Yesterday I saw a pair of wood storks take off

and fly in separate directions. One sailed across

a wide expanse of flat green field, the other’s wings

were mirrored in the nearby lake.

Riding thermals over a palm, then a banyan,

their flight paths diverged in a wide “v” until

I could no longer see both at the same time.

My limited peripheral vision.

My friend the birder tells me wood storks mate

for life, a heady lifestyle in the natural order—so much

depending on survival and fitness, boredom or excitement,

or pleasure and pain—or some other opposite.

Isn’t that what attracts one to the other? Links of pheromone

or invisible lines drawn to appearance, aura, or agenda.

Doctor, lawyer, husband, poet, wood stork, mate, or wife?

Who says the bonds will hold?

Or will planes come crashing, tsunami wash the stretch

of land once lived upon, earthquake shake the East Coast’s

fault, or hurricane waste a path of destruction through

what was once considered solid?

This could be fate, or just what is, my friend the birder

says. But then I saw the two storks land together again, near

the lake’s retaining wall, grass greening beneath their wings,

their long and oddly hinged legs kneeled to perfect purchase.

I saw one tuck a long-beaked head under wing, safe, as the other

took watch. One feathered sentry looked out over slick water’s

surface, clouds as white reflections passing by in a mirror where

we might also see ourselves.

___

A poet and arts administrator, Susan R. Williamson divides her time between Charlottesville, where she serves on the advisory board of Streetlight Magazine and Boca Raton, where she is assistant director of The Palm Beach Poetry Festival.

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Cape Rock, The Chaffin Journal, Connecticut Review, Controlled Burn, Crab Orchard Review, Eclipse, Hawai’I Pacific Review, Lagniappe, Lucid Oona, Lumina, The MacGuffin, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Paterson Literary Review, Sanskrit, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Smartish Pace, StorySouth, Streetlight, Three Candles, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Willow Review. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and more recently anthologized in Letters to the World (Red Hen Press 2007). She has attended the Sewanee Writers Conference, Nimrod Summer Writers Workshop, and won the University of Virginia Medical Center LINK Poetry Award, judged by Kate Daniels. A finalist for the VaBook On-In-Ten Competition, she received a fellowship with the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and is currently a Joel Oppenheimer fellow in New England College’s MFA poetry program.

is drying after being washed

and this is what it carries:

*Right Side Pocket

Leather wallet, coin pocket taped

from my husband before he left

3 keys attached with wide red ribbon

from a Christmas wreath

A quilting piece from a favorite aunt

who read to me

One of John Galsworthy’s books

*Middle Pocket

5 empty Kroger shopping bags

to use at Sav a Lot

Yellow napkins from Wendy’s

to use anywhere

White napkins from McDonald’s

*Middle Zipper Pocket

Small plastic container with lid

for rescuing small things

Several covered toothpicks

to use lunching out

A rubber band from somewhere

in case I need it

A safety pin (closed)

*Left Pocket

Plastic baby carrot bag

to carry daily pills

Orange case for sunglasses

for driving

Retractable black pen

to capture words

Coupons from Wendy’s

for $1 off combo meals

Small Tupperware party case

for Merle Norman face cream

Flash drive the shape of lipstick

in case my house burns

Notes from Trauma and Recovery

by Judith Herman, M.D.

Used copy paper cut in half

___

Carol Smallwood co-edited (Molly Peacock, foreword) Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland, 2012); Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011) was nominated for the Pushcart. Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, (Key Publishing House, 2012) is her most recent book. Her sixth anthology for the American Library Association, Bringing Arts into the Library, is forthcoming. Some magazine credits include: The Writer’s Chronicle, English Journal.

Truth shall set you free, truth is stranger than fiction

We’ve all heard these—and it could be true

But day to day living brings whimsical constriction:

Truth shall set you free, truth is stranger than fiction.

Mark Twain wisely warned against illusions held on suspension:

“When they are gone you may still exist but you ceased to live.”

Truth shall set you free, truth is stranger than fiction

We’ve all heard these—and it could be true.

___

Carol Smallwood co-edited (Molly Peacock, foreword) Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland, 2012); Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011) was nominated for the Pushcart. Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, (Key Publishing House, 2012) is her most recent book. Her sixth anthology for the American Library Association, Bringing Arts into the Library, is forthcoming. Some magazine credits include: The Writer’s Chronicle, English Journal.

My grandfather called the birds, seagulls, that

followed his plow in spring. They were so very white

against newly turned soil—so far from the sea

When Jonathan Livingston Seagull arrived,

I poured over and over the paperback willing

Jonathan’s hard won wisdom to become part of me

Walking the beach after divorce, I wondered

if the curious speckled seagulls following me

were young or old

In a new city, a seagull walked in circles

and was told: “They die like that from

pesticides”

Now I wonder if seagulls migrate—

and why I hadn’t before

___

Carol Smallwood co-edited (Molly Peacock, foreword) Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland, 2012); Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011) was nominated for the Pushcart. Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, (Key Publishing House, 2012) is her most recent book. Her sixth anthology for the American Library Association, Bringing Arts into the Library, is forthcoming. Some magazine credits include: The Writer’s Chronicle, English Journal.

