 Red Circle on Black, by Jiro Yoshihara (Japan) 1965 Red Enso The wind blew clouds across the sky in rapid scrawl as streaks, puffs, and stacks—semaphores written across the landscape of Himalayan peaks, shrouded then revealed—I longed for one last glimpse of Mount Kailash before I climbed into the car, the flaps of my cap beat against my ears but held my hair inside, no strands whipped my face, but I could not walk to the open car door yet, I turned to my Ama-la, prayed this wouldn’t be the last time I’d see her, when the sun suddenly appeared. Everything fell still into the blue sky. Mount Kailash appeared. Ama-la clutched her apron, afraid to wave, I ran to her and held her tight. She embraced me. I shut my eyes tight, dots of light appeared against the red skin of my eyelids. I tucked my head into her shoulder and saw single red circle. I had not seen this circle with eyes open, now only one image appeared, not two, not one for each shut eye, but a single image, I wondered why with both eyes closed I didn’t see two images, but instead this single red ring as though painted purposefully by one hand, then I heard my mother’s voice: “Jampa my love, it is this circle of love that keeps us together whether perfect or imperfect, and I know you have seen it as I do with my eyes closed. We will never be apart in mind, only by distance, and you will always be my child, my beloved boy, though I must let you go, your journey from here may seem to go into a line of an unknown future, or an arc from young to vigorous adult, then to old, or as a series of circles, morning to night to next morning to night, that elapses in days, or months, year after year, but at the end of your life, this circle will tie you onwards to the next time you return, even when you take your last breath, you might recognize me as someone you knew before, I might be your child next time, so do not miss me. In parting, we'll meet again.” Annie Bien Annie Bien has published two poetry collections, flash fiction, and a pamphlet, Messages from Under a Pillow, that includes her own illustrations. She is an English translator of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures. Forthcoming is a historical novel on the Sixth Dalai Lama, co-written with Robert Thurman. https://www.anniebien.com/ ** To Jiro Yoshihara Regarding Red Circle on Black art renewing life reflecting -- imperfectly -- life renewing art Portly Bard Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Obsidian Bold boiling lava hits icy ocean cold as mistrust misunderstanding and all other mis- It all happened too fast No time for crystallization Sharper than diamond and surgeon’s steel blade A giant black tape 0n the mid-melt mouth of the ocean Jiang Pu Jiang Pu, Ph.D., is an author, editor and translator of many textbooks, literature and children's books; and is the founder of NextGen Education. Her recent poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Caesura, Topical Poetry, among others. She grows a bee & butterfly garden in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her first name means "a big river". www.jiangpu.org ** Choose You must decide-- inside or out. All black. That will ooze buckets about who you are—what spills and what is con- tained. Do not get seduced by the O ring—crimped. Choose your purgatory. Jay Brodbar Jay Brodbar: "My family here in Toronto and my writing practice are my two pillars, the latter getting a boost in coping with isolation in the time of plague. I have published in various journals including McGill Street, Parchment, Reform Jewish Quarterly. My poem, What We need Beyond the Pale, appears in the Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine, with proceeds going to PEN Ukraine." ** Only Night Knows For Sure A circle blazing orange-red against darkness. Snake aflame in the matte-black night. Fireworm corkscrewing through midnight-blue water. Night as it passes through the orange-red, crackling circle in Yoshihara’s painting like words an ear picks from the crackle of a flame. From the ravings of sooty beaks. A rave of ravens. Gathering secrets tucked beneath ebony pinions, clucked about in small talk and inuendo. What does night know of me as it pulls me through that circle? Pulling me by the eyes through an illusion of motion in the painting. Are they words as snake venom, which can stop a heart? As the neurotoxin in fireworm spines, setting the world into a tailspin when brushing past? My wife says I dwell too much on words and things passed long ago. Wheel in a rut. But can a circle go anywhere other than back as it moves forward? Follow the tread—a line of burning blood—and look at how it falls back onto itself over and over again. Recollections on an axle. Rumors turning. A conspiracy of ravens, gossiping within earshot. A scorching circle. The circle in the painting, going nowhere and round and round. My mother says, from among the dead, that I dwell too much on the pain of the living. It’s like the poet who says he’s studied and become intimate with the speed of darkness.