In the Year 2020 ~ by Sharon Auberle

11/27/202011/15/2020 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

snow coming tonight
pot of red beans and rice
simmering on the stove
dark comes earlier
each evening now
 
I have survived so far
even thrived
though I didn’t always know it
I’ve touched clouds
flown about the world
 
and that     in times like these
seems not real     a dream --
flying machines and castles
in the sky     faces unmasked
bodies still allowed to embrace
 
hands to touch    arms
able to sculpt angels
with a child in fresh snow
beer and beans and rice
allowed to share
 
while laughing and dancing
the black night away …

Sharon Auberle is a poet and photographer who served as Door County, Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2017-2019. She has authored a number of books, including her most recent–Dovetail, co-authored with poet and artist Jeanie Tomasko, which won the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Chapbook of the Year award.

November Editor, Ronda Miller was State President of Kansas Authors Club, 2018 – 2019, Miller has three full length books of poetry: Going Home: Poems from My Life, MoonStain and WaterSigns and chapbook Winds of Time. Miller’s first children’s book, I Love the Child, was published 12/13/2019. The book’s illustrator is Katie Wiggins, a found cousin. I Love the Child, won first place for The Children’s Books Award at the Kansas Authors Club State convention, October, 2020.

I am not A or B ~ by Ande Johnson

11/21/202011/15/2020 Another Darn Fine Poet1 Comment

Cannot check yes no or even may… be
Not boy
Not girl
Not young
Not old
I am the space between
Beyond the outlier
A distant frontier yet undiscovered
Seeking only my answers
Finding only my questions
Looking for definition along the blurred edges
Not in the trimmed hedges
I am not fenced in
But I am not growing wild
I am Boxed in and
Locked out
I am not A or B
I am Lines Left Blank
I am Unnamed
I yearn for contentment
Instead
I am the movement
The transition
The search

Ande Johnson moved to Leavenworth, Kansas in 2019 to be closer to family while homeschooling his son, Wilder. In addition to working on his MPA with plans to attend law school, Ande nurtures a variety of eclectic hobbies as a worm farmer, squirrel rescuer, autism enthusiast, apprentice potter, Excel wizard, camping professional, straw bale gardener, and tarantula dad.

Dark Times ~ By Jacinta Camacho Kaplan

11/17/202011/15/2020 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Open the heavy door
of neighborhood bowling alley,
no one’s there. Dark.
The Big Dipper requires sunglasses on a normal night.
I get my own shoes
and ball as if I own
the place and all the rules have changed.
 
At the snack bar, I pour
myself a lukewarm bottle
of Coke, grab a bag of potato chips, wait for the lights
to switch on while I learn patience; bears hibernate
in summer and tulips bloom
in January in North Dakota.
 
Knock on tavern door a block over. Sign says OPEN, 
but chairs are upside down on
tables, no bartender, no lies or exaggerations, 
no swagger, smoke, or temptation. The town’s devils 
have been evicted or found a better planet to corrupt.

Stand like a statue in the middle of the road, each 
corner empty of strollers,
skateboards, bikes and people on porches, 
no cars in driveways, no taxis to run me
over, no one to give me 
the finger with abandon— I miss that person.

The grocery store follows protocol to buy toilet paper, 
milk and bread. I load the ’72 Volvo wagon with hand sanitizer, 
disinfectant, bleach, and a new chest freezer. But the children 
are middle-aged; they buy their own supplies.

Angst like scratchy linen sheets rubs against raw skin 
like grief tumbling down a rocky hill, there before you realize its name. 
In the movies, they grab a bottle of booze and smoke when they worry,
I stuff cheap chocolates
and rocky road ice
cream down my gullet.

Jacinta Camacho Kaplan has written poems and plays since she learned to read. A retired architect/ restaranteur, she planned to publish her first chapbook called ‘Mooning Everything” in 1995. Jacinta still cannot copy and paste, but she cut her own bangs during lockdown—scissored a W for writer.

