Blue Heron Review is pleased to announce our nominations for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Anthology! (All poems must have been first published or appeared on the web between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016.)
From BHR Summer 2015 (July) issue #4:
• Ray Young Bear (“A Life Shaping Spoon”)
• Anne C. Kaiser (“Minnows”)
• Chris Abbate (“Sisters Praying”)
From BHR Winter 2016 (February) Issue #5:
• Florence Weinberger (“Three Miles on Gracie Ditch, Nevada County”)
• Cathryn Essinger (“What He Saw …”)
• Devi Laskar (“Most Days a Passage”)
For your reading pleasure, we have a special showcase issue below, to help celebrate our very fine writers. Blue Heron is honored to publish the work of ALL of our poets. We are only allowed to nominate 6 poems for this award, but please know that we hold our writers in the highest regard. Poets appearing in Blue Heron Review are some of the finest, contemporary poets writing today!
Ray Young Bear (“A Life Shaping Spoon”)
A Life-shaping Spoon
The clear, plastic spoon, which Ke ti ko na,
Eagle Feather, keeps in a school backpack
is a tangible indicator of change. In this case,
it’s the all-important name of a newlywed
kindergarten teacher. With a summer-
reddened face, Amy arrives and soon
becomes a Mrs., making the spoon
a keepsake. Since it came from
a draped table of a glorious party
where a giant cake was served,
it’s arguably a life-shaping utensil,
the kind you can see through
and examine under safety. And
it’s insignificant if he wasn’t there
or whether the spoon was used
for a mid-morning snack. What
matters is what it means to Amy–
and ostensibly for him. So we clean
it in the kitchen sink with diligence
and add it to his basket of sunlit
possessions.
Anne C. Kaiser (“Minnows”)
Minnows
Brushstrokes of life
painted singly or in groups
catch sunlight like bent grass
scatter and reunite beneath water’s living velvet.
My shadow rises and falls on waves,
glows copper,
is traced by the liquid stitchery of water bugs;
minnows decorate my head, living ideas
spotting a phantom crown
haloed by undulating sun stripes.
Above, sky the color of Delft china
sings blue as infinity
painted by a strong west wind.
Chris Abbate (“Sisters Praying”)
Sisters Praying
If they knew the Sun
was a fleck of sand on the beach,
or that they were two blue
raindrops in the ocean,
one sister wouldn’t be kneeling
by the bed of the older sister
on an August afternoon,
helping her breathe
through a Hail Mary
she cradles in her hands.
If they knew the Earth
was just a speck of dust,
that what they prayed for
was wider than these walls,
they wouldn’t have carried
each other these seventy years,
they wouldn’t have a name for God
like dough rising in the kitchen.
If they knew they had always lived
in the center of the circle,
that there was nothing to ask for,
the older sister wouldn’t be
whispering into her bed sheets,
telling the younger one a secret
about disappearing,
about the light she would soon become,
that she too is a fleck of sand.
Florence Weinberger
(“Three Miles on Gracie Ditch, Nevada County”)
Three Miles on Gracie Ditch, Nevada County
To whatever power banged sun into being,
pinned oak, pine, sycamore, big leaf maple
to the black unsettled earth, I give thanks
for the walk on Gracie Ditch Trail this morning.
For rocks and roots that declined to trip me,
for cooling shadows. We dodged the joggers,
the dogs, the bikes, shmoozed between breath
and silence, your cousins, the town where
you live now white charm through the trees.
When conversation lagged, the birds kept it up,
tailing after us with their scolding and nattering,
so we laughed as if we knew
and I was grateful, too, for the light that drizzled
like manna through speckled leaves, banked dirt
that subdued the meandering ditch,
how its waters sang as they zig-zagged,
nimble as your hands that gripped
my elbows, guided my unstable steps,
eased me around the rusty gate, its trusty
cadence mostly unnoticed until you got me
back intact to my daughter’s house,
still humming its stumble and consequence.
Cathryn Essinger (“What He Saw …”)
What He Saw…
She holds the moon between two fingers
like a pearl, and then places it in the sky
between the church steeple
and the distant river,
and if she tips her head for
just a moment, rests her chin
in her cupped hands, she might
become Art Deco,
a billboard perhaps by Mukta,
but she stands, picks up the check
and moves to the door just as
the moon clears the steeple.
It continues to rise after she is gone,
papery and thin, finding other landscapes
to imitate, all the while making
it clear that it is what it is,
and nothing more, no more a part
of art than the girl who created
the moment. Still, he thinks
about a watercolor by Monet
and then a Van Gogh arbor painted
“by moonlight.” But it is not
until he pushes his books away,
spreads his hands on the table
that the moon, that sweet conspirator,
bends over the table and he sees
the smooth china of her face,
reflected in his empty cup.
Devi Laskar (“Most Days a Passage”)
Most Days a Passage
There are nations within me,
tribes of angry dispossessed
people who are good at riding
horses, making spears, singeing
souls with a single glance. Look
at me, I change but remain the same
the way a wall clock pulses forward
the time but still retains its shape.
I try to gather the people
within, as the days gallop
by me, when I study the stars
at night. There is something up
there, looking back at us: see
how those constellations blink
and nudge, disappear altogether
when the sun gods come out
to bicker over the price of shade.
Don’t try to follow me,
you’ll only disturb my dust.
There are days when the rains never
stop, there are days when the snow
drifts in to every crevice and hides
all our faults. Most days it’s a passage,
the thinning line between the living
and the dead, the moment just as
Persephone leaves the underworld
and steps into the lands of Ra,
Apollo and Surya, shimmering.
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