[2] So fast it’s always here, coming from nowhere.[3] Circling in an ocean current. Burning at the slightest touch. Gravity pulling continually from the hole of a circle. On a current of air, caught in a feather. As if the cells which compose the hole crackled, ready to take the cells which fashion the circle with them. On a current of breath. A treachery of ravens, gathered and cackling. Glistening black marbles in feathered heads, taking in the entire world. Black news caught in crystal balls. My father says there’s something inside the hole, but best not to look too long or too deeply into it. A circle burning through the black background of a painting. A reverse brand, seen from under the skin, searing. Marking its own. The fireworm lands and the tingling from its spines begins. My brother looked long and red into the blackness of that hole, peeling apart its layers, before he finally fell through it. He’s still falling. I hear him in an owl’s screech. In the grinding rust between axle and white-enameled steel wheel on a red child’s wagon. The wheel turns, revolving around dead things, as ravens are wont to do. Searching with the whole eye. With the hole in the eye. The hole beneath a fiery brow. Night knows about this. About him. Is he why I fear waking in less than utter dark? In the turning of a worm—a word? —something burns through and is carried, floating. Playing the circle where it lies, in the truth toward which a golf game would return? My wife, who used to play golf, says to hit the ball and move on—the circle will take care of itself. Circle at the game/s end. Reversing, circling back as if gazing deeper at a painting. Raven in the hole at the circle’s core, cawing for the others in its unkindness. Trickster, roosting in the hole of my circle, pulling with its beak. The caw in the morning, an orange-red tear though myself. Is it actually the night wanting me back? Is it my brother wanting me back? Better to play the ball, move on. Jonathan Yungkans Jonathan Yungkans finds time to write while working as an in-home health-care provider, aided by copious amounts of coffee in the early-morning blackness. His work has appeared in MacQueen's Quinterly, Synkroniciti, Unbroken and other publications. ** Red Circle on Black Here against the black background of grief Love inscribes itself in a red circle which grief can never swallow. As long as I remain in that red circle eternally, darkness will not cover me. Elissa Greenwald Elissa Greenwald, a retired English teacher, now prefers writing to reading. ** The red ring is perfectly imperfect: a universe expanding, contracting, breathing a heartbeat an umbilical cord a circumcision a tick’s bite bulls eye unleashing a crippling palsy the burnished brass plucked on a carousel ride with cackling cousins a secured seal - what no human may tear asunder Grandma Flo’s jiggly, canned fruit filled bundt Jello mold cupping marks - a practice that failed to clear the fluid in time an unknowable centre adrift in the black of everything else Jeffrey G. Moss Jeffrey G. Moss was born and bred in Brooklyn, USA. After 32 years guiding 13/14 year olds in crafting their worlds he has finally started following some of his own writer’s advice. His creative non-fiction has appeared in Bending Genres, Cagibi, Hunger Mountain Review, Under the Gum Tree, and Hippocampus. Find him on IG @jeffgm. ** Temptation of the Circles Everyone at home was eagerly waiting for Diwali—Indian festival of lights which adds extra sentences to autobiographies and school essays every year. The walls of home had become fierce like Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” The old paint had already started falling off the walls like the cascade of descending swaras. Festival brings offers, bonus and loans. Father had applied for a festival loan from his office to purchase paint. The good news was that his officer’s pen tagged Rescued screamed on the paper—-‘sanctioned.’ Money was drawn, paint accessories purchased and furniture was weaponed with tattered and unusable bed sheets, newspapers so as to protect it from falling wet paint. The room was already ready yesterday and whitewashing had started. Now what next? The next threat was Vani. Vani was their two-and-a-half year old naughty baby girl. They already knew about her unexpected quirks. Just six months back she graduated from crawling, zigzag to perfect walking. And see now—-she’s gliding! Her round, eyes on her round face reflect infinite energy! She would live like a butterfly hovering around every flower of the garden. At one moment she’s on the window pane at another she’s at the diwan. She would fall down, rehearse again, cry and laugh again, and then again run—-laughing, falling, jumping—- bare foot. All holes tempted her. Many holes are circles after all! Compelled by her instincts she’d go happy around inserting her fingers in running-electric-sockets or any other empty spaces she would come across, sometimes even hers or father’s nostrils. The pet Jimmy had mixed feelings of love, subordination and scare for her as once she startled