NewPoetry

Matt Robinson

Post-storm sun, a soft windowed heat, toasts
………….the squint lost sleep of your brow. Dog now
sigh-purrlicued behind & against you, warm hint
………….in the near-permanent dell, the sunk weave,
of the chair’s cushion’s fur-fetid funk. Day’s junket
………….crescendoes & goes all-at-once, twice, askew.
A spin cycle’s engaged with a click; Fortnite’s
………….first-personing echoes anew, joy-sticked down
stairs. A far room’s desk’s thumped into being,
………….all moving chairs & spare parts. The dog starts
& then settles, a kettle near boil. Would it be fine
………….if you ended right here, right now? With sun’s
simple heat, this dog’s metered breath, family’s
………….indiscreet toiling through task & routine
on a bright, early day? Or do you want all
………….the more now to stay? Stay & curse the idea
of death, of being a guest, some minor foil, in
………….the whimsical acts of body’s dumb play; fear
the way you’ll at some point not know
………….the hows, whens or whos—future’s splay—
of what’s now, again now, again now, become
………….joyously clear, post-storm, in soft heat.

John MacKenzie
after Lament by the Riverside by Du Fu, 712 – 770 CE

An old man looking inward tugs
at the hem of his keffiyeh,
the tears of many years pooled
behind the stones of his eyes
as he steps out carefully
to walk alone in the Spring
beside a strange current flowing far
from his river, far from his sea.

Everything here is young and green,
all slender willows and slim reeds
but, broken and dusty along low
banks, what he sees is the old
stone of houses tumbling down
into ragged shell craters
behind all the green growing
here for no one he’s ever known.

He knew cool courtyards once
and walked among olive trees in
a breeze scented with the Faqqu’a iris.
He walked among smiling faces
in gardens where wedges of poppies
touched aisles of shade beside walls,
lines of white lilies standing tall,
and rows of green figs in the sun.

And he knew a woman there, her face
was the sun and moon of his life.
They walked together each day
in the gardens and the courtyards
examining threads of saffron,
sitting on benches by fountains whose
waters were perfumed with blossoms
of bergamot and the bitter orange.

They sat together by fountains
where the sound of falling water was
the murmur of laughter around them,
the laughter of happy people
in the evening; a sound built from
a scent of coffee and cardamom,
from pearls, coral, and lapis lazuli,
and the sheen of worked cedar.

He sees them look to the air
on that evening, as if to watch
an osprey’s gyre, or perhaps
a loom of starlings weave
tapestries across the sunset.
He sees them draw together
as their laughter fades under
the screaming, falling shells.

He knew a woman there who was
his only home. He knew a woman
whose eyes were bright in the night,
whose teeth shone with laughter.
Where is she now? Where are all
those who are murdered in genocides,
whose blood is baked into dust?
The dead have their homeless too.

The River Jordan still flows there
past craters and broken stones, past
the shattered foundations of schools
and hospitals, past graves of journalists
and women and children children children.
The waters of the Jordan still flow
down into the Dead Sea, but are enjoined
against carrying word of the fallen.

The stones of his eyes have shifted
and he weeps openly as he walks
here alone in another country.
He weeps because in memory
everything remains. He weeps
because he walks by a strange river
where all that is young and green
burns on the banks of his memory.

It’s evening now and he knows
that brown uniforms and greed move
beside the dust-choked fountains,
that the air is cruel with laughter.
He knows the bones of the dead crack
under the heels of murderers and thieves
whose voices echo in the night
beneath the broken roofs of home.

Rachael Carline

My body bounces
in all directions.
Kept in place by the
red seatbelt across my stomach.
Dad hums to the cassette tape
“That’s Life” fighting the engine noise.
We’re taking one last ride
to commemorate our time spent in her.

The white blue exterior
is mixed with rust, but Dad
says she’s fine.
Velvet red seats emit
the smell of hot July.
She can drive but Dad
is sending her away.
He stops the truck on the edge
of a tan bumpy road.
Feet crunch as he walks.
He lifts me and sets me beside him
we stare at the canola yellow
field in front of us.

He says its almost harvesting time.
I keep looking at the rust
wanting to touch.
He steps off the rocky road
into the sea of yellow
and returns with a wiggly
green snake.
A gardener snake he calls it.
One of my small hands
wrap around his finger.
The other runs along the snakes back.

Together we swim in the field
and release the wriggly rope.
“Was that a nice goodbye?” he asks.
My lip trembles
shove it between my teeth
nod my head once
and climb into the silver and blue
hot July for the last time.

