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Better Than Starbucks
Poetry and Fiction Journal
. . . if you love diversity and creative writing in any and every form, then you’re in the right place . . .
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May 2022
Vol VII No II
Published quarterly:
February, May, August,
and November.
The Force of Attraction
He doesn’t know quite what a “sister” is
(he’s only two), but here’s this tiny thing
to fill the central spot that once was his
and turn the grownups rapt with marveling.
Experimental physicists observe
that mass draws mass, and greater mass, of course,
draws lesser, causing even light to curve
as space itself is altered by its force.
But Emerson saw the way a baby’s coo
made satellites of full-grown men, as all
their massive shoulders jostled close to view
the dimpled darling, smallest of the small.
The boy hears something in his sister’s cry
to which the laws of physics don’t apply.
Richard Wakefield’s publications include East of Early Winters (winner of the Richard Wilbur Award) and A Vertical Mile (short-listed for the Poets’ Prize). His new collection, Terminal Park, has just been published.
Loser
“Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.”
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
The qualities of loss often conceal
how winning is a limit and a lie,
since human nature would much rather deal
with touchdown dances than with kids who cry
their disbelief we just want them to try
their best. They know better, they know too well
winning gets parades, applause, proud eyes
that say well done, instead of damn it, hell,
how did you miss that pitch, that pass, oh, well,
we’ll practice more, or send you to a camp,
some place where they do all they can to sell
you on the notion that there’s just one stamp,
one way to court the dark drug of winning,
to hide how life is loss from the beginning.
Joe Benevento has had fourteen books of poetry and fiction published, including Expecting Songbirds: Selected Poems, 1983-2015. He teaches creative writing and literature at Truman State University, in Kirksville, Missouri.
Nothing is Needful Here
Whatever I might have wanted,
I didn’t expect a thing.
Be easy. Breathe slowly.
Nothing is needful here.
See: I take three steps back
and turn my face away
that I might be allowed to stay.
Jane Greer edited Plains Poetry Journal in the 80s and 90s. Her most recent poetry collection is Love like a Conflagration (Lambing Press, 2020). She lives in North Dakota.
For a Daughter Leaving Home
Over the waters of a Northwoods river,
Where it widens into a shallow bay,
I take you, daughter, to the lily pads.
They grew like this some fifty years ago
When I first paddled out in this canoe.
Before you go, I wanted you to see them
Flowering white on floating disks of green.
No one’s allowed to pluck them out, and so
I lift one gently with my paddle blade.
Breathe in its fragrance. See how it depends,
Below a pad striped purple underneath,
Upon a rope-like stem that’s rooted down
Within the riverbed, withdrawing for
The winter freeze to rise again each year.
My lecture done, I gently place it back.
The summer soon is gone and then you’ll move
Two thousand miles to California’s coast.
Rivers of your own lead you to your life.
Steven Peterson’s poems appear in Alabama Literary Review, America, The Christian Century, Dappled Things, Light, and elsewhere. His plays have been produced around the USA. He’s a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, splitting time between Chicago and northern Wisconsin.
“Hi”: An Experiment in Operant Conditioning
At just one formal greeting, both our breaths turn slack.
Hello, good looking man, I love you so. I want
a taste of you or more than one tonight. Although
I love our conversations, I request a waltz
or more; a bedroom tango or a marathon
if you prefer. The Kama Sutra is the book
that makes us gods tonight. Our bond, our flesh, our heat
can turn a swimmer into man someday. A magic
trick, for when we want to slow our reel: just breathe
and change the “hi” to “hey”. We’re both psychologists
and know the mind enough to tame the imp that wants
to dance so much. It’s never easy being you
or me; our illnesses can feel like metal on
another element until . . . we wear us out.
Before we bear one child, we must control for tone.
Christy Reno is a first time published middle-aged poet originally from Oklahoma. She is an artist and trained to work in mental health. She loves dogs and enjoys reiki and singing.
