the new neighbor asks how my aunt is feeling

I stop

how would she know my aunt, as we never see her

and it is my other mother who is sick

she questions, as if my mothers are two sisters

who live together

raise children

share a bed

not sisters Gertrude Stein says

my mother not mother but mother

      ***

as one mother is a nurse the other is a counselor

a kind of therapy down the middle

one for the mind the other for the body

I help them sharpen that double-edged axe

for gardens for protection

each job a work of resistance

against grindstones

~ Dennis Etzel

Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas. He has an MFA from The University of Kansas, and an MA and Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Kansas State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, DIAGRAM, and others. He teaches English at Washburn University, is the Managing Editor of Woodley Press, and volunteers at the YWCA’s Center for Safety and Empowerment.

kneeling like a giant monk under a

bliss so vast that kingfishers welter

in the equivocal wind. His concrete

thighs bulging arc & secretly grunt up

around buttock & the leaning back as

ballast. At night they appear in

hordes, a streaming silent echo marking

under the belly of sleeping ecstasy

like living tattoos. They fall in white

crescendos, commas, ellipses, the pubic

curls of questions & drop like periods

into it, into him- their stories are

the tangling currents of a turbulent

confluence, an orgy of silver

sufferings: basil, roses, chocolate.

The man comes down from the house in

sleep and stands at the iron opening.

Chanting on a swift tide, a tempest

whisper told far at sea. The figures

rise wet to face him speak, and slide

from the vessel to bound across the

parched plain as creatures once did

here before fences and plumbing. They

go and come as heavenly bodies whorl

until the man returns to his bed. It is

July. The dry farmers have begun

plowing in lost corn. The silo owns a

spigot known to the hand of those who

fraternize with the bones of stars.

~ Peter Wright

Peter Wright tends his fire on fifteen acres in Jefferson County, Kansas. He divides his time between studying the languages of the cloud shaped whales that migrate above and the grass clad people in the surrounding sea.

Pulse is abruptly revived
from weeks of stale existence
Heart slapped across the face:
“WAKE UP! BARE AND LIVE!”

Lungs fill with trees’ exhaust
in crisp, humid draws

Journey quickens to
leave the clasping cold behind
Shoes shuffle through
bleached leaves, grass

~ Bill Hagman

dawdling when suddenly she

sweeps up the staircase,

loose hair streaming, her dress

an avalanche of lost

messages. Turn

on your heel. After her.

In a moment reverse

a lifetime of error.

~ Roderick Townley

Author of fifteen books and two children, Roderick Townley is known for his novels for young readers, including The Great Good Thing and The Door in the Forest. He has published two volumes of poetry and won many honors, the greatest of which is his marriage to poet Wyatt Townley. www.rodericktownley.com and www.facebook.com/RoderickTownley

Starting Line

Stretching beneath

The sign with two bullet holes,

I gauge the gray sky,

Pulsing veins of darkness.

Swimmer

Wind rushes in

To fill space

Where sea water once

Raced for shore.

Specimen

All afternoon, incredulous

Farmers in trucks

Slow to ask if I

Need a ride, son.

Flint Hills

At the ridge top

Semis swoop past

Honking great blasts

Of pterodactyl breath.

Race Official

Wind whistles

A break through

Windows of

An abandoned house.

Diner Lunch

When I tell the waitress

I’m running across the county,

She says she’s running too,

Out the door at five o’clock.

Rain Shower

I’m now walking

With my head down

Rivulets

Pacing like blood.

Freedom

The old bull escaped

From the broken pen

Jogs a bit as I pass,

Vanishing into the ravine.

Gas Station Window

Plastic bottle under

The outdoor tap,

I watch a waterbug dash

Across the mirrored plains.

Exhaustion

My breath becomes

Some panting beast

Running beside me

Barking into the wind.

Town

Suddenly land falls away

To reveal miles ahead

A sparse silent line of homes

With a sun shaft sprinting past.

County Line

I lean against the sign

For fifteen minutes while

Storm clouds inside me

Veer away into the hills.

~ Thomas Reynolds

Thomas Reynolds is an associate English professor at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, and has published poems in various print and online journals, including New Delta Review, Alabama Literary Review, Aethlon-The Journal of Sport Literature, The MacGuffin, Flint Hills Review, and Prairie Poetry. Woodley Press of Washburn University published his poetry collection Ghost Town Almanac in 2008. His chapbook The Kansas Hermit Poems will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2013.

In the kitchen with the low windows

my fat grandmother grinds away

at the brown wooden churn. The wattles

of her arms move in rhythm with

the clack of the heavy paddles.

I watched her then, savored the sour

smell of butter, took for granted

that a woman would work this hard

for food. Her overloaded heart held out

for years. She cooked, cleaned, bleached,

laundered, starched, ironed, mended.

Bathed eight children one after the other

in a common zinc tub. Every Sunday

she dressed up twice for church. Black dress

with the tiny white flowers, black hat

balanced atop her grey hair, wound in a bun.

In the end it was her brain, tiny vessels bursting

silently, a slow conspiracy of displacement.

My mother, Pearl, the child of disappointment

became third person to my grandmother.

My grandmother became Susan once more.

