Time and Distance, by Alan Walowitz

Time and Distance
by Alan Walowitz

Two trains leave Whoville and Anytown at noon
and we’re told to determine when they meet,
not to mention if the bodies will be laid aside the tracks,
or they’ll be carted off in refrigerated trucks–
so much for the beauty and synergy of math.
Then, soon as we realize it’s not us on a train
bound for oblivion, it’s only our canned goods lined up
on the patio table to be scrubbed and bleached,
and we watch as the labels fade in the warm spring sun.
After a while we can’t tell the garbanzos from the pigeon peas.
Yes, we hoped for the taste of some future hummus,
but maybe those nasty limas could be sufficient for now–
if only this doesn’t turn out to be the rest of our lives,
and it’s just another maddening and unscheduled stop.

Process notes: I hate math and lima beans and needless deaths and washing my groceries.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love was published by Osedax Press, and his full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press.

Unfamiliar Terrain, by Alan Toltzis

Unfamiliar Terrain
by Alan Toltzis

Driving a new car, in a new town,
in grinding traffic, switching lanes,
not knowing their curves
or my blind spots,
fumbling for controls—
nothing’s where it should be.
The radio grates off-kilter rhythms.
The GPS displays the wrong destination.

But it’s not long before
that same music
plays near the ground meat
in the supermarket aisle.
Blood pools
where cellophane meets Styrofoam.

I look up some night
and think it’s morning
because the moon
is full again,
its craters staring
me down in bed.

Process Notes: Visiting or moving to a new area can be disorienting and feel surreal. I was trying to capture that experience in this poem.

Alan Toltzis is the author of 49 Aspects of Human Emotion, The Last Commandment, and Nature Lessons. A two-time Pushcart nominee, he has published in numerous print and online journals including, Grey Sparrow, The Wax Paper, Black Bough Poetry, Eye Flash Poetry, and Poetry NI. Find him online at alantoltzis.com and follow him @ToltzisAlan.

Texas, by Alan Toltzis

Texas
by Alan Toltzis

I flew
into the west Texas sunset,
miles of brown-grey plains
rigged and pumping under me.
The day deepened like love,
the way orange paint
dies back
two shades
as it dries.

Process Notes: Sometimes, I carry images around with me for decades before they work their way into a poem. That’s the case here. Once, I watched miles and miles of oil wells as I was flying to the West coast. About 30 years later, after I had painted a door the same shade as that sunset, I was reminded of the view from the window of the plane and wrote the poem.

Alan Toltzis is the author of 49 Aspects of Human Emotion, The Last Commandment, and Nature Lessons. A two-time Pushcart nominee, he has published in numerous print and online journals including, Grey Sparrow, The Wax Paper, Black Bough Poetry, Eye Flash Poetry, and Poetry NI. Find him online at alantoltzis.com and follow him @ToltzisAlan.

October, East-bound On I-80, by Greg Stidham

October, East-bound On I-80
by Greg Stidham

Brisk Nebraska winds whip
colorful early brittling leaves,
swirling in circles round the gas
pumping into the camper-pulling car.
The wind’s warmth belies the onset
of autumn’s coming frosts,
and the ghosts and goblins come begging
on the Eve of All Hallows.
Later the western horizon’s
gold and rose hues at sunset
create a calm camper-bound evening
before an early morning merger
back onto the frenetic
interstate traffic heading home.

Greg Stidham is a retired pediatric intensivist (ICU physician) currently living in Kingston, Ontario, with his wife Pam and their two foundling “canine kids.” Greg’s passion for medicine has yielded in retirement to his other lifelong passions—literature and creative writing.

At A Campground In Nebraska In Spring, by Greg Stidham

At A Campground In Nebraska In Spring
by Greg Stidham

Nothing seems stale, but nothing seems new.
I look at everything through a hazy hue,
a fog that makes everything unclear.

To the west I see a sun setting rustily
and quietly, over bare tops of wheat stalks.

To the sides, north and south,
skies are mostly dark, though
no stars are quite ready to glow.

Behind, I don’t want to look.
It’s all black already, with only
highway haze to remind me
that there is still light.

