Tag: philly

Two Poems by Magda Andrews-Hoke

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Fig

Life is a crystal fig
dropped
from a great height.

It’s not
that it might break,
but will.

Inevitably,
it glitters
in the plummeting.

* 

At the Walnut Lane Bridge

Over the bridge, the sun set
in a peach perfume.
Standing by the railing,
I peered into the creek below
and watched the dark
increase by small stitches
of indigo. What I hoped
to find there, I did not find.
And in that searching,
I was blind
to what was there. But
peace, but patience, waiting
stillness, have brought silence
to this qualm. And in its place
a subtle hymn, of softer colors
than the scene.

*

Magda Andrews-Hoke lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she works at the Kelly Writers House. She studied Linguistics and English at Yale University and was a 2019 recipient of the Frederick Mortimer Clapp Fellowship for poetry. Her poems can be found in Commonweal Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere.

Two Poems by Sean Webb

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It is Snowing. My Country is Dying.

Those are two states of things
among countless states occurring
at once. Trees stand stripped.

All insects dead or dormant.
People hustle through deepening
snow accumulating in Love Park.

Up the street, the Liberty Bell sits
behind unbreakable glass. The shops
on Jewelers Row are closing down.

I want to believe we are wrapped
in a chrysalis; some coming spring
we will unfold into better selves.

Meanwhile, unseen overhead,
an asteroid named Akhmatova
drifts silently through the void.

*

Letter to the Doomed

Riding a train over the Schuylkill river
tilting a bottle to my lips
I am a body of water
drinking water over a body of water.

There is nothing but temporality in that.

I hope at the end
I have enough willing personal energy,
enough functioning body systems, enough
spiritual accord with a grand internal acceptance
of all vaguely understandable universal systems
to defy my inherent fear,
that I might find the power of perambulation
to carry myself out to an open sea, tundra, plateau,
whatever cycling biome is nearby
to find beautiful the relentlessly tangled
wilderness and give my solitary self to the rigors
of death and the continuing struggle
of countless enduring life forms that will
propagate from the end of my being.

*

Sean Webb has received many honors for his work. Most recently, he won the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Prize for Poetry, the Asheville Poetry Review William Matthews Poetry Prize, the Gemini Magazine Poetry Open, and was a finalist for the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Prize. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and a past Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including The North American Review, Prairie Schooner, december magazine, The Seattle Review, Nimrod, and two chapbooks, What Cannot Stay Small Forever and The Constant Parades. He currently lives in Wilkes-Barre with his wife, the artist Colleen Quinn. More information can be found at seanwebbpoetry.com.

Phanatic by John Arthur

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Phanatic

the day you swung my Louisville
Slugger at me and I caught it
with my bare hands
you smacked my bare ass
while Jimmy held my pants
at my ankles and I was
getting hard, harder
each week from dead
lifts, lunges, and power cleans
until mom poured a gallon
of milk on my head,
the lactose sticky on my skin
as I let it soak in
laying there on the dogsmell couch
where dad drunkslept during Phillies
games. we were there at Citizens
Bank Park when they broke
the record for most
innings played in a game,
at infinity, and everyone
left the stadium except for us.
They’re still playing.
We’re still there.

*

John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared in Rattle, trampset, Maudlin House, Third Wednesday, and other places. His band is called The Deafening Colors.

Birding with My Sister by Pamela Wax

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Birding with My Sister

She tracks the migration of hummingbirds,
calls to say they were in Philly two days ago,
could arrive today at her lake house in upstate
New York. Her feeders shine red with nectar,

readied. Last summer she fell for a blue
heron. She’d moor in the middle
of the lake, play a game of dare with him,
refused to part first. She swore he waited

on the banks for her to kayak past
for their rendezvous, sent me daily
photos of his one-legged posturing.
We joked about this boyfriend, the time

she spent in pursuit. I even googled him,
wondered if Heron might break her heart.
But he’s a symbol of calm, his visitations
a call for deep breath, pause. Just one

is never a siege. Today I bird with her,
anticipate the dare of charm, tune, shimmer
of flock, the pungent bouquet of truth in wings
chattering with brio and hum. Had I not

been a fish in my other life, I’d adopt her
reverence for flight, for yogic postures
lakefront, for plotting patterns of exodus
and stations of oasis on the migrant

journey. But I am propelled to undulate,
flapping and feeding in the great,
briny school of the deep, not rooted
to land, nor destined for flight.