butcher rack by Cei Loofe

11/13/202011/15/2020 Darn Fine Poet3 Comments

 i wanna be a boy!
 that’s what i told every ‘old lady’ 
 that came to play bridge with my grandmother. 
 they would smile…
 ruffle my hair and say
 ‘you are cute honey, but you’re a girl.’
 and they were right. 
 i was cute.
 saddle leather tanned
 feathered with incorrigible
 able to fly with a wing span imagination wide 
 i ran shirtless, chest first into everything i could
 i would be cowboy, riding propane tanks all the way to dallas
 and building callouses on my hands from swinging on the kill rack
 long into the night
 washing the blood off before i came in.
 by the time i was seven i knew the meaning of sin.
 i didn’t know wanting to be a priest
 instead of a nun qualified
 so i lied after grandma’s disapproving glance
 and her suggestion i find a better habit. 
 i can still say mass, word for word. 
 i heard all her all their admonitions
 shame on you, young lady.
 wore the blouses they put me in
 my hair held perfect ringlet curls
 i became the precious i was expected to be
 and somewhere in the process
 i lost me. 
 my skin became pale.
 my feathers fell.
 i was no longer able to fly.
 the callouses left my hands, 
 i hung from the rack by a rope.
 long into the night. 
 but with a foothold, not a noose
 wishing to wash off who i had become,
 begin again, in new skin.
 two thousand  ‘what if’s’ and hundreds of ‘why not’s’ later
 i grew courage-gained new feathers sprouted in confidence blue.
 my arms stretched hallelujah-finally wide and i began to fly.

Cei Loofe writes and makes art in Seward, NE with an ASL speaking dog and a quad of stone flipping fish. Loofe spent 25 years as a free-lance journalist before switching to creative writing. Since, he has been included in several anthologies and has been published three times independently.

Creative Collaborations at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Topeka, KS on 1/4/2020

10/27/202011/15/2020 Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Creativity gives me community
voices pushed by the voices
of my ancestors– love
 
creativity allows a clear mind
kindness in my life
don’t judge me but feel me
 
creativity gives me freedom of spirit
we are better together than apart
purpose
 
passion with purpose = power
 
we are shaped by what we create
we create what we hold in our heart
 
creativity lets you express
your soul to the world
 
creativity is the expression derived
from the internal collaboration
of the two selves
 
your voice is you power
to live a creative truth
words become wings that
give birth to the future
 
I dream of a day when all are
equal & live without fear
 
thankful for moments to reflect, now onto
reality; nephew’s memorial service,
post suicide
 
Don’t let someone else’s opinion of you
become your reality or define you
don’t go looking for evidence that you
don’t belong
 
be willing to uplift others
leaders are created
when you teach others
how to lead

Exquisite corpse: (from the French term cadavre exquis), A method by which a collection of words or images are collectively assembled. I collected these poems as I traveled through Kansas. These poems are written collectively by Kansans at readings, open mics and workshops. The titles of each poem are the locations and dates where they were assembled. They are part of Exquisite Kansas, a collection to be published at the end of my laureateship.

Pratt High School in Pratt on 11/28/2019

10/13/202011/15/2020 Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Where has all the summer gone?
 
The summer was sweet
The summer was salty
Long days full of laughter
Joy was evident under the hot sun
Joy is summer, summer holds beauty
beauty is a blessing
 
The summer turns dark
Cold and desperate
 
The summer will vanish & leave
but will always find its way back
to us
although summer is where bellowing heat
resides, there are also relenting, rosy tides
& in those times I think
do my friends really love me?
They never seem to call me
 
The sun rises the sun falls
but why do my friends never call
even when I call them
they still don’t talk to me
 
So instead, I speak to the sky,
the sun, the clouds, stars, moon
& all the galaxies in between
that stop & listen as I spill
my heart like rain
 
An aching like no other
why must I continue to
exist in pain for the
benefit of those who
don’t care
 
to their senses
understand
how the world is
& can be
 
the sunlight ripped away
now there is no light
I can’t see where
I was or should be

I sat there with nothing
empty  inside
I’ve decided I can no longer hide
there’s so many words stuck
in this mind of mine
for we, the children of mankind
teeter on the brink, between
fear and success
the fear of fear itself,
withers away the thought of success
 
Someday, maybe, we’ll understand why
all the success consumes our minds
 
But why do our minds crave success
the thing that eats us
inside & out
 
with the consumption of our body.

Aaron Douglas Art Fair in Topeka on 9/28/19

10/10/202011/15/2020 Huascar Medina1 Comment

Surrounded by art,
smoking grills, misty tents
& Tennessee town ghosts.

Rainfalls as mist
& I’m reminded of Seattle
as people run from the weather.

I almost never carry an umbrella,
even if people tell me,
I’ll need one.

Umbrellas in the desert
are mocking the sky;
Seattle is always wet.

I ran away,
I ran away to you,
to those eyes &
to those hands.

My breathing stops.
If only I could start my
faltering heart. Which
beats only for you.
Always for you.

For strength is relative,
goals found are fought differently,
then the goals still looked for.

