Issue #51
Syd Bernthold
Wheat Fields after the Rain (The Plain of Auvers), July 1890
Van Gogh shot himself in those wheat fields
He died three days later.
Years before, he had written a letter to his brother:
“If I’m no good now, I won’t be any good later either
— but if later, then now too,”
in scrawling manic pencil.
“Wheat is wheat
even if it looks like grass at first.”
He had painted those wheat fields thirteen times
standing out in the July sun, smearing crazed
yellows onto yet-worthless canvas.
Carving out the sky in spirals, scratching furrows
into the ground as if he were tilling the soil himself.
Before he died, nobody wanted a Van Gogh
After— he’s hanging in The Louvre
Did he imagine museums full
and millions at auction
laying there in that young field
bleeding into the wheat in thick
cadmium drops
Or did he only see the grass?
Sydney Bernthold (they/them) is an artist from Columbus, Ohio, and a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a B.A. in English. They live in a haunted house with their betta fish, Jean Luc, and work at a farmers’ market when they are not writing.
LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Rebecca, Manderley, and Murder by the Sea
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley
again in my pink Maidenform brassiere.
This stately Cornwall mansion by the sea
is owned by Maximillian DeWinter.
My spouse turned louse. He tried to murder me!
Conveniently, his speed boat helped dispose
of evidence. That night, fortunately,
when we fought at a charity event,
I was adorned with heaps of jewelry.
While sinking, glinting diamonds caught the eye
of water nymphs, who protected me — ‐
exchanging help and oxygen for rings
of gold festooned with opals, jade, rubies,
and topaz. From death’s bondage, I escaped.
But Max was fooled, believing he was free,
my mighty splash as good as a divorce.
I learned deep diving meant the pressure change
was challenging. It’s cold, eternally
dark in remote zones. My furs kept me warm
as I restored a shipwreck, busily
created underwater enterprise.
Squid ink is perfect for calligraphy
on my advertisements. Billboards went up,
attracting workers for my sea factories.
I unionized the oyster beds. They get
rewarded for their productivity.
Pearl necklaces hand-strung by goddesses,
Poseidon’s daughters, came with warranties
of life-time luster and resale value.
Bivalves have strong work ethics, luckily.
But staffing’s challenging from Davy Jones’
locker. Young mermaids balked at quality
control. Though nymphs were good with customer
relations, out-put lacked consistency.
For underwater hand assembly, what would
it take for Cornish folks to work for me?
Since strong support has come from my brassiere,
inspecting it supplied my remedy.
My Maidenform became an aqua lung,
giving artisans full ability
to function in ten fathoms of water.
An applicant from Cornwall sent me news:
Maxim remarried! I planned my sortie:
revenge disguised as priceless property.
His bride got a gift — — anonymously.
A rope of pearls, luxuriously hexed.
Its wearer would envision Manderley
in flames. Destruction would preoccupy
her — — until it’s done. That’s what I foresee.
Maxim, I promised I’d make you sorry.
Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo, recently Poetry SuperHighway’s Poet of the Week, is a member of SFPA and The Dramatists Guild. Elgin Award nominee “A Route Obscure and Lonely” and “Concupiscent Consumption” are her latest poetry titles. Forthcoming is a paranormal poetry opus, a collaborative horror chapbook “Santa Muerte,” and “Flirting with the Fire Gods,” inspired by her Aeolian Island heritage. (Linktree) (Twitter) (YouTube)
Alise Versella
Pantoum for My Future Lover
When the mud fills my soles and becomes a bed of unknowing,
remind me of where I was going.
In mud is where the lotus blooms, petals like disciples with their hands clasped.
Be for me a map.
Remind me of where I was going,
like diviners with their tarot cards divining,
be for me a map.
Tell me what my future holds, oh! Hanged Man, oh! Hierophant,
like diviners with their tarot cards divining,
be my compass, my North Star shining.
Tell me what my future holds, oh! Hanged Man, oh! Hierophant,
if I be the river, flooding over the embankment,
Be my compass, my North Star shining.
My captain, charting the course with a sea shanty sounding.
If I be the river, flooding over the embankment,
be for me the levy to hold what runs so rampant.
My captain, charting the course with a sea shanty sounding,
if the hurricane comes, I know you will keep us from drowning.
You are the levy that holds what runs so rampant,
the shipwrecking parts of me survive, triumphant.
If the hurricane comes, I know you will keep us from drowning.
When all my storms show no signs of slowing,
the shipwrecking parts of me will survive, triumphant,
because you remind me how to make an umbrella out of a rest-stop map.
When all my storms show no signs of slowing,
when the mud fills my soles and becomes a bed of unknowing,
you remind me how to make an umbrella out of your rest-stop map,
that in mud is where the lotus blooms, petals like disciples with their hands clasped.
Alise Versella is a Pushcart nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society whose work has been published widely in journals such as Poydras, Umbrella Factory Issue 50 and Visitant Lit. She is forthcoming in The Courtship of Winds and The Poeming Pigeon. Her full length collection When Wolves Become Birds is available now with Golden Dragonfly Press and you can find her at www.aliseversella.com.
Will Walker
Aspiration
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space.
-Gloria Steinem
Yet set me up on such a perch
now and then to catch my breath
and read the title on my tiny box
of elevated real estate—Model Citizen,
Compassionate and Wise Human,
Tender of the Flame of Truth and Justice,
Bodhisattva in All but Name,
Proponent of Graceful Living, Courtesy
and Common Sense.
