PDF Release of Journeying, Fall 2020 Issue 17

I am pleased to announce the release of the Fall 2020 Issue.

The poets with work in the Journeying edition are:

Misky Braendeholm
Paula Bonnell
Corbett Buchly
Jeff Burt
Alan Cohen
Carolyn Clark
Barbara Daniels
Mark Danowsky
Holly Day
Edilson Ferreira
Peter Goodwin
John Grey
Diane Jackman3
Gurupreet K. Khalsa
Ron. Lavalette
Lori Levy
Marie C Lecrivain
Karla Linn Merrifield
Shelly Narang
Akshaya Pawaskar
John D Robinson
Judith Sanders
Emil Sinclair
Elizabeth Spencer Spragins
Greg Stidham
Ivor Steven
Debi Swim
Alan Toltzis
Mark Tulin
Elise Woods
Mantz York

You may download a copy of the PDF release here.

Journeying Fall 2020 Issue 17

You’re invited to submit to our new issue, titled The Reaper. Read submission guidelines here. You may also find us over at the other site at Red Wolf Editions. Happy writing!

Irene Toh
Editor
Fall 2020

Against the Rules, by Diane Jackman

Against the Rules
by Diane Jackman

I make this journey today
when we have laid you in the ground.
I cannot sit in an empty house
and so I drive through the rules of pandemic

to the place where we were happy last,
the ruins of the leper hospital
falling into the northern sea.
Though I am confined to the car,

I gaze through the broken arch
where still the Portland sheep
and rust-coated cattle graze,
survivors, with me, of that remembered day.

I drive home strangely comforted.

Diane Jackman’s poetry has appeared in small press magazines and anthologies, and has won or placed in several competition. Starting as a children’s writer she now concentrates on poetry. She is passionately interested in medieval rabbit warrens and Anglo-Saxon literature. She runs a poetry café in Brandon in the heart of the Breckland, England’s desert.

Ars Poetica, by Karla Linn Merrifield

Ars Poetica
by Karla Linn Merrifield

Here is dark morph northern fulmar,
one among fifty thousand I will see,
precisely as many as my thoughts
on the average human day, eight percent

of them but echoes of an original—
we think, rethink.
I have an idea:
I wish to be a seabird,

then invent the doppelgänger image.
I wish to glide far and wide above
the Bering Sea as does the archetypal
specimen of Fulmaris glacialis

who flies into this doubling line
to complete the closing couplet.

Karla Linn Merrifield has had 800+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the 2019 full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. In early 2021, her Half a World of Kisses will be published by Truth Serum Press (Australia) under its new Lindauer Poets imprint. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars; the book is slated to be published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY).

.

Lockdown, by Adrienne Stevenson

Lockdown
by Adrienne Stevenson

there’s great discomfort, sitting
on this razor’s edge of boredom
all voices muted, filtered, distant
human contact dulled to a wave
smiling with eyes only

our decisions all pragmatic
we bow to the necessity of distance
keenest pain that of loneliness
belatedly, we begin to realize
how much we need others

even if we could travel
and that’s forbidden now
where would we go to escape?
no haven is secure enough
all choices harsh

Adrienne Stevenson is a Canadian living in Ottawa, Ontario. A retired forensic scientist, she writes poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction. Her poetry has been published in Bywords, Constellate Magazine, Quills, Scarlet Leaf Review, Blood & Bourbon, The Wire’s Dream, The Literary Nest, The Poet-On the Road, Ottawa Poets Pathway Lampman Challenge chapbook, Time and Again Poetry Anthology chapbook, and 20/20 Vision by Canadian Authors Association-National Capital Branch.

Arrival CDG – 2014, by Carolyn Clark

Arrival CDG – 2014
by Carolyn Clark
                                     for Sean and Caroline

Our white mare follows me
even across oceans:
transported inadvertently
past la douane
one white horsehair
on my jacket, brand “Avalanche.”

This level crossing of la banlieue
the Blue line at first glance so similar to Rockville’s
Red line: above ground, green and below…

but – Sycamores – here there are more of them,
Isis’ gift,
and ubiquitous graffiti.

Similarities abound,
parallels to Tribeca, trains of NY.

Yet here these trees adapt, hang on.
And graffiti? Why try to erase
that which cannot be (erased).
A deeper history here relives the pain
of centuries as if it were yesterday.

I’m crossing towards Paris, past
crumbled buildings and crumpled litter
that stills swirl in place,
yet today the early light,
and hope, slices of fresh shade,
cool in summer,
put on a fresh face.

Carolyn Clark, Ph.D., is a devoted teacher and a personal trainer. Indebted to teachers at Cornell University, Brown University, and The Johns Hopkins University for degrees in Classics-related fields, she enjoys riding, writing woodlands lyric poetry, and finding mythology everywhere.