him by putting her finger in his bum when he while asleep and was already being sniffed by one of his street opponents, in dream. While exploring her senses, yesterday, she poked her fingers on the newly painted wall. Two times she spoilt the paint. What can she do? Colours fascinated her. “Pappa..pappa…gimme colours papa,” Vani babbled, her eyes already hypnotised with ‘her’ expected answer, present in future, “Yes. Yes. Why not Vanu. These all buckets are for you Darlo.” The father turned towards mother and instructed with a flat high tone (mainly the first one) you only find in Mandarin, “You’ve to take care of this monkey before she spoils everything. I told you to send her to the play school but you denied. You never do what I say.” Listening the word ‘school’ Vani clenched mother’s legs and looked at the father through the green ripples of her sari. Mother caressed Vani with love. "She’s not even three. Don’t you remember how uncontrollably she cried when we sent her once?” Mother instructed Vani to bring her notebook on which she could write with a pencil. Vani ignored the pencil-book-idea and made herself invisible behind the door from where in half crying tone she kept insisting on dripping her fingers into the bucket of paint. Suddenly accompanying the drizzling sky, the Sun came to a position where it could enter the room through the window and reflect the mixed colours kept in the bucket forming young handsome rainbow on the white wall. “Alright Mom, pencil. Gimme one,” Vani babbled in a language which only her mother could translate. But there was no reply. Father had gone out to bring thinner for the paint and mother had gone to the veranda to collect wet clothes from outside. Vani knew that it’s ‘the’ opportunity. She ran towards her coveted aim like the best female sprinters of the would-be The Paris Olympic— 26 Jul, 2024. Like a philosopher holding his jaw on his hairy paws, Jimmy gazed suspiciously at her activities, hiding his ipseity with his fluffy tail. Vani inserted her fingers into the paint tub and scribbled circles on the wall depicting something which only she or her God knew. Droplets of colour poured on her arms, nostrils, lips and everywhere around the floor. She painted many many circles. Every circle was different. Enchanted by the magic of circles she made, she would poke her finger in the middle of it. She went on and on, destabilising centres, unexhausted. That wall was now an admixture of beauty and beast. After a while mother came inside. She saw Vani and the wall, the whirlpool of colours around her. Her mouth opened agape, the wet cloths she held on her shoulder fell down with a thud of Newton’s apple. She went running towards her and yelled, "Vani! Vani!!" Sandeep Sharma Sandeep Sharma is an Asst Prof of Comparative Literature at Government College, Diggal (HP), India. He is Associate Editor of the journals In Translation (Université Badji Moktar de Annaba) and Traduction et Langues (University of Oran 2). He received the Award of Academic Excellence (2022) by the Arab Translators’ Association for his contribution to research and linguistics. He has published his works with Impspired (UK); SIL International (US);The Yellow Medicine Review (Southwest Minnesota State University); PoetryXHunger (Maryland State Arts Council, US); Southwest Word Fiesta (Silver City, New Mexico); Lothlorien Poetry Journal (US); The Anguillian (Anguilla); In Translation (Algeria), HP University (India) and so on. His book on Translation Studies is made available as a reference book in the universities of Africa, Ukraine and India. His page, with 277k viewers, remains at the top 1% position on academia.edu. Here is the link to the page https://hp-in.academia.edu/SsandeepSharma ** caught in the crossfire he is a volcano threatening to erupt a gasp of thin-red-lipped fear a bloodshot eye on high alert a cigarette burn on flaky skin a target ripe for a sniper’s gun a hole in the heart erasing love a petalless poppy weeping blood a scarlet wreath laid at his feet Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published in the next month. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Onxy Mood O stony sorrow O sorry loss O loop too hollow O no tomorrow O woozy cocoon O poppy knot O ghostly blotch O cold clock stop O cross fox howl O owl scorn dollop O phlox blossom spool O sky myrrh-blown O bloodshot body O scorch of pox O colon clot O lot of horror O shock of drool O snort of rot O joy forgot My bowl of soot Helen Freeman Helen has poems published on various sites and magazines and regularly submits to The Ekphrastic Review. She currently lives in Durham, England. Instagram @chemchemi.hf ** The Nip Stare at red circle on black for mere minutes, then look away to a white wall. The image reverses, rehearses. Red turns green, black urns white. Boundless roundness. Rods and cones, my brain moans and gives up, spluttering, gasping for air. In the blink of an eye, the wink of trying to change things. Infinite jest, circle with a nip taken out by a hungry universe. It’s not perfectly round, more human, with foibles. The caged circle too contained by the dark. Chipped like her toenail polish, tonal dripping with blood. Wild and pacing, bracing for an escape. Never turn your back on the circle. Red eyes flashing in the dark. