Bruce McRae
The coming and going of things,
time altering itself, adjusting temperatures,
refining seasonal light, making all the difference.
A darker morning than the month before,
Venus struggling in the lower atmosphere,
the stars reassessing their previous stance,
Planet Home circumnavigating the galactic rim,
pulling us by the hand as if an untoward child.
Sitting at the littoral edge of the world,
summer packing it in, autumn shaking in the wings,
alterations accruing at the cellular level,
otherness replacing otherness on the big wheel
and little I can do about it,
ruination unenviable but always in fashion.
Losing my grip to a false sense of accomplishment.
An exasperating cavalcade of light and circumstance,
youth fossilized, the middle ages genuflecting
before a darker age approaching.
When the last is first and nothing lasts.
Where we make mansions of the ephemeral
and a door closes for evermore,
gravity’s top wobbling as you reach for the wine.
The Earth running down. The light tiring.
 
Pushcart nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 900 poems published internationally, including Poetry.com, Rattle and The North American Review. His first book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’, is available via Silenced Press and Amazon. To see and hear more poems go to ‘BruceMcRaePoetry’ on YouTube.

Josh Anthony
Listen to the poem:

 
Nothing smart. Another drink. more smoke,           cover my skin in the nights,
the nights,              the nights. It comes with a light shift,
it comes with the absent fingers on my back. There’s the news.
Some turn of event.           Itching beneath the broken bone.
Flick off the ash from your sweater. Collapse the tent,
tilt your body weight into the dirt,           scratch your rib, part of an organ
that exploded when you were 10,000 years old.
This desk holds your weight well.
Someone takes a picture. Are you
smiling
yet? Where’s B.?         Sure that’s where we can lay down.
These ashes are       beautiful, don’t flick it all off yet,
let it smudge       right here in your hand, we’ll call it a word.
It’s always        the dirt in the glass, here’s a toothpick,
let’s see          how the gum sticks. No, the
roof              is perfect, it’s perfect.
 
Josh Anthony really tries, really, he tries. He is endlessly thankful for past publications, including Sleet Magazine, Dead Flowers: A Poetry Rag, Meat for Tea, The Screaming Sheep, Slipstream, and The Oklahoma Review, among others. Josh lives in the shadow of Mt. Fuji.

R.A. Morean
Listen to the story:

