This poem is inspired by Her Room, by Andrew Wyeth (USA) 1963.
 ​https://collection.farnsworthmuseum.org/objects/1251/her-room
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​The Artist Has Laid Down His Brush And is Done
          
for Betsy Wyeth

The same curtains blowing at the window, the same
wallpaper, but peeling a bit now, faded and water-stained.
The conch shell, empty as his chair, blows the same sea across 
the cove of your ear as you lift it to your head like before.

Bring home the gulls to your roof with a long low whistle
from the conch, bring neighbors with casseroles, bring
the dog from his lapping the melt of ice in the dooryard.
Bring your same fingers to draw the curtains aside.

Step through each room, their creaking floors like old bones,
careful and slow. Watch the leaves of his sketchbook ruffle
in the breath of the open window as if he’s thumbing 
them, deciding which drawing or sketch wants paint today.

The same scenes are never to be the same without his careful eye. 
The conch will go silent, the chair unmoved and dusty.
Somehow a shaft of sudden sun slanting the floor won’t be
the same kind of light he saw. Even the dog will not snore the same.

People will call and ask of you now that the artist has laid down
his brush and is done. You won’t answer because you are not the same
as you were just yesterday. They will ask for some small memory
of your time with him and you will say, the wallpaper holds all his secrets.

Carol Willette Bachofner
​
Carol Willette Bachofner is an award-winning poet, memoirist, photographer, and watercolourist. She served as Poet Laureate of Rockland from 2012 -2016. Carol is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Test Pattern, a Fantod of Prose Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2018). She is at work on a mixed genre memoir, A Life Beset With Words.  Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, such as Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, The Comstock Review, Cream City Review, as well as in the anthology, Dawnland Voices: an Anthology of Writings from Indigenous New England (University of Nebraska Press, 2013).

Jazz Flag

A silhouette swims across the starry night,
darkness in a midnight blue backdrop;
A splotch of red where the acrobat's heart is,
representative of a dozen of the best.

And above in the velvet depths of openness,
we see those stars Sirius, Vega, Cassiopeia,
as well as Parker, Gordon, Davis, Coltrane,
Hughes, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti and Corso.
​
Like officers of the line, those heroic artists
just kept on fighting this society's emptiness
by endless improvisation—all emanating
from a red splotch of the acrobat's heart.

Each session—a variation on the ordinary,
but at the same time something new,
and we raise this flag just after sunset
and listen to changes that are always true.

​DH Jenkins

DH Jenkins' poems have appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician, The Tiger Moth Review, The Global South, Bellowing Ark and The Wave. For many years he was a professor of Speech and Writing for UMUC-Asia, living and working in Japan and Korea. He now lives in New Zealand and enjoys hiking in the Southern Alps as well as scuba diving and snorkeling in the Pacific Islands.

Still, Life: 1950s

What can be said to the perfect mother
sitting stone still in the 1950s living room
where you never really lived? Poised, not reading 
words you cannot say, syllables that might crack

the stone sitting room? Still in the 1950s,
she smiles beautifully but doesn’t hear
words you cannot say, syllables that might crack
the polished stairway you creep down. Comfort?

There is none. She smiles but doesn’t hear
grief, pain, anything slightly unpleasant. Still,
you seek comfort, creep down the polished stairway.
Maybe this time she will turn her head, believe your

grief, pain. Instead, anything slightly unpleasant
goes unsaid. You protect her, this beautiful sculpture,
who might, this time, believe you, turn her head
and feel your scowl. It could destroy her,

this beautiful sculpture. The unsaid? The child protects 
the mother, who sits stone still in her 1950s living room.
Don’t allow her to feel the scowl that would destroy her.
You cannot say the words that might crack syllables,

alter the 1950s room, her life. She sits still as stone.
What can be said to the perfect mother?
Your syllables might crack her. Your child words
could destroy her poise, uncover where you really live.

What can be said to the perfect mother?
Poised, she smiles beautifully but doesn’t hear.
Why destroy both child and mother? You’ve never lived
outside cracked words you cannot say. Silent, still.

**

This poem was first published in Shiuli.

​

​Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
 
(after Emily Dickinson)
 
The curlew is the thing 
with feathers, is the beak 
 
wildly waving wide ribbons
that hold back the strands 
 
of storm. That’s the thing 
about curlews, 
 
about hope. Red sky
in the morning....Warning 
 
and delight intersecting, 
flag-like ribbons curling 
 
into another day
maybe. The curlew is 
 
the thing. Even in the middle 
of a hurricane, even on a fragile 
 
bough while earth’s vast tornado 
of despair keeps widening, 
 
widening, the curlew is the thing 
with feathers, is the beak 
 
wildly waving its frayed 
but flapping ribbons 
 
of persistence, of hope. 
Red sky at night, 
 
sailor’s delight. Sky 
widening, widening into 
 
curlews, into hope. 
That’s the thing.
 
