Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems January 5, 2018 Cover Art: "Clinking Chains by Patricia Carroll Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Patricia Carroll: As an abstract expressionist painter Patricia plays with paint, making marks and then responding to those marks through a combination of spontaneous and thoughtful conversations with the work. These conversations, affected by personal and archetypal experiences, occur consciously and subconsciously. A successful painting emerges from this happy struggle.
Saviour
We believe God (extraterrestrials) will arrive in a Flaming Chariot (UFO) and save us. It's matter of faith.
We believe evidence to support this tenet is promoted (denied) by theologians (the government) to pacify the population. It's a matter of control.
Possessing omnipotence (superior technology) He (they) will appear at precisely the right moment, resolve all conflicts, eliminate pain, poverty, pollution and Climate Change, establish 'Heaven on Earth' (Utopia) just as He (The United Galactic Federation) ordained. It's a matter of power.
We believe this will happen (has to happen) soon. Because we cannot (will never) clean up this mess all by ourselves. It's a matter of fact.
K.V. Skene’s work has appeared in Canadian, U.K., U.S., Irish, Indian, Australian and Austrian magazines. Her publications include Love in the (Irrational) Imperfect, Hidden Brook Press, 2006 (Canada) You Can Almost Hear Their Voices, Indigo Dreams Publishing (UK) and Under Aristotle Bridge, 2015 courtesy of Finishing Line Press (USA).
Abyss
The winds sing the squid dark sea. They sing of nuclear submarines. And fibre optic cables blinking at sperm whales. They sing of minerals lying around in the abyss where the fish look like a sick child's drawings. And of boiling waters at vents where the ocean floor cracks apart and discharges, watched by brave submersibles with lights that blind deep sea eyes. (Those creatures must believe they are visited by a destroying angel.)
Julian O'Dea is an Australian poet who lives in Canberra, the nation's capital. He has been writing poetry for a few years, since retiring as a government scientist.
overview described familiar skills and purpose basic compassion
—--
this day passes somewhere nearby someone practicing on an out-of-tune piano trying to get it right accompanied by a novice tuba player and other such small things cluttering a warm Spring afternoon
—--
melancholy dog waiting in the open shed his people at work
Ayaz Daryl Nielsen, veteran, hospice nurse, ex-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado, USA. Editor of bear creek haiku (26+ years/140+ issues) with poetry published worldwide (and deeply appreciated), he also is online at: bear creek haiku poetry, poems and info
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems January 12, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Redacted, What’s left, Some Added
What’s left? Mountains, mist, fog, smoke, weather—rain and sun, earth jewels, daylight’s winter face, leaves and flowers beneath a sky-fall road less traveled.
What’s left? An infant’s arms around your pilgrim waist? Religion? Love?
David Fraser, 2017 (Response to “Hold The Mist” by Andrew Brown)
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016. Recently April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
The Up-Pull Of Spring
Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind. Mason Cooley
and it‘s god’s great absence/ presence that compels us to pray, that and the up-pull of spring,
and our children and our children’s children – their tiny fingernails.
Each morning we are someone new, someone incomplete, a thought, a heart- beat
in the still-wintry dark we wait
K.V. Skene’s work has appeared in Canadian, U.K., U.S., Irish, Indian, Australian and Austrian magazines. Her publications include Love in the (Irrational) Imperfect, Hidden Brook Press, 2006 (Canada) You Can Almost Hear Their Voices, Indigo Dreams Publishing (UK) and Under Aristotle Bridge, 2015 courtesy of Finishing Line Press (USA).
Questions
the manuscript is porous like a lost child i entered.
since you so wisely left untellables alone and i have often been an untellable and alone, i fear my origins long for their own annihilation and i believe my mother’s death was a matricide though not literally.
we always pity the perishing
you never told half and I can see why for when art cracked the world’s veneer and i glimpsed that darkness hypnotic and perilous we signalled our betrayals.
do questions fill or create voids?
the patio was covered by wet leaves you sat and typed on the cedar chair while I fed the squirrels. one bit you when you offered it food; this, you see, is the problem the one who is always bitten affronts my sense of justice, so i rambled on about banalities while the ghosts of dead mother and aunt, foreign and unknowable, haunted the recesses of our discourse arsenals of words to stitch with
i too possess that unquenchable clatter in the bones. are you alive all or in part or are you a question? interrogativity after all these years, (only five or six but feels longer) i constructed reasons for your reasons new questions for your question
Monika Lee is author of gravity loves the body (2008), skin to skin (with Shelly Harder, 2016) and slender threads (2004). She has published poems in Canadian Literature, vallum: contemporary poetry, Scrivener Creative Review, Windsor Review, Dalhousie Review, The Nashwaak Review, Harpweaver, A Room of One’s Own, Event, Atlantis, The Fiddlehead, Antigonish Review, Ariel, Quills, Qwerty, Ascent, and The Windsor Review. Her play, “The Petting Zoo,” was performed as part of the Playwrights Cabaret at the McManus Theatre in London, Ontario. Also the writer of Rousseau’s Impact on Shelley: Figuring the Written Self (1999) and essays on Shelley, nineteenth-century literature, Canadian literature, and creative writing, she is a professor in the English Department at Brescia University College in London, Ontario.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems January 19, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca Last week's Friday's poems are included this week as well, since we were late last week.
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Three Layers of Night, Ghost Ranch, NM for Layne Kalbfleisch Below – a cold, blustery night on a high desert that was once a sea. Above – stars float like fish in the steady rotation of the sky-bowl. Beyond – violent interstellar winds swirl hot gasses in the birthplace of stars, and old white dwarfs explode into oblivion. Three layers, a single mind. Author of Light and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0 The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com Howard F. Stein, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma City, OK USA; howard-stein@ouhsc.edu
Almost Good Enough To Begin With
There are few things more dishonourable than misleading the young. Thomas Sowell
And now we find ourselves at the end of our beginning and this isn’t what our parents promised, isn’t what our teachers taught, isn’t what our mentors meant, isn’t what our ginormous student loans bought and paid for, isn’t our 21st century you-can-have-it-all lifestyle: the high-entry-level position, the bonuses, the promotions, the penthouse, the hot partner, the travel, the yacht, the private jet, the ever-bellowing bull market … (almost good enough to begin with) isn’t demographically distributed, isn’t government guaranteed, isn’t working …
K.V. Skene’s work has appeared in Canadian, U.K., U.S., Irish, Indian, Australian and Austrian magazines. Her publications include Love in the (Irrational) Imperfect, Hidden Brook Press, 2006 (Canada) You Can Almost Hear Their Voices, Indigo Dreams Publishing (UK) and Under Aristotle Bridge, 2015 courtesy of Finishing Line Press (USA).
On The Metro, To The First Ballet Class In Weeks
not in the zone like someone trying to write after weeks, too burned out. The train slides past two onyx. Today should be as cool and clear as the teal pond, green air new as a baby’s skin or under the goose like Mother Ginger, cozy under what’s warm, pale yellow and goslings cuddle
Lyn Lifshin has published over 130 books and chapbooks including 3 from Black Sparrow Press: Cold Comfort, Before It's Light and Another Woman Who Looks Like Me. Before Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle, Lifshin published her prize winning book about the short lived beautiful race horse Ruffian, The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness. Recent books include Ballroom, All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially The Lies, Light At the End: The Jesus Poems, Katrina, Mirrors, Persphone, Lost In The Fog, Knife Edge & Absinthe: The Tango Poems . NYQ books published A Girl Goes into The Woods. Also just out: For the Roses poems after Joni Mitchell and Hitchcock Hotel from Danse Macabre. Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle. And Tangled as the Alphabet,-- The Istanbul Poems from NightBallet Press Just released as well Malala, the dvd of Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. The Marilyn Poems was just released from Rubber Boots Press. An update to her Gale Research Autobiography is out: Lips, Blues, Blue Lace: On The Outside. Also just out is a dvd of the documentary film about her: Lyn Lifshin: Not Made Of Glass. Just out: Femme Eterna and Moving Through Stained Glass: the Maple Poems. Forthcoming: Degas Little Dancer and Winter Poems from Kind of a Hurricane Press, Paintings and Poems, from Tangerine press (just out) and The Silk Road from Night Ballet, alivelikealoadedgun from Transcendent Zero Press Just Out and forthcoming Refugees Her web:www.lynlifshin.com
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems January 26, 2018 Cover Art: Pinwheel by Patricia Carroll Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca Last week's Friday's poems are included this week as well, since we were late last week.
Patricia Carroll: As an abstract expressionist painter Patricia plays with paint, making marks and then responding to those marks through a combination of spontaneous and thoughtful conversations with the work. These conversations, affected by personal and archetypal experiences, occur consciously and subconsciously. A successful painting emerges from this happy struggle.
two haiku
throat duets in inuktituk - blasts – blizzards – winds howling in dissonance
aurora borealis casts long shadows from inuksuks onto past spirits
Sterling Haynes
Aeons, Ghost Ranch, NM
I come here every time to imagine the unimaginable – steep mesas and deep canyons, a history book in rock two hundred million years old – and I dare to stand unafraid on sacred ground. Wonder teaches me I belong in this place – I do not disappear into insignificance, but bear witness to a scale where unimaginable becomes possibility, and I can hold aeons in the embrace of mere mind.
Author ofLight and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0 The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma City, OK USA;
A Rusty Band
Horns resembling trains burning night tracks and a snare drum sounding like a thousand cats across garbage lids brush the cymbals while the bass man finds his fingers chasing the the mouse on the strings feeding the ears listening and sloppy dancers as the golden trumpet breaks half notes into quarters and gingham shirts feel the sweat and magnolia perfume competes with cigarette smoke all under lights related to the sun while the saxophone answers all the questions about the brass and the origins of jazz.
Dr. Roger G. Singer has been in private practice for 38 years in upstate New York. He has four children, Abigail, Caleb, Andrew and Philip and five grandchildren. Dr. Singer has served on multiple committees for the American Chiropractic Association, lecturing at colleges in the United States, Canada and Australia, and has authored over fifty articles for his profession and served as a medical technician during the Vietnam era. Dr. Singer has had over 890 poems published on the internet, magazines and in books and is a Pushcart Award Nominee. Some of the magazines that have accepted his poems for publication are: Westward Quarterly, Jerry Jazz, SP Quill, Avocet, Underground Voices, Outlaw Poetry, Literary Fever, Dance of my Hands, Language & Culture, The Stray Branch, Tipton Poetry Journal and Indigo Rising.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems February 2, 2018 Cover Art: Albanese Meats and Poultry by P.W. Bridgman Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
P.W. Bridgman writes short fiction and poetry from Vancouver, Canada. His work has been published in The Honest Ulsterman, The Glasgow Review of Books,Ars Medica, The Moth Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Litro UK, Litro NY, Praxis, pif MAGAZINE, Grain, Ascent Aspirations, The Antigonish Review, The New Orphic Review, Easy Street, London Grip, A New Ulster, Section 8 Magazine, The Mulberry Fork Review, Aerodrome and other literary periodicals and e-zines. You may learn more about P.W. Bridgman by visiting his website at www.pwbridgman.ca.
Meat, Bread And Open Mic: Soho, 2013 So, since I’m thishigh my ma’d send me to get veal at Albanese Meat and Poultry on Elizabeth Street. Since I’m thishigh. You look like a nice lady. The veal was so beautiful. Pink and sweet and tender. The way she did those chops. And her fettine. Porca miseria! So, I’m telling you, Albanese Meat and Poultry, around the corner. You don’t want to get your veal anywhere else. I’d get my veal there, if I could. It’s still up there, on Elizabeth Street. This is my neighbourhood. I was born five blocks away. You look like a nice lady. You’re not from here, are you? I used to pick up ciabatta and bastone at the Vesuvio Bakery. That’s on Prince, a few blocks up, just before Thompson. My ma sent me there too. Two for a quarter, forty years ago. I was a cute little patatino then. Beautiful black curls. “Ricciolino,” they called me. Hard to believe, eh lady? Now I hang out at the library and mostly eat out of dumpsters. You look like a nice lady. I can tell we both need a drink and a bite. Can we go for a drink? At Milady’s Bar? Genovese’s joint? It’s close to the Vesuvio. I want to tell you the story of my life. You might want to hear it. It’s a dive bar, lady. Genovese’s house red goes for four bucks, a bowl of pasta for six. I can tell we both need a drink. I hear they make a nice conchiglie farcie. You spot me tonight. I’ll cover you next week. Ha! What about it? Will you come with me to Milady’s for some wine and a bite? Not tonight? Did I tell you I write poetry? Did I tell you that? I’m gonna write you a poem, lady. I’m not just yer ordinary bum. You’ll see. You come back here in a week. Meet me at this corner at five. You think I’m toying with you. Well. Meet me here. I’ll give you your poem and prove you wrong. Maybe we’ll go to Milady’s then. Lady, I’m gonna be wearing a clean white shirt. You’ll be able to see me from a mile away. I’m gonna shave. I’m gonna have a poem in my pocket, a sestina. It’ll be more hopeful than Larkin. Less laced-up than Hopkins. More pretentious than Stevens. I practically live in the Jefferson Market Library. I’m Michaele. “Open Mic” for short. I’m famous around here, or I should be. Don’t be late, lady. P.W. Bridgman writes short fiction and poetry from Vancouver, Canada. His work has been published in The Honest Ulsterman, The Glasgow Review of Books,Ars Medica, The Moth Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Litro UK, Litro NY, Praxis, pif MAGAZINE, Grain, Ascent Aspirations, The Antigonish Review, The New Orphic Review, Easy Street, London Grip, A New Ulster, Section 8 Magazine, The Mulberry Fork Review, Aerodrome and other literary periodicals and e-zines. You may learn more about P.W. Bridgman by visiting his website at www.pwbridgman.ca.
Hey Joe Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
Jimi’s in a purple patchouli haze. He wants to kiss the sky, decked in turquoise, silver, all afro, Technicolor, velvet pants. I’m gettin’ chills from his gypsy eye so there’s no talkin’, no complications, not a mention of the drugs.
We’re in the kitchen makin’ muffins. I’ve put in my hours of bakin’ time and I’m teachin’ Jimi how to scoop and drop, left-handed, sweet feelin’ from his fingers slopped mixture landin’ in those muffin cups, and he’s experienced, in a trance hammerin’ on to muffins, pullin’ off, with syncopated pickin’ patterns like guitars on fire, that spangled banner, napalm from a distant war,
and Jimi’s doin’ voodoo and the muffins with rocket slides, licks and riffs, all chaotic fuzz, are risin’ on the counter all by themselves, and I say, “Step away from the kitchen, Jimi. Please. The hour is gettin’ late. The hour is late.
I’ll get my strat, all I want to do is bend some strings with you.”
Previously published in the January 2018 Issue of Subterranean Blue Poetry David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016. Recently April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
Liquid, Ghost Ranch, NM
High desert valley surrounded by rock – siltstone, sandstone, mudstone, limestone, making mountains, mesas, buttes, spires, that all look permanent – are they not exactly as I saw them last year and ten years before?
These citadels of stone are tricksters to the eye; to geologic time’s deposits and erosions, all rock is flow. Solid is illusion; these rocks are liquid – as is time.
Author ofLight and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0 The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma City, OK USA;
Friday's Poems February 9, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Arctic Vortex Aftermath There are no gods in the wilderness, only wolves remain scavenging in the four corners of the savage winds, angels are made of black iron, refrain from kissing their frozen feet. In the tangle of crushed trees a flurry of fur and tails: monkeys are returning. Katherine L. Gordon is a rural Ontario writer devoted to the promotion of Canadian Literature. Many of her books, chap books and anthology collections, essays and reviews, have international recognition as part of a growing Canadian contribution to world culture. Working with fine contemporaries is her inspiration. Her latest collection: Piping at the End of Days, reflects this creatively invigorating collaboration.
Shopping Trip
Friday night at dusk, we pull in to Tesco’s car park to buy ‘proper’ pop -corn for cinema. Encounter scene like trailer Ken Loach film; blue double decker, property some enterprising farmer, has just pulled in, its sole purpose rounding up migrant workers from farm to farm, driving them into town for supplies. They tumble off the bus, swarm across car park towards supermarket. I shake my head at farmers reverting to labour relations that should be consigned to sepia photos.
In truth, these workers wrangle waiting lists to arrive in our village early spring. Glimpsed in fields and orchards, engaged on work that elderly aunt states requires hard graft and expertise. Put up in dilapidated caravans and statics, planted behind farm out buildings. Encountered occasionally in post office causing pursed lips atmosphere, as they crowd the counter fathoming how to wire money home.
Now they make sport out sprinting to the cash point , then scatter amongst aisles where abundant shelves try to goblin market seduce, canny Tesco even stocking home comforts. I expect to see pay day blow out bags full, but they are thriftily saving to fund house, business, college in own country, so, exit bearing maximum two bag essentials. October, they stuff vans with electrical goods, clothes … haggled for at local boot fairs, head home.
Fiona Sinclair
Intimate Immensity, Ghost Ranch, NM HF Stein after Gaston Bachelard and Lesley Poling-Kempes
(“ . . . a sense of shelter and exposure, enclosure and expansion. . . . . universal and personal, dangerous and comforting, temporal and transcendent.” (Lesley Poling-Kempes. 2005. Ghost Ranch. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. P. 4.)
So much space, this emptiness of high desert between mesas, vastness I could dissolve in. I take little comfort in the radiance of the Milky Way, when I no longer know where I am, or the path to where I thought I was going – terror so close of kin to awe. I am lost in this emptiness, and despair of ever again being found.
