Elizabeth McCarthy

The Compaynys of Beestys and Fowleys

after “The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms” written by Juliana Barnes (Berners), 1486, originally credited to a male author

Men didn’t know it was she

            a fifteenth century nun

                        cloistered in an English convent

who scribed with a feather in bastarda blackletter script

            the collective names for beasts and fowls.

How did she, this bride of Christ, know of the

            murthre of crowes and unkyndenes of ravenes

                        What kind of company did she keep?

As a young girl did she listen to the

            wache of nyghtingalis and charm of goldfinch

                        learning to sing in God’s choir?

Did she stand on the banks of her country estate

            and join the sege of heronnys and gagle of gees

                        as they took to the sky like angels on wings?

Was her soul bruised by the glorious walk

            of the ostentation of peacocks

and the diving romance in a fall of woodcockis?

Did this unusual girl of nature and letters befriend

            nest of rabettis and scoff of fysh

before she grew and hid her true self from the

            pride of lionys and sculke of foxis?

What company did she keep in that sheltered house

            where man does not recognize a woman’s hand?

Atlas

condemned by war

he held up the sky

carrying things

to the end of eternity

in a shopping cart

filled with the world’s belongings,

its squeaky wheels rolled onward

along train tracks and highways

he moved from place to place

seeking home for the unwanted

mumbling on street corners

whispered warnings never heard

until the weight he carried

fell and crushed the earth

and with it, the myth of humanity

Elizabeth McCarthy lives in an old farmhouse in northern Vermont. Retired from teaching, she began writing poetry when the world closed down in 2020. She is a member of the Poetry Society of Vermont and an online poetry group, The Lockdown Poets of Aberdeen, Scotland. Elizabeth has four collections of poetry, The Old House (self-published), Winter Vole (Finishing Line Press, 2022), Hard Feelings (Finishing Line Press, 2024), and Wild Silence (Kelsay Books, 2024).

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Michael Montlack

It’s Not the Job of the Clairvoyant

To lead us through the catacomb,

to be a sliver of light in the hollow.

It’s no one’s job to show us what

we have made in life. Our crops

speak for themselves. The culprits

who poisoned the soil disguised

in costumes of our own making.

Doesn’t the Clairvoyant remind us

we are more than the sprockets,

we are the machine. We are able

to count but choose blowflies

over blessings. You are naked,

the Clairvoyant says. Not my job

to dress you. We ask if the others

are just as scared and scarred.

We ask for a thicker sliver of light.

Not my job! We reach for a hand

in the dark, so sure the blowflies

can smell our expiration dates—

feeling entitled to understand

our purpose. Dreading there’s none.

Can You Spare a Dime

I miss phone booths, the irony of seeking

privacy in public in a transparent box.

A conversation seemed more dramatic

there. A dire performance for passersby.

Who even talks on the phone anymore?

When I call, rather than text, friends,

some can’t hide their annoyance: Um—

why are you calling me? I want to say

my voice offers more nuance than emojis.

I miss the graffiti in phone booths too.

The FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL . . . etchings.

Those declarations that [INSERT NAME]

WUZ HERE. It was so existential. Simple.

Animal. How we marked our territory.

But smart phones leave a live loud trail,

erasing any chance for a secret getaway.

And forget about pranking so-and-so

about that good time. Caller ID’s sure

to rat on you. I miss making prank calls—

junior high exercises in method acting.

Adopting personas, doing improv really.

How it taught us to keep a straight face.

Maybe emojis will make faces obsolete

like phone booths. Replace words even.

Is this the evolution of communication?

It feels dire, and I keep thinking about

well . . . phone booths. Wondering if

without them, it’s harder for Clark Kent

to transform into Superman. How do you

say Who will save us now in emoji?

My Friend Stephanie Asked When I Knew I Was a Writer

And I was as surprised as she was when I said,

Before I learned to write. I was four maybe.

