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 . . .
November 2021
Vol VI No IV
Published quarterly:
February, May, August,
and November.
Formal Poetry
The Flesh Remembers
This afternoon the old man’s fitful sleep
is haunted by the breath of new-mown lawn
that whispers, like a spirit on the deep,
of waking in a long-ago pre-dawn:
His father’s rumble shakes the bedroom wall,
“In heaven there’ll be time enough to rest,
in this world we’ve got hay to bale and haul.”
He hears the swallows flutter from their nest
beneath the eaves, as if they understand
that work comes first and last in this dark place.
He stirs and wakes and holds his calloused hand
against the sun that slants across his face.
There where sixty years of work are shown
he reads his father’s words made flesh and bone.
From the upcoming collection Terminal Park..
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, is due for publication this year.
Between Two Worlds
(For Matthew Arnold)
The ash-and-ember colored cedar trees
were mountain born, and picked at by the wind
like cuticles on upthrust fingers: skin
crusted above, but pink and sore beneath
like anxious people’s hands; they made me wince.
But in the basin nobody looked up,
for it was occupied by midget ducks
who scooted in and out oblivious
of grand horizons, blissfully convinced
that only water mattered.
As for us,
we craved the smug oblivion of ducks.
But there were austere temples in our past
balanced on precipices so remote
not even god could reach them. So although
our noisy splashing scandalized the ducks,
and we were far too busy to look up,
we couldn’t quite forget the cedar trees
who silently reproached us —
Kathryn Jacobs is a poet, professor emerita, and editor of The Road Not Taken. Her fifth book, Wedged Elephant, was published by Kelsay Press.
On tour, arriving at the next theatre
Enter. The sounds of silence wrap us round,
Welcome us in. This stage. This place of dreams . . .
‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’ . . . Crowned
Kings, murdered lawyers, fools chasing moonbeams,
Jack-the-giant-killers. We’re to strut and fret
Here on these boards a couple of hours a night
For two months, then be heard no more . . . And yet,
Because this stage pulses with ancient ghosts —
Not of people but of performances —
We may live on too, like smudges, almost
Forgotten, till, from one chance audience’s
Mind-store, one gasp at one scene in one show
Pops up like Jack-in-a-box with love’s red rose.
Leo Aylen was born in KwaZulu, South Africa, has lived in London, New York, LA, and Johannesburg. He has published nine collections, the latest being The Day The Grass Came (“a triumph,” Melvyn Bragg; “Stupendous,” Simon Callow). He has also published hundreds of poems.
Dream in November
I dreamed a little icon of a bed.
“Click here to start,” the words beneath it said.
End of the Spring Semester
after Frost’s “The Span of Life”
The graying, staid professor who walks past
once lay in her bikini on the grass.
Hope Coulter, author of The Wheel of Light, directs the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language at Hendrix College. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Hardware Store By-Laws
This isn’t something a table saw can parse.
No power drill can poke a hole in it
To show us through. The brass and stainless steel
Doorknobs in aisle six will never fit
And, even if they do, will never turn.
Weed killer’s useless where the weed is doubt.
The mowers just remind us flesh is grass,
Darkness sealing the stars in place like grout.
We carry unmatchable washers in our pockets,
Cold coins to lay on the eyes of the dead.
Do it yourself, say thumbless master builders
Who did the work themselves and bled.
When you have to build a law from raw materials,
One footfall, and the hardwood flooring fails it.
Destruction: Now there’s a weekend project.
How smashingly the hammer nails it.
Amit Majmudar is the author of four poetry collections: What He Did in Solitary, Dothead, Heaven and Earth, and 0˚, 0˚, four novels: Sitayana, Partitions, The Abundance, and Soar, and Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary.
A Hundred Hankies
Inside the wooden box my mother left,
I found a hundred hankies neatly kept,
folded and scented with two small sachets,
embroidered tokens of the poise and grace
of ladies who once used them. I cannot.
Who’d spoil them sopping at a runny nose
or pressed against a bloody paper cut?
These hankies hold a whiff of temps perdu,
of stifling Sunday mornings in a pew,
of hymns and prayers and having to sit still
enforced upon a restless, wayward will.
Where is the pretty faith that I outgrew?
Barbara Loots is a frequent contributor to The Lyric, Light Poetry Magazine, The I-70 Review, and Better Than Starbucks.
The Box
I have a box they say is you.
My God my love, if that were true
I’d talk to the box and show it things
to make you laugh. I wish you knew
that I have a box that fills my heart
with ice and tells me you have gone.
Away from the box I sometimes start
to run to you to carry on
our sweet discourse that made us glow
but then I stop before I fall
into the chasm that has no
humanity or love at all.
Janet Kenny was born in New Zealand, sang professionally in Britain, then moved to Australia where she was active in the anti-nuclear-war movement. She has published two collections of poetry. She was married to her husband for 66 years.
with Vera Ignatowitsch
Listen
Is there a sound that the snow makes?
Can it be known
Through the fall and sigh of the flakes,
or the harsh moan
Of the wind? Or is it a gift
that might be found
In what comes to rest in each drift,
each long white mound?
Not what is said, but what is heard,
if one should ask
Of the snow, what is it, what word
from your pale mask?
Jared Carter’s seventh book of poems, The Land Itself, with an introduction by B. J. Omanson, is from Monongahela Books in West Virginia. Carter lives in Indiana.
Tunnels
A snowy field — sun sparkles on the ice —
Devoid of life to those who do not know
That underneath a furtive swarm of mice
Live out their lives in tunnels through the snow.