So much space, this emptiness, enclosed by tall mesas across a wide wilderness. My soul sprawls here, held in the arms of these ancient stones. Beneath a riot of stars, I take comfort in an expanse too vast for my imagination to wrap itself around – as if being lost is a kind of being found.
Author ofLight and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0 The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma City, OK USA;
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems February 16, 2018 Cover Art: Sun Dogs by Don Schaeffer Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Don Schaeffer has previously published a dozen volumes of poetry, his first in 1996, not counting the experiments with self publishing under the name "Enthalpy Press." He spent a lot of his young adult life hawking books and learning the meaning of vanity. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been translated into Chinese for distribution abroad. Don is a habitue of the poetry forum network and has received first prize in the Interboard competition.
I Tried To Explain To Her
I tried to explain to her that it was the pollution that made sunsets so beautiful
but she spoke louder and over me
I stood ignoring her and looked at that sunset
It humbled me
Paul Liddy
Routines
He ate oatmeal.
Exercised by critically considering the labored movements of thirty-five runners ruining the view of his front window. Shaved. Showered. Shampooed. Deodorized.
Worked on a rather rigid poem to restructure it into an essay with some interesting sidebar tangents better suited to prose explorations.
Had lunch.
Deleted two tangents that were wandering in directions even more unexciting than unnecessary.
Took a nap. Restless and unfulfilled because of other tangents willfully charging off into directions unknown. Washed six pair of socks and enough jockey shorts.
Ate supper preceded and followed by a smooth boxed wine.
Watched one hour of wrestling to explore his dark side. Then followed tangents.
Dennis Herrell’s work life began as a teacher, then a sporting goods wholesaler, a gift/card wholesaler, and finally an antique dealer. He is now retired. In the year 2000, he started seriously submitting his poetry, with about 500 poems published in various U.S, Canada, British, Austria, Australian magazines, plus three poetry books.
How All Of Life Springs From The Mud Of The Schoolyard
you know, sometimes i think the most meaning in my life came when i wrote joey reich on the top right corner of the composition paper with the thin blue lines in elementary school, 1970, today will be sunny
Joseph Reich is a social worker who lives with his wife and twelve year old son in the high-up mountains of Vermont...
He has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary journals both here and abroad, been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, and his books in poetry and cultural studies include, "If I Told You To Jump Off The Brooklyn Bridge" (Flutter Press) "Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life & Times Of The Man Sawed In Half" (Brick Road Poetry Press) "Drugstore Sushi" (Thunderclap Press) "The Derivation Of Cowboys & Indians" (Fomite Press) "The Housing Market: a comfortable place to jump off the end of the world" (Fomite Press) "The Hole That Runs Through Utopia" (Fomite Press) "Connecting The Dots To Shangrila: A Postmodern Cultural Hx Of America" (Fomite Press) "Taking The Fifth And Running With It: a psychological guide for the hard of hearing and blind" (Broadstone Books) "Scenes From The Dynamite Stand" (Bedlam Press) "The Hospitality Business" (Valeveil Press) "The Rituals Of Mummification" (Sagging Meniscus Press) "Magritte's Missing Murals: Insomniac Episodes" (Sagging Meniscus Press) "How To Order Chinese During A Hostage Crisis: Dialects, Existential Essays, A Play, And Other Poems" (Hog Press) "The American Book Of The Dead" (XI Dracunis Books) "A Psychological Hx Of Charles Atlas" (Old Angry Man Press)
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems February 23, 2018 Cover Art: Disused Sailboat by Don Schaeffer Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Don Schaeffer has previously published a dozen volumes of poetry, his first in 1996, not counting the experiments with self publishing under the name "Enthalpy Press." He spent a lot of his young adult life hawking books and learning the meaning of vanity. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been translated into Chinese for distribution abroad. Don is a habitue of the poetry forum network and has received first prize in the Interboard competition.
Columbian Peeks It's gotten so goddamn lonely these days but maybe not as don't necessarily know if I would call this lonesome while in a strange way, finally coming to terms with the reality of the solitary elements of my existence, and found myself just recently falling in love and enraptured with this classical piece over the radio I was listening to when making my morning coffee, but just couldn't get the name of the composer or the piece and thought I had heard something like Russian composer or some catch phrase, like "in front of a glacier" and wrote and developed a nice rapport and exchange with the manager of the classical radio station who was a real fine lady (who I imagined was like a single mother who lived in a log cabin at the base of the mountain and somehow I might save her) and went out of her way to try and find and track it down and told me they hadn't had any Russian composers or anything to do with glaciers over the last couple of days, which placated me by the simple and spare image and concreteness of it all, or that she even went out of her way to get back to me and then thought and reflected what if I inquired and probed to see if she could try and figure out and identify the score perhaps by giving her the exact window of time it played somewhere between 7:25 and 7:30 that Tuesday morning which in many ways ironically just seemed to contain and narrow it all down, and somehow breaking down that exact surreal moment like the exact minutia and details of my everyday life and told me she couldn't that way because in fact it was a national program, but did give me the link for that date and that morning and wished me all the best in trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, and thanked her profusely for all her efforts and strangely enough it turned out of course obviously just like everything else to be Beethoven and Mozart I believe younger versions, but damn gotta find those exact keen pristine notes which moved me so profoundly somewhere between 7:25 and 7:30 Tuesday morning when I was making my Columbian Peeks taking those first and final sips. Joseph Reich is a social worker who lives with his wife and twelve year old son in the high-up mountains of Vermont... He has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary journals both here and abroad, been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, and his books in poetry and cultural studies include, "If I Told You To Jump Off The Brooklyn Bridge" (Flutter Press) "Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life & Times Of The Man Sawed In Half" (Brick Road Poetry Press) "Drugstore Sushi" (Thunderclap Press) "The Derivation Of Cowboys & Indians" (Fomite Press) "The Housing Market: a comfortable place to jump off the end of the world" (Fomite Press) "The Hole That Runs Through Utopia" (Fomite Press) "Connecting The Dots To Shangrila: A Postmodern Cultural Hx Of America" (Fomite Press) "Taking The Fifth And Running With It: a psychological guide for the hard of hearing and blind" (Broadstone Books) "Scenes From The Dynamite Stand" (Bedlam Press) "The Hospitality Business" (Valeveil Press) "The Rituals Of Mummification" (Sagging Meniscus Press) "Magritte's Missing Murals: Insomniac Episodes" (Sagging Meniscus Press) "How To Order Chinese During A Hostage Crisis: Dialects, Existential Essays, A Play, And Other Poems" (Hog Press) "The American Book Of The Dead" (XI Dracunis Books) "A Psychological Hx Of Charles Atlas" (Old Angry Man Press) Black Pond By dark mountains I have come to rest, where stars still sprinkle across velvet sky. To the east, the city pulses, and then the rising sea. The birds have gone. Their silence echoes in the empty trees. I am making my way down to you, past the black pond ringed with reeds, beyond pines and spiky birch scratching at air. Your name lingers like wine on my tongue. I have carved its letters onto the flesh of my arm, and stitched them to my coat. Past hope I have hiked, dreaming of you. I have made a song to win the boatman to my side. Steve Klepetar has recently relocated to the Berkshires in Massachusetts after 37 years in Minnesota. Klepetar’s work has appeared worldwide, and several of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (including three in 2017). Klepetar is the author of thirteen poetry collections and chapbooks, the most recent of which include Family Reunion (Big Table), A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps). The De-Greening of America three excerpts from an environmental history poem "tires, like diamonds, are forever" And so billions of discarded tires formed mountains around the country And they may indeed last forever, at least on the human scale, except for those hit by lightning strikes or deliberately set on fire, there to burn for days, months, even up to a year or more, because officials deemed that putting out the fire would pollute even more than letting it burn And with the West no longer Wild for humans, the so-called scientific managers said it must be so for certain animals also: "Large predatory mammals destructive to livestock and game no longer have a place in our advancing civilization" And so coyotes wolves bears bobcats lynxes mountain lions were killed by the tens of thousands in a short time But because some animals were killed, others flourished, causing a different set of 'problems', another example of The Law of Unintended Consequences So that the so-called Cold War didn't turn hot, using the madness of M.A.D., the government detonated, above ground, 126 atomic bombs in a 12-year period One year alone almost 5,000 sheep were poisoned to death by the radiation, and radiation turned others into science-fiction mutants with no ears, with no tails, with hears on the outside of the body (no word on whether any were born with no heads, or with more than one head) And there were no official statistics on the damage done to people living downwind of the test; the agency considered them "a low-use segment of the population" Michael Ceraolo is a 59-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had one full-length book (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press) and a few shorter-length books published, and has a second full-length book, Euclid Creek Book Two, forthcoming from unbound content press.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems March 2, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
I asked my girlfriend to leave the house. She took the things I had given her. She took the things she had given to me. She was always very fussy. What was mine was ours (and what was hers, hers). When I came home that night, there was no light. She had taken all of the bulbs. So I turned Buddhist after that breakup. Next time nobody will have anything to take.
TS Hidalgo (45) holds a BBA (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), a MBA (IE Business School), a MA in Creative Writing (Hotel Kafka) and a Certificate in Management and the Arts (New York University). His works have been published in magazines in the USA, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Germany, UK, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, South Africa, Nigeria, Botswana, India and Australia, and he has been the winner of prizes like the Criaturas feroces (Editorial Destino) in short story and a finalist at Festival Eñe in the novel category. He has currently developed his career in finance and stock-market.
Enough
My play has been happy, a comedy, maybe a centurion approaching a century. The last scene changes, the third act rewritten to include walkers, implants, titanium joints, stents, shuffling and wonkiness.
The play grows darker, lights dim, dizziness, flashes of brilliance, slow breaths gulps, coughs, burps, flames flicker. Do led lights last forever? Will I accept the darkness, on stage? Has it been enough?
Will I make 90? the last curtain call. Maybe, perhaps - I hope not. Will the lights go out on time, then I’ll be on cue.
Sterling Haynes was a practicing MD until age 70 when he started writing more stories, haiku and poetry. He had a stroke at first: his brain became re-arranged and he became more creative. Sterling’s right foot is still weak but literature and writing are a big part of his life 20 years later. His right brain has now become dominant and he writes most days for anthologies, magazines, newspapers and journals. Sterling is working on a collection of stories and poetry – his fourth book entitled “Rumours in My Brain – tales and poems by a frontier doctor.”
Lives Passed
After all the times I looked away as my dog led me through the homeless woods and someone at a camp-stove looked up, waved at me, and smiled –
after all the times I looked away and felt lucky but guilty because I had a home –
in another life, I come in thrift-store hand- me-downs, still escorted by my dog who goes up to each person she’s known in passing, tail wagging,
and she licks each hand as if she knows them all by name and scent,
the people who lived in natural places without title or key but simply lived, and waved at strangers and their dogs, and smiled.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and serves as El Dorado County’s first poet laureate (2016-2018). She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University). Her latest book is Uplift (Cold River Press, 2016).
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems March 9, 2018 Cover Art: Alex Nodopaka Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Alex Nodopaka originated in 1940, Kyiv, Ukraine. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & sings in tongues after Vodka. He propounds having studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Presently full time author, visual artist in the USA but considers his past irrelevant as he seeks new reincarnations.
To Our Son
We’ll give you the gift of love. Every day we’ll show you that we love you, accept you and treasure you. We’ll hold you, play with you and talk with you. We’ll teach you that love is the greatest, most powerful force in the world. We’ll teach you that life has problems and problems have solutions. We’ll teach you to let love guide you and you’ll never be lost. We’ll give you wisdom so you’ll know you have a special power- the power to be yourself; the only one who can give the world what you have. Life is a journey. There will be rivers to cross, mountains to climb, and oceans to sail. For your trip We’ll give you a back pack full of love and open arms when you return home.
Lili Sinclaire lives on the Central Coast of California and has been writing for over 30 years. Three of her books will be coming out this summer: two self helps books and a novel.
Paraphrasing Purdy
To the many poets good, or bad, or indifferent who have been, are now, or will be, I am grateful.
The bug that bit those took a chunk out of me, thus infecting us all with this habit, or craft, or art, or whatever it is.
I've experienced euphoria when, upon completing a good poem, I wonder how it came to be.
Even at the worst of times, writing poems has been joyous and rewarding.
All of us are indebted to everyone else who writes with enthusiasm for the craft.
I have enjoyed being alive, of being ashamed, and being proud of making mistakes, and of stumbling onward for answers where no questions have been asked.
As past and future converge, and my body says, “Slow down, you silly bugger.” my impatience lingers; for there are still important things ahead, and poems to write.
I know that if I was floating in the middle of all the beer I’ve drunk, I'd never be able to see the shore.
Graham Ducker is a retired Principal, Primary Methods Supervisor, and Kindergarten teacher. His book, Don't Wake the Teacher, was published in 2004. A poetry book, Observations of Heart and Mind, was published in 2006. Two primary picture books -The Elephant That Wanted to Join the Circus, and Why Pigs Have Curly Tails - were published in 2011. www.grahamducker.com
Am I a Racist?
Suppose I had said No dreadlocks, dead heads No begging bowls, no huddled masses Yearning to be anything, But especially not to be Americans, Then am I a racist?
Suppose I had said no women less than 9’s, No ladies past their primes, none less Than B’s or larger than C’s And preferences given to blue-eyed blonds With great tans and hourglass figures, Then am I a sexist?
Suppose I had said no Jews, no Buddhists, No Catholics, no Zoroastrians and of course, To state the obvious--- no Muslims, No mentally defectives, no gypsies, no homos No transgendered folks, no communists, Then am I a Nazi?
Suppose I had said No gray hair, wrinkles or age spots Sagging breasts, double chins, beer bellies No canes or any assistive devices like Hearing aids, walkers or canes Then am I an ageist?
Suppose what I have said is very very bad, An impeachable offense in fact, so sad. No worries. I will grant myself Permanent sanctuary at the terrific Mar A Lago Club which of course Has none of those folks as members.
Judith Amber is a free-lance writer living on California’s Central Coast. She writes on topics including food and wine, the environment, politics, travel, and the arts. She also writes creative non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in the San Luis Obispo Tribune (annual poetry contest and essay), Tolosa Press (creative non-fiction and short story), Transitions Abroad (online), The Oregonian, Oregon Coast Magazine, The New Times (San Luis Obispo) and the literary journals Talus and Scree and Fishtrap Anthology. She is a regular columnist on sustainability in the wine industry for the quarterly publication Edible San Luis Obispo. In 2017, she won second place in Arts Obispo’s Ingrid Reti Literary Awards for a personal essay.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems March 16, 2018 Cover Art: Alex Nodopaka Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Alex Nodopaka originated in 1940, Kyiv, Ukraine. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & sings in tongues after Vodka. He propounds having studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Presently full time author, visual artist in the USA but considers his past irrelevant as he seeks new reincarnations.
She Will Tell me I can't, then I will. Build your barrier with shame fear or coercion Watch me break down that wall. Might of a warrior conjured from your doubt Predators be warned Write about a woman scorned Read the wrath of women scarred. We Can. We Will. We Surge. I resolve. She Will. R Read is a marketing consultant, writer, and new member to SLO Night Writers, having moved to SLO from Ann Arbor, MI in 2015. Her writings over the years consisted of magazine articles, press releases and technical jargon. She recently published She Too, a raw and poignant look at the current culture of drugs, sexual assault, and young adult suicide on college campuses. Round Two you think that was pain whispers the universe you ain't seen nothin' yet I imagine myself leaning backwards on the ropes of a boxing ring and whisper back give me what ya got maybe it's you that ain't seen nothin' yet Elizabeth Crocket: Samples of Elizabeth's writing can be found on her website, ElizabethCrocket.com Her first of three women's fiction novels, "A Path to the Lake", is due for release soon. Cross My Heart 1963, in a smoky, maroon-leather San Francisco club, I first heard a band play sexy, raucous rock and roll Guitar chords plucked my heart, The drummer twitched my shoulders, a gravel-voiced bass swung my hips I tore off my long white gloves, kicked off my burgundy pumps, and let the music fill my pores It led me, encompassed me penetrated . . . . Following the beat instead of a man, I danced alone Cross my heart and hope to die the same way, dancing * * * August, we took our canes to hike over rough terrain to a retirement party in the hills Son-in-law, daughter, retired? their friends, retired? Grandkid buying a home? Suddenly, I felt really old . . . . Until the band played raucous Irish rock and roll, blasting those hills, Begorrah! I grabbed my cane jumped onto that red fabric floor let the music penetrate . . . and danced alone Cross my heart and hope to die the same way, dancing Evelyn Cole, MA, MFA, writes novels because they are exciting and challenging. She writes poetry because she can't help it whenever life delights or breaks her heart, and she attends critique groups in both genres. An advocate of sound and sense, her poems are easy to understand. She taught English in high school and college for 23 years and served six years as a K-12 mentor teacher. Her website for novels, poetry, and an astrological, philosophical cooking blog sub-titled: How to Feed Your Friends Instead of your Frenzy can be found at http://www.evelyn-cole.com
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems March 23, 2018 Cover Art: Alex Nodopaka Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Alex Nodopaka originated in 1940, Kyiv, Ukraine. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & sings in tongues after Vodka. He propounds having studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Presently full time author, visual artist in the USA but considers his past irrelevant as he seeks new reincarnations.
Quick Change
the day I left the hospital I packed my suitcase stuffing it full with pieces of my life I couldn't have or do anymore that wouldn't be able to go home with me when I got behind closed doors I took each thing out put it away and learned to live without it
Elizabeth Crocket: Samples of Elizabeth's writing can be found on her website, ElizabethCrocket.com Her first of three women's fiction novels, "A Path to the Lake", is due for release soon.
