Three Poems by Jennifer Pratt-Walter

02/02/202302/02/2023 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Then I Woke Up
 
Then I woke up, my memory remade,
still slender as the dream of the chickadee
outside the bedroom window.
 
Then I woke more and wandered
through the garden, the coral azalea
releasing its lurid scent indiscriminately
over the just and the unjust,
the young ones and me, the unsure elder.
 
I thrice awoke, reeling to the perfect homily
of Nature and her unbound truths
masquerading as a slow walk around the yard,
 
her small prophets the mourning doves
and tree frogs, her flowers calling bees
to their mumbling tasks, life aiding life
unceasing.
      They preached this to all who would understand
in this time of separation and dread:
even apart, we are all still a dazzling bouquet
just waiting to happen.

To RBG
 
When a dam breaks open,
the wound in the lake’s exit calls valiantly
to refill, to settle amid the flood,
to change the story downstream.
 
The truths you revealed were curled up
in the depths and mud like a sturgeon
all along.  Even in crisis,
even in our collective grief for your loss,
 
there must come a new field of sight.  
We are the hopeful salmon smolt,
shaken free to seek, unseen,
the sea ringing through our combined synapses.
We must ride that turbulent tide,
we are part of your lake wherever we swim.

Blaze
 
What can you do when feelings
are too loud to lie still and be trapped
on paper?
 
What can you do when your wild-horse soul
imprisoned in its small corral grows wings
no fence can hold?
 
What can you do when your fiery heart
ignites the cold agate squeezing its rage out
in the center of your chest?
 
Scrawl upon the sky!
Soar!
Blaze!

Jennifer Pratt-Walter is an elder and Crone making her way by recognizing the everyday miracles found in the small or mundane. She is a musician, poet, photographer and soft-hearted farmer. Jennifer has three grown children and disabled husband.

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. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

A Poem by Kay Jacobs

01/30/202301/31/2023 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Taking Our Pulse
 
There's an electricity in our bloodstream
Creating an accelerated pulse
Reading the pulse of society
Causing (my) heart strings to pulse
Feverishly
We feel the pulse of the nation
Thumping
Against the walls of bodily suppression
Stomping
Against the pains of mental depression
Marching
Against the pockets of racial oppression
Electricity flowing through
Our synapses
Syncopating rhythms through
Our veins
An energy
Screaming from inside our chests
Up to the collective's breast
Up and down spines
Craving
Calm craving
Fusion craving
Unity
 
Hold my hand
Feel the power
Surging
Coursing through the people
ready to fly
 
And light the sky with
 
Shift the atmosphere to
 
Embody this
 
Electric
 
Love
 
So that we shall never
lose this energy or
lose ourselves
 
never lose us
ever again.

Kay Jacobs is fairly new to the poetry scene. A native Louisianan and educator. She is the author of Within Shades of Mahogani, her first anthology of poetry that traces the angst of her adolescence and the conundrums of her college years. She is currently crafting poems for her next work, Beneath the Stripes of AmeriKah.

A Poem by Carrie Nassif

01/26/202301/21/2023 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

we had been born free footed made from frothy cascades

had ourselves borne chains we had never before named
mother or daughter simultaneous particles and waves
 
suspended lights burnishing in the texture the harmonics
 
of one dilating chord that approaches   pulses   and   ricochets
splays through and lashes staccato shivers into shade
 
you may walk as brisk as you like while we haunt this earth
everyone must wait on the tides
 
clenched teeth foaming at our ankles
burgundy points of sea urchin spine
 
they tell me perspective is a vanishing line

Carrie Nassif (she/her) is a queer poet and psychologist of the rural Midwest. Her chapbook, lithopaedion (Finishing Line Press) is forthcoming. Other poetry is in Comstock Review, Concision, and Gravity of the Thing; and anthologies including, Slow Lightning: Impractical Poetry, and Written There: The Community of Writers Poetry Review 2022.

Two Poems by Jaclyn Youhana Garver

01/23/202301/21/2023 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Maybe She's Born with It

Have you heard of that girl who
graffitis in Kabul? They say she’s
Afghanistan’s only female graffiti artist.
 
She’s not there? he asks. You mean she lives
here, where the paint in her can is no
threat, where the pigments can’t
 
haunt bearded men who peer between the cells
of pork, paintings, and pigeons as pets
and shout It Is Forbidden. Here, where girls
 
can fly kites, take orders at drive-
thru windows, or prosecute ex-
football players. They can study
 
the musculature of a hand, which can cup
the tender nub of the clitoris or strike
the cheek, can set a broken finger or sketch
 
its knuckle lines and nail beds,
embedded veins that give life to picture
and person. And anyway, yes, this girl, this
 
woman, Shamsia Hassani, (say it
right), still lives there, where they kill
the pet pigeons. She still gifts
 
her faceless models with thick lines
of eyelash, that feminine flutter. She still risks
makeup, music, and the hope
 
of the snowy,
 
winged
 
pappus.

