Adelaide Literary Award Anthology 2019 - POETRY

A Hundred Crisp Winters

by Edward V. Bonner

A Hundred Crisp Winters
I heard thy crisp winter voice.
Clear rich unpredictable winds,
magical as frosted diamonds
whisk in the sky.
Nature’s leafless limbs divulged a hundred winters
paralleled to life’s mysteries.

The northern pines tossed their cones
to the song of the babbling brook.
This rhythmic sound echoed in the valley,
like the earth’s howling wilderness,
gallant with mastery and force.

Shining through various pathways
the sun produced a bluish orb
that pillowed deep
into this ancient forest.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

The land fashioned
a heady perfume
with hypnotic spices
coveting the human mind.

From this unplanted forest dwelling,
where fallen acorns feed the deer, the turkey, the squirrel
and many more,
is God’s blessing to the world.

We must understand the reason
behind his love,
and not destroy his gift
to the human man, woman and child.
We must protect for all eternity.

Edward Bonner grew up in a rough area of Pittsburgh Penn-
sylvania, a small mill town called Hazelwood. An avid out-
doorsman, he holds degrees in business and aeronautics, an
A&P license, and 6th degree black belt in Shotokan karate. He
is the author of poetry collections One Kiss – Just One Kiss
and Through the Eyes of a Lost Boy. A regular contributor to
Adelaide Literary Magazine, he is the Finalist of the Adelaide
Voices Literary Contest 2018.

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Rising Dough

by Donny Barilla

Into the breads of her soft arms, I quiver
above the pulse of her warm veins.

Placing her breasts against the most rigid of bones and blood,
I sulk alive in the dance of her fullness and rhythms.

Upon following the thick milk and heavy cream,
I fasten to the posture of her waist and
the goblets of her rising dough.

As she dips through thee fragrant waves of
the quivering grass, meadow and field,
the sun glances in the Autumn sky.

Every shadow licks across my flesh, neck and arms.

We wander to the creek as I slumber across
the valley of her full, danp bosoms.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

Most eager and cool, I struggle through the
fabrics and heat of her flooding summit
which I find upon arrival.

Donny Barilla, living in the beautiful state of Pennsylvania,
devotes his evenings and nights to writing poetry. He published
over seventy poems in magazines and literary journals. He has
twenty-three books in libraries, both academic and public. He
hosts readings and signings on a frequent basis. Coming in
the first place of the Adelaide Literary Award for poetry, two
thousand and eighteen, many of his pursuits have come in the
direction of charities for children in need. Donny released his
first two books, ‘Treasures’ and ‘Dance Upon the Forest Floor.’
Numerous more rest on the horizon as Donny writes daily con-
stantly trying to improve upon his craft. With nature standing
as his backdrop for his poems, Donny pulls on the heartstrings
of his messages and stays as a disciplined artist.

102

City of Narcissus,
City of Icarus

by Monique Gagnon German

We walk these city streets
with their sunset gold
and dollar green glass buildings
reflecting our steps along
blocks and stories of businesses.

Our pace is brisk. Predicted storms
move in above our heads as we stride
faster than the crush of cars beside us
emitting tangled streams of exhaust and frustration
anxiously inching the length of pumped brakes

We have felt days like this before
and chose different means of escape,
uncertain of purpose and connection
you went above it all, while I sunk down beneath.
This time, we won’t make the same mistakes.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

The cars shine, pack of mirrored turtles
reflecting parts of us separately,
stretching flashes of arms, heads, legs
into skinny flying snakes.
You: up the door of a silver BMW,
Me: along the fender of a lake blue Infiniti FX.

When we stop and laugh for a second
about this game we’re playing with perspective,
the traffic lunges, splashing muddy stains
against our legs
reminders how webs can snatch
the distracted into an assembly
of unexpected endings.

The batting of storm clouds spreads
above our heads thickens into clots, darkening,
pretending softness while threatening rain:
precipitous stones to be cast in our image
at our images, again and again, startling us
back to our smallness on the street
standing in the tangy smell of worms and asphalt
as the barrage of cold taps mark us with wet claw prints.

We are stilled statues in this moment
fathoming Atlantis not buried in reef
waiting for the river of cars to part
and let us cross the painted street
where flashing lights and distorted sirens
impede the destination we seek

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and that’s when the sky spits
faster bullets, icy signs warning us
to pick our direction now and sprint
as far as we can get or find
the closest awning to huddle under,
pretend we aren’t looking for a better place.

