Forsythia
by Joseph Cilluffo
My mother loved their buds blooming
always in the wrong season, yellow stars
beaming in the late February sun, winking
across the dead space of the winter yard
filled only with desolation. She would pause in her steps
walking from the car
to our front door to look at them,
having appeared as if of a sudden,
messengers from beyond come to tell
winter’s secret — all seasons end.
They never live long enough,
those early blooms.
They seemed little more than great, big bushes of weeds.
Cold, I tugged her sleeve, pulled her forward
and away with my tiny hand full of time.
The cold sun kept moving overhead.
It was winter's secret, she said.
Now that I’m older, that she is gone
I understand — this is also summer's secret.
My mother loved the forsythia blooming too soon
the way you love
— that you can only love —
something beautiful, and delicate,
and brief.
Joseph Cilluffo’s first book of poetry, Always in the Wrong Season, was published by Kelsay Books and is available on amazon.com. His poems have also appeared in journals such as Philadelphia Poets, Apiary, and Philadelphia Stories. He was the Featured Poet for the Fall 2014 Edition of the Schuylkill Valley Journal, which nominated his poem, “Light,” for the Pushcart Prize.
Prayer Lists
by R. A. Allen
It used to be,
I want, I need, I must have.
Ad hoc appeals to God:
let that traffic light
stay green till I get through;
keep her in slumber
when I stumble in late;
and for more money, of course.
Notes of anxiety
crept in at midlife:
one prayer for take-offs,
another for landings,
a few more to win this last woman,
and then fresh ones to keep her.
But for now, please gently explain
this newfound wheezing,
this frightful forgetfulness,
this lump.
And when our words are drying up
our greed for life will cry out only
to see the light of one more sun.
R. A. Allen’s poetry has appeared in RHINO Poetry, The Penn Review, Gargoyle, Mantis, Night Train, Glassworks, JAMA, Rendez-Vous, and elsewhere. His fiction has been published in The Literary Review, The Barcelona Review, PANK, The Los Angeles Review, and Best American Mystery Stories 2010, among others. He lives in Memphis and was born on the same day the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism: December 26th. More at https://poets.nyq.org/poet/raallen
For You
by Katherine Hahn Falk
I cover my eyes with my right arm, a log
across water, a path to look for you
in clear darkness, that in its evenness, shimmers.
Almost instantaneously, you appear
with an impish smile and classic white garb.
You’re in a horizontal posture
not dissimilar to your position in the body bag
I asked be opened beyond the fraction of your face
they thought would do, your handsome face,
your beautiful hair, for your whole self, lying there
beyond sleep. With my arm removed from its stance
across my eyes and us together back in the morgue,
I cannot help but wail in my bed, wail after you in the abyss
till I retreat back to your angel self, your wink,
the pucker of your lips as if for a camera
to say, “Come ahead, remember this.”
Darkness overlaid with mottled threads of white film:
Your image no longer there. Your healthy hands
the way they looked in life now only in my mind
(as I stress and fight the image of your right hand
after death), your hands that could do almost anything -
measure, construct, repair,
doggedly, determinedly, lovingly play guitar,
knowingly, lovingly play me.
I stand on a speck of space dust and look out
on vastness, moments, seeming caverns, space refuge,
for you,
for you to suddenly appear.
Katherine Hahn Falk, Pennsylvania Poet Laureate for Bucks County in 2017, was selected by the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium, in 2019, for a program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She studied poetry at the graduate level, has won poetry contests and enjoys teaching poetry to students in their classrooms.
Envoy to a Coming Granddaughter
by John Timpane
Little life, igniting light, you and your mother
Orbit each other. For you there’s not yet any
Other, but father is there to make a
Together. Hover, gather us, nearly-here
Heart. Farther and farther in sun-tethered
Neighborhood, smothered in our nursemaid,
Nothing, we swing in a flat, round
Loop, lost as we can be. I would rather
You, yes I would; I would rather you came,
Mouther, bather, breather, soother and
Centerer, sent to us, naked in this, the
Altogether. Alter the weather within. In
Our oval wandering through the turbulent
Empty, can wonder ever be over once
You’re here? We can wait. Make us better.
Until recently, John Timpane was the Commentary Page Editor and later the Theater Critic and Cooks Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has appeared in Sequoia, Cleaver, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Vocabula Review, Per Contra, Apiary, and elsewhere.
Stage-Set
by Ray Greenblatt
The dense groves of trees
have been stored in the wings,
they’ll be pushed onstage
again tomorrow.
The ocean fretful
all day churning huge teeth
somehow quiets under
cover of darkness.
Late arriving ship
nudges into harbor
its bright spotlight eye
glaring into all bedrooms
then snaps off for the night.
The actors are now at home
their roles in another dimension,
music filed in memory.
It is time to sleep
to think about today’s events,
let dreams expand our lives
into Romance or Tall Tale
or even—who knows—Myth.
Ray Greenblatt teaches a Joy of Poetry course at Temple University-OLLI. His latest book of poetry is Nocturnes & Aubades (Parnilis Press, 2018). His most recent book reviews have been published by the John Updike Society, the Dylan Thomas Society, and the Graham Greene Society. He is presently circulating two MSS, From an Old Hotel on the Irish Coast and British Belles-Lettres: 1890-1940.
This is my evening
by DS Maolalai
One glass for ash
and another
for wine.
One night long
to look down the days
and think
that this
is deferent,
this is
deteral,
this is the way
of the fox,
the wolf,
the huddled animal.
this
is the deer,
poised,
ready to run
at the road
if the car will just
slow down
this is the hand
which guides the pen
and inspires the sword.
the backspace key
is the only gift
and the wine;
the ability to expel mistakes
made in the moment
by the drunken finger
and only let the night move in.
smoke
accidentally blown into the eyes
and burst away,
breathed downwards
to linger
on wool.
nights like this
ring around
an abundance in which
things dance.
DS Maolalai has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019).