I adjusted my Army Surplus belt and made sure I had extra pencils in the canvas flap.  The larger pocket was supposed to hold a metal canteen, but my diary fit perfectly. On the other side, the straps to tiny little kid fold-up binoculars were woven through the eyelets, and I had a snake bite kit in my rear pocket.  Not that there were that many rattlers, but I liked the romance. Ready to go out and play and “take notes” on people in my neighborhood I caught my friend staring at me, the ice cream cone starting to drip in her hand.
“You better lick that,” I offered.
“You need to read Harriet the Spy,” Mary Garret volleyed back.  She did, however, attend to her rocky road. “You’re just like her.”
Just like her. Those three words to an eleven year old could engender either wrath  or coy self-confidence.
“You sure you don’t want to come and take notes?” I said, hefting the belt and cinching it a bit tighter around my waist.
“Read the book,” she said.
So I did.  That weekend, and suddenly my world changed.
Here was a girl who wanted to be a writer.   So did I.  I had already written my own autobiography, wittily titled Ykceb (Becky backwards), a short novella about a gang of art thieves and the plucky woman Interpol agent who investigates them, and a sad clutch of over wrought poems about water pollution, my dog, owl pellets and smog. But more than that, Harriet did exactly what I did, except she named things. Harriet didn’t just “take notes,” she spied on people.  She wrote in something she called a “notebook,” and she wore a “spy belt,” and she said things like “rat fink,” which I started using the moment I slammed the cover shut in what I hoped was a Harriet-like fashion. So I co-opted her language and suddenly my little adventures became a “spy route” and instead of just peeking in windows and hiding in people’s backyards hoping to hear a snatch of a fight, I was now a spy.  A real spy.
Everything I did had a name, and with the name a purpose, and with purpose came, effortlessly, wild adventure.  I read the book over and over. Focused intently on Harriet’s sublime confidence and then her decent into friendlessness, I ate the book up. This sounds clichéd, but I mean I actually ate the book.  Like ardent people of faith who devour the Bible or Quran, tearing pieces of tissue thin paper and stewing the pages, drinking the ink and chewing the pulp seeking to have the spirit of the words in their bones, I ate the Harriet the Spy.  I couldn’t help myself. I‘d bend over and bite the corners off as I read, swallowing, as if I were taking a host. The librarian at school finally asked me why the top corners of the pages were all chewed away.  “My dog,” I said.  “My dog just likes the ends.” Then the bottom corners began to fray.
The spy route, now named, became a place where risks could be taken.  Before, when I called it “play,” as in “I’m going out to play,” I just sat and listened.  Now I scampered down hillsides, found a poor old man sunning naked in the back yard, climbed into a car where teens were drinking beer, and listened to Gary and Martha Wiltweed talk about “making ends meet.”  My most notorious exploit remains the Devenshires, however.
The Denvonshires were Jehovah Witnesses and looking back, living in the Southern California desert, I am sure they felt out of place. But they were having a rip roaring argument about whether or not to give medicine to one of their children. I strained to hear what they were saying from my perch on a rock under their bedroom window.
“Well why did you pick up the prescription in the first place?” said Mr. Devonshire.
I could hear his wife crying.  When they left the bedroom, I lost them, and I was stumped.  What would Harriet do? Harriet with her can-do attitude and fearless disregard for the manners of life, was a spy and I could take her lead.  Harriet, I decided would go inside.   If only there was a dumbwaiter I could climb in to.
Because all the homes were cookie cutter ranches, I knew I had to settle on hiding in the pantry in the kitchen. So I carefully opened the back door, crept into past the sink and slipped into their pantry keeping the door slightly ajar, and I could hear….everything.
My heart slammed against my ribs when Mrs. Deveonshire came into the kitchen, still crying.  Mr. Deveonshire leaned against the sink and lectured her about the Bible. They shouted some more and then she put her hand on the door handle to the pantry.  I held my breath. This was it.  She would pull open that door and see some vaguely familiar girl in jeans and a red and white striped shirt, short wild curly hair, a notebook with writing, and some weird belt with stuff hanging off of it.  Both horrified and exhilarated, I stood my ground.
Her hand dropped from the handle. Mr. Devonshire stopped yelling and rubbed the back of her neck with his hand and then they kissed. Right there.  Grown up drama.  It could not get better. Harriet would be proud. Harriet was proud.
Harriet saw me through high school, followed me to college and then from the west coast to the east coast.  She watched my children grow up and became a part of their lives.  I learned that naming things is critical and that with names can come purpose.
Years later, when my husband proposed to me, I said “yes” with two qualifiers: 1) I would keep my last name and 2) he would let me read him Harriet the Spy.  He gallantly agreed to both. Now he is gone, but Harriet remains.  Three ratty old copies of the book sit on my desk holding me fast to who I am and what I wanted to be. And, as it turned out, I am a writer.
 
R. A. Morean is a short story writer, essayist and novelist. We’ve Got This, an unapologetic beach read, debuts September 8th. Azimuths (December 1) represents a 20 year literary process. Both were satisfying to write. A professor at Sinclair College, she also serves as president of the Antioch Writers’ Workshop.

David Anthony Sam
There the kitchen,
my kitchen,
age-warped windows
distorting the garden of burials
where four dogs
and twelve cats
molder my life
with a fence that keeps
their silence shaded in mornings
by the lilac
that needs thinning
and does not blooms
another spring.
 
Here my sink,
the right basin plugged slow
like the history of my veins—
And here my stove,
its four gas burners
that glow blue—
and the oven below
where I must bake
more bread.
 
Wait…wait.
Wait the door to my
dining room,
the dark walnut
dining table and buffet and china cabinet
we bought used from…
when was that,
what were their names? Wait…just wait
here at the door.
 
The archway here
to my living room,
my chair, my stand
with crosswords puzzled
still unfinished,
my pen,
my notebook with poems still
unfinished,
my unread books there
on the unfinished shelf
he started
to make and never stained. Wait.
 
Begin again, here, my kitchen,
here my refrigerator, the GE
that needs defrosting, wait—
we gave that one away
decades ago.
Here my new refrigerator,
open it,
here is the milk and eggs.
Here is the cupboard,
open the spices
that flavored so many
memories
and flour.
 
Wait…please wait.
The end of the story,
I guess.
There in my kitchen.
Where
is my bedroom?
I have to get my life back.
How do I get my life back?
 
Wait, no—it is not here,
not here.
I guess it’s time to write another
story.
While my hands fade
and cannot open memories more.
Cannot knead the bread that needs
baking, feed the cats
and outside
feed the birds, squirrels, chipmunks.
 
No, no, wait.
I am forgetting my
kitchen curtains.
They yellow in the sun
I cannot see.
Here is not—
Time is not again.
Who bakes now,
who feeds now,
who knows where my
kitchen is and what remains
undone there?
Who knows me
when I cannot get my life
back there, there
is my kitchen—Wait.
 
David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years with two collections. He lives in Culpeper, Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda. Sam was the featured poet in the December 2015 issue of The Hurricane Review and was a 2017 nominee for the Pushcart Prize.