Month: November 2018

#Mountains: Reign of Ash by Michael H. Brownstein

~ califragile ~ 1 Comment

12992_Hawaii-Volcanoes-National-Park-web

This is one of those nights you never dream,
The sky not on fire, but burning.
Falling ash and ember. An orange cantaloupe moon. Nosebleeds. Diarrhea.

The volcano dome collapses, a sudden cloud, and night is hyphenated.
A rain of black ash
And all of the stars drop from sight in bundles.

The people come out of their homes and stand on their verandas,
A people of the long knife and volcanic dust,
Skin hard with ash, hair ash-poisoned, ash sweat stew.

Spirits roam the roads and pathways, find life in the old ones,
The village’s simple center crowded into the hill,
Welcomes the voices of the dead.

Later island rescue comes with breathing masks,
A church opens its doors early to pray for rain,
Goats come from their hiding places to shake themselves free.

All day dust clouds landscape and window.
The mountain sacrifices itself to lahars and spirit people.
Everything, every leaf, every iguana, every ghost wrapped in ash.

 

 

Michael H. Brownstein is on the roof of his old house, the roof in serious disrepair, and he walks on it as if he’s on a boardwalk – a squirrel falls through where he just stood – what is left to do but go to all fours, tread carefully until he’s on safe ground, call the roofers (he can’t fix this), and write a poem.

He’s walking across a great field, firecrackers exploding. He swats away at dozens of mosquitoes. Near where he teaches, the security guard tackles him and points out a sniper who has been shooting at him as he crossed. There is nothing else to do but conduct a poetry workshop in his algebra class.

He goes camping, and a rattlesnake crawls into his sleeping bag. Prayer and poetry – they really do go together.

On and on. Take a break. Write a poem.

#Mountains: Mountain Ants by Tamara Madison

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

photo by Davidi. Mountain Ants Tamara Madison

Up here the sky
is a thin blue skirt
the dusty summer sunlight
smells of woodsmoke
and pine
and ants grow big
and black as berries.

I watch them follow
their secret trails
in the fine mountain dust,
envy them their purpose
and their path, wonder
at their sturdy black bodies,
imagine a breakfast
of ant jam.

 

First published in Wild Domestic, by Pearl Editions.

 

 

Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook The Belly Remembers, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine, all published by Pearl Editions. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, the Writer’s Almanac and other publications. She is thrilled to have just retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school.

 

Photograph by Dawidi.

Crescent Smile by Victoria Crawford

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

BattleofIssusDetail Albrecht Altdorfer Victoria Crawford Crescent

The Moon smiling
Cheshire cat grin,
dimpled star chin
twinkles below.

Alice questions
to stay or go;
the Moon may show
her mysteries.

 

 

Victoria Crawford is a poet from Monterey, California, currently living in Thailand where nature explodes in the serious season of rain and sun called the monsoon. Holy days are governed by the fullness of the moon not the sun calendar.

 

Detail of painting, Battle of Issus, by Albrecht Altdorfer.

Three Poems by Kala Ramesh

~ califragile ~ 2 Comments

meghduta-k2aE--621x414@LiveMint

trying to merge
with twilight’s oneness: but
those monkeys
go nonstop
inside my chattering mind

 

on a forest trail
as leaves change colour
I admire
the walking meditation
of insects

 

forest bathing
I tune in
to the trees

 

forest bathing was first published in Holden Arboretum Haiku Path.

 

 

Kala Ramesh – Poet, editor, anthologist, Kala’s initiatives culminated in founding INhaiku to bring Indian haiku poets under one umbrella in 2013. She has taught haiku and allied genres at Symbiosis International University and the Katha National Writers Workshop since 2013. To bring haiku into everyday spaces, Kala initiated HaikuWALL, haikuTRAIL, haikuTALK, haikuWORKSHOP, haikuYOUTH, haikuUTSAV, haikuDHYANA andhaikuSTAGE – a weaving together of art forms. SAMVAAD :: the open sky — a dialogue to bring writers of different poetic genres together is her latest venture. She is the editor of four haiku, tanka and haibun journals. Kala has been a speaker at several national and international literary festivals.

Kala co-edited the award winning Naad Anunaad: an Anthology of Contemporary World Haiku (Vishwakarma Publication 2016, Pune),  Wishbone Moon (Jacar Press 2018, USA) and  EquiVerse SPACE (Notion Press 2018, Mumbai), co-authored with Marlene Mountain the e-book  one-line twos (Bones Journal 2016, Denmark), authored a tanka e-chapbook Unseen Arc (Snapshot Press 2017, UK) and two print books: Haiku and the Companion Activity Book (Katha Books 2010, reprint 2017, New Delhi) and Beyond the Horizon Beyond Haiku & Haibun (Vishwakarma Publication 2017, Pune).

