a caesura of frogs

~Terry Dawson

					(West Lake Hills, TX, 2005)

“so much depends upon
the red wheelbarrow
covered with rainwater
beside the white chickens”

-	William Carlos Williams


I depend upon the brown-green wheelbarrow 
full of a choir raising from the ground up a sound –
from puddles of marshy tussocks around the bend --
but more upon how they cease as one as they sense 

my coming and their resumption after I pass   
how do they manage to quiet themselves 
in sync?  with no cell phones 
or passive infrared sensors, these

small mouths of spring:
cliff chirping and spotted chorus  
frogs, announce their
harmonic consensus

as I go for my constitutional stroll
down the road from our home
alone, but never unnoticed;
I’m surrounded by tiny receptors

even when still – even then
they tell me I exist in space and 
time -- that I swim through the unspoken
agreement of amphibians – of these mere thumbs of 

serpentine and bronze, holding their song like a breath, 
which means I am the breadth of a knot of frogs interrupted
I am a caesura in unison claimed; listen, 
as I wave to life like a flag of silence.

Image credits: (L, Top) Photo by Kasia Gajek on Unsplash, (L, bottom) Photo by Truong Tuyet Ly on Unsplash, (R) Photo by Joseph Arteaga on Unsplash

Editor’s Choice Award

Let’s not put smells in our poems

~Jane Ward

Comprehensiveness is the death of delight, so let’s not tick the senses off one by one. Don’t ask that sour smell by the free weights to stand in for the hopeful throbbing of a dark-haired young man. Send the thick heavy sweetness of honeysuckle straight out the back garden gate. 

The only one I might do is petrichor
that flint arrowhead in the mouth 
its iron vein down the middle
our oldest alarm 
our most pleasant tang of fear
time to end the hunt
time to figure out how to keep 
these delicate bodies warm
because when the dirt darkens 
and the grasses reach 
up to the sky to say 
come down on me 
lie down on me
you don’t want to get 
between that.

In the evening

~Jane Ward

the trees bled their colors onto the sky
while we stayed in the box of yellow light
to resume our fight against the zombies
or that fungus or sometimes vampires.
The cortisol was popcorn in our mouths.
They’re on our side, he’d say, pointing at the screen
if I got distracted. 
These ones are on our side.
Conversation was a wooden bowl between us --
it was supposed to be me then you then me 
again but the zombies kept interrupting. 
Wouldn’t her right arm get huge, 
after all that work with the sword? I would ask,
but then we’d be pulled along to the next awful 
battle. The rheumatic growling was the worst of it
but you could lower the volume if you liked.
The trees went gray and black 
and the sky was sucking the dregs 
of their colors through its sky straw
when the term “non-dominant” came to me so I said
she should try fighting with her non-dominant hand.
He considered this and then nodded and we 
weren’t keeping score
but it was a point for me 
nonetheless.

Saturday

~Jane Ward

I waited too long to make a slaw

so I tossed the green cabbage off the deck.

The deer are so dark in winter.

Practicing Presence

~Sandi Stromberg

Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery, Singapore

Far from the fire
and damnation 
of my father’s pulpit
I sit on marble
before tiny Bodhisattvas
faces full of laughter

Bright orange koi caress
their stone bodies
plump as putti
Each day I come
to the pond’s waters

open my journal
practice presence
To bask in the calm of its trinity 
of bubbling fountains 
To commune with space
sacred to another faith



Practicing Presence first appeared in the collection Moolight, Shaken, Kelsay Books, 2026.

When the Tree of Paradise Commandeered My Yard

~Sandi Stromberg

When the rains started, the tree
simply began to grow and grow,
found itself arced like the rainbow
God painted on the sky after 
the Deluge. A promise 
in the embellished colors 
of rubies, amber, sapphires. 
As though the plain brown trunk reached 
down inside itself, found 
a palette and brushes 
to paint a colorful concord 
across its spreading limbs. 
A sheaf of multicolored 
leaves that in autumn would carpet 
the earth and fly me away.


When the Tree... first appeared in the Waco WordFest Anthology: Earth
Included in the collection Moonlight, Shaken, Kelsay Books, 2026

Time Zones, ii.

~Sandi Stromberg

I’m learning to live in kairos. 
So un-American, this uncountable 
time without English derivations. 
No defining word to capture 
the ineffable intervals 
when I side-step the frenetic pace 
to enter a beckoning flow, 
lose myself in a poem, drift 
in a Chopin nocturne,
or merely
contemplate 
silence.

Time Zones, ii. first appeared in Texas Poetry Assignment
Included in the collection Moonlight, Shaken, Kelsay Books, 2026

Incantation

~Sherri Harvey

~dedicated to Cathy Miller

On rare occasion, when a witch stokes the fire, the water in the cauldron refuses to boil.

But– sometimes, the water itself combusts.

You see, a witch makes her world of fire, then ink, then words, then smoke.

A witch spends many lifetimes perfecting her book of common prayer. She knows things she has not seen with her eyes. She speaks a foreign language to no one in particular.
She stands over the fire in seductive silence and seduces the harbinger.

A witch knows perfectly the boiling point.
She knows when the seasoned wood can refuse no longer.
She knows precisely when to drop the match to orchestrate the reckoning.

But she knows, too, that some will sleep through their own baptism.
Some will be forever cursed— too exhausted even for their daily routine, locked in the frozen cell of their own silence.

Never say you are one of them.

When in doubt, call forth your monikers.
Consider your classmates. Consult your flock. If you have been called forth to experience Cathy’s tutelage, remember:

You have been ordained. Beware: you may appear to frown, even when you are smiling.
But you know you know you know.

You now understand why dry grass loves the lightening bolt.

Remember her witchcraft. Learn her secret of making rancid the milk of righteous students.

Remember: when you create your own cantation, no superior form of empowerment exists.

When it happens, you become something you never imagined.