A Week in Our Backyard
~Irmi Willcockson
change is a matter of perspective
inland sea oats burnt sienna
a few pale seeds remain
still contrasts with green
Oxalis leaves opening magenta
flowers ‘grass flowers’ open in
clumps in the soil wet
after hard rain the puddles
large and small receded
until only damp remains
while a tiny fly alights
on my notebook crane flies
search for mates
and pecan tree still bare
bur oak buds still closed
bird watching and listening to
blue jays yell to each other
white-winged doves forage
cedar waxwings passing through
Queen Anne’s Lace
~Sheila DC Robertson
Queen Anne’s Lace floats wild
reigning over ditches
Fringing cultivated fields
Each bowing head
ministered by a tenor hum
of buzzy bees
Joined by royal hues
of Monarch butterflies
And robins’ joyful
sunrise concerts
Sharing jubilation with all
who attend
Near-Field Cosmology
~Cindy Huyser
From my place on the deck, Orion blinks
between bare branches, three bright stars belting
their milky drinking song below bloodshot
Betelgeuse. What I see with my eyes closed
is India ink root scrawl, a tatting
of capillaries, dark matter’s gravity
holding love and failure just below
the surface. Twenty-thousand miles away,
my double’s drenched in summer sun, fanning
themselves fringed by philodendrons,
fat leaves whose veins play out like strings singing
to the shadows around me, opposite
my seat on this side of Earth.
The lights above make a flickering birth.
Campfire
~Sheila DC Robertson
Stories crackle and pop like sparks
And we linger after a day on the river
Reluctant to retreat from the smoke
Reluctant to retreat into night
Backs ache and sunburns smart
But embers invite
And tales unfold
Of rock-toothed rapids
Wild drops and churning flips
Of last year’s mountain lion
And rattlesnakes coiled in clefts
Pictographs of big horn and pronghorn
Grass sandals and bird points
Cached in a cave
Sparks spiral upward
Toward Orion and Aquarius
Stories and the river
Wind ever on
And time rewinds in tales
In the telling
And retelling
Clogged Brain
~Carlos Ponce
The neurologist says:
You have a morbidly obese brain,
you haven’t tossed your
old feelings,
ancient loves,
archaic fights,
your brain is clogged with ashes and skeletons.
You need surgery to remove these useless emotions.
I panic.
Am I going to lose my precious excuses?
What is going to occupy my ocean of obsessions?
I know I carry a lot of trash, but it’s my trash.
To hell with the doctor.
I’ll talk to a plumber.
A Softscrabble Life
~Mark Smolen
The tiles glow with a warm patina
imparted by forty years of caresses
as we arrange them on our racks
and attempt to decipher the anagrams
arrayed so mysteriously before us.
We search for meaning in randomness,
strive to build a ziggurat of words,
dare to make a quixotic play.
The complexity of our vocabulary has evolved
in parallel with the complexity of our lives.
There is profound comfort in this,
the communication of accrued knowledge
and insights into each other’s world of words
through the careful placement of wooden squares
that thread one thought to another.
I stare at my letters in an attempt
to find the perfect play, a trifecta
of worldliness and worth and wit, but
I am mesmerized by the possibilities
and forever caught in their spell.
Glow
~Dede Fox
Out of blue shadowed woods, fireflies
dart through leafy hedges,
drift up in silence, swimming
to the moon in shimmering chains.
A round-shouldered man watches
from a screened porch
as he rocks a restless baby.
In a world too hot and dry for magic,
he hasn’t seen them for years,
thought they no longer existed.
Now he knows he can chase them,
chase them with his grand-baby
beneath a summer moon.
He descends weather-worn
steps, captures one, feels it flutter
in his closed hand. His round-eyed
grandson solemnly studies the spaces
between his trembling fingers
and sees it glow.
Out of Darkness
~Dede Fox
The bus rattles up the mountain.
Darkness obscures what lies outside.
It rumbles around a curve. Brakes squeal.
Doors thump open. Silent pilgrims file out
into night, cold as obsidian, feel their way,
line up at the rim. Gloved hands grasp cold metal
rails. They wait, witness an incandescent glow,
ethereal, like lights from a UFO or heavenly body,
far to the east. Below the horizon, all is in shadows,
a colored canvas washed in black ink. Minutes
later ghostly shapes emerge from ultramarine blues
as humans stir along the rail, pull cameras from bags.
Metallic clicks and murmurs rise like chants, prayers.
In the distance curved white, a river, etches its way,
carves rock into sculptures of unnatural grace. Petrified
strata glow, change colors, as sun ascends from stone,
welcomes all to daily revelation, sunrise at the Grand Canyon.
Home Depot
~Dede Fox
She wanders
behind a rattling basket
and tips her head,
then begins to dance.
Arms wide above her swishing
flowered skirt, she juts out her rear
end and bounces, feet stomping
to the rhythm, hands clapping
and swinging, open-palmed
to catch the next note.
Men, arms heavy with ball peen
hammers, painter’s tape, wooden
baseboard trim, stop to stare.
