A Poem by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

When Kelley Hunt Sings


The first velvet words land right in the center 
of whatever we think we know. By the time
the drums pick up, we're ready: hips tilted to one side,
shoulders to the other, the drum beat an ocean
in high wind, a hummingbird in our chests.

The fire warms us across the distance, right here
in Liberty Hall, on the last night of a decade.
When we inhale, we're down at the riverside. 
Exhale, and it's not over when it's over. 
There’s a mountain of voice, her hands dizzying 
across the keyboard or red guitar, each low note 
catching the best of the sun nearing the horizon.

Then the sudden rise of voice and horns, the strongest 
wings, heavy as the siren call of all we can’t live
without but do. We rush back to the dance floor, 
boogy-woogie our muscles into the lone star road 
of twist and rise, and lift our sights above 
the blue notes, into the beautiful dark.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 23 books, including Miriam’s Well, a novel; Everyday Magic: A Field Guide to the Mundane and Miraculous, and Following the Curve, poetry. Her previous work includes The Divorce Girl, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet, a bioregional memoir on cancer and community; and six poetry collections, including the award-winning Chasing Weather with photographer Stephen Locke. Founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, Mirriam-Goldberg also leads writing workshops widely.

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A Poem by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

The Night John Prine Died



The pink full moon rose over the pandemic
singing through the tree, “Hello in there. Hello.”

We listened, all children grown old, but always
looking for something to hold onto, even angels

of the old rivers of our hearts’ journeys, 
grown wilder in their holiness, forcing new channels

like the holy is prone to do, especially when everything
changes. What is there to do but stand here,

willing peaceful waters to calm us, sometime 
in the future, as if that’s where paradise lay?

But John Prine knew there’s a hole in the world. 
We can only glimpse it now while time changes us,

if we’re true, into souvenirs of this life,
talismans of something perennial as leaves

beneath the tree of forgiveness the moon climbs.
Come on home, come on home, come on home.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 23 books, including Miriam’s Well, a novel; Everyday Magic: A Field Guide to the Mundane and Miraculous, and Following the Curve, poetry. Her previous work includes The Divorce Girl, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet, a bioregional memoir on cancer and community; and six poetry collections, including the award-winning Chasing Weather with photographer Stephen Locke. Founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, Mirriam-Goldberg also leads writing workshops widely.

Two Poems by Morgan O.H. McCune

Letter of Long Grass

We urge whomever responsible
To address this matter very
Urgently; there is danger,
And if not addressed
A team must be dispatched.

Look--let bees tangle
The leggy oregano, let spiders
Spin in wild blades of rough;
Let each wasp bring
Its blessing of sharp attention
To heal what has been mown.

Seaweed

I.

Kelp, I learn at the aquarium,
have holdfasts to anchor them,
stipes like stems, bladders to lift
blades to the sun. I try to trace
a line to its end, but it moves
like memory, bleeds into other
lines, and the whole view sways,
dizzying. Fish cruise between
dark and light, thoughts in salt-water.

II.

For these two women to harvest
seaweed, they must venture
into bitter surf with sharp
knives, wrestle the living ropes,
cut them free, twirl them
into baskets that they then
must keep from the sea.
They load the boat heavy,
steer home while the sea pulls.

III.

We ignore storm warnings, afraid
we’ll miss our chance. Vacations are
rare as reunions, and we’re taut
cables stretched from ship
to foundering ship. We arrive at a beach
piled with seaweed, ugly and shocking.
But what’s familiar about this smell?--
natural as chemical signals, as beach,
storm, the salvation of a weed
absorbing surge.

Assistant Editor Morgan O.H. McCune recently retired from Pittsburg State University in southeast Kansas. Now based in Topeka, she holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis (1991) and an M.L.S. from Emporia State University (2002). Her poems have been published in River Styx, Flint Hills Review, and other places. 