Seeking Eternity, Ghost Ranch, NM
I came here to find the peace of eternity in mesas’ massive cliffs, in mountains’ evening shadows, in valleys’ scruffy fields, and in a boundless sky. I found instead deep canyons carved by water, stone statues sculpted by ice’s thaw and freeze. The might of strata formation played against a counterpoint of erosion. I came here seeking eternity; instead I found relentless time. I found my peace in paradox: that in the vanishing lies the exaltation.
Author ofLight and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0 The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma City, OK USA;
Rainforest in Russet
In the silence between breaths,
my truth rises.
I fall into the space where the forest
captures light.
Is this the question or the answer?
To trust this journey of closure?
A new opening repertoire -
I dig for you in the shadows
of dying grey matter
to find a slip,
a morsel of foggy memory.
How we set up your chessboard the night we met.
Photographed the pieces
in their complicity to be seen as art.
The queens,
their own fashion statement balanced in the spotlight.
The horses rode across the checkered landscape,
free of battle scars or fear.
Configurations came and went.
We both knew the game transcended competition,
our strategy a decades long tango of connection.
We played until slivers of dawn
shone
onto an empty stage.
Now at the threshold of rainforest in russet,
ash into earth, to whatever is or isn’t,
I am released.
Jude Neale and Cynthia Sharp
Jude Neale is a Canadian poet, vocalist, spoken word performer and mentor. She publishes frequently in journals, anthologies, and e-zines. She was shortlisted, highly commended and finalist for many international competitions including: The Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize (Ireland), The International Poetic Republic PoetryPrize (U.K),The Mary Chalmers Smith Poetry Prize (UK), The Wenlock International Poetry Competition (UK) and the Carers International Poetry Prize (UK).
Jude has written six books.
Her book, A Quiet Coming of Light, A Poetic Memoir (leaf press), was a finalist for the 2015 Pat Lowther Memorial Award,five of its poems were shortlisted for The Magpie Award, judged by George McWhirter, Vancouver's first Poet Laureate and three of its poems were nominated for the coveted Pushcart Prize (US) by three different publishers.
One of Jude's poems from her recent book,Splendid in its Silence, was chosen by Britain's Poet Laureate to ride with other winners around the Channel Islands on public transit for a year. Jude was a featured reader at the Guernsey International Literary festival.
This book was recently a SPM Prize winner and was published in the UK last April. Some of these poems can be heard on Jude’s collaborative (viola/spoken word) EP, Places Beyond.
Jude's forthcoming book, A Blooming, will be published in London the spring of 2018 and her collaborative collection, Cantata in Two Voices, with Bonnie Nish will be published by Ekstasis Editions in the fall.
Cynthia Sharp thrives on interdisciplinary collaboration and peace education. She’s been published and broadcast internationally in journals such as CV2, untethered, Toasted Cheese & Poetry Quarterly and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net Anthology. She enjoys being a board member and Vancouver regional rep for the Federation of BC Writers.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems March 30, 2018 Cover Art: Alex Nodopaka Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Alex Nodopaka originated in 1940, Kyiv, Ukraine. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & sings in tongues after Vodka. He propounds having studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Presently full time author, visual artist in the USA but considers his past irrelevant as he seeks new reincarnations.
I Got up
Teez
Another Day
One snoozing dog snores a little as a car whispers past ... the other sits on a small pile of clothes ... his strong little chest falling and rising ... a bird outside repeats itself like a boy learning to whistle ... the puppy sighs and turns onto his back ... a cooler morning in summer nestles down.
Later the day turns warm and outside there is the snapping of grasshoppers in the tall, dry grass. The trees speak with the wind and shadows move in the parched park.
Julian O'Dea lives in Canberra, Australia. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in zoology and archaeology and worked in government on policy, in fisheries management, and in regulatory toxicology. He has also written film criticism and book reviews. In recent years he has had a variety of poetry, including haiku, published online and in print.
If I Could Just Understand
if I could just understand what the prairie grass whispers to the wind, to the wind and to the sun, to the sun and to the rain, to the rain, and to me, to me!
Ayaz Daryl Nielsen, veteran, hospice nurse, ex-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado, USA. Editor of bear creek haiku(30+ years/140+ issues) with poetry published worldwide (and deeply appreciated), he also is online at: https://bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems April 6, 2018 Cover Art: Ting Pan Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Ting Pan is an illustrator from Los Angles, She loves fantasy and fiction and nonfiction theme illustrations. She uses all kinds of elements is to show her fantastic worlds. Please check her personal website. www.tingpanart.com
The Boarding House
My brain is a boarding house—Christian Scientist, existentialist, atheist, Freudian, Jew, New Ager, and the Buddhist all have rooms.
At Sunday school, the Christian Scientist said daily life was an illusion. By knowing the Truth, I would dwell in a divine world.
In high school, I met the existentialist. Wanting to be viewed as intellectual, I brought him home and name-dropped Camus, Kierkegaard, and Sartre.
The atheist demanded space, moved in, told me to stop kidding myself and face facts: We live. We die.
When I went for therapy, the Freudian settled in my cellar—he interpreted dreams, uncovered fears, and recorded each resistance to his insights.
I invited the Jew to take a room. We listened to klezmer, made matzo ball soup for Passover, and shared how we were still enslaved.
The New Ager knocked. I turned her away until she said I could co-create my reality and promote peace and enlightenment.
The Buddhist startled me with the reality of impermanence and suffering—I must change my karma or come back as a caterpillar.
At a boarding house dinner, the atheist argues with the New Ager, the Freudian declares, God is just an exalted father, the Jew recites a blessing,
the Buddhist calls for silence, the existentialist laughs, and the Christian Scientist says, I’m not here. I pass the potatoes and we eat.
(from I Got What I Came For, Penciled In, 2017)
Jeanie Greensfelder wrote Biting the Apple (2012), Marriage and Other Leaps of Faith (2015), and I Got What I Came For (2017). She’s had poems published at American Life in Poetry, and Writers’ Almanac; in anthologies: Paris, Etc., Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems, To Unsnare Time’s Warp, and Corners of the Mouth; and in journals: Miramar, Thema, Askew, Kaleidoscope, Persimmon Tree, Riptide, Solo Novo, Falling Star, If&When Jeanie serves as the current San Luis Obispo County Poet Laureate. Learn more at jeaniegreensfelder.com
Hey Joe Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
Jimi’s in a purple patchouli haze. He wants to kiss the sky, decked in turquoise, silver, all afro, Technicolor, velvet pants. I’m gettin’ chills from his gypsy eye so there’s no talkin’, no complications, not a mention of the drugs.
We’re in the kitchen makin’ muffins. I’ve put in my hours of bakin’ time and I’m teachin’ Jimi how to scoop and drop, left-handed, sweet feelin’ from his fingers slopped mixture landin’ in those muffin cups, and he’s experienced, in a trance hammerin’ on to muffins, pullin’ off, with syncopated pickin’ patterns like guitars on fire, that spangled banner, napalm from a distant war,
and Jimi’s doin’ voodoo and the muffins with rocket slides, licks and riffs, all chaotic fuzz, are risin’ on the counter all by themselves, and I say, “Step away from the kitchen, Jimi. Please. The hour is gettin’ late. The hour is late.
I’ll get my strat, all I want to do is bend some strings with you.”
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016. Recently April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
If You Think Of Death
If you think of death, think of it as an old friend one who would do anything for you even give you the sheet off his bed to cover your bleached white bones as you lie like a shipwreck on the sand.
When you think of death, think of it as a city you love a place of squares with sidewalk cafes serving dark coffee in porcelain cups-- think of how you sat there one afternoon with paper in front of you and wrote this poem.
If you think of death, think of it as a bus stop on a country road. There is a small shelter, only a roof over a green bench its paint worn as you sit and wait in the sun for the bus to arrive and take you away.
When you think that death may have touched your shoulder, try not to shudder; or if death kisses you, do not turn the other cheek-- there may be a message intended for your ears alone so try to make out every word:
because in each friendship there is loss because all cities contain streets you’ve not walked down because no matter how long the wait, a bus will come because a caress felt is never an unkindness because a word from death equals all the novels you’ve read.
So if you think of death as dust, also think of it as blood beating in an underground heart think of that terrible, beautiful moment when you were a child and you realized that death was possible.
Andrew Brown is a retired teacher and active writer and actor living in Qualicum Beach, B.C. He has been published in several literary journals in Canada and the U.S. and has published two books through Gravity Press in Vancouver: Crow’s First Word (2007) and The Stone Inside A Man’s Heart (2013). He is currently at work on his third volume of poetry and micro fiction, titled Share The Road. Andrew enjoys reading and performing his poetry at a variety of local venues.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems April 13, 2018 Cover Art: Ting Pan Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Ting Pan is an illustrator from Los Angles, She loves fantasy and fiction and nonfiction theme illustrations. She uses all kinds of elements is to show her fantastic worlds. Please check her personal website. www.tingpanart.com
Broken Toy
While cleaning out the drawers
I find a broken toy
lying next to a picture of me and my sister.
Smiling, we are five and seven and not yet broken.
Joseph Spinelli was born and raised in Long Island, New York. His poetry has appeared in Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Vox Poetica, and Haiku Universe. He is currently putting together his first collection fo poetry "Drink More Water" which will be available this spring.
Color Wheel
peach tan desert sand my color figment walked away burnt orange copper beaver too much seed café con leche swarthy he let us drops fight each other ruddy weather’s never fair for a bit of his sun
kin made kindling times I’ve been burned family first into the fire learning to forge mettle charring substrate from ores found in my skin little twigs the apellido* making rebar from my hair
*Spanish for surname;
Mimi Gonzalez-Barillas (emerging Noemi Rose) is a romantic feminist who aims to battle the cynicism of this too human world through a poem or a punchline. She's a seasoned comedian who's traveled the world to make audiences laugh including US troops, national Prides, Womyn's music festivals and cruises. Throughout her years on the road, poems emerged among the jokes in her journals and now offers itself as Dream B. She is a candidate for an MFA from Mills College in May 2018. Mimi feels she’s earned a bonus degree and offers her eternal gratitude for all she’s learned from the brilliant and beautiful Oakland literary community.
At the Circus
My mother took me to the circus, where we saw clowns pile out of a tiny car and a woman with dyed blond hair and long legs ride bareback on a beautiful white horse.
First she sat, then rose to stand on its broad back, before slipping down along its flank, just above those powerful, pounding hooves.
When she somersaulted onto its neck, we gasped, and I could feel my mother looking closely at my small face, that mirror spinning in darkness.
No doubt she was looking for wonder and joy. She may have seen those, but also something dark and strange:
a pair of eyes burning through the veil that covers our lives, buries them beneath an illusion of soft and gentle air.
Steve Klepetar has recently relocated to the Berkshires in Massachusetts after 36 years in Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including three in 2017. Recent collections include A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps), and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems April 20, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
I want to collage a face like my own start first with the eyes
two magazines before I find brown
on a Latina
Should I cut across her hair or make an incision across her forehead the page winces back
She’s suffered enough to make it into glossy I need brown eyes
dominance doesn’t pay this time again
can’t cut her face instead I pare carefully around her curls
save her place her in my tableau watching my every move
Mimi Gonzalez-Barillas (emerging Noemi Rose) is a romantic feminist who aims to battle the cynicism of this too human world through a poem or a punchline. She's a seasoned comedian who's traveled the world to make audiences laugh including US troops, national Prides, Womyn's music festivals and cruises. Throughout her years on the road, poems emerged among the jokes in her journals and now offers itself as Dream B. She is a candidate for an MFA from Mills College in May 2018. Mimi feels she’s earned a bonus degree and offers her eternal gratitude for all she’s learned from the brilliant and beautiful Oakland literary community.
Roma
When they were Gypsies the Roma had romance on their side with their fingers on the strings of lightning violins and the flash of an earring in the dark. When they dressed
in good luck and sold fortunes, wandered the back lanes and camped where moonlight could not find them, slept on coals and made rings of the smoke from their fires
they were fate, they were the dreams other people were afraid to dream. Now they have become
their new name by which they are a disease, they are contagious, they are not worth issuing passports for, there is no cure for them, not even the potions the Gypsies brewed could make them disappear.
David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications online and in print, and reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His newest collection of poems is Bird on a Wire from Presa Press, and The Bitter Oleander Press published Shatter the Bell in my Ear, his translations of poems by Austrian poet Christine Lavant.
Daughter of Dragonflies
To bless them, as they haunt the day lillies, is bleaching the white of the sun. In this bed, born to hunters, dazzle the blue, dry these wings. In flight, what they taught -- silence in June, from fence to field. The grass never stood so well and good, tall with snakes, or spiders, or such blood quest. Such blood, free of veins, for the color of this flight.
Meg Smith is a poet, journalist, dancer and events producer living in Lowell, Mass. Her poetry has appeared or has been accepted to The Cafe Review, Pudding, The Offering, Astropoetica, Star*Line, Illumen, and more. She is a former board member of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! and produces the Edgar Allan Poe Show, dedicated to Poe's presence in Lowell. She has recently published a second poetry book, Dear Deepest Ghost, available through Amazon.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems April 27, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Cleveland Haiku #501
Garbage day--- human scavengers hunt for treasure
Cleveland Haiku #502
December--- some leaves stubbornly stay on the trees
Cleveland Haiku #503
Annual amnesia--- people forget how to drive in the first snow
Cleveland Haiku #504
January thaw-- rain on my birthday
Cleveland Haiku #505
In the backyard--- a deer's hoofprints in the snow
Michael Ceraolo s a 60-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books, Euclid Creek (Deep Cleveland Press) and 500 Cleveland Haiku (Writing Knights Press), published, as well as several shorter-length publications. He also has a third full-length book, Euclid Creek Book Two, forthcoming from unbound content press."
Stick It
Do not trust your instinct. Swallow that poison quickly, passionately. Swallow that pride. Choke silently on your lies. Inhale whole chunks of anger. In moments of crisis, better to bite large whatever truth you believe in.
Gary Pierluigi has worked in Social Services while continuing to write. Since first being published in Quills, he has been published in numerous poetry journals, including CV2,Quarterly, On Spec, Filling Station, The Dalhousie Review, The Nashwaak Review, and Grain. He was short listed for the CBC 2006 Literary Awards in the poetry category, a finalist in the Lit Pop Awards and received an honorable mention in The Ontario Poetry Society’s “Open Heart” Contest. His first poetry book,* “Over the Edge”, has been published by Serengeti Press. He is currently completing his first novel.
Magnitude 6.4
Sections of the Suhua Highway gone, office blocks tipped, unsafe, angular, scrunching low down almost to sidewalks, fear stalking. But it’s ok, it’s happened in Taiwan. Long way. Different. Not here. Sorry for them. Go for coffee, get the day done. Tomorrow will be somewhere else, foreign, alien, not here, nowhere even near, watch the news tonight, pictures, hope no children are buried, stay unscathed, change nothing.
Linda Stevenson’s Chapbook The Tipping Point published by Blank Rune Press in 2015 contributes to current ecopoetics in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. Her poetry delves into the relationships between our planet’s dilemmas, our personal lives, and the issues that we attempt to confront and resolve.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems May 4, 2018 Cover Art: Janice Konstantinidis Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Janice Konstantinidis immigrated to the United States twelve years ago, a late life sea change you could say. She lives in the Central Coast of California with her husband and two dogs. She has been writing poetry since I was a child. I enjoy writing flash fiction and prose. Here is one of her stick drawings.
The Fraudulent Lawyer
Raphael is good company, – he knows all my acquaintances and shows me his 'selfies' with them. One of those acquaintances gave him my telephone number and introduced him to me with a rather urgent request: Raphael has been stranded in Lebanon for four years, thanks to a fraudulent lawyer who had been instrumental in his deportation from Cyprus, where he had a thriving business in pest control – shows credentials. He also shows me a large list of donors supporting his stay and raising the legal costs of his repatriation. They have raised enough money but for the last three hundred Dollars which would enable him to be on the next flight to Cyprus. He assures me he would return the sum, as soon as he settles there. I happily give him three hundred feeling good for my benevolence. A few months pass and I hear that he still languishes and collects 'the critical few hundred Dollars' from a new list of donors in Lebanon and abroad!
Boghos Artinian is a Lebanese Armenian physician who has been practicing in Beirut since 1975, after spending 5 years in Saudi Arabia and Two years in the UK (Edinburgh and Lymington Hospital ) He is a graduate of the American University of Beirut in 1968 and MRCP (UK) 1973. He started writing poetry as a hobby since the early nineteen eighties. He has more than a hundred and fifty poems on websites and literary and medical journals. He also writes scientific essays like 'The Custody of Genomes' , 'The Cognitive Capacity of the Human Brain' , and ' Wait for Extraterrestrial Echoes'
New Feet An old growth spruce creaks and falls. A new hemlock sapling sprouts from its wormy decay.
Old men loose their hair first then their mind even after they've passed
I will carry them the rest of the way atop the young souls of new feet.
-- Eric R. Kosarot is a writer, musician and painter. Eric also gardens and works at the Farmers co-op in Everett, WA. He has written several articles advocating ecological restoration. He wrote a story about a bike co-operative called "The Hub" and he recently wrote an article about companion planting and chicken tractors for the co-op newspaper.
After the Starfish Are Gone
Farewell to glorious purple arms (And burnt orange, yellow, crimson). Farewell to crabs, anemones, tight-lipped mussels.
Still waves, though acidic, will roll in Sands spit, blow holes blow And children with pails and shovels Will build castles of sand.
When is a forest not a forest? When millions have died of drought, Beetles, fragmentation. When pine trees and junipers have gone The way of the dodo soon to be joined By panda, panther, polar bear. Another question: if 66 million trees fall And there is no one to bear witness, Are they really gone?
