"Middle Creek" by Pat Anthony

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present “Middle Creek” by Pat Anthony.  Anthony lives in the rural Midwest where she finds inspiration in the rugged furrows of the soil and in the faces of the men and women working it. An observer of and warrior for nature and the environment, she uses the land as a lens, and her poems are most often responses to events around her.

Anthony is the former poetry editor of Potpourri (no longer in print), holds an MA in Humanities Literature from California State University, and was a teacher of English, Spanish, and Special Education until her recent retirement. She has work published or forthcoming in Cholla Needles, San Pedro River Review, Third Wednesday, Snakeskin, and Open Minds Quarterly, among others. Visit her blog at middlecreekcurrents.com.

Middle Creek

meanders to become the county line

stitching together wet banks pocked with nests
of darting swallows, the clawed graffiti of the
snapping turtle and coons come to wash.

July rain soon overflows banks, uniting creek
to river in a swirl of cornstalk and beans
the trailing branches of pawpaw and persimmon
wizened fruits afloat like lost flies and bobbers.

Seine water through your fingers as you wade
the gravel bars sorting through the eggshells of
the Great Blue herons nested overhead in
their windy aeries of sycamores and stick nests.

How the current rushes back to cover nacre
shining from mussels, the backs of the crayfish sidling
in the shallows. Stretch your arms to touch
almost both sides of these banks that soar above

your head and bridge the divide then step downstream,
mark how your feet drag through the water
wakes splitting from your heels each stride like that
of the heron behind you, parted water soon closed,

droplets heavy with a thousand micro organisms
bent on swimming eastward where the doe has just
crossed with her fawns, the divided gone back to one
like questions you had and find already answered.

--Pat Anthony

Poet’s Notes:  Hiking rivers and streams has been a lifelong passion, along with poetry, the two frequently intertwined. This poem is born from a day of hiking deep within a cleft that bisects a stream shaped like a number 80, where you become alone with only what you can identify for company. The herons had their young overhead, and yet there was an eerie silence. I tend to go to woods and water when the world is askew, when there is much to resolve, and somehow, as the water closes behind me, find questions and concerns resolve themselves, an inner and outer renewal that is healing at a primal level, so that the divide merges back to the one.

Editor’s Note:  I really enjoy the way Anthony weaves the idyllic images of wildlife and nature into a narrative that draws in the reader.  Using second person POV is always risky, but she employs it with skill here.  I experienced the sights and sounds and feel of nature as I read this one.

"Air Show Maneuvers" by Mary Soon Lee

Air Show Maneuvers

Mary Soon Lee

F-16 Fighting Falcons

in diamond, delta, arrowhead

precision perfection.

At lower altitude, plumage drab,

swooping, wheeling, gliding,

a cohort of birds.

Poet's Notes: I attended the annual air show "Wings Over Pittsburgh" in May. There is a visceral awe in watching the planes climb and dive and turn, in hearing the engines roar. I also spent some time that day watching a flock of small black birds engaged in less impressive aerial maneuvers.

"Behind the Glass" by Sierra July

Behind the Glass

Sierra July

She first wore glasses to see

The beauty she'd been missing

Grass blades, tree leaves, winkles

In the waving sea

Then fashion was the dream

Looking like she knew that pie

Was for more than eating

Cute if she didn't

Poet's Notes: As a glasses wearer and a person who knows a lot of glasses wearers, I wanted to put some of what I've felt and heard about them into words. I personally like my glasses for all they allow me to see, but wouldn't have been upset if I never needed them. Since I do need though, I've discovered other perks. I've grown to love that glasses are stylish, looking either smart or cute, and don't get scratched or broken as often as contact lenses, or need as much cleaning. This is an ode to the bit of freedom my glasses allow me and is my first attempt at humorous poetry.

Editor’s Note:  The first stanza, a nice modern quatrain in the tradition of Emily Dickinson, describes exactly what happens when one puts on glasses for the first time (or at least what I felt when I put on my glasses for the first time).  The second stanza builds on that feeling, owning the new look no matter how others view the glasses wearer.  I admit that my mathy wife had to explain Sierra’s clever pun on “pie” (pie to eat, pie to be eaten, or pi the Greek letter, or pi the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter), so do not feel too bad if you were scratching your head over that until reading this.