Two Poems by Katelyn Roth

At the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

When I take her daughter
onto my hip in the Egypt room, 
my cousin says babies are the best 
tour guides if we will only follow
their eyes to the dizzying
spread of ceiling tiles, thin,
needle-sharp arms of lights
straining to us, the nearby slope of
some woman’s neck, the warmth
in her pale hands. And in the 
gift shop, a tiny water wheel
turns and turns and turns. Her baby rejects
my two offered fingers in favor of her own
palm. She is everything she needs.

Mass Shooting

i go to Lucille
Clifton again, to 
“the times.” on my bed
in a chiffon dress, soft
to the floor, i eat
chocolate-covered
pomegranate.
the body 
can feel good things
too. we can make
a home here.
ear buds without music
muffle even the
silence. i am
so full and so hungry.
i eat in the bath.
i almost text
my ex. i am 
lonelier
than i can ever remember
feeling.
i collage. i want
to finish, push, 
make something. so I 
make myself 
stop. feelings
just have
to be felt.
it is hard to remain human
but we are, and 
i am.

Assistant Editor Katelyn Roth has a master’s in poetry from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press, in Apeiron Review, and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Ohio where she is an MFA candidate at Ohio State University.

A Poem by Katelyn Roth

I drive to the city

to a park, which are different
in the city (city park), and sit
in sun that only looks warm
(because sometimes
things only look warm), and the guy
in the offroader next to me
gets a beer from his trunk
after a while and we sit
side-by-side in our cars, not acknowledging
each other, him drinking his beer
in a ballcap, me nursing a new album
on the radio, and the couple in the long grass 
just ahead
is kicking a soccer ball
and trying cartwheels. I feel
as if there is nothing
I could more reasonably be doing
than watching the thin cat hunched
on the treacherous side of the railing 
of a balcony across the street. 
(I can’t know this,
but at home, my dog is yowling
at every pass of the neighbors
overhead. Who isn’t yowling
at things passing just overhead?)
You will ask which songs on this
new album were my favorite—always 
the saddest ones. I wish I could connect
over easy, simple, human things, like the beer,
like the ballcap, like a soccer ball
and the sharp coolness of the grass
under-palm as I circle myself over it,
but the saddest songs are my favorites,
it must be agony and nothing else, and his beer
must be a sad beer, and his cap must be
to hide his tired eyes, and the couple must be
on their last attempt to reconcile, and
the cartwheels must be a frenzied swipe
at what is always just overhead.

Assistant Editor Katelyn Roth has a master’s in poetry from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press, in Apeiron Review, and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Ohio where she is an MFA candidate at Ohio State University.

A Poem by Laura Washburn

Mr. Redbud
	     
Mr. Redbud, I’m not sure how 
well you can hear me anymore.
You’re the moon through a telescope.
I’d like to hang a plastic Easter
egg on each one of your limbs.
Oh Mr. Redbud, wait, wait,
and now you bud.  To hell
with the rain, and to hell with your roots;
everything’s going to be okay.

Helloooo, Helloooo, Mr. Gravity,
are you there?  I wanted to tell you
about the buzzards out at the farm.
They almost live on the pole out
by the old cellar.  You could dive
in there during a storm, grab hard
to the ground and hang on.

Dear Mr. Red Dirt, you have ruined
the white canvas shirt, the one
with the chainsaw grease on the sleeve.
I fear putting it in the washer 
with anything but jeans.  Also,
you’ve eaten away the rubber soles
of my best go-to-hike boots,
though, I admit, burrs 
stuck pretty bad in their thick laces.
I request restitution forthwith.

Oh, Grasshopper, how you hop
so fast into morning.  Coffee
and laundry, the clean dishes,
maybe a poem.  Oh Grasshopper,
when will you ever learn?
You took those ants too much to heart.
The freezers are full.  Winter
is nearly over.  Sing or snore,
come ‘a rain come ‘a rain come ‘a kinebo
kinebo sinebo karo saro
rattletrap pennywinkle popadoodle yellowbug 
come ‘a rain come ‘a rain come ‘a kinebo,
and stretch your lean limbs slow,
hug the big trunk of a foreign tree,
have piccolo gelato, afternoon espresso
when you need to wake up.
The raked leaves will wait for tomorrow 
or for the good and neighborly wind.