But we just stand there under it, in it,
doused and waiting
maybe for some other factor to intervene
and either crush us immediately,
or kindly point the way.

If you were looking for it, you’d find Monique Gagnon Ger-
man’s poetry and fiction in over 40 journals/anthologies in-
cluding: Rosebud, California Quarterly, Tampa Review, Off
the Coast, The Ilanot Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, and,
The Wayfarer. Monique is a Pushcart Prize and “Best of the
Net” nominee. Her flash-fiction and short stories have been
featured in: Kalliope, A Journal of Women’s Literature & Art,
The MacGuffin, Adelaide Literary Review, Typishly, and, Run-
ning Wild Press’s 2019 Anthology of Short Fiction. For more
Monique: http://moniquegagnongerman.webs.com/

105

Immensity

by Susie Gharib

He accuses me of being in love with immensity,
which excludes him and a large proportion of humanity.
I ponder over his statement and the possibility of its veracity
and decide to examine every immense element
in my mental and emotional spheres
that has overshadowed his cordiality.
I admit that I do prefer contemplating
the sea to a café’s joviality.
The blueness that mirrors the sky’s with its soothing fluidity
becomes a stage for emotions imprisoned in a bosom
that cannot unburden its concerns
in a commercial, public facility,
where people incessantly talk without listening to each other –
I call it the speech surreality.
The fumes weaved by cigarettes and endless rows
of kindled hubble-bubbles smother my lungs
that gasp for any nuance of terrestrial, aerial purity.
The glittering masks behind which every interlocutor hides
induces a state of turgidity

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that leaves every nerve taut with constraint
and nausea with middle-class modernity.
Eyes survey the inmates of the café
like a radar in search of the enemy’s plane
and quickly swoop over its prey with unabashed cruelty,
ripping and slashing the target identity
with gossip-based data or with fabrications
instantaneously composed under necessity.
This is the main entertainment in this part of the Middle East,
reducing outcasts like myself into oddities.

I do at times wade into the immensity
of a book in the same way Stevie Smith’ Joan
steps into Turner’s world to experience eternal liberty,
but unlike Joan, I come back after
having a draught of freedom
to a world of servility.
Bookish women in this part of the world
are nicknamed with various epithets
that connote a freakish individuality.
It is the singleness of the erudite
that makes them substitute reality with intellectuality.
Their refusal to conform to their procreative nature
transforms them into bookworms,
further estranging them from commonality,
a breed that poses a threat to every woman
who entirely relies upon her femininity.

I am also enamored with the immensity of invisible feats.
An act of kindness from a well-cloaked hand

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

frees the receiver from any sense of indebtedness,
endowing the giver with the gift of infinite generosity.
Unconditional love leaves the object of adoration
unshackled by any sense of obligation,
purging the bearer of love of selfishness
that is capable of transforming amity into everlasting enmity.
A smile that is born of the labor of hidden anguish
scintillates with immense luminosity.

Dr. Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde.
Her poetry and fiction have appeared in various magazines
such as Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Curlew, The Ink
Pantry, A New Ulster, Down in the Dirt, the Pennsylvania
Literary Journal, Mad Swirl, and The Opiate.

108

What You Hold

by Carole Langille

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water
You could be that tree
that sends out roots
While it is still light you believe you could be
that tree that holds the land in place
during heavy rain.
You could be water — crosscurrents, riptides and all –
but deep in the ground
clear and cold, keeping trees alive,
replenishing as it rises
or falls, bends
or doesn’t bend. Like Atlas,

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

that ancient god who held
what looked to you like the world
on his back. And all yield fruit
in season Even when you don’t get
the golden apple
or the gold, when a morning glory
is the glory,
especially then, it’s good to know
(without and sometimes with
grace) that you have held and will hold,
not the earth on your shoulders
or sky, but for moments at a time
and just in time
everything together.

Carole Langille is author of four books of poetry and two
collections of short stories.

110

A Prayer to Invisible Stars

by Lowell Jaeger

On our rented motor scooter
weaving through the breeze along the shore,
we inhale forgotten simple joys
of youth once more — our skin toasted brown,
our hair bleached with brine, the horizon
so blue, so generous, so deceptively endless.