     ~ Diane Wahto

Diane Wahto is a retired Butler Community College English instructor. She, her husband, and three dogs live in Wichita. Her three children and five grandchildren live in Lawrence and Shawnee. Her poem “Crossing Highway 66,” will appear in Reflect and Write, a text for high school students, in spring 2013.

Contractions bring snow.

February the seventh:

the tyrant drought blinks.

2.

Olga eats red grapes,

chicken broth, and jasmine rice

from proffered teaspoons.

3.

Lavender oil

calms. Our doula untangles

dueling stethoscopes.

4.

Expectant father,

bright in the ghetto Dillons,

buys food for breast milk.

5.

The mill grinds wheat on

the choked Smoky Hill for the

pizza factory.

6.

Haiku in the space

time between painjoy shouts.

Seconds. Syllables.

7.

It is time to leave

the carriage house of the Lee

Mansion where we live.

8.

Olga breathes dragon

breaths. Snow crystals, black coat, our

Volkswagen Jetta.

9.

The hospital like a

catcher’s mitt. Elevator

dings on every floor.

10.

Downtown below us,

the Masonic Temple too.

Such gargoyle heights.

11.

We don’t know any

better. We tell you to push

when you want to wait.

12.

Strange scissors that chew

through the umbilical cord.

Cry, needle. Wail, thread.

13.

The traveler is

tired and sleeps. Come morning,

Kansas will be new.

~ William Emergy

William Emery is the author of Kodoku, a children’s book about the first man to sail alone across the Pacific Ocean, the nonfiction travelogue Edges of Bounty: Adventures in the Edible Valley, and the “sustainability punk” webcomic Engine. His poems have appeared in Mastodon Dentist, The Leveler, and To the Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices. He is a founding member of Ad Astra Books and Coffee, a worker-owned cooperative bookstore in Salina, Kansas and former acquisitions editor at Heyday Books.

over the river bend, green shrubs

even a droughty river holds—

just as the flock had a week before,

right before he saw the small Washita,

a white triangle in the pea gravel—

he might have, had he believed

in omens, egret deities, or other magic,

thought himself lucky, looked

for another point, that moment,

at his feet. Instead, he was only

gladdened. All day he saw

gravel and minnows, light

on the water. Only later,

moving back upriver,

did he indulge his foolishness,

cursing, almost aloud, the day’s

heat, the barrenness of the river.

He saw again the ungainly grace

of wading egrets lifting in late

afternoon’s sallow light. Their blessing

had been real. “Walk slowly, look hard

in the small gravel. Move on.”

~ William Sheldon

William Sheldon lives with his family in Hutchinson, Kansas. His poetry and prose have appeared widely in small press publications. He is the author of three collections of poetry, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley, 2002), Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill Press, 2009), and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth, 2011).

if you cross the line

after which no shoes are required

if you grow out of your clothes

before I grow out of mine

and enter the atmosphere I breathe

I will hunt you down eyes closed

every day every night every

breath one breath closer I

will take you in breathe you out

a cosmic CPR

on the couch in the car

in the woods in bed

for if you should precede me

you’ll be in front of me forever

ahead of everywhere

I turn as I push off

to the word ahead of this one

~ Wyatt Townley

Wyatt Townley’s books of poems include The Breathing Field (Little, Brown), Perfectly Normal (The Smith), and her latest, The Afterlives of Trees (Woodley), a Kansas Notable Book and winner of the Nelson Award, completed with a fellowship from the Kansas Arts Commission and just nominated for the Pushcart Prize. (www.WyattTownley.com)

from The Afterlives of Trees by Wyatt Townley (Woodley Press, 2011)

in parking lots, songs of the tribe,

schoolbooks laid out on a farm table;

match books, account books, paperback

novels with broken spines; comic books,

coat buttons, bottle rockets, produce sheds,

hardware salesmen, cattle market men,

auctioneers and german bakers; road

surveyors, men who take risks on the

interstate in trucks; summers plunging

off a bridge into a muddy creek, the rust

of railroad tracks returning to the earth;

clamshells, sardine cans, dogs with sad

haunches and mouths swung open

like sliced watermelon; questions

with no answers, horses no one

can ride, a panhandler mooching

through the backyard; a firehouse

plot that thickens; towns, towns

and more towns; men who are

consumed by them, men who

work outdoors in the rain,

bankers and wildcatters

and rodeo boys, tractors

crawling across the horizon

like snails; men with

slouch hats blocking out

the sun, men in barbershops

and women in beauty parlors;

gods that exist in sullen wicked

hearts; concrete which hardens

in the most solemn sets of eyes;

a saloon in every town, a mason

jar, a stump hole, a chicken bone;

a half bottle of rye whiskey left out

on the porch; a wrecked fence; a swing

slung low from a huge old apple tree;

decent men, decent women, children

who come out of nowhere; their silent

faces, their delicate faces, like dew on

flowers, like clay baked in a ferocious

oven; furious, silent, lonely faces,

lonely as flower pots; the silence

of words that remain unspoken,

lives translated out of silence

and back into silence again;

a silence which retains its tragic

simplicity; like music which exists

inside music; the kind of music

that is trapped inside itself

~ George Wallace