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and several others. She is published in Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Fresh Words Magazine, Spillwords, Topical Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Blue Mountain Review. Lynne stands on the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is an editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience. Her book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy will be published in 2023 by SCE Press. ** Poet’s Wudu Unroll the prayer rug. Surrender to surrender. Kneel in the pew, needing to be kneaded. Settle on the cushion cross legs close eyes. Bow begin the kata yin leading yang arrive where time neither ticks nor tocks feel the hand of Author True holding the pen of your life. Mike Wilson Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including Amsterdam Quarterly, Mud Season Review, The Pettigru Review, Still: The Journal, The Coachella Review, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic, (Rabbit House Press, 2020), political poetry for a post-truth world. He resides in Lexington, Kentucky, and can be found at mikewilsonwriter.com ** Blind Spot Early Christmas Day, she catches a glimpse of an unwanted gift: a grey dot, lingering like some weird charcoal patch, stuck over her right eye. It blocks her stars’ jazzy blues. It steals a host of angel shapes. It snatches the tree-lights’ dazzle. All she can see is a bright red halo, filched from Santa’s hat, beaming back at her like a Bloody Mary, half-drunk. Dorothy Burrows Based in the UK, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poems, flash fiction and short plays. Her work has been published both online and in print journals. She often doodles in circles. ** 無限 (Infinite) by squaring the circle, this unaccustomed stroke of artistic notion unknown by many a man you wonder if they’ll understand your dab of red on black as conjured in your mind avant-garde, you hope they exclaim as impasto flows by many a field and fallow but time will tell, you know as for all innovative lexes you ARE a pioneer of vicissitude in the realm of the inured *** oh, unblemished stillness unfolds in my mind as I try to fathom how it feels to be liberated from the shackled chains of the unyielding traditions in this Self of cyclic effort we call the perpetuation of Life Andrea Damic Andrea Damic born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She’s an amateur photographer and author of prose and poetry. She writes at night when everyone is asleep; when she lacks words to express herself, she uses photography to speak for her. She spends many an hour fiddling around with her website https://damicandrea.wordpress.com/ ** What my heart yearns for now. L. She's only 6 years old but she swings the fire poi like a pro carving a perfect red right angle into the November blackness. Wrists and elbows flick sharp, fluid. She's Zorro. My heart is so full it could burst the Thames Barrier with an ocean of bluebells, king- fishers, Finding-Nemo-fishes, with an ocean of electricity all around the w w w w w w world. O. She's only 6 years old but she has the poise of a pro swooshing a perfect red circle through the November chill. Her arm spinning from her shoulder. My heart is so full of pride Scottish pipe bands march up my arteries, with kilts and drums. Red sparks light up face-painted faces eating toffee apples. Red sparks light up sheets of copper for the copper-bowl-beating. She lassos us all together with a perfect red circle of molten candy strawberry, raspberry, cherry. V. She's only 6 years old but she can write with molten glass in the air. She can spin and swing and change direction abruptly. Making a succession of red ticks, flick-booking on my retinas. My nostrils breathe smoke from the bonfire breathe cider, lentil curry, roasted pumpkin. In the distance snatches of sound from the singing workshop - chanting, clapping, laughing. My heart is a Venetian kiln full of Murano an Armada, a coastline of blazing beacons. Her fire trails whip us all together into a Big Top, into trapeze and clowns and elephants and funfair, into a circus. e. She's only 6 years old but she can spiral fire like candy floss like Celtic writing, like scarlet ribbons. Buzzards are mewing overhead. Clover and vetch grow under her toes. Red deer watch from the larches at the ruined monastery. She loops her red threads around us tying us all together, over and over. We hold our breath, scrunched up like empty packets of crisps in tight fists. Our hearts leap across the night, leap through my daughter's hoop of flame. saskia ashby saskia ashby is a UK visual/performance artist and poet. ** stillness [inhale] 1 2 3 4 [exhale] 5 4 3 2 1 [breathe]. ### Tonka Dobreva Tonka Dobreva is a writer and Christian life coach. Her work has