Poetry Life and Times

THROUGH A FOG, AFTER THE FALL & WISDOM. 3 Poems by George Freek

by 

THROUGH A FOG (After Su Tung Po) 

Wind rustles the leaves
with rough fingers,
then blows away.
Silence is a muted scream.
Clouds look at nothing
when they pass by
like men who
no longer ask why.
The moon, once so bright,
is a dim light
in that immense sea,
while I search for
things that are not to be.

AFTER THE FALL (After Mei Yao Chen)

Dying flowers lie like corpses
with discolored heads.
If my wife were here,
She’d try to revive them,
but she’s also dead.
Night holds me in its arms,
as if I were a child,
abandoned in a desolate spot.
Stars crawl across the sky
like bugs wandering
lost and blind,
over an infinite rug,
Life is unkind.
Life will never be how it was,
but I think the way it was
was only in my mind

WISDOM (After Tu Fu)

I stare at my unmade bed.
Outside, a chilling breeze
rustles the dead leaves,
as if they were feathers.
The moon is a ball of lead.
I gaze at distant stars,
lost in the infinite sky,
as if they had
nowhere to abide.
A torn shirt, hanging from
a tree, waves in the breeze,
like an abandoned flag,
now a tattered rag.
I feel the approaching cold.
I watch traffic pass me by,
as if I were a stone.
I’ve learned 
what it means to become old.

George Freek’s poem “Written At Blue Lake” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Enigmatic Variations” was also recently nominated for Best of the Net. His collection “Melancholia” is published by Red Wolf Editions.

Temporal, Forest Paths & The Fringe. 3 Poems by JD DeHart

by 
Temporal

 
Everyone I talk to lately
seems to be mediating on the passage of time.

 It goes so fast, they say. Almost in chorus.

 It’s the greying in all of our hair, or
the effect of being holed up for two years,
twenty-four months that have felt like
a decade of worry and anticipatory grief.

 Of course, we are creatures
that have an inevitable terminus. There
are a variety of words for this truth.

 Crapshoot and shitshow both come to mind.
Funny how scatological such terms are,
indicating how we truly feel about the ultimate

 away and, in some cases, our lodging here.

 I munch another bite of the remnants
of a creature that met its demise to
sustain me for a few more hours.

 I contemplate how the past is not real
anymore, and neither are my speculations
of the future. The body bears the mark of all

 but everything eventually becomes
memory or a vague sense that someone,
even someone much like us,

 used to be here.


Forest Paths

 
I can still trace
the way our feet fell
where few other feet stood,

 I would walk further
ahead, always drafting in my mind.

 The comic books and adventure
stories I built with each step,
while you, my father, walked

 just behind me, the sound
of our family hunting dog
lapping and sniffing.

 That time when I was younger,
when you threatened to cut
our walk short. I must have
deserved it, but said:

“If I come back without you,
no big deal, but if you come back
without me, you’re in trouble,
mister.”

 What was I thinking to speak
to you in such a way, but you
and Mom laughed about that
for years, probably still telling
that story whenever you can.

 Did you know I still go back
when life is full to those quiet places,
where I can hear wind
moving through the trees of memory?

It’s true.

 My brain still finds that place
where the forest grows denser,
past the well-trod path,

 rounding curves and bends,
being careful of stray dogs
and spiderwebs, to go to places

 few others go.

 I will always be
a creature of the woods.


The Fringe

 
So, here I am.
Always on the edges.

 Wondering what word
captures me. Belonging and never
belonging.

 Maybe I’ve always fit in somewhere
and just haven’t seen it yet.

 A figure from the fringes, do I
love? Of course I do, trying my best to

 hold the affection for neighbors
that I ought to hold for myself (that I work
on holding for myself).

 Yet, always at the edge, somehow,
at the corner of the room, looking in.

 A describer’s heart, an ethnographer’s
mind.

 

 
JD DeHart is a writer and teacher. His latest poetry collection, A Five-Year Journey, is available from Dreaming Big Publications.