Ramble on in fine print if you must,
mentioning at tiresome and excessive length
my many virtues and achievements.
Give me a chance to speak briefly,
to say Thanks—and then to step down
with ease and grace and help
whoever is admiring my favored soapbox
of virtue and propriety up onto same
with identical intent: to rest a spell,
to take the longer view, to bless
from a distance all the striving, whining
multitudes we live among, to wish all
but the worst of us freedom from pain,
and a few moments of peace.
Will Walker’s work has appeared in a number of literary journals. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his poem What Tribe?, part of his 2020 full-length collection, Zeus at Twilight (Blue Light Press). His chapbook, Carrying Water, was published by Pudding House Press, and his full-length collection, Wednesday After Lunch, is a Blue Light Press Book Award Winner (2008).
Stephen Mead
The Shop Worker’s Wealth
Water obsesses me, the idea of it.
My environment, however is really quite solid.
These walls for example, are a rough desert stucco.
Nine to five I inhabit them, dreaming some liquid might dare come.
Oh yes, I wish, existing according to clock hands
and the palms of customers coming one
after another. Their mounds of skin are not interchangeable,
though, as hours run, they seem the same textured cloth.
How I try to stay enchanted, like a blind
man by braille. It’s their calmness I long for,
some malleable diffusion when mine
are so possessed with cash, checks and charge.
Here I keep shop, my title: cashier,
no automaton drone, all reduction and function,
but the some of such parts producing the whole human.
Still there’s a fractioning, the dependence on allotments:
lunch, cigarette breaks, as some metronome’s beat rings
the drawer’s money treble. Gross profit, output, input—–
in my sleep I hear change
though sometimes that clang is gentled by
particular patrons I’ve known.
See, these are their eyes, deep as the lifelines,
the pulsing wrists before transaction is over.
Between us I try to imagine a beach spreading,
its echoing waves, my heart booming content, delighted, unwound.
There everything is lucent, tide-swelling,
some replenished flow lapping quite distant
from these divisive coral walls.
Is this not a world of fishbowl currency?
But still, I am flickering in an aquarium which remembers oceans,
oceans of wealthy freedom untold.
Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall.
John Schneider
Cuttings, Mid-September Morning
Late summer turning to early fall, several
nights of frost lace the garden. Things
we have come to know ending.
Outside the florists shop I press my nose
against the glass for one last glimpse.
Inside, the room colored from leaves
on yesterday’s cut branches refract
light against the walls —a green that seems
to burst into itself, washing the walls in hues
soft to the touch as a newborn’s lanugo
what the florist calls “light fall.”
*
Her shears click and
snip delicate tips. She shapes and sculpts,
fashions and fettles, pinching black discolored,
mostly dead, leaves from sprigs of Black
Oak, Silver Maple, Coffee Berry, later
to be gathered in bunches, or bouquets,
wrapped in paper to form a cone, after
the death arranged in a clear glass vase
to make room for tomorrow’s vibrant cuttings.
John Schneider lives in Berkeley, California where he has studied poetry with Robert Hass. His most recent publications have been in: Slipstream; Potomac Review; Bitter Oleander Press (2019, #2); The American Journal of Poetry; Chautauqua; and Lullwater Review (forthcoming winter 2022). He is included in: California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. He is a Pushcart Prize Nominee.
Rob Piazza
Woodcuts, Munch, 1894-1896
1.
In a quarrel with Madonna the Vampire,
his lover screamed, “Edvard, it’s your finger!”
(Loss painted the Self as Woman.) Were
his agitated woodcuts deep Norwegian skies?
In the background between hell and his studio
a faceless clock in an empty bed stands erect.
2.
The woman’s fingers spread like a clock’s.
His empty quarrels were in the background
of his studio. Madonna shot Edvard in bed
as an agitated vampire painted skies of loss.
Between the faceless self and a lover’s hell
stand deep Norwegian cuts of artist’s wood.
3.
Edvard quarreled with the skies. The self
stands yellow in hell between Madonna
and a faceless vampire. His agitated finger
painted an empty clock in bed. (Norwegian
wood cuts deep as a woman lost.) His lover
shot the artist’s studio back into the ground.
Rob Piazza recently completed his MFA in Creative Writing at Fairfield University. He teaches literature and composition at colleges and universities in Waterbury, Connecticut. His poems have appeared in Mystic Blue Review, Halcyon Days, Society of Classical Poets, Haiku Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Founder’s Favourites, The Lyric, and October Hill Magazine. He serves as Poet Laureate of Litchfield.
Sam Cherubin
all that goes unlisted
Oysters are a gift by mugwort in the reeds.
Mass of shells, in each the succulence of
being. Honeysuckle and beach rose. Leaves
lifting chlorophylled faces to the sun.
Discarded blue Hot Wheels, shards from
sunglasses, wave smoothed granite and silica.
The gift of sight and the gift of being seen. Life
beholding life: dependencies and origins.
A body to walk, a cortex to think. Blue
backdrop of sky, descent into day, ascensions
of night, dogs, sweatpants, double-
strollers. Bless the things I want to bless, and
the gifts I refuse: limitations, food cravings,
rushes to judgement, tender buds on
dying trees, empty homes.
Sam Cherubin earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a Futurist working in healthcare, and explores the intersection of virtual reality and climate change. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Midwest Quarterly (Winter 2022), Palo Alto Review, Wallace Stevens Journal, Packingtown Review and Wrath Bearing Tree (September 2021).