the swimmer
by Anne E. Michael
At meadow’s edge, the sleek doe hesitates.
Milkweed, goldenrod, eupatoria, timothy—
every plant tall with the heat of an early summer,
unrelievedly green.
In she steps. Meadow closes over her haunches,
her head just visible above the flora as she wades
through leaves. Eyes alert, neck swaying, she reminds me
of my mother swimming.
~
When I was small and stayed on the sand,
my mother stood hesitant at water’s edge awhile
then let the sea envelop her, past her shoulders,
body almost hidden.
She never submerged completely, so I could
keep her in view. She moved through the yielding
element slowly, neck extended, eyes alert, always
at the edge of her fear.
~
Waiting to bolt away.
Anne E. Michael’s chapbook, Barefoot Girls (Prolific Press), is due out later this year, as well as a full-length poetry collection slated for publication in 2021 from Salmon Poetry. She blogs at www.annemichael.wordpress.com, where there are links to her previous books and to many of her poems online. She is also assistant director of the writing center at DeSales University.
Flying East With Lyla’s Ashes
by George Drew
Unornamented, the black box holding them,
bound by twine, with no identifying tag,
I carried it tucked under one arm
while at check-in and through security,
then boarding. I could have checked it through,
but no way would I risk her getting lost
or crushed under the weight of heavy bags.
Finding my seat, I stowed her snugly
in the storage bin directly over my head,
and as we crossed time zones and into night,
we talked in whispers, illicit lovers on a redeye flight
winging our way eastward from the mountains,
those hard and immovable things, eastward
over the plains and valleys to the shining sea.
George Drew is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently Pastoral Habits: New and Selected Poems, Down & Dirty and The View From Jackass Hill, winner of the 2010 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, all from Texas Review Press. His eighth, Fancy's Orphan, appeared in 2017, Tiger Bark Press, and his ninth, Drumming Armageddon, will appear in June 2020, Madville Publishing.
fastening
by L. R. Harvey
This world, this dresser drawer, is full of loose
buttons.
They rattle hopelessly against
each other, desperate for fabric ports to lash
to, weather out the storm.
This wooden box
is laden with colored spools gone twisting on
themselves like mothers with grown-up sons—they look
to fix, to heal, to tighten what’s been loosened.
Picking a needle from its nesting tube
I thread a yellow strand straight through the eye
and back again, then pinch the khakis to
the button. The top hole from the back, if I
remember correctly, goes first. A pass or two
and it is evident that thread without
a knot is pretty string, effuse as the gas
that slips beneath a bolt-locked door.
My mind is full of colored thread,
this world a mass of buttons looking for a fix.
I’ll sew my words.
Maybe, just once, I’ll twist them into a knot,
a catch.
L. R. Harvey writes to provide a glimpse into the Mystery of Being. His most recent poetry has appeared in Poetry Pacific, American Diversity Report, SOFTBLOW, Red Eft Review, Better Than Starbucks, Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry, The Road Not Taken, and more than a dozen other magazines/publications. He currently holds a BA in English, an MA in Teaching, and is beginning his pursuit of his MFA in creative writing this summer.
desert hearts
by Joyce Meyers
You tell me your heart
was hollowed out
when your young wife left you,
holding up a mirror
reflecting an old man.
You took it from her hands,
wore it as a mask so long
that even you no longer
know your face. Your heart
you keep as a shuttered room,
locked tight, surrounded by a high
stone wall, a moat. And I,
whose heart was shattered
when my young husband died,
pity your resignation.
You say you have no heart
for finding someone to grow
old with. And I think,
why old? Why not grow wise,
or strong, or joyful?
Why not ride a camel
over the high dunes
of your desert heart,
see in the arid land below
a billion grains of sand
reflecting a trillion
trillion stars studding
the onyx sky of a desert night,
of trillions more unseen
pulsing their packets of light,
all those that are, ever were,
are yet to be.
Joyce Meyers practiced law in Philadelphia for nearly three decades. Her poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Atlanta Review, Slant, Iodine Poetry Journal, and Common Ground Review, among others. In 2014 she won the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collections include The Way Back (Kelsay Books 2017) and two chapbooks, Shapes of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Wild Mushrooms (Plan B Press, 2007).
Avalon, October 2018, Northeast Storm
by Jack Chielli
Crooked was the line of cormorants
that stitched the grey flannel clouds to the sky
and into the northeast storm
the black silhouettes sewed their course
over the summersaulting walls of the sea
I watched the waves
fall to the flat embrace of the shore
and the birds resign themselves to the headwinds
This was surrender on the beach in October
the waves to the pull and push of the moon
the birds to the steady headwinds,
and I to your memory
faded now by the tides of time
and my tired heart’s yearnings.
Jack J. Chielli is a writer living in Frederick, Maryland, where he is vice president of enrollment management, marketing and communications for Mount St. Mary’s University. He has worked as a newspaper journalist, magazine editor, political communications director, and higher education communications and marketing professional. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, Pennsylvania, a BA in Writing from Roger Williams University, Rhode island, and served as editor of his collegiate literary magazine.