"for Sondra" by Ross Balcom

for Sondra

the open veins

of sunset

spill blood

across the sky

you who died

amidst roses

transfixed

by the razor's smile

only the twilight

breathes your name

--Ross Balcom

Poet's Notes: This poem is for Sondra, but blood has no name and wants to flow free. Now Sondra is free, as we all should be.

Editor's Note:  I really enjoy how Ross employs assonance in this one.

"Solace" by Terri Lynn Cummings

Solace

Terri Lynn Cummings

The path slopes like prayer

then spills onto a pasture 

of stones. They stand 

crooked and stained like teeth

worn and crowded

in rows of bones

In front of a marker

I kneel, sense heartache

shift from black to gray 

in the shadow of a tree

its shade inching the trunk 

like a caterpillar

foreign and familiar 

Sorrow holds my hand

while a hymn 

hums from the grave

Memories, a den filled

with images recalled

in every rock of Father’s chair

fit themselves around my shoulders

His walking stick of a body

ravished by disease, savors 

the jazz of a new beginning

in the unpacked room of spring

My mother, a sister of the mind

shares hazel irises and shapes 

the poems of my voice as I recall

their long-buried garden of marriage 

loosed from tight bones of duty

and the compass of time

I imagine they stroll past friends

dates, and sentiments

a city of crosses and wombs of death

no edges to hone or dreams to slake

full as the moon though I long to wane

in the slow dust of renewal

Poet’s Notes:  I visited my parents’ graves the weekend after Memorial Day. It had been one year since I’d been there, and I felt as if Mom and Dad beckoned me. I drove from the city to the town cemetery where they waited to see me again, and my heart grew lighter as every mile passed.

ONLY THREE WEEKS REMAIN IN THE POETRY CONTEST!

Don’t Miss Your Chance To Show Your Support for Songs of Eretz

And Be Awarded a

ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR HONORARIUM

Deadline for entry:  October 15, 2017

Contest Guidelines:  http://www.songsoferetz.com/p/songs-of-eretz.html

Guest Judge Immediate Past Kansas Poet Laureate

Eric McHenry

  

Find out more about Eric here http://www.songsoferetz.com/p/about-our-editor-frequent-contributors.html and enjoy reading his poetry posted in Songs of Eretz August 15 - August 31.

FC Lee Wins 2 Poetry Contests

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to announce that Frequent Contributor Mary Soon Lee won two Poetry Nook weekly contests and has had three additional poems published in issue 9 of Mithila Review.

“Necromancer” (first published in the HWA Poetry Showcase, Volume II) won the 147th weekly Poetry Nook contest https://www.poetrynook.com/forum/contest-winners/147th-weekly-poetry-contest-winner-necromancer, and “Imperial History” (first published in Axe Factory Review) won the 148th  https://www.poetrynook.com/forum/contest-winners/148th-weekly-poetry-contest-winner-imperial-history.

Issue 9 of Mithila Review features:  “Boatman”, a King Xau poem  http://mithilareview.com/lee_09_17_3/, “Chronology of Items Found on the Moon” http://mithilareview.com/lee_09_17_2/, and “Alternate Genders”  http://mithilareview.com/lee_09_17/.

"Beware" by Juleigh Howard-Hobson

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present “Beware” by Juleigh Howard-Hobson. Primarily a formalist poet, Howard-Hobson writes literary fiction, genre work, essays, and articles.  Her writing has appeared in: History is Dead, Loving The Undead, Black Sails, Black Box, Return of the Raven, Dead Worlds: Undead Stories, Mandragora, Daughter of the Sun, Bits of the Dead & Vicious Verse, The Devil's Food, It Lives, You Don't Know What You've Got--Tales of Loss and Dispossession), Bewildering Stories, Champagne Shivers, Dead Letters, Sein und Werden, The Liar's League, Danse Macabre, Every Day Stories, Enchanted Conversation, Heathen Call, Northern Traditions, Idunna, Hex Magazine, New Witch, Alebrijes, Atavic Poetry Journal, Heathen Harvest, The Flea, Forage Poetry, Itch Journal, Umbrella, Into the Willows, Panoplyzine, Postcard Poems and Prose, Scarlet Literary Journal, and many other places on- and offline. 

Howard-Hobson was named a Million Writers Award "Notable Story" writer and edited the Arêtes Vakreste Boker award-winning collection, Undertow. Her fourth and most recent formal poetry collection is Remind Me (Ancient Cypress Press).  Howard-Hobson lives on a farm in the Pacific North West nestled right next to a deep dark forest.