**
 
This poem was first published in Valiant Scribe. 

​The Witnesses
            
after the 2018 wildfire in Curlew, Washington
 
Near the confluence 
of Long Alec Creek and the Kettle River, 
the curlew watches its namesake--
town of one hundred--
as residents stare toward the west, 
inhale fear. 
 
Smoke rewrites the sky 
where the curlew once flew. 
Flames attack its map and habitat. 
Ridgelines pulse with what is singed: 
feathers, pines, mountains, horizon
streaked with regret 
 
and the burnt promises
of those not there to witness,
the incineration of branch,
the contagion of spark,
the long, slow burn of loss.
 
O Curlew and curlews,
obscure enough to hide 
once within these safe acres,
even you Grief has found, 
even you.
 
**

Marjorie Maddox

**
 
This poem was first published in Valiant Scribe.
 
**

Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 14 collections of poetry—most recently Begin with a Question and the ekphrastic collections Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (with Karen Elias) and In the Museum of Her Daughter’s Mind, a collaboration with her artist daughter, Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work), and others. She also has published the story collection What She Was Saying and four children’s books. Two new collections of poetry are forthcoming in 2024. Please see www.marjoriemaddox.com 
 
Dr. Karen Elias, who taught college English for 40 years, is an artist/activist, using photography to raise awareness about climate change. Her award-winning work appears in private collections and galleries. She serves as board member of the Clinton County Arts Council, as membership chair, and as curator of the annual juried photography exhibit. In addition to Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For, collaborations with Maddox have appeared in such literary, arts, or medical humanities journals as About Place, Cold Mountain Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Other Journal, Glint, Ekstasis, and Ars Medica. Elias, also a playwright, has had work chosen by the Climate Change Theatre Action and performed in eight countries. 

​Rothko No. 5 / No. 22
 
“Close your eyes 
and you'll see”
 
The heat-haze 
Off the red-hot highway 
That grows across this 
Painted desert 
Like a blood-soaked bed of
Leafless roses 
In a sea of light that 
Shimmers 
And a box of sand that
Swelters
“Yes, I see, I said”
Combustible pools of
Oil and turpentine 
Chasing 
Sunburnt turf
 
“I sense your anger, 
but you are not mad”
 
No one could destroy such
Magnificence
No one, not even he, wields 
Such powers
Under layer upon painstaking layer
An ocean roils 
Obscured
By gleaming gold and sand
“A-wash this desert,” I cry
“Oh, please wash it clean!”
And above the horizon
A gate opens
With a single stroke
 
"Mine eyes have seen" 
"Still gazing inward," he replies
 
When the desert floods
Is it providential precipitation
Or human tears and blood
The year was 1950 
We’re still counting and
Watching the gate
A madman’s mushroom cloud
And when the shockwave crosses
The highway centerline
Razing everything in its path
“Promise me I'll be gone
I have no heir, no next of kin
You cannot hurt me then”
 
Steen W. Rasmussen
 
Steen W. Rasmussen is a native of Denmark and lives in New York City. His interest in writing is rooted in many years of songwriting. His poems have been published by Sparks of Calliope, Lothlorien, Dadakuku, and Voices of Poetry. 
 

Nighthawks
            
                          More coffee, ma’am?
No thanks.
Why do you keep looking at that thing?
What do you care? It’s just something to remember it by.
Yeah, I’d like to forget about it.
              A little more water, please.
                            Sure thing, Mac.
Awfully damn quiet tonight.
‘Cept for your yakking.
Come on, Jimmy. You said we was going to have a nice night.
Well it’s after midnight, so the night’s over.
              (Cough.)
              Got an ashtray?
                            Let me wash one out for you.
So you think we’ll get into a war?
Gloria, Roosevelt says we gotta be prepared
and learn to live with lights off in case of attack.
I hope you don’t get drafted, Jimmy.
Me neither.

​

​Fishermen at Sea    

Dylan! Haul in the nets, lad.
Bring the lamp closer so I can see what we’ve caught.
Cod or flounder?
Watch the rocks! It’s not called the Needles for naught.
Looks like a bit of both.
Thank the Lord we’ve got the meager moonlight to see some money tonight.
Pull with me, Connah! I canna bring in the net alone.
Ah, it’s a night for rollers it is.
That Mervyn’s boat afar?
I canna barely see you, Dylan, but it looks like his dory.
I’m sure he’s left some fish for us. He’s the laziest lembo in all of Wales.