At last, Mr. Bigmouth
Bass, remember the time
we bobbed on our toes,
took stride against the current,
and rode the breakers into shore?
We’ve been king of the sea,
king of the pond and the shore.
Oh Mr. Bigmouth, let’s play
with the line and the pole,
let’s eat plates decorous
as ballrooms, one course
after the next, bubbles 
for me, martini straight up
with olives, of course, for you.

Come on, Mr. Coldbones, 
let’s all go to bed.
I’ve got the black kitty 
that sleeps on your feet.
Come on, Mr. Coldbones,
let’s all go to sleep.
I’ve got the black kitty,
     and that’s all that she said.
     If you want to hear more, 
     you can sing it yourself.

This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).

Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.

A Poem by Laura Washburn

Moon Smoke

In the high southwest
beyond the cankering oak
above the third floor’s roof
between chimney and branches
I watch an oblate moon
fidget behind wisps of smoke
from the witch’s campfire.
Folks are tossing dust
into the coals; the smoke
rises like windswept clouds.
Somewhere a woman is dancing
in iron-hot shoes. She
is going to escape,
and the bright moon fades.

This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).

Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.

A Poem by Laura Washburn

The Gathering
     “There will be another eye, a strange one, beside
       our own: unspeaking under its stony lid." –Paul Celan

When the old man comes dragging his sack,
the children run away from the fire.
Sparks snap and glide, then fade. Whole worlds
whistle and break. Even under the perigee moon,
the woods are dark. Moonlight berries soothe
and lure. 	     Children run away from the fire!
The old man has come dragging his sack.

When he drops back into his crevice
and rock, he drags the deep sack behind him.
The gray stone of the third eye knows
in its slow blink every terror in our skulls.
   Hands reach up
to cup us as we gather. Hands reach up,
but dumb, we run away from the fires.

This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).

Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.

This week’s WritersFest honors writer Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Kansas Poet Laureate Emeritus, and celebrates her many and varied contributions to the state’s literary arts. The 2023 WritersFest features Caryn, local poets, singer-songwriters, and other Kansas poets laureate. The festival also celebrates Mirriam-Goldberg’s donation of her literary archives to Axe Library at Pittsburg State and lays the foundation for an annual WritersFest on campus. 

A Poem by Laura Washburn

Self-Portrait in First Grade

Lucky child, we have been dreams together
with eyes bright as birthstone sapphires.
When we clasped hands in the white
muff, the rabbit’s fur sold us on its pleasure.

I was like nothing then I would ever be again.
The caterpillar I portrayed in kindergarten
in dyed green Keds was going to transform
into a bookish woman, at least that segment
connected to my feet. I know some
legs and arms went military or complacent,
took drugs, cancer-died, built machines.

We were the child the neighbors came
to take pictures of at the bus stop, blond-eyed
and blue or however that goes, perfected 
in purple gingham like any mother’s favorite doll.
Did I mention patent leather?

This isn’t a brag, the hair and eyes,
the dress, the absolute black shoes
are symbols. Was I even there to wear them?

Imagine being welcomed like that child,
imagine her fear of entering the yellow bus alone,
imagine the flash of the portrait,
the not-yellow of her teeth, the blue bus number
pinned to the frilled pinafore. 

I would like human frailty to amuse me;
I would like to stop her constant
disappointment. I am like the dog
who can’t stop biting at the flea, the one
whose skin welts up, the one who bleeds
from the actions of his own nails and teeth.

The child is going into the halls where one boy
always gets in trouble, where the teachers
rip off his cap to find his father 
shaved him bald, where skin colors
don’t match and all hair doesn’t hang straight,
where she finds meanesses are cultivated,
where she learns to read the first word,
where in small chairs they strain to say it:
I, I, I.

This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).

Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.