Chantarelle's Notebook

A Night Like This

Old
chairs
in a
circle where
the moon seems to stop
in its nightly patrol across
the sky, for just a few extra moments, and stare down
at the epicenter of this improvised amphitheater,
where, in the past, on
a night like this, there would have been some kind of
congregation gathered here to
witness, admire and
worship in
each their
own
way,
that
is
until
they gave it
up for glowing screens
and gossip (insert emoji).

Hauling Ass

A
long
empty
road taking
us away from our
past lives (of only hours ago)
and the sinking sun in the rear-view mirror, like a
burning ship pulling the whole sky down with it
into the briny deep of night, leaving
us a wall of black clouds, dead ahead, cracked, here and there,
with slivers of lightning above
a train, that’s hauling
ass along
the dark
edge
of
the
world.

Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry,six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be(loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors.
He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Kicking Up the Dust, Calling Downthe Lightning (Grindstone Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Braille Lesson

“Stop rubbing,” says your Braille instructor
because you’re rubbing the dots
up and down, up and down,
to feel them better. Because they’re hard to feel
and it feels like you need a pencil sharpener
for your finger. “Just let your finger glide
across the page, left to right, softly but firmly,
and without rubbing.” But the thing is
rubbing feels good so you do it, and you keep on doing it,
which reminds you of other kinds of rubbing you have done.
“It’s hard not to do it,” you tell your teacher
whom you can’t see but can feel nodding sympathetically.
“Yes, but it’s a bad habit. It will be hard to break
down the road. Best break it now.” Still,
rubbing is the only way you can make
sense of the dots. There are six of them,
two columns of three, in every braille cell,
and each position has two possibilities: Dot
or no dot. What you’re doing is essentially
a very soft whack-a-mole with the whorl of your index.
There are sixty-four possible combinations
of the six dots–two to the sixth power. Or two times two
times two times two times two times two.
You’re a safe cracker trying to figure out
the combination. Every time. Every letter. “You’re
rubbing again,” says the teacher. If only
you could break in, grab the money, the treasure. Grasp it.

Flirting with the Deaf

I’ve been watching you watching the
interpreter. She is just to the left of the
speaker, and always slightly behind
so that you are always slightly behind
too, your face registering surprise
when the surprise has already been,
your smile on the heels of the other smiles,
your laugh coming after the wave of
laughter subsides. I love the lag time, the
pause between word and sign, the space
between signifier and signifier and
signifed. I want to slip inside that space and sit
across from you, legs crossed, hands
folded in my lap. If I made myself very
small, inconspicuous, insignificant as
another pair of antennae on the wall,
just watching you, quietly, watching the
interpreter, could I, could we, fit?

Paul Hostovsky makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter and Braille instructor. His poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog.

MOON OVER WEST MOUNTAIN

Your mother and I watched last night
The moon clock out through West Mountain.
We could see her from the hospital
Swiping her time card
And slipping her pumpkin hips
Through the turnstile.
“Her shift is over,” we said,
“And here comes the day he will be born.”
If you are like your father,
Sleeplessness will coil in your body —
A tree trunk rippled with old barbed wire.
Foreign beds will yield no dreams.
Unfamiliar mountains at dusk
Always eat the moon at dawn,
And you will be awake, a lone witness.
Your friends on their pallets
Will dream oblivious.
Last night’s insomnia, though, was different.
I was neither alone nor hollowed out.
Your mother was wired into her bed
Attended by nurses. My blanket was thin,
But dawn was not a blanched monster
Nor the death of any chance for sleep,
But the slow rousing of the forest
Preparing the footpath for your approach.

CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE ABANDONED FACTORY

Through large windows set in concrete
Panes long removed,
Christmas sun;
No snow, brown grass,
Leafless sapling
Rooted in a cracked spillway.
Debris on a cold floor is not joyous.
Pubescent graffiti is not merry.
Abandoned machinery is hardly festive.

December 25th is not, by nature,
Endowed with Christmas.
Out here far from the highway
Down a crumbled road,
Utility poles unstrung,
It looks like any other afternoon near the solstice.
My footsteps crackle on shards.
Time to turn around.
I do not want to still be here
When I lose the light.

Scott Thomas has a M.S. in Library Science from Columbia University, and a M.A. in English from the University of Scranton. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the Scranton Public Library and an adjunct faculty member at Northampton Community College.
His work has appeared in Mankato Poetry Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, Webster Review, Poetry East, Poem, Philadelphia Stories, Floyd County Moonshine, Talking River, Pointed Circle, Plainsongs, Spoon River Poetry, and others. He lives in Dunmore, PA.

Sleeping Tips for the Partially Blind

after they check your blood pressure
you mention again how you can’t sleep
& the nurse reminds you
that you have only one eye now
as if you could ever forget
she says that the blind
sometimes have trouble sleeping
& that might be your problem too
you think about light you don’t notice now
things in dreams that just feel incomplete
like an unfinished painting
or half of a song
where you never get to see
how lovely a girl’s hands are
when there are only half as many stars
to radiate the night sky.

Poem for the Dead Mouse on the Edge of My Bed

you remind me of
all of the things
that randall jarrell
could wash out of a ball turret
with just a few words
but he was never here
to help guide your spirit
through the clouds
& bring you in
out of
the rain.

Farewell Tour

at fifteen we all want to fly into the sun
when it still seems like there’s plenty of time
to find our way back
on that next bit of highway
before the road less traveled
is closed for repairs
before crumbling away altogether
where kerouac & richard hugo
throw their wild fists in the air
blanketing the montana sky with youth
never imaging they’ll be dead
never dreaming that this is where
all of the wishing wells
will run out of water
at 46 i think about how someone
had to find ted berrigan’s bloated body
about how someone had to chip
bruce embree’s broken heart free
from an icy idaho stream
as a pair of deers drank in every word
one day soon
i’ll end up in some dry missouri patch of grass
right now though i’m thinking about how
at fifteen i raised my fist
at a kiss concert in a now demolished arena in pittsburgh
i think about how
like god
gene simmons
could make the lights go dim
just by waving his hands
& how kiss could keep coming back
every few years
fatter & fatter with their makeup running down their faces
under the broiling stage lights
without ever once reaching the sun
& how while kerouac remains buried in the ground
sometimes farewell
doesn’t have to mean forever.

John Dorsey is the former poet laureate of Belle, Missouri and the author of Pocatello Wildflower. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

DREAMED VILLANELLE

You dream of ships until your own creaking wakes
you. Are you the yawning, cargoless hold?
No maps exist here. Sail your long mistake.

You shudder. Sleep returns. The dream won’t break
but wavers like a tattered sail. You’re cold
in this dream. Ships slip to sea. Watch their wakes

and dream ports only seen in books—bright plates
etched by blind artists. Sail away. Unfold
blank maps. Waters here make sailors mistake

stars for signals. There are no songs. You wait
for mermaids, for serpents. Your mother told
stories like dreams of ships creaking. Don’t wake

now. Look past flat horizons to one place
you’ll never reach—where oceans glow gold
and maps don’t reach—sailors stories mistake

night work for living lies, salt licks for cake.
Listen. Your body sings old wood and bold
dreams. These lost ships creak at anchor. You’ll wake
when mapless tides turn by the moon’s mistake.

Mark J. Mitchell worked in hospital kitchens, fast food, retail wine and spirits, conventions, tourism, and warehouses. He has also been a working poet for almost 50 years. He is the author of five full-length collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. He is fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco. He can be found reading his poetry here: https://www.youtube.com/@markj.mitchell4351.