Two Poems by Carl Palmer

His Limbo Soliloquy

Actually, I like lockdown. I already was before COVID anyway,
but now I’ve got my privacy. No family feeling forced to visit
or hold vigil in my netherworld, he confides through the phone.

Both of us former Army soldiers placing us on common ground
made introductions easier with the usual “where were we when”
comparisons of duty assignments all military members embrace.

Though sharing multiple telephone calls these past seven months
since my assignment to be his companion as a hospice volunteer,
I have yet to meet him face-to-face due to pandemic restrictions.

Using his bedside number at the nursing home I can call anytime,
not worry about visiting hours. I ask if he’s busy, got time to talk.

His answer’s most always the same, Just busy here being alone,
too close to death to complain. Clicking me to speaker he begins
what he calls “me-memories from a time when when was when.”

Mostly musing of being anywhere but there, lost in an actual place,
blurring “what was with what is” behind and in front of his shadow,
recalling dreams as a younger man, of a future in past perfect tense.

And times talking of present times from his no man’s land outpost,
All days end as they begin in purgatory, today recopying yesterday,
cared for by hosts of faceless masked angels not letting me die alone.

Forgive me only thinking of myself, I just need you to hear I’m here.
Inside I’m your age, the two of us sharing a brew at the NCO club,
years ago and oceans away, comrades-in-arms talking of our day.

To me he’s the sergeant with permanent change of station orders
in transition for his final mission, ending his time on active service,
in hopes his God is religious and his terminal assignment is good.

November 21, 1963

He took the harmonica
from the bib pocket of his overalls
blew thru left to right, low to high
back and forth a couple times,
slapped it on his palm
like he’d tamp his cigarette,
one of those unfiltered camels
on his silver Zippo lighter,

He blew a quick riff up the scale,
inhaled it back down,
spun his harmonica around
slapped it a couple more times,
stopped as if thinking
about what he’d play
then smile that smile he’d smile
while looking at her,
start in on The Tennessee Waltz
watching her close her eyes,
hug herself, stand up and sway.

As he played he moved to her side
wrapping one arm around her waist,
she draped both arms on his shoulders
and they glided around the living room
in a world of their own
viewed by us six kids,
all of us grinning and smirking
and making kissy faces
watching mom and dad,
mom singing the words
motioning us all up to dance
that night before our president was killed.

Carl “Papa” Palmer of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia, lives in University Place, Washington. He is retired from the military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), enjoying life as “Papa” to his grand descendants and being a Franciscan Hospice volunteer.

And the winner is…

Sparks of Calliope is pleased to announce its nomination of

“My Father Remembers” by Laurie Kuntz

has been selected for inclusion in Pushcart Prize XLIX (2025 edition).

Congratulations, Laurie!

Read “My Father Remembers” in Sparks of Calliope here.

In accordance with the contract provided by Pushcart Press, Sparks of Calliope and Ms. Laurie Kuntz will receive a copy of this edition of the anthology, and Ms. Kuntz will be appointed to the editorial board for all future editions.

Two Poems by Audrey Towns

Stheno and Euryale’s Sister

There was a heckled birdsong through
the window this morning.
An aged peeled-back seal let in
the laughter. I can’t see
how they think it’s funny,
the way my bones
hang like autumn leaves,
and I don’t seem to soar
like I used to…head up up up,
in the crowd, red dress
smooth against tight
skin that could make you
a believer. The crowing, the singsong,
and there was nothing funny about it.
They told me to enjoy it; it goes fast.
But do the birds outside
enjoy flying more just because it
will be over one day, feather-plucked,
scales shed without the fresh body underneath?
So, fly as high as you wish.
No one’s laughing. No one would dare.
Touch the sun before the wax and water take your wings.
You’re immortal. Hydra.
I believe. I believe.
I believe.

Odyrmós

Even catacombs of cacti with broken bowels push daisies.
beaks nurse nectar from their verdant lobes cradled
near cracked areoles, cochineal youths entombed in
bony spines, a festoon of feathers hiraeth for hummingbird hearts,
the lacuna of drumming echoed in long-ago fluvial formed
barrancas of breached bellows, drowning in desiccated
desserts of stone where mortar and pestle grind
fresh herbs for Darwin’s feast of fitness, their children carmine
for foreign tapestries, a death whistle woven through the loom.

