3 Poems by Olivia Lewis

Ramekin 

In the kitchen, the ramequin
Sits and in its white angelic
Placidity, holds forth and
Sings, and its insufflation
Makes the souffl� rise
Drenched in unswept notes. 

The ceramic is secretive
Unperturbed and silent.
We do not hear it meloving
To the dough as it rises,
So softly we cannot hear,
When we are dead asleep. 

It sings of the air, warm
And real, of the kitchen,
And the fireplace, of seals and surf
Owls that fly too high and clatter against the moon.
And of coral, morning,
Orange juice, and sand witches. 

But mostly it warns of
The sooterlings that creep
Down the chimney
At midnight to
Flavor the dough with the
Zesty relish of life, and
The sweet tangy wallop of
Forgotten dreams. 

The Old Cowboy 

He ate a plucked peach
By the sycamore tree, with
Its soft texture,
Like armadillo fur
And the peach fuzz fizzled
In the sweet spring breeze
That was plumper and fuller
Than the peach could ever be
Swollen torrents in the cleft
Canyon cruel as a spider�s weft
All these things in the round
World, in the bite of a fruit
By the Mississippi. 

If You and I Lived Above the Sky 

The refraction of ice skitteringly swooned
Like the knife that shattered the moon 

In time to the twang of a Grecian lyre
And the lofty orange of the tambourine 

The moon swayed, a precarious dance
Among the fragments, it dipped and caroused 

Darkness swooped down on charcoal wings
And light rose up on simple things. 

Spotlights gleamed on the dark orcas in the midnight sea
In the night, the glint of the waves cast fairy keys 

And you and me, the sharks soared by
Underneath the surface, 

And the swimmer curled by
while the world was high.


Bionote

Olivia Lewis is a writer and student of biological sciences in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is chief editor of Aleola Journal of Poetry and Art, a print publication in its third y ear. 

3 Poems by William Bernhardt

Revelation 

For those who thirst
        there�s a waterfall
For those who ache
        there�s tender embrace
For those who think they�re alone
        angels beckon
For those who doubt
        a compass points the way
        within 

Where the Poet and the Bride say Come 

Snowrise 

The sky was still, the air was brisk
I held the ice within my fist.
So sure that I had reached the end
my travels slowed before the bend
but as I reached this new plateau
the ground gave way, as did the snow
I felt a shuddering in the earth
it shed its skin, the ground gave birth.
A crocus called, with purple voice
its dappled petals, soft and moist.
The freeze would melt and in its puddle
clues to what before befuddled.
I felt the fear and doubt subside
while joy within would coincide
with love, and promise. When there�s room
and time enough, the crocus blooms. 

Song of Lara 

I celebrate the way your eyebrows
      do backbends over hazel eyes
      on the pedestal of your cheekbones
      and the parabola of your smile. 

I delight in your voice, so soothing
      when you whisper, rumbling
      as you sleep, growling when you pull up
      your pants, rapture in the shower. 

I revel in your walk, your defiant
      stride, determined gait, saucy
      buttocks distracting, the grace
      of calf and thigh in delicious syncopation
      kinetic art, music in motion. 

But most of all, I love your hand, soft
      smooth sultan�s satin, I will curl up
      beside you, able to sleep but
      unwilling, because I would rather be
      aware. 

Bionote 

William Bernhardt is the bestselling author of more than thirty books, including the blockbuster Ben Kincaid series of novels, the historical novel Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness , currently being adapted into an NBC miniseries, a book of poetry ( The White Bird ), and a series of books on fiction writing. In addition, Bernhardt founded the Red Sneaker Writing Center in 2005, hosting writing workshops and small-group seminars and becoming one of the most in-demand writing instructors in the nation. His monthly eBlast, The Red Sneaker Writers Newsletter, reaches over twenty thousand people. He is the only writer to have received the Southern Writers Guild�s Gold Medal Award, the Royden B. Davis Distinguished Author Award (University of Pennsylvania) and the H. Louise Cobb Distinguished Author Award (Oklahoma State), which is given "in recognition of an outstanding body of work that has profoundly influenced the way in which we understand ourselves and American society at large." In addition to his novels, he has written plays, a musical (book and music), humor, nonfiction, children books, biography, poetry, and puzzles. OSU named him �Oklahoma�s Renaissance Man,� noting that in addition to writing novels, he can �write a sonnet, play a sonata, plant a garden, try a lawsuit, teach a class, cook a gourmet meal, prepare homemade ice cream, beat you at Scrabble, and work the New York Times crossword in under five minutes.� 

