Sally Mcrae--Sapphic Purveyor of Intrabeauty

No matter.

(All bets are off.)

I caught a glimpse of the future and you were expunged.

(Why is that?)

I was alarmed to find that you weren't there,

in the book of us.

Being knowing in the present sent me to the past.

The lights were off, a door was ajar and love had leaked out.

Who was last to leave?

Voile fluttered in the drafty corridor.

In the lab seedlings grew;

a few so well that they raised the roof.

Light streamed in.

Would it lead me back to you, to now?

Hillary's ascent was slicker

but he had Tenzing

and Kendal Mint Cake.

I just had an unconscionable thirst, unshakable faith

and light-dancing feet.

Pausing at a dizzying height,

to admire the view, assess my progress,

caused the whole lot to telescope back in.

Sending me hurtling through quasars,

reaching for

detached,

floating hands,

which no longer held wisdom —

clearly a silly construct, after all.

You weren’t There.

There, there, dear.

Always safe, Here.

Here, I AM.

**********

It is often a vacuum.

And they are wrong.

Constrained.

Distracted,

attracted by reflective ribbon.

Seeing only the millennial dust,

missing the abiding intrabeauty —

beyond Them & Us. 

A link to a video poem, PONTIFEX, by Sally:

http://youtu.be/bkSg8GjKfgc

Sally McRae originally hails from England and is presently living in Atlanta, USA. Having run wild across the globe (under the radar) for years, she has many interesting experiences to draw on for her poetry and prose writing; she’s played with royalty and sat with sages —perception is her constant toy. A former actress, television presenter, director, producer and executive producer of video and live events; she now enjoys a most interesting and diverse array of roles; mother, writer, yoga teacher, reflexologist, mentor, and creative director at One Creative Choice. Wit is her sword and savior, keeping her fully grounded in reality. Her simple, narrative poetry has a musicality and sincerity that reaches deep; it dances with duality and humor — an appropriate reflection of the author. Sally is currently working with the theme of love – in all its forms – and thinks that the ancient Greeks were onto a thing or two…

www.instagram.com/onecreativechoice

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www.onecreativechoice.com

Corey Mesler: An Engineer Making the Ominous Days Smaller

Transformation

My wife’s castoff pajama
bottoms lie curled
on the unmade bed like
some kind of sensuous
cat. Alone at home they
startle me as if I have
walked into a forbidden
room. I could pick them
up and smell the warm
goodness of her but I let
them lie. Later when I
return, determined to
clutch them this time, they
are gone, and the day
becomes one of reflection
and tough, spontaneous grace.


Wee one

Wee one,
voice so

shrill I
almost can-

not per-
ceive it,

nor can I
find the

words to
answer,

here in
the castle,

so far
from your
pinpoint eyes,

your mouth
an obelus.


The day is big

The day is big
and
I am small.
I find
myself after losing
so much
else. You are there
and you’re
holding out your
hand,
in your palm
an egg.
I want
to talk to you about
the change
but it is not
essential. You are
here. Even
when the day is so
big
I fall from its height.



COREY MESLER has published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Good Poems American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published 8 novels, 4 short story collections, numerous chapbooks, and 4 full-length poetry collections. He’s been nominated for many Pushcarts, and 2 of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife he runs a bookstore in Memphis. He can be found at https://coreymesler.wordpress.com.

John Dorsey Is Your Woody Guthrie; Did You Know That?

Philadelphia Poem for David Snellbaker

You were the first real friend I ever made here

Telling me about your days with a Mexican religious cult

Where they tried to brainwash that man

right out of your hair.

You said, “They’d have to whitewash the streets with blood”

to make you feel clean again.

Bridget

You sang songs by Woody Guthrie

Not the originals

But covers by the Counting Crows

Placed your heart in a locket

Hidden under a pillow

On the third floor of a West Toledo mental ward.

You never learned how to dance

Just painted flowers on your toes

when it came time to bloom.

Drunk John

gave me $7 and a cigar snip

for my 25th birthday

the morning his girlfriend

kicked him out

of their spruce street apartment.

the year before

i’d watched as she passed him

love notes in hindi

across the bar

while he listened

to iggy pop

on the jukebox

as it rained outside.

i could swear he was crying  

when he sang happy birthday

under the busted street light.