We are in love and long married, no
small miraculous adventure on its own, having lasted
past crashing along the long road. And now
we carry with us what survives. We wear it
like a flag, a truce of goodwill, the two of us
scooting inland toward our hotel, past military

guards posted at gates to the base,
their black rifles in hand, stern-faced
and dutiful. We see the danger; don’t misunderstand us,
please. They’re just boys, my wife says, and says it

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

with a heart full of hard-earned forgiveness, says it
like a prayer to invisible stars, the ones we know,

eternally burning through darkness. She waves,
and the soldiers lower their guns, just boys again,
smiling and waving. Don’t misunderstand; we comprehend
the world is hemorrhaging sadness. Our small cause
is to risk our brittle skulls on an open highway
in a foreign land. We hold fast to love. We hold to the other

and won’t let go.

Lowell Jaeger (Montana Poet Laureate 2017-2019) is founding
editor of Many Voices Press and Professor of English/Creative
Writing at Flathead Valley Community College (Kalispell,
Montana), where he also serves as Humanities Division Chair.
He is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, winner of the
Grolier Poetry Peace Prize, and recipient of fellowships from
the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts
Council. Lowell was awarded the Montana Governor’s Hu-
manities Award for his work in promoting civil civic discourse.
He is the author of eight collections of poems, the most recent
of which are Or Maybe I Drift Off Alone (Shabda Press 2016),
Earth-blood & Star-shine (Shabda Press 2018), and Someday
I’d Write This Down (Shabda Press 2019).

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Because of Everything

by Sandra Kolankiewicz

I had less time than I thought but finished any
way, what husbands would call passive

aggressive in my desire to complete
what I have begun even if I don’t

like the end I see coming. While some won’t
start, and others cannot stop, I’m compelled

to do both, even following through on
what I don’t believe in, the DNA

involved probably the biggest reason my
line dies out with me after surviving

for no reason through the previous and
innumerable generations. All

ends here with cats scratching even after
the flea medicine’s applied, dog looking

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

over his shoulder as if I have done
something unforgivable by having
managed to collect rooms full of things that
would disappear under dust but for being
swept spotless by the woman who has come
to clean every Tuesday for thirty years.

Sandra Kolankiewicz holds a BA and PHD from Ohio Uni-
versity and an MA from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She
has over 300 poems and short stories published in numerous
literary magazines.

114

Anomalies

by Marc Frazier

…for everything flowers from within,
of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to

reteach a thing its loveliness…Galway Kinnell

In the endless mall of Florida—a French
patisserie run by French people.
Birds flit for crumbs.
Sherbet umbrellas beckon Town Cars
of the aged to dock nearby.
Scents of hibiscus, sunset-hued blossoms of tropical vines
blend with that of yeast, humid asphalt, and Estée Lauder.
There is no one left to love.
Sometimes the evidence is overwhelming.
Sometimes I wish a gull will miss landing on its piling.
The real truth is that nothing mitigates.
Lonely birds call through a pink dusk.
If I could name the flora and fauna, I
could cope with uncertainty.
I could walk outside to a gator in the pool.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

Surprising things happen.
A double murderer was just arrested in Chicago
where he’d lived as a poet for twenty years.
I have to write so many words just to survive.
How many will it take to endure? To be happy?
The many places I’ve been make me like every place less.
I love the romantic excess of Spanish explorers:
cities of gold, fountain of youth.
Here the old grow younger or think they do.
Who am I to shadow conquerors?
Sometimes a clean, well-lighted place is fine.
Sometimes nothing is enough.
Always that restlessness in the stalls.
The need to be touched.
The need to be reminded of my loveliness.
As if I am one of the few who are chosen.
Carlos Fuentes described Frida Kahlo with her
jangling jewelry and intensity as her own opera.
At times I am so tame I wonder if even the trained
can prepare me for a return to the wild.
At times the Leo in me sees the world as collateral.
A woman in a poem hopes in the growth of two dozen seeds.
The man thinks she expects too much: “To
grow her a whole new life.”
What can I expect here beside the ocean?
I do not ponder the damage done—a cul de sac of regret.
Loss.
Not everything happens for a reason.
I hear orchids grow in wet seclusion.
Stones are silent by choice.