Trees Tell Our Future by Wren Tuatha

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

dead tree wall crop
The bark beetle blight burns
across Nimshew Ridge
and every other slope

on the coast. Nimshew,
little water in the language
of the people who are gone

from here. The drought weakens.
The Roundup weakens.
Three acres behind my cabin

become a Union battlefield
in the time of Trump.
the fallen stacked, crisscrossed,

fifty score. Open blasting blue.
Exposure, some lid lifted.
This place will not be woods

again in our time. Ponderosas
are prognosticators. Township
to cul de sac, people will fall

to the blight they brought.
They bought it at the mall,
stacking containers and dust

collectors, widgets to plug
in that blink or smell.
Trappings made in Turkey

for holidays of distraction.
Let us be thankful.

 

First published in The Bees Are Dead.

Wren Tuatha’s poetry has appeared in The Cafe Review, Canary, Peacock Journal, Coachella Review, Baltimore Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Loch Raven Review, Clover, Lavender Review and others. She’s editor of Califragile. Her chapbook Thistle and Brilliant was a semi-finalist in the 2018 New Women’s Voices Contest and is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Wren and her partner, author/activist C.T. Lawrence Butler, herd skeptical goats on a mountain in California.

Photograph by Wren Tuatha. 

Baritone Body by Daniel B. Summerhill

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

shaping-of-black-america.jpg!Large

Body-
breaking, 
		     black bodies
bodies	        breaking
	besides gurneys 
news,
	    breaking news!

A bodies been broke,

		Black
		Boy
		Bad
		  Broken
		  Bronzed
		  Bucked
		Brazen
		Baritone

		Eulogy-	Black
			Boy
			Bad
		Broken
		Bronzed
		Bucked
			Brazen
			Baritone

			Broken

		Breaking

			Bodies

 

 

Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet and performance artist from Oakland, CA. Currently an MFA candidate at Boston’s Pine Manor College, Daniel has performed and taught guest workshops and lectures throughout the U.S, Europe, and South Africa. He has published two collections of poems, Crafted and Brown Boys on Stoops, and has been asked to perform at Ted Talk and Def Jam Poetry with Danny Simmons. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Pine Hills Review, Cosmonauts Avenue and The Voice among others.

 

Artwork, Shaping of Black America, by Charles Wilbert White.

#Mountains: Burlington Airport by Joe Cottonwood

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

Burlington Airport Joe Cottonwood photo by Anlace

Two men in T-shirts are sun-roughened,
muscular in the non-gym way.
They know physical work.

On the window glass with a smudgy finger
the older man sketches a map from memory.
They speak of a trickling spring.
A field cleared by hand, a fence of stone.
Twin graves on a hill.

The younger man says, “That little mountain,
every time I set foot on it, I felt hugged.”
Embarrassed, they each look away
to the tarmac where jets are rolling.
Newark. Chicago. Some city. Now boarding.

 

 

Joe Cottonwood has built or repaired hundreds of houses in his day job as carpenter/contractor. Nights, he writes. His latest book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast.

 

Photograph by Anlace.

Come the Day by Nolan Meditz

~ califragile ~ 1 Comment

louisiana_zombie_afternoon_1_by_frogstar_23-dbmhdbi

Someday the sun, ceasing its fire
and spiral toward dust or increase
in density—a reaching toward
a haul of iterant rocks
tumbling—will as it always has,
only this time more starkly,
fail to recognize you.

 

 

Nolan Meditz was born and raised on Long Island, where he received his MFA at Hofstra University in 2014. He received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2018 and will begin teaching writing at Southwestern Oklahoma State University this fall. His poetry has appeared in Roanoke Review, AMP: Journal of Digital Literature, Mockingheart Review and The Wild Word among other publications.

 

Art by Jenn Zed.

#Immigration: Me, Too by Barbara Henning

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

pelezhomeless

—rheumatic fever—turns the skin—yellow—a heart, scarred——soon—my mother says—you will—take my place—I wear her old stockings—dye my hair henna—like hers—smoke cigarettes—wear red lipstick—her fringed leather jacket—at 18—at the sewing machine—my foot is hers—pressing the pedal—there’s a murmur—in your heart—the doctor says—but soon it will heal—in the afternoon—I birth a child—walk down the hallway—in her turquoise bathrobe—at the zoo—an old female orangutan—locks eyes—with a young woman—breastfeeding a baby—yes, she nods, me, too—at 37—my two children sound asleep—and all of a sudden—I wake up—surprised to be alive—what about—the others—I think—the motherless migrants—the refugees—the cumulative wound—rooms—that murmur—and whisper—remember me—take care of them—take care of you— (20 May 2017)

First published in The Journal of Poetics Research.

