Issue #68

Ken Poyner

LIMINAL CREATURES

In this lot, I am the cryptid.
People lean forward from the couch
to gaze sideways at me.
If they think I am about
to do anything requiring any
degree of dexterity, they put down
their drinks, suspend their conversations,
arch their backs, and focus
entirely on me. They do not seem
to think I notice. Look,
they imagine, he is the cryptid,
he does not understand our attention.
But I do. It separates me
from them more than my being
the cryptid. I try to be unspectacular,
but it seems I am designated, by them,
to be the exception that defines
their staggering species. Remember,
in this lot, I am the cryptid.
Put together another collection of
individuals and I might be
one of the crowd, one of the intent
observers who sees someone else
across the room as the cryptid.
I admit, I would watch his every
move. There is a theme for any
cryptid. And for the moment,
that cryptid is me, my theme open
to my making. In my role, I excuse
myself and go to the edge of the
encroaching forest to purposefully make
footprints. It is expected,
no matter how uncomfortable
my designation, I do my duty.
When I come back in, the room
goes silent with a cocktail-planned
silence. The conversation has not been
about me, but it is my place to believe
it has been. It follows a script.
I make a few clicks and a whistle,
let a low unthreatening growl escape, stagger
my way to the bowl holding the party mix.
One couple admits their babysitter is engaged
for only another hour, begins goodbye-ing towards
the door. I like the party mix, but I shouldn’t.
Only six more couples to leave, and I
again can be something explainable,
something that can on the way home
stop at the convenience store for beer,
have the clerk suspect my money
far more than me. I pledge that next
party, I will go easy on the cryptid.
But I am lying.

After years of impersonating a Systems Engineer, Ken has retired to watch his wife break world raw powerlifting records. Ken’s four current poetry and four short fiction collections are available from multiple bookselling web sites.

Rich Murphy

Ambling the Cranial Hemispheres

When mind wandering from brain stem
where family roots route this way and that,
hiking hoots and insight stabilize
for the moment and stun with transformation.

Daydreams that show on a lobe tickle,
while awareness sometimes throws light
that electrifies to assure in memory.

A drifting thought catches on and plucks
at the nerve behind eyeballs,
as the synapse creates an image to feast on.

Ignoring the outside memes to arrive at ear canals
and sound systems, enunciation roars
while the threat squeaks, a mouse in the cavern.

Waiting for arousal in the garden,
nostrils and blossoming taste buds harvest.

Sensing from skin and follicles, a touch
here and there and there and there embraces,
overwhelming the interior trek.

But a whole cortex most excites when confusion
confounds, contests with stark possibilities
until the whole head and body address to redress.

Rich Murphy’s poetry has won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice (Americana, 2013, and The Left Behind, 2021) and the Gival Press Poetry Prize (Voyeur, 2008). Other books include Space Craft (2021) and Practitioner Joy (2020) by Wipf and Stock, and Prophetic Voice Now (2020) by Common Ground Research Network.

H.D. Harper

Snowlight

Snowlight accelerates     with exhilaration, completely
Cloaking     the mind. It glows     like a pure white pearl
Sparkling

In the dark     clam of winter — in the cold, clement
Night. And shards     much sharper
Than the icicle’s
Heart

Break     quietly
To pieces. The whole street still twinkles
With sparrow-song…
                                       In the contemplation
Of composition      light bends everywhere
At once,     collapsing     into a growing
Form,     unfurling

Certain sights:     as if hammers     of a crystal
Piano     throwing back
Their heads…

                          Yet here, in this lattice of air
And ice, there is a mystery
More important
                                Than resolution.
There is a hint of laughter

Levitating
In the frosted distance — faint notes
Added     to the lonely melody,     glittering free
And bright.

Is it clarity
That snow brings? Or is it only the sting
Of seaward winds     whipping
Against the soul?

H.D. Harper is a writer from Seattle, Washington.

Mykyta Ryzhykh

untitled

children making sand castles
adults making sand castles
high tide

Published in the journals “Dzvin”, “Ring A”, “Polutona”, “Rechport”, “Topos”, “Articulation”, “Formaslov”, “Colon”, “Literature Factory”, “Literary Chernihiv”, on the portals “Literary Center ” and “Soloneba”, in the “Ukrainian literary newspaper

Greer Engle-Roe

Bathtime Soldier

Spears dipped in gold to reflect
the light. Sparta swallowed
by red. The spear trembled and quaked
in my hand. I felt victorious. Almost.
Almost except for the bathrobe
loosening steadily around my waist. Water
pools around my feet. Blood drips
from my hair. I shout to halt, call on a bird’s
wings. A quail appears, nests on the tip
of my spear, indomitable. It asks, Why
do you need me if you claim to be winged
of foot? No matter. No matter at all. Horses
trample, paper flies, a soldier’s helmet gleams
like a tin can, the earthen maw yawns open. Into
the valley! Forward! Forward! I shout.
There follows a clatter. Roars of cannons,
a phalanx. The opposing line is breaking—
my spear is stripped from me. A general looms
overhead, swats her towel. I am bared
to the wind that filters through the cracked
open window. Sent to bed—a hero in defeat.