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Water builds only to lose itself.
Blue calms my tendency to wander, to see other sides.
Life, like anything, is a habit, can be found
almost anywhere, can happen to anyone.

Marc Frazier has widely published poetry in journals including
The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, Good Men Project, f(r)
iction, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Slant, Permafrost, Plain-
songs, and Poet Lore. Marc is the recipient of an Illinois Arts
Council Award for poetry and has been nominated for a Push-
cart Prize and a “best of the net.” His book The Way Here and
his two chapbooks are available online as well as his second
full-length collection Each Thing Touches. Willingly, his third
poetry book, was published by Adelaide Books New York in
January 2019. His website is www.marcfrazier.org

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Delta Sagittarii

by Daniel King

Here I stand where the orange sun will rise
Here I wait for the central star to blaze
And point
To the stars at the heart of the galaxy where the Praised
Of the Bowmen will roam
So exalting the sign of Kalki
Light years
From our home and from Kaus. Barium star, be free!

Starlit agates are scattered near my feet
Lakshmi’s sheen is a wonder suns create
From tides
Of the ions we Centaur adventurers, we the Great,
Seize as targets and stem
With our lasers. We love to dare
All souls
To be Secants and rule, born in far Altair.

Altar world of a star long classed as K
Altered world with a warring tilt that cares

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To rage
And declaims as it radiates, glittering in its glare,
To the irised elite
That its status as base is steel:
Be proud
As you send to your star light of the Bow, and kneel.

Daniel King is a prize-winning Australian writer. His poetry
collection, Amethysts and Emeralds, was published by Interac-
tive Press on May 15 2018. His hobbies include surfing, skate-
boarding, following the latest developments in space explora-
tion, and listening to the music of Mike Oldfield and Project
System 12.

119

Hour Hand’s Message to
a Friend

by Bikal Paudel

Dear minute hand,

I wait for you for an hour
And you leave in a minute
Making me wait another 59
Till we are again aligned
We both get life with the same power
Batteries in the core of this Earth that gave us birth
You go through love for numbers

You don’t wait for anyone, so I shouldn’t
have expected you to wait for me
But I can’t help it. Every time you come
close, I can’t feel my heartbeat
I get this feeling that makes me sit and think.
And stop. I wait and wait. Tick tock *2
And this is gone before I can say a word like a writer’s block
I’d like to think I have a lot of patience but I’m just like

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you in the end. And together we make a fixed clock.
Maybe if I wasn’t a bit odd, and maybe if I was
a just a bit tall, I could move fast just like you
and with you forever without any mixed thoughts.
From society. We could do anything, travel the
world and climb mountains to the tip top

My minute hand,
But sometimes I feel bad for you
Maybe it’s not you that wants to play with numbers
Maybe you also just want to get settled
Find the perfect place, but more
importantly the perfect time to last
But we can’t live in the past. Those damn seconds
and the second hand. They move way too fast
Those people on top that determine time
make me go in circles twice a day
To make us do things, they sometimes hand you
fake compliments like you look nice today.
Like I don’t look nice everyday.
I used to complain about why I was so slow
Then I realized you’ve got to go in circles to do 24.
And they don’t care about us b/c we don’t have a
famous brand name and we don’t keep score
They just want a rollie, rollie, rollie, Marc
Jacobs and Michael Kors
Not really knowing what it’s for.

My minute hand,
Every minute you’re moving for the next

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Just because you’ve got that extra length
And you’ve got some extra strength
Just because we don’t have the same skill set
Of the new digital watches and the digital age
We’ve got to work twice as hard
Play games with entities that are twice as large
Is it getting political again, don’t let me start

But my minute hand,
I just want to be with you
The same Earth that gave us birth and makes us move
is the same reason our love is never approved.
Same reason we can’t stop, Same reason
you can’t be on top. Of me
Even when the sun disappears over the horizon
Even when there is no more moons
Time will go on, Even though we can’t live together,
breathe together, and tick tock together
I will appreciate that we are both attached to the
same thing, and the same energy that we bring
Maybe you’ll never be mine
But I’ll watch you move flawlessly
Even though we’ll grow old and have our own kids
And they’ll listen to you when you tell them it’s time to sleep
And more. It’s time to wake up to a loud ass beep

