Starwords

Sumera Saleem

May 6, 2021

Meanings spring from Spring growing deep inside,

Though words wither on the tongue of my desert-heart.

Friendship heals slow souls like yours and mine,

Like dawn’s light shadow bidding darkness depart.

To feel death, just scratch the flesh of desire.

To master loss and grief, first learn to find

That which cools the greed, the burning fire,

For eyes stuck to treasure, often go blind. 

Stuffed in night’s hand, stars are polished nails.

My window frames a bold pattern in the dark.

I wonder how well they follow God’s trails,

Like angelic scribes tracing his mark.

Love is not love when it erases all pains.

My eyes are never eyes free from the rain.

Sumera Saleem is a lecturer in the department of English language and literature, Sargodha University, Sargodha and gold medalist in English literature from the University of the Punjab for the session 2013-15. Her poems have appeared in Tejascovido, Langdon Review published by Tarleton State University, USA, Blue Minaret, Lit Sphere, Surrey Library UK, The Text Journal, The Ghazal Page, Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters, Word Magazine. A few more are forthcoming in international and national anthologies.

Ursula Waking

Jesse Doiron

 May 9, 2021

Sweet Ursula wakes warm as milk this morn              

From dreams, adrift upon the true sublime,                 

All bundled up like some forlorn unborn,                   

afloat within a fetal mindless time.                              

She hesitates her eyes to un-crossed climb                  

From focused snout to harsh and rock-bound light.    

A swarm of bees buzz eerily off-rhyme,                     

While birds bring in their singing out of sight.           

Poor Ursula, confused just who is right,                      

Passes a paw across her muzzy nose,                          

Gives moan to groan and grumbles in her plight.       

(The neighbor bears nearby are still a doze.)              

Thus, with her winter-ragged coat undone,                 

Sweet Ursula now stumbles into sun.

Jesse Doiron spent 13 years overseas in countries where he often felt as if he were a “thing” that had human qualities but couldn’t communicate them. He teaches college, now, to people a third his age. He still feels, often, as if he is a “thing” that has human qualities but can’t communicate them.

Stray

Robert Allen

May 2, 2021

She has this dream she will die in the snow

on a Monday morn, lying flat, having spread

her last angel, when flakes drift down in slow

swirling motions on the eyes of her head,

which in turn will dream of a warm green glade

with chirping birds, soft grass, and trees that grow

large, lifting their boughs to offer deep shade

to feral creatures who wander below—

but not today. This February day

with trees bare, birds making the only sound,

and the hopeful search for a place to stay

gone wrong, it will be hard to move around

or even breathe. Too late this man will lay

her stiff, frail carcass in the cold blue ground.

Robert Allen is retired and lives with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and six cats. He has poems in di-vêrsé-city, Voices de la Luna, the Texas Poetry Calendar, the San Antonio Express-News, The Ocotillo Review, and Poetry on the Move. He now co-facilitates Gemini Ink’s Open Writer’s Lab.

Look No Further

Thomas Quitzau

April 25, 2021

Look no further than lines of sharp tulips,

Sharks piercing bait balls for a first-time glimpse,

Then take a glance at the coming eclipse,

Or praise the strong abilities of chimps

And I assure you, your fascinations

While noble, popular, and natural

Considering the full exploitations

Of lobes, parietal and temporal

Seeking perfection on this lovely Earth

With Science’s self-serving assistance,

Our schools push sour limits soon after birth,

Infertile truths born of sweet persistence:

        Love, Charity, when personally sought

        Freely promises, in the net, you’re caught.

Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.

What Spring Might Mean

Michael Helsem

April 18, 2021

What spring might mean to one in house arrest

i hardly dare to imagine, while warm days

reap torrents of allergens; i study low-rez

gifs: this screen my windshield has replaced.

What spring might bring i seldom wonder much,

having so long retired my future’s glass.

i’m glad, i guess, more for the mass of us

than me, that better things are ripe to hatch—

& spring unseen proceeds in its needful work

regardless of the streets torn up, our games

that serve us in lieu of plans: fierce wind affirms

the futility of such, house gewgaws break

with branches of a certain size. The rest

survive, as most will, still in the squid’s own daze.

M.H. was born in Dallas in 1958. Shortly afterward, fish fell from the sky.

Adam and Eve: Two Sonnets

E. D. Watson

April 11, 2021

Adam

Back then, I could pronounce beasts’ names, the ones

They called themselves, each one different.

We shared the ground beneath a single sun;

I had nothing for to be repentant.

This loss, of all things, most grieves my conscience:

With my first taste of flesh, I was transformed.

My ears closed up, and I lost the nuance

Of animal speech, and the voice inside storms.

Now, the high-lonesome wind just sounds forlorn

And I’ve forgotten the words to the birds’ songs.

My woman mostly looks at me in scorn,

Between us a distance many sighs long. 

Sometimes I think I almost understand

The ragged sparrow who still finds my hand.

Eve

My husband was obsessed with gods and names—

“An oak,” he’d say, pointing. He called me Eve. 

From him I learned to sniff for rain

Which was god, he said, as was breeze.

We did in those days just as we pleased,

And met the gods for supper once a week.

Adam milked the goats, I made the cheese;

In time our eyes grew bright, our bellies sleek.

But as the days unspooled I came to think

That there was something crucial we yet lacked

And also lacked the name for such a thing.

Restless, tetchy, I stepped out back

And—Oh!—the sweetness of that forbidden fruit!

To know the thing I was. To learn the truth.

E. D. Watson’s poem, "Psalm for Those Who Die Alone" was featured in the Langdon Review Tejascovido edition. Watson also has poems forthcoming at Mom Egg Review and The Healing Muse.

Sonnet Earth

Thomas Quitzau

April 4, 2021

For the 10 million soldiers and 7 million civilians

who senselessly lost their lives during World War I

Commit to sprinkling poems in the breeze—

Word currency which will not pay the bills:

Planting seeds in some germinal countries,

For fertile eyes, plowed under topsoil frills;

Life, progressing, leaves old faults confessing—

Brandied sap masters prop up their statures

Ungloved, meekly loved, lovingly messing

Nests planning to withstand Mother Nature’s

Rhythms; syncopated forced convections:

Recoiled festive mossing of the branches

Designed for top-views over cross-sections

Showing off cross complexions, Crossed trenches

     Along which shadows do bend, do obey

     Her terraneous rule, in time worn away.

Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.

Of All the Machines (Imposed by Doctors

Thomas Quitzau

April 1, 2021

Of all the machines imposed by Doctors

One’s imagery puts all poets to shame.

Meet the MRI’s! X-Ray’s pro-proctors

And ultrasound? Comparatively tame. 

So imposing! The steel behemoth tombs’ 

Loud clacking magnets whir & tug at thought:

But deep within, beyond matter and wombs

Dwell souls that can neither be tamed nor bought

Nor located by radiation’s beams

Lasers unseen ‘til particles they strike

Our bodies reduced to visions, it seems

Until there’s nothing human left to like

        Try as they might pursue us after death

        Heaven’s no place for monsters of such breadth.

Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.