Marie. A Poem by Jack D. Harvey

by 
         Marie

Oh Marie, you are
an aging wreck;
your dangling dugs,
your languid wrinkled Miss Muffet
won't bring the milkman early;
dirty and smelly
slattern of the month, 
the epitome of
everybody's discarded laundry.

Lapses in motor function
mental focus 
get you to the streetcar  
late every day
and late to work;
booted out
sooner or later
when you get home
what will he say?

What a burden
for our pity and revulsion;
you're frightening
in your squalor.

Night and day
a dead soul
an endless round 
of apathy and despair,
what kind of life is that?

That's what we think.

But some rare times,
God knows why
somehow roused,
triumphant 
between the bed posts
like a shaky marionette 
you rise and fall
to the challenge
of bleary marital bliss;
for those few moments 
assertive queen, 
sweating with your
hirsute timorous king
dismantling him,
cannibalizing him,
you burst forth new-made,
king and queen together,
amorous two-backed beast 
before your reign fades away
in the glimmer of tomorrow 
and you come apart,
Priapic darling,
again become 
what you were.

Alas, Marie, time's more
than a placeholder;
eater, destroyer
changing Nineveh 
and all of us to dust;
false fellow traveler
rubbing us out
of our space and place
before we know it.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Poetry Life & Times, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies.

The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

His book, Mark the Dwarf is available on Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Mark the Dwarf Jack D.Harvey Ebook

Six Poems from EL PLAZO (THE DEADLINE) by Olga Muñoz. Translated by Amparo Arrospide and Robin Ouzman Hislop

by

Six poems from EL PLAZO (THE DEADLINE)

16.
Desapareceríamos todos si las abejas murieran. Por ahora somos cuatro: dos adultos y dos crías que cargar en brazos en caso necesario. Pronostican una marcha tranquila, aunque el zumbido nos alcance en las próximas jornadas. Como alimento llevamos la oscura miel de la familia, indigesta, dulzona. Los nuevos evitamos derramarla, ya que una gota perdida trae la maldición de confundir las criaturas propias. Sin olerla llegó el animalillo de nombre equivocado, en medio del camino.

16.
Were bees to die, we would all disappear. Right now we are just four: two adults and two cubs to carry in our arms if necessary. In spite of the buzz reaching us in the next few days, a peaceful march is predicted. We carry as food for the family our dark sickly sweet indigestible honey. As the newly arrived we take care not to spill a drop as a drop lost would curse us into confusing our own offspring. Not smelling the honey, a little animal with a wrong name appeared into the middle of the road.

17.
Volvemos a casa con la cría y el espacio se ha hecho redondo. Las elásticas paredes ceden a nuestras voces. Parece que el hueco estaba listo desde hace meses, pues cada objeto ocupa su espacio densamente. Sólo a la llegada nos percatamos. Despacio penetramos el aire, conseguimos traspasarlo para cobijar a los nuestros.

17. We return home with the cub into a space that has become round. The elastic walls recede with our voices. It seems the vacuity had been prepared for months, as each object occupies its own dense space. Only after arrival do we realize it as we slowly penetrate the air and manage to cross it to find a shelter for our own.

18.
No rodará, no caerá al vacío. No lo abrazará el aire, continente escueto al principio, península improvisada, isla final. Como en los trucos de magia, existen hilos invisibles, saliva que me ata a tres cuerpos y hace de mí una marioneta ciega.

18.
It will not roll nor fall into a void nor embrace the air, a bare continent at the beginning, an improvised peninsula, an island at the end. As with tricks of magic, invisible threads exist, saliva that ties me to three bodies like a blind marionette.

19.
Cada uno aguarda su turno para respirar. No nos vemos siquiera. Ocupamos salas de cristal con cuerpos transparentes, reflejados al azar. La gran mentira, el espejismo del aire. Mientras, las crías dormitan en la madriguera, repleta de oxígeno su sangre recién nacida.