But minute, you will always be so fine baby
You make them check you out when it’s time to leave
When it’s time to eat, when it’s time
to move their feet with a beat

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

When it’s time to drink
Ugh I get jealous when they stare at you so intrigued
I’m not insecure and I understand but I can’t help it I’m sorry
The way you move with that beat
Tick tock *2, my heart skips a beat
I mean without you, time will be incomplete
And it will just be me
Trying to tell people I’m not lonely
But with just one hand, they will see
Because you are that missing piece
I’ll be useless with no feet
You’re sugar to my bland tea, so damn sweet
Even though they won’t let us be

Even though they won’t stop time
For a little reflection, whether it’s happiness or affliction
I’ll wait till you’re just mine
I’ll wait till the batteries die
I’ll wait till we’re not so accustomed to life
Till we don’t all follow the same direction: clockwise
For now, I’ll let you live your own life
But please don’t run too far away from me
like people run away from time

Bikal Paudel is from Kathmandu, Nepal. He currently resides
in Washington DC with his family. He loves music and poetry.

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The Cantor’s Green-Eyed
Daughter

by Richard Fein

Everyone recalls their first mouth-to-mouth kiss.
For me it’s not a quick flashback but a haunting reminiscence,
a rerun, a savoring, the skin tingling again,
a warm yearning in my arms
as I try to embrace a long-gone flame.

Rivka was the cantor’s daughter.
She was sleeves to wrists, dress to ankles Orthodox.
But two blocks from Hamilton High
and three blocks from her home,
we detoured from our usual route and escaped into the park,
under a canopy of trees and behind a green veil of bushes.
She laid down her algebra, history, and Shakespeare
and I my geometry and chemistry.
Chemistry, I and the cantor’s pretty, green-eyed daughter.
She ran her fingers across my cheek,
as mine slipped under her sleeves.

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Pecks on the cheeks,
and like a novice shoplifter she turned her head left and right,
again and again, but no one was yet watching.
Then our tongues slowly waltzed.
Somehow my hands were suddenly under her blouse
just as neighborhood brats ran into the park.
The unwanted chaperones taunted us with
a promise that they would tell.
A promise fulfilled,
and legions of aunts took turns driving her home
until she was transferred to a girl’s yeshiva.
She never walked home with me again,
except, perhaps, maybe, in her memory.

But I walk her home almost every day,
with no robed father high on a dais singing loud hymns.
And always above Rivka and me there’s
that swaying, leafy canopy,
while the green veil gently blows aside
in the late Spring breeze.
And most of all green, her green eyes.

Richard Fein was a finalist in the 2004 New York Center for
Book Arts Chapbook Competition A Chapbook of his poems
was published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, Mad-
ison. He has been published in many web and print journals
such as: Reed, Southern Review, Roanoke Review, Skyline
Magazine, Birmingham Poetry Review, Mississippi Review,
Paris/atlantic, Canadian Dimension and many others

125

Mahler the Third at
Chautaqua

by Korkut Onaran

I see with no eyes
but the sounds that words make
vibrate all around my body

that is what a bat tells me.
She is lost. She is trying to get out
of a dead-end hidden somewhere in my thought.

Blue keyholes here and there in the cloudy sky,
through which the word fish
swims from a distant place;

a place where there are no languages yet.
It starts raining. I feel drops
landing on my words.

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

In the darkness of my veins
my blood must still be red.
Somewhere in a large concert hall

in the middle of a finale furioso
of a giant romantic symphony
a violin is trying to hear her heart beats.

The bat enters the concert hall
and bathes in the waterfall of sounds
that are coming from everywhere.

I close my eyes and listen.
Red wine enters and flirts
with all that is red.

Korkut Onaran’s The Book of Colors has received the first prize
in Cervena Barva Press 2007 Chapbook Contest. His poem
House has received the second prize in 2006 Baltimore Review
Poetry Competition. His first book of poetry The Trident Poems
has been published by World Enough Writers in February 2018.
His poetry has been published in journals such as Penumbra,
Rhino, Colere, White Pelican Review, Crucible, City Works
Literary Journal, Water –Stone, Review, Atlanta Review, Bayou,
Common Ground Review, and Baltimore Review.