John Dorsey is the author of several collections of poetry, including “Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer” (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), “Sodomy is a City in New Jersey” (American Mettle Books, 2010), “Tombstone Factory” (Epic Rites Press, 2013), and most recently, “Natural Selection: Early Poems” (Kilmog Press, 2014). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com

Erica Bernheim: Marrow-Craving Head-Huntress

The Scent of Fear

It is not unlike the lye, and what you need to know

is nothing to brag about: the vestigial nipple of

the nutria, a handbag filled with other handbags,

a buzzard in a long, blonde wig, the idea that you

could--if you wanted to--control the weather.

It is criminal to celebrate fragility. The bees want

your pollen; the chickens want your plants; bugs

will populate your made-up dreams about other

poets and farms. Tell me what city I'm in, and I'll

tell you my name. The rabbits sense the smells

of stale human bodies, of legs stacked larva-esque

in the sprawl of an underground garden. The weather

begins to remind you of movies you haven't seen,

of books you will never read, and of the sounds

of the sounds of trees. There is no place in which

you don’t want traffic to move forward. There

are universal misdeeds. There are times when

resurfacing is the expectation.

The Shrunken Head

It’s been nearly fifty years and no one remembers

the country he was filming in. Headhunting

occurred in many regions of the world. Is it

accidental that he couldn’t tell you to stop making

sentences or plans? When you stumble upon

the head of your beloved on Match.com, the proper

response is:

a.     Develop an attraction to striped shirts.

b.     Never have the intention of doing the right thing.

c.     Grow in popularity.

d.     Move to a suburb of Milwaukee and cultivate a suntan.

e.     Bring your best feelings towards the cooler.

           

People, look too helpless and you will cover

yourselves with pastry, fashions, burning down,

and awkward conversations.

This is the age of being touched:

gently. Don’t touch.

Death Swim

It wasn’t about the war. It wasn’t about

the lake. It was about fire and the lakes of oil,

shot from a helicopter. Those are not lakes.

These are full of oil, the oil is literally

boiling, and the process of watching

makes you wonder how long you should

make the same mistakes without thinking

about them. I say, there must be a better

way than this to evolve. There

should be a way around impossible love,

a legitimate reason women love horses first,

then men. There must be a way for bone

marrow to settle around the heart and heal

Only sometimes do situations not turn out

as you might have expected. Think how you

might have overused me, merrily screwed me

over the promises of darkness. If I were

a naked vulture, things would be the same.

My experiments will not have gone

unnoticed. A man outside will invent

something for this. This is me walking

away. This is me as seen from behind.

It is a fact that we will grow old before

learning to settle our deeds near fire.

It is a fact that civilians do not need

search warrants to enter each other’s homes.

Erica Bernheim holds degrees from Miami University, The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is currently Associate Professor of English at Florida Southern College, where she directs the creative writing program. Her first full-length collection, The Mimic Sea, was published by 42 Miles Press (Indiana University South Bend) in 2012. She is also the author of a chapbook, Between the Room and the City (H_NGM_N B__KS, 2006) and her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Georgetown Review, Saw Palm, and The Iowa Review.

Julia Rose Lewis: A Keeper of Winter Zephyrs

Tell Me a Story Or Another Vineyard

My sister keeps seeing a woman with

a long gray braid and glasses, so she

calls me.  I tell her that my hair is as

short as hers, the last time I saw her. 

I have been thinking of Catalina a lot lately.

“Grapes and grays and graze,” we

say. 

Sleeping Sevenling

It was the time of the metaphors,

the verb to be,

participles.

Winter,

static winter,

winter ring was the rest of the world. 

Meanwhile, I was trying to hold a place in my head all winter. 

In Memoriam

Of the tree

that thought itself a horse.

A feeling for my steed please, the tree

has turned into a horse that is too old to ride.

Standing still,

it is dying,

broken legs are fatal for horses. 

Sap is all that is left

of the branch that I used to climb on

the branch that was its back, thick as my thigh.  

A big barreled animal standing at 16.2 hands,

a tree as tall as me,

with a mane of needles 

I could use to find its breed, its species, its seedlings

unfolding into foals. 

I have loved

a tree that thought itself a horse.  I want

a blood bay horse again. 

Julia Rose Lewis is a working towards her MFA at Kingston University London.  She received her BA in Biology and Chemistry from Bryn Mawr College PA.  Her poetry incorporates philosophy of science, representations of illness, and climate change.  For her dissertation she is looking at the intersection of ecopoetics and queer theory.  When not in school, she is living on Nantucket Island.  She is a member of the Moors Poetry Collective of Nantucket.  Her poems have appeared in their second and third anthologies, Lemmon Hummus and Tips on Throwing a Housewarming Party in a Small Space.