Cemetery Silence, by Michael Keshigian

He stood in front of the headstone
marking his father’s grave
under a maple tree
that shaded the parcel
reserved for his mother.
“I found that twenty
you sent me,” he whispered,
“found it in the leaves
next to the curb during my run
the day after
we moved you here.
I asked for a sign
and you thought of
dropping a twenty on me.
I knew it was yours,
all the serial numbers
matched your birth and departure date,
never mind the letters, all T, S, & K.
Money is what drove you,
but at least, this time, you answered.“
He concluded the one-sided conversation,
hoping for another sign,
but all that followed
was a long silence,
one that encompassed all the gravestones
and the rows of dead they marked.
He kneeled, got closer to the granite slab,
pressed an ear against it
as if to block the deafening quiet
that enveloped his surroundings.
Still nothing, cemetery silence,
the most disarming silence of all,
so silent, he could hear the still air breathe.

*********************

Language Requirement, by Michael Keshigian

In college, he elected jazz
as a language,
dropped French so he could learn
that chops meant
playing the sax like Paul Desmond,
creating a sound
resembling a golden hue
that only the angels
might duplicate,
carried so high
it might be heaven,
though he could sense
Desmond’s fingers
moving with elegance,
ballroom dancing on the keys.
He later learned
that Desmond played
in various modes.
They were not clubs
or bars he could frequent,
though the modes
were most often located in bars.
He found out
that Mel Torme had pipes,
beyond a collection of meerschaum,
an ability to sing songs
and scat like no one heard before
without ever leaving the stage.
Could say he also had chops,
but with singers it was different
because with one set of pipes
he created a timbre all by himself,
a degree of contrast as varied
as timber in the forest.

Michael Keshigian’s poetry collection, Eagle’s Perch, was recently released by Bellowing Ark Press.  Other published books: Wildflowers, Jazz Face, Warm Summer Memories, Silent Poems, Seeking Solace, Dwindling Knight, Translucent View. Published in numerous journals, he is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best Of The Net nominee. His poetry cycle, Lunar Images, set for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator, premiered at Del Mar College in Texas. Subsequent performances occurred in Boston and Moleto, Italy. His website is at: michaelkeshigian.com

*********************

Archeological Tour, by David Chorlton

We’re two visitors
among the mossy shadows
where a wet trail winds
between hand-carved stones
and insects. Don’t touch

that one, the guide says
as it crawls along the rail
around a structure once
as high as the circles
embedded in the earth
are wide, and set in a forest

thick and dripping
with stings that swell
an arm to twice its size.
Some of the leaves are the shape
of a heart, some resemble
an elephant’s ear, and others

fan to points where raindrops
hang, the way they used to
when a jaguar sprang on a man
unprepared for afterlife
and whose body was left

in the green world to be purified
for the ethereal one. Not a leaf
among millions is wasted here.
Even after touching the bristles
along a caterpillar’s back

there’s a leaf to purify the skin.
You need only know
which one to pick.

*********************

Whispering Woods, by Julie Kovacs

Black pond immersed beneath
layers of granite rock

immersed home to nothing
                 but empty cans bottles and cartons

the only animal life seen surrounding it

a small gray rabbit
a family of squirrels
and three lone grasshoppers

making their home in a fallen thatched roof
that once covered the stone house nearby.

Ghosts of people past
who never left those stone walls
trapped inside
waiting to be liberated into
the silver and pink skies above

where nothing seen nothing heard
in those deep woods
except for the periodic
free spirit looming in the air

never stayed long enough
to say “Hello” nor “Goodbye”
to the guest from the outside world.

*********************

Glacier, by Thomas Piekarski

The shield to my upside-down
ostensibly indigenous profile
is feeling vulnerable.
Innocence won’t let the body
understand what the mind can’t.
It would seem quicker
should I jump ship and simply sink.
Stentorian concussions parade
a constellation of mirrors before me
from which I’m forged.
Liberty shines, but doesn’t blink.
Melting vascular escalators sing
“Anchors Away” for a swarm
of venerable distractors.
My bounty awaits
while illusions opt
to pop inside
an estranged imagination
as I slit through life
like a knife.

*********************

Unsinkable Bettie Page, by Thomas Piekarski

When she was at her height of fame
she quit, then went insane—
the only icon
luscious as Marilyn,
and no less photogenic.

She made camera lenses frolic,
shocked into joyful convulsions
as they focused on her
stupendous form.

Considered lewd for posing nude,
they chastised her. But Bettie
never overtly intended
to promote sex,
and being devout as a nun
hovered above moral ground.

Fifties Foreverland America
crazed by those irresistible bangs
and smile a mile wide.

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared in Nimrod, Portland Review, Kestrel, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Boston Poetry Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Poetry Super Highway, and many others. He has published a travel guide, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems. He lives in Marina, California.

*********************

At an Urban Read, by B. Z. Niditch

Unwinding language
being shy
for the cameras
at my urban read
feeling like Caliban
expecting the air
of J.D. Salinger
to rise up
over this metropolis
with novel words
to translate for me
with an old suitcase
folded between
two oceans
held by four strings
near my wrinkled chords
of a Basque guitar
convulsed by warmth
mirrored as rain
for a runaway time
such as this,
a Beat poet
you recognize
will not stumble
on his last love poem.

*********************

I Could Just as Well Be a Poet of Sewing Needles, by Don Narkevic

Garcia Lorca
On the back porch, Bessie sits
on a wooden chair,
the finish on the seat worn,
a white moon where a flower pot rested.
By the dim light of a 40 watt sun,
she sews a tear in her husband’s work-shirt
turned inside out on her lap.

She wets the thread.
Removing her glasses, she slips the fiber
through the needle’s eye. Along the length of the tear
she creates a running stitch, then inserts the needle,
just the way her mother taught her
to prevent the seam from fraying.
After knotting, she bites the thread
so close to the shirt
she can smell the faint odor
of blast furnace steel and his sweat.
Turning the shirt right side out,
she places the needle in the cushion,
her husband dead only a week
but her grandson in need of a shirt tonight,
his new job, a pin man in the wire mill
on the graveyard shift.

Don Narkevic is from Weston, WV and has a MFA from National University. Recent poetry of his has appeared in Bijou Poetry Review, Naugatuck River Review, Prime Number, and Off the Coast. Poetry Chapbooks include Laundry, published by Main Street Rag. His plays have received readings in Chicago, New York, and Virginia. In 2013, FutureCycle Press published Admissions, a book of poems.

*********************

Mysteries of the Bible: The Loaves and Fishes, by J. H. Johns

So,
was it a supply end problem,
a demand problem,
a delivery problem-
too few club or value packs?

Or,
was it- perhaps-
the beginning of
“portion control?”

Well,
whatever it was-
it was a problem
that required
divine intervention,
but, still,
questions remain.

Did it end up being
tilapia, salmon, cod,
haddock, catfish or flounder?

Were they
baked, deep fried,
grilled or poached?

Were they served with
white, rye, pumpernickel,
whole grain, multigrain
or organic?

But,
then, again,
maybe something was lost
in translating the Bible,
and that
“the loaves and fishes”
were really
“bagels and lox?”

Yes,
just another mystery
of the Bible.