Man Dies Alone of Covid-19 in Hospital by Laura Lee Washburn

01/04/202101/30/2021 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

The family parks in a circle 
and stands each at their own car.

The doctor tells them of the death. 
They stay in masks and coats until 

they are chilled and cold.  
They stay in the hospital lot, distanced,
 
aware they cannot touch.  The widow 
mother grandmother goes home alone
 
to a dog and a house 
she’s told to disinfect.

Of course she cannot. 
What is she made of? 

In the house, the dog, a bag of hamburgers,
her husband dead, every surface a danger,

the widow alone but for his dog.
 
We are nearing inhuman times. 
Dolphins swim the canals of Venice.

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 microchap prize is named in her honor.

Editor 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. She lives, works, and writes in Kansas City.

The Revolution by Molly Easley

12/28/202001/30/2021 Another Darn Fine Poet1 Comment

I love my anger
For it has written me many poems
And performs them artfully too
But I love my anger
And then I let it go
For anger will not win the revolution
This is the task of love

Anger deserves no laurels
No trophies
But neither should it be kept
In the basement
Locked up
Never spoken of
Never tended to
Just shushed and starved
Never given a pen and paper
Never given a spotlight
Never given a voice

Now love writes decent poems
And bombs win battles indeed
But treaties are not signed with clenched fists
And so I beg of you comrades
Love your anger
And then let it go
For it will not win this revolution

Molly Easley is a native of Kansas City, Kansas who has called Lawrence home for over 20 years. In her fifteen-year career as an educator, she has worked with students of all ages, from preschoolers to professionals. Molly is also an avid dancer and practicing tarologist.

December Editor, Pat Daneman’s recent poetry appears in Atlanta Review, Freshwater, Bryant Literary Review, and Typehouse. Her collection, After All (FutureCycle Press 2018), was first runner-up, 2019 Thorpe-Menn Award and finalist, Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award. She is author of a chapbook, Where the World Begins. For more, visit patdaneman.com.

Evening Grass Whispers Yesterdays by James Benger

12/21/202001/30/2021 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

She’s got this locket,
 and she’s sure it
 meant something
 to someone once,
 but that meaning
 has gotten lost
 in the mud and the years,
 and no small amount of
 sweetly mown grass.

 Pictures faded to
 little more than pulp,
 brass tarnished to
 scrapyard metal,
 she stands in the field,
 thinks of all that locket
 once contained;
 the hopes and fears,
 loves and disappointments,
 triumphs and ultimate,
 final failures.

 Dime store trumpery
 or treasured heirloom,
 in the end it doesn’t matter,
 because the sun is going red,
 and the grass is going to seed,
 and the significance
 is all hers.

James Benger is a father, husband and writer. His work has been featured in several publications. He is the author of two fiction eBooks: Flight 776 (2012) and Jack of Diamonds (2013), two chapbooks of poetry: As I Watch You Fade (EMP 2016) and You’ve Heard It All Before (GigaPoem 2017), two split books of poetry, Little Fires Hiding (with Jason Baldinger) (Kung Fu Treachery Press 2018), and Against The Dark (with Tyler Robert Sheldon) (Stubborn Mule Press 2019), and one full-length solo book of poems, The Park (Kelsay Books 2019.) He is a member of the Riverfront Readings Committee, and is on the Board of Directors of The Writers Place in Kansas City. He is the founder of the 365 Poems In 365 Days online poetry workshop and is Editor In Chief of the subsequent anthology series. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and children.

We buried our oldest cat behind my parents’ house by Julie Ramon

12/14/202001/30/2021 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

We picked a spot near the edge of the woods where the trees
seemed to know something. The neighbor shooting—
his bullets echoed in the valley—a steady heartbeat that faded
with the leaves. Kids in the wagon, the oldest leaned over to see.
Will he come back? –No. Will we see him again? –Maybe.
When the shovel slowed, we took turns patting down the soil.
Will you bury me? –No. He rubbed his hands and brought them
to his mouth where breath became a steady pulse against the trees.
No need for pockets where hands can meet. Everything cold can teach.

Julie Ramon is an English instructor at NEO A&M in Miami, Oklahoma. She graduated with an M.F.A from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Among writing, her interests include baking, sewing, traveling, and garage sales. She is also a co-organizer of a Joplin, Missouri poetry series, Downtown Poetry. She lives in Joplin with her husband, sons, and daughter.

THE COW WITCH by Michael H. Brownstein

12/07/202001/30/2021 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Have you seen the Cow witch?
 The one who seeks berries and tombs,
 A rose blackened by water
 Hard by the blossom tree?
 Tent caterpillars wrangle in the sun’s coils.
 There are the crows; there are the ravens.
 A horse runs as fast as a horse.
 The Cow Witch knows these powers.

 Search for me by the Crypt of St. Augustine.
 I have made my home there.
 Early morning I find the softening bark of cassia,
 River water, fresh fish, garden snails in the dew.
 Wait for the sun to reach its falling.
 I will be there near the heavy door,
 The fallen rock and cured sandalwood,
 Kneeling in the weed and thyme, singing.

