Catching the tall cylinders of wood on the
back of the chair, a skein of thin wool was
held in place so I could wind it into a ball
suitable for knitting a sweater, or socks,
hat, or mittens. Why didn’t any stores
have knitting-ready spheres rather than
coils of yarn? What if my chair’s back
didn’t have tall projections above the seat?
Round and round the fibers changed from
long strands to what resembled a child’s
plaything. Ready. I can begin. Begin.
This long-sentenced piece is what
pleases a literary editor who sees words
in run-on, and it’s designed to extend
as a skein. For me? I usually write
with a period placed
after a short line
as if I were
typing
dot.com.
– Lois Greene Stone
Note: This piece was originally published in June 2016 by The Lake and reprinted in the Nov/Dec 2021 issue of Scarlet Leaf Review.…
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A white gull cuts across a snowfield
turns up the coast and is gone
sea and sky cry achromatic blues
neatly punctuated
by a full lunar face at the point of exclamation!
– Edward Sheehy…
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I was leery about teaching Lear
wondering what my students
might understand about dynamics
of family life. Young faces found
dreams and fairy dust appealing but
“Midsummer Night’s Dream”
seemed silly as a Puck, to them,
is a hockey item. And Hero
definitely would be “Much Ado
About Nothing” since comedy
has four-letter words spouted by
jeans-clad entertainers. “Hamlet”
tragedy isn’t as terrible as a broken
cell-phone or wondering where is
a wi-fi hookup. 1603. Sounds like
a zip code with missing numbers.
“O, blood, blood, blood!”, “Othello”
more suited to students television
preferences. “To be or not to be”
teaching Shakespeare, “that is
the question.”
– Lois Greene Stone
Note: This piece was originally published by The Lake in May 2016 and reprinted by Scarlet Leaf Review in June 2020.…
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A crescent moon smiles over Big Piney Ridge
frozen above the black cross-stitching of the forest canopy
chilling anatomy of arteries veins and capillaries
endlessly branching from trunk and stem
with roots groping for my boots
through the crusty snow.
– Edward Sheehy…
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the Hudson has a magnet smell
dark water railroad track
spongy grass
rocks scattered wrappers tossed
the Hudson has a railroad depot
abandoned revived
a party for
a cousin turning eighty
the freight trains go by
a long chain clanging
guests turn not hearing
each other the roar subsides
stranger beside me
remembers Johnny Mathis
and I do yes Chances Are
didn’t sex send sparks
we compare he saw Miles at a dive
I saw Ahmad Jamal come what may
his Poinsiana I’ll learn
to love forever
he loves certain lyrics
a guide on how to live
four years
since his wife died
he leaves keeps returning
his pressing need
for the forgotten prelude
to Hello Young Lovers
and then he has it
when the earth smelled of summer
and the river
and the sky was streaked with white
we sing beyond us
the huge barge of trash
pushed by a small tugboat
navigates the Hudson
– Holly Guran
Author’s Note: The Hudson River that flowed below my childhood home, the high school I attended, and my close relatives’ town is always a force in my work.…
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You hand out names to the hummingbirds that squabble
a few feet away—on the patio, perching
and racing past like fighter pilots, divebombing
the red plastic feeder that drips
and sways on a
hook.
We eat breakfast and we watch as sparrows
greedily vacuum the food you pour into
a shallow dish each morning. And when they catch us
peeking at them, they scatter, splashing
seeds—sunflower, safflower, millet, milo, flax,
cracked corn.
I’m off to my next meeting, you say.
We work a dozen feet apart nowadays. And
you haul it all—laptop and mouse, notepad, and books—
to the bedroom. I follow you with a chair to
the place where you attend these meetings
(and job interviews).
Where we plot our escape every night.
Alone together.…
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I very much dislike being at a buffet
– Mary Ruefle
I stand in the stairwell say to him that he
and I aren’t going to work out, him being
a cowboy, aspiring cop. He marries a librarian.
I go on to psychedelics, sit-ins, join a cult,
marry and move to a place he would’ve hated.
My mother tells me, twenty years in, she’s
heard he still has my picture on his mantle.
You never lose the first he-was-everything-to-me.
I’ve googled him over the years, imagined
how a call might go, nearly did one summer.
From the poem “How We Met” from Dunce
– Hari B Parisi…
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