A Prayer for a New Year – 2024 by Charles Carr

A Prayer for a New Year – 2024 

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Come to a standstill in all the light and madness

Come throw away the container of despair.

Come nearer the forgotten self, the lost meaning.

Don’t be afraid of the absence of what is unknown;

          think of the absence of what was known.

Come release the sun that is shut up within the body.

Come shove the light into the night like a star.

          Defy the queen, paint the roses white again.

Come let the verb probe through until it stops all the hate that flows.

Nothing stops the landscape as it walks through you,

         it is fragile, held by the glass hands of the horizon

Lie on the grass, turn your eyes to the sky,

           listen to the humming of the bee

           let it be.

Come let the cloud burst soak you to the skin.

Come to the sands by the water’s edge.

Come to the beach’s longing to stop the world on the brink.

            Follow the path, listen to the voiceless trees,

            run from the swollen shadows.

Come like a dancing flame.

Come weave your way homeward.

Ler there be nothing between us,

          between me and them and their coming back.

When you come be more than when you went away.

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Charles Carr of Philadelphia has two published books of poems, paradise,pennsylvania and Haitian Mudpies & Other Poems. Charles has been active in the Philadelphia poetry community for 20 years and he hosted a Moonstone Arts Center Poetry series at Fergie’s Pub for 5 years and is currently the host of a live monthly broadcast Philly Loves Poetry now in its seventh season.  Eat This Poem, a Chapbook, published ny Moonstone Press, was released in December.  Proceeds of the sales of the chapbook will go to Ukraine Trust Chain.

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The Time I was a Linguist by John Dorroh

The Time I was a Linguist

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I was your teacher & you were more than soft bones.

We struggled with throat sounds & making sense

of chaotic patterns that took forever to diagnose.

There were no pills or elixirs, just work that no one

wanted to do.

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You separated yourself from “rathers” and ate

cake made of stone. The icing was like storm front

gray with a constant threat of fear. Torrential rain,

spot flooding, afraid to wade barefoot into silent

streets.

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You made words in your stomach, forced them up

through the machinery in your esophagus. I modeled

quivering/shivering as a hybrid of self-salvation.

You watched the video clips, did the homework,

practiced with diligence until your heart was

in sync. That’s when I backed out & observed

how you adapted to your new mouth.

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John Dorroh may have taught high school science for several decades. Whether he did is still being discussed. Three of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Hundreds more have appeared in journals such as Feral, North of Oxford, Wisconsin Review, River Heron, North Dakota Quarterly, Loch Raven Review, and Selcouth Station. He had two chapbooks published in 2022 – Swim at Your Risk and Personal Ad Poetry. 

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Discernment by Frank Wilson

Discernment

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Amid the darkness place the sun,

That veteran god, from deepest night

Evoking brightest day. Make plain

Imagination’s gestures are

But acts of faith, and loss of faith

An absence of imagination.

Merely perceiving misperceives:

We must invite what our eye bears —

Sunflower, catbird, passing cloud —

Into the tabernacle of the heart,

There where the lamp of vision flares.

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Frank Wilson is a retired Inquirer book editor. Visit his blog Books, Inq. — The Epilogue  Email him at PresterFrank@gmail.com

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Mountain Notes by John Zheng

Mountain Notes

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less trodden trail

to the clearing

blooming bluebells

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twist and turn

our desire to waterfalls

flows along the stream

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skimming egret

a white cloud ripples

across the pond

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after storm

the muddy creek

a good noise jazz

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view of valley

hay rolls stand at attention

to the bloody sun

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winding road

slow drive for a view

of mountain peaks

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John (Jianqing) Zheng is the author of The Dog Years of Reeducation (Madville Publishing, 2023), A Way of Looking (Silverfish Review Press, 2021), Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Texas Review Press, 2019), Delta Sun (Red Moon Press 2018), and The Landscape of Mind (Slapering Hol Press, 2002). His edited books include Conversations with Dana Gioia, African American Haiku, The Other World of Richard Wright, and Sonia Sanchez’s Poetic Spirit through Haiku. He is a professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University where he edits Valley Voices: A Literary Review. Zheng’s newest chapbook Just Looking: Haiku Sequences about the Mississippi Delta is available for download via Open: Journal of Arts and Literature.

