Poetry Summer 2023 fiction all issues
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Cover
Joel Filipe
Kristina Cecka
Rabble
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Uncivil War of Love
& other poems
LuAnn Keener-Mikenas
Skunks at Twilight
& other poems
Alyssa Sego
Passage
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
Forest of One
& other poems
Brent M. Foster
Ode to Darwin
& other poems
Jack Giaour
trans man is feeling blue
& other poems
Alan Gann
how strange
& other poems
Richard Baldo
The Privilege
& other poems
Michael Fleming
In
& other poems
Holly York
As it turned out, there was no bomb on board
& other poems
Celeste Briefs
Late Poppies
& other poems
Kayla E.L. Ybarra
Goose Song
& other poems
S.E. Ingraham
Leaving to Arrive
& other poems
Rachel Robb
Molting Scarlet Tanager
& other poems
Bruce Marsland
Sauna by a Finnish lake at Midsummer
& other poems
Ellen Romano
Seven Sisters
& other poems
Greg Hart
False Coordinates
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
Shanksville
& other poems
Corinne Walsh
Southern Charm
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
Two Geese
On the drive home, just a brief glimpse
off to my left at the side of the road,
the one, standing erect and alert, firmly balanced
on webbed feet, the other, sprawled carelessly against
the curb, one wing fanned, the bill half open,
both of them motionless.
I had read somewhere that geese mate for life,
like wolves and swans and otters, so it’s likely
that these two were paired, before some predatory
or mechanical piece of violence had occurred,
the only sign now a roundish mound of feathers,
and a particular, perfect stillness.
It was just a goose, one among millions,
lacking our treasured human sensibilities,
a brutish creature without emotion,
in its abundant, anonymous wildness,
and surely, I thought, they do not feel hope,
or love or loss. Still, I felt like crying.
Kudzu
In the deep South, it’s now almost a joke,
the massive, relentless ubiquity,
monstrous green curtains that suffocate oak
and dogwood, smothered blossoms of cherry
and rose, growing fiercely, one foot per day,
overachieving, unwilling to spare
a house or barn that might be in the way,
a dogged instinct to spread, everywhere.
I’m on the lookout, as it crawls and creeps,
an irresistible march to the North
where helpless, I wait, unable to sleep,
a nightmare that it will soon reach New York.
Central Park, the High Line, Fifth Avenue,
the Brooklyn Bridge. All covered in kudzu.
In County Wicklow
We were married in Glendalough,
under a wide blue sky, on a clean mountain breeze
that I imagined might lift away suspicion
and soothe our stubborn family controversies,
but it only ruffled the lavender blossoms
in Aislinn’s hair, as red as the deepest, fiery sunset.
We named the baby Claire after my mother.
She came too early, weak and yellow,
and though we admired her proud resolve to survive,
she lasted just six weeks. We buried her in the far hill,
and marked the spot with a granite cross
that we hauled down from Dublin in the hay wagon.
For a time, we contemplated the mysteries
of human misfortune, placing ourselves,
in thought and memory, against our more profitable neighbors,
whose good luck or superior character, allowed them
to gather and assemble their daily contentments,
and to avoid calamity.
This was in 1918, when the influenza had spread
to Ireland, creeping north from Spain, some said.
Aislinn’s skin turned suddenly gray, and she was besieged,
spectacularly, by fever and nosebleeds and monumental fatigue.
One October afternoon, she climbed the heavy stairs,
and for the first time in full daylight, lay down in bed.
A more adventurous spirit would have looked ahead,
in spite of these dreary setbacks, to rediscover hope
and confidence, but I have found the strength only to remember,
one starry midnight when I carried our tiny daughter
through a field of primrose, and a cool autumn morning
when Aislinn turned to me and whispered that she loved me.
Shanksville
With broken hearts we stared, our mouths agape,
as three planes crashed, a horror on TV.
The never-ending replay traced the shape
of grief and fear, a grotesque tragedy.
The news would come that there were four not three,
another plane in Pennsylvania down,
and witnesses would swear that they had seen
it was inverted, when it hit the ground.
And now a vast memorial marks the site,
where mysteries are known and stories told,
the forty screens of marble, gleaming white,
and forty names in letters scratched in gold.
We sense an invitation here, for prayer,
a kind of peace, and infinite despair.
Two Boxes of Sheet Music
From deep in a dark, dusty corner of the attic
I carried them down, down to the light and air
of the present day, and cautiously reached inside
toward a strangeness long passed, to touch
once familiar pages, the austere mythologies of my youth.
Andersen etudes, Bach sonatas,
Quantz, Rameau, Danzi, Hindemith,
Mozart concertos, Kuhlau duets, and layered
appropriately at the bottom of a pile, mercifully hidden,
the much dreaded Prokofiev and Chaminade.
Elaborately cascading displays of ink, a vast profusion
of notes, and my own markings in pencil,
indications of tempo, dynamics, articulation,
and for wind players the most profound
and impossible of challenges, where to breathe.
Once so much a part of me, or who I thought
I might be, an ecstatic urgency
to know music, to understand it, to master an instrument,
with yes, some measure of ability and interest, but alas,
as I had always suspected, an undeniable absence of real talent.
Slowly I sifted through the pages, with sharp waves
of nostalgia, and true astonishment that I used to be
able to play these pieces, with what I presume
was an elevated refinement of mind and personality,
an immersion in the beauty and elegance of bygone centuries.
I can still recall the joy of being a musician, the wonder of it,
the long, long hours of lonely practice, occasional pride
and constant doubt, and the miraculous thrill of a high G,
lifted tremulously above a final shudder of strings,
a proper moment of silence, then the rush of applause from strangers.
Greg Tuleja
was born in New Jersey and received degrees in biology and music from Rutgers University. Greg lives in Massachusetts and has recently retired, after working for 39 years at the Williston Northampton School, where he taught English, music, and for many years served as the Academic Dean. His poems and short stories have appeared in the Maryland Review, Lonely Planet Press, Romantics Quarterly, Thema, and in two previous Sixfold publications.