July 2018 | poetry
Materials
The copper widow
offers a penny a thought
to fill her basket
with derivative fortune
cookie drivel of evil
~
The two-bit widow
dispenses small-time wisdom;
small-minded yokels
in small towns throughout the land
think me soothsayer gypsy
~
The très chic widow’s
custom-fitted tuxedo,
a George Sand number,
parfait with kitten-heel pumps,
and couture pop-art bow tie.
~
The watchful widow
on stake-out beyond the wake
of amplified loss
catches the constellation
Orion hunting me down
Zodiac Ripple
I was born on a full moon
a bad-ass moon
in Aries’s house
my sun sign in tight-ass Virgo’s
has a big bulgy ball of loosy-goosies
to contend with
some rules
apply
some rules don’t (as here)
fickle the application thereof
I know the rules
know which is which
a poker face doesn’t stand
a chance
you can’t
fake me out
the aggrieved
grammarian
prim-grim librarian
is off-duty tonight
my ram rises
for George Wolff
by Karla Linn Merrifield
Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 600+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 12 books to her credit, the newest of which is Bunchberries, More Poems of Canada, a sequel to Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills), which received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. Forthcoming this fall is Psyche’s Scroll, a full-length poem, to be published by The Poetry Box Selects in June. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet Redux, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com. Google her name to learn more; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel; https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.
July 2018 | poetry
I love our pup, she whose DNA chooses to chew
the coffee table’s legs, any book, shoe or the pair
of reading glasses I left where anyone my age
would set them in case of fire, storm, the need
to finally pay a bill, much less an inappropriate
drop-in by someone you would never add to
your daughter’s wedding invitation list. However
it’s 7am and I must feed her. There’s a schedule,
a set of behaviors prescribed in validated tomes
by those who decided never to major in philosophy,
dance history, or literature. They opened their minds
to trial and error, determining a schedule is for sure
the only way to raise a confident and willing companion
who will at some unfathomable day give up dragging
anything dangling—bed spread, sweater, scarf, shower curtain—
who will come when called, sit, lie down, heel, fetch, love
me even when there is no treat. But it’s 7am and I
staggered to bed after meeting a deadline at 3am.
The schedule proclaims “Feed the pup at the same time
every day.” If she sleeps just a measly hour longer, do I
risk her turning into the neighborhood’s teeth baring
dingo who digs up Mrs. Phelps’s petunias, snarls
at the priest on his daily walk, steals the dump truck
from the sandbox down the street, snaps at the kid
selling magazines for a trip to Haiti? Will I be
the one whose best friend must be muzzled for
sleeping into just one more hour of just another day?
Do I take a rabid risk? Oh hell, God bless the kibble.
by Jack Ridl
Jack Ridl’s collection Broken Symmetry was named the year’s best collection by The Society of Midland Authors. His Practicing to Walk Like a Heron received the Gold Medal for Poetry from ForeWord Review/ALA, and his Against Elegies was chosen by Billy Collins for The Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize. He was named Michigan’s Professor of the Year by the Case/Carnegie Foundation. More than 90 of his students are now publishing their work, several of whom have won first book awards.
July 2018 | poetry
To minimize sorrow’s splash & sizzle
baby lava drops slow motion fall
leaving their tear ducts empty of ways
to transport the stuff of grief
some lean toward heavenly things
the blue & white fluff of paper Mache
obese clouds of thunderous joy
the pretty and perfect pulseless distractions
made famous by the stuff of faith
consumption is rarely subpoenaed
for questioning too much stuff
in the gut’s garage too much mail
in the mind’s cold box to sort out the real
from the almost real the who the hell sent
this wickedness to me who has time
for such stuff
by Daniel Edward Moore
Daniel Edward Moore’s poems have been published in the Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Columbia Journal, New South, American Journal Of Poetry and others. His poems are currently at Lullwater Review, Natural Bridge Literary Journal, Scalawag Magazine, Tule Review, Fire Poetry Journal, West Texas Literary Review, The Chaffin Journal, Bluestem Magazine, The Paragon Journal and Sheila-Na-Gig. Poems forthcoming are in Weber Review, Stillwater Review, Hawaii Review, Blue Fifth Review, Plainsongs, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, Broad Street Magazine, The Museum Of Americana and West Trade Review. His books of poems are the anthology “This New Breed: Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians,” and “Confessions Of A Pentecostal Buddhist” can be found on Amazon. He lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. (danieledwardmoore.com)