Smiles turn up edges
of their lined lips
and they nod before moving on.
Maybe it’s the round blue eyes
fringed with dark lashes,
or the wisps of curls
that frame her fair face, or
her open-mouthed delight.
Like this two-year-old,
they hear the piped-in music
for the first time.
“Glow,” “Out of Darkness,” & “Home Depot” first appeared in Postcards Home (2014).
The Lazy Music Is Still
~Cathy Sydlo Wilkes
Late one evening in a mostly empty kitchen
Dishes put away
Day is done
Breeze sashays through an open window
Shadows play
From the buttery moon
Barefoot couple standing in the middle of the room
Heads resting on each other
Arms holding one another close
Swaying slowly to the final song on the radio
Feeling the love emanating,
Surrounding them like a warm, comforting embrace
Dreaming their dreams
Translating the emotion to a slow easy rhythm
Although the radio has stopped
The music still plays in their hearts
A Starchy Kind of Love
~Margo Stutts Toombs
I wish I could love you naked
in a white bowl
my virgin spud
untouched by milk, butter, and cheese
carb camo
sponge for sauces and gravy
I wish I could relish your simple flavors
but subtle tastes can’t linger on a tongue
tainted by years of herbs, spices, & fat
But I will keep trying my modest tuber
Maybe tonight I will dress you, simply
with a pat of butter & pinch of salt
Post-Derecho Landscape, Houston
~Vanessa Zimmer-Powell
At the park, a sculpture of fallen trees
creates a blockade, a fortress, for the wild.
Limbs rub one another, moan.
Vomiter mushrooms sprout.
The earth sends up its fecund
decay and stink. Amber leaves float
in honey-gold storm puddles
and light pulses
its heat along the new landscape.
I say, at least it's a wet 100 degrees—
no drought this year,
and as we search for something to love,
the anhinga, snake bird, arches silver
black wings above our swamp lake.
His slender beak is open, confident.
We slow our pace,
sacrifice blood to mosquitos,
witness the catching of fish.
For the Defense
~Joan Penn
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth…?
Oh, no, no, no, no, Your Honor. I relish embellishment.
Wishful thinking informs my testimony, not as duplicity,
but as tried-and-true survival tactic. I prefer to fabricate
far-fetched fables, sandpaper the sharp-edges of facts,
furnish fictional statistics, and colorfully crayon
the plot of what might otherwise sound like
a dark history.
Please view my responses as Magritte inspired,
rather than as Salvador Dali surrealistic
distortions. My version of “What is”
riffs on reality. With feet on the ground,
head gravitates toward exaggeration.
My defense lies in imaginative
vocabulary painting a picture
of a law-abiding citizen.
That’s my story, Your Honor,
and although embroidered with
idiosyncratic contradictions,
I trust you’ll judge it justifiable.
But, one way or the other,
I intend to stick to it,
refuse to amend it,
and plead not guilty
to charges of hyperbole,
as Defense requests
case be dismissed…
For the Defense" first appeared on
Half and One, December 2022
Editor’s Choice Award
Storybook of Heavenly Bodies
~Heather Brown Barrett
I. Simmer
Steamed shrimp peels cleanly from shells,
my fingers uncoiling each little crustacean,
dropping them like an offering
into an old Pyrex bowl.
Biscuits, hot from the oven
and hugging cheddar-filled centers,
line a pan on the stovetop.
Molten cheese seeps from cracked edges.
Comfort food
the way our mothers taught us.
You nuzzle our son’s hair
at the kitchen island, read another line
from one of his favorite books.
Pages of colorful cut-paper collage
rendering sun and moon, stars and planets.
Toddler curiosity bends our ears:
why is the sun the center? is it hotter
than the oven? will we melt
when we go to the sun?
is heaven inside it?
I stand light-years from hot right now—
half-moons darken undereye
and acne constellates my chin.
Hair greasy, shirt stained
from the day’s smears and splatters.
Exhaustion covers me like second skin.
But you
catch my eye and wink
and I could melt from the pleasure
of masculine meets tender.
II. Prayer
After supper we tuck our creation into bed.
He holds my face between his small palms,
plants kisses on my cheeks,
as if he’s mothering me.
My gratitude expands. We embody
day and night. We’re the spark,
a nucleus, a universe
unto ourselves,
existing in the firmament
of light.
We read him more books.
And more and more.
And one more.
Then close his door.
III. Devour
You beckon me
to our bedroom and grip my hips,
pulling me within profound gravity.
Our breath rushes
the way fire seeks air, like we consume
the darkness, or entire rooms
of our tired bodies, or the smirk of moon
peeking through window panes.
Despite washing, my hands reek of the sea.
My fingers search your muscles,
crawling over skin, clawing
up from fatigue.
We shed clothing like we're molting,
strip restraint like a shell, like we can peel
each other open, climb inside.
Sweet, sweet
burst of heat.
Like a supernova, or lava flowing
from the core of a cut biscuit. The comfort
of having everything. Like heaven
started in the loins
of God.