California Dreamin’

All real living is meeting.—Martin Buber
It’s important to get the basics.—Mahnaz Saberi

They can hear the bulldozers rumble down, to raze all
their makeshift dwellings in the camp. Real
people live here, but those living
nearby complain of noise and theft. Fear is
what fuels the brightly-lit machinery, this violent meeting.

One woman, 44, a shed-dweller, says it’s
urgent to save what’s important
for her friends―blankets, flashlights, a grill—to
warn them that their plywood shanties will get
no mercy. Life here is the
splintered furniture of poverty, where stars are the only basics.

Hegemony

(A play with Hegemon, outspoken leading man;
the innocent Subordo, from a world apart;
and simple Publico, of short attention span;
and Opulo, the merchant.) Let us start.

Says Hegemon: “It’s vital that we intercede
to help you govern.” Says Subordo in reply:
“This serves us well. In compensation we’ll concede
our country’s wealth.” But as its fortunes go awry,

Subordo nominates a leader for reform.
Says Hegemon: “His record of debauchery
and greed will devastate your land. You must transform
your nation to a market-based democracy!”

The people balk, thus Hegemon’s soliloquy:
“Such insolence demands that we suspend
all trade.” Subordo, cast aside in misery,
appeals to Hegemon, who promises to send

a righteous leader to restore the fragile peace.
Says Publico: “You’re welcome to our bank accounts!”
Says Opulo: “Our arms production must increase!”
As Hegemon prepares a gala to announce

the victory, Subordo cries, “Our homes are lost,
our land destroyed!” Says Hegemon, “We must denounce
the enemy, and then rebuild at any cost!”
Says Publico: “You’re welcome to our bank accounts!“

Says Opulo: “Rebuilding? Let me calculate.”
And Hegemon declares in mighty voice: “We state
the Truth – throughout the world our message resonates!”
(Then silence, as production terminates.)

Excursion

Roses needn’t be red, white or yellow.
I see purple in them, as in lilacs and orchids.

I take a few moments to sit in my room,
empty my mind of tiring tasks,
and taste the rose-scented rippling air
of my summers and winters.

In my twilight years, I discover the shades
of my decades, noticing deep colors.
Purple is in my moods, sorrowful or peaceful,

watching sunset’s amethyst clouds
darken the roses or the butterfly’s violet
wings skimming over regal petals.

I feel roses’ moist buds, see the sound
of falling blossoms in sun and rain
during this short stay.

Double Beds and Free HBO

i left my heart on
for her
she stayed cheap
and only for two nights

checked out on me
early the third morning

the maid found innuendos
lies
and empty pizza boxes

in the clutter
i was charged for the damage

and my key card absconded

now the entry
is forever locked

and i am in the parking lot
watching warily
for cars
and sly smiles
that sluice into my vein

where i once left my heart on
for her.

erin-cilberto

Bio of Gay Guard-Chamberlin

Gay Guard-Chamberlin is a Chicago poet and artist living in the redolent Devon Ave. neighborhood. Her first book of 36 poems, Red Thread Through a Rusty Needle, was released by New Wind Publishing. Gay has a Masters in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College, Chicago. She has also studied and taught an array of topics, from collage and papermaking to women’s self-defense and InterPlay.

As often as possible, she and her sister in California, Anara Guard, perform their poetry together as Sibling Revelry; in April of this year they co-taught a workshop in Collaborative Poetry online for the Chicago Public Library’s celebration of Poetry Month. Gay also edits manuscripts, teaches creativity to adults, and poetry to young writers.

Mad for the Moon

I'm an unapologetic lunatic
for all things numinous
lovely and luminous

I’m fanatic for the fantastic
the phosperescence
of biolumenescence

the opalescent essence
of moonlight in refraction
the knowing reflection

inside an abalone shell
its lustrous glossy gleams
like the iridescent dreams

of miniature moons
milky-pearl planets crystal spheres
singing bowls for the waning years

Bio of Maureen Tolman Flannery

Maureen Tolman Flannery has grounded her poetics in the various landscapes of her life experience: Wyoming, where she grew up in a sheep-ranching family and has recently returned to rescue and restore two historic log cabins, Mexico, where she became infatuated with the rich complexity of its culture; and Chicago, where she and her husband of 52 years settled to raise their family of three sons and a daughter.