*

Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have received a Best of the Net nomination and awards from Crosswinds, Paterson Literary Review, Poets’ Billow, Oberon, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. She has been published in dozens of literary journals including Barrow Street, Tupelo Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Chautauqua, The MacGuffin, Nimrod, Solstice, Mudfish, Connecticut River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Slippery Elm. An ordained rabbi, Pam offers spirituality and poetry workshops online and around the country. She lives in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.

What I Loved by Robbi Nester

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What I Loved

As a child, I often visited my grandmother and cousins
in West Oak Lane, straight lines of dark brick rowhomes,
old trees, so wide you couldn’t get your arms around them.
In summer, people sat out on the stoop and watched
neighbors in their somber suits and hats parade
to service in the tiny synagogue where my uncle
served as sexton. In the back of each house, there was
an open space, a paradise of gardens, some gated.
I loved the ones with a reflecting ball, precisely
in the center, mirroring the bees and sulfur yellow
butterflies. I thought I saw some other country
there, one that I’d explore on some dull day
when my cousins were busy with their chores
or their piano lessons, and I was left to roller
skate for hours on the cracked concrete behind
their house. I didn’t like the other decorations—
plastic flamingos or painted plaster gnomes,
objects with no mystery about them, far preferred
to peer between the iron filagree or wooden slats,
pretending that I stood on soft green grass
instead of forever banished, on the other side.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

Holmesburg Prison, Philadelphia by Leonard Kress

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Holmesburg Prison, Philadelphia

The guards circulate among the prisoners
asking, who wants to sell a patch today? Meaning a
patch of skin—detached—to test the effect of toxins
on living flesh. There are takers, eager to escape
the crowd inside their 5 x 8 cell, selling what’s left
to the Penn professor, well-funded. I was here once,
waiting—my wife visiting her cousin from Poland,
sitting Poles say, for brawling at the Polish Eagles
Club, threatening to bomb the dance at Saint Adalbert’s,
shipped back to the village, a harmless drunk farmer with
a moped and Ursus tractor. The prison abuts
Pennypack Park and surely inmates thought of what kids,
did under the stone bridge, baring fresh unexcised flesh.

*

Leonard Kress has published poetry and fiction in Missouri Review,
Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard
Review, etc. His recent collections are The Orpheus Complex and Walk
Like Bo Diddley. Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his new
verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam
Mickiewicz were both published in 2018. Craniotomy Sestinas appeared
in 2021. He teaches philosophy and religion at Owens College in Ohio.
www.leonardkress.com

Two Poems by Joseph Chelius

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The Franklin Institute

All the wonders of science and invention
stood before us in the distance: if only
we could decode the pattern of the Parkway lights—
our grandmother in her green coat and hat,
the scent of Jean Nate,
leading the three of us with our blond crew cuts
on the day’s expedition: the trolley ride
into town; soft pretzels from a vendor.
And then, as amused Ben Franklin looked on,
peering through his tiny spectacles,
our stepping into the crosswalk—
the talk so many years later
not of the Planetarium, nor even the Giant Heart,
but our awe of tall buildings, the bewildering
phenomenon of commerce and traffic;
our linking hands as if entering
a panorama—sun glinting off metal and chrome.

*

Stopping Between Errands to Watch Little League Baseball

Forget the hardware store,
the broken clapper
on the running toilet.
And the wilting asparagus,
the half-gallon of mint chocolate
sweating it out
in the sauna of the trunk.
Unlike my fellow spectators in the stands,
I have nothing invested here:
no regard for the score
or, as I’d had years before,
no son to cheer as he stands at bat
or maintains his poise on the pitcher’s mound.
But like some roving ambassador,
a retired neighbor filling his days,
I have taken these moments
to play anonymous fan
for both the reds and the yellows
as they compete on the field.
To feel the sun on my arms,
on the back of my neck,
to be a man interrupted—
kindly, avuncular,
without a list or an agenda,
who if only just briefly
on a Saturday afternoon
can put out of mind
the unpacking of groceries
and querulous fixtures.
Can resist even the call
of the pent-up mower—
shrill and exacting,
that disciplines grass.

*

Joseph Chelius works as a principal editor for a health care communications company. His poetry has appeared in journals and magazines such as Commonweal, Poetry East, Poet Lore, Rattle, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and THINK. He has published two full-length collections with WordTech editions in Cincinnati: The Art of Acquiescence (2014) and Crossing State Lines (2020).