3 Poems by Stephen Collis

your purists are where we are going

I cannot
forthwith
the mechanism
some clouds
new wind
all the change
we�d enable
comes out
carnage too
often abrupt
like shellshock
the hope of
no hope
in a file called
No File
we cannot open
or close 

loose regulators

When we
slow the crickets
down
tromp l�oeil
nuance of
nothing�s
as real as a
flash of lightning
image at a standstill
stormy or quill-bright
now and then
leaping forth or
dynamically holding
each other in the
wind a minute
sleet and the cropped
state of the world
wobbling reflection
in the pitcher we draw
valets to no powers 

placed a long time in the future

Seems like
furor now
off the temps
inside of us or
against half of us
such as no doc
or sans papier
what representation is
is a winter of
spent enclosures
unspecified seams
a firth or
gorge broken
open I give it
spatial egress
to walk into
there�s all of us
now grow 

Bionote

Stephen Collis is a poet, editor and professor. His many books of poetry include The Commons (Talon Books 2008; second edition 2014), On the Material (Talon Books 2010�awarded the BC Book Prize for Poetry), To the Barricades (Talon Books 2013), and (with Jordan Scott) DECOMP (Coach House 2013). He has also written two books of literary criticism, a book of essays on the Occupy Movement, and a novel. In 2014 he was sued for $5.6 million by US energy giant Kinder Morgan, whose lawyers read his writing in court as �evidence,� and in 2015 he was awarded the Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy. His forthcoming book is Once in Blockadia ; he lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University. 

2 Poems by David Francis

The Early Morning Guard�s Song 

The steam is gone
it has served its purpose
the train is gone
either disembarking or boarding
the cows have been
cleared off the track
and led back to the
range
the sheep back
to the pasture
steam by its nature
is transient
I am resigned to that
but even the pollution
of exhaust is welcome
when it�s freezing
however I am too far
from the curb
and must protect the
Platonic form of
a fort 

A House Someday 

I promised you a house
which became a houseboat
and floated away 

in my mind I promised
an old stone house
by the sea 

one that would not tumble
like wildflowers
from the hill 

one that would not
be a beach house
and subside or surf 

but outside the mind
neither promises
nor objects survive 

unmoved by argument
it tumbled down the hill
and floated away 

the house made of stone
by the sea 

Bionote 

David Francis has produced five albums of songs, one of poems, and "Always/Far," a chapbook of lyrics and drawings. He directed and produced the films "Village Folksinger," "Projection," and the music video "Commercial for Cassette." His poems and stories have appeared in a number of journals. www.davidfrancismusic.com 

5 Poems by Erin Slaughter

Five Haikus for the Fall of Icarus 

1
Pan to the mountains
cut to the writhing city
slow fade out on spring 

2
The tip of his tongue
flicking at molten sunlight
cypress blossom sweet 

3
Listen to this fact:
Icarus was just a man
falling out of frame 

4
Hopeless descending;
the herder was the only
soul who noticed him 

5
Like breath. Acceptance.
On ships, children closed their eyes.
The sea kept churning. 

L�appel du vide

Tell me how the dust motes that glitter in the light 

want to gnaw on our bones. Tell me about how stars are just rips in the black skin of the sky, and most of them are already dead, anyway. Tell me how God lives in trees, and in books, and that He won�t be mad if we re-gift the raggedy sweaters He gives us, 

that we�ll all live to see this town go up in flames. Tell me how a grave isn�t a hundred miles an hour into a brick wall, it�s more like the forests I�m always climbing through in my dreams, 

and really, Death is the lover you�ve been waiting for all your Life. 

Fear and Love in Three Movements 

1
Once he sat and looked
from one face to the next, his eyes
like pieces of a broken plate.
�Good morning. Were
you looking for me?� 

2
I heard him talking
over his shoulder, those eyes
hard and pale and reckless
quizzical and maybe contemptuous
even then. He turned,
looked at them again, not knowing
what to do exactly. 

3
And it might have
been a good thing that they could not
watch him sleep. 

Ocean Eyes 

It�s always raining
            in your ocean eyes, and your face
takes on the weather. 

                             As the gray mist stirs and rocks collide,
                             some versions of us
                             breathe still, unsure breaths 

under wintery skies.
             I watch the waves crash
from iris to shore. 

Sunday, Thick Noon 

Sunday, thick noon creeps
down the windowless hallway
like molasses, sugary sick
like a cough syrup punch
in the gut. Like nuclear waste 

seeping under field-lounging
barn floorboards,
or whatever�yeah, yeah;
a teenager�s tongue clicks out
bubblegum splatter onto the sidewalk. 