She received a Literary Award from the Illinois Arts Council and was thrice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Maureen has received multiple awards in Poets and Patrons contests over the years, as well as in the Joanne Hirshfield Memorial Award, WyoPoets and New Millennium Writings contests.

She earned her BA and MA degrees in English Literature from Creighton University, and taught English as a Foreign Language for thirty years. She has been active in end-of-life care and support of home funerals and green burials.

She has published over 500 poems in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Her own volumes of poetry are Following the Cabin Home, Navigating by Expectant Stars, Tunnel Into Morning, Destiny Whispers to the Beloved, Ancestors in the Landscape, Beloved Quietus, Secret of the Rising Up, Remembered into Life, and Snow and Roses, a chapbook about the White Rose resistance in Nazi Germany.

Litany for a Rancher

Bless this man who lies abed
with so much riding on the way he dies,

Bless his riding the range, his bronc riding,
his riding it out, letting it ride,
riding herd on, riding rough-shod over,
and his sometimes riding the fence.

Bless his fence building, fence fixing,
his offense, defense, nonsense and his sensitivity.

Bless his camp tending, crop tending, pretending,
his tenderness tending sick lambs at night,
his tending to park at the Ten Sleep bar,
his being wrong and his being right.

Bless his bull breeding, bull-shitting, bull-dogging,
his shooting the bull and his humble going home.

Bless his fishing, hunting, dogging the timber,
sheep dog training, curses blaring, pups birthing,
nursing into dog days of his doggedly caring for sheep.
Bless his lambing, docking, shearing,

his mouthing out, his dressing out,
and his being out of time.

Bless all that husbanding
and the wife a lifetime at his side.
Bless his siring five to carry on the line.

Bless their dancing at the Wagon Wheel,
his sheep wagon, covered wagon leading the train,

his being on the wagon
and the wagging tails of his well trained dogs.
Bless his logging and cabin building,
the muddy cab of his pickup truck,

his wethers, ewes, his bucks, his cussing and his cussedness,
his luck and his being down on it.

After tending his land and tending to land on his feet,
bless his recent forgetting, falling, recalling,
calling out in the night,
his victories, feats, defeats.

Bless his wink for the nurse’s assistant,
his cursed insistency on peeing in the sink

Bless his branding cattle, branding sheep,
rounding and rounding up,
rough riding, rodeo riding,
riding high, riding west into the sunset.

Bless him.

the prints of a dance

taking a step-back
as the dust settles
from a cliff collapse
revealing three-hundred-and-thirteen-million-year-old
fossilized tracks
described in a cold, distant and detached
two shelled-egg-laying animals, passing
at different times
along the slope of a sand dune

 upon a telescoping closer,
the prints express, paws in a primal dance
the distinct gait of tetrapods
four legs, step to prance, telling the story of ice-forming
as the norms, then gorges tore
into the unspoken for
and the sky tugged at the shores
raising tides for the deep to climb
fins to limbs,
as sharks roamed from the ocean floor
to meet the beasts upon the plains
to tear apart a fallen star
and set their prints with claws and pads
raptured in a primal dance

The Athenian Housewife’s Lament

As dainty spring moves fast to ruddy summer,
Now I this household nudge to life again,
The good mechanicals to call to arms,
Yet find them other places occupied.
A play, they say, for Theseus, the duke,
A steady man, and yea, for all his guests,
While I am left to wring my hands and sigh
For all the ragged want of cottage fey.
Quince, the roof, the shingles’ wagging tongues,
The canted frames, Snug, put them back to right,
Bottom, you ass, for new frocks set your loom,
Robin, these coats do fix, then put away,
Francis, mend, for fires need baking bread,
Snout, the pans and pots beg well your hand.
The play, the thing, can wait, for urgent parts
Your friendly band for kern-bards clamor thus
And need we too the balm of laughter’s sun
Flute, to play. ‘Tis almost dinnertime.