Starry Night 
 
Whorls of stars and planets 
spin around in my head
lighting the sky
while the little town sleeps
the good doctor has let me out
in the field behind the asylum
to capture the panoply of the heaven
whooshing above me
and the one dead cypress
 
Larry Oakner

During the two years of the pandemic, he led a group of "Senior Poets" in a poetry Zoom, and self-published another chapbook entitled, Unwinding The Words last year. He has also had poems published in other online sites. Recent and upcoming publications include Blood & Bourbon, Burningwood Literary Journal, Nassau County Voice in Verse, Ghost City Review, and Red Wolf Press.
​

Gold​

Call us debris, the whorls of a kiss. There’s no verbatim for this lit, shared space. Maybe we were each a TESS in orbit, trailing the universe for inhabitable bodies beyond our own. A brave science, mining for glimmers in the dark. How many hours have we sat and mapped it out, nattering on sweet trajectories under night confetti? With golden nothings scribbling by the fence – chestnut-brown anemones erupted on the bed. Vines in the crimson dusk kinked on our naked feet. Do you see the flowers sprouting from our crowns? Before you, wise ones bade me only kiss where butterflies throb. This! Generations of ranunculi made the pattern in our kiss. So lush, almost obscene. Do the neighbours glimpse our quilted pornography? What about these stars, once silvery, set high? Now they’re honey-smattered low around our gamut-of-yellow sheen.  

Linda Kohler

Linda Kohler lives and writes in Kaurna Country, South Australia, with her three people and a lorikeet. You can find her at lindakohler.com.

​Snowscapes  
 
Yesterday’s filigree branches 
and low, grey clouds 
promised this…  
 
…I wrote a haiku
 
A near whiteout
…I wished
 
My fondness for how falling snow… 
Tamps down the city’s jangling distractions  
 
Fond even of how it can render me invisible to everything 
on the other side of my window…
 
Or am I? 
 
Most of all how snow lends plot, vivacity to the view…
 
The snow-spangled roof across the street 
puts me in mind of Hiroshige…
 
Hiroshige, Master of Rain and Snow
 
I could be Hiroshige’s cat gazing out another window 
overlooking the rice fields of Asakusa
 
Better still, his fine eagle swooping and diving 
over the marshes of Edo Bay     
 
To be a bird right now would suit me fine…soaring above 
this conglomerate of rooftops, circling spires, 
dodging towers, scoping gorges 
 
For a glimpse at the ripples of sidewalk life…
 
Best of all to touch down on a lightly-dusted ledge 
or shoulder of a gargoyle…  
 
Watch the tiny crystals emerge from a snow cloud
Float, twist, turn, collide, tumble and take shape, 
facet after facet, branch after branch 
into six-pointed star-ness…
 
Or melt. 
 
These would not be Hiroshige’s snowflakes… 
His dot the sky like constellations, 
eliding the details; more intent 
on the aerodynamics
of imagination.
 
Almost without notice, the squall beyond this window 
has subsided—the atmosphere no longer 
in motion…  
 
The roof across the street does not evoke Edo. 
I am not cat or bird…
 
In the blink of an eye I have been jolted 
from one dream world back 
to this one, 
 
Fitful, yet poised as always to drift 
ever so easily into the next…
                                        the next…
                                              and the next…        
                                                        .                                                                      
Kay S. Lindsey
 
Originally a visual artist, latterly, a poet, Kay S. Lindsey enjoys collaborating with creatives in variety of disciplines, most recently, a cellist. In 2001, her poem, “The Origin of Applause,” written in collaboration with a visual artist, was transformed into a public art work and permanently installed at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, Memphis, TN. Her work has appeared in journals, several anthologies and chapbooks, online and performed. A Washington, DC native, she’s called Philadelphia, NYC, L.A., Sacramento, Hawaii, San Antonio, Memphis and now Hyattsville, Maryland, home.

The Entering

For years, her soul had not resembled this,
the girl who made the goddess Venus seethe
with envy. Possibilities of bliss
had seemed remote. To live was just to breathe
and try to staunch the hopeless flow of loss
she suffered daily. All her flowers had died,
and underfoot a melancholy moss
was withering. In mourning, tired-eyed,
she never even dreamt that Love was near
until the sudden turning of a key,
romance of roses, goddess gown, the cheer
of zephyrs rustling through a cypress tree.
She hesitates a moment – then she starts
to enter; overhead, a cherub darts.

F.F. Teague

F.F. Teague (Fliss) is a copyeditor/copywriter by day and a poet/composer come nightfall. She lives in Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham (UK). Her poetry has been published by a number of journals and her first collection is titled From Pittville to Paradise. Her other interests include art, film, and photography.
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