19.
We each wait for our turn to breathe. We can’t even see each other. Our transparent bodies occupy glass rooms, randomly reflected. The mirage of air, a great lie. Meanwhile, the cubs are dozing snuggled close, their newborn blood full of oxygen.

20.
Escucha a su madre leer un cuento, la historia que lo espera al otro lado. Aún lo separan unos centímetros del designio. Un jabalí descompuesto en el bosque recuerda a ese niño alumbrado a la muerte. El deseo repetido de luna en luna, la tristeza rojiza del vacío. Mujer estéril que sueña al hijo con solo apartar la mano a tiempo.

20.
He listens as his mother reads a story, a story that waits for him from the other side. Yet still a few centimeters separate him from his fate. A rotting boar in the forest resembles the birth of the child born to death. The same desire passed from moon to moon, the reddish sadness of emptiness. A barren woman who dreams her son with only the withdrawal of her hand on time.

21.
Encontraste el sedal entre la arena, lejos del lugar del sacrificio. Casi caíste, y con todo tu cuerpo –uñas, árbol, océano– preguntabas qué era ese hilo. Te dimos palabras precisas, las más adecuadas seguramente. Nos pierde la exactitud. Aún así, siguen muriendo los peces de asfixia, con ese mismo sedal de tus dedos.

21.
You found the fishing line in the sand, far from the place of sacrifice. You almost fell down, and with your whole body – nails, tree, ocean – asked what was that thread. We replied with precise words, surely the most adequate. Exactitude is our undoing. But still fish continue to die of suffocation, with that same thread from your fingers.

Olga Muñoz Carrasco is author of the books: La caja de música (Madrid, Fundación Inquietudes/Asociación Poética Caudal, 2011), El plazo (Madrid, Amargord, 2012), Cada palabra una ceniza blanca (Valencia, Ejemplar Único, 2013), Cráter, danza (Barcelona, Calambur, 2016), 15 Filos (Madrid, Cartonera del escorpión azul, 2021), Tapiz rojo con pájaros (Madrid, Bala Perdida, 2021) and Filo (unpublished). Her editorial work is linked to the Genialogías collection at the Tigres de Papel publishing house and the Lengua de Agua collective. She completed her doctoral studies in Philology in Madrid, USA and Peru, and is currently a professor and researcher at Saint Louis University (Madrid Campus). In Lima she published her monograph Sigiloso desvelo- The poetry of Blanca Varela (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, 2007). She prepared Blanca Varela’s anthology Y todo debe ser mentira (Barcelona, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2020) and in France she has just published her study Palabras para un canto. La escritura en espiral de Blanca Varela (Paris, Belin Éducation/Humensis, 2022). In recent years, her works have appeared in the field of Spanish-American and Spanish poetry. She is part of the research project “El impacto de la guerra civil española en la vida intelectual de Hispanoamérica” (“The impact of the Spanish civil war on the intellectual life of Latin America”) , which led to her book Perú y la guerra civil española. La voz de los intelecturales (Madrid, Calambur, 2013). She also teaches at the José Hierro Foundation (Madrid) and at the Diploma Course on Appreciation and Poetic Studies, Caracas (Venezuela).
 
 
Amparo Arróspide (born in Buenos Aires) is an M.Phil. by the University of Salford. As well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines, she has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento. The latter is part of a trilogy together with Jacuzzi and Hormigas en diaspora, which are in the course of being published. In 2010 she acted as a co-editor of webzine Poetry Life Times, where many of her translations of Spanish poems have appeared, she has translated authors such as Margaret Atwood, Stevie Smith and James Stephens into Spanish, and others such as Guadalupe Grande, Ángel Minaya, Francisca Aguirre, Carmen Crespo, Javier Díaz Gil into English. She takes part in poetry festivals, recently Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) .

Review Press Release Gary Beck’s Double Envelopment Collected Poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop

by


 
Double Envelopment is a page poetry book. Available in paperback with a retail price of $14, ISBN: 978-1-910718-58-2. Published by Purple Unicorn Media.
 