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The OverLook by Lynette G. Esposito

The OverLook

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the moss creeps over my face

on the north side

a lime green mask

warm to the touch

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I am as silent as a sea serpent

blanketing shore stone

with decaying silver scales

shivering in the sunlight like water

but still.

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Down the cascade of falling tears

from the overlook, a breath of birds

beating the air with their wings,

flutter momentarily in the mist

and I look up,

stirred.

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They fly on,

whisper to each other

in a language unknown.

I hear them and think the

whispers are about the moss trying to live on my face

while I lay here–

wait for….to…molt my skin…

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to look at me you would think

I am a Roman fresco

painted by ancient gods

but I am just a man

fading into the sandy landscape

looking skyward

for aid

wishing the birds would come back.

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I hear the chirping

of young children at play

throwing pebbles into the ditch

splashing the dirty

water.

They speak the unfamiliar

words of the very young

laughing with uncontrolled glee

until they see my broken self–

scream and run.

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they are not like the birds

they come back with help

and pour their innocence

of hope all over me.

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I am baptized by their

belief all things can be fixed.

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             when I look down from the overlook,

I wonder which reality I am living–

the one before I jumped

or the one after.

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I smile because it makes so little difference.

except for the children.

I throw some hardened clay rocks into the ditch and watch

the water leap.

This time, I laugh

with glee like a child

redeemed.

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Lynette G. Esposito has been an Adjunct Professor at Rowan University, Burlington County and Camden County Colleges. She has taught creative writing and conducted workshops in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  Mrs. Esposito holds a BA in English from the University of Illinois and an MA in Creative Writing and English Literature from Rutgers University.  Her articles have appeared in the national publication, Teaching for Success; regionally in South Jersey Magazine, SJ Magazine. Delaware Valley Magazine, and her essays have appeared in Reader’s Digest and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her poetry has appeared in US1, SRN Review, The Fox Chase Review, Bindweed Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, That Literary Review, The Remembered Arts Journal, and other literary magazines. She has critiqued poetry for local and regional writer’s conferences and served as a panelist and speaker at local and national writer’s conferences.  She lives in Mount Laurel, NJ

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[the next big nothing] by Edward L. Canavan

[the next big nothing] by Edward L. Canavan

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fill in the blanks

with buzzwords

and bright colors

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blind the public

to the intentional augmentation

of reality

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keep them guessing

and smiling like idiots

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while they consume the latest

and greatest playthings of delirium

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specifically designed to keep

them obliviously distracted

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while the strangest fiction

is spoken as truth

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and chaos becomes just

as valid a method as control

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in the final conquest

of civility and common sense.

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Edward L. Canavan is a Los Angeles based poet whose work has most recently

appeared in The Opiate, Literatus, and Anti-Heroin Chic. He has 2 poetry collections

published by Cyberwit Press. Born and raised in the Bronx, NY, Edward currently

resides in North Hollywood, California, where he practices Buddhism and is currently

listening to PJ Harvey.

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State of Treasures by Amy Barone

State of Treasures

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Do not disturb echoes as we pass

roadside patches of red-beaded weeds,

scurrying grizzly bears, their cubs in tow.

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A bodacious bison lounges outside Grand Prismatic Spring.

Trespassing elk munch grass in a neighbor’s front yard.

A Jesuit mission sits off the beaten track in St. Ignatius.

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We savor long summer days, an expansive sky,

Columbia Falls’ rodeo on a Thursday night,

the Missouri River flanked by massive rocks,

a raft ride on Flathead Lake’s emerald cover.

