October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Hitchhiker
I’d seen him an hour or so earlier,
outside of Medford, before the
rain set in, and I’d hunkered down
at a truck stop to ease the dizziness
in my mind and the queasiness of an
empty stomach, too many cigarettes.
Must have gotten a ride soon, then
passed me when I was off the road.
Here he was once again; suede coat
now soaked to a seal-skin sheen.
His dog was soaked too; black lab,
no leash, sitting next to the bedroll.
That was about all I took in before
eased the gas and onto the shoulder.
I don’t know what possessed me.
Normally I don’t pick up anyone.
Something about his reappearance
perplexed me and needed an answer.
It was kind of a closed-in, dreary day,
a day when you look for company,
good or bad, just to share the rain
and the half-full bottle on the seat.
He didn’t run to the truck when
I stopped a bit ahead of him,
as a young man might do, but
merely bent full from the waist,
retrieved his pack, tipped down
the brim of his hat a lower, and
started forward with a purpose.
The dog came too, of course,
perhaps adding to my belief
in this man’s native goodness;
I can usually rely on dog sense.
Whatever the reason, I decided
to pick up this soaked hitchhiker;
he and the dog grew larger in the
right hand mirror, as did the knife.
by Richard Hartwell
Leavings
Four – or is it five? – lonely leaves
left dangling from the apricot tree;
wrinkled, yellowed ancients of the
ravages of late fall, early winter.
Seems sort of forlorn to be the
last ones left hanging around
when all the others have left
hurriedly, in the wind, weaving
away to the far side of the yard.
Leaves and fruit bunch together,
huddled communally, windrows
against the base of the wall as if
in group therapy they organize
to rout the wind and restrain the
ravages of snow, rain, and ice.
by Richard Hartwell
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember, the hormonially-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California, with his wife of thirty-six years (poor soul, her, not him), their disabled daughter, one of their sons and his ex-wife and their two children, and twelve cats. Yes, twelve! He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing poetry, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Your mother attempts to clear the bushes
A first infant taste of lunacy
that made me think I could jump the
4-foot porch over the thick hedge
into the yard, scratchless, blameless.
Kid, you’ll be jumping any day now.
You’ll get to know them folks,
them fellas, them naysayers.
You’ll see what I mean:
Always the wide- mouthed expressions,
always, “Are you serious, kid?”
when you come up bleeding
and mount the porch again.
But had you cleared the bushes,
toes in grass, knees unscathed,
family behind you on the porch, cheering,
that’s when you’d have given up jumping.
So anyway, what I mean is, though it
pains me to say it: jump. I still do.
With any kind of luck, eventually
we’ll both make it over.
by Lauren Shows
“Free canoe. Not seaworthy.”
The ad suggested that it could be used
for a sandbox, a planter, decorative piece
but no one, not those you hated most
should peer out to sea from its unworthy hull.
“I will help you load it.” We made the call,
joking as we bobbed down SR 343
then pulled in, gravel skipping, pack of dogs barking
and walked up in the dusk and no-see-ums hover.
We should have listened. The mosquitoes grieved
over a still black pond. We bit back laughs
as the red-faced man said, “Ain’t good for shit,”
and scratched his chin, days and days unshaved.
What else can we do? As the sound of water
enters our ears, our shoes, the pockets of clothes
we unmoor it from the porch, and the rain abides.
Step in. Hope the old man knew he was wrong.
by Lauren Shows
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
One doesn’t intend to comment on
strangers lives, but when you wake
to a glass shattering on the floor
above you, followed by a scream
and then the words I refuse,
repeated, you know that sleep
will not return for quite some time.
They divorced and for a while
it was quite. The husband would wander
the neighborhood in white undershirts,
the wife presumably far away. Then
they discovered the phone and a whole
new kind of one sided argument erupted,
louder, with no broken dishes.
Our next door neighbors were happy,
and in love, which is a different sort
of problem. A different set of sounds.
by Caitlin Elizabeth Thomson
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Invitation From Hopper
She leans forward into the bay window.
Water, a long way off and a loon cries.
In the room, a man speaks,
someone listens. Expectations
are set in motion. She remains
frozen at the window, waiting,
not a matter of time. The call
of the loon carries over the water.
Expectations have a way of shifting.
Though The Scream has been stolen,
Oslo keeps its appeal, the train ride
a preliminary. Formal introductions
have their own façade. Do you
bow or let your eyes reach
their own conclusions? So much
has entered, rushing to fill the gap.
Still she leans into the morning light.
The thicket, green and familiar,
doesn’t distract. Out there,
the air has a yellowness, lifting
from the tall growth gone dry.
Anticipation holds, a thread not quite sewn.
by Peggy Aylsworth
By The Grace Of
The orange moon
plays the banjo, hot tempos
over blackest night
as the city bravely lights its tower-tops.
The beat
presses through glass.
Ovens blister
the sleepless in New York.
All things interior
breed new eyes, opening to the unseen,
held for the perspicacious
to uncover in the star-hung night.
Delicate lights
signal windows, signal pauses
for thought,
a revelation luminous as the moon.
Country calls can almost
be heard,
but their value
escapes
the impeded.
Night birds have nested
in the lungs
of many born in tall grass
gone dry,
grown foreign.
by Peggy Aylsworth
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Herb Robert
The pale-pink spikes of Herb Robert
recede in hedgebank’s galaxy
of buttercup, harebell and phlox
unsucked by butterfly or buzzing bee;
one visitor alone alights
on its unfancied petal- fair
hard to tell if wasp or fly-
its pungent nectar to imbibe.