127

Before the Ink Was Dry

by Kevin Keane

He would take a razor blade from his
desk and a make little slit
On his hand and use it as an inkwell
And sign the letters to her that he so carefully composed
Placed them in the mailbox on the side walk
Beneath the elevated train in Cypress Hills so long ago
When he still believed in poetry, still
believed her vicious smile

He walked his bicycle along the boardwalk
The seagulls screaming in the terrible wind
Walked out on the jetty and searched for that same starfish
The one washed away when he still
believed she read his letters
Signed in blood and sealed with his tongue
in that dark building above the street
Where the train no longer woke him as he slept

He no longer used a razor blade for he no longer bled
Signed off one last time with a cheap red pen substitute

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

And a brief explanation of his betrayal
The creaking of the mailbox never to be heard again
Drowned out by the train overhead
Now taking him beneath the river and gone

Kevin Keane was born and grew up in New York City and
currently resides in Arizona. After writing for more than forty
years, Kevin only recently began submitting his work in 2018.
Previously Kevin Keane has had three poems published since
he began submitting his work in 2018 and this will be the
second appearance of his work in Adelaide Literary Magazine.
The writer is working on editing a compilation of his poems
written over a forty year span for inclusion in a full book of
poetry to be ready before the end of 2019. Mr. Keane has been
influenced by Lorca, Bukowski and Don Van Vliet.

129

I Swim in This Darkness

by Ann Pedone

surrounded by insomnia and sand
a woman writing in the dark
parts language with her eyes
with the tip of her tongue

I am caught between phrases from
poems no longer extant
fragments
come up in my bones
nest in the thickets of my thighs
swim as fish
in the rivers of my veins

I am here
made naked by words
I spread my hips for you
for your hands
your tongue

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

we are but in these things
bodies that make their way through other bodies

and I lie, stretched out as a shore of so much foam
whiteness and breathing
the day
breaks in my eyes
and I open to the sky
a poem split in two

Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College in 1992 with a de-
gree in English Literature. She has a Master’s Degree in Chinese
Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann has recently
had work published in Adelaide, Birmingham Arts Journal,
Comstock Review, and Apricity Magazine. She lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area with her three children and a small dog.

131

The Dust of the Garden

by David Dephy

When I woke up today, I felt the smell of the rays around
me. Listen friend I want to tell you a story about the wind.

I was standing on the stairs of New York Public Library.
It was in October. I felt the words all around me. I felt all
the languages all around me. I felt the wind. I remember

my loneliness there, on those stairs, I thought about Adam.
Man in the garden. Man alone. Man from the dust. I felt his
presence on those stairs—surrounded with all the languages.

I remember the color of that wind—
pink. I remember the smell
of it— rose. The wind was blowing on my face and I asked:
“When the Creator created Adam, was he a baby or a man?”

and felt the taste of the wind— cherry. “He was in between
of the beginning of time and its end,” said the wind. “What
language would Adam and Creator have used or spoken?”

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

I asked and the wind said: “The language of trust and music.”
“What was the first word of Adam?” I asked the wind. “His
first word was his very first breath, with your first breath

you can create the creature too and fill that creature with
unbounded light,” and the wind vanished. I felt that touch
of that wind— the ray with the dust from the garden.

When I woke up today, I smiled. I was singing too, and
then my wife turned on the radio. They say: “The war is
over in Syria. All the children are alive. The war is over.”

September 19, 2019

David Dephy is a trilingual Georgian/American award-winning
poet, novelist, essayist, performer, multimedia artist and painter.
The winner of the 2019 Spillwords Press Poetry Award for
June’s Publication of the Month. The Finalist of the Adelaide
Literary Award Anthology 2019 — the category of the Best
Poem. He is an active participant in the American and inter-
national poetry and artistic scenes, the Bowery Poetry Club
named him a Literature Luminary. His works have been pub-
lished and anthologized in USA, UK and all over the world by
the many literary magazines, journals and publishing houses.
He lives and works in New York City.

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The House, After Sandy

by Samantha Zimbler

1.  The Girl

No airplanes flew by.
Outside the window I saw small dogs shivering
helplessly as they floated down a river
of boats and houses.

I spent the dark days cultivating mindfulness
in a half-lotus position, drawing cats
with lopsided faces and throwing them into the fire.

And in the night there was green lightning
that flashed for just a moment too long.
Morning found small birds playing
dead on suburban lawns.

