Love, Steve

      by Steven Deutsch

 

That old photo

took my breath away.

How had I misplaced

the memory?

Did you?

 

It was

forty years ago.

The gentlest June—

the sea, the sand, the sun

on a tiny island

 

off the coast of Maine,

where the whole clan

stayed in a ramshackle

shack with uncertain plumbing

that must have slept a dozen.

 

Remember how it leaned away

from the sea and cackled

like a coven of witches

whenever the wind blew?

What a history it must have had.

 

Rooms added

so haphazardly

to the two-room shell

we learned to sleep

wherever we flopped.

 

Two weeks at end of semester

and everyone came.

We ate spaghetti

and the local catch.

Drank cheap Chianti

 

out of the bottle,

and talked all night

about what would be.

I thought I would love you

all forever. Didn’t you?

 

Bio: Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and the first poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. Steve was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He has published six volumes of poetry. Brooklyn was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press. A new full length, Seven Mountains, was just published.

 

 A Strauss Waltz

         by James Kangas

  

Tales from the Vienna Woods, I think,

slightly bawdy tales, and some mufky

fufky going on in the greenery outside

 

the ballroom, as skirts of all colors

(pastel, of course) fly round and round

the dance floor with fancy black

 

tuxedos, and the sweating zither player

plucking and strumming his strings

in the middle of the orchestra, plucking

 

and strumming his heart out, every face

flushed with the dancing and flirting,

and heaven knows what whispers behind

 

the fans of the women sitting on the side-

lines. What a sight to behold, what great

joie de vivre, and my brain just keeps

 

twirling away in a dizzying tizzy

for as long as the dancers are dancing,

for as long as the music goes on.

 

Bio: James Kangas is a retired librarian living in Flint, Michigan. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Faultline, New York Quarterly, Penn Review, Unbroken, et al. His chapbook, Breath of Eden (Sibling Rivalry Press), was published in 2019.

 

 

To W.

       by Gabriella Garofalo

 

Who’s that, can’t you see it’s only
A matter of time, and seeds everywhere,
A red ochre on rough white rocks,
If she distrusts his smile, look, her sky bites
When handling trees, or limbs-
But words have nothing to do with it,
Words, her stale bread, her damaged goods, yes,
They can’t bite a bastard winter, or dirty sunsets,
So, stop showing off, stop shouting for answers,
Stop trees, or limbs, and rush
To brambles, to blades of grass,
The answers you set to tangle her mind,
Just think of her women, the black that shines
If you foul up the trees, the sky, the moon, the grass,
If a tricky light breaks your desire for a lost creation-
And you, Father, please don’t waste your time
Carving comets, or trees, while in her lounge
The grudge springs up, stays on,
Such a lovely bush, whenever you lend
To her dirty time sighs, blades of grass,
Young lovers on the road,
On the trail of runaway stars -
Give it up, she can’t see the music of wombs
They told you again and again,
When desire is just around the corner,
That disgraced blade of grass of no interest
To deaf souls she sees lost in the undergrowth,
Still dreaming of bold moves,
And to your wait for a fall where at long last
You might even bend to light.

 

Bio: Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of these books “Lo sguardo di Orfeo”, “L’inverno di vetro”, “Di altre stelle polari”, “Casa di erba”, “Blue Branches”, “ A Blue Soul”, “After The Blue Rush”.