This Was My Alarm This Morning
                song lyric from “Bowl of Oranges,” Bright Eyes
 
I had to hold hands
with a stranger
on a flight cause they
were too scared
 
to land, the radioman
crows from his pink
and snarling mouth
of loam. Like he’s so great
 
for deigning to hold a stranger’s
hand with all its wrinkles, germs,
hangnails, hidden pins of poison
in the fold. I’d rather be like Conor
 
and his bowl of oranges
and his doctor. Just hold my
hand. I think that that would help.
Handholding can’t cure
 
ugliness or illness, but
my heart might sigh at the press
of palm to palm, the income
 
of your skin
to the surface of my
exhalation
        	or kingdom.

Jaclyn Youhana Garver is a freelance writer and editor from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the communications specialist for a national marketing organization. She won a trio of honorable mentions in the Writer’s Digest’s Annual Writing Competition in non-rhyming poetry in 2021 and 2022. Her poetry chapbook, The Men I Never:, is scheduled to be published by dancing girl press in 2023, and her contemporary fiction is represented by Savannah Brooks of KT Literary. Her story “The Butterfly Catcher” will appear in This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories About Bugs, out this May.

Two Poems by Caitlin Grace McDonnell

01/19/202301/21/2023 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment


Instructions for Not Caring
 
Remember that the population of dreams
can be recast. Errata. For the shark
stuck in the snowbank. Read: Power.
The lover who receives a name can
always become the rabbi, the clockmaker.
The maternal tug of the heart is the one
we can tie bricks to our feet for, walk
into the cold lake. Do it lovingly, with silk
separating the big toe from the rest. For
our mothers, finally, will we open our fists?
Show what we’ve been holding? For
ornithologist, read unemployed. For EMT,
Insomniac. Maybe we like to sleep with people
to pretend that death doesn’t happen alone.
Don’t show me the other side of the machine.
Please cover your logic board. There are tiny
pills like little planets that will turn off your mind.
Do you really want the job? Wouldn’t you rather
turn out the light and practice for your greatest
show yet? Everyone will say, she was always
beyond all that. She was always part
here and part deep in the seaweed, the lake
moss. Walking with a fearlessness earned
by breaking, over and over, with grace.


Letter from the End of the World

 
What do you do to get through the day?
 
The sight of war:  schools, churches, malls,
 
garlic festivals and my uterus.
 
Reality being unbearable, we prefer
 
to dance with death with salt
 
on the rim. The earth is burning
 
so why are we drowning? Where can I melt
 
my argument, how do I excavate this hard
 
metal I’ve swallowed like a question mark?
 
I blur enough to get my child out of bed
 
and off to school to learn about conquests
 
and hide under desks. Get out of bed
 
my friend texts me when I can’t sleep.
 
Get something cold from the fridge,
 
roll it in your hands and try to breathe.

Caitlin Grace McDonnell was a New York Times Poetry Fellow at NYU where she received her MFA. She has published poems and essays widely, including a chapbook, Dreaming the Tree (2003) and two books of poems, Looking for Small Animals (2012) and Pandemic City (2021) She lives with her daughter and teaches writing in New York City.

4 Poems by William Sheldon

01/12/202301/09/2023 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Time
 
A cardinal calls, desperate lust
masquerading as bravado, counter-
point to the beep of some heavy
machine in reverse. The coffee
goes cold. The dog lies
across the screen porch doorway
oblivious to the robin
hopping two feet from her nose.
The day is waiting. The boats
are turned belly up. Tomatoes
green on the vine. Tomorrow’s
not worth discussion.
You, with your book in your hand,
it is time for your la-la-la’s
your mi-mi-mi’s. A flash
of red followed by a darker,
similar shape makes its way
into the greening trees.

Thrall
 
I like to walk the river far
from the bridge into the sound
of no traffic
hearing a kingfisher dive
or water snake slide
in S’s on the surface
I like to see no colorful
kayaks, or canoes, pass me
wading crotch-deep into holes
where carp hold	their fins       
feathering the current 
knowing no one anywhere
walks like I do
subject of all I survey.

The World and Oysters

He brought rakia and she brought flowers.
The food was good. They left with colds.
 
He brought flowers. The rakia was good.
He left without eating, walking home in the cold.
 
The food was cold. There were flowers.
She was cold. There was rakia.
 
He brought food for her cold.
They drank rakia. Bees moved in the flowers.
 
He drank warm rakia with honey
for his cold, called her flower when she brought food.
 
He went without food to buy her rakia.
She was a frozen flower with bee-stung lips.

Three Rivers
 
 
I. Night Noise
 
Smoke rises in horns
on a herons’ wind.
All night the mud groans
as the river sweats.
We hear the moon
scratching its cradle.
Stepping from our tent
onto this pelt of sand,
all is still
except the slight
panting of smoke.
 
 
II. Commonplaces at a Wake
 
The rain’s mourning
holds the river enthralled:
the drizzle’s starched talk
with the soughing mud:
“Tomorrow… A better day…
“No, no… A long way from
happiness, but… The sun
will rise… Some compassionate
gesture...” The river
who barely knew the departed
watches the mud,
knows that surface
acceptance of solid advice
belies the cold scream
that is building.
 
