A Book of Beasts, by Royal Rhodes

Centaurs, unicorns, and flying horses
are dreams, but these are possible to ride. (“Zebra”)

Royal Rhodes’s paean to beasts will surely delight. Inspired by the medieval bestiary, the collection is a series of 28 sonnets with animal subjects. Richly descriptive, invocative of medieval texts and fabliaux, the poems are felicitous of meanings associated with each beast. Being earthly and mythological, these beasts which breathe and die like us, partake of our imagination.

Royal takes each animal subject, riding along with it in myriad ways.
I ride hard naked, while the flying mane
whips me, purging me with ghostly pain. (“Horse”)

Does this give you an image of Lady Godiva?

As creatures, they clearly inform a teleological view of our universe—do you see God’s hand in them, does one need more evidence of a God?

The creature that we think bizarre and odd,
creating awe, no odder is than God. (“Kangaroo”)

Of course they’re also emblematic, and we need go no further than “Tiger” whose meaning is of “all our body’s burning,/tongue and touch”. Royal embraces that as a referent of mortality:
If you embrace the dread, the heart will know.
Only a mortal hand or eye could trace
and hold such rare ones close, and let them go,
while deadly terror shows its holy face. (“Tiger”)

The poems treat language with a sense of play, to switch meanings, generally using humor in generous dollops, rinsing out seriousness as a panacea probably.

The sea is rising. All our future ends,
when great white bears will swim where Broadway bends. (“Polar Bear”)

The final sonnet, “The True Zoo” sums up the menagerie nicely, a final indictment of man, but funny.

Download the collection here.

a book of beasts

~

A Book of Beasts, The Illustrated Edition

Red Wolf is pleased to collaborate with Royal with a special illustrated edition. The animal subjects, it is thought, deserve a visual presentation. Irene, who took up the mantle, played the wild card. Untrained, yes, but does the result bring joy? Yes, we think! It led her to a close scrutiny of her animal subjects, and with it, an affirmation of their mesmerising beauty, even the darn spider! We hope you enjoy our serendipitous collaboration.

a book of beasts illustrated edition3

Making small, by Emil Sinclair

Making small
by Emil Sinclair

“Trees are
so very tall;
they make us
look
so very small.”
—Anonymous

So, have you heard the news?
The rivers are overflowing,
or drying up;
the icecaps are melting,
as the seas rise
to the chins of our cities;
the forests are on fire,
burning down the house
of no shame.
The rains come
and do not go;
the graceful elands
wither and die
on plains of dust and ash,
as we play cost
accountant
with Mother Earth.
The Blue Man
of greed—
the fat-taker—
was not banished
by the red seer,
after all.

I heard the crows
this morning,
singing their hymn
of supplication.
The grey squirrels
run along the top
of the fence,
clucking their prayers.
Where is our humility?
Can we surrender
our own hubris
and sacrifice
our self-love
to Persephone
and Great Pan?
We cannot remain
until we have made
ourselves
very small.

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

One Long Summer is Not Enough, by Debi Swim

One Long Summer is Not Enough
by Debi Swim

Now. Now, I need the change
It used to be they were abrupt,
a shock, a dread because I was
young and youth wants sun,
fun, long days in which to play.

Now, I crave each season as it comes
and as it ages comes to the end
I’m ready for the next to begin.
Continuity is what I love as the year
slips gently into its fourths
and forth again, again, again, again.

I need the spring of shoots and buds
the summer of flowers and slinky days,
the fall a time to wind down
and winter a time of rest and mending.

I need them all as the earth needs rain
and sun and harvest and a cooling down
They seep into my innerness and connect –
a symbiosis of life to life, content.

Debi Swim has had poems published in two anthologies, online publications and in the Bluestone Journal for Bluefield College. She is a persistent WV poet who loves to write to prompts.

The Covid Years, by Debi Swim

The Covid Years
by Debi Swim

are evergreen fog, grey-green
tranquil it would seem to some
rather it is a surrender to drab,
dull, bordering on disillusionment.

Follow the science became a corn-
maze of miscues, lies, guesses, hopes
leaving people in a fog of uncertainty
and pointing fingers, scared into total

collapse of sanity, commonsense,
political power gone amok. Shortages,
hoarding, disinfectant seeping into
the rugs and atmosphere – we are afraid

to take a deep breath. Evergreen fog
shades us all. Here’s hoping in years
to come for some sunny, enlightened
hues of health and trust and good will.

Process notes
Sherwin-Williams has named its “Color of the Year” for 2022, and this time it’s Evergreen Fog – a tranquil gray-green hue that takes inspiration from nature.

Debi Swim has had poems published in two anthologies, online publications and in the Bluestone Journal for Bluefield College. She is a persistent WV poet who loves to write to prompts.

On Solitude, by Joan Mazza

On Solitude
by Joan Mazza

Two days alone and I call up the past,
dates with Archie, after dinners out, time
at my house, the other’s quiet presence
a comfort. Sometimes he played guitar
while my dog gazed at him in adoration
and I could read or doze or float in the pool.

Even then I needed extra sleep after
company, no matter how I sought him
out, placed ads to meet more men, looked for
someone better. The bliss of solitude
when they disappeared or I did. I’m older

now, and Archie’s dead, along with his third
wife—a proper wildness match. They lived
apart and got along, compatible,
content in their quirky ways in separate
houses. Balanced solitude without
loneliness or longing. They had just enough.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, Slipstream and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

Becoming a Hermit, by Joan Mazza

Becoming a Hermit
by Joan Mazza

Whoever thought a day of solitude,
thoughtful hours spent quietly alone
would nourish and restore my fortitude?

Back when I greeted others with gratitude,
I couldn’t stand the silence, grabbed the phone
to spare myself one day of solitude.

No plans, no calls, days I spent confused
by the freedom to please myself or roam.
No way do I restore my fortitude

now by being with others. No platitudes
from advice givers who think they’re grown.
I make art for a full day in solitude.

Reveling in wildness, coming a tad unglued
is now a pleasure I would not have owned,
when I needed others to find fortitude.

Call me, if you like, in the interlude
between the crowds of people. Now a crone,
I anticipate a day of solitude—
the best way to restore my fortitude.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, Slipstream and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

In Seclusion, by Joan Mazza

In Seclusion
by Joan Mazza

Isolated and confined in extreme environments,
polar researchers sometimes enter fugue states,
unable to do more than stare when spoken to.
They sleep and feel disoriented, lose track of days,
are easily confused. Depression and boredom
settle in like chronic pain. Motivation skates
outside out of reach. The natural state is lethargy
with torpor seem. No wonder bears hibernate.

Expeditions and remote stations reveal who thrives
and survives in quarantine or exile, who knows how
to dive inward into the unknown self. During this time
when we’re asked to keep our distance, stay home
even if alone, we find our inner resources, discover
who can entertain themselves, who must talk and text,
or turn to TV for company to tamp down
thoughts and feelings before they surface.

Those summers of my childhood in Sound Beach
alone with my mother, no other children near, I read
through all the Reader’s Digest Condensed books
left by the previous owner of that decrepit cottage,
kept a diary, learned to fish, and how to shuck
clams and slurp them on the half shell with lemon
any time I pleased. I played my 45s, set my hair
and polished my nails, although there was no one

to see me preparing for future dates and dinners
I could not envision that summer I was twelve.
Who would have guessed those summers of long
walks in the woods where imagination grew
like the wild grapes and poison ivy on the verge,
would serve me well sixty years later? Confined
to home, I’m reading books I hauled from Florida
to these Virginia woods where only birds call.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, Slipstream and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.