 
Gary Beck has long been a contributor to Poetry Life and Times Artvilla.com over the last decade. In his recent collection of poems Double Envelopment, a collection in response to harsh conditions affecting many of our people, who only want a better future for their children, to quote the author, we already feature some of his poems under the title heading Liberty in Ashes. Beck is a prolific writer, his output over the years is awe inspiring. But what is notable about all his work is his unswerving adherence to style, a particular style, which he never varies from. And this is what is, in my view, one of the most intriguing factors about his works as a poet. It is of course an impeccable style crafted with an expertise at the medium he wishes to portray. His stanzas, often minimal are succinct and pointed directly at the critique he adopts. In fact it is true of most of his works that I have read they are a socio cultural critique viewed from many different perspectives, but always with a compassionate reflection towards the underprivileged and their hardships. Reading his work you follow stanza after stanza in a crisp terse deliberation, that superficially may look simplistically written but in fact are profound and more easily accessible in the form he reaches in them for the reader. Again Beck is a citizen of the USA and much, all in fact of his work centres around its socio cultural milieu. Yet his work is wider than that and finds an appeal and reach of a common humanity that we all embrace. It is a form of poetics that is highly original in its content, because at first glance you are forced to question is this poetry or merely a narrative prose. It is only as you follow the way he develops a theme leading it in its subject matter to deeper enquiry, that you begin to see the subtlety of turn in each stanza poem, of which he seems to have become an adapt of past master, rather easier to test than you might imagine, as when you would attempt to imitate one of his own renditions. Double Envelopment has recently been published and is available at…. http://www.purpleunicornmedia.com/double-envelopment-gary-beck.html 

Urban Sight

The creaky, old homeless woman,
ravaged by unmet demands
pulls her cart of broken dreams
as she trudges unkind streets
that do not welcome outcasts,
concrete without compassion
for relics of once normal lives.

Removal

Winter winds blow harshly
on the abandoned homeless
marooned on city streets
‘til rain and snow drive them off,
no choice but to leave behind
cardboard signs imploring aid,
cardboard mattresses, cardboard blankets
decomposing from the torrent
that washes away the last hope
for primitive survival
before eradication.

Share and…

The great divide
between haves and have nots
is never wider
then at Christmas,
when the wealthy celebrate
on their super yachts
with epicurean pleasures,
while many huddle
in pubic housing
without heat, amenities,
each day a struggle
to endure poverty,
while only a few
can better the lives
of their disadvantaged children

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 3 poetry collections, 14 novels, 3 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 5 books of plays. Published poetry books include: Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order, Contusions, Desperate Seeker and Learning Curve (Winter Goose Publishing). Earth Links, Too Harsh For Pastels, Severance, Redemption Value, Fractional Disorder, Disruptions, Ignition Point, Resonance and Turbulence (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Double Envelopment). Motifs (Adelaide Books). His novels include Extreme Change (Winter Goose Publishing). State of Rage, Wavelength, Protective Agency, Obsess, Flawed Connections and Still Obsessed (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Call to Valor). His short story collections include: A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing). Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Essays of Gary Beck (Cyberwit Publishing). The Big Match and other one act plays (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume 1 and Plays of Aristophanes translated, then directed by Gary Beck, Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume II and Four Plays by Moliere translated then directed by Gary Beck (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume III). Gary lives in New York City.
 
 
 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Gestation. A Poem by Bonnie Bostrom

by 
Gestation


I want to capture a poem;
                   There are thousands swirling
				In my midnight room.

I stalked one into the kitchen
	Where it joined me for a graham cracker
And peanut butter sandwich (crunchy style)
		Along with a fistful of Fritos.

Back in bed,

One shared my pillow and asked ridiculous questions like—
		What is the first name of Aristotle?
And…..
			Why the hell do you keep doing this?
		
		I am in deep desire for the orgasmic climax
Of a poem sought and seduced
			I		nto a stand still
While these dervish lines flying 
			Around my room avoid me, yet tease with 
Flash glimpsed images. 