But palm trees may thrive in northern tropics And perhaps tall saguaro cacti will replace Towering redwoods and douglas firs, Parrots occupy woods where owls once flew.
And yet. For us who remember, a void, an absence, .Is Earth, bereft of half its species, Still our planet, our home?
* On learning that in the next half century, 50% of all species alive today could be extinct and that 66 million trees in California forests are dead or dying
Judith Amber is a free-lance writer living on California’s Central Coast. Her article topics include food and wine, the environment, politics, travel, and the arts. She also writes creative non-fiction, satire/humor and poetry. Her work has been published in the San Luis Obispo Tribune (annual poetry contest and essay), Tolosa Press (creative non-fiction and short story), Transitions Abroad (online), The Oregonian, Oregon Coast Magazine, The New Times (San Luis Obispo) and the literary magazines Talus and Scree, Points In Case (online); Jewish Currents and Fishtrap Anthology
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems May 25, 2018 Cover Art: Ting Pan Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Ting Pan is an illustrator from Los Angles, She loves fantasy and fiction and nonfiction theme illustrations. She uses all kinds of elements is to show her fantastic worlds. Please check her personal website. www.tingpanart.com
Portrait Of Myself In Cut-Off Blue Jeans Pretending To Be Happy As A Boy By The Lake
"I'm just trying to do my jigsaw puzzle 'til it rains anymore" -The Stones
I
I have decided I want to live in that perfectly clean pristine home with that vacuum cleaner saleswoman who always looks like a fresh mint and is always happy and always has a grin and when I miss behave folds me up and puts me under the bed back to my natural habitat with the monster and nightmares the never ending tickertape consistently going at the bottom of the screen for corn & wheat & soybeans
II
(I never understood the point of spring cleaning, just another one of those superstitions)
III
O the long, insane, endless winter’s finally over & the blessed beaming rivers at last swollen & flowing to their holy destinations
awaking my spirit & returning me to the source of my imagination
Birds appear like magic from their secret hideaways as if they’d never left
IV
Connie, the redhead in that motel in Maine
V.
No one has the right to be mean but still will firemen stand on top of the hill
(firemen stand on top of the hill firemen stand on top of the hill)
blues gawn boo-dah...
Joseph Reich is a social worker who lives with his wife and thirteen year old son in the high-up mountains of Vermont...
He has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary journals both here and abroad, been nominated seven times for The Pushcart Prize, and his books in poetry and cultural studies include, "If I Told You To Jump Off The Brooklyn Bridge" (Flutter Press) "A Different Sort Of Distance" (Skive Magazine Press) "Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life & Times Of The Man Sawed In Half" (Brick Road Poetry Press) "Drugstore Sushi" (Thunderclap Press) "The Derivation Of Cowboys & Indians" (Fomite Press) "The Housing Market: a comfortable place to jump off the end of the world" (Fomite Press) "The Hole That Runs Through Utopia" (Fomite Press) "Connecting The Dots To Shangrila: A Postmodern Cultural Hx Of America" (Fomite Press) "Taking The Fifth And Running With It: a psychological guide for the hard of hearing and blind" (Broadstone Books) "The Rituals Of Mummification" (Sagging Meniscus Press) "Magritte's Missing Murals: Insomniac Episodes" (Sagging Meniscus Press) "How To Order Chinese During A Hostage Crisis: Dialects, Existential Essays, A Play, And Other Poems" (Hog Press) "The American Book Of The Dead" (Xi Draconis Books) "American Existentialism" (Tuba Press)
Logging the Vale of Memry
You do not know a thing is lost until you can’t find it. You did not know a thing was lost until you do find it.
The mind brims with items but some fail to surface. Some pop up later and some perhaps sometime else.
We form as functions that fold and grow; crests curl in chaos as time crashes home.
We know where we want to go but trails fail in moss. We flail in a void to move a cloud to touch a thought.
Off and on the olden return looming and illuminating. We reminisce, wondering if we can re-summon them.
The idea keeper hides in water under the forest thinking he must leave some record of thought.
I observe events I judge perhaps to stir and preserve. Old growth logs on cold lake bottoms is why I write.
J.S. MacLean has been writing poetry since the early 70s with two collections Molasses Smothered Lemon Slices and Infinite Oarsmen for One available on Amazon. Around 140 poems of his are published in journals and magazines in Canada, USA, UK, France, Israel, India, Thailand, and Australia. He enjoys the outdoors, and indoors too. In 2007 he won THIS Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt in Poetry (1st Prize). He spends August at the beach with his wife Grace. He strives for the lyrical and hopes for the accidental.
Botany Lesson
In her upturned collar, she showed him the sepals below the flower; and see, the flower head sits on the slender stem so delicately, she said; and blushing, told him that in his hands it might bloom hot crimson.
Julian O'Dea lives in Canberra, Australia. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in zoology and archaeology and worked in government on policy, in fisheries management, and in regulatory toxicology. He has also written film criticism and book reviews. In recent years he has had a variety of poetry, including haiku, published online and in print.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems June 1, 2018 Cover Art: William C. Crawford Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
William C. Crawford is a writer & photographer based in Winston-Salem, NC. He was a combat photojournalist in Vietnam. He has published extensively in various formats including fiction, creative nonfiction, memoirs, book reviews, and essays. His new book is highlighted elsewhere on this site. He had a parallel career as a social worker and community organizer. There, he wrote biting editorials on behalf of the powerless such as abused children, the frail elderly, and victims of enforced state sterilizations. He is known as Crawdaddy to his Yellow Lab, Scout.
Afterward
you remove your shoes and the day spreads out ahead of you, curiously unfilled by myriad joggers in hoodies and earbuds, the strollers, small dogs on leashes. A neap tide pulls lightly at your heels.
Later you say “yes” to tod mun at the Thai place beside the esplanade. This evening is cool and empty around the edges.
Tomorrow will be soon enough to give his clothes away.
Diane Lee Moomey has lived and wandered around the US and Canada, and now dips her gardener’s hands in California dirt. A regular reader at San Francisco Bay Area poetry venues, Diane has published prose and poetry, most recently in Mezzo Cammin, TheSand Hill Review, California Poetry Quarterly, Caesura and Red Wheelbarrow, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. In 2016, she won first prize and an Honorable Mention in the Sonnet category of the Soul Making Keats Literary Contest, and first prize in the Creative Non-Fiction category of the same competition.
Diane is also a watercolorist and collage artist, an experience that both seeds and is seeded by, her poetic imagery. To view her artwork, please visit www.dianeleemoomeyart.com
Just to get this out of the way, what are some popular cliches about the Plateau today? High-desert beauty, breathtaking vistas, a place that inspires multiple visits.
Can you describe it scientifically? A physiographic region, or province, of the Intermontane Plateau.
Would you pinpoint its exact location? It straddles the so-called “four corners”: Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and, eponymously, Colorado.
Some striking physical features? Mesas, canyons, meanders, pinnacles, Ponderosas, basins, quaking Aspens, fossils, gorges, badlands, buttes and spires.
Isn’t there something special about the air? If you’ve been there, you’d remember the air. The Sierra Mountains, west of the Plateau, block moisture coming off the Pacific, holding rainfall to ten inches a year, so, of course, the air is very dry. Thin, as well, since the elevation’s high, in places reaching eleven-thousand feet.
Has the air quality declined in recent years? Polluted, ninety percent of the time, the culprits, smog, and power plants, coal-fired. At Mohave Power Station, a plume arches into the sky, blighting the blue.
Thank you. Anything more you’d care to say? What nature makes, man should not throw away.
Note: The Mojave Power Station is currently shut down: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohave_Power_Station
Other Sources: geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/.../coloplat.h... www.britannica.com/place/Colorado-Plateau http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/education/foos/plateau.pdf www.hcn.org/issues/56/1748 http://arizonaexperience.org/land/colorado-plateau
Ron Singer’s poetry has appeared, e.g., in alba, Anemone Sidecar, Avatar Review, Borderlands, The Brooklyn Rail, Cake, Ducts, Evergreen Review, Grey Sparrow, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Strong Verse, Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, Windsor Review, and Word Riot. He is also the author of ten books. For details, please visit: www.ronsinger.net.
Love of Bottles
I love the shape of bottles, How the light so easily slips around and through the glass Like invisible hands massaging an illusion. Sand and heat temporarily transfixed in time, Capturing beauty In a fragile mortality…..
Once our lives were transparent to each other, As we trapped the light, striving to be pure, to be free, As if this was the ultimate purpose of life, A destination in itself…. love shaping and forming us, light transforming our moments into one flicker of lucidity…..
I remember the bottles gleaming in the sun, I remember every one…..
Joyce Collier-Petit is a writer /poet sculpting pictures and insights with words and descriptions of moments. Previously published in various publications: N. B. Sunday Advertiser, Northern Light, Globe and Mail, Our Canada, Ontario Poetry Society.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems June 8, 2018 Cover Art: William C. Crawford Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
William C. Crawford is a writer & photographer based in Winston-Salem, NC. He was a combat photojournalist in Vietnam. He has published extensively in various formats including fiction, creative nonfiction, memoirs, book reviews, and essays. His new book is highlighted elsewhere on this site. He had a parallel career as a social worker and community organizer. There, he wrote biting editorials on behalf of the powerless such as abused children, the frail elderly, and victims of enforced state sterilizations. He is known as Crawdaddy to his Yellow Lab, Scout.
Once During the Drought,
that long drought, during one of those late post-daybreak dreams you swear are what you’re waking into, I heard a dripping from the upstairs deck onto my own—a pattering of drops sliding between the planks to fall onto fuchsia and sedum, the hollow echo of drops as they hit the downspouts debouching onto paths below--
and through my half-closed eyes the light seemed dull enough for that. So I believed in the power of the rain dance I’d done the day before and lay there, not engaging
in the reality of bright sun on the decking, the upstairs neighbors taking their showers.
Diane Lee Moomeyhas lived and wandered around the US and Canada, and now dips her gardener’s hands in California dirt. A regular reader at San Francisco Bay Area poetry venues, Diane has published prose and poetry, most recently in Mezzo Cammin, TheSand Hill Review, California Poetry Quarterly, Caesura and Red Wheelbarrow, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. In 2016, she won first prize and an Honorable Mention in the Sonnet category of the Soul Making Keats Literary Contest, and first prize in the Creative Non-Fiction category of the same competition. Diane is also a watercolorist and collage artist, an experience that both seeds and is seeded by, her poetic imagery. To view her artwork, please visit www.dianeleemoomeyart.com dianeleemoomey@gmail.com
Cultivated Time
land wears thin on cultivated time abandoned farm houses sag; top soil drifts rain barrels leak, life dribbles away
Rose Willow’s work appears in Spring, Transition, The Society, Portal, Horticulture, Saskatchewan History Magazine, and VIU’s Incline. Rose has a degree in History from the University of Waterloo, and is working on a second degree, Creative Writing, at Vancouver Island University. She lives on beautiful Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada.
Caribou Crossing
It's still warm, he mutters, slipping a cautious knife under muscle, tendon, nerves, Slow incision exposing the hunter's prize, his first real kill.
In the morning mist, the animal's memory disperses swiftly, absorbed By land, and rock, and winter: stony witnesses to the ghost of the creature,
Erased by the bullet, and a sea storm of red.
FJ Doucet’s work has previously been published in several print and online sources, including Red Bird Chapbooks, Hamilton Arts and Letters, and The Saving Banister, with work forthcoming in The Lyric and Grey Borders magazines. She loves to travel and has lived on three continents, but some of her most treasured memories include time spent living in an Inuit settlement in Nunavik, Northern Quebec, a setting which inspired this poem.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems June 15, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Empty Hands
Did I hear you say that your hands are empty, that once a string of pearls dripped from your fingers, but now only shadows play on your palms? I hope I didn’t misunderstand. My hearing has become so bad that voices seem like aural shadows flitting between trees. You make a sign though, holding your empty hands to me, though lately they were filled with rain. I saw you shiver as you carried ice in your hands. I saw them redden with cold. I watched you climb the hill behind our house, passing birch and pine. I listened as frogs sang out in their many voices, and the sun dipped lower in the sky. Your hands were full of rainbows. Crows looked on, their golden eyes betraying nothing, cold in their hollow skulls.
Steve Klepetar has recently relocated to the Berkshires in Massachusetts after 36 years in Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including three in 2017. Recent collections include A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps), and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).
Retirement
Some days I do minimum what I do is just piddly
Other days I don't even do that I do diddly.
Backlog
If you're backlogged
reduce your stress
do nothing more
do something less.
David Knape is retired. He is also tired. He compensates by writing poetry. It is the most wonderful thing that has happened to him. He loves to write and writes everyday. He then sends poems out for people's review. Few are impressed. Even fewer amused. Hence his works are seldom published, except here.
Coffeehouse Poem # 282
The woman with the titanium Leg waves at me from Across the room, but I dont really notice a Prosthetic leg at all It is long and sleek " A souvenir from desert storm" She jokes
It reminds me of a missile When she walks, she cuts A path like blade runner She told me she ran a Marathon on her bullet leg And i am dumbfounded Though, she laughs like a Song, when she admits Sometimes, she is clumsy When she's dancing
Erren Kelly recieved his B.A. in English-Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He also loves to read and to travel, having visited 45 states and Canada and Europe. The themes in his writings vary, but he has always had a soft spot for subjects and people who are not in the mainstream. But he never limits myself to anything. He always tries to keep an open mind.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems June 22, 2018 Cover Art: Keening by Patricia Carroll Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Patricia Carroll: As an abstract expressionist painter Patricia plays with paint, making marks and then responding to those marks through a combination of spontaneous and thoughtful conversations with the work. These conversations, affected by personal and archetypal experiences, occur consciously and subconsciously. A successful painting emerges from this happy struggle.
On His Leaving Home
this son walked into another conversation left the house voice trailing through hedges to enter a discussion I couldn’t hear I watched his wind-ruffled hair pass the gate and knew our exchanges grown from half words to full dictionaries would be occasional but on the phone Joanna M. Weston. Married; has one cat, multiple spiders, raccoons, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen-houses. Her middle-reader, ‘Frame and The McGuire', published by Tradewind Books 2015; and poetry, ‘A Bedroom of Searchlights’, published by Inanna Publications, 2016. Other books listed at her blog: http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/
Alley Walk
A block behind the street where mannequins in glamorous winter garb simper warm in storefront windows –
in a cubby battered from alley bedrock my dog showed me what passed last night for a mattress – bag of old
clothes serving as a bed, as all things in this human world must find their nouns, their names and titles.
Rusty grate for an open fire; it got cold last night, here in community with feral cats and tree-of-heaven –
known in this town as pest and weed. The alley’s a place of making do. Who slept in this one-night hostel
hewed from rock? Our morning walk – when each discovery is by grace transformed in bell-ringer
wind and the wash of dawn.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and serves as El Dorado County’s first poet laureate (2016-2018). She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles(Everyman’s Library) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University). Her latest book is Uplift(Cold River Press, 2016).
Didn’t know I was starving until I tasted you
Three snowy days makes delicious crunch beneath our boots, lovely and soft piled on roofs and corners of mullioned windows, icing on gingerbread houses. A bright sun finally remembers his job glistens off cottages lavishly painted pie-case colors: lemon here, hint of strawberry glimpse of pistachio with sudden splash of peach cobbler. The street glitters sunlight nearly blinding. It seems we are walking between gumdrops to a chocolate inn where russet stone has turned mahogany. It’s doors open in welcome. Giggle through sign-in, we rush to snowy sheets the past another country now. The present is finding candy sweets with hands and lips, a fast pouring nectar of discovery and bliss. Our future filled with insatiable appetites.
Michelle Hartman’s latest book is, The Lost Journal of My Second Trip to Purgatory, from Old Seventy Creek Press. The first poetic look at child abuse and its effects on adult life. Along with her poetry books, Irony and Irreverence and Disenchanted and Disgruntled, from Lamar University Press, Lost Journal is available on Amazon. She is the editor of Red River Review. Hartman holds a BS degree in political Science, Pre-Law from Texas Wesleyan University and a Paralegal cert. from Tarrant County College.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems June 29, 2018 Cover Art: Keening by Patricia Carroll Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
Elegy For A Search Dog
Wind is a blade that scythes the sky
and that dog was first to run out catching fragments of news up a swale
up canyon, from the far valley then leading me on trail – off any trail but
wise to the wind
track a man might wander, lost. How the sky sieves through underbrush
and swirls in a pool with light glazed ice-brilliant, so many colors
of scent.
That dog would range below the campanile hill, up
scree slopes above timberline where a westerly wings over the crest.
Who follows the wind
will disappear in a gust or a long exhaling always finding the way to go.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and serves as El Dorado County’s first poet laureate (2016-2018). She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles(Everyman’s Library) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University). Her latest book is Uplift(Cold River Press, 2016).
Anastasia
Supping from my Starbucks sippy cup watching the boys go by in their hoodies and the girls in their tights while night dissolves slowly and the Who who should know sing about teenage wastelands. We are lucky to grow old. We are grateful for every hard-earned January.
I forget my computer, chew my fingers till they bleed so unsteady am I without my Wi-Fi.
This is supposed to be escape. The women walk the shores of Anastasia. They are not young – like me. They are not pretty – like me. They are not thin – like me. They are free in this cold cove. The wind is a lover’s caress, the sun caramel iced down for serving.
They scavenge for treasures, nothing fancy, nothing deep, nothing they will give away. The odd-colored shell, broken sand dollar, a pelican feather, any trinket they can keep to remember the day because today they know they are smart and beautiful and the wrinkles on their skin came from a million smiles and the pounds from gatherings and the knowledge from blessed years, and it’s too damn cold to wear Spandex anyway!