As brute beaks break their tender skin, what name do they beseech
when each trip around the sun equates transformation with consumption?
Morrigan? Mars? Apophis? Odin? They have beaks of their own,
feasting upon the slippery skin of Pelops.
          Such cycles make meals of our children,
small ivory shoulders heavy with Demeter’s distraction and Myrtilus’s
malevolence. Gone, the crimson cadence of their cores, lost
to the scorched seas of war, now tomb to the ill-fated dog, her bark
a breathless warning bloomed from parched blue lips, a sibyl
from frothed laurel-eating throats, poison turned to prophecies,
spreading like tendrils of yellow rot in empty stems, a nostrum of violence
quenched by the liquor of lament, torched eyes guiding
like a north star for travelers weary of revenge,
          navigating dark turbulent waters,
a tempest of tears their triumph.

Stars ascend and fall still wearing thick thorn crowns of ancient
cacti or the cochineal robes of conquest; unity is not all hymns of hope.
Grief, breaking and branching from polyped pores,
ribs yawning, callus ripened, not offered, but eaten, where finely formed
glochids pierce neighbor’s dominion, rash spreading, inflamed.

Those closest to the fires of Niflhel water roots with searing
cauldrons of grief, Pair Dadeni, reborn mute, intimate
prayers without alter, they weep ambrosia potions.
How good are tears, how sweet are dirges,
repatriation of splintered flesh, transformation without consumption,
Ι would rather sing dirges
than eat or drink.
 
Through throttled throats held tight, cries
rising, vibrating in the chasm
of their chests, tongue-splitting
siphons, rattling, raging
into a lore of lament
 
and protest

Audrey Towns, a literature and composition instructor in the heart of Fort Worth, Texas, dismantles the nature/culture binary in her prose and verse. New materialism is her muse, landscapes her canvas, and the connection between the human and nonhuman her essence. She has published in several places, including The Stone Poetry Quarterly, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and You Might Need to Hear This.

“Someone Here” by Kathryn Ruth Stam

Inspired by Rig Veda and poet Frank Gaspar

The brown bricks in the courtyard offer up their histories of clay and ash,
There is someone here who is the daughter of the moon.
She is awake, having gone where the sky is thin.
She has uncovered the edges of the horizon.

In Kamala’s house, the pressure cooker spins and spits streams of hot steam.
My right hand scoops the rice with my fingers,
My thumb, the trigger.
I did it the way they taught me, the rice and curry airborne.

Kamala told me that she and Narayan were lovers back in Nepal.
I asked her for how long. She said, “Always.”

Once, I saw a goose separate the milky ocean back into milk and water.
Milk is truth and water is not.
A smart human accepts the truth.

If you listen, I can tell you.
Once, Krishna painted the entire world on his thumbnail.
Once, I saw my son’s father hold our baby up in the air,
           the baby standing on his palm.

Trickster is not a common magician or horse thief.
Trickster is driven by appetite.
They know best the places where one must never walk.
When sunset is visible, the sun has already set below the horizon.

Trickster cooked lamb curry and made from it a vulva.
Trickster took squirrel kidneys and made from them a kiss.

What is the world is trying to say to us?
Sky and earth, Guard us from the monstrous abyss.

Kathryn Ruth Stam is a professor of cultural anthropology at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, NY.  She writes about the people she has known in Thailand, Nepal, and Central New York, and the joys of getting to know the resettled refugees who are our newest neighbors and friends. Her creative non-fiction work has been published in Griffel, Exposition Review, the Santa Ana River Review, Wanderlust, Flumes, and the Write Launch. She was a finalist for the Nowhere 2020 Emerging Writers Contest with her story, “Elephant Crush.” 

Two Poems by Dan Raphael

Not Even Halfway Through Winter

waiting for something to fall,
to be broken through, to crumble
a faulty form of weaving, s scent of unraveling
holding up to the wind to winnow, to filter,
to enhance with partial exposure

sheets in the wind and rain, thread count, space count
what chords at what speed driven where, the margin of humidity
window air, patchwork air of various -parencies, -lucencies
& focus lengths, unstill reflections in attention’s pan,
refractions in chameleon-eye air

the angle and speed of my turning
enticing vision to correct itself
to not accept how others see it
what’s 20 got to do with it
a thirst for light, a jones for void

trust that the air will be there
that we can get back without turning around
the shaker says salt, white crystals come out, but

the language of reality is changing but mine continues
its erratic spread, away from the weave
pockets in the turbulence, fairly still, somewhat porous
certain angles get in at certain times
of day or season, wind speed and direction

my breath isn’t me, thee world outside my window
as distant as the snippet lives and headlines on my screen
I tempt the mirror to enter, we take time to reflect
but don’t talk about projection, giggle at conjecture,
not all injections are judged equally, the strength
to reject rejection, to bathe in rain, the endless potential
in all these shades of grey

