Author: shirleybellwriting

Issue 2 articles, Issue 2 poetryLeave a comment

MacLean J S – J S MacLean

shirleybellwriting

Emit Time   Poets, physicists, and philosophers have discussed traveling in time. They have focused on change, consequences, contingency, and the never was of is.   Philosophers, physicists, and poets flail in a river that has no source, no banks, no end, and no forks. There are so many questions like ‘Are we not there yet?”   This poem runs on time. I must be quick to propose this; If time itself simply began a rewind, we wouldn’t even know it, would we? In any garden a path must go both ways.         Preserving The Ghost   … Continue reading MacLean J S – J S MacLean

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Stanizzi J L – John L. Stanizzi

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I would like to give you a brief description about the poems here and the project from which they emerged. They are from a one-year-long project called POND — The poems are acrostics.  Here is my process.  Everyday, at different times during the day, I would visit our pond with notebook and camera in hand.  I’d jot down some notes, and take a picture or two, if a good photo op. presented itself.  Then I’d head home and write a four line acrostic using the letters P, O, N, and D.  To elevate the challenge, I added the caveat that I could use … Continue reading Stanizzi J L – John L. Stanizzi

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Jatzek G – Gerald Jatzek

shirleybellwriting

Cemetery Man had an eye disease from staring at the cross.   Man had a heart disease from making other men stare at the cross.   Man had a voice like bells that flew to rome,   called the troops to wash his gouty hands in duty. Risk It’s cheetahs runnig on a razor’s edge.   It’s ocean trees on barbed wire island.   It’s fragrant clouds behind a poison tank.   Let’s say at seven at the coffee shop.   Let’s hope the cheetahs will be there.   Surrender to be a concrete man to be a hero   … Continue reading Jatzek G – Gerald Jatzek

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Smith I C – Ian C Smith

shirleybellwriting

2 prose poems In Imagination’s Lighthouse Wind a heavyweight hullabaloo, surrounded by sea-surge, nothing dislodged on my reconnaissance, I stare back at a chill of harboured currawongs beady-eying me here in this receptor of my life’s heat.  I eat plainly, snooze through three-hourly blocks wrestling gothic dreams, jot notes of memories, some of venery, deceit, the sordor of trodden tinsel, consult an old Oxford dictionary, read.  Welcome guests, a rhapsody of writers, Boland, Erdrich, Robin Robertson, conjure me to lower their thoughts to my heart recalling scenes from my kaleidoscopic past; seeing flying fish in calm conditions before later plunging … Continue reading Smith I C – Ian C Smith

Issue 2 fiction1 Comment

MCQUIGGAN S – STEPHEN MCQUIGGAN

shirleybellwriting

ARCH BISHOP There was a hole in the fence that echoed the rent in Bishop’s soul. He inspected it closely, noticing that it had been chewed through, but he refused to accept that the dog, his dog, would resort to such desperate measures. Someone must have cut it, or gotten their own mangy mutt to tear it apart. Bishop’s dog had everything here it could ever need –why would it want to escape? It all amounted to the same thing in the end – the dog was gone. Bishop had already lost so much, he wasn’t sure he could cope … Continue reading MCQUIGGAN S – STEPHEN MCQUIGGAN

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Brice C – Charlie Brice

shirleybellwriting

A Question   Here’s a question: Say George Frederic Handel got an idea in the middle of the night; did he jump out of bed, scuttle fingers over ivories, scribble notes on staves, while sitting in his underwear? His underwear wasn’t like ours. Jockeys were centuries away, even boxers were short of imagination.   Handel would have worn, on those hot inspired nights, braies which looked like something in between diapers and capris pants. Think of that: George Frederic Handel, at his piano, 3 AM, dressed in a glorified diaper, finishing the Hallelujah Chorus, singing to Jesus whom, he claimed, … Continue reading Brice C – Charlie Brice

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Arnold S – Sheila Arnold

shirleybellwriting

Breath “Is he breathing?” She asks the question without panic, without fear, much like she’d ask, “Is it raining outside?”             “Is he breathing?” she asks, but in that pregnant question, she sees more than 50 years of life. She sees the olive green military Army uniform that he was wearing when she first met him. She hears his voice and his laughter. She feels his strong hand on her hip at night as she curls into their familiar cocoon to slumber. She smells his Old Spice aftershave and again feels the irritation she would get when he would track … Continue reading Arnold S – Sheila Arnold

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Saunders A – Anna Saunders

shirleybellwriting

3 excellent poems from the forthcoming collection Fever Few, which will be reviewed here in impspired when it is published Is this the ebb, or flow?   We are manacled in green the grass like an anchor, holding us to the earth   new buds on the magnolias break through as the blossom sheds itself like skin cells.   The moment is born, the moment dies, simultaneously.   How is it that late in life, even after losses,  the moment sings, symphonic.   Like the time we watched the song thrush every speckle on its tiny chest as vivid and … Continue reading Saunders A – Anna Saunders