Issues – Page 63 – Amsterdam Quarterly

J. R. Solonche – Five Deer

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Five Deer
by J. R. Solonche

Five deer come to the house down
from the mountain.
The snow is deep.
They root around in the deep snow
where the birds eat the seeds we leave them.
They snuffle around in the deep snow
for the empty shells.
They are that hungry.
They smell the earth and spring is there,
deep beneath the snow,
and summer deeper still.
They sense my presence although I have not
moved at the window, jerk their heads up,
stamp their feet.
One, the biggest, snorts a jet of snow
into the air in front of her.
Immediately they turn and gallop off,
on the same track back up the mountain.
I turn from the window,
wondering which will not be back
in spring, in summer.

Jack Freeman – Taking Down the Nest

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Taking Down the Nest
by Jack Freeman

Over the course of four days
two mud-swallows soared
under our back porch and erected
a nest of twigs, sticks, and dirt.
My father saw them swoop in.
He watched, his eyes watered,
for he could see the nest forming
in the light of early morning.
My father grinned in the window
and called it a marvel, that they could
build in such a rugged construction
site. His smile sunk to a frown
when he turned and murmured
that the nest must come down.
We took the shovel from the shed
and a black trash bag from
the kitchen cupboard. We walked
out and stood in the leaves and debris
and stared up at the hardwood eave.
In the ceiling, a ham-sized ball
of peeling muck, lice, and straw
stuck out from under an oaken beam.
A male and female flew around,
rose and fell on beads of air, sailing
to and from their nascent home.
I raised the bag, opened it wider
than I’d opened anything before.
I shut my eyes and grimaced
as the shovel scraped and shook
and I breathed deeply when the bag
gained in weight and specks of sticks
and twiggy dirt spat all over
my hair, naked arms, and shirt.
My father grabbed the black bag,
twisted and tied the top in a double knot
and asked me to toss it in the trash.
At arms’ length I held the bag
and made my way in vacant reverence
around the house to the garbage bin,
listening to the chirps that gasped
out of the plastic.

Claire Hermann – Cat Lady Primer

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Cat Lady Primer
by Claire Hermann

Each one has its defects, its troubles –
bad kidneys, fear of boots,
heart swollen, gums red –
and each its quirks –
a fondness for burying nails in the soft skin of your shoulder,
a tendency to run beneath your feet.
You know them as well as you know any intimate
who sleeps in your bed and eats from your plate
and cannot speak your language.
They come to you with scars, but no histories,
demands, but no reasons.
Of all the world’s downtrodden
these are the ones who come to your door
and wait to be let in.

J.L. Conrad – Portent

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Portent
by J.L. Conrad

The meteor throws its weight against the atmosphere. As if someone lit magnesium on fire, only brighter than any day you have ever seen. There is not yet a name for this. Across five states, people come out of their houses to stare. I thought a transformer blew one says. I didn’t worry. The police lines are deluged with calls. They have nothing to say in return. Reports come in of babies arriving early, cows that cannot be righted, a mouse with two heads. The good news is our dog comes home again: a little worse for the wear, bedraggled and somewhat apologetic although her tail cannot stop wagging.

Jayne Marek – Snake Tree

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Snake Tree
by Jayne Marek

Serpents curled together in a bush,
so many snakes we could not count them
in such a complete embrace
light could not slide its blade between
bodies and the supporting branch,
and for a moment none of us breathed,

our hands knotted in pockets
although May was warm, coming to itself
in leaves the size of snakes’ eyes,
and warblers nearby sang and piped
about the spring journey they had taken
to blossom in these trees, near those snouts.

And the snakes, whose intimate twining
had to happen, did not for the moment
follow the tiny birds, intent
as we all were on the difficult power
of seasons, being worked out underneath
shifting scales of light.

Richard Linker – Tiny Juggernaut

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Tiny Juggernaut
by Richard Linker

How has the snail
scaled the sheer wall
to this garden? Or
climbed the dank drain
to find what few
damp spots survive
this sunny yet winter-cold
day? Ask me this,
child, and why the human heart.
To feed
he moves by dark and day
encysts himself against
the sun, seeming piece
of night abandoned
in the shadow of pots.
The shoot has a grace
that seems swift
in its thrust for the sun’s
lubricious heat;
inexorable his slow movement here,
inexorable his rest.
Winter’s mist of bloom
has gone off the jades now,
and the stars have budged
another inch onward.
Snail unseals, unfastens, and
glides out on this
raft of watery light.

Cynthia Gallaher – Cold Little Creatures

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Cold Little Creatures
by Cynthia Gallaher

you know it’s below zero when
snow’s crunch sounds like a leather saddle
stretching as you mount, now astride with every step,
breaking into the run of a pinto pony,

your lungs strain bare-air breath first warmed by fire,
fascination with freeze becomes more battle of layers
than will, your meditation on blinding snow
takes on smoked-glass serenity.

but all winter long
goldfinches, titmice, chickadees
shiver at peak revolutions per minute,
woodpeckers splinter dead wood

like ice picks,
probe for dozing larvae, while shrews
and furry owlet moths race past hikers like yourself
as pieces of bark blown in a snowstorm.

surrounded in deep caches of seeds,
pocket mouse, ground squirrel,
chipmunk, marmot, brown bat hibernate,
doing something while seeming to do nothing,

in places you can’t see, cockroach freezes,
box turtle and wood frog turn nearly solid,
every cell bathed in sugary wet flood,
precious antifreeze, the refusal of ice

to crystalise in this most frigid blood
warmed only by March.

Jennifer L. Freed – Witness

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Witness
by Jennifer L. Freed

The mole
that the dog caught—
not for food, but for anointing
himself with the scent of earth
and wild, small beast—
lies in a slant of morning light
beside the driveway.

No wound.
Only the perfect
stillness,
the wonder
of his immaculate hands: skin, pink
as my own, pearly
cones of nails
clean as from a bath,
unmarked by scrimshaw of dirt or scratch.

I lift him
on the tip of a shovel,
and I carry him
across the yard,
and I lay him down
beyond the lilies.

The days will reel on
without him.
The dog will forget,
as would I,
if not for his miraculous hands,
if not for the want of words
that could hold them.

Meryl Stratford – Ruffian

17 June 2017/in Poetry

Ruffian
by Meryl Stratford

This race is to the fleetest of the fleet,
rushing headlong toward the finish line,
the one who thunders past on fragile feet.

Every time she raced she would repeat
her easy victory, just having fun.
The race is to the fleetest of the fleet.

She looked like a movie star, ready to greet
her fans, in her jet-black coat with her wind-blown mane,
galloping like a gazelle on dainty feet.

Everyone wanted to see if she could beat
the best of the boys, fight for the lead and win.
The crown is for the fleetest of the fleet.

Foolish Pleasure and Ruffian would meet,
and a startled bird, and the fatal flaw in her genes,
that mix of thunderous speed and fragile feet.

Then she lay in a dark hole under a sheet,
dead to pain’s panic and shattered bone,
she who thundered by on flying feet.
What grace was hers, the fleetest of the fleet!

Dianne Kellogg – Unusual Animals

17 June 2017/in Photos

Unusual Animals
by Dianne Kellogg

Dianne Kellogg is a rural, Northeastern Ohio photographer and artist, who enjoys capturing the sights of her area along with those from her annual winter migration to warmer climes. Below are four examples of her photography of animals from near and far that are both close and far away from home. In the third photo, the trumpeter swan has a red head due to the iron-rich water.