Geometry
I want to learn geometry —
not proofs or points, not certainty
about an angle’s rightness, but
some skill with obtuse ones that jut
into my sphere. I’d like to see
the shapes of my own history,
and maybe find congruency
between the things I have and what
I want. To learn
the arc of love would likely be
more than Euclid could promise me,
but if his theorems might cut
through chaos, or reach hearts once shut
to skew lines and asymmetry,
I want to learn.
Jean L. Kreiling is the prize-winning author of three poetry collections, Shared History (2022), Arts & Letters & Love (2018), and The Truth in Dissonance (2014); she is an Associate Poetry Editor for Able Muse: A Review of Poetry, Prose & Art.
Cancer Scare
A flash somewhere, then suddenly
ponds that sprout starflower and shrub,
jasmine and beard lichen, spreading white fingers.
Rustling — here comes a net of curved horns
crisscrossing against each other, sturdy,
brown scythes moving slow.
The herd stops and looks. Now the world
is calm. See — no steps. Only the wind
pushing a branch caught on another branch.
And then soft screams. They rise from
little mouths wet with mucus and tears.
The wild goats weep like a drone of hornets.
There — on the ground between grasses
and hooves, there spreads another pond.
Crimson, carmine, precious. Red sulphur
painting the dull rocks till they shine
like gold. Skinny legs set at hard
right angles, piled up unnaturally still.
Tan yellow fur ripped from skin
by a canine tooth and jaw — it dusts
the stone like fresh fallen snow.
Then, up the plain comes
the howling of hounds, a death song
kept by the beat of horses punishing stone.
Wild horns scatter far. Back to the jasmine
and dwarf trees to cool craggy springs.
Back to hiding from the hunter. But the
hunter comes each day for a new mark.
The herd shrinks and shrinks, till one day
the wind finds only itself.
Kevin Blankinship is a professor of Arabic at Brigham Young University. His essays and poetry have appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Gingerbread House, Blue Unicorn, Wine Cellar Press, and more. Follow him on Twitter @AmericanMaghreb.
They won’t stay in
They won’t stay in, the things I must not say.
I stuff them in a box. I lock the vault
but my skin splits — tries to scream anyway.
I beg for medicine, they rub in salt
and seal it over locking in the lie.
I’ve been shamed silent by cruel command,
but not this time. I reach out my red hand
and lifting up the lid let slip just one thin cry —
one cry of agony so long denied
but in that cry are ten more stifled cries
each one with ten more stifled cries inside.
In exponential waves they multiply.
The truth explodes whoever’s world it rocks.
No one resists for long Pandora’s box.
Robert Priest is the author of fourteen books of poetry, three plays, four novels, lots of musical CDS, and one hit song. His words have been debated in the legislature, posted in the Transit system, quoted in the Farmer's Almanac, and sung on Sesame Street.
Futility
As the moth that ceaselessly beats its wings
Against the casement that holds the flame,
Drawn on as if by phantom strings,
Oblivious to all other things
Save the faint hope to which it clings —
I do the same.
One crucial fact it seems to miss —
’Twould be consumed in the coveted glow —
And being unaware of this
It struggles on in careless bliss,
Seeking the fire’s burning kiss;
But I — I know.
First published by The Society of Classical Poets.
Anna J. Arredondo is an engineer by education, a home educator by choice, and by preference, a poet. She has poems published in Light, The Lyric, Time of Singing, and The Society of Classical Poets.
Retaliation City
“She’s my girl!” “Pay me now!” “You’ll get it!” And a fight . . .
Same scene in twenty city neighborhoods last night.
This morning’s headlines scream out shots, deaths, tears,
Car screeching from a parking lot beside shut Sears.
Prayers summon some resilient love and resonate
Persistence, mothers’ hugs above a gutter grate,
Then in grief’s pews and, finally, a sleepless bed.
Here love means loyalty, and blame means blood, bright red.
David D. Horowitz founded and manages Rose Alley Press. His poems have appeared in Terrain.org, Raven Chronicles, The Lyric, Coffee Poems, and many other journals and anthologies. His website is www.rosealleypress.com.
