A Yawn of a Butterfly, a Handful of Confetti, by Dmitry Blizniuk

A Yawn of a Butterfly, a Handful of Confetti
by Dmitry Blizniuk

The flying snow outside the window –
huge flakes, a slanted white fringe –
made the room look like a firm soap bubble,
or a capsule of a space ship.
We, astronauts of love,
were comfortably settled in it,
and the winter silence –
the burlap wrapping Hannibal’s elephants
crossing the Alps of life –
made us confident,
while your cream-white, sleepy waterfall of curtains,
gave us comfort.
In such winter evenings, non-Euclidean,
warped by the snowfall,
you can feel your roots.
Like a pine, you let them touch
the eerie depth of millenniums,
go deeper and deeper, like black multiarmed lightning.
How big is the civilization? –
just a yawn of a butterfly,
a handful of confetti
thrown on a piece of raw meat…

Do you remember the evening BI (before the Internet),
when electricity was cut in the whole building,
and we suddenly became a thousand years older,
got filled with animal wisdom and darkness,
but were still lit by an inner light,
usually invisible?
Like blind people who live by touch, by poking fingers,
like sneaking wart hogs,
we lit candles, searched for books,
had mysterious conversations, listening to the rustles, whispers,
drops of sound, which touched the surface of the lake of silence,
to the flinching fridge,
to the thump of the doors opening and closing in the stairwell,
to flickering ribbons of the voices between the concrete walls,
or to the murmur of our own circulatory systems,
as if we were in a womb.
Do you remember, fifteen years ago,
the chandelier suddenly went off,
as if a royal golden octopus
had died of a heart attack?
The tape-recorder stopped working.
Paganini’s melody came to a sudden end,
as if the violinist hand had been chopped off.
The whitened fingers were still clenching the bow tight,
but the music grew out of itself and played on and on –
in our minds, in the silence.

Who are we?
shipwrecked, on the islands of souls,
we don’t venture into the depth of the jungle.
We stay put on the beach where we can be rescued (do you believe it?)
and where there are no leopards.
We swim, fish, and sunbathe.
We argue and suffer from loneliness,
but we never exactly know what’s hidden behind our backs,
how many ways can lead to other worlds.
Sometimes the starry hunger
pushes us to a secret door,
however no one but impostors has the key to it.
For we and only we are the keys to all doors,
to all holes in time and space.

(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)

Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Pinch, Salamander, Willow Springs, Grub Street, Magma Poetry and many others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. Member of PEN America.
Poets & Writers Directory:
http://www.pw.org/directory/writers/dmitry_blizniuk

Qi, by Ron. Lavalette

Qi
by Ron. Lavalette

I think I remember feeling it,
silently ebbing and flowing,
altering everything about me.

I recall my first encounter,
ages ago, at the University
in that meditation class,

OM-ing and focusing on breath
under the blue-sky maples
with Professor Gurumeister;

and I guess I sailed, then,
unanchored, adrift, imagining
I could avoid current events.

But I’m almost ancient now, and
the Morning News reminds me
I’ve forgotten the Guru’s name.

No matter; no matter. Nothing
matters anymore; I breathe deep,
unfurl my inner sail, and I’m gone.

Ron. Lavalette is a very widely published, award-winning writer living on the Canadian border in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. His first chapbook, Fallen Away (Finishing Line Press), is now available at all standard outlets. More than 250 pieces of his poetry and short prose have been published in both print and pixel form in journals, reviews, and anthologies ranging alphabetically from Able Muse and the Anthology of New England Poets through the World Haiku Review. A reasonable sample of his published work can be viewed online at EGGS OVER TOKYO.

Looking Glass, by Ron. Lavalette

Looking Glass
by Ron. Lavalette

It seems like all the windows
we used to look through
to see our bright futures
have turned into dark,
accusatory mirrors
intent on reminding us
of our failed yesterdays
and our current miasma.

It seems like yesterday’s
beneficent light-givers
have turned into dark
foreboding crystal balls
into which we’re forced
to gaze at tomorrow’s
inevitable nightmares.

Ron. Lavalette is a very widely published, award-winning writer living on the Canadian border in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. His first chapbook, Fallen Away (Finishing Line Press), is now available at all standard outlets. More than 250 pieces of his poetry and short prose have been published in both print and pixel form in journals, reviews, and anthologies ranging alphabetically from Able Muse and the Anthology of New England Poets through the World Haiku Review. A reasonable sample of his published work can be viewed online at EGGS OVER TOKYO.

