Nightingale & Sparrow

Author: juliette

  • Joan McNerney

    Joan McNerney

    Poetry Contributor

    Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Blueline, and Halcyon Days. Four Bright Hills Press Anthologies, several Poppy Road Review Journals, and numerous Kind of A Hurricane Press Publications have accepted her work. Her latest title is Having Lunch with the Sky and she has four Best of the Net nominations.

    Works in Nightingale & Sparrow

    In Flight

  • Bright sky

    Bright sky

    Carol Alena Aronoff

    dispels black thought;
    fear slips away–wisps of cloud
    dissolving into azure silk.
    I look south for solace, search 
    for sun’s fire in my waning
    inner life, seek to rekindle
    a clear path to spirit.

    Threads are still there–
    frayed from trying 
    too hard or not at all.
    Confusion has been woven
    in my outer fabric
    yet I know there’s a clarity
    that shines from the heart,
    so close, so luminous,
    it is easy to overlook–
    to look elsewhere. 

    Opening past habits of dead 
    wood, the voice complaining
    like lazy wind blows 
    this way and that
    without saying anything.
    I find space to breathe,
    take flight with geese
    in endless lemon sky, 
    soar blissfully
    back into my self,
    knowing that I never
    lost anything. 

    Carol Alena Aronoff

  • Country Boy

    Country Boy

    Jack M. Freedman

    Tapping in his Tony Lamas
    Wiggling in his Wranglers
    Stimulating in his Stetson
    The wind propels him
    Twisting and spinning
    As the guitar strums
    He is a centrifuge
    Defying gravity
    Never succumbing
    To earthly limitations
    This cowboy soars
    Grabbing his belt buckle
    As if launching himself
    Into the atmosphere
    Propelled in alignment
    Embraced by acoustics
    Born in the USA
    Stature of the
    Colossus of Rhodes
    Love child of deities
    Product of divinity birthed
    As if Icarus and Terpsichore
    Conceived him
    As he glides across dancefloors
    He could make himself
    Levitate in midair
    Knowing full well
    He was born to fly

    Jack M. Freedman

  • Claire Loader

    Claire Loader

    Photography Contributor

    A writer and photographer, Claire Loader was born in New Zealand and spent several years in China before moving to County Galway, Ireland.  Recently published in Pidgeonholes, The Bangor Literary Journal and Crossways, she spends her days seeking enchantment in ruins.  You can find her work here: www.allthefallingstones.com

    Works in Nightingale & Sparrow

    Soar

  • lift off

    lift off

    Britton Minor

    lift off

    Britton Minor

  • Linda M. Crate

    lindacrateLinda M. Crate

    Poetry Contributor

    Linda M. Crate’s works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies. She’s the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest of which is: More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019). She’s also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears
    (Czykmate Books, June 2018). She has published three full-length poetry collections: Vampire Daughter (Dark Gatekeeper Gaming,
    February 2020), The Sweetest Blood (Cyberwit, February 2020), and Mythology of My Bones (Cyberwit, August 2020).

    Works in Nightingale & Sparrow

    malignant dystopia, what’s left, crow song & solitude

  • we wait for something beautiful then we destroy it

    “we wait for something beautiful then we destroy it”

    Stuart Buck

    lying in the inch of fairy floss snowfall in the car park
    of the abandoned hardware store but we don’t feel the cold
    oh no, we are boiling mercury in our veins and the beautiful
    thing is that the sky isn’t falling, we are soaring up to meet it
    so I kiss your hand as we hit the screaming brilliance head on
    becoming fractured perfection for those endless seconds but
    oh god, we wake as only dust on the pavement and your frostbitten
    fingers curl up as a dying plant in a desert of unanswered prayers

    Stuart Buck

  • Akif Kichloo

    Akif Kichloo

    Poetry Contributor

     Akif Kichloo is a poet of Indian origin currently alternating residence between Saginaw, Michigan (USA) and Kashmir, J & K (India). With a bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery, he has been eating shoelaces for the past year because he gave up everything to write poetry.

    Works in Nightingale & Sparrow

    Dreamers Dream Dreamers Do

  • Devil’s Den No More

    Devil’s Den No More

    Zoe Philippou

    Devil's Den No More

    Zoe Philippou

  • Ascending Cliffs in the Distance

    Ascending Cliffs in the Distance

    Jeffrey Yamaguchi

    An endless beach, truly. Miles upon miles of sand, sea, and cliffs. Not another person in sight. I was alone with my body and my thoughts, one foot in front of the other, feet sinking into the ocean soaked sands.

    The alone part, wonderful. The thoughts, not so good. The clichés ricocheted inside my head, each effort to break out of this line of thinking just reinforcing and cycling back into itself the inherent problem 

    Is this a dream?
    This is like a dream.
    This is a dream come true.
    I feel as if I am one with nature.
    The ocean and the sky are as close to forever as I’ll ever know.
    Like a dream.

    Someone else says these things, you roll your eyes. You say them to yourself and you want to pull your eyes out of your own head. But I kept reaching for the clichés, because the other places my mind would trip itself into were very specific — too specific, in fact, about the nonessential but nonetheless highly stressful elements of the ongoing nonspecific nature of the work that I (we) do and from which I had made a vehement point of taking a break from:

    The nonsensical clarification of a confusing explanation from an ongoing conversation at a regularly scheduled and always running-long meeting.

    The repeated generalized ask for more creative for the more creative aspects of our most creative work.

    The conference call invite details for a discussion about a better process for our debriefs after important conference calls.

    It’s as if I was actually still at my desk staring at a screensaver of the beach that I was walking upon right at that very moment.

    That is when I saw the birds.

    In a dynamic formation the birds trailed up the edges of the glistening sea and danced with the continual roll and crash of waves, sheer elegance in the way they lifted their wings ever so slightly above the frothy waters in flux. They flew over me in a drift, and as soon as they passed, the speed of their traverse seemed to rapidly accelerate. I stopped and watched their flight to further. In the distance they shifted their trajectory and ascended the steep walls of the cliffs, whipping themselves out of view, beyond the vantage of my sight. They were gone, and my mind was set to glide as I imagined the birds continuing on with their flight.

    I wanted this, to reach the cliffs and to see what is on the other side, and then to carry on, out of sight and aloft, heading ever higher and further into the unknown spaces of beyond.

    There is no one to report what happened next. This is the true beauty of taking a walk alone that is long and far enough away — to get to the point where the things you (don’t) think and the places you (don’t) delve into and the (non)decisions you decide (not) to make are truly and wholeheartedly yours and yours alone. 

    I did not see the birds again. But I kept on moving, and I did reach the cliffs. And once I reached the cliffs, I continued on with the journey.

    I am still there, sometimes, not always. I never find myself if I have to look. 

    Watch them disappear
    keep moving and get closer
    to not being there

    Ascending Cliffs in the Distance

    Jeffrey Yamaguchi