On Thursday 7th October it was National Poetry Day in the UK. To celebrate, you can hear a poetry reading from Bindweed Magazine’s Editor in Chief, Leilanie Stewart. The YouTube reading is from her recently published collection, The Redundancy of Tautology by Cyberwit Publishing.
Hope you enjoy listening!
Cherry juice
Cherry juice squirts
on my index fingernail
at breakfast.
It looks
like tiny drops of blood.
How quickly
a party
can turn wild:
words spew from
vodka lips; a finger
penetrates a shoulder
like a knife, eyes pierce
into other eyes savagely.
An ancient branch
shatters the veranda
roof during a storm,
and twigs slash
the porch screens
while thunder booms
like a violent disagreement.
He finds someone else
at a conference in LA
and my hands are bloody.
Down the Drain
Hibiclens recommended
for pre-op cleansing
five days before
my hip replacement,
two times already we wet
my skin in the shower,
turn off the shower head
then rub in the red cleanser
all over except for tender face
and privates
and wait for three minutes
like warming bread rolls
in the microwave
to destroy bacteria
that potentially can cause
disease then wet again
to rinse the soap off.
This morning’s peculiar
soap fragrance wafts
off my neck and arms
up to my nares,
a medical synonym used
by the pharmacy for nostrils.
Will the neighborhood dogs
still want to sniff me
with their friendly curiosity
when my usual pheromones
wash down the drain?
Jan has had 328 poems published in international journals as well as in the U.S. for example: The American Journal of Poetry, Atlanta Review, Calyx,
Nimrod and Phoebe. Her three chapbooks and one full length poetry collection, I Wanted to Dance With My Father, have been published by Finishing Line Press and are available on Amazon. Orbis, England, nominated her for the Pushcart in 2020.
Jan was a nun for seven years then lived in Australia for fourteen years with her Aussie husband and two children. She completed a dissertation at The University of Rochester: Age and Natural Order in Second Language Acquisition then taught ESL at RIT, Loyola and DePaul Universities, back in Chicago.
Tuning into a Stranger
On the crowded bus from Reykjavik to our flight,
I squeeze close to a woman, who wipes her eyes,
turns to me, home bad Katowice
She shows me her ticket, 20th hour, a late night.
I wish I could ask how, why, or look into her eyes
on the bus from Reykjavik to our NY flight.
We sit as close as sisters but I can not make it alright.
She points to her heart. Me Papa sick.
“I’m so sorry.” Me go Katowice.
She loses her glasses on the dark seat
I search, find them, Tak. She touches my shirt.
The bus rattles from Reykjavik to our flight.
She snaps opens her purse covered in butterflies
Green and yellow flutter in the opaque light.
“Keep this lava rock for good luck tonight.”
This stranger’s part of me like the Icelandic sky.
On the crowded bus from Reykjavik to our flight,
I need to believe Papa will be alive in Katowice.
Mare Leonard’s work has appeared most recently in A Rat’s Ass, Perfume River, The Courtship of Wind, Bindweed, Forage, New Verse News, The Chronogram and Communicator’s League She lives in an old school house overlooking the Rondout Creek. Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches writing workshops for all ages through the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT program at Bard College.
Congratulations to Bindweed contributor, Cathleen Cohen on her recent poetry and paintings collection, Etching the Ghost, published in February by Atmosphere Press. It’s available now from Indiebound, Barnes + Noble, and Amazon.
Cathleen has contributed poetry to Bindweed and was published in February. You can read more of her work in Issue 11.
We wish you all the best with your new book, Cathleen!
Asylum: Way of Being
It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Thoreau (Walden, “Economy”)
For the dignity of labor, I break
my body just as tin soldiers die
of metal fatigue, as truce flags beg
until their fray is woven among twigs
of goldfinch nests. My hand tools
become mantle shelf antiques, valuable
to collectors in pristine uselessness:
my making made me.
For honesty of heart, I spray paint
through the stencil of my handicap
as proof of concept; to old friends confess
miscalculated desires, the way
apple trees drop their benevolence
as a catalog of worms. Regret
undermines confidence, so says
this voice of ink.
For the refuge of mind, I cross
off the been there, done that, the else to do.
I am the out of focus child
in witness snapshots like a humble god,
but I have traveled the Middle Way
like a hemlock falling precisely between
gravestone rows, the way a latch-bolt
snugs to its keeper.
Frederick Wilbur’s first book of poetry is As Pus Floats the Splinter Out. A second poetry collection, Conjugation of Perhaps is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publishing. His work has appeared in many print and on-line reviews including Shenandoah, The Atlanta Review, the Comstock Review, The Dalhousie Review, Rise Up Review and New Verse News.
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