I was the woman going home
after a hard day.
I took the long way
across the soccer field,
no one was playing,
the clouds tasseled.
If there were still good things
in this world
I wanted to feel it in the ground
that holds me up,
catches me when I fall.
Read more "Summer Ended Long Ago"It’s not torrential
or even steady,
this moderate rain,
more from the eaves than
the clouds. I’ve long closed
the blinds; I hear it,
not see it. Like
the tentative steps
of would-be visitors
killed in car crashes.
Read more "Pitter-Patter"One day you finally knew
what you’d been put there to do,
and did it
while the loud voices rang louder
and tugged at your sleeve,
each cry a death cry, a flashing red sign.
But you knew.
You knew what you had to do,
though the thread unwound round you
leaving you nakeder and nakeder,
its melancholy terrible.
Then the queerest thing happened.
Being almost already too late, and too dark,
the moon threw down
a bird, a
shining wild raven and in its mouth,
a flower of life.
The stars burned in its brilliance,
at first saw themselves shyly
then danced and shone round to
find themselves extraordinary.
Comfortable in the cold,
mist tendrils rising
across morning garden,
dew-dampened boots
dry in the rising wind.
Cracking this year’s journal,
I release pleasure to the river.
Behind a dome of December clouds,
the sun struggles.
the clouds hinted of old bedsheets
left on too long
and then the fog fell clammy
in a downing with the sun
and we were so cold
the wet seemed like wind
and the turns in the road
like twists in a tortured gut
until the steam rose with bravado
from the lonely sugar shack.
Political Harvest Toward the east Through back porch screen Clouds are forming their ranks Against the sun A crow’s distant cawing Gives voice to solitude Worn like a thorny cloak And mocks that final promise Hope and lifeline once Now become more lethal Than foreign shrapnel Pines murmured all night In their high, strange tongue […]
Read more "Political Harvest "Inappropriately Dressed I wasn’t dressed for snow, or clouds, or wind, or for walking at all, if I were being honest. But sometimes you just have to give it a go and trudge through the clouds, kick up the snow in passing, challenge the wind with the size of your hat. It wouldn’t dare to […]
Read more "Inappropriately Dressed"King Grossman is an award-winning poet, novelist, and writer of short prose. His poems and short prose have appeared or are forthcoming in The Round, Licking River Review, Crack the Spine, Forge, Tiger’s Eye, DMQ Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Qwerty, Burningword, Ignatian, Drunk Monkeys, The Paragon Journal, Pennsylvania English, SLAB, Slag Review, Midwest Quarterly, The […]
Read more "Growing Younger As The Sun Goes Down"Ode to Slow I appreciate slow after speeding bullets, ground records, and the turbulence of climate change. Like slow food, Zafu pillows sold online, apps that ring mellow gongs to end minutes of mindfulness. Three-toed sloths live too far away for me to know. Slugs move at night on my lettuce, chewing. Rockfall and glaciers […]
Read more "Ode to Slow"Clyde Kessler, poet and naturalist, lives in Radford, VA with his wife Kendall and their son Alan. Several years ago they added an art studio to their home and named it Towhee Hill. His latest book of poems, Fiddling at Midnight’s Farmhouse (Cedar Creek Publishing), was illustrated by his wife, Kendall Kessler. Smuggling Butterflies Sunrise […]
Read more "Smuggling Butterflies"
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