The people around me were doing the strangest
things in the dark.
There would be a new baby boom,

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since people no longer knew what to do
with their bare hands and aching bodies.
“Accept the chaos,” they must have whispered
to one another in their unmade beds
beside the faint glow of old candles,
battery-powered lamps.

My parents’ room smelled of holly,
of gingerbread-scented oil burning,
before the damage,
but of oak, of wet bark,

when the ancient tree,
its body now spent,
slept peacefully, its spine
warped into an impossible angle
with their unmoving bodies.

2.  The Father

“My whole body is a wasteland now,”
she whispers to me in the chaotic dark

and I can hear her cosmic selflove
erupt into stars—
she begs to be nakedly taken,

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

to be thrust into the wrinkles of the
bedsheets,
to multiply, prove her bodily worth.

She runs a softsocked foot against my leg;
I feel the sudden urge to check on the broken generator.

I am afraid of a new attack,
while her body is pumping with
blood and want.
I am afraid that this shelter, this
life I have built,
will come crumbling before I do.

And in the newfound silence of these dark days
with meat rotting in the freezer while
society is suspended in its own sudden humanness,
I can hear the blood rush into my ears,
microscopic cells bounding to the cardinal organs.

Do I sink with her? Submit to the apocalyptic present,
the downwardmoving spiral of our history,
our story? Do I long to please our neighbors?
the children?

Or do I admit to myself that it is
the woman’s own vanishing selfhood
that she loves,
seeing who she is fall away in wisps
around her,

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

landing at her
pointed heels?

The lightning strikes
and green leaves burst through the ceiling.
deciding my fate for me.

3.  The Mother

I want him to feel the wildness in me,
kicking its way around,
searching for the secret
sacred exit.

And, in this way,
I am less alone than he.

I light the candles, thumb my prayer beads,
and place a small white pill
on my swollen tongue.

I force it down, the badness,
force it inside me
with the last of my saliva.
I feel my throat begin to close
in on us both,
the terror begin to subside.

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Adelaide Literary Award 2019

There is a heat that will not come.

It is alive in the shadows;
the fat water plunging from the black sky
sends traces of it—
wet, ominous.

I watch on in solidarity
as mother nature cries cold tears
on the windows, which glow with
the dizzy electric chaos outside.

The vast wetness is inescapable.
I feel the entire axis coming unhinged
beneath us;
the entire room is falling victim
to this savage and inescapable night.

4.  The Tree

There is no home for the ancient.
We have no graves, no palace doors.

Our mothers live in the dust of other lands.
It is possible that our souls have already expired,
fled to seek the warm newness
of refuge, salvation.

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

We are the product of the earth now,
in the gray night.
There is nothing left to see from above.
My once unyielding spine of oak is cracking
with the effort of each falling leaf.
These wooden limbs will soon give way.
I am dizzy, growing weary from the static,
the electric clouds above a rushing land.
The ground is not at peace tonight;
It wraps around my roots
and pulls me down.
Nothing is uncaused. The currents in the air
have spoken.
What is left of me bows down
to kiss the trembling earth.

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Reality Sets in

by Christine Tabaka

On the outer edge of reality,
I planted my dreams.
What seed should I sow,
to resurrect the image
of what I want to be?
Salt air and harsh winds
have corroded me.
My hands no longer
weave the silken thread.
I fought to the end,
but lost the beginning,
when you were by my side.
Soft words and hard kisses,
vanished with the
arid soil of despair.
Logic refuses to move forward.
So, off I walk,
poppy seeds in hand,
colorful dreams tripping off my palm.
I see the edge become clear.

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart
Prize in Poetry, has been internationally published, and won
poetry awards from numerous publications. She is the author
of 9 poetry books. Christine lives in Delaware, USA. She loves
gardening and cooking. Chris lives with her husband and three
cats. Her most recent credits are: Burningword Literary Journal;
Muddy River Poetry Review; The Write Connection; Ethos Lit-
erary Journal, North of Oxford, Pomona Valley Review, Page
& Spine, West Texas Literary Review, The Hungry Chimera,
Sheila-Na-Gig, Foliate Oak Review, Better Than Starbucks!,
The Write Launch, The Stray Branch, The McKinley Review,
Fourth & Sycamore.