Wendy Thornton is a freelance writer and editor who’s been published in Riverteeth, Epiphany, MacGuffin and many other literary journals and books. Her latest book of essays, Sounding the Depths, was published in May 2018. Her mystery, Bear Trapped: In a Trashy Hollywood Novel, was published in 2015. Her memoir, Dear Oprah: How I Beat Cancer and Learned to Love Daytime TV, was published in July 2013. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has been Editor’s Pick on Salon.com multiple times, and started the Writers Alliance (www.writersalliance.org). Her work has appeared in England, Ireland, Australia and India.
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David Knape is retired. He is also tired. He compensates by writing poetry. It is the most wonderful thing that has happened to him. He loves to write and writes everyday. He then sends poems out for people's review. Few are impressed. Even fewer amused. Hence his works are seldom published, except here.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems July 6, 2018 Cover Art: "Succulents on Mt. Arrowsmith" David Fraser Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
Ja Sam
Baked limestone fragments and fragrant Pine needles, a ring of torsos silhouetted Against aquamarine glare. Tanned bodies Soak in Adriatic tears, waterplay belies horrors Of the recent past. Where are you from? A clumsy question. In response incantations summoning the dead: Vukovar, Sarajevo, Travnik, Mostar. Paradise is named Jerusalem no more.
Tiny waifs present bright drawings Of charming cottages afire and mothers Lying below soldiers with guns. I praise their skill and ask Is this your home? They nod Unabashed and smiling, with an inner Faith that might never have been. And their triumphant existence Becomes my private jubilation.
Ivan presses blanket cotton Into my palm, a cross of knots Stolen from insufficient warmth. Two hundred and seventy-one days He whispers. The relentless torture Is not what he remembers. His army green Concentration camp souvenir lies frail In my limp hand, and the creases On his face smile.
A crowd mills on burnished steps Of Dalmatian marble. There is no room In the church yet they stay. Drawn by salt water and torn by duty, I follow Ivan into the throng and over the threshold where babbling voices Are silenced by a man in vestments. I don’t dare look at the disc he holds aloft, But I see it. It is reflected In Ivan’s eyes. They are no longer dull. He shouldn’t be alive and I shouldn’t Be here, but he is and I am. Ja sam, I murmur, I am.
Darkness is dispelled, and numbness Warms in sunlight unseen. Momentary Amnesia takes hold. The war On everyone’s lips ceases to exist. Children giggle, widows envision Reunion with veterans whose limbs and Dreams are long gone, and nothing Matters except that we are Conscious and breathing.
Mishka Gora is a writer and historian based in Tasmania, with particular interest in conscience, war, and international justice. She is the author of Fragments of War, a novel-memoir about her experiences as a humanitarian aid worker in the former Yugoslavia, and Wellspring, an epic fantasy chronicle. Ja Sam is her first foray into poetry.
Self Ease
A calm’s settled in. A field of cloud clover like a soft-green blanket For us long-distance runners to peer at. It wraps itself around an old soul shivering When the clock has taken his time from him. The world looked at with jaundiced eyes Stealing what he had anticipated.
Where once a quivering heart beat, Replaced by a bevy of horned beasts. He’s the drummer who came to a sad party of iPhone texters Who preferred selfi-ing to listening to his staccato beat Instead of the sweating encumbrances of living.
It is the calm, A red-spotted eye in the storm, A blinking presage without benefit of caring For what the landscape will look like in the end.
Is the obverse preferable? Would the legs kicking aimlessly in a barrel before the plucking, Blood draining in a kashrut ceremony Be preferable to the mad uncalibrated dashing about to the bloodied finish line?
They sit at their tables mesmerized by the images and its inanities. They sit at their park benches engrossed in the sublime disconnect Of the technicolor nature around them. They walk on streets oblivious to the other walkers And rate their walking prowess with so many thumbs up In huzzahs of the numbers of steps they have taken, Or pockmark their pages with emoji-unhappy faces Until their world craters with mounds of reactivity Falling Into so many barrels-full of simulations, artifice and artificialities Substitutes for intelligence.
The Roomba picks up its stray leaves of dust collected from their sedentary Cohabitation with their sofas and hides in their filtered light. Lifeless rays of light sneak furtively into their space.
The beast is out and the legs of the chickens have stopped pedaling And the calm brings an ordered sadness to the legacy of the self ease That drifts in on a wind that sighs expectorated last breaths.
Sy Roth
The Conservation of Matter Consider the disappearing moose. Years ago, when we first rented this house, my wife and I watched a cow and her calf trundle across the lawn below the porch, the site of our morning coffee rite. Over the years, moose sightings persisted, always droll, if seldom so picturesque.
But, now, these charismatic mega-fauna --moose, I mean-- seem scarcer than hens’ teeth, the cause, a massive drainage of blood by winter tics fleeing climate change. When the flesh of a moose that wastes and dies sustains a myriad of tics and flies, has the biomass been re-stabilized?
The other day, again on the porch, in the midst of the morning coffee rite, a white moth vanished from my field of sight. Hovering for a moment above the boards, it gave way to the jagged silhouette of a burn mark, or moth-shaped knot hole. Matter conserved, at least in metaphor.
Coming closer to bone, for eons now, Science has known that a decomposing corpse maintains the balance of the ecosphere. These days, before Death turns up at the door, many of us choose to be cremated. Alive, we save nada y puesnada, * but, once we’re dust, conservation kicks in.
Humans, moose, waste and die; moths transmogrify. The conservation of matter applies.
“nothing, and more nothing” –Spanish
Ron Singer’s poetry has appeared, e.g., in alba, Anemone Sidecar, Avatar Review, Borderlands, The Brooklyn Rail, Cake, Ducts, Evergreen Review, Grey Sparrow, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Strong Verse, Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, Windsor Review, and Word Riot. He is also the author of ten books. For details, please visit: www.ronsinger.net.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems July 13, 2018 Cover Art: "Mt. Arrowsmith" David Fraser Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
“Prayer for the Dying/ A Darker Shade of Heaven”
There is no beginning, Nor an ending in this life, Only depths so deep, It bends auras and seperates light,
These eyes... behold the shadow of eternity, A darker shade of heaven, The belief in abandon & singularity, Open for the vultures and the sun. I never recognized my own footsteps because it was you who always carried me,
When midnight falls upon dark water, Its reflection can deceive us, She's not the type to lie down beside the angels looking for a savior like Jesus,
To love you... like the dying love life, What nourishes me also destroys me, When I run into the light,
Like a dying child that has learned to sing, And transforms ravens into beautiful things, I exhale my breath in the end, And fall in love with the world all over again,
Blackholes in your chest explode like supernovas, Capricorn climbing mountains looking for Jehovah,
I see no reason to debate with a fate that is quantum, Or the fear in losing our souls to the angels & demons that want them.
These eyes behold the shadow of eternity, Open for the vultures & the sun,
There is no beginning, Nor an ending in this life, Only depths so deep, It bends auras and seperates light,
To love you... like the dying love life, What nourishes me also destroys me, When I run into the light,
Priscilla GoodBear or Illuminate Steele (her stage and performing name) was born in Portland, Oregon and is a unique and intelligent singer, songwriter, producer and activist who is an enrolled first nation member of Three Affiliated Tribes: The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation,which is located on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in central North Dakota. Illuminate started out as a local DJ and promoter performing and promoting events in her hometown of Portland and throughout Washington DC's metro club circuit.
Illusions, Ghost Ranch, NM
In the high desert valley between mesas, immensity is fulfillment; emptiness is illusion. Desolation is the wrong metaphor for the story this place tells. Space is parable for time, which is here in abundance.
Absence is failure to notice. This vastness is not barren; its gorges are thick with history – hundreds of millions of years designed this space, once a tropical inland sea teeming with dinosaurs and ferns.
Close our eyes; our vision will improve. Imagination sees what eyes cannot behold. Inner space fills the void in the chasm between cliffs. What is absent from sight, memory can restore to the Piedra Lumbre Basin* in the dwelling-places between mesas and buttes and spires.
Howard F. Stein *http://towlola.com/piedra-lumbre/ Accessed 12 June 2018
Author ofLight and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0 The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Cleveland Haiku #533
Dry summer--- sand dunes on the infield
Cleveland Haiku #534
First ball field--- now the city's service garage
Cleveland Haiku #535
Playing ball in the street--- successfully dodging cars
Cleveland Haiku #536
Game in a parking lot--- we climb the building to retrieve homers
Cleveland Haiku #537
Empty ball field--- no games nowadays unsanctioned by adults
Michael Ceraolo's second full-length book, 500 Cleveland Haiku, was published recently by Writing Knights Press.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems July 20, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Good Evening Arizona
Every day at four-thirty the list of our crimes begins as the anchor says, Good evening Arizona, and then tells us what we’ve done
while the temperatures were rising: a shooting on the west side, a robbery to the north, and arson at a factory where the rubber is still burning its way into our lungs. Let’s break now
and then hear about the diet just in time for those days beside the pool. But first, this just in from the parking lot
where an altercation left one of us dead and one on the run. Who among us is the victim, unidentified,
and who is in the truck, racing on adrenaline as sunlight melts the view before us.
David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. Arizona's landscapes and wildlife have become interestingly important to him and a significant part of his poetry. Meanwhile, he retains an appetite for reading Eugenio Montale, W.S. Merwin, Tomas Tranströmer, and many other, often less celebrated, poets.
Late For Work
At six a.m. a man tailgates my car, squeals onto the main road, hunches over the wheel, swerves into traffic openings, goes through a light floors the gas to get around a bus, speeds up between lights until he comes to the Expressway and enters a wall of traffic slowly moving west.
Adam Fisher
You, sea are our boat
you, sea are our roots sustenance of home holding beginning and end
together we grieve through salt your changing nature; where coral reefs
multiplicities of species in danger – hawksbill turtle, stellar sea lion, blue humpback whale only four of two thousand, two hundred and seventy species who are endangered or threatened
in this precious web of life soul needs you as plankton live within your fluid body
You, sea are our boat.
Celeste Snowber, PhD is a dancer, poet, writer and educator who is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. She has written over 50 publications in the area of embodiment and arts-based research and her books include Embodied Prayer and Landscapes of Aesthetic Education. Her book, Embodied Inquiry: Writing, living and being through the body and a collection of poetry, Wild Tourist were both released in 2016. Her newest book of poetry is Blue Waiting co-authored with Sean Wiebe. She can be found at www.celestesnowber.com.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems July 27, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
A man in his only shirt drifts across the post office parking lot dragging his shadow behind him. As each car stops at the drive-by drop he stoops to say
he doesn’t have the strength to make it four miles south for the charity meals. The whites of his eyes like two drops of water
glisten on his face. As we listen to Sunday’s radio news of bombs and rice falling on Afghanistan he runs a finger down an imaginary map until he reaches the food bank
but his feet can’t follow his mind. The war is farther away from him than from anyone else. He dies a little as we watch. All it takes
is two dollars to bring him back to life.
David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. Arizona's landscapes and wildlife have become interestingly important to him and a significant part of his poetry. Meanwhile, he retains an appetite for reading Eugenio Montale, W.S. Merwin, Tomas Tranströmer, and many other, often less celebrated, poets.
Orphan Train
I. First Read This (Part of an 1893 ad in a Tecumseh Nebraska. newspaper shown in The Orphan Train By Andrea Warren, The Washington Post, 1998,) Homes are wanted for the following children: 8 BOYS: Ages, 10, 6, and 4 years; English parents, blondes. Very promising, 2 years old, blonde, fine looking, healthy, American; has had his foot straightened. Walks now O.K. Six years old, dark hair and yes, good looking and intelligent, American. 10 BABES: Boys and girls from one month to three months. One boy baby, has fine head and face, black eyes and hair, fat and pretty; three months old.
II. Now Let’s Tell Something of the 200,000 in 1853-1929
So talk about the rail tracks, the long line of carriages, the train, the Orphan Train, not one train, but up to 300 children riding east to west like cattle, to Texas, Kansas, North Dakota, Nebraska, farm country, farms where help was needed, children used, sometimes adopted.
Tell how these orphans – the homeless, the very poor, immigrants – from Germany, Lebanon, Russia (some not able to find parents who’d come before), were herded onto a train in New York, dropped off across all the states.
Mark how they presented best behavior to entice new owners – these sprigs of life spruced up, taught manners, poems, songs to show off when they lined up small to tall at a station, or sat in church chair rows.
You know they were flung like woodchips, or rough-hewn dice, station by station, year by year, to homes, to farm barns, to be beaten or loved, some bitter and sure blood in their veins was really bad, some lucky with music lessons,
Lavinia Kumar is an immigrant twice over, and her husband once, so they are very tuned to opportunities and problems this adventure involves. Her books are The Celtic Fisherman’s Wife: A Druid Life (2017), & The Skin and Under (Word Tech, 2015). Chapbooks are Let There be Color (Lives You Touch Publications, 2016) and Rivers of Saris (Main Street Rag, 2013). Her poetry has appeared in several US and UK publications.
Immediacy and Memory, Ghost Ranch, NM
Juniper and mesquite, Deep canyons and sandstone cliffs, The Chama River and Piedra Lumbre Valley, Embraced by a forever sky – My companions and kin, As close to me as I am to myself, Until I must leave for Ordinary place, ordinary time, Vowing to return, But uncertain I can keep My promise.
How to transform Presence into memory, One, however vivid, That must still leave the badlands behind? Remembering takes over for immediacy, And will have to suffice, Though it can never Soothe the sting of absence. I had never thought to grieve Old rock and dead tree And hardscrabble land That would grant me new life, If only I could return.
Author ofLight and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0 The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma City, OK USA;
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems August 3, 2018 Cover Art: "Juan de Fuca Kelp" David Fraser Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
Voices
One man speaks to the empty seat beside him on the bus, telling it the LAPD is to blame and if he ever gets his hands on the bitch who left him we can only guess what will remain of her. One man walks along the street
stabbing the air with his finger while he shouts at an absence, implicating the government while a fire ripples underneath the skin on his face. Each day from ten to twelve
one man sits tearing paper into flakes while he addresses the sunlight over the state of affairs before he embraces his cardboard box and slow dances it away. One man in the park
reads a litany of numbers; one man in a parking lot preaches with his dirty hands showing where the nails were hammered in; and one man
wanders endlessly with his voice on replay, contained by the bubble he pulls behind him on a string.
David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. Arizona’s landscapes and wildlife have become increasingly important to him and a significant part of his poetry. Meanwhile, he retains an appetite for reading Eugenio Montale, W. S. Merwin, Tomas Tranströmer and many other, often less celebrated, poets.
South Carolina Auction The Sumter Banner, February 27, 1850
First Monday on March next, highest bidder, pay cash three hundred acres of land, one negro, property Mr Graham
My children were left across the ocean I pray to Roog that even in this land my soul will find my tribe at my end.
One horse, asset Mr. Barwiek one horse-mill, from Mr. McLeod one lot and buildings thereon three negroes, property Mr. Barwiek
We’d carved a hare as family totem and prayed long to our village pangool before they brought us to this auction.
One negro sold, twelve hundred One horse sold, fifty going gone Two negroes sold, four years credit Two negroes, one mule, estate sale
Roog’s sign was near the hemlock and black snake. It’s natural it will stay around that tree because souls are immortal – they never flee.
Lavinia Kumar is an immigrant twice over, and her husband once, so they are very tuned to opportunities and problems this adventure involves. Her books are The Celtic Fisherman’s Wife: A Druid Life (2017), & The Skin and Under (Word Tech, 2015). Chapbooks are Let There be Color (Lives You Touch Publications, 2016) and Rivers of Saris (Main Street Rag, 2013). Her poetry has appeared in several US and UK publications.
Dog Drum Dance (for reXFiles, a starving dog who came to me) The dog’s heartbeat Becomes a drum As we gather our selves together. Dancing the dog Dancing the doom away He comes to me, Starved and scared, Shivering and sacred. Let us dance, o dog O my beloved We dance away the fear. We dance away the worry Thick as matted fur upon our backs. We cradle then encircle Become lovers entangled O my dog dancing under the moon Of American cheese and macaroon. Oh my dog who bites even me. We dance Hungry dog and lonely human We dance Until each of us Is finally fully fed.
Ali MacDonald was born in Alabama but lives in New York and has been lost in the Adirondacks. She has a degree in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has been published in some small magazines, Long Island Quarterly, Baltimore Review, Street Magazine, and others. She is a Vietnam-Era Veteran.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems August 10, 2018 Cover Art: "Sand Worms" David Fraser Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
They Were People Lesbos, Greece
He will not say who he is, walks past tall marble monuments personalized with birth and death dates, names, fond messages, a few with fresh flowers. He visits each week, sees only the molehill graves near rubbish in the far corner. Today he counts 1 through 29 small flat stones that tell a little story – boat sinking-date, Afghan 3, or 7, or just Number 11, or 6 – child, man, woman. Those no-one knows, or wants to know. Except kin left behind, or kin they were to meet.
His phone rings – a call for photos of a grave, the face of the dead. He emails, does not tell the burial was without prayers, without the head facing Mecca. He does not tell that when this corner is filled, stones and bodies are removed, bones desecrated. He cannot say it is made ready for new drownings on the ninety-minute sea crossing. He cannot not tell these families their people might never have existed.
Though buried in the cradle of man.
Lavinia Kumar is an immigrant twice over, and her husband once, so they are very tuned to opportunities and problems this adventure involves. Her books are The Celtic Fisherman’s Wife: A Druid Life (2017), & The Skin and Under (Word Tech, 2015). Chapbooks are Let There be Color (Lives You Touch Publications, 2016) and Rivers of Saris (Main Street Rag, 2013). Her poetry has appeared in several US and UK publications.