How should one organize kitchen spices—alphabetically, size, or age?

Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition of curry against cumin,

pepper pushing cinnamon, onion salt hugging ginger that keeps mine jumbled, free from a cleaning lady.

Spice shelves are for wondering if bay leaves crowned early Olympic winners,

conjuring India with curry, contemplating romance with rosemary leaves, thyme;

to linger over crushed red pepper, the color of cayenne, sturdiness of stick cinnamon furls. To savor cans still shiny. Remember marjoram, savory, and braided cardamom bread.

When my son opened the spice shelves last Christmas he said,

“Hey, Ma, it looks like something out of Mad Men.” I replied I’d liked that show of the Sixties—not asking if he remembered allspice and ginger in cakes and cookies, tasting vanilla, adding breasts to angel cookies for Christmas.

Spices are what I paced by back and forth in grocery stores debating divorce,

torn between hearth and freedom.

Now I try to forget the clang they’ll make tossed when I’m gone.

___

Carol Smallwood co-edited (Molly Peacock, foreword) Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland, 2012); Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011) was nominated for the Pushcart. Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, (Key Publishing House, 2012) is her most recent book. Her sixth anthology for the American Library Association, Bringing Arts into the Library, is forthcoming. Some magazine credits include: The Writer’s Chronicle, English Journal.

whirlpool and when you think

you know the prevailing wind

turn scurrying mice–

or thoughts when trying

to sleep

A barn is almost swallowed

by new development,

the farm house recently gone—

the barn still red

Nearby stands a tree

with all leaves gone

from sea change without

having seen the sea

Each fall day

I feel more the visitor

in a strange land

___

Carol Smallwood co-edited (Molly Peacock, foreword) Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland, 2012); Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011) was nominated for the Pushcart. Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, (Key Publishing House, 2012) is her most recent book. Her sixth anthology for the American Library Association, Bringing Arts into the Library, is forthcoming. Some magazine credits include: The Writer’s Chronicle, English Journal.

Searching there

you may wonder

which way

the dead face.

There is no telling

them to turn.

Is the sun over

the right or left

shoulder as it tries

to warm those so

cold so long?

And youth and

memory

from which side

of morning

will they rise?

___

Henry Rappaport has four books of poetry published, including Dream Surgeon and A Book of Days, from Intermedia Press, and more than twenty recent poems in literary journals such as Poet Lore, and The Cincinnati Review. This summer he was at Bread Loaf Writers Conference working with James Longenbach, and previously has attended the Sewanee Writers Conference and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Originally from the Catskill Mountains of New York, he has an M.A. from the University of Washington, and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

This was the mine

Gray mud and bent tracks.

Here at Ingashaw,

Anthracite launched sideways

While my brother lay in smoke.

That concussive morning

With volleys and terror barking,

China shaken to shard, then dust,

As the great bells summoned.

To the mine!

The soul priest, the sole priest,

Downed his wine,

Velvet flapping, sweating, wheezing:

To the mine!

Bearer of the Word.

I could immerse, sublime in the Testament.

I, called with a calling,

I, heaven’s minion,

Heroic valet to the Lord.

I, absolution, guiding

The Spirit’s scared lantern,

Conduit of holy justice.

Blunt dilution of adolescence,

Prompt demise of priestly aspirations,

Involved my one-armed brother,

Beloved former miner,

Worshiped, sinned, and walked alone,

Walked the hill

On Ingashaw’s anniversary.

Leapt to join those departed,

His final descent

Our faith forsworn,

His act, my liberation.

___

Andrew Frederic Popper has taught at American University, Washington College of Law for the last three decades. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2010 University Scholar/Teacher of the Year.  He is the author of more than 100 published novels, casebooks, articles, papers, poems, and public documents.

Homage to Olivier Messiaen

Notes mistake barbed wire

For a treble staff

And so perch there until

A clarinet wails their cue.

They start their escape,

Jumping to the bass clef

And sliding down,

Hiding behind flat black keys

On a broken piano.

Until the violin’s high note,

Long and clear,

Transfixes the guards,

Holding them until the end of time

When music vanishes.

___

Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock, and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty-five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, and Line Drives. His chapbook, Three Visitors, will be published by Negative Capability Press later this year and his novels, The Magic War and Knight Prisoner will be published in the coming months. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and film maker Joan Juster. Currently he’s seeking gainful employment since poets are born and not paid.

You sit straight up, watch the redundant nun

Stab at the blackboard. Your hands are folded,

Thumbs crossed. You’ve been blisteringly scolded

For something you meant to do, should have done—

Was it memorizing martyrs? Maybe

Sorting out some saints? Obscure categories

Of sin distract you and suggest more fun

Than Bible History class, even in a dream.

Still asleep, you can smell the chalk, the book.

You feel small, restless and dumb as you look

At iron plate engravings. They seem

To change to color pictures of a girl

You never talked to, or wanted to. Her curls

Become snakes, slide towards you. You wake. Scream.

___

Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock, and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty-five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, and Line Drives. His chapbook, Three Visitors, will be published by Negative Capability Press later this year and his novels, The Magic War and Knight Prisoner will be published in the coming months. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and film maker Joan Juster. Currently he’s seeking gainful employment since poets are born and not paid.