My dog, who finds them out by smell or sound,
Runs snorting through the snow in wriggling glee.
Then back and forth ecstatically he’ll bound
Until some mouse has nowhere left to flee.
For so it goes with mice as well as men,
Those tunnels where we run turn into traps
When forces that are far beyond our ken
Play out their game until our ways collapse.
Do waiting mice envision what impends?
That somewhere up above a canine snout —
Deus ex machina to mice — descends
To pierce the snow and pull those trapped mice out?
Few things in life will make that dog as glad.
The mouse may not rejoice — its life is through.
But whether killing mice is good or bad
Depends completely on your point of view.
Bruce McGuffin’s poetry has appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, and other journals. He divides his time between Lexington, Massachusetts, where he has a job, and Antrim, New Hampshire, where he fritters away his time writing poetry and admiring the view.
Self-reflection
Y’know — it ain’t a lot of fun
negotiating one-on-one
with the person in the mirror who
is staring blankly back at you
with hollow, soporific eyes —
but you penetrate his deep disguise,
and then it is you realize
that you’re in for loads of gloom and doom
cooped up within this little room
all by your empty, woeful self,
all, all alone, with no one else —
and the guileful guy you’re talking to
isn’t talking back at you —
’cause he knows there’s nothing left to say.
But the sonvabitch won’t go away.
Oliver Butterfield is a retired former criminal lawyer living in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. He writes short stories and personal essays as a hobby, some of which have been awarded prizes and/or been published. He is a newcomer to writing poetry.
Instructions for My Prayer Card
Use the picture of me plumed in feathers
dyed scarlet red. Nude beneath sequins
and satin, beaded bikini, pasties, fringe
and showgirl headdress. My quads in that shot,
flexed and steeled, hover above sleek high heels.
Knees bent so low that I could sex the floor.
Crop out the loin-clothed dancer behind me,
synchronized in squat and glittery garb.
His hand will stay glued just below my ribs.
Don’t share the dignified matronly me,
bosomed by family, laureled by colleagues.
Use the me baptized in samba and sweat.
Let our grandkids squirm, acquaintances gasp.
My love, please do me this one last favor.
Anita Cabrera’s poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in The New Guard, Brain,Child Magazine, Colere, Acentos Review, RavensPerch, Best Travelers’ Tales 2021 Anthology, The Deronda Review, and other journals.
Black Hole
Darkness Visible, Finally: Astronomers Capture First Ever
Image of a Black Hole (The New York Times, 10 April 2019)
We’ve finally seen the great abyss,
and now it’s looking back at us.
From far away, through time and space,
a single eye that lacks a face,
extinction’s portal, black on black,
is looking back, is looking back.
Above the jumbled cosmic hiss
it seems to say, There’s only this!
Within my flaming oval ring
I am the end of everything!
We gape at it and hope to see
the bottom of its mystery.
We peer into the light year haze
and it returns a darker gaze . . .
that eye, a black unblinking hole
without a mind, or heart, or soul.
Richard Meyer, recipient of the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize, lives in Mankato, Minnesota. His book of poetry, Orbital Paths, was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.
A Tufted Titmouse Braves a Cold Spell
Peter-peter-peter cries my voice
echoing through the trees. Flakes fall to test
my stamina and patience. It is cold.
Tomorrow will be chillier still, fresh rime
glazing flower and fence. My whistles chime
like piccolos to pierce the stale and old
that clings as lichen to a larch. I rest
in a nest in a lifeless oak. I have no choice
but to sing and to hole up in this secondhand
woodpecker’s dimple, no alternative
but to twitter to my better half, to live
in my feathered fashion. Oh, but it is grand
and it is hard and it’s both work and play
and — peter-peter — it is cold today.
First published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.
Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, is a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He finds contentment in long walks in the woods or the city and writing poetry, often alluding to the creatures and plants he encounters.
Luke Palmer on Unsplash.
Lighthearted Verse
Jingle Tills, Jingle Tills
With the annual arrival of Yule.
The world becomes all slop and drool.
Like that song with the sleigh
They incessantly play
The points I award it are nul.
Turkey-slaughter is callous and cruel
While the weather turns vile as a rule.
It is cold, wet, and grey,
Life becomes pay-pay-pay,
And the thought makes me blanch, puke and mewl.
Who requires the great brain of George Boole
To find lands needing no winter fuel
And spend Christmas away
Where the sun shines all day
Sipping drinks beneath palms by a pool?
Jerome Betts edits Lighten Up Online in Devon, England. His verse appears in Amsterdam Quarterly, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The New Verse News, The Hypertexts, Snakeskin, and various anthologies.
The New Sportswriter
His flowery language gets in the way
of what in the hell he’s trying to say.
Damian Balassone is an Australian poet. His work has appeared in a variety of publications including The New York Times, The Australian, First Things, and Asses of Parnassus. His most recent collection of poems is Strange Game in a Strange Land.
On a Hopeless Romantic
Like Jesus, she felt God-forsaken,
like Joan of Arc, wanted a stake in
a life full of meaning,
a life undemeaning —
like Jung, she was simply myth-taken
First published in Light.
Robin Helweg-Larsen’s poems have been published in Better Than Starbucks and other magazines in several countries. He is Series Editor for Sampson Low’s “Potcake Chapbooks,” and blogs at formalverse.com from his hometown of Governor’s Harbour in the Bahamas.
Archive of Formal & Rhyming Poetry by issue:
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 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016