Idlewild by Richard Schiffman

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Idlewild

Back then it was enough
to stand outside the fence
with dad and watch
the lumbering steel birds taxi
down the runway,
then bank into the blue and vanish.

We were seeing no one off,
yet felt the ache of departure, even then,
and the mystery of it,
how something can leave so completely,
leaping into air, defying gravity
to land upon a shore a world away.

*

Richard Schiffman is an environmental reporter, poet and author of two biographies based in New York City. His poems have appeared on the BBC and on NPR as well as in the Alaska Quarterly, the New Ohio Review, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and other publications. His first poetry collection “What the Dust Doesn’t Know” was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.

The Eclipse by William Palmer

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The Eclipse

          after Walt Whitman

When I wore my solar glasses that cost a simple dollar,
When I watched the perfect ball of fire 93 million miles away,
When our moon moved in measured time between us and our sun,
How my mind cleared
In those mystical moments toward totality,
And not until I took my glasses off did I realize
I had not thought about lies, fraud, or immunity.
I never thought once about his name.

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William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in I-70 Review, JAMA, ONE ART, On the Seawall, and Rust & Moth. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

Lucky Rice by Ellen Austin-Li

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Lucky Rice

Just the three of us on the Midway.
Late August at the New York State Fair,
my brother Carl & Barb & me
& the sun blazing & the barker calling us
into the tents to see the bearded lady
& the World’s Smallest Man. Way back,
before Carl & Barb had kids & I was single.
Flash again & we’re riding the Twizzler,
smashed together in the twirling car, metal
arms groaning with the threat of letting go
the faster we spun. The centrifugal force
& Carl’s mouth a perfect “O” & Barb’s face
bleached flour, her eyes squeezed shut, tears
coursing my cheeks as I laughed & cried
at the same time. Afterward, we walked
on wonky legs to the Dairy Building, & collected
little plastic red-hearted “I LOVE NY” cups
as we pounded free samples: chocolate, strawberry, white.
& me shouting: This has to be the best day of my life!
Somewhere on the way out, we found that stall
with the guy hawking Lucky Rice. You could order
your name etched on a single grain, the artist
then dropping the piece into a tiny ampule of water
threaded on a red satin cord. A necklace of sorts.
Carl returned years later—a carny rat,
he calls himself—to search for that seller,
then ordered my wedding present.
I can’t wait for you to open your gift, he said,
on the lead-up to the day. Back then,
I wish I had been more grateful when I looked
inside. Now it hangs on a shepherd’s hook floor lamp
next to the Chinese lantern in my bedroom. See
the husband’s initials with mine, enshrined on a grain
of lucky rice? The letters amplified by the liquid.
Me & Jolly, the man from Taiwan I married.

*

Ellen Austin-Li’s first full-length collection, Incidental Pollen—a 2023 Trio Award finalist, 2024 Wisconsin Poetry Series semi-finalist, and runner-up to the 2023 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize—is forthcoming from Madville Publishing. Finishing Line Press published her two chapbooks, Firefly (2019) and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic (2021). Her work appears in Artemis, Thimble Literary, The Maine Review, Salamander, Lily Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. She’s a Best of the Net nominee and holds an MFA in poetry from the Solstice Low-Residency Program. Ellen co-founded the monthly reading series Poetry Night at Sitwell’s, in Cincinnati, where she lives.

Picnic by Les Brookes

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Picnic

We spread our plain white sheet
beside the stream, the sun high,
our shadows black and stunted.
The field was a mass of cowslips.
We ate hard-boiled eggs
lightly salted and a plate
of gherkins and olives.
We smiled and munched,
and I lost myself
in the soft pink pout of his lips.

His eggshell eyes were blue
and shone like coloured glass.
His face was a bowl of cream
wreathed by a blond halo.
He rose on bare feet,
slipped to the water’s edge
and dabbled his toes. I gazed
at his slender white legs
and shifting shoulder blades
and knew I was falling in love.

*

Les Brookes lives in Cambridge UK. He writes poetry and fiction, and his work has appeared in anthologies published by Cambridge Writers and Paradise Press. He is the author of Gay Male Fiction Since Stonewall (Routledge) and blogs at lesbrookes.com

First Kiss by Dick Westheimer

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First Kiss

You – like lemons
I – like apples.