 

 

Barbara Henning is the author of several collections of poetry, her most recent A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press 2015). Other recents include A Swift Passage (Quale Press), Cities and Memory (Chax Press) and a collection of object-sonnets, My Autobiography (United Artists). She has published three novels, Thirty Miles to Rosebud, You Me and the Insects and Black Lace, and she is the editor of Looking Up Harryette Mullen and The Collected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins. Born in Detroit, Barbara lives in Brooklyn and teaches for Long Island University, as well as writers.com. http://barbarahenning.com

 

Painting Homeless by Fernand Pelez. 

Daddy’s Friend, Stan by Alexis Rhone Fancher

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

daddy's friend stan alexis rhone fancher photo by muffinn

1.
Stan likes me in those cut off jeans that fringe
my upper thighs, fringe I unravel when I watch
TV, after my homework’s done.

I do it for Stan.

2.
He says I’m rocking this silver
bikini. It makes my nipples hard.

3.
He says in this suit I look like “moonlight
flickering in a jar.”

4.
Swimming laps.
Going nowhere. Disastrous
pair: Daddy’s flirty little girl, and his
good friend, Stan. Beer in hand. Watching
when he thinks no one’s watching.

I swim for Stan.

5.
Smolder-eyed, half-lidded, snake.

6.
He almost touched me.
He never touched me.
He almost never touched me:

Choose one.

7.
Driving me home from
Northridge, Stan’s daughter, Ruthie
asleep in back; me, strapped in
front, the seatbelt dissecting my
budding breasts.

Stan’s speeding,
his eyes on the road,
left hand on the wheel,
right hand lost in the no-man’s land
between my knees and thighs.
“Shhh!” he soothes when I whimper,
afraid he’s gone too far.

He thumbs the fabric instead of me,
whistles the theme from
Mission Impossible.

That fringe! That fringe! Oh, that fringe!

 

First published in Quaint Magazine. Nominated for Best of The Net 2015.

 

 

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Plume, Rattle, Diode, Rust & Moth, Nashville Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She is the author of How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems,(2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), and Enter Here (2017). A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.
http://www.alexisrhonefancher.com

 

Photograph by Muffinn.

Where the Oldest Gods Lived by Patricia Nelson

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

 

Liliyam Parva Iranian artist

Dark rock and cold, bright water.
Edges of great height, large lines
where sky and shadow move without rest.

Nothing that implies the things
alert and toothed and tilted at the eye,
the little warm cries with large, absurd intentions.

There’s no way to foretell the change
that will dull the rocks
with a callus of creatures.

No animal to eat things smaller
and more beautiful than itself.
Nothing that flees or tricks or dies

among the thoughtlessly strong.
Nothing yet that moves the gods to leave,
to lift like angry waters over black rock.

The old gods see the sky come down
to those alive and temporary, dragging its particles,
making its gradual case for blue or gray or cold.

The sky holds too the gods’ migration,
the odd wish to watch the mortal and the accidental,
to want the foolish awe, the alteration.

 

 

Patricia Nelson is a retired attorney who has worked with the Activist group of poets in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her most recent book is Spokes of Dream or Bird, Poetic Matrix Press.

 

Painting, On Coming News, by Liliyam Parva. Used by permission.

 

Caged Skylark By Gerard Manley Hopkins

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

Dorothea Lange migrant farm workers

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells –
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest –
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen.

 

Gerard Manly Hopkins, 1944-1889.

 

Photograph by Dorothea Lange, 1895-1965. 

#Mountains: The Mountain by Tamara Madison

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

Kuznetsov_008-1

My child sleeps on her stomach;
one arm crawls over her head
like a swimmer’s,
mouth with lush lips
open, a constellation
of moles on her shoulder
stray stars flung
about the rest of her.
Her breath is a breeze
moving curtains, one lock
of hair curls up from her earlobe
to lick the new, rose-lit
earring. With many rings,
bracelets of plastic lace,
I watch her gaily skirt the foothills
of adolescence, just poised
to make the climb; still
the mountain looms
and she sleeps
in its deep green shadow.

 

First published in Wild Domestic, by Pearl Editions.

 

 

Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook The Belly Remembers, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine, all published by Pearl Editions. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, the Writer’s Almanac and other publications. She is thrilled to have just retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school.

 

Painting by Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kuznetsov.

# Mountains: High on Her Mountain, the Witch Witch Warms Herself by Michael H. Brownstein

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

karin_dreijer_anderson_by_frogstar_23-dcd3vjs.png

The witch witch wakes hungry
ice on her breath,
clouds in her hair,
underwear gray and red,
warts sprawled across her arms.
There are always people who are meant to harm you.
The witch witch is not one of them.
She can dig a shallow grave,
pray over a cat at play with a mouse,
squash a scorpion between thumb and forefinger.
The witch witch sees the dormant volcano
through an opening in her wall,
the sudden rise of steam, the push
of ash like wet sand,
the beautiful collapse of the dome.
She walks onto her veranda,
folds her small hands into a smile,
and watches the mountain catch fire.