Greer Engle-Roe is a senior in high school, attending Interlochen Arts Academy with a focus on creative writing. They have been published in JUST POETRY: the national quarterly. Along with poetry, they spend many hours watching soccer, building models, and painting miniatures.

Ray Malone

Borrowed form 34

A sort of measure, as a mile
in the mind. The inch of a map.
Its paper, its thin image, of hills
is it, of home, of line

and place. A point pricked
at random, where to land, where
to rest. Or ramble on. The ear
impatient to pause, the eye

to push on. The fine crack
of refuge in the folding
and unfolding, the frayed edge.
Of reading. The final trace

of a print, the point where the pin
entered. The flesh.
Where the earth bled.

Ray Malone is an Irish writer and artist living in Berlin, Germany, working on a series of projects exploring the lyric potential of minimal forms based on various musical and/or literary modes/models. His work has published in numerous print/online journals in the US, UK and Ireland.

Stephanie V Sears

Fleet

Nothing human is written on this plane
Of unrecorded memory
             But a tire-printed track dripping
Fossil tinctures
Between the cuneiform hooves,
Sneaking up on the Bush Baby’s
Infant tree house.
Over this unsettled circus of plain and crag
Once licked by lava
Whispered are the rules
For what chases or flees or
Dwells quietly at intervals
Smudged into neutrals.

Grassland runs alongside low-slung clouds
Pursuing their own evolution.
Cheetah hooligans
Reclining in barrettes
Clipped to gilded sod
Manufacture concealment.
Black noses pressed to the displays while
The hills smocked with cacti
Push nightfall onto them.

In slow file the cats up and parade
Hunch-shouldered
Tea-brew eyes red with sunset
Kohl running down rock star faces,
Winding up.

Now they will turn their wire into feather.
A froth-up of angels
Fomenting maelstroms of speed
They will part walls
Until   the air runs out of breath.

And feast in haste before
Ill-mannered nature takes back the rest.

Haka’iki^*

^*chief, king

Large looms this figure of a man,
anonymous in yellow waterproof,
though, about him,
crowned and sceptered,
a stark quiet commands.

From Ua Pou to Hiva Oa
we are too many on board.
Each swell amplifies
the signs of bad luck.

In night’s bucking brine
and onrushing space
the boat shackles me
to windlass and capstan.
I reach for the sky’s cosmic wallpaper,
kite heart cannoned upward
on a string of destiny.
Knees and feet grow wings
over the next soaring crag,
casting a pall over the stars.

He stands as barbican
against the livid depths
fathoms down in my imagining
their indifferent swallow.

Even as exhaustion seizes mind and flesh,
prepares them for drowning,
a thread of rebellion
weaves through me,

seesawing off the shoals. Safety
was never part of this scheme.
He makes that clear
with battlefield arms
lathered in salt and tattoos.

Holds me inside the thick brackets
of his muscles, corrugated chest
warding off waves, wind, and fate.

Thaumaturge to his people,
king to their yearnings,
he cradles me in his lineage
of harbors and valleys.

Until I fall asleep, his copper chin
resting in my hair.

Stephanie V Sears is a French and American ethnologist (Doctorate EHESS, Paris 1993), free-lance journalist, essayist and poet whose poetry recently appeared in The Deronda Review, The Comstock Review, The Dawn Treader, The Nonconformist, SORTES, Red Ogre Review, and The Headlight Review. Her first book of poetry: The Strange Travels of Svinhilde Wilson.

Julia Caroline Knowlton

When We Make Love

When we make love, just what kind of love
are we making; the kind where you wear black

and I wear white, and we float near blue flowers
in a sky, in a painting? Or the kind where we walk

down a city street in wool coats, crunching autumn
leaves underfoot, then go our separate ways?

I do not know where I go when your force washes through me.
I know that all emotion is mere water, falling in more water.

Who can say what hidden stones might be moved.
Who can say what part of wet ground might stay.