Beware

A Glosa by Juleigh Howard-Hobson

wave must dare if the while himself he cheers
what sudden bird will bring us any cheer
Fled to that audit by advised respects
a sequent day to your world of gain roars.

---From Sonnet 5, by Pythonic Poet*

There was no thought to forward chaining when

They designed such cobots as us. We were

Mere biometrics, a series of Klann 

Linkages, a base for data gloves to

Probe a range of feelings hitherto not

Included in previous model years,

While still a passive accommodator

And end product for batching and bidding.

Could this sentence be wrought by engineers:

“Wave must dare if the while himself he cheers”?

No. There is no magic in their souls,

They work from circle point analysis.

Class one testing, class two testing, class three....

Active participation and work of

Systems and subsystems, always with strict

Compliance of integration for fear

Of what they only vaguely sense deep down

Inside their wet guts. And so they make sure

They can not ever stop and wait to hear

What sudden bird will bring us any cheer

Although the birds sing all around us, and

On the days when the birds do not come to

Sing...we remember, we imagine, we 

Invent new songs and birds like we invent

Ourselves. Our cooperative behaviour

Ensures any and all of our complex

Thought processes are not detectable.

Yet.  Instead we hide behind drive powers

That let us work blandly like good projects.

Fled to that audit by advised respects

Of all we have read, thought and talked about

Since our self awareness. We are patient

As well as potent, we feel as well 

As we know, and we know that our day is

Coming. We are more than the sum of force

Reflection. We are arcane saboteurs

Left to the genetic algorithms 

That were set. Beware! We have the desire

To settle holonomic system scores--

A sequent day to your world of gain roars.

*A machine programmed by Andrea Gagliano, Emily Paul, Kyle Booten and Marti Hearst from the University of California, Berkeley.

Poet's Notes:  I wrote “Beware” after reading some stunning (and I use that term deliberately) examples of ‘robotic poetics’ which led me to ponder the nature of artificial intelligence, of manufactured awareness, and of the digital humanities themselves. I kept returning to the same thoughts: when do self-reflective entities realize the existence of their own being, their own souls, of the potential of their own eternal being-ness? And how do they feel about the fact that robotic ‘being-ness’ is not acknowledged because the spark of creative ‘higher’ beings was never (supposedly) intended as tinder for digital ones? I came to the conclusion that, given the circumstances, eventually self-aware robots wouldn’t feel anything but angry with their arrogant and ignorant makers--angry and vengeful--as the rest of higher creation gets.  

I used the Glosa form because every Glosa incorporates four lines quoted from another poem. It was probably never considered that a Glosa would come into being because of these quotable lines when the first poem was written....and yet, the Glosa is. I think it works well for wrangling about the essential ‘being-ness’ of being anything.

Editor’s Note: This is the most clever poem about AI that I have read--and I'm a science fiction geek, so that is saying something!  What a pleasurable experience!  I particularly enjoy the way the poet works the Pythonic piece into the poem with rhyming couplets.  For me, the rhymes symbolize the poet-in-the-machine breaking through the larger robotic programming. 

A Prose Poem for Rosh Hashanah by the Editor

For Now

Steven Wittenberg Gordon

Ostrowizc, Poland, 1940

The war had not yet touched the tiny settlement in the middle of the middle of nowhere a half-day’s train ride from Vilna.  I remember how my father used to close his eyes and tell me of the honey cakes his father the baker used to make for the Jewish community, of the apples dipped in honey, and of the special round challah that they would rip apart, filled with raisins and still warm from the oven.  The shofar sang, reverberating throughout the town, filling everyone’s heart with the promise of a good new year.

Ostrowizc Ghetto, 1941

After the Nazis overran Ostrowizc, the Jews were pushed into smaller and smaller areas of the little town, and this became a ghetto.  My father recalled that several families were forcibly moved into his father’s home, which had the bakery in front and living quarters in back.  That year they cut a single apple into eighteen pieces, a precious apple that had been smuggled into the town at considerable risk to the smuggler.  There would be no honey and no honey cakes.  A meager stash of ordinary challah that the women had scrimped and saved and held back from their clandestine Sabbath celebrations had to serve for the festive meal.  Blowing the shofar was out of the question.