Shadow in Flight
A crow takes flight in an impossibility of physics trying to shake darkness from its feathers light beckons upward enclosed in quanta How can you tell carbon from carbon? Or the difference between a crackle and the wind? How can you speak to something that’s only its shadow?
Neil Garvie is a member of Victoria Writers’ Society and Comox Valley Writers’ Society; and has a book of poems entitled Silence Craves a Voice due Autumn 2018 with Poplar Publishing.
Time Lines
Time touches you in intimate places, more like an inquisitor than a lover.
Katherine L. Gordon is a poet, publisher, judge, literary critic and reviewer. Her focus is always on the promotion of Canadian writers, now making an impact on world culture. Her newest book “Caution: Deep Water” will appear this fall.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems August 17, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
A Round of Crow
Let us from loins of father crow and fruit who mother lays us
Since tended egg we crack the dome which then they set to raise us
They work to feed by stealing crops while cows in pasture graze thus
We learn to watch and watch to eat our nature too obeys us
But soon enough our father’s squawk out of the nest he waves us
Which lead to us same fruit and loins another round replays us.
Neil Garvie is a member of Victoria Writers’ Society and Comox Valley Writers’ Society; and has a book of poems entitled Silence Craves a Voice due Autumn 2018 with Poplar Publishing.
About Leaving our Mutual Heritage in the Wrong Hands
The hands I speak of are smooth like the slippery voices of the bodies they dangle from. The hands I speak of grasp, character lines stray on their palms, confused between self and other, unsure concerning destiny; their fingers go to fist too readily, thumbs askew and tucked in like cowards do it, hiding intention. Have I said enough? pointing with my own forefinger, sure as I endure here that we’ve taken ill care of all our fortune, signatures scrawled on invalid wills, our testaments paid out to thieves.
Linda Stevenson is a Melbourne,Australia, poet and painter; the content of her poems is primarily world environment, issues of equity in race and society, and treatment of refugees. Her latest collection is a Chapbook “The Tipping Point”, published in 2015, containing powerful activist ecopoems. Her work is also currently published in local and international literary journals and special interest magazines.
Spilling the Names
to a crow the divine is a crow to a dog, a dog, to you perhaps a dandelion
spilling its gold on the grass The real, in and not in the names
bearing so much weight warring over them, futile; still we war
not yet having walked our dreams into presence
Susan McCaslin is a BC poet who has published fifteen volumes of poetry, including her most recent, Into the Open: Poems New and Selected (Inanna, 2017). Her Demeter Goes Skydiving (University of Alberta Press, 2011) was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Poetry Book Prize) and first-place winner of the Alberta Book Publishing Award. Susan resides in Fort Langley, British Columbia where she initiated the Han Shan Poetry Project as part of a successful campaign to protect an endangered rainforest along the Fraser River. www.susanmccaslin.ca
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems August 24, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Superbowl
I did notice how spectacular our home is, barely birthed as I was from one of its tangles, soaking still in delicious. I saw it, flagged as delirious, destination superbowl, all its corners swept and prepped for inclusion, heard it humming, musos fitting their own notes between stupendous and all its valleys alight, ferns deft, hills in love. How it burned. In the best way. From inside out. Conflagration supreme. So I breathed it firstly, so gladdened. What about you? As fierce rain spewed for your eruption, how glad were you ...
Linda Stevenson is a Melbourne,Australia, poet and painter; the content of her poems is primarily world environment, issues of equity in race and society, and treatment of refugees. Her latest collection is a Chapbook “The Tipping Point”, published in 2015, containing powerful activist ecopoems. Her work is also currently published in local and international literary journals and special interest magazines.
Out of a Blue Diamond Flame
words fall
“tell yourself a story about yourself
where I is saying thanks”
my own voice speaking? yet calmer softer clearer
I puzzle over grammar the shift from second to first person
was the voice saying “create a story about yourself where your I is so one with what is that gratitude flowers?
why say so much?
The tone not admonitory rather a call
come come home
Susan McCaslin is a BC poet who has published fifteen volumes of poetry, including her most recent, Into the Open: Poems New and Selected (Inanna, 2017). Her Demeter Goes Skydiving (University of Alberta Press, 2011) was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Poetry Book Prize) and first-place winner of the Alberta Book Publishing Award. Susan resides in Fort Langley, British Columbia where she initiated the Han Shan Poetry Project as part of a successful campaign to protect an endangered rainforest along the Fraser River. www.susanmccaslin.ca
Corfu
My head throbs just behind my eye, a wash of red and shadow. It was my fault. Drinking The Retsina in the bar overlooking the azure ribbed sea. I had forgotten that transformation Is transitive so I said yes to more. The feeling of soaring away from my body tricked me to believing in flight. The bouzouki and sun and impossible sky all conspired to one more round of toasts. And I laughed at the waiter who pulled me up to mark the beats with my outstretched arms and shuffle of dusty feet. Circular celebration and sweat trickled between my breasts. I was lifted by the heat and that sweetness of momentary perfection, just before I passed out, skirt still dancing in the breeze.
Jude Neale is a Canadian poet, vocalist, spoken word performer and mentor. She publishes frequently in journals, anthologies, and e-zines. She was shortlisted, highly commended and finalist for many international competitions including: The Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize (Ireland), The International Poetic Republic PoetryPrize (U.K),The Mary Chalmers Smith Poetry Prize (UK), The Wenlock International Poetry Competition (UK) and the Carers International Poetry Prize (UK).
Jude has written six books.
Her book, A Quiet Coming of Light, A Poetic Memoir (leaf press), was a finalist for the 2015 Pat Lowther Memorial Award,five of its poems were shortlisted for The Magpie Award, judged by George McWhirter, Vancouver's first Poet Laureate and three of its poems were nominated for the coveted Pushcart Prize (US) by three different publishers.
One of Jude's poems from her recent book,Splendid in its Silence, was chosen by Britain's Poet Laureate to ride with other winners around the Channel Islands on public transit for a year. Jude was a featured reader at the Guernsey International Literary festival.
This book was recently a SPM Prize winner and was published in the UK last April. Some of these poems can be heard on Jude’s collaborative (viola/spoken word) EP, Places Beyond.
Jude's forthcoming book, A Blooming, will be published in London the spring of 2018 and her collaborative collection, Cantata in Two Voices, with Bonnie Nish will be published by Ekstasis Editions in the fall.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems August 31, 2018 Cover Art: David Fraser Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
Injured Shadow (V3)
In nakedness of life moves this male shadow worn out dark clothes, ill fitted in distress, holes in his socks, stretches, shows up in your small neighborhood, embarrassed, walks pastime naked with a limb in open landscape space- damn those worn out black stockings. He bends down prays for dawn, bright sun.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. Mr. Johnson published in more than 1037 publications, his poems have appeared in 37 countries, he edits, publishes 10 different poetry sites. Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, IL, nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015/1 Best of the Net 2016/and 2 Best of the Net 2017. He also has 167 poetry videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos. He is the editor-in-chief of the anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762and editor-in-chief of a second poetry anthology, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses which is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545352089. Michael is also editor-in-chief of Warriors with Wings: the Best in Contemporary Poetry, a smaller anthology available now: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1722130717
The Lake
Nobody built this lake that sits frowning 0n the plain, fenced by forest, virginal until The 1980s. We can feel the cold depth 0f her even from the log lodge which tries to warm the park. It's the romance of dread that draws us from our homes to bring the beer and laugh here among the echos.
Don Schaeffer still considers himself a social scientist. He studies the human condition using the insights poetry provides.
Hoard
The goldfinch are back. Their heads flame with the bearing of gold, back and forth from the sun to the red red earth.
They keep the secrets of their nesting places, where the nightingale, thorn at his throat, drips on their sleeping heads.
The puddling feet of gulls remember only the wet rocks and the cold cold sea, their porcelain bodies always crying out.
But I have a gilded apple-tree charmed with rubies. Every day I count them and look for more treasure in free-fall from the sky.
Gerard Rochford lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. He writes about human relationships, wildlife and politics “Perhaps they are all one.” Collections include: Of Love and Water, Koo Press/Malfranteaux Concepts - 2011, a collaboration with Canadian artist David Ladmore. CAIRN - poems for the Isle of Lewis, Malfranteaux Concepts - 2016. DNA - poems for a family. Malfranteaux Concepts - 2018. He has poems in the following anthologies: Erotica. Ascent Aspirations. Canada - 2008 and Planet Earth - 2013 Leaf Press, Canada. Gerard’s poem “My Father’s Hand” was in Best 20 Scottish Poems of 2006, chosen by Janice Galloway for the Scottish Poetry Library. (gerardrochford@btinternet.com)
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems September 7, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Autumn Journey
The geese are moving again; calling to one another and to me. They draw their marks upon a slate sky, and a chill wind tells me they’re right to go.
They neither hurry nor linger, travel to a steady beating, a sure knowing, of gentler tables of land.
Even in the darkness I hear them. They nudge my sleep like a seduction, unsettle my dreams.
From frantic summer feeding they are packed for the journey with fat and muscle; they rise from the earth like a revolution.
Eight thousand miles! And when they’re half-way there, with neither memory nor precise desire, still they are driven, by sex and food, and faithfulness to their created heart, which tells them pleasure relished comes again. This is the faith of the Autumn journey.
Gerard Rochford lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. He writes about human relationships, wildlife and politics “Perhaps they are all one.” Collections include: Of Love and Water, Koo Press/Malfranteaux Concepts - 2011, a collaboration with Canadian artist David Ladmore. CAIRN - poems for the Isle of Lewis, Malfranteaux Concepts - 2016. DNA - poems for a family. Malfranteaux Concepts - 2018. He has poems in the following anthologies: Erotica. Ascent Aspirations. Canada - 2008 and Planet Earth - 2013 Leaf Press, Canada. Gerard’s poem “My Father’s Hand” was in Best 20 Scottish Poems of 2006, chosen by Janice Galloway for the Scottish Poetry Library. (gerardrochford@btinternet.com)
Lists
1
Does silence know herself in a darkened room in the gong’s tone in breath in a sanctuary in crushing wind in cedar planks?
It starts with a question a minute and a half of music taking that first step a quiet morning amongst spruce trees thunderous clouds or the flakes of a snowstorm.
Trauma is insidious a lingering aftermath that ambles in for invisibility yet I could cope with nothing deciding that something had been stolen long ago.
2
That winter I helped my mother when the birch trees stood quiet and the crows disappeared it was so cold frost formed in marrow yet something in her existed outside of time like at the hospital they tapped her soul like a tree for maple syrup.
You were born two months early she said, but I want you to know like all of us, your back is against a wall.
At first I was afraid and then I think how could that have been?
Maxine Cowan is a visual artist and designer who will tackle anything creative on the assumption if she can design one thing, possibly she can design in a completely different genre. She hits and misses on that but she maintains her confidence. Her deepest passions are in art, design, architecture and writing, and in anything frankly? Minimalism.
Widen Your Wings
Widen your wings and take to the sky. The savage storms come from the east side.
You are weary and gentle. You need to get steady for great distances.
Go seaward in the serene night. Fly and be free to a place of safety.
Walk on the sand. Feel your hair brushed by the soft air breezes.
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. He was born in Mexicoand lives in Southern California. His poetry books have been published by PygmyForest Press, Poet's Democracy, Kendra Steiner Editions, Deadbeat Press, TenPages Press, Alternating Current Press, and New Polish Beat.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems September 14, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Neighborhood Convenience Store, USA, 2018 “Bottom Feeders,” What an old friend In the medical field Calls them. “They don’t eat healthy.” “They don’t live right.” “Most of them are obese,” “A time bomb for bad disease.” Always They, Them – Blacks, Hispanics, even many whites. Called “neighborhood convenience stores” To make them sound homey, part of “us,” Strategically located for people Who mostly have neither cars nor pickup trucks, Nor nearby city buses; Only legs and feet to walk miles; If they are lucky, a few relatives in town who might Sometimes give them rides; At best old bicycles With baskets on their handle bars. They walk at all hours of day and night, On sidewalks and in the streets, Both arms hanging to their sides, Carrying bulging paper and plastic bags Filled with soda pop and beer, Hot dogs and bologna, Laundry soap and toilet paper, Boxes from shelves and freezers Stacked with foods steeped in Sugars, fats, salt, and starches – Little or no fresh fruit or vegetables To be found here – Maybe a few overly ripe, overpriced, bananas from a basket on the cash register counter. This place offers what they can afford, With little money or Food Stamps Issued once a month. Supermarkets lie Far beyond their bodies’ reach; Most of these emporia of plenty Have moved away, Found it too expensive to stay. Destitute folk on the margins Trudge to run-down apartment buildings And ramshackle shared rent-houses, All within “walking distance” Of the convenience store. Neighborhood store patrons Are mostly shadow people Who come and go, Hardly noticed by the traffic That passes them by – Faceless marks, Good for profit, And little more. Author ofLight and Shadow (poetry): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0 The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com Howard F. Stein, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma City, OK USA;
What Really Matters
the colors of hydrangeas. body language. moonrise. drinking enough water. moss on a massive gray stone alongside a hiking trail. the sound the screen door at my childhood home made as it closed. stop signs. the freckle on his right thumb. tree branches dancing in the wind. rhythm. the bucolic blue drawings on my grandmother's dishes. listening skills. heartfelt laughter. avocados.
Laurajean Zaino is a mom and a yoga teacher, but her first love was the written word. She has an MFA in poetry and can’t help but find beauty everywhere. Early poems were mostly about love and nature, but lately things have reflected her spiritual study, giving way toward the great beyond. Her first manuscript is entitled “Release & Hold.” Find her on Facebook and Instagram as YogaAndAllIsWell.
To Name The Place
Before dawn we took a little dirt road that contours off Ice House Road. A couple of cabins hugged the edge of canyon, far above South Fork with its snowmelt rapids grabbing at the cliffs, eroding them away. My topo map showed Fresh Pond just across the raging river and downstream from Short Place which I never heard of and may not exist anymore.
This is just to orient myself, called out of sleep to search for someone who left one footprint and even her name behind.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and served as El Dorado County’s inaugural poet laureate (2016-2018). She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University). Her latest book is Uplift (Cold River Press, 2016).
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems September 21, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
War Or Feast
This Maidu cooking basket woven of willow twigs and tule roots, and love – it must have taken love to craft such a beauty. The curves of bowl, pattern of a rising arch over clouds and ripple-rings. The long work of fingers weaving earth’s wild hair, at peace with our land. Peace that is a family circled for a meal. I wonder when it was made. Before the militia rode against Indians in Gold Rush times? Long before this morning’s endless TV commentaries on coming together or walling apart. How could this basket hold a thought of war?
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and served as El Dorado County’s inaugural poet laureate (2016-2018). She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University). Her latest book is Uplift (Cold River Press, 2016).
Apricity
After five cold nights and a clouded morning the sun is bright. My son whistles by my right ear and birds by my left. And a woman walks by with ankles like music.
Julian O'Dea is a retired government scientist and part-time carer. He began writing and publishing poetry a few years ago. He lives in Canberra, Australia.
It's Murder Out There
Foul humour and without a pistol but if I had one this would be the day, this bustling cafe the place. News of the latest American or Afghan massacre does nothing but heighten my enthusiasm. Mad cow sitting at next table, blabbedy-blabbing on phone in that mosquito voice while overly- tattooed, expressionless, Cro-Magnon boyfriend hasn't uttered a syllable. I assume he hasn't yet discovered language but has discovered picking at his scabby tattooed arm in a focussed way. Compulsive chatterbox also has a tick which she accompanies with a squeak, used to elicit agreement amidst the flood of her words. She has a bag with the word BAG on it because she's so random, cutting edgy, supermodelly. And sideways baseball cap is just so . . . Slowly, I pull out my somewhere-in-memory urine pistol and prepare to squirt Her Loudness but – picture this – as 'phoney' continues to blab and I release the safety, boyfiend reaches over, lovingly pushes a lock of hair from her forehead and cracks a humanish smile. He adores her! I slip piss-loaded pistol back into invisible holster, will likely chuck it into an imagined river, post shooting myself in the forehead before returning home, murderous urge exorcised.
Originally from Saskatchewan, Allan Lake has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton Island, Ibiza/Spain, Tasmania, now calls Melbourne home & retreats to Sicily often. He has published two collections; Tasmanian Tiger Breaks Silence (1988) ; Sand in the Sole (2014) plus a chapbook, Grandparents: Portraits of Strain (1994). Lake won Elwood(Aus) Poetry Prize 2015 & 2016, Lost Tower Publications(UK) Poetry Comp 2017 and Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Festival/The Dan Competition 2018.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems September 28, 2018 Cover Art: The Poet Spiel aka Tom Taylor Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
The Poet Spiel aka Tom Taylor American artist/author, b.1941-, Frequently focusing on the confinement of being human, this diverse artist has created visual and verbal imagery which has been exhibited coast-to-coast and in Zambia. His work has been published internationally. His most recent book: REVEALING SELF in Pictures and Words. www.thepoetspiel.name
Something to Hold and Feed
I reach deep down for poetry, for the telling metaphor, the just line but I am empty, dry an abandoned well a creekbed during drought or water trapped as ice.
Snow falls outside the window. From downstairs, sound warped by floor-- my son's rap music-- expresses young male angst I can't relate to.
I long for a springtime of the imagination mind thawed warm and meandering through a meadow bright with flowers of thought.
Some kind of opening is needed an expansion a letting go, a kind of orgasm or birth-giving some small creation alive and warm and wet against my belly's flesh. Something to hold and feed.
Lately, I have dreamt twice of a baby-- not my real-life son, or daughter, or grandchild-- a stranger baby, yet, in the dream, familiar-- soft hair fair as lamb's wool. He seems to belong to me but only in the dream.