Each morning
I pull a ripe apple
from the bowl,

place it on the same cutting board
on which you sliced
your lemon.

You a lemon
for your morning tea

I an apple
for my breakfast
sliced in a puddle of lemon juice

Their flavors mingle in my mouth –
our first kiss of the day.

*

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared or are upcoming in Whale Road Review, Tony Seed, Gyroscope Review, Minyan, Rattle, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and Cutthroat. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at dickwestheimer.com

Haiku Targets — A Workshop with Michael Dylan Welch

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Haiku Targets
Instructor: Michael Dylan Welch
Date: Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Time: 5:00-8:00pm (Pacific)
Note: The 3rd hour of this workshop will be intended for haiku sharing and discussion.
Price: $25 (payment options)

To register for this workshop, please contact Mark Danowsky (Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART) at oneartpoetry@gmail.com

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Haiku Targets

Haiku poetry has a rich history in Japanese and English that extends far beyond counting syllables. This workshop, led by Michael Dylan Welch, explores various targets you have at your disposal in writing literary haiku. They include seasonal references (kigo), a two-part juxtapositional structure (equivalent to using a kireji, or cutting word), and chiefly objective sensory imagery. In our first two hours we’ll explore and discuss example poems and learn a bit of haiku history (including poems by Japanese masters). In the optional third hour, we’ll try a writing exercise and share our poems for discussion. Rules are obligations but targets are opportunities, and some of the “rules” people believe about haiku are essentially myths. Learn how to make the most of the opportunities you have to improve each haiku, and how these techniques can help you improve your longer poetry.

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Michael Dylan Welch has been investigating haiku since 1976. He has published dozens of haiku books, judged and won first place in many haiku contests, and has had his haiku, longer poems, essays, and reviews published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than twenty languages. Michael is a cofounder and director of the Haiku North America conference (1991), cofounder of the American Haiku Archives (1996), founder and president of the Tanka Society of America (2000), cofounder and director of the Seabeck Haiku Getaway (2008), and founder of National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com) (2010). He is also an officer of Haiku Northwest, founder and curator of SoulFood Poetry Night, and president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword. Michael served two terms as poet laureate of Redmond, Washington, and in 2013 was keynote speaker for the Haiku International Association conference in Tokyo. In 2012, one of his translations from the Japanese appeared on the back of 150 million US postage stamps, and his haiku have also been carved into stone in New Zealand and printed on balloons in Los Angeles. Michael documents his publications and other poetry activities at www.graceguts.com. He sees haiku as a poetic path to empathy and vulnerability, preferring to emphasize targets for haiku instead of rules.

Two Poems by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Poems without Metaphors

Nests with no birds.
Tracks with no train.

Blood without red,
blood without blue.

Cupboards with no food.
Mouth without a tongue.

Lovers scorned.
Empty envelopes.

Orphans.

*

Backyard Lyric

Sunlit, I sit cradling
my hardcover book
with its scents

of wood and ink.
I doze and do not think.
A breeze sends

last year’s dry yellow
magnolia leaves eddying
down the driveway—

gold flashes clatter
and add more light
to indigo sky.

Nearby, a cardinal
(unseen) weds its red
purpose to deepening green.

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton teaches French and Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, where she is the Adeline A. Loridans Professor of French. Recognition for her poetry includes an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award. She is the author of five books. Kelsay Books will publish her first book of children’s poetry, A to Z Poems for the Very Young, in 2024.

Moving Mona Lisa Downstairs by Jessica Whipple

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Moving Mona Lisa Downstairs

When the museum staff told her she was
being reverse-curated, she forced a yawn.
They cited “improved visitor experience” and her eyes
rolled like onyx marbles let loose on a table.
Don’t mock me (smiling gently). We all know what people
come here to see (pleased with herself, as always).
Who was she, even? What did she want from them?
And how does a woman like this end up in the basement?
She stands, smooths her frock, and walks there herself.

*

Jessica Whipple writes for adults and children. She published two children’s picture books in 2023: Enough Is… (Tilbury House, illus. by Nicole Wong) and I Think I Think a Lot (Free Spirit Publishing, illust. by Joseée Bisaillon). Her poetry has been published recently in Funicular, Green Ink Poetry, Door Is a Jar, and Whale Road Review. Her poem “Broken Strings” was nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize. She lives in the US and inhabits the places where picture books and poetry intersect. You can find her on Twitter/X @JessicaWhippl17.