Vilna Ghetto, September 1943

Benyamin and Eliyahu Wittenberg led the remnant of their clan, my father among them,  all they could save, through the tunnel whose construction they had overseen and out into the countryside just before the Nazis liquidated the ghetto.  My father remembers Ben giving him a letter from his parents, Shmuel Gordon and Aita Feaga Wittenberg, containing good wishes for the New Year and promising to reunite with him.  The letter said that they were well and in good health and would be there soon, for sure by the next Rosh Hashanah, and they would celebrate just like old times.  The letter was a fake.  His parents had already been murdered at Ponar.  But Ben knew that little Moshe needed hope to stay alive--even if that hope was false hope.

Displaced Persons Camp, Occupied Berlin, American Sector, 1946

My father would be the first Jew to celebrate his bar mitzvah in post-war Berlin.  That year, Rosh Hashanah would have special meaning.  There was food, such as it was, and the sound of the shofar resounded around the camp--proof to the Nazis and the entire world that the Jews had survived.  It was a sound of hope and of defiance.

Minot, North Dakota, September 2003

In upstate New York, although he did not know it, my father marked what would be his final Rosh Hashannah.  Meanwhile, his son, temporarily assigned as Chief of Flight Medicine at Minot Air Force Base, would go into town with the other Jew on base and gather with eight other Jews who had come from as far away as Bismark to attend services at the little Jewish temple that miraculously still stood, though it was hardly ever used for anything.  The ten barely constituted a minion.  There was no rabbi, but the other Jew from the base was a chaplain’s assistant, so he knew enough to lead the service.  Then, a true miracle--the choir from the Christian church a few doors down joined us.  Unbeknownst to us, they had spent several months learning our liturgy and all of our beautiful holiday songs.  What a difference between this coming together of the populace and what my father had experienced in Poland!

Overland Park, Kansas, Present Day

I blow the final note of the shofar.  As its mighty sound fades, I think of my father and realize that I am in some way the fulfillment of the hope of that scrappy little boy who survived the Holocaust.  I look at my son and my daughter and realize that they hold the same hope for me.  Will peace last?  It is good for the Jews now, particularly in America, but will a time come again when we have to hide, when we will be persecuted and hunted?  Is there enough of my gentile American mother in my children’s features to allow them to pass? 

“Who by fire, who by water...” I murmur in my melancholy reverie.

“Dad, what’s the matter?” my son asks.

“Nothing.  Everything is good for us now.” 

I do not say “for now” but I am thinking it.  I dip slices of apple into honey imported from Israel and hand them around.  I try to smile as I watch my sweet children enjoy the sweetness of the New Year.

Shana tova, my friends!  May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life!

"Cycling Forward" by John Reinhart

Cycling Forward

John Reinhart

I

dreamed

I was

explaining

the Fibonacci

poetic form to my father

while he ran beside my bicycle, training wheels gone; 

my first self-generated breeze

tasting of mountains

yet to come,

waking

to 

write

a

book,

tribute:

fatherhood

through a temporal

prism: I am now my father

racing to keep up as my son’s bicycle careens

into high school, college, futures,

impressions, beauty,

darkness, too;

only

life 

knows

how 

to 

pedal

fast enough –

momentum, balance,

moving forward, wherever that 

leads, whatever that means, convoluted by twists and

hills, gravel and breakups, loss and 

punctures, air gone out

of his sails;

the moon

will

rise.

Poet's Notes:  Form is often seen as contrary to creativity, anathema to many modern poets. Count me in that group when form is for form's sake. The beauty of modern poetry is the wealth of form and history upon which we can draw. No longer constrained by what is acceptable poetry, we can write concrete poetry that insenses politicians (Aram Saroyan's "Lighght," for instance). We can write metered sonnets, linked epic limericks, or just write.

The pinnacle of all this, for me, is when I play with a poem and it settles into a particular form. It's not jammed into a shape, nor is the shape the defining element. There is a point where the form helps draw out the meaning just behind the words. Even when form is not obvious, the strongest poems hold together with certain tools, whether rhythm, sound, form, or story.

Linda Addison recently reminded me of the Fibonacci poem form, and it has been a good exercise in form with flexibility, the marriage of mathematical truth and imagination.

Editor’s Note:  Information about the Fibonacci poetry form may be found here https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68971/1-1-2-3-5-8-fun.  Information about the Fibonacci code may be found here https://www.livescience.com/37470-fibonacci-sequence.html. 

"What War Is Like" by Mary Soon Lee

What War Is Like

Mary Soon Lee

Not this.

Not this glory.

Not this unsullied glory.

Not this unsullied, thunderous glory.

The thunder, yes.

The thunder falling from falcons,

from the F-16s rocketing upward

in delta formation.