Lost Summer, by Jon Wesick

Lost Summer
by Jon Wesick

White walls, beige carpet, popcorn ceiling, three bookshelves, unused Quebec and Nova Scotia guidebooks, wooden sword, window AC unit with blinking change-filter light, indigo loveseat, IKEA coffee table, Kleenex, Kindle, tea mug, fountain pen, seven plastic storage boxes, exercycle, red-and-gold poster from my feature at the Kerouac Café, chicken stock, canned tomatoes, five pounds of brown rice, cherry mead fermenting in a gallon jug, stand mixer, toaster oven, busted microwave, stove with two broken burners I won’t report to the maintenance staff so proud in their refusal to wear face masks, six pair of shoes, disinfectant wipes by the door locked to keep the virus out, two file cabinets, last paycheck, first Social Security check, full-size latex mattress, meditation bench, Thich Nhat Hahn calendar, desk, two office chairs, laptop for Netflix and Zoom meetings

White walls, beige carpet, popcorn ceiling, unused guidebooks, white walls, beige carpet, popcorn ceiling, white walls, beige carpet, popcorn ceiling

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. “Richard Feynman’s Commute” shared third place in the 2017 Rhysling Award’s short poem category. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom as well as several novels and most recently the short-story collection The Alchemist’s Grandson Changes His Name. http://jonwesick.com

Ablutions, by Fred Zirm

Ablutions
by Fred Zirm

Now we sing Happy Birthday to ourselves
twice, just in case we don’t make it to
next year, as we wash our hands like surgeons,
like that Scottish lady, like Pilate, like priests
in preparation or repentance or faith or fear
for all the good and ill our touch has brought
all the way from China unless we change
our tune and learn to sing together.

After earning a B.A. and M.A. in English from Michigan State and an M.F.A. from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, Fred Zirm spent nearly 40 years teaching English and drama at an independent school. Since his retirement, he has continued to direct plays but has also focused on writing poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. His work has been published in about a dozen small literary magazines and anthologies, including Still Crazy, cahoodadoodaling, NEAT, Voices de la Luna, Greek Fire, and Objects in the Rearview Mirror. He lives with his wife and younger daughter in Rockville, MD.

San Lucas Mission, by Elise Woods

San Lucas Mission
by Elise Woods

I first heard about San Lucas when I studied abroad.
I was told by a middle-aged professor named Gordon that I should
really consider going.

During the week of Semana Santa, it was customary to reflect.
Colorful carpets called alfombras were made out of flowers;
everyone was quiet during a somber parade.

Tuesday was Market day:
All the vendors would gather to sell fruits, vegetables, and crafts.
They would sell whatever they could pass off for a reasonable sum.

The children I worked with at the biblioteca
Would brush their teeth at school and smile through foam.
I stayed five months before yearning for home.

Elise Woods is an assistant tutoring coordinator at Jefferson Community & Technical College. Her work has appeared in The Avenue, The Learning Assistance Review, and SpreeBeez magazine.

In The Hot Sun, By A Deserted Barn, by Paula Bonnell

In The Hot Sun, By A Deserted Barn
by Paula Bonnell

The barn gone grey, silvery grey,
and here in its side, one board of many
and in it, many vertical
lines which thread it from end to end, bending
as they go – leaning this way and that
with the lilt that makes a move
a dance. They are fibers, each
of them; joined, they make wood. Cut,
they are grain, and the knots
they sway past were the arms of
branches, which reached and elongated
as they emerged from the trunk
to stretch, to sieve air through
manifold twigs and unfurling leaves
while these rising paths, these filaments,
lifted and carried water to the cresting
top of the tree.

Paula Bonnell’s writing has appeared in four collections
of poems, including “Airs & Voice”, chosen for a Ciardi Prize
by Mark Jarman, been heard on The Writer’s Almanac, and
a short story selected for a PEN Syndicated Fiction Prize
and published in newspapers.

Florida Haiku, by Paula Bonnell

Florida Haiku
by Paula Bonnell

The wind in the trees . . .
a wind chime –
These parts are inhabited!

*

The sound of a motorcycle –
the call of a mourning dove –
the trailer park

*

Evening star, palm tree
Illuminated swimming pool
crescent moon

*

Summer night:
within the hurtling along the tracks,
an invisible train –

Paula Bonnell’s writing has appeared in four collections
of poems, including “Airs & Voice”, chosen for a Ciardi Prize
by Mark Jarman, been heard on The Writer’s Almanac, and
a short story selected for a PEN Syndicated Fiction Prize
and published in newspapers.