GEMÜTLICHKEIT by Michael Salcman

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GEMÜTLICHKEIT

Despite a vow taken after the war
the occasional German word
escaped my father’s mouth
in a hail of Yiddish spit.

Gemütlichkeit was one such word,
by actual vote their favorite
in Berlin and the German side
of Prague—where it held
the warmth of a house alive
with comfort,
and so many other meanings
you could hear it breathing
with books and a cat, friends
and wife, enough warm food
and drinks like a fiery slivovitz.

He knew
the wet sound of this word
how it unwound slowly on his tongue
syllable by syllable,
and how it took some time to forget
where and when it was spoken

Last.

*

Michael Salcman: poet, physician and art historian, was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland. Poems appear in Barrow Street, Blue Unicorn, Hopkins Review, Hudson Review, New Letters, and Smartish Pace. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti, The Enemy of Good is Better, Poetry in Medicine, his popular anthology of classic and contemporary poems on medical subjects, A Prague Spring, Before & After, winner 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize, and Shades & Graces: New Poems, inaugural winner of The Daniel Hoffman Book Prize (2020). Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems (2022) and the forthcoming Crossing the Tape (2024) are published by Spuyten Duyvil.

Three Poems by Andrea Maxine Recto

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I think I love you

You’re sipping coffee
and leafing through your dad’s woodworking guide.
I’ll be jamming with my bass player in the afternoon
and another local musician this evening, you reply.
I was asking about your plans for the day.
You could have been reciting the Bible
or reading a grocery list,
I’d still hang on to every word.
Have to go get cat food and beer at some point too, you add.

I smile.
You scratch your head and stare in the distance.
There’s something about the way you speak
that mingles with the memories I hold dearly,
knows how to touch the tender places of my body,
and makes a home of the hard places between my ribcage.
I’m still smiling,
but this time, my cheeks redden a little.
You look at me, puzzled,
and tuck a stray hair behind my ear
before gently cupping my face.
Maybe I’ll slip into something more proper
and get to work on that darn dresser I keep putting off.
You laugh quietly,
toying with a toothpick in your mouth.
I liked that you worked with your hands.

I can’t help but stare at your lips,
and wonder what it’s like
to be the tiny creatures that live in your house.
The black ants that cross your coffee table daily.
The little gray mouse you refuse to get rid of and even gave a name.
Or even the damselflies that live near the lake out in front.
How close in proximity
they are to you.

*

Things I say to myself

I play this game
where I stand naked in front of the mirror
and ask the body before me, who do you belong to?
Some days, I say I am my mother’s daughter
or the apple of my father’s eye.
Other days, it’s the name of my new lover.
One day, the name I say will be mine.

*

What colors do cracked glass windows show?

My father used to tell me he could taste colors.
I remember laughing at that as a little girl.
I hoped that one day I would too.
He opened and closed his bedroom door three times;
I never asked him why.
He always wore this sage green sweatshirt
and said God didn’t care about what he did,
much less what he wore.
One day, I entered his room and found him sound asleep at noon.
Bottles crowded his dresser.
He looked happy, young even,
but mostly peaceful.
I stood by his bed and watched him sleep for half an hour.
I later woke up in the middle of the night
and found him kneeling on the grass in the middle of the yard.
He was uprooting the flowers.
The burgundy roses, mulberry asters,
golden buttercups, and tangerine tulips – all of them.
It was a warm evening,
but he was shivering when I touched his shoulder.
Underneath the moonlight,
I could see his face was wet.
I couldn’t tell if it was sweat, tears, or the morning dew on his cheeks.
He howled,
and I swallowed the terror
that had begun to live in my throat.
The next day, uniformed men came to dress him in white.
He had somehow broken a vase;
crimson ran down his arm.
I removed my jacket and wrapped it around his hand.
My father looked at me, tears in his midnight eyes,
only broken things can taste colors.
I try my best to keep my voice from shaking,
then you and I are in the same boat.

*

Andrea Maxine Recto is a Spanish-Filipino poet living in Manila. Her poetry explores the themes of womanhood, grief, love, darkness, and introspection. Her work has appeared in ONE ART and the Santa Clara Review, with more forthcoming in the Long River Review, Spry Literary Journal, and elsewhere.