 Near St. Louis gold grows in the clover.
 The Tree Men of Ashanti yearn for its fragrance
 And somewhere not near yet not far away
 Green shoots find doors through softer soil.
 St. George’s herb roots deep within root,
 Juno’s tears flower into pigeon wood.
 Here comes the vine that lives to strangle.
 Life and decay hold each other’s hand.

 The Cow Witch is an expert in hiding.
 She knows large cities hold more than sewage.
 She understands her neighbors by name:
 Naked Lady, the Borrowers, Porch Sitter,
 Those-Who-Hold-Court-On-The-Corner,
 The Corn Men, the Ice Cream Family.
 She knows them all by face and figure,
 Walk and gesture, voice and violation.

 My song knows only elf leaf and ivy.
 I pluck the strings of my kora,
 Beat the slotted drum, play the thumb piano.
 I own the harp tied between the giant oaks.
 You must come after the dew settles.
 I do not sing at night or morning,
 The time for rest and meditation.
 Songs are not work like bridges, like alleys.

 The Cow Witch will come when she is ready
 Like the calf, like the bridge over the valley,
 The Garden of the Sun and Moon,
 Like an empty place ahead.
 Heather dries in the light, seed swings to earth,
 Wind tangles music from my harp,
 And the farmer’s wife wakes, stretches,
 Calls on the bloom that may be spring.

Michael H. Brownstein’s poetry volume, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else: A Poet’s Journey To The Borderlands Of Dementia, was recently published by Cholla Needles Press (2018).

JIM [MORRISON] AND I DANCE TO A GREGORIAN CHANT OUTSIDE BETHANY LUTHERAN CHURCH by Lindsey Martin-Bowen

11/30/2020 Another Darn Fine Poet1 Comment

Lindsborg, Kansas

 Latin lyrics with long vowels
 echo inside walls and reverberate
 from the tower to the front steps,
 where Jim moves in a slow march.
 No Shaman today, no swirling
 snake bending its long neck.
 Lifting knees to a steady beat,
 he’s a Swedish drum major
 conducting invisible
 Medieval string musicians.

 Sweet pear wafts on the lawn
 and hovers over benches and a red
 door, close to the turquoise
 windows by the apse. Above,
 the steeple’s so white, its iridescence
 lights this town all night long.
 I wonder about this place—
 this small town too far from a
 cathedral, how it creates peace
 by merging ancient sounds

 so holy with sunlit beams
 filtering through stained glass.
 I glance around. No one watches,
 so I join his largo march
 to music rarely on a radio.


Published in CROSSING KANSAS with Jim Morrison (Paladin Contemporaries 2016).

Lindsey Martin-Bowen: Last July, 39 West Press released her fourth poetry collection, Where Water Meets the Rock. Her third, CROSSING Kansas with Jim Morrison (in chapbook form) was a semi-finalist in QuillsEdge Books 2015-16 contest. A poem from her Inside Virgil’s Garage (Chatter House 2013) was nominated for a Pushcart, and Standing on the Edge of the World (Woodley), was a Top 10 Poetry Book for 2008 (McClatchy). New Letters, I-70 Review, Thorny Locust, and others have run her work. She teaches at MCC-Longview and dreams of Pendleton, Oregon.

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.

How our rooster taught me to love? ~Amirah Al Wassif

11/20/202001/08/2021 Darn Fine Poet1 Comment

My father picked me up with one hand.
Even I could touch God's throne.
I laughed so hard.
I laughed until I lost my voice.
I call my father Mr. Rooster.
He isn't a real rooster
And, of course, I am not a little hen.
Our identities prove that.
Yes, we are human.
In our Arabian Nights,
The rooster has a prominent place.
He is a storyteller
Just like my father.
As a little kid,
My Mother hung me
In her ears like a star. 
Shiny ones.
She taught me how to weave
A fairytale around
The waist of the universe.
We were playing drums
During baking bread.
Our dusty faces before our stove,
The birds pecking our napes.
Many delicious stories
Float through our bodies.
I am a verse hovering over the air.
My mother's scent enfolds
The horizon.
Our rooster starts telling us
How the ancient Queens and Kings
Revealed the secret of embalming.
We are in love with braiding
Our grandmother's hair.
Me, my father and my mother,
Fighting against the pain.
We dissolve our salty tears
In a glass of sugar and wine.

Amirah Al Wassif’s poems have appeared in print and online publications including South Florida Poetry, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaii Review, The Meniscus, The Chiron Review, The Hunger, Writers Resist, Right Now, and others. Amirah’s poetry collection includes, For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate (Poetic Justice Books & Arts, 2019) and a children’s book, The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories.

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, WaterSigns, and a chapbook, Winds of Time. Miller’s first children’s book, I Love the Child, was published 12/13/2020. The book’s illustrator is Katie Wiggins, a found cousin. I Love the Child won first place for The Children’s Book Award at the Kansas Authors Club State Convention, October 2020.

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.