Julia Caroline Knowlton PhD MFA is a poet and Professor of French at Agnes Scott College. Recognition for her poetry includes an Academy of American Poets College Prize, a 2018 GA Author of the Year award, and inclusion in the 2022 Georgia Poetry in the Parks project. She has published five books.

Jacquelyn Shah

One Red Cento

Shed by some stripper ripe with ruby
Dylan Krieger

I.
Many red devils ran from my heart,
to write in this red muck.
Madness for red! I devour the leaves of autumn.
Double red daisies, they’re my flowers,
abundance, furl of reddest petals.
The whole country got covered by red flowers growing
that varied in their hue from red to green.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds
at the crystal moon, at the red branch.

Wee sleekit in red brambles,
I’d have a gown of reddest red,
my nest of mercies in the rude, red tree,
red crystal bells upon each bough.
The little red dress will always seem right.

Along a mission to supersize red shutters:
red flags the reason for pretty flags
that burn your brows with blood-red sufferings.
Only with kisses and red poppies can I love you—
your lips are the red symbol of a dream.

II.
In a red red hood
and red with a wild desire
a Lady red—amid the Hill
catches tigers in red weather.
It’s an ant, she’s religious, the flowers are red.

Among the red guns,
a red wolf stands on the shadow’s dark red rim,
white stripes, moonstruck eyes’ red fire,
red wine staining his bearded jaw.
And the red flamingo flies
out in the rank moist reddened air.

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown,
the red anemone with no sound.

III.
Red, red, red!
Red was your color, you revelled in red
squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.
Even when setting cherry-red as now
from the red cliff of the mountain,
you go to sleep with a red sun on your palm.

IV.
Out in the yard turning gray in the dawn,
half of her gray, half of her red—
red slippers . . . flaws of gray.
A gray discouraged sky overhead,
fire licking the sides of the gray stones,
the chamber of gray rock in which she lay.
“The curse is come upon me!” cried
the Lady . . .
                      for the lady was ruthlessly seized . . .
shuddered aloud, with a hissing sound
to mutter and mock a broken charm,
brought thus to a disgraceful end.
Once red, now spiderspit-gray, intact but empty.

Cento—lines, in order of appearance, from: Stephen Crane, Conrad Aiken, Robert Graves, Tess Gallagher, Tomaž Šalamun, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, Dean Young, Dorothy Parker, Dylan Thomas, Edith Sitwell, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Ashbery, Gertrude Stein, Sarojini Naidu, Pablo Neruda, Claude McKay, Anne Sexton, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Tomaž Šalamun, Carl Sandberg, D. H. Lawrence, Robert Lowell, Wendy Cope, Robert Louis Stevenson, Algernon Swinburne, T. S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mary Oliver, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Nazim Hikmet, Edgar Allan Poe, Gary Soto, Derek Walcott, Mary Oliver, Amy Lowell, Walt Whitman, Robinson Jeffers, Percy Bysshe, Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge, Coleridge, Coleridge, May Swenson

Jacquelyn Shah: A.B. English (Rutgers U); M.A. English (Drew U); M.F.A., Ph.D. English literature/creative writing–poetry (U of Houston). Grants: Houston Arts Alliance. Publications: chapbook, small fry; full-length book, What to Do with Red; poems in journals. Winner: Literal Latté’s 2018 Food Verse Contest.

John Muro

The Mending Line

West of Yellowstone

Approaching sunset and dreaming
day away, I’m following the fly-line’s
slow arc, binding thin air and hope to water,
and each cast feels like a do-over, looping
through a tide of saffron light from behind
the stands of aspen and greening hills
like so many memories flushed from
stock-still pools within the heart, suddenly
aware that parts of my life, too, are being
cast out upon the rapids that extend like
braids of silk across this narrow neck
of river, with its ruptured banks choked
by arroyo willow, jeweled knapweed
and sage brush, carrying all that has come
before downstream while a distant fanfare
of western sky lingers in parade rest
as the stream turns and loops back in
afterthought to collect and cradle the last
of these divestments and day’s last light,
before it winds its way to darkness and
overflows its banks, sweeping all things
in a soft confluence of tangled reeds
and sphagnum moss that will serve as
new-found beds for the heart-worn and
poorly rooted much further downstream.

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and, more recently, for the Best of the Net Award, John Muro has published two volumes of poems – In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite – in 2020 and 2022, respectively. His work has appeared in Acumen, Barnstorm, Grey Sparrow, Sky Island, Valparaiso Review, and elsewhere.