Tannaz Taghizadeh

A goodbye over a glass of Ramato
at Terroni on Yonge St. on a rainy Tuesday night,

a brave farewell to a ten-year-old relationship
a friendship, full of memories
hit the wall
a wall of boredom

last sip of wine
a smile
a hug
and an uncertain hope for future memories,

goodbyes can be liberating.

Adam Seelig

Easi-
er to serve
breakfast than
break serve

at such
critical
moments when
nerves creep

in re-
gardless of
the strawber-
ries cream’s

got lactic
acid

Josephine LoRe

After the castle and steep stairs
where Afonso tipped the crown
from his queen mother’s head
to become first king of Portugal

After the plaque
now bubbled with rust
instructing bucket brigades
which region to attend

—the bell ringing
a set number of times
depending on the location
of the blaze
……..seven tolls for São Paio
fourteen for São Pedro
…….eight for Misericord

After the open arches
of the Romanesque church
and Nossa Senhora da Oliveira
I look down

……………………….and there
stamped in the ground
a scallop
…….a signpost

I find myself
…….on el caminho Português

I had gone expecting to find
seafood and wine
cobbled streets and tiled walls
but not this sanctity of place

Were I to continue this path
…….which winds from the D’Ouro
…………..to Santiago

Leaving the windswept coast
…………..and hugging rugged hills
would I at last find my peace?

Nevada-Jane Arlow

i recognized you first as the queen of love and magic
when you slept upon the dutch u-boat
flippers crossed, all pretty-like. befitting of a lady

sleep and rest, that rest the loud ocean never permitted you
even long after the jötnar perished, this evaded you
your wandering flipper went kingdom to kingdom
and the bourgeois ferryman’s vessels became your jest
freya, shall i wrap your russet body in your feathered cloak?

freya, i cry red gold for you
and i watched the molten pearls fall into the atlantic
down, down into the frigid depths
Fólkvangr awaits you, my beloved girl
i sing your songs while you go
may they cross yggdrasil to find the openings of your ears

freya,because i am weary in this world
i will not taste food again until i dine with you
instead i will push it through my left cheek,
to bypass my tongue and into my throat

the oslo council had a city meeting
“grass is only allowed to be this high
there’s a new bike lane
and we’re going to shoot the walrus”

Dave Hickey

On mornings immaculate with fog,
Marlene clicks the scissor door
open, which disappears

inwards, like exhausted caregivers
everywhere. My daughter
steeple jumps towards her, leaps

steps a third her height,
and swings into the very rst
seat, saved for the lightest of passengers.

The stop sign folds: a minor
mechanical wonder I
watch, still groggy and dazed

as the brakes release, and all
that electricity is set
in motion. A thousand kilometres

west of here, this same bus will burn:
vinyl smoke, unmistakable blue
bookending its length,

billows going up,
and soon nothing is left
but the blame. A hazmat suit

is sensible fashion
these days, and
anyone appearing hopeful

seems disastrously
underdressed.
Still I wave to my daughter,

knowing she is already
elsewhere, and that I’m waving
to my own reflection,

the parts of myself
the world returns and
those that are never not leaving.

Sara Krahn
after Blossom Dearie

As yet, your lamp-lit hands chord
into cool fourths. You sing,
and there is no turning back.
What is strange begins to ache

with the familiar. Around a corner
your eyes castle the sky and cut out
a prince’s beat-up jawline. Your voice
hovers at the easy edges of his hand-

some psychopath, a divine body
spring-loaded to shoot. As yet, a light
song on your lips as you pass by.
Here his mighty oak never drifts

far into your dreams, unlike the willow,
her sylphlike arms swept aside
for you as you sigh from a closer
distance. You’re told only the oak

must matter to you now, as if oak
was always the matter with you now,
his shadow fire between your legs
as you round another wrong turn. You walk

a little faster, as if you could walk
a little faster. Your gaze flickers backwards
into a glistening pillar of seasalt
air and the sea. Like Lot’s wife, you will be

remembered in the other direction,
even as a new vantage point upswells
in the ocean of your mind, saccharine
jazz, vibrato-less soul dissolving time.

Somebody catcalls your name
as if this was always your name.
You sing as a girl to your lover, as yet
somewhere a killer awakens.

Matthew Tierney

The bouquet’s sneaky as
a sunset, night-lit sparks
from the pink roses I gave
my wife last week; roses dying
an expected death, a few
half-closed like the beaks of
fledglings, others breathing
like a galaxy, if a galaxy
could be said to breathe.
Who sees change anymore?
Permeable, unsiftable
sensory cues, the way falling
degrades the dream;
dozens of trillions of
molecules form top notes
of decay, a space helmet
around my head. I inhale,
pure seconds froth into
the white-not-blue light
of substation afterlife. It’s
nobody’s fault this spiral
on sidereal axis, this drift
through a ring of asterisks.

