In that haunted writer’s retreat
in Southern Pines
a spiral staircase descended
from the ceiling.
No, it wasn’t a dream.
I opened my eyes
and the corded spiral
appeared. I waited
for a ghost to show,
or a voice to whisper.
Dark hours I stared,
until early light spilled
into the room, erased
the vision.
Today I wonder
if I had it all wrong;
maybe those stairs
were waiting for me
to climb up.
— Maureen Sherbondy
(From Eulogy for an Imperfect Man)
Like a spot of blood against the blue sky,
a Cardinal perches on the shepherd’s hook
where I hang suet and a cylinder of seed-feeders
I gave Sylvia for her last Mother’s Day.
The birds are a gift to me now. Her beautiful
ashes fill a marble blue urn and rest
near one of her crazy quilts in the foyer to welcome visitors.
Buddha is there on a table and guards her keepsakes,
a cleaned-out bookshelf holds her high school portrait,
a cross-stitch she made for me. Every little corner
has its memory of how short a sweet life can be.
— Marty Silverthorne
From Collected Poems of Marty Silverthorne
At opposite ends of the feeder,
dangling from the buckeye
by a sliver of jute,
a cardinal and indigo bunting
feed, seemingly oblivious
to the blue and scarlet other,
their self-absorption
an ongoing evolutionary tick
completed this very instant.
Birdseed falls into the tall grass
under the tree.
The cardinal flies off,
upsetting the feeder’s ballast.
It sways, wildly
at first, then less
and then less until less,
like a hypnotist’s gold watch,
while the bunting,
fading by degrees
into the falling blue spell
of evening remains
perfectly still.
— Joseph Bathanti
Joseph Bathanti served as North Carolina’s poet laureate 2012-2014. His most recent book is Light at the Seam.
When you were my living father, I thought of you as you,
alone. Now that you’re long dead, I think of you and me
as us, together, not that we were closer than most
fathers and sons who can’t say what should be said,
the unspoken words between them a great gauzy silence
ever after, as on the moonless night we fished the
Miles River, a tributary of the Chesapeake, skidding our
johnboat into an early autumn’s slacking, our fishing
rods angled on the gunnels. Nettles billowed the pilings,
cottonwood and locust sapped the brackish air as
the lulling water swirled us into an outgoing tide,
tugging us midstream where you tossed the anchor
overboard and heard it splash, no chain securing
it to the boat, the lead shank long gone in deep water.
“We’ve lost the damn anchor!” you swore to high
heaven, and as the outwash eddied us bayward you
stripped off your shirt, shoes, and shorts and dove in,
roiling the dark water to gulp you under into perfect oblivion,
leaving the child I was alone with night sounds — a screaky
covert of moorhens, cicada crescendos, the coo and stutter
of a cormorant — and I knew, at that moment, you were
the bravest man who ever lived. I could feel your fingers
probing the busted soda bottles, tangled tackle, and rusting
beer cans, groping amid the grass eels, hogfish, and bristle
worms. I held the longest breath I’d ever held and prayed,
prayed, for your deliverance, and mine. And sure enough
the surface riffled, the waters parted, and you burst
foaming into still air, anchor in hand, and clacked it
onto the sloshing deck, pulling yourself free of the current,
your body slick with river slime, and grasping the oarlock,
rolled into the rocking boat.
I sighed my only true sigh, longing for the wisdom
you’d dredged from the foulest netherworld, testimony
that life is more than the taking in and letting out
of breath by a father and son adrift beneath a thin haze
of stars. Having plumbed dead bottom, you’d been
resurrected to impart a consoling truth, a glistening
coin I could tuck in the pocket of memory. You obliged:
“Wish I had a nickel,” you said, “for every kid who’s
pissed in this river.”
— Stephen E. Smith
Stephen E. Smith’s most recent book is A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths.
As the day star rises over a frozen field,
kissing the roofs of houses, the barren
limbs of pin oak trees and the long arm
of the church spire reaching toward the
wintry sky, I can’t help but think of the
rock pigeons we saw huddled wing-to-
wing early last evening, on two ropes of
electrical wire. We passed by them so
quickly, I only glimpsed these dozens of
dozing birds, though long enough to note
their cozy coexistence, their companion-
able willingness to keep each other warm.
Heads tucked into their necks, their chests
puffed like rising pastries, most slept but
a few, perhaps keeping watch, remained
vigilant. Like twin strings of black pearls,
they enhanced the beauty of the bright
firmament that would soon fold them into
its purpling light — their little bird hearts
beating as one through the cold, dark night.
— Terri Kirby Erickson
Terri Kirby Erickson’s most recent book of poetry is
A Sun Inside My Chest.