Sunday, quarter-til-three
your veins are lead, concrete, asphalt
blazing. People in other countries go home
or to the pub, their evening a shuffle
of goodhearted indeterminate noises,
stumbling towards
�half-past�, �half-till�; The hourglass
half full or empty. It depends 

on who you are, the color of the room,
what you take to drink. Most things
do, you know: wind and dance around
themselves and put themselves to bed
like dutiful children.
Whispers under floral-smelling sheets.
Lullaby stories and freshly shampooed
hair. Everything eating everything
in the end. 

Bionote 

Erin Slaughter has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. After a brief rendezvous with publishing in the Pacific Northwest, she is currently an MFA student at Western Kentucky University, and works as the graduate assistant for Steel Toe Books. She is the head editor of Lavender Bluegrass: LGBT Writers on the South , an anthology forthcoming from KY Story in 2016. Her fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction has been published in The Harpoon Review , Drunk in a Midnight Choir , GRAVEL , and 101 Words , among others. She lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky with her two monochrome cats, Amelia and Cecil. 

3 Poems by Jennifer Hoffmann

Spring

I notice a small branch
on Fairlawn Avenue.
Tiny, bare, like a Tai Chi pose,
it lies vulnerable
in the busy road.
I bring it home and place it
in my favourite single bud vase.
Pour the water in slowly,
meditatively.
I watch over this offering.
For just a few moments each day
I merely witness as the end of each
tiny offshoot transforms
into buds,
and then, remarkably,
into blossoms.
It is a little like being a spiritual companion
to this small branch;
as Galway Kinnell might suggest
my reverent daily attention is teaching
the thing its loveliness
until it flowers from within. 

One Line

I want to write
one line
of poetry
perfect
for this moment, 

sanctifying the pen
sanctifying the paper
sanctifying the moment. 

I want to write
one line
of poetry
perfect
as a bough of Forsythia 

pirouetting, Ikebana-like,
in a slender, silver beaker. 

But
all that stutters
from my sorry pen 

is chicken soup and matzo balls. 

A Poem 

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer.
It is soul in action.
Poets compose in a frenzy of ecstatic intuition. Edward Hirsch 

Your hand, Your hook.
My prayer. 

Help me recall
what my heart already knows
but has forgotten
as the rocks on the river-bed
rattle me, as my words are muted
by the miracle of morning light. 

Help me reach
for my shield and my staff,
the pen and the paper
which are the voice of soul. 

The words are the thread
to the invisible heart.
Who is the author? 

Reveal to me
once more
the thin place inside time
where talking and listening become One, 

as, in a blaze
of intuition, 

I remember 

my first tongue,
the language I spoke
before I was born. 

Help me re-discover
as Rainer Maria Rilke offers,
that You are the Other
in my solitude,
a silent center
for my conversations with
myself . 

Bionote 

Jennifer ( Jinks) Hoffmann was born in 1943 and was raised in South Africa. She and her husband Alan immigrated to Canada in 1966, where they have lived since. Jinks is a Spiritual Director. She trained in the Lev Shomea program, which means �listening heart� in Hebrew. She is the poetry editor of Presence: an International Journal of Spiritual Direction. She has three adult sons, and is blessed with eighteen grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Jinks loves to write poetry, and to work daily with her dreams. These are two of her most loved ways of listening for life's Mystery. Jinks has had numerous poetry and prose publications both in print and on-line journals. Jinks may be reached at jinksh@sympatico.ca 

1 Poem by Tim Staley

Stalled Ink 

At the grocery store Lois searches
in her wallet, her pockets, her planner,
her purse, her phone�
The girl at the register
eats Flammin' hot Cheetos.
Her fingertips are stained bright red. 

What Lois searches for
bleeds through the paper and the paper
has faded away. 

Bionote 

Tim Staley was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1975. He completed a Poetry MFA from New Mexico State University in 2004. His first full-length volume of poetry is forthcoming from Pski�s Porch Publishing. His chapbooks are available for purchase at the Grandma Moses Press online store. Journal publications include Border Senses, Cacti Fur, Canary, Chiron Review, Circumference, Coe Review, Malpais Review, Magnapoets, RHINO: The Poetry Forum, and Sin Fronteras . His hobbies include thinking, taquitos, and waiting. Actually, just taquitos. He lives with his wife and daughter in Las Cruces, New Mexico.