Sabbatical, by Alan Walowitz

Sabbatical
by Alan Walowitz

Being a good boy never was so easy:
the tables set, the garbage taken out,
the mothers not ignored.
And even now, years since being good
failed to be its own reward;
the cats are fed, books properly stowed,
the wives have been laid,
sometimes left satisfied.

I’d rather I knew how
to curl up in a corner with some trash.
Take the time I’m owed easy.
Let the clock on the wall
beat a lonesome tattoo.
Let the auditors scour the books
and track the embezzled hours.
Let doctors search for the pulse
that sleeps deep inside my being.

I’ll wiggle a toe
when they carry me out
should I decide
I’m staying.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written both trans-continentally, and mostly remotely, with poet Betsy Mars.

Père Lachaise Cemetery Diptych, by Karla Linn Merrifield

Père Lachaise Cemetery Diptych
by Karla Linn Merrifield

#1

Une
rose
blanche pour
Héloise
et Abelard, deux âmes—
les amants qui aiment aujourd’hui

One
rose
white for
Heloise
and Abelard, two souls—
two lovers who do love today

#2

Une
rose
blanche pour
Frédéric
Chopin— l’âme qui jeue
parfums d’une polonaise perdue

One
rose
white for
Frédéric
Chopin— his soul plays
perfumes of a lost Polish dance

Karla Linn Merrifield has had 1000+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 15 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, recently nominated for the National Book Award, was inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars and published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Web site: https://www.karlalinnmerrifield.org/; blog at https://karlalinnmerrifeld.wordpress.com/; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel;

Look, by Alan Walowitz

Look,
by Alan Walowitz

Three generations of a Bronx family died Sunday when a speeding SUV carrying seven people — including three little girls — vaulted off an overpass and plunged 60 feet into the Bronx Zoo, killing everyone in the car.
–NY Daily News, April 30, 2012

most days I travel south on the Parkway
never even see the Bronx River though my mom says,
she took me fishing once I was a kid
and this time of night can’t see nothing
even if there’s water down there–

–the el’s on my east,
but a train hardly comes
and on the west’s the zoo where I hardly go
now that I’m always nights
but tell you the truth,
I could stand to calm there an hour some day.
Ten bucks for parking’s a joke
considering what I make–

then I get close to the place
where the minivan drove crazy,
hit the Jersey barrier,
then flew high over the iron rail
and into a part of the zoo they don’t use no more–
good thing no one was below,–

traffic slows to a crawl looking and looking
though it’s already two days old
and this ain’t some pisshole
where nothing happens, this is the Bronx.

The spot marked in red where it went flying
and there’s a bunch of plastic flowers on the side
and a photo-guy is carrying his boxy camera
on a path along the Parkway
and what looks like a regular Bronx guy,
cool in camouflage, is leaning over the rail
to look down, but don’t know why–

the van’s gone,
the abuelas and niñas gone,
the mother who was driving and the titi gone.
I’m no rubber neck; I just want to drive, get home,
but the people that got to look they look
and make it stop-and-go and dangerous as hell for me,
and what, I’m not gonna slow down and look?

and, God, those kids, such a long way down.
Jesus, Lord God, in heaven
will you only look down sometimes
and take the goddamn time to

look?

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written both trans-continentally, and mostly remotely, with poet Betsy Mars.

Our Words Began the Imagination, by Karla Linn Merrifield

Our Words Began the Imagination
by Karla Linn Merrifield

of time, its construct of eons
and nanoseconds. Elasticity
sticks to my tongue and stretches
across your upper palate as we
attempt to pronounce the number
of hours to germinate the idea of love.

Likewise is distance reinvented
every instance your synapses
trick your lips into giving voice
to the exactitude of bird migration.
And my axons and my dendrites pulse
with the articulation of new latitudes.

At long last miles and years evaporate;
we are able to utter in unison: time is
the longest distance between two places,
two bodies and their minds. But with
practice we are able to sing a belief as do
peach-faced lovebirds — Agapornis roseicollis.

Karla Linn Merrifield has had 1000+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 15 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, recently nominated for the National Book Award, was inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars and published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Web site: https://www.karlalinnmerrifield.org/; blog at https://karlalinnmerrifeld.wordpress.com/; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel;

Brief Stop at the Whitney, by Alan Walowitz

Brief Stop at the Whitney
by Alan Walowitz

We’ll text our friends,
and tweet our acquaintances–
time to take photos of the Hoppers
and post them on Facebook.

Then, at leisure on the bus, we can see
if the Nighthawks are secretly snarling
or their beaks are empty as sieves.
We’ll blow up the naked woman
standing in the sun and examine her skin.
Does she have the texture of a reptile
or does the canvas poke through
the pigment like a knife?

Time enough for the others in our party
to study the floor plan for the rest rooms,
eye with envy the nearest exit,
cross their arms over their chests,
to keep their anxious hearts from bouncing out
and bounding down the stairs like a Slinky,
a pram gone wild, or a Dali if, God forbid,
they choose to proceed through their time here
with such little intention.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written both trans-continentally, and mostly remotely, with poet Betsy Mars.