Capturing the Moment (In Memory of Vivian Maier)

Tall, plain with cropped hair,
in and out of eyeshot, she cradles
a box camera, savoring
Chicago’s street theatre.

On a gritty sidewalk, sitting alone,
worn laborer with dusty hands
eats a sandwich from its torn wrapper.

A carefree boy rolls a car tire
without a wobble.

Plump woman, hair in curlers, walks
with poise among passing strangers.

Smug and nifty, another woman,
azure eyes, color of her necklace,
flaunts her orange hat, matching coat.

A man buries his face in his knees
with his arm over his cap,
cocooned from hunger
and perhaps, shame.

Ready for a fun outing,
six kids laugh, crammed into
a station wagon with Grandma.

On the bus, old husband and wife
in their orbit, doze to the wheels’ hum,
her head on his shoulder,
face hidden under his wide brim hat.

With a cast of the 1950s and 60s,
the artist tells strangers’ stories,
dawn until dusk, through her keen lens,
when not sustaining herself as a hurried nanny.

She captures ordinary ironies
idling by, lost to others in their daily blur.

Sparks Fly Upward

Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust,
neither doth trouble spring out of the ground;
yet man is born unto trouble,
as the sparks fly upward.

Job 5:6-7 (KJV)

Humped over my books at night, reason will not help me,
nor desire, so I take my groundless grief into the darkness

where fireflies escape like sparks soundlessly from a crease
between the shadows of trees and my moon lighted lawn.

Light from the lamp on my desk, a floor above where I stand,
spills wasted to the ground and I regret the yellow cast it leaves

on the grass in need of rain, onto the thin skin of earth
that does not, I am told, hold the First Cause of affliction.

I listen again, being born unto trouble, scheming of ways
to explain the morality of God, and strain against the silence

of blank space between star-sparks echoing light
where I hope against evidence of tomorrow’s dust.

My Daddy Knows How to Drink

My Daddy knows how to drink,
barreling down the boulevard,
eyelids drooping behind the wheel,
a half smile and a nod to those passing by.

Christian music blaring on the radio,
escaping through the windows,
rolled down to catch the breeze;
to catch the wondering stares.

His white T-shirt blowing in the hot air,
he throws back another swig of hooch.
Checking the rear view mirror for the police,
no one is following. He sneaks another gulp.

In full dark he steers around the culvert
and honks the horn for a joke.
Oh, he’s a joker, my drunken Daddy;
just wish he could find his way home.

At home we wait. His dinner is cold.
I’m in bed when the back door flies open.
Angry are the words my Mother hurls
as he shatters his plate, and leaves.
She is crying again.

I peek out the window to see him staggering
back to his car. He starts the engine.
He looks up at me in my window,
Catches my wide eyes with his
and drops his head, shaking it slowly.

He takes a deep breath, then another gulp,
the brown bag crinkling around the bottle.
It’s empty so he tosses it out the window.
He peels out of the dirt strip in the grass
that we call a driveway.

I don’t know when I will see him again;
all I know is I’ve made him angry.
I crinkle up my little face and tears stream down.
I crawl back in bed, my head under the covers
so Mother doesn’t hear me crying again.

The Language of Love

“Without arts, the inner life would wither” — Mark Strand

Take three bus transfers anywhere.
Get off at the last possible spot.
Look around—you will be surrounded
by Chicago, but you won’t be lost.

Doubtless you will see Mark Strand
wandering State Street in an overcoat.
Maybe you see a thousand such poets,
falling from the sky like a Magritte painting.

Open your umbrella to protect your face
from their tears. Watch as their broken
legs and blood smears the sidewalk.
Step over their bodies.

