Paul Dickey’s TheySay This is How Death Came Into the World was published byMayapple Press in January, 2011. Since his last appearance atAscentlast year, Dickey’s poetry has appeared inConcho River Review, Potomac, The Potomac Review, diode, 32Poems, Barnwood, Broadsided, I-70 Review,and Prairie Schooner,and is forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and Pleiades. This spring Dickey compiled a new full-length volume of poems entitledWires Over the Homeplaceas a collaboration of poetry and art with the Brooklyn artist, Ira Joel Haber. Selections of this synergistic work have appeared online atOtoliths and in print at thePinyon Review.Biographical information and notes on previous publishing activity can be found at the site of theNebraska Center For Writers.
I Don’t Know How She Learned of Sadness ~ Paul Dickey
I don’t know how she learned of sadness.
Our curriculum was always joy.
When we lost all her houses, she lived
well enough in mine. When we quarreled
over nothing, it reminded us how love is.
Our children came by the house and left –
bringing babies into and out of each day.
Nothing seemed lost longer than the length
of a memory, although autumn returned
everyday to claim crisp, paper loud leaves.
They cackled in the wind, whispered
behind our backs we were getting older.
All of this got out to the neighbors
who, one by one, observed the children
no longer coming to the front door
in SUVs too early in the morning.
Donald Morrill
Donald Morrill is the author of two volumes of poetry, At the Bottom of the Sky and With Your Back to Half the Day, as well as four books of nonfiction. He has taught at Jilin University, Peoples¹ Republic of China, and has been a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Lodz, Poland, as well as the Bedell Visiting Writer in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the Tammis Day Writer-in-residence at the Poetry Center at Smith. Currently he teaches in the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Tampa and is Associate Dean of Graduate and Continuing Studies there.
The Lingerhut ~ Donald Morrill
It straddles the brook,
Holding its builder’s poem:
“On Doing Nothing;”
Four chairs, three empty—
Which is most alone? The hike
Yesterday is here,
Mud tracked from the Swag—
Such nonsense, this pretending
With screens on all sides!
But how many stones
Have you gotten to know? See,
Daddy longlegs gropes;
Carved from hemlock stump,
A cracking man considers
The bird of his hand;
I prefer my hosts’
Wine, the limbs sore from dancing
Past midnight; lean in,
Rhododendron, hear?
Women’s laughter up the hill—
Third day together . . .
for Helen & Peter Wallace
Cataloochee Ranch, NC
Bethany Bowman
Bethany Bowman holds a BA from Roberts Wesleyan College and an MST from SUNY Potsdam. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Comstock Review and Art House America, and is forthcoming in The Other Journal, Nectar, The Cresset, and Rock & Sling. A native of upstate New York, she lives in Hartford City, Indiana with her husband and their two children.
Signs ~ Bethany Bowman
They know they’ve arrived when they see trees.
Trees mean water, timber, game. They unload the wagon,
eat flapjacks. Pa plays fiddle, Phoebes sing.
Much later, our family drives five-hundred miles
from upstate New York to northern Indiana.
Vineyards line the Great Lakes; we don’t stop.
Before long, it’s soybeans and corn and no hills.
Somewhere near Columbus, the kids sample conies
with Cincinnati chili, and I wonder if I wrinkled my nose
the same way when my husband took the job.
Una counts buzzards while our youngest finally naps.
We listen to C. S. Lewis on audio book: The Problem of Pain.
Una’s eyes close, and we discuss the new house,
afraid the wallpaper might be ancient,
that the roof, which has four layers of shingles,
might not hold off tornado season rain.
We wonder if we’ve made the right decision,
uprooting the kids from their grandparents, the Valley,
to follow a dream that rubs legs and wings together
like locusts in the Midwest, and if there will be a sign
we’ve made the right choice, and if we’ll recognize it
if it hums and snaps at dusk, or flies with transparent wings.
Pa could read the signs, but still, some nights, trudged home
with a rifle full of shells, empty pockets, no meat.
We wonder if it’s right to look for signs,
knowing there’s just one sign, The Sign of Jonas,
and the only way to wake up on a new shore
is to spend three days in the belly of a whale.
But there are signs: A doorbell that chimes Auld Lang Syne,
garden rife with onions, stray cat asleep on the porch.
Inside, the walls are damask, ceilings high,
and the staircase may lead to a magic wardrobe.
Best of all, there’s room for the piano,
which I will teach our children to play
just as my mother taught me, and I will read to them
the books of my childhood, and pray,
in the spirit of Ma, who, miles from anywhere,
washed muslin and calico as though it mattered.
Jim Daniels
Jim Daniels’ recent books include Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry, Carnegie Mellon University Press, All of the Above, Adastra Press, and Trigger Man, short fiction, Michigan State University Press, all published in 2011. Birth Marks, BOA Editions, will appear in 2013.
Blues in the Key of March ~ Jim Daniels
Sleet spots the window like errant stars
like whispers of a confidence
betrayed. No mailman or savior
going to live this weather down.
No use asking God to deliver another
morning. No Special Orders.
No raising your hand when no one’s
going to call on your sorry ass.
All the hard buds stalled aquiver.
Somebody asking, do you remember?
And you don’t. Sky eraser. Blood
tease. A promise slipping through
fingers into a plunge, all those spots
merging into the unnamed river
we all have a name for, having
rode it alone in the dark,
having contributed our tears,
having justified silent dreams.
Having paddled against the current,
abandoned the paddle.
Robin Chapman
Robin Chapman is author of seven books, most recently the eelgrass meadow (Tebot Bach).
Her poems have appeared this year in Appalachia, Wilderness, Nimrod, and Valparaiso Poetry Review,
among other journals.
Landscape ~ Robin Chapman
What’s native? This stretch of yard once marsh
fringed by tall-grass prairie, fire-swept, drained
to re-emerge in cherry, hickory, oak all felled
for lumber, fallow in winter, tilled to cornfield
fringing the edge of town—come house, grass,
elms, honeysuckle border creeping in—now
we machete-slash the stems of indigo, beebalm,
asters and goldenrod for slow compost, clear
so that the tender crocus, scilla, and daffodils
will lift their faces through leaf drift to the early
bees and each of us weary of winter sleep.