Re Quest

Can a story be all questions
Will this ladder hold me
Is the water safe to drink
I talk to myself to be ready if anyone else appears

Are there times light is more important than heat
If the sound is coming from both directions, do I have to choose
or wait, learning to doppler, to separate, sending agents or drones
while staying at home, monitoring more sources than I have fingers

Is there somewhere so barren you can’t tell if there’s wind just by looking
When putting on more clothes makes me colder
Where every window and mirror is a monitor, taking more than they give
Is there any personal data left in me

Can a story be nothing but facts, connecting conjectures
above my pay grade, the only AI I can access is Advertising Intensive
My credit score is too low cause I pay all my bills
and have only one card—what kind of a story is that

Like a topographical map of time, mountain ranges of wars and plagues
narrow valleys of peace and isolation. I’m nowhere on the map
now here, as the map continues to scroll and evolve
Why are the same stores at every exit
Why do gas prices rise as my tank nears E

Time for a new chapter in a new city in my fictional memoir
of what’s to come—is it my fault reality didn’t read the script
yet sends its own consequences, sometimes misaddressed,
rarely with instructions, never a return response

Dan Raphael, a vibrant presence in Portland’s poetry scene since 1977, engages as poet, performer, editor, and reading organizer. His anthology Impulse & Warp: The Selected 20th Century Poems showcases works from his initial 13 collections. Notable among his new poetry volumes are The State I’m In, Breath Test, and Showing Light a Good Time. Collaborating with jazz artists Rich and Carson Halley, he released the CD Children of the Blue in February. With over 250 performances, including Wordstock and Portland Jazz Festival, Dan’s impact extends across diverse venues. Editor of NRG magazine for 17 years, he founded 26 Books, spotlighting regional poets. Additionally, he curated reading series at Borders and St Johns, and orchestrated the monumental event Poetland, featuring 80 poets across 8 locations in an 8-hour span.

“Girl in the Garden” by Donna Pucciani

inspired by “Young Woman Sewing in a Garden,” Mary Cassatt, c. 1880-82

She could be any ordinary woman
engaged in lace-making, perhaps
tatting the edge of a handkerchief,
sitting dully in a shady spot among
a handful of poppy-bright flowers.

Intent on her task, she is oblivious
to the verdant shrubbery around her,
summer’s cloud of tepid breath.
She does not dissolve into the scene,
does not become one with the garden,
or filter herself through blossom,
but remains contained within herself.

Her plain gray dress closes around her,
leaving bare only her arms, wrists,
and hands free to engage in sewing
the tiny square of fabric that is
her raison d’être, its soft material
gathering her dreams in the task
of the moment.

The graveled path behind her
provides a horizontal stripe of dusty beige
through a haze of trees. She could easily
run away from her nearly motionless
existence, but refuses to consider escape,
her delicate labors calling her from the heart,
or not.

Donna Pucciani has been been published on four continents in such diverse journals as International Poetry Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Pedestal, nebu[lab], Italian Americana, Journal of the American Medical Association, Poetry Salzburg, Shichao Poetry, Istanbul Literary Review and Christianity and Literature. Her poetry has been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Italian, and has won awards from the Illinois Arts Council and The National Federation of State Poetry Societies, among others. She has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize and currently serves as Vice-President of the Poets’ Club of Chicago. A list of her eight poetry books can be found on her website.

“DSM IV 298 or Am I Blue?” by Leslie Lippincott Hidley

My limbic system’s gone to sleep —
My affect’s flattened by the walrus on my head.
No difference in doing and not-doing.
The world is an ashtray, a splatted spider,

A drudgery of breathing in and breathing out,
Pushing blood through tired veins.
All is uphill.
Only sleep is sweet.

I will talk to you in words of one syllable
So even you can understand.
I will make you feel better.
I will push on your psyche —
Yank it around.

Like I would cheer you out of a broken leg
Or appendicitis.

Plotinus said, “Weather is the celestial form of music.”
I say, “Mood is the neural form of weather.”
I am in the doldrums, stupefied, dull winds droning,
Bleak-brained and dim-lighted.

Look where you’re not looking:
I am the creator of full ashtrays and garbage.
Unmade beds, floors full of wet towels and dirty clothes.
Tables stacked with unpaid bills, coffee cups,
Empty wine glasses, papers.
Ants in the kitchen. Hurt feelings.

I have a gift for disorder.
I make messes.

My tongue is shredded cardboard and junk mail,
Chopped metaphors, and broken shards of soda bottles.
My mind is a kitchen rag.

