Betsy Sholl

Fragment

I was always asking something, asking over and over,

never listening to the answer, as if the question was mine,

the answer more like someone else’s wow

over a shooting star I didn’t see.

And isn’t the point to see? —

to be dropped to our knees by a light-struck violin,  

its pitch intent on breaking the heart, and us

crying out, Yes, all right, break it.

Betsy Sholl’s tenth collection of poetry is As If a Song Could Save You

(University of Wisconsin Press, 2022), winner of the Four Lakes Prize.  Her ninth collection is House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems (University of Wisconsin, 2019). She is faculty emerita in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts and served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011.

B. J. Buckley

Late Rothko, Gray Over Black

for Mark Zimmerman

Low December sun paints the trees, the fields,

with brilliance, for hours, bare branch, shorn stubble

shimmering gold, and through our kitchen windows

across the table where the cats curl in their beds,

bathed in light, purring, warmed, in the wintery chill

of the house — and as it falls further, sinks into

the still ocean of afternoon, early evening, the whole

sky shouting blue above grows bands below,

of butter, then milk, then rose, then apricot, orange,

peach, lemon, like quick slides shifting on a screen,

one of those old carousel trays, click, click —

and almost without noticing, blue turns in on itself,

grays, shades, shadows; along the horizon, soft edge

of darkness, black over lavender, black over plum,

over violet, over cobalt, a blackness we have always

known, inhabited — womb, midnight, void, vastness,

that grave we rise and rise from, before and after,

ends and beginnings of worlds.

B. J. Buckley has worked as a teaching artist in Arts-in-Schools programs throughout the west and Midwest for more than 50 years. Her poem, "Pickin' Out", was a Finalist for the 2025 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Poetry. B. J.'s most recent books are Flyover Country (Pine Row Press) and Night Music (Finishing Line Press), both in 2024.

Andrew Cleary

Lessons Learned from The Voyage Out

Humans have their own pits if you eat them;

some smaller some stone. Boredom is no protection

from overconfident doctors. Marriage can save

the dissipated and kill the blameless.

Fathers may be forgotten, then remembered, and amount

to little consequence in the end; men who get by

on the achievement of their minds may wish

for the compulsion of physical strength through wine.

Decorate with furniture or with people

to find that books can hide the scuffs on either;

rather than know, you can pretend and live

on the memory of what you thought once.

An ocean separates in time as much as space; music

offers the escape falsely promised by the water

but fades, and life with it. Mountains can rise to spite

the sea, but the water has patience infinite.

Andrew Cleary lives in St. Paul. His poetry has previously been published in Sugar House Review, Willows Wept Review, and Lily Poetry Review.