The beating is faster when found
slowed to nothing. ‘Till.
‘Till.

Mo(u)rning Ghazal by Shawn Pavey

09/18/2020 Darn Fine Poet3 Comments

Heavy rains for the better part of twenty four hours.
The river rises, water overflowing its borders.

Thunder fills everyone standing with dread, but lightning
cracks the air, opens us to all the sky’s murderous powers.

Beside a propane tank behind my studio, at the edge
of an overgrown gravel drive, sway black-eyed Susans and lacy wildflowers.

Strong black coffee punctuates overcast mornings.
Cigarettes are good, too, but I don’t smoke those anymore.

Last week, chatted with an old and dear friend who’s writing a book
on “The History of Reading” that I want to devour.

He told me it’s cancer. He told me the executor of his will
will send me his lifetime’s book collection of analysis and verse.

I do not want my friend to die and neither do I want to end.
I am exhausted from saying goodbye, yet here we are.

shawn pavey

Shawn Pavey is the author of Talking to Shadows (2008, Main Street Rag Press), Nobody Steals the Towels from a Motel 6 (2015, Spartan Press), and Survival Tips for the Pending Apocalypse (Spartan Press, 2019). He is a Co-founder and former Associate Editor of The Main Street Rag Literary Journal, and a former board member and officer of The Writers Place, a Kansas City-based literary non-profit.

September Editor James Benger is the author of two fiction ebooks, and three chapbooks, one full-length, and coauthor of three split books of poetry. He is on the Board of Directors of The Writers Place and the Riverfront Readings Committee, and is the founder of the 365 Poems In 365 Days online workshop, and is Editor In Chief of the subsequent anthology series. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and children.

Someone’s Sister

08/24/202008/29/2020 linzigarcia4 Comments

The last time I bit my brother,
he was nine. I was six. I don’t know why
my furious teeth broke his unsuspecting skin,
but to my disgust, he cried. I reasoned
that he was just nine, that boys cry. But
so unbecoming—loud wails, puffy
eyes—I never bit him again.
He made me cry when I was 16, saying
girls couldn’t drive—couldn’t park
straight, got lost all the time. I clenched
my furious teeth. I bit through my own lip.
I had to learn that when he calls me ‘Sis’
he means, ‘I love you.’ Why
must his ownership be his love?
Once, he pedaled furiously to the corner
house that sent me home crying
in hot anger, biting my tongue.
What did he do
to the boys there? Hit them,
maybe. That’s what boys do
to show they love what’s theirs.

Katelyn Roth graduated from Pittsburg State University with her Master’s in poetry. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives, works, and writes in Kansas City.

August Co-Editor and Past Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019) Kevin Rabas teaches at Emporia State University, where he leads the poetry and playwriting tracks and chairs the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism. He has twelve books, including Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner. He is the recipient of the Emporia State President’s and Liberal Arts & Sciences Awards for Research and Creativity, and he is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry.

August Co-Editor Linzi Garcia can be found frolicking through fields, cemeteries, and bars across the states, gathering poetry along the way. She recently received her MA in English at Emporia State University, where she served as the assistant to Former Poet Laureate of Kansas Kevin Rabas and to Bluestem Press. Her first poetry collection, Thank You was published by Spartan Press (2018), and her co-written chapbook Live a Great Story was published by Analog Submission Press (2019). She is always looking to invest time in new places where she can absorb new perspectives

Red Rover — by Dawne Leiker

08/17/202005/31/2020 linzigarcia1 Comment

When I picture Alan, it’s with his toes outlined
in silky white sand, stepping into a frothy wave,
just as a slice of sunlight welcomed him
to take one more step. His mom bracing herself
against that same wave. And when she looked again,
Alan was gone. That was all. Just gone. Lost
where eyes cannot distinguish ocean from sky,
From a shore a world away from
the sea of Kansas wheat fields.

That summer after Padre Island
That summer of undertow and loss
we remembered the teenager who
entered seamlessly into our neighbor kid games:
Red Rover, Green Light Red Light, New Orleans
A pale cowlick resisting the order
of his freshly combed hair.
We remembered how he
lit the grassy summer nights.
Strolled easily when Red Rover called him over.

Dawne Leiker is a former journalist, now working in academia. Her news/feature stories have appeared in The Hays Daily News, Lawrence Journal World, and several online publications. Her poetry and short stories have garnered awards in regional and statewide literary competitions. Ms. Leiker’s fiction and poetry often are influenced by her past news story interviews, as she develops and re-imagines fictional characters and situations loosely based on local individuals and events.