Anne Miles has, over the years, had work published in Quarry, Canadian Woman Studies, Room of Ones Own, People’s Poetry Letter, The Fed Anthology and other publications. She was the runner up in the 1997/98 People’s Poem contest and she won first prize in poetry for the 2003 White Rock and Surrey Writers’ Club Cecelia Lamont Literary Contest. Anne lives in Gibsons, on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast where she reads her work at all the open mics she can find.
Identity Theft
Someone tried to steal my identity strange things started happening but when they found out who I really was they gave my identity back apparently they did not want to be associated with someone like me.
David Knape is retired. He is also tired. He compensates by writing poetry. It is the most wonderful thing that has happened to him. He loves to write and writes everyday. He then sends poems out for people's review. Few are impressed. Even fewer amused. Hence his works are seldom published, except here.
Domicile
I looked at her and at the grassy plain over which the plover came and went and swooped time and time again as fierce and enduring as the wind or the spirit of human generation; her nest was somewhere about, no doubt, as was ours, and we made our way back home.
Julian O'Dea is a retired government scientist and part-time carer. He began writing and publishing poetry a few years ago. He lives in Canberra, Australia.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems October 5 and 12, 2018 Lat Week and This Week Cover Art: The Poet Spiel aka Tom Taylor Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
The Poet Spiel aka Tom Taylor American artist/author, b.1941-, Frequently focusing on the confinement of being human, this diverse artist has created visual and verbal imagery which has been exhibited coast-to-coast and in Zambia. His work has been published internationally. His most recent book: REVEALING SELF in Pictures and Words. www.thepoetspiel.name
October 5, 2018
A Dying Matter
cast my ashes on agitated water
where my enemy cannot surround them
where my best friend cannot long to wake them
The Poet Spiel aka Tom Taylor American artist/author, b.1941-, Frequently focusing on the confinement of being human, this diverse artist has created visual and verbal imagery which has been exhibited coast-to-coast and in Zambia. His work has been published internationally. His most recent book: REVEALING SELF in Pictures and Words. www.thepoetspiel.name
A Colour
It’s a colour like heavy breathing when it’s stuck in your chest and remember when you screamed — it’s like that.
It’s rage and frustration, it’s like banging your head against a tree trunk.
It sounds like Taiko drums ten of them banging all at once or like hard rock at high volume, bouncing off the walls.
It’s like being in a cave cold and damp or like thunder and a downpour that soaks you to the bone.
It’s ninety-nine percent humidity -- there is no air and worst of all, it tastes like mud.
You know how your cat feels, right? It’s like that only much larger.
Her coat is smooth, her skin taut her muscles ripple beneath your fingertips and she’ll be a tad high strung because she likes to move --
it’s highly unlikely she’ll begin to purr.
Maxine Cowan is a visual artist and retired designer passionate about all things creative. She’s a graduate of Ontario College of Art and Design and holds graduate degrees in gerontology and architecture.
CPR Haiku
I work to compress jewels -- little worlds that breathe every once in a while.
Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards, and authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016) which included work published by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, American Journal of Poetry (Margie), Main Street Rag, MiPOesias, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Voices Israel, Blue Mountain Review,Tishman Review, Suisun Valley Review, Burningwood Review, Fiction Southeast, Junto, Heartwood, Tiferet, Foliate Oak, Parhelion, Bonsai plus featured in New Verse News, Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords, Floor Plan, Good-Man-Project, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Poetry Circle, Fiction Southeast, Walt Whitman Tribute Anthology and Tipton Review. “Amber of Memory” was the single poem chosen for my 50th college reunion symposium on Bob Dylan. Mount Analogue selected Sarnat’s sequence, KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY, for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day 2017 as part of the Washington DC and nationwide Women’s Marches. For Huffington Post/other reviews, readings, publications, interviews; visit GerardSarnat.com. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO and Stanford Med professor. Married for a half century, Gerry has three kids/ four grandkids so far.
gerardsarnat.com
October 12, 2018
Here are a few poems written about dogs. The first one from my childhood, the others about Jamie, the border collie we helped to become a real dog.
The Dog
I didn’t even choose his name. Didn’t choose his breed, but we went with the milk truck my dad borrowed from Silverwood’s Dairy over night, so we could go across town where the puppies were and I picked the shy one in the back because he was so much like me, even though I was disappointed with all of them since they were beagles and were barking all the time, but I also thought no one else would choose him if I didn’t choose.
I didn’t go in the car when they’d decided to put him down because the last straw was he’d bit my mother who’d fed him all his life. Wasn’t asked. Wasn’t consulted although I was probably fifteen at the time and he was no longer or maybe never was the dog I wanted, now I think about it, just the dog they got because I was an only child, troubled, hard to deal with, head-strong they used to say, but a boy who’d saved the worms when digging in the garden and was horrified when the pest animals were killed—garter snakes, limp across the shovel’s blade, starlings, necks twisted in a fist, bat’s crushed against a white-washed wall, and this dog maybe had a good life overall until the incident, so I am glad I didn’t go when he was taken, or I might have said, “You know he died the day you beat him with the kitchen chair. He died that day, you know, and I’ll remember that.
David Fraser
For Jamie #1
I think him as a pup confined to a ten-foot run, food-focused, starving, but he had spirit, locked up inside of him, until he was nursed back to weight, but still reserved, hadn’t learned at three-years old to wag his tail, but I remember that day on the hike in the woods, walking slowly off leash beside us, like he’d been taught for show dog in the ring, and how he’d taken off full gallop and after a hundred yards something clicked inside his brain and then he ran twice as fast as if he’d released this spirit, a late-blooming rocket in his soul.
He never lost that, mornings all happiness to be alive, even to the end, my sweet, sweet gentle boy.
David Fraser
For Jamie #2
I don’t want to see him go down that darkest part of the road.
David Fraser
Once We All Slept That Untroubled Sleep
In his last days the old dog pants through his dreams, no longer that small animal snuggled among his brothers, sisters, his mother’s warm milk murmuring in his nostrils as he sleeps that timeless sleep.
In his last moments I hold the soft fur I’d ruffled every day, and feel him drift into the calm to which we all, one day, will go.
David Fraser
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems October 19, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Acts of G-d, Natural Disasters, Names we give to devastation We contend is out of human hands – Hurricanes (typhoons), tornadoes, Earthquakes, floods – The culprit: Father G-d and Mother Nature.
Rising oceans, warmer seas, Melting polar ice, methane release From thawing permafrost – All created in part by Burning fossil fuels at such a heat That we require even more of it To sustain our expansive ways – The culprit: ourselves, No gratitude, no remorse, Only more mining and Fracking and drilling.
How unnatural, these natural disasters? How G-d’s acts are so much like our own? The earth remembers – Our myths and words May kill us all. We are the fathers and mothers We defy.
Howard F. Stein, an applied, psychoanalytic, medical, and organizational anthropologist, and organizational consultant as well as poet, is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, USA, where he taught for nearly 35 years. From 2012-2017 he was group facilitator for the American Indian Diabetes Prevention Center, in Oklahoma City. He is author, co-author, or editor of 32 books, of which ten are poetry books or chapbooks. His most recent poetry books are: Centre and Circumference (2018) https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0; and Light and Shadow (second edition, 2018): https://doodleandpeck.com/adult His cat, Luke, keeps him company and somewhat grounded in reality. He can be reached at howard-stein@ouhsc.edu
Stray
One time on a trip my dad stopped at a convenience store (we called them ice houses back then) to get some drinks and gas and there was a dog running around loose looking for scraps and attention I was just a kid along for the ride but I got to playing with that dog and petting it and talking to it It was such a friendly dog When it came time to go I begged my dad to let me keep that dog Believe it or not, he said Yes (I think mom may have influenced the decision) And so...I opened the car door and in hopped the dog I was so happy to have that old stray dog I named him Sandy because of his color he was wild and untrained and slobbered all over everything but there was such joy in that dog he had found a home and he became a true friend to me the best friend a boy could ever have.
David Knape is retired. He is also tired. He compensates by writing poetry. It is the most wonderful thing that has happened to him. He loves to write and writes everyday. He then sends poems out for people's review. Few are impressed. Even fewer amused. Hence his works are seldom published, except here.
Don't Buy Jobs
There has always been endless inventiveness in the ways people have devised to cheat workers In the early twentieth century one of the ways to defraud migrant lumber and agricultural workers was for an 'employment' agency to charge a fee for placing the worker in a specific job, often hundreds of miles away, to which the worker also had to pay his transportation cost The agency had already made a deal with the foreman on the faraway job to split the fees involved, and further agreed the foreman would fire the worker after a few days (the best-case scenario; the worst case was that sometimes the job didn't exist), necessitating a replacement from the agency: "one man going to a job, one man on the job, and one man leaving the job"
The Wobblies decided to fight this practice, and began to speak out against it on the streets of Spokane, Washington Thousands traveled to the city to get arrested for free-speech and labor rights, clogging the local 'justice' system, often being brutally treated as prisoners Eventually the city surrendered: repealing the unconstitutional law, releasing all Wobbly prisoners, revoking the licenses of nineteen 'employment' agencies, even forcing those agencies to repay at least some of the money they had cheated workers out of
Michael Ceraolo is a 59-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had one full-length book (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press) and a few shorter-length books published, and has a second full-length book, Euclid Creek Book Two, forthcoming from unbound content press.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems October 26, 2018 Cover Art: Don Schaeffer Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Don Schaeffer has previously published a dozen volumes of poetry, his first in 1996, not counting the experiments with self publishing under the name "Enthalpy Press." He spent a lot of his young adult life hawking books and learning the meaning of vanity. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been translated into Chinese for distribution abroad. Don is a habitue of the poetry forum network and has received first prize in the Interboard competition.
A Cameo
High in the sky over trees long bereft of leaves
a small formation of geese, so sure of their destination
in the increasing chill of deep autumn.
Antoinette Voûte Roeder has a Master’s degree in music and finds music, both its lyricism and pauses, in poetry. She facilitates retreat days and workshops in writing and poetry and is passionate about the plight of the earth. Her latest poetry volume is called The Space Between, available from the author.
The Humor Condition
My humor never goes away despite time or maturity
it is a long-term condition to which I am afflicted some would say I am addicted I cannot break the habit
it has never subsided in fact seems to have grown worse with age
the condition requires constant monitoring my wife being the one who monitors
she says there is no hope of recovery that the condition will last until I die or until I am shot
whichever comes first her call.
David Knape is retired. He is also tired. He compensates by writing poetry. It is the most wonderful thing that has happened to him. He loves to write and writes everyday. He then sends poems out for people's review. Few are impressed. Even fewer amused. Hence his works are seldom published, except here.
Hell Realm
Sometimes I’ll play God with her. Not play exactly. Her empty eyes are fish swimming in opposite directions.
Hands washed clean, I load a dropper with two memories, one for each eye.
She is busy trying to mend a torn stocking with her bare hands.
She walks through me. I am nothing. A stumble of air. I give her a shove.
Robert Hirschfield’s poems have appeared in Salamander, Descant, Tablet, Grasslimb, Pamplemousse and other publications. bobbyhirschfield@gmail.com
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems November 2, 2018 Cover Art: Don Schaeffer Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Don Schaeffer has previously published a dozen volumes of poetry, his first in 1996, not counting the experiments with self publishing under the name "Enthalpy Press." He spent a lot of his young adult life hawking books and learning the meaning of vanity. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been translated into Chinese for distribution abroad. Don is a habitue of the poetry forum network and has received first prize in the Interboard competition.
Because
Because the sun slants low geese gather, crows mob
Because frost crusts the roof early mornings bless the dark
Because yellow leaves shout down the green peaches give way to apples
Because quiet follows hectic summer
I love fall.
Antoinette Voute Roeder has a Master's Degree in music and finds music, both its lyricism and pauses, in poetry. She facilitates retreat days and workshops in writing and poetry and is passionate about the plight of the earth. Her latest poetry volume is called The Space Between, available from the author.
Daybreak, and the End of Rain
The sun opens another page in the same old book—this morning, a love story all about the garden-- a spider’s dew-strung necklace drooping between fence posts, bumblebees fussing over my daisies and your chrysanthemums, tabby cat under the porch, too dozy to disturb a robin’s ablutions in the slow puddle leaking from our rusty watering-can, and your hat just where you left it last evening when the rain began and the two of us ran, laughing, hand-in-hand, inside.
Pat Smekal loves her home by the sea, along with family, friends, pelicans, avocados and words. Her poetry has won a number of prizes and has been published, over the past fifteen years, in more than sixty anthologies, chapbooks and periodicals. Pat, a.k.a. “Jazz,” frequently reads her work at events on Vancouver Island and beyond.
Conversation with Buddha
He does not pray as he sits beside the Buddha covered in vines, the cedar log his seat. He asks questions why last year’s doe lies wasted on the road, or the neighbour’s dog so abused has gone, a mystery as he no longer hears its midnight howls. He asks why there is a bounty on the wolves, their long bodies lying still and stretched in a pick-up bed. He wants the bullfrog not to intimidate and eat the lesser frogs who call the pond their home, He doesn’t pray but wishes for all creatures to have a life not full of fear, not fraught with suffering but Buddha smiles back, stony-faced and he is left to work it all out by himself.
Previously published in the collection, Paper Boats.
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems November 9, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
This moment is for the fragrance of frangipani, the promise of papaya hanging high in tight clusters, for long-fingered pandanus clutching at cliffs and beach sand sifted squeaky-fine, for honeyeaters suckled on bottle-brush and the call of whipbirds lashing bushland, for goannas that rustle under bracken and lantana, and especially, especially this moment is for the magpie and his mate, whose marvellous throats pour torrents of warbles all over my Queensland morning.
Submitted to Beaded Purse Poetry Contest, Nov 2010
Pat Smekal loves her home by the sea, along with family, friends, pelicans, avocados and words. Her poetry has won a number of prizes and has been published, over the past fifteen years, in more than sixty anthologies, chapbooks and periodicals. Pat, a.k.a. “Jazz,” frequently reads her work at events on Vancouver Island and beyond.
The Last Act
The shouting crowd choking in glowing LED necklaces, sticky cotton candy fingers buried in patriotic-colored pillows waiting wondering that sends me smack-dab center of a 3-ring circus. Poodles to my right jump hurdles, perform handstands; to my left a balancing genius in blue-black tux holds his chin accountable for a dozen dinner plates far away swaying to faltered applause, sugar-coated grade-school screams as I sway the trapeze. No net. It’s the draw of the fall.
I could slip, trip, slap the concrete while sawdust coats me. I could shed my sequins my threadbare tights up the ante but not like a fall. Is this a replay in real time? I welcome the freedom from routine. Deliver what only children admit to, why sticky fingers crave the circus. Mistakes a gruesome end. I am shoveled onto a gurney sad poodle eyes follow my exit the show goes on. Give them what they came for, leaving screaming to the swing swaying until it’s lowered and a man climbs into the cannon center ring.
Suzanne Nielsen writes and teaches writing in the twin cities of Minnesota.
Shapings
The shape of air sea gulls lifting a steaming of a soup in brittle china cold unknowing
I am made of words & blood walking along the quai of seas distant to myself
as though a flame extinguished
And so
Anna your poems of stillness transparent as a scrim shadowless
we the lovers weren’t we lovers there just there
above the gray Parisian streets, our single window narrowing the sunlight
and we two our divided selves our beings hollowed out to begin the poems of flight of distance
a stepping out of a density palpable obscure
into a necessary absence
our poems become slender wands,
a reaching into without touching,
the seas we imagined of more than water.
Doug Bolling’s poems have appeared in Posit, Water-Stone Review, Convergence, Poetry Pacific, The Missing Slate (with interview), and Isthmus among many others. His poetry has received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations and several awards, recently the Mathiasen Award For his poem “Body and Soul” published at the University of Arizona. He lives in the environs of Chicago and is working on a collection.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems November 16, 2018 Cover Art: Skagit Delta by Eric Robert Kosarot Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Eric Robert Kosarot lives in Everett, Washington USA but prefers the bio-regional homeland called Cascadia. The sweeping views of the Western Cascades and river estuaries from the monadnock islands of Skagit county have always awed me.
Waking By Numbers
I’ve a corner to keep all the shambles
stabled so to speak.
They know all the angles
how to leak,
or flow backwards like mercury
off a tongue.
If you see them don’t ask for directions.
They follow
a long string dipped in honey,
a solo way home.
An algorithm of travel fob watch ticking
ignoring digital silence.
James Walton is published in many anthologies, journals, and newspapers. He was a librarian, a farm labourer, a cattle breeder, and mostly a public sector union official. His books include The Leviathan's Apprentice 2015, and Walking Through Fences 2018. He did not write between 1970 and 2013, and resigned from an elected position in 2014, so he could write again.
True Spring
Hoverflies and the warm smell of wattle hang in the air under our pergola; wattlebirds bully and scrape on the aluminium roof for scraps of food; fruitflies scout the compost bin. Nature clatters on. Heat fills this upstairs room and I turn on the fan; it feels like angels' wings on the way back to Eden.
Julian O'Dea is currently doing some consulting in toxicology and minding his son. He began writing and publishing poetry a few years ago. He lives in Canberra, Australia.
Another Road Trip to the Corner Store
Old man walks stooped over his dusty shoes. Ahead of him, a matted-tufted dog trots, all nose and morning-wagging tail.
The man plods, reluctant with each step. His dog is spring, blue sky, present.
It’s a long journey, like taking a toddler to the corner store, how each step brings surprise, a pause, a breath, daffodil that wasn’t there just weeks ago when the snowfall iced the steps and neither man nor dog got out the door.