previously appeared in Ekstasis Magazine and is forthcoming in The Amethyst Review. ** Ebb and Flow I chase my cousins into the laundry room. They shriek in laughter, tossing a wad of clothing back and forth, stashing it into the dryer, but I manage to peel away their fingers from the metal door—and it’s in that moment as my twin cousins have collapsed onto the floor with laughter, and I hold, triumphantly, a soiled piece of clothing--that I find out what menstruation is. I don’t remember when I first got my period. The doctors always ask me that, and so I estimate: middle school, 12 years old. For my mother, it happened in gym class. White shorts. Somersaults. Eternal embarrassment. She still winces when she tells the story. I’m diagnosed with PCOS–Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome–in college. Irregular periods, extreme pain, blood-clots-larger-than-a-quarter. But my breaking point is my first year of teaching. My roommate and I joke about how that first year begins to mirror the 10 Plagues of Egypt: lice, mice, and a three month long flood of blood. And it is a gush. I use triple layers of protection: super tampons, bedtime extra-long pads, specially designed period panties (black) that should never go in the dryer. I give up on wearing jeans and stick to black slacks. I stash tampons and pads everywhere—in my car, the bottom drawer of my desk at work, my purse, the pocket of my backpack. I drive with a towel over the seat of my car. I set alarms for 3:00 in the morning to remind me to take a pain killer or else I’ll never uncurl from the covers at 6:00. When my gynecologist appointment finally comes, my doctor warns me that if/when I try to have kids, it may be difficult. To solve the issue of my never ending period, she prescribes medicine to make my body shed all of the lining of my uterus. I cannot understand how there is still tissue and blood left to be sloughed off. But yet, somehow there is. The shedding continues a month into taking birth control before, finally, the madness ends. In the third year of trying for a baby, I buy the expensive digital ovulation and pregnancy tests because I can’t take the color game anymore. I need the shock of the answer in harsh, black lettering to believe it. No: you are not pregnant. No: you are not ovulating. Late at night, I google for hope: when will I ovulate if my cycle is 35 days long? 40 days long? 42? How heavy is implantation bleeding? How many days does implantation bleeding last? My period—both the lack of one and its reappearance—betrays me. In August 2022, the doctors inform us that my husband is missing something in his DNA; he can’t and will never be able to produce sperm. We both stop taking fertility medicine. We stop counting days and measuring colors and debating names. Instead, we research sperm donation, adoption, fostering. We cry. We question. We make depressing art. We vent about all the well-meaning nonsense we’re told. We promise to adopt a dog when Summer comes. We kayak in tandem and bicker about taking turns paddling. We dream about going on a cruise around Japan. We navigate the Chattahoochee River’s rapids and rocks in inner tubes, flip out into the two feet of cold water—and cackle as other pink and green tubes bump helplessly into us. And eventually, we loosen our grip on the grudges against our bodies. Annalee Simonds Annalee Simonds writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She dares her high school students to use semicolons and em-dashes in their own writing. When she's not teaching, she dabbles in watercolour. She grew up in Georgia, but now lives in Utah. ** Red Circle on Black Target with no center. Big apple without core. Aimless fruit in sleepless city. Bruised, but given to the poor. Laura Gunnells Miller Laura Gunnells Miller is a writer in southeast Tennessee who enjoys exploring rural backroads and creating travel photography books. Her poetry has been curated by Artemis Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, American Diversity Report and other publications. ** Into the Darkness Graves under a November sky, dark memories of wilting poppies, red blood, black mud, flooded trenches. Mouths without faces, bodies without limbs, fingers,arms, feet; here a skull lingers. Scarlet tissue in a lunar landscape, the dark side of the Moon. Rings of fire, of sacrifice, of heroism, wreaths of poppies, pride, pomp, patriotism. Beyond - vacancy, darkness, the wronged wait in the blackness, the nothingness of oblivion, for the glorious mirage. Stateless, without passports, nameless, awaiting that other, promised country on which the sun never rises. Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher living near Cambridge who also taught in India and Tanzania. She started writing last October after a stay in hospital, following an accident. