Lorene Delany-Ullman

(image) The dead will return to berate us

Sullen clouds
but no drizzle

the weather impetuous—
a trace of sun

tips us towards promise,
yet, what begs us to the shore

are dead sea lions
with gunshot wounds

the sea no longer sanctuary,
death equals death,

the scale of grief
never balances out—

what clings
to me, you,

and the coral reefs
is indestructible

synthetic, man-made,
a test-bridge—

what we have done—
what have we done?

(image) The farmwife’s lamentation

one of the last farms
in this almost beach town
steeps in the exhaust
from the nearby Ikea parking lot,

crops sing with promise in mid-summer,
by fall, an overripe still life—

on the corner, the homeless staged
with the brightest blue umbrella,
the sun, always demanding respect—

we bludgeoned the beans,
celery, and strawberries;
we thought we had no choice

(image)

Lorene Delany-Ullman’s book of prose poems, Camouflage for the Neighborhood, was the winner of the 2011 Sentence Award published by Firewheel Editions (December 2012). Delany-Ullman teaches composition at the University of California, Irvine. She also works in collaboration with artist, Jody Servon, on Saved, an ongoing photographic and poetic exploration of the human experience of life, death, and memory. http://www.lorenedelanyullman.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAayoPKvWyo

Juleigh Howard-Hobson

(image) When I am 100

I’ll be like May Sarton: alone but not
really alone. Old, but not terrible
in my olderness. Reasonable,
approachable, given to deeper thought
than conversation casually made in post
offices, banks, gas stations, will reveal
about me. I will share myself, both real
and unreal, honest and dishonest (most
of me is not who I think I am at
all). I will plant seeds in well worked earth, I
will watch deer and porcupines pick through my
garden behind me. I’ll make peace with that
by then, considering it part of this
compromise called living. Called truth. Called is.

(image)

Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s poetry has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Mobius, The Lyric, Able Muse, Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press), Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos), and many other places. Nominations include “Best of the Net,” The Pushcart Prize, and The Rhysling Award. Her latest book is Our Otherworld (Red Salon). She lives in the Pacific Northwest where she tends a large garden … amid the deer and porcupine.

Laura Grace Weldon

(image) Hitched Together

Squatting on strong toddler legs
he holds a blue Duplo car,
searching for something
to fit its hitch. No hole
in the yellow wooden block
so he presses them together,
pulls block behind car
under the sunlight of his smile.

I know hands like his, like mine
turn farms into fracking sites,
reduce mountains to rubble,
clot skies with particles
so thick they’re seen from space

while holding ourselves apart
as if our essence
remains somehow separate.
But everything here on Earth
is about connection.
Even flowers answer buzzing bees
by making their nectar sweeter.

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Laura Grace Weldon is the author of the poetry collections Blackbird (Grayson 2019) and Tending(Aldrich 2013). She is Ohio Poet of the Year for 2019. Her poetry has been interpreted into sculpture and stamped into a public sidewalk. Her background includes teaching nonviolence, writing collaborative poetry with nursing home residents, and facilitating support groups for abuse survivors. She works as a book editor and teaches creative writing. Connnect with her at lauragraceweldon.com.

Suzy Harris

(image) Late Summer Letter

Water from the hose is tepid and slow,
berries so hard not even the birds
want them. Everything
demands more shade.

Craving the sound of running water,
I walk to the river, dip my sweaty feet
in mountain run-off, watch mindlessly
as sticks float by, jam into rocks, disappear.

Over there, an osprey nest
tops a burned-out tree,
osprey and tree both survivors
from last year’s fire.

We, too, are survivors. We carry
what our grandparents could not
release, what kept our parents
awake at night.

But this is a letter about summer,
how our skin remembers the scrape of knee
against concrete, rub of suntan lotion,
splash of icy water from a flat dive.

Tell me what keeps you awake at night,
and I will tell you about an inky sky rich with stars,
meteors blazing their white trails,
galaxies spinning out into the darkness.

Tell me what keeps you awake at night
and I will build a twig barge
for your worries, watch
the tiny boat disappear under rocks,

hum you back to sleep,
plant your dreams with stars.

(image)

Suzy Harris was born and raised in Indianapolis as the fifth of seven siblings. She has lived her adult life in Portland, OR and is a retired attorney. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in CALYX, Clackamas Literary Review, Oyster River Pages, Rain, Third Wednesday, Willawaw Journal, Windfall, and other journals and anthologies. She and her husband have two adult children who live in Portland, one dog, and a granddog.