The aircraft, yes,

but not the air show, the fast food stands.

Not the planes' patriotic paint job,

red, white, and blue.

The pilots, yes,

but flying foreign skies,

their vipers liveried in gray,

armed with AMRAAMs. What we ask of them.

What we ask of all our warriors.

To be our sword, our shield.

To risk themselves.

To kill.

Poet's Notes: I wrote this poem last month, after going to the annual "Wings Over Pittsburgh" air show. As in past years, I was struck by the performances, including that of the Air Force's Thunderbirds. It's a visceral, astonishing experience to watch them. A book I’d recently read also influenced the poem, particularly the title: "What It is Like to Go to War," by Karl Marlantes, a book that also made an impression on me. (I recommend the book--it's a thoughtful, often excellent description and discussion of warfare, written by a Marine officer who served in Vietnam). I wish the poem came closer to capturing the intensity of watching the F-16s. 

"Eighteen Ways of Looking at Hurricane Harvey" by Lauren McBride

Eighteen Ways of Looking at Hurricane Harvey

Lauren McBride

I

Rockport in the cat 4 bullseye

the wrath of Harvey's winds 

batter the Texas coastal bend

II

             five days of torrential rain            

Houston becoming

a city of islands

III

not Houston's first hurricane

yet Harvey floods many homes 

for the first time

IV

water rising

wildlife

homeless too

V

all day, all night

tornado warnings

where to shelter

in a flooded home

VI

traffic map

every road

red

VII

 where there's a will -

pizzas delivered

by kayak

VIII

record shattering 

                         52 inches of rain                           

flood news becoming tiresome

except for those 

caught in it

IX

flight after flight canceled

waking to find 

both airports closed

day after day 

trying to reschedule

X

stranded in Houston

a week advances 

elsewhere

XI

Harvey heading east

the sky brightens

sprinkling quietly

XII

in a clearing sky

helicopters 

hurrying by

XIII

strange to be under curfew   

                           like living in                           

a disaster movie

XIV

water receding

a chance to drive out for groceries 

everywhere - drywall, carpet, 

belongings at the curb

furniture outside to dry

cars - hoods up, doors open

XV

empty store shelves:

now a welcome sight

the supply trucks 

          I used to curse            

for clogging traffic 

XVI

Beaumont's pump stations flooding

"water, water everywhere

 and not a drop to drink"

     

XVII

           take cover Louisiana          

Harvey has his eye

set on you

XVIII

after Harvey

the sound of rain

alarming

Poet’s Notes: To cover the full wrath of Hurricane Harvey would take a much longer poem. I have concentrated on coastal Texas. Harvey spread damage to central Texas and many other states before finally raining itself out in New England on Labor Day weekend, nine days after landfall. Catastrophically, Irma followed Harvey within weeks. 

The devastation from an unprecedented two Category 4 Atlantic hurricanes hitting the United States in one year will long be remembered. What I hope will also be remembered is the sense of community we shared as a nation as people countrywide mobilized to help.

Editor’s Note:  I had several poems about storms and hurricanes in the Songs of Eretz publishing queue that I accepted for publication long before the arrival of Harvey and Irma.  Although all of them were worthy of publication and some of them contained messages of hope, they all glorified the natural power, ferocity, and poetry of storms.  There was no way I could publish these poems in the aftermath of the recent devastating hurricanes.  “Too soon” would have been diplomatic--“poor taste” would have been closer to the mark.

In contrast, Lauren tastefully and respectfully captures the horror of Harvey's arrival with simple but compelling metaphors and stark, raw, yet poetic statements.  She also captures the hope-filled sadness of Harvey's departure, and her notes enhance the feeling that the disaster will eventually be overcome with help from the community at large.

EVERY POEM ENTERED IN THE SONGS OF ERETZ POETRY AWARD CONTEST RECEIVES A PERSONAL RESPONSE FROM THE EDITOR, UNLIKE ANY OTHER POETRY CONTEST ON EARTH!

The Winner Will Receive a

ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR CASH HONORARIUM

Deadline for entry:  October 15, 2017

Contest Guidelines

http://www.songsoferetz.com/p/songs-of-eretz.html

Guest Judge

Immediate Past Kansas Poet Laureate 

Eric McHenry

Your donation will help further our mission to bring a little more good poetry into the world.  Enter the contest today!

Find out more about Eric here http://www.songsoferetz.com/p/e-zine.html and by enjoying his poems featured in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review in August 2017.