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Heeding warning signs of prairie rattlesnakes nearby,

I quickly pick a blade of eyelash grass as hailstones

pommel us at First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park.

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Gold and silver in Last Chance Gulch long gone,

we unearth Montana’s riches from a tourist bus,

salute natives Gary Cooper and Myrna Loy,

pass through a living prayer that goes on and on.

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Amy Barone’s new poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books released her collection, We Became Summer, in 2018. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) Barone’s poetry has appeared in Local Knowledge, Martello Journal (Ireland), Muddy River Poetry Review, New Verse News, North of Oxford and Paterson Literary Review, among other publications. She belongs to the Poetry Society of America and the brevitas online poetry community. From Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she lives in New York City.

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We No Longer Kill Our Visitors by Eric D. Goodman

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We No Longer Kill Our Visitors 

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The millipede scurrying across the basement floor

searching for a dark corner in which to rest.

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The spider dangling from the bottom of the bathroom windowsill,

working less enthusiastically as hot steam fills the room.

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The stink bug rummaging through an orchid in the bay window,

not putting off any particular smell.

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The mouse who found a bit of coffee cake on the kitchen floor,

darting back beneath the oven.

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The bird who came in through the sliding door,

flying from room to room before finding exit

through an open window.

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The fruit bat spinning rings around each bedroom

before escaping through the attic vent.

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These are our COVID guests,

our pandemic partners.

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We no longer retreat to the hardware store

in search of ways to trap or kill them.

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We invite them in for a visit, a bit of dialogue—

wink of eye, twitch of nose—

and ask them not to be strangers

as they hide from us in the shadows

of our shared home.

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Eric D. Goodman lives and writes in Maryland, where he’s remained sheltered in place during the pandemic and beyond, spending a portion of his hermithood writing poetry. His first book of poetry, Faraway Tables, is coming in spring 2024 from Yorkshire Press. He’s author of Wrecks and Ruins (Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press, 2022) The Color of Jadeite (Apprentice House, 2020), Setting the Family Free (Apprentice House, 2019), Womb: a novel in utero (Merge Publishing, 2017) Tracks: A Novel in Stories (Atticus Books, 2011), and Flightless Goose, (Writers Lair Books, 2008). More than a hundred short stories, articles, travel stories, and poems have been published in literary journals, magazines, and periodicals. Learn more about Eric and his writing at Eric D. Goodman .

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On the Epistemology of Toy Soldiers by Henry Crawford

On the Epistemology of Toy Soldiers 

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On a bookcase in my son’s old bedroom

a plastic soldier taking aim

points his rifle at an empty window

his featureless hand fused to rubbery gun.

Feet planted to a stand of plastic ground

his arms and legs bound forever

in a powerless sniper’s stance.

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With a mind of molded plastic, the soldier

steadies his sightless eyes, grips the gunstock,

sniffs the acrid barrel oil. Knows

to keep his knees straight. Arms locked.

Feels the necessity of his martial duty.

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I cannot speak for the little head

beneath the stamped generic helmet.

Did he know his playmate master?

Does he know the boy is gone?

Does he long to put his toy gun down?

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I don’t touch the figure.

I’ll let him guard these bedroom books.

Sometimes, from behind the door

I’d listen to my child in his quiet hours reading

imagining the electricity of words

lighting up his mind. In a boys place.

Closed to all.

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Henry Crawford is the author of two collections of poetry, American Software (CW Books, 2017), and the Binary Planet (Word Works, 2020) and a chapbook, The Little Box Theater (printF Press 2022). His poem, “The Fruits of Famine,” won first prize in the 2019 World Food Poetry Competition. His work has been published in Boulevard, Copper Nickel, Rattle, the Southern Humanities Review, and many others. He was nominated for the 2022 Rhysling Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. He also serves as a co-host of the Café Muse Literary Salon Online.

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