed, oh god of the plains, and I am your vicious club.

(First appeared in Baltimore Review, Winter 2019)

~~~

It’s an Empty-Headed Move I Love the Most

 I swear I’ll leave your ass in Tennessee

with the trumpet vines and BarcaLoungers

slumping under carports. Maybe at a BP

near the bottom of a hill, where a state road

curves that way and a sandy one cuts back.

Maybe there next week, I’ll leave your ass.

You can throw your hands up all you want,

cinematic like, dramatic, your rage so quick

to bloom you’ll smash your phone to bits

before you’ll call me. You can be happy

in the injustice of all that balance:

a thought forms and then rejects itself, lizards grow

by eating the gray skins they have outgrown.

The dog, Caesar said, is cat. The jelly jar is cracked

and that your one good glass. Alas, I guess,

is a thing you’d say. Cross a river. Then another

or the oxbow bend of the same. It doesn’t matter.

The world reaps what the world repeats.

It’s natural as nature to always feel afraid,

to keep playing, even when you’ve been outplayed.

(First appeared in Phoebe, 52.1)

In Service

Bless this moment before the hydraulic door

sighs open. Bless the tamped heel click

on the low knap carpet. Bless the medicine

cart its quiet wheels. Bless how it feels

to watch your face attenuate as the glass

levers inward. Bless its disappearance

and the hall that takes its place. Bless this:

mylar balloons taped to temporary name plates

along the corridor. Bless late comforts. Bless night

nurses ending another shift. Bless their laughter.  

(First appeared in Chattahoochee Review, Spring 2020)

Epitaph

the sky my mind

my heart an ocean

here’s an antidote

go find the poison

Poetry of the People featuring Michal Rubin

My fourth Poet of the People is Michal Rubin. What attracts me to Michal's poetry is the unadorned integrity, honesty, and humanity of her voice.

Michal Rubin moved from Israel to Columbia, SC 32 years ago.  A psychotherapist, a Cantor, and an emerging poet, her work was published in Psychotic Education,  The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Wrath Bearing Tree journal,  Rise Up Journal, Topical Poetry,  Fall-Lines,  The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Waxing & Waning: A Literary Journal, and South Carolina Bards Poetry Anthology 2023.

In a secret dark spectacle

after Ada limon

I saw the twirling gust of dust

moving into the distant

world of pain I remember

and I flew there to be

with kin I have not met

come! they said

and I sat in their midst

huddled underneath their wings

they fluttered, the wings,

and the chill of history penetrated

my sheltered space

I breathed it in 

the chill

and the chains weighty

on my wrists

as I was dragged by the power 

of the dead

into the land

~~~~~

In Gaza

tomorrow’s touch

through the settling dust

will remind you of

love

unhidden in the rubble

behind the corner

forbidden moment

fused with desert breeze

salted droplets we carried

home

or what was home

~~~~~

Exploits

I write with no address

or neighborhood

letters that belong to

the smoke of burnt homes

or piles of old shoes

I try to stitch words 

so they become 

an embroidery of unwanted

stories

we live them

the stories

we spit them as hulls  

discarded shells of seeds

we feasted

I, the betrayer of dogmas spread

stained uniforms strewn on the page

I, the jailed soldier

braid sins into the chain of letters

words bathe in shame

each bullet finds a target

smoke of burnt homes fills the nostrils 

I, the one who left,

weave what you call art

with the exploits

remnants of our crimes

RIVER POETS Poetry Reading Sunday Afternoon at Stormwater Studios

The public is invited to attend a poetry reading Sunday afternoon featuring Jasper Magazine Poetry Editor Ed Madden at Stormwater Studios, 413 Pendleton Street, behind One Eared Cow Glass.

Organized by Libby Bernardin and Susan Craig, the reading will also feature Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, Ann-Chadwell Humphries, Ruth Nicholson, and (in adsentia) Mary O’Keefe Brady, as well as Bernardin and Craig themselves.

Madden, who is the former poet laureate for the city of Columbia, will be reading from his newest collection, A Pooka in Arkansas.

The event begins at 4 pm and will conclude with a Talk-Back session with the poets.