3-D Memories, by Debi Swim

3-D Memories
by Debi Swim

I begin to forget what happened
just yesterday as
the distant past loses its sepia
coloration and is no longer
one-dimensional, flat, insipid
becomes a hologram image
that teleports me
to those living moments again
Why?
I can’t undo it. I can’t right it.
We’ve all moved on
carrying yesterday’s weight
squeezing the baggage
into the hidden places…
I’m trying to navigate this
difficult passage
between ‘Waiting for God’
and ‘Do not go gentle, rage’
One seems too passive
the other too violent.
But what do I do with these
years before the end
when raging doesn’t seem to help
and capitulation
like copping out?

Process notes:
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is a poem by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
“Waiting for God” is a British sitcom that ran from June 1990 to October 1994.
I woke from a dream into the scene of a past incident. Maybe this was traumatic stress disorder, but it felt like I was back in that moment, reliving it with a new perception of accountability that left me in tears and rage. I can only hope this is not what old age memories are always like.

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

Twilight Fox, by Robert Walton

Twilight Fox
by Robert Walton

Hiking down from rock spires
As day ended,
A gray fox —
Muzzle drooped low,
Tongue dust red —
Crossed the trail
In front of me.

He stopped, trembling,
A loop of drool
Sagging from his mouth,
Touching dust.
He stared at it.

I kicked a pebble
And he saw me,
A wild star flashing in his eye.
Gray lightning streaked
One more time
Around the next bend.

I found him stretched on golden grass
A little farther on,
Last steps taken,
That wild star
Still burning free.

I spoke,
Though words couldn’t soothe him
Or even me:
Buddy
I’d like to give you a hand.

But the wild star faded with my words
And dusk’s dry cloak,
soft and cool,
Folded around us both.

Robert Walton retired from teaching after thirty-six years of service at San Lorenzo Middle School. Walton’s novel Dawn Drums won the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction. “Sockdologizer”, his dramatization of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, won the Saturday Writers 2020 Everything Children contest. Most recently, his award winning collection of stories, Joaquin’s Gold, was published on Kindle.
website : http://chaosgatebook.wordpress.com/

Relative Distance, by Ron. Lavalette

Relative Distance
by Ron. Lavalette

I suppose I’ll be up late again tonight,
with the white high full moon
in the cold, almost-springtime sky
banging on the windowsill
screaming to be let in,
and you so far away.

I suppose that in two months’ time
the grass will have greened
and I will lie again in your arms,
having forgotten completely
the shadows of these midnight clouds
racing across the deadleaf lawn.

Tonight, though,
it’s late and I’m awake,
thinking of you
staring up at the same silent moon
                   a quarter million miles away.

Ron. Lavalette is a very widely published poet living on the Canadian border in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. His premier chapbook, Fallen Away, is now available from Finishing Line Press. His poetry and short prose has appeared extensively 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 at EGGS OVER TOKYO: http://eggsovertokyo.blogspot.com

As It Should Be, by Ron. Lavalette

As It Should Be
by Ron. Lavalette

This morning’s forecast
requires no translation.
There is nothing unintelligible
about the sunshine, nothing
open to interpretation, nothing
equivocal. No.
                       This morning
the lawn—if brown can be a lawn,
if a lawn is a mat of last year’s leaves—
this morning, then, at long last
is finally and totally frost-free,
no snow left anywhere, just a
slowly warming too-long cold
and the promise of a soon Spring.

Ron. Lavalette is a very widely published poet living on the Canadian border in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. His premier chapbook, Fallen Away, is now available from Finishing Line Press. His poetry and short prose has appeared extensively 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 at EGGS OVER TOKYO: http://eggsovertokyo.blogspot.com

Rust, Pepper, by Ron. Lavalette

Rust, Pepper
by Ron. Lavalette

It’s hard, living here, not to
want to be a tender poet, not to
wax poetic and rhapsodic when I
step out onto the deck at dawn
as the last tendrils of fog fade,
the first birdsong of the day
rising, a delicate prelude; hard
not to give in, not to write
about wispy cloud and fragile
early leaf unfurling in early Spring.

But I’m not like that. No.
Morning’s birdsong is for nerds.
Not for me the silver sunrise; rust is
where I really live. Give me instead
the mid-afternoon call of ravenous
crows, swooping down on carion.

I can tell you this much:
faced with a panful of fresh-caught
trout, I’ll choose the coarse-ground
pepper every time, leave the lilt of
saffron for some other kind of poet.

Ron. Lavalette is a very widely published poet living on the Canadian border in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. His premier chapbook, Fallen Away, is now available from Finishing Line Press. His poetry and short prose has appeared extensively 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 at EGGS OVER TOKYO: http://eggsovertokyo.blogspot.com