 

 

Michael H. Brownstein is on the roof of his old house, the roof in serious disrepair, and he walks on it as if he’s on a boardwalk – a squirrel falls through where he just stood – what is left to do but go to all fours, tread carefully until he’s on safe ground, call the roofers (he can’t fix this), and write a poem.

He’s walking across a great field, firecrackers exploding. He swats away at dozens of mosquitoes. Near where he teaches, the security guard tackles him and points out a sniper who has been shooting at him as he crossed. There is nothing else to do but conduct a poetry workshop in his algebra class.

He goes camping, and a rattlesnake crawls into his sleeping bag. Prayer and poetry – they really do go together.

On and on. Take a break. Write a poem.

 

Watercolor by Jenn Zed. 

#ElectionDay: Go Gather Wood by Pablo Cuzco

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

prague-mural-lennon-3

Go gather wood for your fires boys,
gather wood to burn | don’t pick wood that’s wet or rotten,
or it will not burn ::the cherry trees stand withered,
the orchards bare and dry | the grass parched and dying
by a scourge sent from the sky.

The leaves eaten by the sun,
the water line is clear | the lake is showing rooftops
of a town once disappeared ::it rains and rains for days on end,
so the fires burn out | the sun shines from the sky,
suddenly it’s a drought.

There’s flooding in the valley,
chaos in the hills | the roads washed out by the creek
that once ran deep and still | the river swollen to the banks,
the farmlands turned to swamp | the city center’s four feet deep
of a rage that just won’t stop.

The government is sending troops and sandbags by the score,
but the angry skies won’t listen, tomorrow—
another storm | the national guard stands ready
with its soldiers and their guns | but the thunder’s roll is louder,
the battle has begun.

pennsylvania-primary-election-guide-3

 

Pablo Cuzco is an American writer of poetry and short stories. He spent his early years in France and Germany with his family. In his teens, he traveled across America with guitar in hand, writing songs and jotting memories along the way. Now, living in the Southwest with his wife, he has time to reflect and share those stories. His works can be found at Underfoot Poetry, The Big Windows Review, and on his blog Pablo Cuzco – in My Mind’s Eye.

Two Poems by Pablo Cuzco

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

01.swallows.0323.mg

The Swallows Have Left

The orchards are bare
the sun no longer shines.
Waters flood the mainland,
avocados shrivel from a lingering drought.
There’s a sign on the door that reads:
“The Bees are Gone for the Season—
We’ll pray for rain but wait for the sun.”

…the swallows have left Capistrano.

 

The Swallows Refuse to Return

The greenback was once well oiled
till renewable energy raised its serpent head.
Hybrids and Uber-Lyft rides on the cheap—
promoted by Utopian masters of the carbon footprint.

A clock’s revolution | a turn of the hand.
A paradigm shift racing toward the event horizon,
the Singularity threatens neural networks with artificial constructs
—a perfect Anthropocene storm.

::you must remember this—we send our boys to war
but bring home *men* in caskets.
Sweethearts wave as trains leave the station—

…the swallows refuse to return to Capistrano.

 

 

Pablo Cuzco is an American writer of poetry and short stories. He spent his early years in France and Germany with his family. In his teens, he traveled across America with guitar in hand, writing songs and jotting memories along the way. Now, living in the Southwest with his wife, he has time to reflect and share those stories. His works can be found at Underfoot Poetry, The Big Windows Review, and on his blog Pablo Cuzco – in My Mind’s Eye.

Stress Positions by Risa Denenberg

~ califragile ~ Leave a comment

531px-Vrksasana

In yoga, when limbs tremble and bend,
I rest in child’s pose and dwell on stress
positions pressed on prisoners. My slight
discomfort weighed against their agony.

In tree pose, I’m a tent post in a muddy
bivouac. I confine my limbs in eagle pose,
as limbless orphans concoct makeshift sports.
In crow pose, I think of stateless refugees

who occupy camps where small caged birds
are the preferred pets. Lying in corpse pose
I wonder how many graves are lost at sea.
My sadness useless as a prayer.

 

First published in slight faith, MoonPath Press.

 

 

Risa Denenberg lives on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state where she works as a nurse practitioner. She is a co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, publisher of LBT poetry. She has published three chapbooks and three full length collections of poetry, including “Whirlwind @ Lesbos” (Headmistress Press, 2016) and “slight faith” (MoonPath Press, 2018).

 

Photograph by Judith.