Another road trip to the corner store. This old man has watched them many dogs ago.
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, BC, Vancouver Island, Canada. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016 which has been short listed for the 2107 ReLit Awards for poetry. Also in April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems November 23, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Summer Has Its Reasons
A koala walked beside me while I mowed stopped when I stopped looked over and slothed along when I started again
Two black snakes ahead of me doing it hard uphill in the driveway the gravel clinging their red bellies dusty
Three eagles counting uplifts tracked me to the dry creek played keepings off with magpies I was singing Guantanamera when the deer sprang
Four horses came Rapunzel manes a skylark of herded intensity back kicked against the day threw heads to say Look Out snickered me the hints of change
The ants a scurry in Farsi spelled what they could remember of the days before tallied landings bark falling the cast net of trees freckles infertile seeds
The skies all opening an upheld portage of locks gypsy barges in a silhouette a symphony of continents the two-finger whistle
I could never do
James Walton is published in many anthologies, journals, and newspapers. He was a librarian, a farm labourer, a cattle breeder, and mostly a public sector union official. His books include The Leviathan's Apprentice 2015, and Walking Through Fences 2018. He did not write between 1970 and 2013, and resigned from an elected position in 2014, so he could write again.
Aftermath
Let loose, the demiurge wrote the night in black ink, and then the gnarled laws that grew like weeds below the Tree of Knowledge; Adam turned like gnostic Dinanukht, half-man, half-book; trying to read himself and puzzle out the new laws; now that he had to fence in beasts and grow sullen grain.
Julian O'Dea is currently doing some consulting in toxicology and minding his son. He began writing and publishing poetry a few years ago. He lives in Canberra, Australia.
Existential
I fear and the wind comes fresh at my face carrying the salt from the beaches of Africa. This is the true earth, growling at me the probability of death. I am not numb when I fear as I am when I celebrate.
Don Schaeffer has previously published a dozen volumes of poetry, his first in 1996, not counting the experiments with self publishing under the name "Enthalpy Press." He spent a lot of his young adult life hawking books and learning the meaning of vanity. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been translated into Chinese for distribution abroad. Don is a habitue of the poetry forum network and has received first prize in the Interboard competition.
Don Shaeffer’s book is entitled Until I Got to New York. It is a book about fate from the perspective of afterwards. It covers 13 years of his personal history: things he saw, learned, and suffered through. He worked on the telephone, interrupting the dinners of innocent families who just wanted to be left alone. He waited for buses in the dark and cold. He took care of beloved people who couldn't stand-up any more and beloved people who were so full of vomit they decided to die. It's not a novel. Its 478 pages of poetic observation and theory-making. It's him. It's the models in his mind.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems November 30, 2018 Cover Art: Maxine Cowan Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Maxine Cowan is a visual artist and designer who will tackle anything creative on the assumption if she can design one thing, possibly she can design in a completely different genre. She hits and misses on that but she maintains her confidence. Her deepest passions are in art, design, architecture and writing, and in anything frankly? Minimalism.
Retired
Why would I want a gold watch? Busy little smithies, little stonecutters inside Fitting me for a choke chain or new collar… .
I’m nobody’s dog! I’ve slipped the leash! Got itchy feet and an easy lope … . New aromas commingle on the breeze.
Chase yer own stick, Jack! The sun shimmers, fairly rolls off my shoulders. I can play with that ball whenever I want now.
Richard Stevenson has been writing for a while now (31 books), and retired back in 2015 after a thirty-year gig teaching English and Creative Writing, Business Communication, and Technical Writing at Lethbridge College. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and edited Prism International back in 1983-84. Most recent books are Rock, Scissors, Paper: The Clifford Olson Murders, (a long poem sequence from Dreaming Big Publications, 2016, USA) and A Gaggle of Geese, (a haikai poetry collection from Alba Publishing, 2017, UK).
8 Track Tape Remembers...
My grandparents were the First people in the Neighborhood To own a color t .v. It was a combination TV/Stereo console And did Grandmother Read the 91st Psalm Like Mom did Every night Uncle Cleo was In Vietnam?
Aunt Flora Mae' mushroom Cloud afro was The sign of the times My father always drove a Chevy Truck and worked For a living Schoolhouse Rock and Saturday Morning cartoons Taught me a lot about The world Sunday dinners ended with Mogen David wine And Great Grandmother Rosie was always standing close by With a cigarette and a can of Beer in hand 120 pounds soaking wet A step away from death She lived to be 95
My Grandparents always made Me read to people Daddy gave me a typewriter Mama took me to the Library Sis gave me a journal one Year for Xmas, and yet, Family and friends Are the biggest dream killers Around Sunday nights were always Wild kingdom and Wonderful World Of Disney Years later, I asked my niece, Marissa if she'd ever consider Being a writer, she said "No" I don't blame her Being a poet is like having a Virus in your body But I don' t want a cure If god didn’t want me To write He shouldn’t have made me A poet I’m in this win or lose
Erren Geraud Kelly is a Two-Time Pushcart nominated poet from Boston. He has been writing for 28 years and has over 300 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine(online), Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications. His most recent publication was in Black Heart Literary Journal; He has also been published in anthologies such as Fertile Ground, and Beyond The Frontier. His work can also been seen on Youtube under the " Gallery Cabaret," links. He is also the author of the book, Disturbing The Peace, on Night Ballet Press
The Words
They come from Walla Walla and Falls Church, from Bristol and Bombay -- anyplace where people know what it means to be people.
They come from happy fields and wanton valleys, from sun-deprived caverns and boastful mountains -- anywhere a hobo can hobble in silver-lined slippers.
They bob among the beer cans on the River Withywindle, as it flows through Barrow Downs, black waves edged with white.
They come in silence, broken by sighs or screams, where the marigolds wilt, grateful or obsequious, along Idlywood Lane.
Oh, how they dance across the tongue of Mrs. Throckmorton as she calls her dying children home How they ruffle their little wings.
Paul Brucker was active in the Washington, DC, poetry scene in the early 1980s, He put a lid on poetry writing to go to Northwestern University's graduate advertising program in a questionable move to earn a decent income. Nevertheless, he succumbed to writing poetry again.
He has been published in many magazines, including somewhat recent appearances in Ink Well, Poydras Review, Ray’s Road Review, The New Plains Journal and the anthology Pagan’s Muse: Words of Ritual, Invocation and Inspiration.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems December 7, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
Losing Battle
A window is closing between us. Once in a while we fight to keep it open-- there is a small gust of fresh air we feel it all the way up on our faces. It garners a smile.
Mori McCrae was born in Toronto in 1961. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art (Drawing and Painting) in 1986. For the last 23 years, she has lived and worked as an artist in the Niagara Region. She is a founding member of the Jordan Art Gallery (2001) where she currently exhibits her work. In 2011 she was awarded an artists residency at the Cill Rialaig Artist Residency in Ireland. There she expanded her visual art practice to explore the liminal shift between image and word. Her poetry developed through support from the Canadian Authors Association and through self directed study at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. She has published two books of poetry, Shelf Life in 2016 and Passersby in 2017, both with Grey Borders Books.
Desert Moon
There’s a shadow in the desert; secrets under the sand and a moon encouraging worship. Winds from a distance, unwanted and cold. Creature side tracks scatter to survive. Everything that breathes must be strong; life is the gold of survival. A forbidden land. Wide boundaries. No fences. Safety is unknown. Water escapes the lost. Crying surrenders all hope. Silence prompts fear. At night deep, vengeance covers the path of escape.
Dr. Roger Singer has been in private practice for 38 years in upstate New York. He has four children, Abigail, Caleb, Andrew and Philip and six grandchildren. Dr. Singer has served on multiple committees for the American Chiropractic Association, lecturing at colleges in the United States, Canada and Australia, and has authored over fifty articles for his profession and served as a medical technician during the Vietnam era.
Dr. Singer has over 950 poems published on the internet, magazines and in books and is a Pushcart Award Nominee. Some of the magazines that have accepted his poems for publication are: Westward Quarterly, Jerry Jazz, SP Quill, Avocet, Underground Voices, Outlaw Poetry, Literary Fever, Dance of my Hands, Language & Culture, The Stray Branch, Tipton Poetry Journal and Indigo Rising, Down in the Dirt, Fullosia Press, Orbis, Penwood Review, Subtle Tea, Ambassador Poetry Award, Massachusetts State Poetry Society, Louisiana State Poetry Society Award.
Euthanasia
I can't put my dog to sleep for I am as old as he; and despite our handicaps he also wants to live like me.
Boghos L. Artinian
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems December 14, 2018 Cover Art: Winnipeg Sky by Don Schaeffer Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Don Schaeffer has previously published a dozen volumes of poetry, his first in 1996, not counting the experiments with self publishing under the name "Enthalpy Press." He spent a lot of his young adult life hawking books and learning the meaning of vanity. His poetry has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been translated into Chinese for distribution abroad. Don is a habitue of the poetry forum network and has received first prize in the Interboard competition.
Donkey
When I got on the train the man was talking and I knew he would still be talking when I got off in fifty minutes. He was mostly talking about Bob. "Yea he is okay but you know". He said in a way that only people who are used to talking, talk.
He is still talking now perhaps he never stops as long as he has someone to listen. My mother would say he could talk the legs off a donkey. This guy could talk the legs off of thousands. As I thought about this I took another look at him a pictured him in a field talking to a donkey with others behind and a big pile of donkey's legs all piled up He got off a Clapham junction still talking and once again I could see him in that field.
Marc Carver: “Some days I have no idea why I write or even leave the house and just now and again I see something and I have to put pen to paper.”
13 Sips of Irish Whiskey
Two days, seven inches, so the old soldier and I stayed inside, counting thundercracks and Wagner, reading Bulgarian verse twice over, his Russian rusty, loosened from years unused, booze, having no one who understood his schisms. I asked only if we had another bottle, if the rain might end. He said his father came to this country, worked as a milkman, bough this land after years of tacky uniforms, rickety trucks. When he ac- quired the deed, he toasted the trees using Gaelic.
Nicole Yurcaba, a Ukrainian-American poet and essayist, teaches at Bridgewater College where she also serves as the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival’s Assistant Director. Her work has appeared in journals such as The Lindenwood Review, Chariton Review, Junto Magazine, Artemis, Still: The Journal, and many other online and print venues.
Icebergs
Why does it seem that what is not, is?
Like believing in a narcissistic
that the image they present is real when nope, it’s probably not
they’re more like icebergs conning us into believing that the hint of what we see is all there is when what slumbers by the ton, beneath the surface deep and dark, visible only to a passing shrimp that actually does see what’s real—a black mass blocking light and life, so
be careful
with what seems white, light innocent, gently floating by, when it could sink you into believing that what you see
is all there is.
Maxine Cowan is a visual artist and designer who will tackle anything creative on the assumption if she can design one thing, possibly she can design in a completely different genre. She hits and misses on that but she maintains her confidence. Her deepest passions are in art, design, architecture and writing, and in anything frankly? Minimalism.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine Friday's Poems December 21, 2018 Cover Art: Norman J. Olson Friday's Poems will be published weekly. Submissions are now open. Send your work to ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
Norman J. Olson, born 1948, is a small press poet and artist who lives in Maplewood, Minnesota USA. Since publishing his first poem in 1984 after many years of regular submission and rejection, he has published hundreds of poems and artworks in the literary press in 15 countries and all over the USA. Web Site: http://www.normanjolson.com Email: normanjolson@hotmail.com
13 Words Your Girlfriend Says When She’s Placed a Hex on Your Ex
My grandmother
said once the
words
are uttered
the consequences
cannot
be undone.
Nicole Yurcaba, a Ukrainian-American poet and essayist, teaches at Bridgewater College where she also serves as the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival’s Assistant Director. Her work has appeared in journals such as The Lindenwood Review, Chariton Review, Junto Magazine, Artemis, Still: The Journal, and many other online and print venues.
And because they slept in, my friends--
artists, musicians, old boys with instruments whittled from boughs, they sleep in,
they do, naturally as animals-- foxes chipmunks squirrels-- burrowing in, deep down
under wings of conifers, not far from brooks, womb like they do hibernate in this place, home, name it, Paradise, (their personal Elysium Valhalla, Avalon)
you see my neighbor says, with that lost child look on his face in the library parking lot, today
you see, he says, about the fires,
they were artists, musicians, retired, like me, and though we are about two hours away…
they were artists, musicians, retired, like me
I tried phoning them, you know and the smoke, it's so hard to breathe even here about two hours south
and the not
the not knowing, and
how the golden-red leaves, swirl, spin, and the not knowing
how to wrap one’s head around how
do you, how they may not have
gotten out, or maybe tried, hunched over steering
wheels round the image, imagine with or without
wives, animals, instruments, their
eyes set on the horizon as if a miracle as if a certainly
A certainty, oh imagine them blinded by fire
carrying their instruments shielded there, tucked angel like
between elbow and waist, cradled fiddle mandoln oboe
just made guitar in its canvas case stretched out across a lap, pieta-like; oh imagine and driving out, they were , or they are
sacred now, all of them, imagine…..sublime.
Leonore Wilson has taught creative writing for more than twenty years at Bay Area colleges and universities. She is on the MFA Board at St Mary's College in Moraga, California. She has two poetry books out (Western Solstice and Tremendum, Augustum). She is a wilderness rancher and environmentalist hoping to save her acreage for future generations.
Affirmations Your Former Girlfriend Gives Your Current Girlfriend
Bitch.
Bitch, you’re nothing but the melodramatic wrist-slasher you were at 17.
Nicole Yurcaba, a Ukrainian-American poet and essayist, teaches at Bridgewater College where she also serves as the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival’s Assistant Director. Her work has appeared in journals such as The Lindenwood Review, Chariton Review, Junto Magazine, Artemis, Still: The Journal, and many other online and print venues.
Seeing My Granddaughter in The Wizard of Oz
Which is the better heaven Dorothy thinks: above the rainbow where the colors are bright and friendships form among allied strangers who judge you by a smile, or the darker earth of aunties? . When I hear the song I cry, swept into the sky where bluebirds go and experienced, with her, in miracles and death. . I live here in Kansas. The intensity of wishes stings my heart.
Don Schaeffer still considers himself a social scientist. He studies the human condition using the insights poetry provides.
5TH ANNUAL HAZELWOOD WRITERS’ FESTIVAL Hazelwood Herb Farm, Nanaimo, August 2014--other poets / review / event with appreciation to Ruth Hill, who helped fill in some blanks
Naomi Beth Wakan tells of being a twin, less special lists what she learned in childhood-- includes, she was special
M. C. Warrior (Mark, owns Hazelwood with Barbara, their daughters) reads work poems; read in San Francisco—with Tom Wayman, Kate Braid the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union; tells of a dream of a green waiting room
Pat Smekal speaks of the passion of pen on paper in “Paso Doble”; of grief—the hole, finally, in a black sock in “Mending”; takes us to her home town, in Finland—her youth
Tina Biello reads In the Bone Cracks of the Walls from Leaf Press in her melodious Italian accent tells of Casacalenda the village doors seeds, weeds bids us keep the dialect alive…
Bob Carson (feature) from California, speaks of a casket a cold workplace; quotes old friends; his poem “Retake the City” was in a collection with Mark Twain; a San Francisco Waterfront Writer he shared a book with Wayman, Braid
Mary Ann Moore flaunts orange-- writes of red and yellow gerberas, lime green ankle socks; reads from her Fishing for Mermaids (Leaf Press)-- how disorganized neighbours inspired her to play at ironing as pretend children waited one by one for pressed shirts
Ruth Hill, with a water theme observes the upside of schizophrenia; takes us on her young family’s off-the-grid, seven-year sail from Horseshoe Bay to Alaska on a sixteen-foot boat; saw rain’s kimono sleeves on birch branches
Andrew Brown (who hosted our event) dances with Delores; dreams of a stream near his bedroom; reads from his first book--Crow’s First Word
Kim Clark explains her love of CHAP books; reads from Middle Child of Summer—31 Poems for August (Leaf Press)
Chelsea Comeau has bird poems-- “The Poet as Heron”, great blue…patron saint of patience; “Virginia Woolf as Cormorant”; how, if ribs were broken differently, Eve might have had wings…
Chris Hancock Donaldson offers list poems: “Forget” and of forgiveness and of her father…
Judy Mayhew boasts of bees, with all five senses-- heavy-loaded drones “thump” at the door; gives us one voice—that of the boy from the less successful family
Madeleine Nattrass, in her chapbook Ma (who did so much with nothing, and lived to 105) shows us the value of clichés…
David Fraser (feature) and Pat (Jazz) Smekal share poetic memories of grandmothers; David speaks of watching and not watching young women; from Paper Boats offers American sentences (17 syllables) and short meditations
Diane Bestwick reads from her novel of life in China-- a second baby in a one-child regime-- And a Bird Sang…bright red on pink
Ursula Vaira shares her emotional reaction to a recent nameless disaster; her conversation with a granddaughter while waiting for her arrival (birth?)
Grace Stephens graces us with the day’s shortest poem
Ann Graham Walker reads from her reclaimed novel-- with a language of not having language
Linda Thompson concluded with “Shoulds”-- collected notes for a bride…
Franci Louann has received awards for her poetry and for her volunteerism in this area. Franci had poems in Dorothy Livesay’s last anthology, Woman’s Eye, 12 BC Poets (Air). She was “Fran Workman” at the time. In 2010, Lipstick Press published Franci’s Beach Cardiology.
Also in 2010, Franci co-founded Poetic Justice in New Westminster. This has morphed into “Poets Corner”, now meeting monthly in Vancouver. Currently Franci is finishing a manuscript with the working title Argentina: Poesia.