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The Garden

by Lauren Bishop

Dew on the green grass, life grows
Lily picks her fruit, rosy red cherries and prickly pears
Sunshine, water flows.

Her mind hops from primrose to primrose
Hiding secrets like squirrels with chestnuts, need to beware
Dew on the green grass, life grows.

Pollen travels and tickles the nose
Shadows overhead means the hunter is near in the air
Sunshine, water flows.

Soft soil sinks under warm toes
There’s no saving the secret squirrels and cuddly hares
Dew on the green grass, life grows.

Wings, feet, legs, and bone all decompose
She’s in her own world, it’s hard to tell that she even cares
Sunshine, water flows.

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Beauty in the garden, but will it show?
With happiness comes despair
Dew on the green grass, life grows
Sunshine, water flows.

Lauren Bishop, the Amazon bestselling author of Bleeding
Heart, attended Michigan State University where she studied
Apparel Textile & Design and Studio Art. The Detroit native is
currently pursuing her degree in Creative Writing and English
at Southern New Hampshire University. Art dominates her
world with her interest in photography, movies, installations,
paintings, poetry, novels and even makeup. When Lauren isn’t
writing, she’s traveling or relaxing with her cat Nomi Malone.

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13 Seconds

by Mickey J. Corrigan

And bombs dropping overseas
where the war continues killing
the people and young soldiers
lose time, limbs, their minds
and the heroin’s cheap
on campuses the students
in torn jeans smoke weed
talk revolution, form lines
around buildings, chained
to the ivy-covered walls
and the bombs drop
in Cambodia and students
at Kent State and everywhere
stand up and march, chanting
to the universal gods
peace in our time
and the National Guard
Ohio’s young soldiers
lose their minds

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

destroying lives
like other shattered soldiers
at VAs across the country
killing
four students
wounding
nine people
sixty-seven rounds
in thirteen seconds

no peace in our time.

On May 4, 1970, unarmed college students were gunned down
by 28 members of the Ohio National Guard. Some of the students
were participating in a protest against the bombing of Cambodia
by the US military, others were merely walking across campus.
Four were killed, 9 others injured. In response to the unjustified
violence, hundreds of American schools closed as more than 4 mil-
lion students went on strike. The tragedy was memorialized in the
popular protest song by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, “Ohio.”

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes Florida
noir with a dark humor. Project XX, a satirical novel about a
school shooting, was released in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the
UK. Newest release is What I Did for Love, a spoof of Lolita
(Bloodhound Books, 2019). Kelsay Books is publishing her
poetry chapbook the disappearing self in 2020. Visit at www.
mickeyjcorrigan.com.

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Ancient Designs

by Mark Hurtubise

Listening to the serenity
of ascending coastal redwoods,

their shallow narrow roots are fingers
interlocking in prayer,
bearing witness to the world.

Through this stillness, a forest spirit
cups my hand and gestures upward . . .

“Fly with me into the souls of air
where time is beyond memories and moments,
a domain
filled with God’s flawless hospitality.

Besides, you own nothing,
but your soul.”

Although her eyes are curiously serene,
I decide for now my trail leads elsewhere.

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POETRY ANTHOLOGY

So, before I surrender
this body
I can only dream of flight.

Mark Hurtubise. During the 1970s, numerous pieces were
accepted for publication. Then family, teaching, two college
presidencies and for 12 years president of an Inland Northwest
community foundation. After a four decade hiatus, he is now
attempting to outpace the speed of a tortoise. Within the past
two and half years, his works have appeared in Apricity Mag-
azine (Texas), Adelaide Literary Magazine (New York), Bones
Journal (Denmark), Modern Haiku (Rhode Island), Ink In
Thirds (Alabama), Atlas Poetica (Maryland), Burningword Lit-
erary Journal (Indiana), The Spokesman-Review (Washington),
Frogpond Journal (New York), Stanford Social Innovation Re-
view (California) and Alliance (United Kingdom).

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Bob Dylan’s Dream

by Rabbi Steven Lebow

It is a little known fact
that Bob Dylan fell into
the company of thieves
in 1968,
after having broken both his legs
while riding his favorite horse,
Gray.

During that time
Dylan holed up
In a blue house,
near the red desert.

It was there,
for the first time,
that Dylan met the poets
Allen Ginsberg
and Gregory Corso.

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