Leslie Lippincott Hidley has been writing prose and poetry for her own amusement and that of her family and friends and others for most of her 77 years. And one of her ten grandchildren is named Kalliope. She has lived in Walla Walla, Washington; Frankfurt and Bremerhaven, Germany; Upper New York State; Enid, Oklahoma; Montgomery and Prattville, Alabama; Lubbock, Texas; Dover, Delaware; West Palm Beach, Florida; Goose Bay, Labrador; Washington, D.C.; Fairfield, California; Omaha, Nebraska; and now resides in Ojai (Nest-of-the-Moon), California, where she continues to write.

Two Poems by James B. Nicola

Celibacy 6: I want this so to be

I want this so to be not about you.
But then I’d have to think about something
other than whether you think my thoughts, too.
Of course it is the thing I’ve tried to do
all week, to no avail. I tried writing
the wildest science fiction yesterday,
but it turned out to be even more true
than fact, like classic myths: what one can’t say,
but can’t not say. So every plot was due,
you guessed, to you. Le plus ça change, le plus…
The wisest writing mentor once told me,
“Write what you know.” But Creativity
dictates and will not be dictated to
—any more than Reciprocity.

Taboo

What else is there taboo to write about?
Salacious, I don’t mean; I mean forbidden:
The secrets you believe are safely hidden
by silence, that your eyes can’t help but shout
in spite of yourself to a soul like me
who then suspects there must be something there
besides what’s there: an imminent affair
that’s more than mere desire: one soul set free
in one new way, or many—that’s taboo.
Though who might be concerned with me or you
could only be a soul three times as sad,
eager to be, if not consoled, then fraught
by white spaces of poems penned to add
a little something to the world, or naught.

James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. He has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller’s People’s Choice magazine award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful. A graduate of Yale and returning contributor to SoC, James hosts the Writers’ Roundtable at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins are always welcome.

Two Poems by Diane Webster

Achieved Again

The old woman totters
down the driveway
toward her morning newspaper
tossed out like bird seed
awaiting early risers
to peck away best tidbits
like this old woman
who uses her grabber pole
to scoop up the rolled paper.

She shuffles back toward home
like doves landing on telephone wires
teetering back and forth
until balance is achieved again.

Cancer Twin

The body gets bored,
decides to experiment
by mixing cells
to see what will happen.

Lo and behold it births
growth magnificent
with rapid regeneration.
Eureka! rushes throughout
the system of blood, bones and tissue
to nourish this new addition,
this new creation until the host
discovers its existence
and plots its demise with assassins.

It floats out spies
to lie in safe houses
until the attack abates.
Snipers crawl forth
and shoot lookouts
so embryo stretches outward.

It matures, flings off
residual parries to its life.
It flourishes as body rejoices
at first, then fears
tinkering twin.

Diane Webster has published in “El Portal,” “North Dakota Quarterly,” “New English Review,” “Verdad,” and other literary magazines. She had a micro-chap published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and one forthcoming in 2024. One of Diane’s poems was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022.

Two Poems by Angela Hoffman

Advent of a Long Marriage

A swirl of grace like the wind
clears the way for what’s underneath,
swallows what seems beyond reach,
and a feeling of deep peace is left
in this commonplace space
where we’ve been anchored.

There is a softness, a slowness,
and familiarity gives off it own glow,
so we watch, stay awake,
the wise knower in each of us
heralding what grabs our attention.
We ponder what has pierced our souls,
forcing the bloom in winter.
There is room for it all.

We become aware how each act
in a long marriage
committed to patience,
hastens towards love,
unaware we were moving mountains.
And so we begin again, another day of visitations;
spirit revealing gifts, repairing wounds,
honoring the beauty in the broken.
We fall to our knees. We quake at the light.

Breathe Deep

While reading a meditation
on the necessity of holding onto wonder,
I mistook the word nuance for manure
which took me down a subtly different path
of the mundane and extraordinary;

diamonds in a dung heap,
flowers emerging from the foul,
and not a Watchmaker but a Gardener
who thought me, brought me
into being, from who knows what.

Undeniably we sense decay;
all that is unlovely in this world,
but if we pause, breathe deep,
we will perceive the beauty dropped
into every ordinary moment.

Angela Hoffman lives in Wisconsin. With her retirement from teaching and the pandemic coinciding, she took to writing poetry. Her poetry has been widely published. Angela’s collections include Hold the Contraries, forthcoming 2024, Olly Olly Oxen Free, 2023 (nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award), and Resurrection Lily, 2022 (Kelsay Books).