Anne Pollard

The rain has given up and a few aching snowflakes
drift slowly from emptying clouds. Past the bare treetops,

past our grey shingled roofs, slowly hobbling, slightly
hunched, stiff-hipped and sore-kneed, they propel

themselves forward, shuffling, stumbling. Now is their time
to glisten, to tumble, to twirl headily towards the earth,

now before the sun leaves, before the summer arrives,
before the doctor goes home for the day. Today the needles

of the neighbour’s pines are brighter in the timid light,
today two quick children in last year’s t-shirts shoot hoops

on their crumbling drive, today the maintenance truck
trimming god-knows-what waits for me to pass.

Yesterday the dog died and I am without him.
The crossing guard in the yellow vest nodded but did not ask,

the large man on the small bicycle did not ask,
the woman in the white ball cap did not ask.

The buds on the red maples did not ask where he,
my companion of everywhere, was. He was thirty-six,

in human years, although I know no human at thirty-six
who serenades the world through closed doors,

pockets a ball in his mouth, sleeps between his mother
and father. Who levitates. I shouldn’t mind

the crossing guard with whom I have not yet spoken
or the dead cat I carried off the road onto the dusty curb

or the periwinkle with one purple flower
at the playground edge as none of them knew him

well. Black locust pods cover the young
grass beneath the swings and slides again today.

They have been trying since early fall and have not
made a single new tree. I used to take bigger steps.

We all live in the small and the large, my friend says.
I can feel the warmth of my dog’s black coat

as he lay dying. How soft. How deep.
……………………………………………………. How still.

T.L. Murphy

Gwen Aube
For Leonie

in the procession
i mutter what i hope
is a french-sounding sorrow

merci says everyone

hi dear, i’m so sorry, i love you
i say to you, i’m so sorry for your loss
i say to your mom

the slideshow of your dad
is the same as the photo album
of my stepdad. habs jersey
instead of leafs. a different lumpy
blue-beige couch.
your dad,

already balding in long-faded film,
holding a baby which i guess is you.

squinting on a kayak, digital trees
crunching into lake saint-louis behind him.

smiling at your mom’s retirement party,
features flat in the selfie camera.

your metalhead friend says
he seems like he was so healthy
and i nod. we agree he looks kind,
which is not an easy thing to look.

an old woman who smells like feces
sits next to me. we pray
and she knows every word.
we stand up and sit down
and when she does either
the stench is renewed.
i love her on your behalf
and also, i suppose,
on my own.

Christ is the only word
which reaches me,

the only other english words:
Time To Say Goodbye

i think the priest sounds like Terminator
when he says it.         i am ashamed
when my incomprehension begets irony.

it’s the name of a song, though,
and i remember it, must have been played
at someone’s funeral—Brian’s?
or Uncle Ed’s, maybe.

it is Mother’s Day.
after this i will have to call my Mom

i was thinking about leaving my girlfriend
and i admit that at your Dad’s funeral
i mostly thought about that.

but when they have you light a candle
i join the mourning chorus.

after, we eat food and you laugh a lot.
you are wearing your ‘trad wife dress’
the blue of morning glories.

i’ve never seen you in black—
we all feel relief we don’t have to.

there is laughter at the table now,
jokes in english for my benefit.
but i am distracted.

i can’t stop looking at everyone
who ever loved your father.

Gary Barwin

I push milk up the mountain of veins
the goat of my brain dressed in tin foil

my wife calls with dates available for my liver test
not the 29th, but yes the 30th, aug 3, 10, 11, 13

let’s coordinate with the eagle
also remember to book

the prostrate follow-up
is the heart like a fist

both clench around a stone
that was never a stone

last week a tree from our yard fell
onto the neighbours’ roof

smashed right through
ok, it’s settled: august 3

Imogene Mahalia

blues reds and browns intermingle
with wet scents spread by the wind.

There is music. It begins to rain:
I’m stood at a cliff’s edge watching

the deep blue waves below, swaying
back and forth, and back and forth.

I hear music. I fall off the cliff.
I’m dancing with a girl wearing

a deep blue dress. We’re swaying
back and forth, and back and forth.

We relish the sensation of sloppy
kisses on the backs of our necks

sunbeams’ saliva
trickling down our backs

we stare at the sky, and beg
the other stars to show themselves.

I hear music. I kiss her.

Linda Besner

I spent my time when it was normal days drawing smoke across the hole.

