Poetry Contributor
Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Wilderness House Literary Review, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999.
John Grey
It rains me blind,
drowns the city,
this submerged body
of gasping concrete,
gurgling steel.
The world’s a shipwreck
sinking in the deep,
broken on rocks of thunder,
mainsails seared by lightning.
I look at my watch,
the one thing visible.
You said 10.00 under the awnings
of the bank.
But there is no bank.
And time, splattered and misting up,
is barely holding on.
It rains me worried.
It rains me stupid.
Such a roiling ocean.
Did the big waves pull you under?
No, here you are,
struggling down Poseidon’s sidewalk.
I pull you into me,
hug you close.
It’s a perilous night.
Even the life rafts need saving.
Leslie Cairns
I grew up on Amber Way, where the tree fell on my Dad’s Chevrolet but it somehow ran. & back then I ran and swerved – left behind – past rocks big as kindergartners, thinking that I had all the summers in the world to obtain scabbed knees. I sat there, folded over, and wondered if the daisies missed me in between.
Then, I outgrow the worn down moss carpet, the pine wood for the ceilings. Now, I think of that place, and don’t think of home. Squinching eyes, instead, I think of friends in sleeping bags, staring up at the tree colored ceilings, asking how we breathe in homes of trees–
So then I renamed the next place I went. A ranch house placed near Amish farm pies, and skies that stretched tight with either blizzards or blustery sunburns. & I learned how to tattoo my roots with something akin to tending. Peeling down the blisters on my fingers, tending to the plants planted in perfect rows near the hummingbirds, beaks open and biting for nectar–
& then I outgrew it. Dashed and revolted, drove an ambling car to the mountains, like we all do
When we need to see the steering wheel go on autopilot, climb to cruising speed,
And stay the same for miles.
I haven’t renamed this place yet,
When the skies bruise, magenta and magnolia orbs flickering in my vision,
The tears mixing in my bedding and my concrete like confetti–
I’ll know it’s time to bloom again.
Grant Howington
Trigger Warning: Violence Suicide
the poets have been hanged from trees tonight
each one a gutted salt-cured gar tonight
their legs move to the wind’s sweet tune tonight
like paired-off ballerinas for tonight
while bending branches sway in step tonight
enchanted by the dancing dead tonight
again I’ll sneak into your room tonight
so I can beg you to come out tonight
tomorrow clouds might burst but not tonight
they only leak a bit of piss tonight
because they’re pregnant with spring rain tonight
and since the poets are strung-up tonight
let’s kiss beneath their kicking feet tonight
swaddled in narrow strips of starless sky
Sandy Benitez
In the courtyard,
I fed you grapes
fresh from the vine.
Poured you boysenberry wine
and scrubbed your dirty feet
until they were pink
as cherry blossoms.
Later, I noticed you sketching
nude figures of women;
their breasts ripe and supple
legs spread wide
revealing desire
in shapes of irises,
furry halved peaches.
Hesitantly, I asked you
why you didn’t draw me.
You replied that you’d seen
enough of me to sate your interest.
Was I that ordinary?
Or did I remind you
of a modern day Medusa,
shaking her reptilian curls
whenever a bad mood arose.
But there was only one monster here.
Mirrors inhabited the empty spaces,
moving faces from wall to wall.
You had looked my way
enough times through the years
and not once did you ever
turn to stone.
Richard LeDue
On a page, words fall,
less valuable than loose change,
unless accepted
by a paying publication-
then the “p” in poem grows up,
and the poet vindicated
for dropping chemistry classes
to study sonnets written by the dead.
“Yet are they truly gone?”
muses a professor, who wrote
about the view from the plane,
flying over Chinese landscapes,
only to get a contributor’s copy,
eventually forsakened to the bottom
of a cardboard box during a yard sale
after the estate was settled.
John Rodzvilla
Most stars move about for an hour
Before pointing their rough heads home,
But not the Plough, never the Plough.
The Plough isn’t ever up in
The evening, even though it
Weighs under a gram.
The Plough is part of a
Constellation called the
Great Bear.
It loafs and eases into to
Wintry night before falling
In line with the other stars.
2.
Most stars move around and
Shake their asses toward evening,
All for the attention of the Plough.
The Plough has never
Handled anything under
A gram, he always sold weight.
The moon landed on heads;
Time is up. Game called.
The Plough is out of a constellation called
Great Bear, which serves winter evenings.
Alexander Etheridge
Every Time here in the dense brush at twilight,
little birds all chatter at once—they know dark
comes on slowly, bringing with it shreds
of eternity. They know a road to the shadows of
Heaven stretches out in us like a secret. This
is the waking fable, they say, this is the living
memory our memories forget. Night opens around us
like a charcoal drawing, and the dusty sparrows
grow still as the ruins of an ancient cathedral.
Joy is clustered with grief inside us, and our prayers
blow softly apart like pollen grains. We follow a path
to the last leaves, and we know death begins slowly,
down in the roots. We’re linked by a thread of fear
and hope. A hailstorm moves from heart to heart—
But an unseen light shepherds us, even through agonies
and decay, something elemental in us watches
the moons of God. We walk out over black and stony
riverbeds, imagining a kinder world. Through the hunger
and desolation we remember an April dream
the forest had, and our faith is swept clean
of doubt. The birds fly out once more, quiet as stars,
older and each alone—purer and peaceful again.
John C. Polles
Trigger Warning: isolation, anxiety, depression
Waves crash—
Saltwater drenches west
ward face of dying light
house, rusted iron cage,
just like in that movie—
A safe harbor?
Or a bleak omen?
I, alone inside and folded in
ward upon myself, wait…
for what?
A safe harbor or
a bleak omen?
It gets dark early this
far north, you know,
this time of year—
Bleak omen,
safe harbor?
What do they want from me,
here and now,
what are they looking for?
Safe harbor?
Here and now,
alone and inward,
folded into
quiet, quiet, quiet
cocooned shadows,
I wonder,
again,
as wrought
iron window frames
clatter—
Rob McKinnon
Red geraniums bloom
in the front garden
otherwise choking with weeds.
Rotting junk mail
stuffed into the filled letter box
hangs precariously
waiting to join other remnants
already on the ground.
White paint flakes from the front bay window
as faded curtains droop unevenly
falling off their rings.
Filled dusty cardboard boxes
on a broken cloth couch
crams under the front veranda.
The open front door held ajar by a shoe
exposes the filling clutter in the hallway
seen from the footpath through the geraniums
and acts as an escape route
for the melodic piano notes
played with pounding passion
accompanying the crescendo of a symphony
booming in the background.
Street traffic rattles passed
not paying any attention.