 
III. Coldwater
 
West of our town, the bones
of the river lie whitening.
Nights we hear mud weep
regretting a lover’s leaving,
perhaps even the loving,
as the distracted moon
hums above. We
know the river’s secrets,
are ours. We smile              	                       
through soiled lips,
our streets coils of skin,
the bones of our hearts
cradling thorns awaiting
evening’s exhaust and desire.
Singing down the sun,
we make our sad ways
to that trickle of solace
knowing what we have done
we will again.

William Sheldon is the author of three books of poetry, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley, 2002), Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth, 2011), Deadman (Spartan, 2021), as well as a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill, 2009). He plays bass for the band The Excuses.

A Poem by Amy Sage Webb-Baza

01/09/202301/09/2023 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Ladies Home 

Hummel statuettes in a lit 
mirrored cabinet. A candy dish 
of hobnailed glass shaped 
like a Victorian woman’s boot. 
Tatted doilies on armrests and 
crocheted afghans draping sofa 
backs. A cuckoo clock just off 
the hour despite winding 
with those little hanging 
pinecone chain weights.
I still see and smell the 
bric-a-brac of ladies’ 
homes, the curtain swags 
and fanned magazines 
on coffee tables and 
all the kitsch 
that pitched me into 
neutrals and bare surfaces 
for such a long time. 

Now somehow I buy bright 
hand blown glass vases 
I fill with flowers. I cover 
the couch with throw pillows,
and even though I don’t host 
teas, I’ve come to understand 
my great aunt’s mismatched 
set of frilly filigreed cups. 
I used to want to travel 
light and lean, all clean lines 
and possibilities. But I found 
myself tethered in place 
and the days grew so long,
my mind so burred with shards 
of thought that scoured 
spaces were no longer places 
of ease. So I invited color in. 
I painted. I hung up rugs 
and art. I cultivated 
my own clutter. 
I moved myself in 
and I felt fine, less 
a mess, even 
better than fine.

Amy Sage Webb-Baza is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emporia State University, where she was named Roe R. Cross Distinguished Professor and directs the Donald Reichardt Center for Publishing and Literary Arts. She is managing editor for Bluestem Press and Flint Hills Review. She publishes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and is author of Your Own Life: Kansas Stories (Woodley Press, 2012). 

Two Poems by Elizabeth A. Frank

11/30/202211/27/2022 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Just Getting Started
 
We are rubbing our hands together
like sticks, we are pacing the room,
we are breathing in sputters, in gusts,
never sure if the words in our heart
will form sparks when we speak
or fall flat and mute to the floor.
We are summoning the boldness to stand
out loud, to leave our shelter
(there’s no risk of being extinguished
if you’ve never burned alight).

We are stumbling in the dark
proclaiming with each small step
we are worth this time and the courage
we clench in our fists.
We are fighting what is,
struggling toward what may be,
knowing we hold the power
to become a flame, our voices
strong and soft enough
to sing this glint into fire.

Womanifesto
 
I am not your
hot-house orchid
pink, feathery, propped
on stakes. I am
no longer easy
to crush or ignore.
I am a thick oak
limbs sky-high, endless
roots buried deep.
I am the sky, streaked
with moods and shades
vast with blue. I am
all the birds
calling out forests
of anger and joy.
I can not be held
in your hand, shoved
in your stiff pocket.
I am no longer small
or still or soft
enough. I am no longer
your little girl.

Elizabeth A. Frank is a poet and artist drawn to the interplay of written and visual arts. Her poems have appeared in Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing and This Present Former Glory: An Anthology of Honest Spiritual Literature. She posts on Instagram @glint_into_fire and lives near Boston.

I’ll Leave It at That by James Diaz

11/28/202211/27/2022 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

What are birds
In the night
If not air's flat iron
Of bone, the river's mercy
Sings, a darker cadence— 
Do you know
The place I mean
No trains run there
There are no birds to speak of.
 
At first glance the world is always terrifying
Then beautiful, then terrifying again– 
Where do they put all of the things we've seen
After we go, who will speak of the snow
That fell across our life
In perfect layers of mute blue hush
 
It's dark
Here. It is morning.
It is almost as it never was.
 
I was happy to have seen
What little of the world I saw.
Pain gave me more than it took.
 
There was never enough beauty
For any of us.
 
I could say more
But the words don't feel right.
I'll leave it at that.

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books) and All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their work has appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal, Corporeal, Rust + Moth, and Cleaver Magazine. They reside in upstate New York.

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 microchap prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

A Shovel for Those of Us Who Transcribe Legacy on Cotton for We Know by Jermaine Thompson

11/21/202211/21/2022 Another Darn Fine PoetLeave a comment

Jermaine Thompson has publications in The Pinch, Memorious, Whale Road Review, Southern Indiana Review, and New Letters. He is an educator who learned language from big-armed women who greased their skillets with gossip and from full-bellied men who cursed and prayed with the same fervor in Louisville, Mississippi.