To blend a softer blackness in the abandoned paddock

they’ve rammed the highway through. I skipped a circle

in the tall brome, sat up on the octagonal fence

out of breath. The horses won’t be back.

Topsy-turvy posts tombstoned the unhayed hay.

We fall in love, you know, with places we don’t own.

It was fading out of the useful world for some years already,

even before a girl walked under the red canopy

of the covered bridge in milkweed anklets and army pants,

burr manacles and a peach-coloured camisole

to masturbate, but surprised a young Ursuline in the creek.

She smelled me, lifted her upper body. I ran,

though I could have put a candle wick to her black coat

and taken a flame. My inner voice says it is weak

to resist change. The stable topples, the horses are taken away,

your life is mostly something you encounter like a rock or a tree.

Weeds walk the ramparts of an overturned silo.

The line of crabapples gnashed by the bulldozer.

Weak, the voice says, almost like a drill sergeant inside.

No mourning the mouth of a cow on a daisy’s toothsome waist.

Or the dirt road where monarchs cast their orange to the dust.

Swallows ribboning the warm slats of the bridge rafters.

No doubt my inner voice poorly renders

your reasoning. The bombed-out houses and occupying soldiers,

the tilt away from a first language, a birth name.

To see myself through someone else’s eyes,

I make them cruel.

And for that, Mum, I am sorry.

Patti Lott

my god, it’s dismal
cold, I stumble through rimy
snow, one mittened hand
against my frost-burned face

above me, dark wings cut
through frozen sky. what keeps
that raven going. it gurgles
soft words of what I take
to be encouragement

the baby has died
she is washing the bones
they are tiny, unbearably
fragile, lined up in an order
they will not find again

maybe this is the same raven
who in spring and autumn
brings gifts to my garden—first
a skeletal fragment, provenance
unknown: filigreed, lacy as a doily

but it’s not the baby
who has died, it’s the mother
a half-remembered feeling
above the crib
the shape of an answer

later, a tooth
which, after some consideration
I recognize belongs to Sol
our horse who died here years ago
who we offered to the scavengers:
coyotes, ravens

the mother’s sister loves babies, but only
while they’re small. when the next one
arrives, she sets the first aside
its older brother likes it
too much

a year later
another Sol tooth, and today
always when I’m not looking
a small spine, spiky, slightly curved
a rabbit, maybe a wildcat

each finds its way
into my walled garden, teeth
appear inside the rusted wagon wheel
bones near the gate

she looks out a second story
window. the girls playing below
are magpies, bossy, overbearing
she knows they want
to break her
walking past them after school
she expects everything
and nothing

outside the garden, I feed
birds, which means I also feed
deer. it’s not wise, it habituates
my closest friends: the deer
the crows, the goldfinches

no one else is interested
the townspeople know
whose kids they are
who they don’t belong to
their hand-me-down clothes
uncombed hair
the way they run wild

my husband brings me birdseed,
gunnysacks
stacked against cases of chardonnay
and pinot noir, discontinued chocolate
bars, twenty-pound bags of rice
from his home country

he’ll give it all away—

[I have more diamond rings than fingers]

Joshua Trotter

I used to walk in a garden. I had a great many followers. I knew each one by name and if I could not remember, I made it up: There was Tigertail, Snow-on-the-mountain, All-about-love. There were Simon and Holofernes, there was Drummond-phlox, Turnagain Blossom, Thundergust.

There came a day when I began to feel myself again, walking outside, among all the bright followers which had made such an impression on me—on my inner selves and my outer self—that none of my myselves could now remember or even bother to imagine their names.

That day I caught a glimpse of what might have been a peacock, far off, against a green hedge, displaying the bright panopticon of its tail; all those purple eyes, yellow, orange, against a dark green hedge, unblinking in the noonday sun. All those eyes turned to look at me, for a long instant, then they were gone.

From that day, I began to spend less time in the garden, among my followers, more time at my mirror, within. I would posture and turn, displaying myselves to myself, holding my eyes wide as long as I could—until they began to tear. The once loyal garden beyond my mirror, if I remembered it at all, was emptier every day, emptier and emptier and further away.

Jessica Bebenek

Leigh Kotsilidis

We wade at the edge
of what is beyond us

There is nothing more
than delusion

Men mistake porch bulbs
for moons

A body drifts indeterminately
unnoticed

Every body leaves
over time

We each belong to a search party
looking for ourselves

The signs are never the same
when we return

There is a different word
for sky here

The last breath
belongs to the resolute

If outer space were not soundproof
we would hear the sun as a chainsaw

Space appears empty
even when exploding with wind

We must learn to hold our instruments
without making a sound

What will convince you?

The stars are so distant,
nothing we do will ever affect them