There is no satiety without the sentences lying
		Layer by layer on a page
				Like the blankets on this bed of torture
Where the very best my mind can muster
							Escapes 
				Before congealing into meaning.

I sift through a thousand partial pictures looking
			 		For that nascent combination of words
	That will condense, make sense and lead to
				Parturition

Bonnie Bostrom has been writing poetry since she mastered cursive. She has published eight books, both solo and in collaboration: The WayShowers, Women Facing Retirement: A Time For Self-Reflection, Quicksilver Dreams, Buddha Nature of the Soutwest, Image & Word: A Dialectic, Born Crazy, Love, Always Love, and Duet. Born Crazy, a memoir, received an Eric Hoffer Finalist Award. She lives in New Mexico with her husband, Jim. Her website is www.bonniebostrom.com.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Mountain Bird and Loquat. A Poem by Richard L. Weissman

by 
Mountain Bird and Loquat

Chinese mountain bird's white belly hungers for sweet,
the fragrant yellow loquat magnets him.
Steady perched midst fragile gnarled branches,
near enough to feed,
yet he wavers uncertain,
black eyes quick dart all round
ever mindful,
ever searching
lest he fall prey.
He longs for safety of nest
but loquat's aroma and sun-yellowed color again call.
Bravely he beaks through downy, red-blushed skin
emboldened by succulent, tangy sweet white-yellow flesh
he repeats until full.
Now soars skyward to home
readies for night
while broken, sun-yellowed loquat remains
exposed brown seeds weep ever earthward
sacrificial in dimmed light.

 
 

 
Bio:
 
Richard L Weissman has written fiction since 1987.
In 2000, his theatrical play, “The Healing” was selected by Abdingdon Theatre for a staged reading Off-Broadway.
Richard is the author of two Wiley Trading titles. His second book, Trade Like a Casino was selected as a Finalist for the 2012 Technical Analyst Book of the Year Award.
 
In 2016, Mr. Weissman completed his historical novel in the tradition of magical realism, “Generations”.
 
In 2020 his poem, “Mountain Bird and Loquat” was selected as the grand prize winner of the Florida Loquat Literary Festival.
 
In addition to hosting, “In Our Craft or Sullen Art” – a biweekly poetry radio talk show, Richard participates in live spoken word events throughout the U.S. https://richard-weissman.com/
on Facebook: @magicalrealismnovels
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

St.Francis. A Poem by Peter Mladinic

by 
St. Francis

Katie Zwerling, leave everything behind
and come with me to St. Francis,
a little town way up in Maine, way up
there, way out there. When people say
out in the middle of nowhere they mean
this place, surrounded by logging roads

cleared a hundred years ago so trucks
could haul logs to populated places.
You’ve seen roads surrounded by trees.
These roads are really surrounded by trees!
You drive on, it’s a bit scary. Nothing’s
around these winding dirt roads but trees

and this town, where we could settle
in a house with heat, air conditioning. 
Would the house have central air?  Maybe.
But it would have electricity, plumbing,
and we’d be close to the logging roads,
get to know them so we wouldn’t get stuck

or lost. People want to be near the ocean,
or a lake or a golf course. I’d take these
logging roads any day over a golf course
or a mall, roads with trees around, pines,
evergreens, no vehicles, except us in ours,
my jeep with a GPS, so as not to get lost.

So much snow in winter, a snowmobile
would be needed.  I could buy one!
Snowsuits to keep us warm. Go out 
on those roads, not too far, and come back
to our house in St. Francis. Both of us
stripped naked I could kiss you all over.

We could make love, then go to a local cafe,
come home, watch Reign on Netflix.
St. Francis has WiFi. We could call people
on our cell phones. When logging roads
were made, did they had telephones way up 
there?  It’s way, way different from here.

 

 
Peter Mladinic has published three books of poems: Lost in Lea, Dressed for Winter, and Falling Awake in Lovington, all with the Lea County Museum Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico. His fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Share