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies from ten countries, including US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, and Nigeria. Writing has been instrumental in learning to walk again. ** Can 0 Be More than Zero? Sometimes she pushes against the notch in the red ring, thinking it’s a hinge that will open to possibilities, but it doesn’t budge. + Sometimes she stands on a red cliff looking into the black face of a volcano, tired of trying to be chill. + Sometimes she walks in circles at the bus stop, creating the red strokes of a Japanese brush painting, but the bus never comes. Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg’s full-length collection, Frogs Don't Sing Red, was published by Kelsay Books in April 2023 and includes several works nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Most recently, her poetry has appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, MockingHeart Review, Sappho’s Torque, The Ekphrastic Review, Waco WordFest Anthology: MOON, and Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose. She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review. Her poetry, translated into Dutch, can be found at Brabant Cultureel and at https://wwwtransito-ah.blogspot.com/2023/07/sandi-stromberg-vak-27-graf-no-66.html. ** Unborn Eye After Jiro Yoshihara After Tomas Transtromer First thing What do see? What do see, before re-entering? Somewhere back in the iris dark, Still joining the stars. What do see before yesterday returns, Wearing reverential all white, The lining of a black suit worn inside Out, as day is to night. What do see see uncorrupted with your Unborn eyes? Quick, someone is coming, remembering. Christopher Martin Christopher Martin is a poet and Buddhist living by the mouth of the Tyne on the north east coast of England. His work has featured in various publications and events. His debut collection is due out 2024 @theblackcatpoetrypress. ** Blast Crater The surrounding perimeter formed a closed curve, rim still aglow with heat from the mountain of smoking rubble that had collapsed into its epicenter. Hot ash covered everything and hung in the air like a plague of sand flies, biting, blinding. We could see there were no survivors. Then a mild breeze created an updraft, which became a whirlwind whose writhing column soared far into the heavens. We prayed it was loaded with souls at peace. R. A. Allen R. A. Allen's poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly, B O D Y, The Penn Review, RHINO, The Los Angeles Review, Maier Museum of Art Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry, Alba and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for a Best of the Net and two Pushcarts. He lives in Memphis, a city of light and sound. bodyliterature.com/2020/02/17/r-a-allen/ ** monoku 1. not a perfect red circle, like existence itself gembun 2. the black seems more like storm clouds when red is circled within a black background... how brilliant the sunset haynaku 3. enso sacred circle black creates red Daniel Brown Daniel Brown has just published at age 72 his first collection FAMILY PORTRAITS IN VERSE and Other Illustrated Poems published by Epigraph Books. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician and Chronogram Magazine and has been included in Arts Mid-Hudson gallery presentation Poets Respond To Art in Poughkeepsie, NY. ** Aubade with Circle Game after Joni Mitchell Someday I’ll love the bottomless swamp. They will tell him take your time… which means to begin by contemplating a dot, and then to reflect on a line wiggling as a sparkling redfish that spirals close to a dark-blue boat drawn off the coast, beaches with plenty of compact sand, throwing perfect, an auburn frisbee feeling like vinyl, an LP ready to needle the future, then gulf fallen, but recovered by your lover’s hand when the sky was full with high cloudlets. Despite the sloppy throws and blisters, you keep throwing. And catching, captive on the carousel of time… I’ll eventually love August, days dripping by. And the seasons they go round and round. And the frontier of a small radio, jostling the antenna to work—clothes as costume—before wonder, before we caught a dragonfly inside a jar. Cartwheels thru the town. Round with decent looks, and later, we escape the escape room masquerading as an art gallery full of painted ponies we press fingertips on. Lights dot up lines under a starry night to reveal clues which help secure the Declaration of Independence and unscramble wooden blocks to spell: teamwork. A hidden door unlocks. We can’t return we can only look. Yes, I love kissing farewell to old, traditional paint, monsters left inside at palace altars. Dear, let us throw our gentle bodies into the swamp. Peat forms coal, fuel for the simple gesture of joining together, sheets of someday. No, dreams don’t lose their grandeur of coming true… Oh, for the elusive, pristine circle. John Milkereit John Milkereit resides in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of the The Ekphrastic Review. He has published two chapbooks (Pudding House Press) and three full-length collections of poems, including most recently from December, A Place Comfortable with Fire (Lamar University Literary Press).
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