Ramps, by Jeff Burt

Ramps
by Jeff Burt

The coon froze on the fence as if sculpted,
a taxidermist’s art, not a flinch or tic of muscle,
not a wandering eye of inspection or fear.
I was no enemy, so moved, but fixed the coon remained,
and I saw two wet waifs on the bottom of the other side
of the fence waiting for cues to cross from their mother.
They could not stay still for long, their cells animate,
climbed, slipped, and climbed again,
never drawing a turn of neck nor hiss of disapproval.
I spoke, said time to get along in a low assured voice,
and the mother broke, the two young slow to master
the top of the fence, tripping, going backwards.
How exhausted she appeared, clean but haggard,
not frightened or anxious. One young fell,
could no longer climb, so the mother took the strong one
toward a trail behind my neighbor’s house,
looking back as if to orphan the weaker one.
I took a wide board saved for repairs
and made a ramp to the fence top and poked
the little one with the handle of a rake
until it used the ramp to make the top of the fence
and slip off to the other side to join mother and sib.
The mother turned at the corner of the house
and looked back at me and I wish to say
I saw acknowledgment, perhaps an animal thanks,
but it was weariness I saw. She was beat.

I remember this today as I disengage from work
serving a mother with children who escaped Syria
on a boat to a camp in Italy where she said she played
the part of shepherd for her kids, herding them here
and there, protecting them from human wolves,
entire days spent at times in lines for food
or haggling for a transport to where her uncle lived,
and I saw those eyes again, not thankful for my assistance,
but weary, fixed on a place in a landscape I could not envision,
a stare into nothingness, a blank.
Today my ramp was words, direction,
of assistance, grants, aid for her children,
a slow elevation of her vision to find
the point of escape, of rescue,
in the worn and faded future she beheld.

I remember my daughter eight months pregnant with Covid
walking the hills of Vermont for ramps,
wild allium, leeks, so her husband could make a pesto
that cannot be purchased, home-made,
and thus avoid human contact.
She converses internally with her child
at all hours, tired, ready to birth, yet
not, the fear of the virus, the apprehension,
the ignorance of not having a predictable outcome.
Her voice on video is monotone except for when she speaks
to her child in utero, when like music
it falls and rises, rises higher to an almost clarinet’s squeak,
or when she speaks of finding clusters of ramps,
fistfuls, the pearls of the soil taken from the clam of wet dirt.
so I study allium, study pesto, pull a few wild leek
from the corner of the yard by the same fence
the raccoon had almost lost her young,
and my daughter and I talk of harvesting ramps
for ten minutes, and this is all I can provide,
not absolve the fear of separation, of illness,
but a slight elevating lever from her distress to the joy
that the world could provide for her and her baby,
a bridge for all of the internal discussions she has
to take root again in the external world,
to which she will, as I have done, yield.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California with his wife. He has contributed previously to Red Wolf Journal, Williwaw Journal, Heartwood, and many other journals.

Trestle, by Jeff Burt

Trestle
by Jeff Burt

We had gone as far as the trestle that led to the pond
with its rickety boards and missing wood
           that left holes to look down into the creek
and wondered if we had enough daylight left

to walk across and watch the sunset
sparkle the water, the few geese swim
           without wake, the duckweed once brilliant
turn to a lesser shade of neon.

The dog wanted to run across, frightened
of the tremor of loose footings.
           naked bolts and crossbars,
but head up, seemingly aware of each paw-trap,

never slipped, not in gracefulness,
but in awkward strides, in the manner a tether
           of a boat in a storm pulls taut, relaxes,
pulls taut, and the boat lurches, survives the storm.

Emerson’s divine animal came to mind,
the body, but our mind and eyes
           looking into the near future
were too far from ground to be trusted.

Perhaps the republic has traveled
just so, ignoring the missing architecture,
           the gaps in justice and equality,
a trestle made for the train of commerce

but not the evened path for others.
Perhaps we have wanted not bliss
           but ignorance, pretending not to look,
to keep our heads trained and vision up.

My mother told me often as I wiped dishes
to only see the good in people
           because the bad will be evident
whether you try to see it or not,

and perhaps that is like crossing
an old trestle, a blithe unawareness
           until your sole fails to find firmament
and your ankle scrapes against a ragged board.

The dog feels tremors, and moves.
If we avoid seeing, we plunge.
           We choose to cross. For the others
who traipse this trestle, I count the missing

and damaged planks that float without anchor,
the planks with wooden spirit worn
           and split, make a date to return,
a list of lumber and coated common nails.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California with his wife. He has contributed previously to Red Wolf Journal, Williwaw Journal, Heartwood, and many other journals.

In Apollo’s House, by Emil Sinclair

In Apollo’s House
by Emil Sinclair

Pan’s forest carnival got too wild
and noisy for me;
too much joy and pain.
So I live here now in Apollo’s house,
where reason rules
and cosmos is king.
Here truth casts no shadow into lies;
and ideas are clear and distinct,
as Cartesian as Descartes.
Words mean what they mean,
and not what we say.
It is cold here now in Apollo’s house;
the sun he lifts for others
brings no warmth to him.

Sometimes at night,
under moon and stars,
from the wooden deck out back,
I listen to the sounds of the woods.
I can hear Pan’s pipes,
and your sweet voice whisper;
I can feel your breath
on the back of my neck,
in the warmth of the evening breeze.
But when I awake in the morning,
after a fitful broken sleep,
I can no longer remember
my nightly dreams.
Now that I live here alone
in Apollo’s house.

Emil Sinclair is the pseudonym of a sometime poet and longtime philosophy professor in New
York City.