Don’t steal their bowler hats.
Walk up to Strand and shake his hand.
Fan the inner flame of art—protect
your fragile and illuminated heart.

— Previously published in Two Cities Review and the Ekphrastic Review

Bio of John J. Gordon

John J. Gordon has had a lifelong love for the written word.
He began writing poetry for family and friends
to commemorate special occasions. After taking
poetry classes, he began his quest to become a poet.
He currently is a member of the ISPS, Poets & Patrons
and the Arbor Hill Gang. He has had poems published
in anthologies, reviews, journals and online.
His quest continues.

Automotive Memories

My family didn’t own one until I was nearly 20.
Most weekends we borrowed Uncle Joe’s ‘47 Plymouth
to be returned by early Monday morning.

Being car-less was not a major inconvenience.
From our south side home, street cars and buses
conveyed us anywhere in the city. We seldom
left Chicago, except on Sunday afternoons.

My father would pack my grandmother, aunt,
mother and me in the vehicle. He was
the only one who knew how to drive.

We motored to what was called the country,
most often a stretch of Ridge Road
near the Illinois-Indiana border.

This area teemed with seasonal farm stands
offering fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs,
honey and flowers. We rarely returned home
empty-handed except in the dead of winter.

I was not enthusiastic about these mandatory
excursions; stuffed in an uncomfortable car,
no radio or air conditioner, an inadequate heater,
surrounded by adult relatives.

I could not appreciate the sheer joy and the feeling
of freedom dad derived from just driving. Now as I
inch along on the Tri-State, I often picture my dad
behind the wheel on his Sunday afternoon drive.

Someone honking propels me back
from this much simpler, less congested time.

John J. Gordon

Bio of Judith Tullis

Judith Tullis is the Treasurer of the Illinois State Poetry Society, Secretary of Poets & Patrons of Chicago, and is active in several other groups of poets and writers. Her many poems can be found online and in print. She lives in a small house with a large garden where poetry often happens.

Mules

Sure-footed Conchita
descends the mountain,
patient under pressure,
her back bowed
by hundred pound bags
of fragrant coffee beans
hand-picked by Juan Valdez.

Dark-eyed Manuela
avoids uniformed men,
boards a plane,
her stomach full
of cocaine condoms.
The job sustains her family,
destroys others.

Females,
placid or desperate,
beasts of burden
for Columbian exports
to satisfy the world’s appetites.

Noah’s Flood

“. . . Noah’s flood is not yet subsided;
two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.”
~ Herman Melville, Moby Dick [Chapter 58]

Two-thirds of the world is watery,
calling the vagabond, the troubled,
the adventurous, the meditative,
to come to the shore and beyond,

to sail out into the deep,
the gull and albatross overhead
and beneath feet which play the deck like a drum,
teeming villages of dolphin, shark, squid,
and thousands of other species, many still unknown.

We’ve learned to love remnants
of the flood, what flows between continents
and up estuaries, waves that foam,
climb the air and fall,
the white sapphire sparkles on the surface
in moonlight or sun.

Scientists say the ice is melting,
the flood returning.
When the waters don’t recede
and whole cities sink below the crest,
you and I will play the role
of Noah’s neighbors.

~ Wilda Morris 

Originally published in Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick by Wilda Morris (Kelsay Books, 2019).

Day at the Library

The man looks at books
and examines the pages;
some of the books,
haven’t been read in ages.

Which one to pick?
Which book should he choose?
His glasses are thick;
as each book he’ll peruse.

It’s September at the library;
summer is winding down.
Each book you read,
has a verb or a noun.

But the sentences you read;
could take you beyond.
television not worthy;
to make you feel fond.

A book in your hands,
might not make you rich.
But it will take you to lands,
where your mind pulls the switch.

I sit here content,
the man is far down,
the aisle with intent,
to narrow his search down.

But through books he still looks
for the perfect titles.
When you are not reading,
your brain turns idle.

So go to the library,
and check out a book.
You’ll be happy,
whichever one you took.

Mark Hudson