As in the case of flowers spurned,
insects that seem grotesque,
everyone and everything
is each by nature blessed
with purpose and the gift
of love and being loved;
and for their very difference,
by only fools are scorned.
by Mike Gallagher
Car Park
Blonde: Tall
Legs: Long
Jeans: Blue
Coat: Brown
Colours: Clash
Beauti: Fully
Long legs
Long strides
This way
Bygone
Old man
Dream on.
by Mike Gallagher
Mike Gallagher was born on Achill Island, Co. Mayo, Ireland. He lived in Britain for forty years before retiring to Lyrecrompane, Co. Kerry. In Ireland he has been published in The Doghouse Book of Ballad Poems, Irish Haiku Society, Revival, The Stony Thursday Book and Crannog; outside Ireland, his poetry and prose has been published throughout Europe, America, Canada, Japan, India and Australia. He won the Eigse Michael Hartnett viva voce prize in 2010 and is a current nominee for the Hennessy Award. He is the editor of thefirstcut, an online literary journal.
October 2012 | poetry
Destiny
While you are dealing the cards, your face is stoney and noble,
You observe your victim like a sphynx.
I escape to the casino table,
Because I don’t have much left,
Just an old family heirloom ring
And very little hope
That I shall avoid seeing you in the croupier’s uniform,
Or the habit of a butler
Who is serving death.
My place is at the casino table.
The emptier my pockets,
The hungrier my passion.
I’ve heard the restless voice of a gambler:
“Perhaps I shall once manage
To deceive destiny… Perhaps…”
And the voice vanishes in the echo of many a gambler’s sigh.
You once again decided to scourge me,
Your shiny hand throws the white ball.
Who knows whose bones this white ball was made of,
This ball that dances so seductively
In front of the inebriated man’s eyes?
Will my bones end up
In its white interior tomorrow?
It didn’t take you long, destiny,
To throw me out into the street
With an empty wallet and a vacant gaze.
Now I stare into this empty night,
And death awaits below the old oak tree
That has accusingly raised its bare branches
Into this empty night.
Do not wear the black butler’s suit, destiny,
Let death wait.
I know you will comply, destiny,
You don’t like those who play it safe,
Because there is me in you,
And there is you in me.
Throw another one, destiny!
by Walter William Safar
Newborn Verse
I could write a new verse today
About two roses
That we laid down onto the black soil
When we parted,
Perhaps even a poem
About the warm tears that were mutely sliding
Into the cradle of your wonderful soul.
I could call you loudly,
Without shame and boundaries,
Like a bird calls another bird,
But my throat is trapped by silence
Born to powerful solitude.
Yesterday, I loved you less than I do today,
And the living memories are proof of that,
Memories that are warmly flowing
Through the dreamy summer air,
Like blood is flowing through veins.
In the silence of this summer day I could write a poem
About our last dance below the old walnut tree,
From which the beautiful memories still emanate,
But the sun is still so cold without you,
Shining like gold:
Cold and deadly blinding.
When solitude tends to my heart with sadness,
All I have left are memories
To give birth to a verse
Like a wonderful child of hope.
While the present haunts me into the past,
I haunt my spirit towards the sun’s golden cradle,
So it would become a blood brother to the newborn verse,
Because I might see you tomorrow
And read this poem to you.
by Walter William Safar
Old Oak
In the shadow of solitude now I see Your eyes,
that so faithfully carry about the light
through my thoughts so dark,
and the pen trembles in the hand,
waiting for the prodigal son’s acknowledgement.
My one and only, acknowledgements arrive in solitude’s embrace,
just like tears, and where there is a tear, there is love,
always faithful and invisible but so real
that you can touch it with thoughts
and with the fiery breath in the infinity of solitude.
I admit to using my verses as ransom for my guilt,
(and guilt is my silence),
and I listen to the rumor
that perpetually, like a bat,
whirls across the lonely poet’s street.
They say that me and You,
my one and only,
are fantasy, but a pen immersed in ink.
But You know, don’t You,
that me and You are perfectly real, full of wishes,
dreams and memories.
My one and only, I am listening to the whisper of the wind
in this warm, dreamy summer night…
It is silent, horribly silent without You,
and the wind’s whisper is dying down, farther away, oh so far,
as if called by death to its black hearse,
and I have waited for so many days, months and years to appear,
to bring Your voice to me,
gentle, soft, warm and yearning,
but it is so silent, oh so silent now,
that I can hear the screams of solitude
chase away memories
into this warm summer night,
my one and only, I am standing in the shadow of the dignified oak,
and I am looking into his empty sleepiness,
as if its playfulness left along with You,
it is silent like the wind.
Its dear, green, eternally waking young leaves,
who used to whisper in Your vicinity, untrammeled and confidential,
are completely silent now, completely dead.
Now I am trembling in the shadow of our oak,
fearfully looking at it as it drags its dignified old face along the ground,
its memories are as lively as mine.
Once, yes, once the memories,
who live so inaudibly,
shall become so weak,
so humanly weak,
that they shall find their dark home
next to our wooden crosses.
by Walter William Safar
Walter William Safar was born on August 6th 1958 in Sherman-Texas. He is the author of a number of a significant number of prose works and novels, including “Leaden fog”, “Chastity on sale”, “In the flames of passion”, “The price of life”, “Above the clouds”, “The infernal circle”, “The scream”, “The Devil’s Architect”, “Queen Elizabeth II”, as well as a book of poems.