By Shelby Stephenson
Hiram Larew turns loose the syllables like steam on water in his 2021 book, Mud Ajar, from Atmosphere Press. His words do not sink up in stirred up mud. At times I feel as if I can almost see through the mud, as the poet shakes form and content to create Poetry.
In “Quiet Come” —
All is up
yes
all is sky
In “Ode to the Edge” —
all arrows lift their grateful views
sung-up like curves
the call of bogs
where edge surrounds
Listen to these few lines from “Mud Ajar,”
the title poem —
Here where beaks are barns
that loop through when
as rain lifts praise
on trill of rakes.
In “Listened Twigs” listen to Larew’s lines —
These trees a choir
in early fine
their waking limbs
When snowflakes hear within themselves
of how beginning sounds.
Every syllable sings: example, these words from “Sign a Lease” —
When the skies boil or bloom
go sweep the stoop. PS
Hiram Larew is the founder of Poetry X Hunger which inspires writers all over the world to combat hunger. In Mud Ajar, the music quakes and the sky blazes all over again.
Shelby Stephenson was poet laureate of North Carolina from 2015-18. His recent book is Praises from Main Street Rag Publishing Company.
She knows shadow, how to
slip behind clouds. She’s perfected
the art of disappearing. She knows
how to empty herself into the sky,
whisper light into darkness.
She knows the power of silence,
how to keep secrets, even as men
leave footprints in the dust, try to claim her.
Waxing and waning, she summons
the tides. Whole and holy symbol,
she remains perfect truth, tranquility.
Friend and muse, she knows the hearts
of lovers and lunatics. She knows
she is not the only one that fills the sky,
but the sky is her only home.
— Pat Riviere-Seel
Pat Riviere-Seel is the author of When There Were Horses
— Las Cruces, circa 1932
Not in any literal sense
a homestead: it was purchased
you learned from an old deed
sent you by a cousin. And in this
winter photo, strange with magic
of the never seen, a study in
whites and grays, foreground
trees and background barn shading
towards true black, porch windows
canvas covered against the cold,
original adobe brooding behind, just
one slender strand of air, smokey
warm you guess, rising from a single
flue suggests habitation, warmth
inside. No one living knows
its history now, when the barn
was built; porch facing pristine snow
now fades into surrounding silence. What
was the day like when someone, your
father perhaps, had hiked out the
back door around towards the railroad
track to capture the snow before it turned
to mud underfoot; foot sodden you suspect
later that morning when indoor
voices might have called to breakfast,
but leave your boots outside. All
gone wherever memories are stored —
you never saw the place in winter
but you slept many a summer night there
on that porch already mythical, heard the Santa Fe
hoot by, carry the present away.
— Julian Long
Julian Long is the author of Reading Evening Prayer in an Empty Church.
for Richard Hood
I’m cooking a pizza in the oven.
Every bit of steam’s frolicking.
Snug on my high bed, the sheets listen.
From dawn to dusk the barnyard lights glisten
When I crease my covers whiter than snow,
For I am loving no flakes this Christmas.
With every yellow daisy popping up,
The meadow turning even more golden,
And the full moon, coming up now, blossoms
To let the elephants and flocks go by.
They flop out of sight like exclamations,
Arriving in wonder, McGee’s Crossroads,
To prep and string popcorn in rows of clouds.
There is no snow on Paul’s Hill this Christmas,
Just dollops of dewy lichens on posts.
May sweaters spring red, blue, white, brown, lacey,
Minds lift away from neutrally racy
Swears to mark the weather this morn.
I put suet out for the woodpeckers.
Not a one in sight will leave me undone.
All my button-holes I keep unbuttoned
For breezes to make my lashes whistle,
This merry Christmas day, Cricket snores.
The front door’s purposefully half-open,
My heart singing a sprig in awe of spring.
— Shelby Stephenson
Shelby Stephenson was North Carolina’s poet laureate from 2015-2018.
I’ve had hundreds of haircuts over the years
but never one as intimate as the one Julie
gave me yesterday, mid-quarantine, and my
hair standing up and out of control and when
she could take it no more she said sit down,
Bozo. I happily complied, always eager for
her touch. She stood over me cutting, clipping,
and buzzing and I could feel her legs on mine,
her forearm brushing my ears. But it wasn’t
the physical touch as much as the proximity,
breathing the same air like we used to do back
when the sight of each other would result in
clothes flying through the air, naked bodies
moving together in rhythm, but this was a haircut,
scissors, a misused beard trimmer, a memory of
what was once there. When she asked why I was
crying, I said Some hair must have irritated my eyes,
and she didn’t press, only wiped it away, said
you’re a fool and she was right once again.
— Steve Cushman