Middle of the Road
Hunched over in the middle of the street
a tiny gray-haired woman blocked the lane
that I was driving in. Should I beep?
Was she confused? Had she dropped her cane?
And then I saw the cell phone in her hand.
Was she in trouble, dialing 911?
To me she looked oblivious and calm,
like someone standing in a beam of sun
checking email on a chilly day, except
that usually you do that on the sidewalk,
not the street. As she scrolled through her texts
I eased around her, trying not to gawk
at someone in her age group acting young —
for who was I to say she’s acting dumb?
Richard Cecil has published four collections of poems. He teaches at Indiana University.
What Will You Be When You Grow Up?
Historically, this never was a thing.
You did what you were born to do, were told,
Fitting yourself into your parent’s mold,
A farmer’s son a farmer, king’s son a king,
A girl to be a mother and a wife.
But then came education, travel, choice,
Awareness of the wishes you could voice,
Countries, careers, sex partners — it’s your life!
And though just who you are you cannot know,
Nor what you want, yet all is your decision.
You’ll make mistakes, find failures and derision
But life is long: so have another go . . .
Retry, and then try something else; take; give.
Do what you love. You die, regardless. Live!
Robin Helweg-Larsen is Series Editor for Sampson Low’s ‘Potcake Chapbooks — form in formless times’ and blogs at formalverse.com from his hometown of Governor’s Harbour, Bahamas.
Where Do You Get This Shit?
“and the sonnet is not dead.”
— Berrigan, The Sonnets, LIX.
Take the Spectacled Eider that’s going extinct;
a rolled cigar, a real Havana, nice.
The ups and downs of all of it. Don’t think
things through. Take payola. Take Old Spice.
Do they still make that? Would you take a bet on it?
Grinding it out again. Can we get fourteen?
Laxatives, lactation, the Old Gray Bonnet?
Old Dobbin, the Fair, and Harold Teen?
I’m sad Tony’s gone, and Mary, too.
Why did they have to die, why anyone?
I taste their ashes on my tongue. And you?
No moral to be drawn from this. They’re gone.
I offered to attend, but won’t be there:
funerals are full of lies — family affairs.
Wells Burgess began writing poetry late in life. His work has appeared in The Edge City Review, The Lyric, Measure, The Federal Poet, The Beltway Quarterly, Light, Think, and Passager.
Lighthearted Verse
Gateway
“The sonnet is a gateway drug . . .”
— quoted from a Zoom with Formalists
The sonnet is a “gateway drug”? To what?
Coy triolets. Slick villanelles. Pantoums.
Sly subtle forms that trick you into shut
Systems like quatrains, with their “pretty rooms”
From which you can’t escape, even by guile.
O Youth, beware. Such are a slippery slope.
You think all’s going well, but in a while
You glance around. Then, you abandon hope!
You’re caught. You’re trapped. There is no place to run!
Poems come up rhyming, in seductive form.
What started out as recreation, fun,
Has led to exile, outrage. Now the norm
Is trial and trouble. Do not take the way
Of smooth, sweet sonnets. You will pay, and pay!
Bruce Bennett is Emeritus Professor of English at Wells College. His poetry website is https://justanotherdayinjustourtown.com.
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Because She’s So Popular
She’s welcomed and flattered and favored and kissed.
She's always invited; she’s first on the list.
She glides through the envy that always awaits her.
Because she’s so popular, everyone hates her.
Spend an Afternoon with Annie
Annie’s always calm and cheerful,
Speaks no ill of friend or foe,
Always prudent and productive,
Meets temptation with a no.
Never gossips, never grumbles,
Eats fresh fruit instead of cake.
Spend an afternoon with Annie —
See how long you stay awake.
Both poems first published in The Providence Journal.
Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 200 poems published in a wide range of places.
Luke Palmer on Unsplash.
Archive of Formal & Rhyming Poetry by issue:
February 2022 November 2021 August 2021 May 2021 February 2021 September 2020 July 2020
May 2020 March 2020 January 2020 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019
March 2019 January 2019 November 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018
April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017