July 2022 | poetry
I believe that if you rub the forehead
of a captured crow clockwise
in small circles, it will gift you
with the knack of comprehension
teach you to understand the cawing
conversations of its cousins, those
who’ve roosted darkly in the maples,
and now are waking up the day.
I heard the congregation, all
the crows’ brash chattering above
the morning mist rising from the river
still lavender with hope.
I am dubious, although I’d like to trust
that this bright river rattling through the gorge
will come soon to a shallow peace, flash
its stony gifts, glinting catch-eyes for the crows.
Beth Spencer
Beth Spencer currently lives near Minneapolis, MN, loves travel, and is a notable example of the persistence of hope over experience. She has been messing about with poetry since fifth grade when she won a “Why I Like to Read Good Books” contest by submitting her essay in poem form.
July 2022 | poetry
Bloodied chrysanthemums envelop
The blurred lines of the paint-strewn floor
Casting shadows in the midst
Of broken light, fragmented scenes
Memories unended, just started
The gleaming red exit sign
In the back
Hurts my eyes; I was told
That the church was a safe place
Somehow, it makes me feel
Empty.
Conjoined benches
Of wispy outlines, ghosts whose
Hourglasses broke too early
Used to hold gold, left dust
In their goodbyes
Silence pursues
Every so often disrupted
By whispers of white lies
That reflect off the silk-covered altar
Losing their voice
To the slightest breath of wind
I once saw a garden outside the bounds
Of these wood-shaven walls
Ruby-dipped roses
Once I turned my head
They were gone
Maybe I hold on to things
That aren’t meant for me
Hannah Zhang
Hannah Zhang is a 16-year-old aspiring writer from Tucson, Arizona. She enjoys reading all kinds of novels, leaning towards adventure and fantasy. Inspired by the beauty of nature, she frequently incorporates it into her stories and poems. She has been writing since a young age and sees it as an outlet to express herself. She hopes that her writing can inspire readers to appreciate the beauty of life and the world we live in. Hannah’s work has been recognized at the Scholastic Arts and Writing Competition and published in Girls Right The World, The Weight Journal, TeenWritersProject Quarterly Lit Zine magazine, Cathartic Literary Magazine, Journal of Undiscovered Poet (forthcoming), Idle Ink and Eternal Haunted Summer.
July 2022 | poetry
“. . . until someone finds you / something else to do.”
Leonard Cohen
The anchor is a victim
no more than the dripping oars
or the lines made taut
by soft lead sinkers.
The anchor is not a poem
but a guide with sand in its eyes
and a hook too big and blunt
for any mouth.
The anchor is a contract
not of glory but of patience
between surfaces and hours,
flashing lure and fading light.
The anchor is a prayer for the father and son
and for the boat kneeling before the reeds
as it reaches for each shore
carrying its own lake and a coiled rope.
Jeffrey Thompson
Jeffrey Thompson was raised in Fargo, North Dakota, and educated at the University of Iowa and Cornell Law School. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where he practices public interest law. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Neologism Poetry Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, The Main Street Rag, Passengers Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Tusculum Review, FERAL, and Unbroken. His hobbies include reading, hiking, and photography.
July 2022 | poetry
[28401 – 28500]
“What sclerotic bibliomaniac,
coincidental with his psychologist,
bussed in these upflung glossaries & down-
loaded them to the icebox?” abridges
a crapulous Nigerian who yaws
again to sidestep a hyperbolic
Swazi cannonball. (That was touch-&-go.)
What a worrier! What a temerarious
ranter! (Here he yorks in order to toughen
his sphincter.) What a miniscule klepto-
maniac! “Must they all, on a bender
of mayhem & abomination, gimp
at the bloodroot of organizational
racism, interacting only to
revitalize their blurry egos?”
[28601 – 28700]
Now, at mid-May in Trapani, plangent
stickleback, with scalene asymmetry,
sheave the seaway in free-for-all bonding
& fusiform interrelation. Was it
Polyhymnia that gelt Castrato?
Does dialog desktop shareware outrank
the monochromatic brume of all this
iconography? Was it wrongheaded
accountancy or simply numismatics
that overlie the Oslo Olympics?
Would’ve anything kept the pterodactyl
from the piglets? Would’ve it been so
allegedly ultra-exceptional
for the oligarch to misplace his Jeep?
[23601 – 23700]
One AM in the insectivorous
Maldives where busybodies dismantle
their esculent lingerie glumly
& etymologically, yet uncontested.
Ah, cohabitation. . . . Crap! A matchlock!
Pappy, oh Pappy! A motorcycle
advertises such vulgarism &
wastage while hare-brained tom-tom outbid them,
nog upon nog, & coagulation
of the Eucharist actuates
zodiacal, agnostic sciatica.
For colophon, the bravura, baroque
nocturne of a fledgling saleswoman:
Best to lacerate then sprint away.
[23901 – 24000]
Relight the astrolabe fey Netherlander,
for I’m conflicted. Though I peddle my
unheroic tricycle, all godspeed
& weirdness, at evensong a bullfinch
deadens the seamless margrave with saltpeter.
Relight the handspike, for this nerve-racking
snapshot is mushy & insubstantial
as a puree of bumptious Newtonian
transcendentalism. Mime on moony
stammerer. Relight the ovule, gullible
ventriloquist, & outflank the buttock of
coronary morbidity: for screed
is pottle to the teetotaler, as
instrumentation is prophylactic
to the wolverine.
[33001 – 33100]
Pocked with paintwork, Lulu mighta been
moonlighting. No tomboyish shogun, but
no sadist, either, she was as left-wing
& luminescent as the Erinyes
on the freeway. She could scam a Rodin
out of a hexahedron. She mighta
been a godforsaken luddite, but her
mega-wonky weathervane, as much as
her hedonic headwind, was undepraved.
We getup to publicize the “gotcha”
lovage of salami knackers &
overplay the Maharashtra back in
Muskogee. What mighta been! Instead we’re
goners for gimlet-eyed ophthalmology.
Peter J. Grieco
Peter J. Grieco is a retired English professor and former school bus driver. His poems are widely published in small magazines on-line and in print. His blog “At the Musarium and Other Writings” [https://pjgrieco.wordpress.com/] archives much of this work. His chapbook collection of ekphrastic verse, “The Bind Man’s Meal,” is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
July 2022 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
Thursday, 12:20 p.m.
Tug is listening to music at his desk.
“What’s that instrument that sounds
like a washing machine?” asks Claire.
Tug says “That’s what we in the industry
call a ‘drum,’ Claire.”
A single eyelash falls from my face,
into my yogurt cup.
A redbird taps its head against the window.
Saturday, 2:22 p.m.
I’m deep in the forest right now.
I have no time to listen
to grown men argue
whether Bib Fortuna
survived Jedi or not.
I want the forest in this poem
to function like the forest
in Shakespeare comedies:
A place of working things out,
unencumbered by social constraints.
But I may have learned that wrong.
Thursday, 3:25 p.m.
No one talks about Jane’s Addiction anymore.
Their admixture of heart and decadence.
They seemed so important at the time.
I wish a machine would take me back.
Spring is here with its dampness
and smell of shit.
A guy balancing on a skateboard
with an armful of flowers.
Justin Lacour
Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. He is the author of the chapbook My Heart is Shaped Like a Bed: 46 Sonnets (Fjords 2022).
