Winter Undertow

Round fire in its tent of sticks shedding chalk and cold
on the edging of my pillow.

So sad. All I can recall is no one to hold me.

After all my skin-chafing labor with the adze, the struggle
to haul your coffin across the river—

cracking and lowing like a barge
in the deep, bleeding furrow
closing in on itself—

your severed arm gone ghostly limp,
flailing like a wave crest along the bank

beneath the claxons of a migrating goose flock
beneath blurrier migrating stars.

Touched by Fire

I drank from the fur cup. It tasted like you – orange blossom honey infused with fire. If our forebears had remained in the Pale of Settlement, herding cows, exhorting God, they would have been destroyed with the rest, and we would never have happened. History is riddled with obscure coincidences. The poète maudit Stéphane Mallarme died from the same disease I have. There is no cure, no absolution, no escape. I am not only a prisoner, but also the prison. Please spare me visits from the sort of people who refer to poetry as “verse.” I just want to stand chest-deep in your flames.

Forest Spirit

Many selves,
a raging fire, a sparkling chasm.
viper slithers to its apogee – the sun –
almost succeeds, almost destroys –
I am justified in brevity, breathing
as I, come face to face,
and so it is – angry souls in each other’s bodies –
while August burns treacherously
in the dry grasses.

Boy leaves tracks. Life trudges.
Brooding, endorsing the searing sun,
Can’t close the seed captured here,
die brother…live sister….
no distress or bitterness or revenge –
merely randomness that
divides itself unmercifully

Chartres

Richard Bentley has published fiction, poetry, and memoir in over 200 journals, magazines and anthologies. He has served on the board of the Modern Poetry Association (now known as the Poetry Foundation). He is a Pushcart Prize nominee. He was prizewinner in the Paris Review/Paris Writers Workshop International Fiction Awards. Chartres They mounted their ladders […]

Former Self Release

Jennifer Lothrigel is a poet and artist residing in the San Francisco Bay area. She has just published her first chapbook through Liquid Light Press, titled ‘Pneuma’. Her work has also been published in Arcturus, Deracine, Rag Queen Periodical, Poetry Quarterly, NILVX and elsewhere. Former Self Release She was feather drifting into the night. Her […]

The Season

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. Her works have appeared in numerous publications and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web. Her debut novel, The Rose Master, was published in 2014 and was called a […]

Wintering In Saint-Tropez

Sal Difalco is the author of two story collections, Black Rabbit (Anvil) and The Mountie At Niagara Falls (Anvil). He lives in Toronto. Wintering In Saint-Tropez The bulbous brown and yellow forms resembled animals, swimming in a sea of spun sapphire. I should have waited to take the pill. It always made me see things, […]

The Fire

Edward Hemstreet is a surfacing artist from New Jersey, United States. His works are featured or forthcoming in Figroot Press, Into the Void Magazine, and The Gateway Review among others. When not writing, he may be found eating bushes of honeysuckle and drinking uncomfortable amounts of tea. The Fire Fast friends /_ bent _/ in the sun. |` Gold grain […]

Bees

David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in rainy Manchester in England, and after spending most of the 1970s in Vienna he moved to Arizona. Since arriving in Phoenix he has pursued his writing, and been active in various capacities in the poetry world. The Bitter Oleander Press recently published his translations from the poetry […]

Visitant

Literary pilgrims welcome

fire