January 2022 | poetry
This time, I will begin at the ending.
That house burned in the fire
along with all of the others
in Larkin Valley.
But by then, the bats were gone.
I keep returning to this poem
that draws me to a late autumn afternoon
when my niece and I sat in lawn chairs
facing her house. Just after sunset,
a dark shape appeared
from a crack under the eves,
grew larger and left
on its jerky flight.
Then came another
dark shape
and another until
the bats had all flown out.
We pulled on our sweatshirts,
poured white wine
and waited for the stars
to begin their display.
Patricia L. Scruggs
Patricia L. Scruggs lives and writes in Southern California. In addition to her poetry collection, Forget the Moon, her work has appeared in ONTHEBUS, Spillway, RATTLE, Calyx, Cultural Weekly, Crab Creek Review, Lummox, Inlandia as well as the anthologies 13 Los Angeles Poets, So Luminous the Wildflowers, and Beyond the Lyric Moment. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, Patricia is a retired art educator who earned her MFA at California State University, Fullerton.
January 2022 | poetry
Is death a seed born in us, growing unseen
ripening at some pre-determined moment
a heart stops, a car strikes, cancer takes a final bite
Is it possible to die a little slower or stretch time out
like a sleeping lion
or salt water taffy
Can you bargain with Time, haggling and hammering
out deals like a summit meeting
but holding hardly any chips, only a few memories
Like her first cry or moments of tidal love
that comfort you during the lean years
memories you are willing to exchange
For a minute, an hour, a day
can you wear Time down until, totally exhausted,
setting his scythe aside, consulting his ledger
fiddling with his abacus, doing the math
like your granddaughter struggling with algebra
making sure it adds up, nothing extra
Nothing left over
he looks at you with tunnel eyes, his brow
narrowed and gnarled
I am an old man he sighs, twirling
his white beard, scratching his ears
where rogue hairs have begun to sprout
He brushes away ash from a burned out star
before handing you a scrap of paper
three days
You write your lover’s name on it
postponing phantom pain
written in the black glyph of forever
Claire Scott
Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
January 2022 | poetry
We track this slow animal in the snow
because it leaves a blood trail
and we think that makes it vulnerable
But then it circles back
breaks the trap and eats the bait
and suddenly disappears
Or comes up behind us
to prove its fangs are real
and at the same time
whispers to us in a soft voice
It lives in artefacts
among monuments and ruins
and at night drinks and carouses
and knocks on doors with its pommel
touting a swashbuckling history
But then finally grows old
and into a child again
was when it was first only a word
delicate as freedom or liberty
dried into a fragile antiquity
subtle as synapses in the brain
or the language of animals
Sing louder they say
and it will leave us alone
and when we dream of flight
it proves to us we have not
the wisdom of birds
George Moore
George Moore’s collections include Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FutureCycle 2016). He has published poetry in The Atlantic, Poetry, Arc, North American Review, Stand, and Orion. Nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes, and a finalist for The National Poetry Series, he presently lives on the south shore of Nova Scotia.
January 2022 | poetry
In This House We Believe In
blogs that pant and drool
speaking with the manager
In This House We Believe In
the latent philosophy of tater tots
Bundt cakes that know how to testify
In This House We Believe In
pinball melodies of washer/dryer combos
chihuahuas that wear lipstick
futures that refuse their present
therapists who prescribe cages in cages
In This House We Believe In
the salt & pepper of the masses
and of course, sanctimonious final lines.
Rikki Santer
Rikki Santer’s poetry has received many honors including six Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eleventh poetry collection, Stopover, which is in conversation with the original Twilight Zone series was recently published by Luchador Press. Please contact her through her website: rikkisanter.com
January 2022 | poetry
This breathing light is
full of past afternoons, curved as sails.
I try to find the Mountain Man album
I would listen to in the last house,
in the lamp’s honeying, in the shampoo smell
and closeness of a rose-patterned quilt.
Some things are a sun
the heavy months have slipped in front of:
the songs I alight on are more recent,
but I listen as a Saturday fades
in that chore-filled way.
A core: in between the swoop of voices
I can hear my hands smooth fabric,
make small predictions.
I still find it hard to tell
which shirts will hold damp longest,
gathered in their furthest corners.
In other words, idle things occur,
and occur to me: my father playing guitar
by the rough stone side of a daydream.
Being twelve, the stalled shape time takes on;
the plastic strings, varnish that peeled
away with a small noise sometimes,
left flywing shapes. The feeling
leaf-weightless and portable.
Alicia Byrne Keane
Alicia Byrne Keane is a poet and PhD student from Dublin. Alicia has a first class honours degree in English Literature and French from Trinity College Dublin and a MSt. in English Literature 1900-Present from Oxford University, and is currently finishing an Irish Research Council-funded PhD study that problematizes ‘vagueness’ and the ethics of translation in the work of Samuel Beckett and Haruki Murakami, at TCD. Alicia’s poetry has been published in The Moth, The Colorado Review, The Cardiff Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Banshee, Bayou, Entropy, Abridged, and the Honest Ulsterman, among others. Alicia’s poem ‘surface audience’ was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Prize; the short story ‘Snorkels’ was featured in Marrowbone Books’ anthology ‘The Globe and Scales.’ Alicia is in receipt of an Irish Arts Council Agility Award.
January 2022 | poetry
Saturday morning to ourselves.
No husbands, no kids.
The lake house, a friend’s but ours
for a few hours. We shimmy
out of jeans into bathing suits,
one piece, thanks very much.
On the pier, I drop my cover-up,
dangle feet in cool water. You say
no one’s seen me in a suit since the
kids were born.
No judgment, I answer,
all the while thinking
why don’t we ever take it easy
on ourselves, we women? Be more like
men. Never a thought to
belly bursting its waistband,
to skin once smooth and firm, now
sagging. Eyes never darting
downward in shame for appearing
less than perfect.
The sun behind does its magic,
transforms us to long shadows
dancing, shimmering,
transports us, two young girls
laughing, carefree
on a do-nothing summer’s day.
Peggy Hammond
Peggy Hammond’s recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Pangyrus, The Comstock Review, For Women Who Roar, Fragmented Voices, The Sandy River Review, ONE ART, and elsewhere. A Best of the Net nominee, her chapbook The Fifth House Tilts is due out fall 2022 (Kelsay Books). Her full-length play A Little Bit of Destiny was produced by OdysseyStage Theatre in Durham, NC.