Greg Stidham is a retired pediatric intensivist (ICU physician) currently living in Kingston, Ontario, with his wife Pam and their two foundling “canine kids.” Greg’s passion for medicine has yielded in retirement to his other lifelong passions—literature and creative writing.

The Kansas I remember, by Greg Stidham

The Kansas I remember
by Greg Stidham

is one of rolling hayfields
on both sides of I-135 north,
from Wichita to Salina, gold grass
as far as the eye can see,
all the way west to the horizon.
A dark drape hangs there,
over the earth’s end, though the air
smells of sweet mown grass,
punctuated only once by the stench
of fresh manure fertilizer.
And later, the pure clean smell
of ozone, creeping over the hayfields,
as dusk falls too quickly,
and the hairs on my arms bristle
before the first explosion of lightning,
the drumbeat of hail on the roof
preceding even the thunder.

Greg Stidham is a retired pediatric intensivist (ICU physician) currently living in Kingston, Ontario, with his wife Pam and their two foundling “canine kids.” Greg’s passion for medicine has yielded in retirement to his other lifelong passions—literature and creative writing.

That Storm At The Lake, by John Grey

That Storm At The Lake
by John Grey

There was something about that feeling
as if oppression and heat had followed us to the lake,
as if that same thunderhead
linked this solitary spot to the city.
We sat back on the banks and watched the dark sky move in,
felt that sag in the way of things
and then heard that rumble from somewhere off
like the distant guns must have sounded in Paris.
All that journey and we hadn’t gone anywhere.
But then lightning ignited the sky
and a crack of thunder boomed so loud
it shook the distant mountains
and rain started to come down
so hard we thought we’d drown in it.
We sat there, didn’t move.
If we were in the city, we would have scattered,
raced for shelter.
We were drenched to the skin
just so we could be some place we were.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Willard and Maple and Red Coyote.

From One Place To Another, by John Grey

From One Place To Another
by John Grey

How did I ever come by this sense of dread
when all I’m doing is moving from
one town to the next?
Why does everyone I drive by
seem so content in these places where they live,
even when they obviously rent.
Why do they all look as if they’ve been
there forever, as if their bones, their skin,
are just part of the house’s carapace
along with the windows and the shingles
and the shutters.

Why is my heart pumping
like a dozen of these hearts?
I look in the eyes
of a woman in a garden.
They are blue and broad
and making a stand there.
An army of moving vans
would not budge her from her roses.

So why do I move so easily
through the streets?
Why, even when I’m driving,
does it feel as if the wind is blowing me?
I feel like a traitor
to that first house we ever bought.
If this neighborhood had its way,
it’d line me up against a white-paneled fence
and shoot me.

Miles ahead of me, another house awaits,
its family of ten years
on a journey as weird, incomprehensible as mine.
We may even cross each other’s paths,
a look of fear, of understanding,
flashing between us.
They may be heading for a house
sold cheaply because the last
of its occupants passed on.
It makes me think of the dead
and the reluctant moving they must do.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Willard and Maple and Red Coyote.

If In Doubt, Remember, by John Grey

If In Doubt, Remember
by John Grey

Strange how a sentimental mood
wipes clean all recent details.
Ten years of hearing, seeing,
touching, tasting,
vanished like my last breath.
Such a sense of utter solitude.
Do people even speak anymore?
Do they draw near?
All is remote, events seem dimly,
but how aware, the half-conscious.
I’m in a lost, forgotten corner of the earth
journeying to a lost, forgotten corner of my mind.
As existence moves away,
I can slip out,
stay increasingly behind.
The present is the illusion here.
I have that feeling about me now
of a long time ago.
Mankind has left in its boats.
I’m the shore, the last memory.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Willard and Maple and Red Coyote.

The Rome Notebook, by Barbara Daniels

The Rome Notebook
by Barbara Daniels

Cherubim fall from golden cupolas,
gilded niches, sham ceiling ribs,
false circle of sky. Galatea turns

in wind, red scarf arcing
above her, move, countermove
fading already in honeyed light.

Is it perfection—blood oranges
squeezed into tall glasses, tuna,
tomatoes, fennel, corn?

The day moves deep into blurs
of bare shoulders— your children
who swim to your arms

Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.