On the backyard swing set in a rush of euphoria

as I competed with my twin sister to see who

could go higher, our bare feet kicking at the sky,

the rusty swings creaking in unison. I knew

somehow I would remember this, this moment

she likely would not. Why? And if she did,

it would be different, framed differently,

or unframed. Even then I was in the habit

of seeing a moment like a diorama or

movie still, pausing to collect a smell, words

a stranger uttered, how a shadow crawled

along a cinderblock wall—a sort of click

in my head and there it was: a blur of joy,

my sister in the bleachy glare, a glimpse

of my mother in the kitchen window, head

down as she sliced onions, the crab apples

rotting in the grass below us, our Irish Setter

a spill of orange on the gray concrete patio.

All loaded with meaning I could not grasp

but managed to carry in an invisible backpack

where I kept the fear that I would never learn

to read, terrified whenever I dared to lift

the open book or magazine my mother left

on a couch or nightstand—all those letters

a secret code, probably making fun of me:

the strange boy who saw stories everywhere

but may never learn to write. Yet even that

I knew would one day be a story worth telling.

“The Inside Scoop on Apollo 10’s Infamous Floating Turd”

            —Popular Science

None of those astronauts ever fessed up to it.

I can neither claim it nor disclaim it, one said.

As if afraid to admit Shit Happens even in space.

As if claiming a bowel movement might tarnish

their new halo, stealing some of its silvery grace—

that shard of shit a blatant symptom of humanity.

NASA transcripts preserved all the repudiations,

but what, if I may, has become of the rogue turd?

Was it plastic-bagged and namelessly tagged?

I prefer to picture it on a parachute, still orbiting,

rather than being filed away in an earthly archive.

The bridal bouquet no one ever dared to catch.

If we weren’t so tone deaf—or unwilling to listen—

what might be gleaned from the wordless sermon

of that turd? A modern but less elegant version of

The Tower of Babel: boisterous kids barging into

our parents’ room, invariably creating a mess.

Reminding us we still have yet to be potty-trained.

Potential Obituarists for Humanity

The Orangutan? Sharing over 97% of our DNA—

can we trust them? Even if they’re willing to sign

our history, will there be gestures complex enough

to express a psychology so bent on self-destruction?

We could ask the cooperative Bottlenose Dolphin,

but the cheerfulness of their squeaks could never

fully convey the sense of emergency we unleashed.

Surely, African Grey Parrots would be fine reporters.

If we were more concerned with being candid than

cinematic, laundering our worst scenes with filters.

Elephants would make much more reliable sources

with their infamous memories. But there are limits

to their altruism if they can’t forget our lust for ivory.

Mother pigs sing to their young. If we weren’t busy

eating them, they might be convinced to compose

a dirge for us, some ballad to recount the fabulous

tale of an animal that once dared to rule the Earth.

Michael Montlack is author of two poetry collections and editor of the Lambda Finalist essay anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (University of Wisconsin Press). His work recently appeared in Poetry Daily, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Barrelhouse, december, Cincinnati Review, and phoebe. He lives in NYC, where he teaches Poetry at CUNY City College.

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Frank Paino

Apocrypha: The Ram Considers Abraham

And what if my god

demanded of me blood

of my own kin,

a ewe, still unsteady

on spindled legs,

for an offering?

What if I led her

to pasture,

to the old wolf

whose hackled shadow

hunkered

amidst the long grass?

What if I turned

only when the screaming

wind became the tongue

of an angel calling back

the Lord’s command

like a man who swallows

fire and lives to tell?

What if, in praise

of that late mercy,

I guided the wolf to the tent

where your firstborn slept

unattended, tangled

in dreams sweet as

the psalm buried

in his mother’s breast?

My Mother’s Corpse

She didn’t need the blanket,

couldn’t feel the cold

of the refrigerated room

to which she’d been consigned

until I could make it

for one final argument

with love’s

misguided ministries;

though it wasn’t sorrow

that came over me

as I stroked her face,

the thin lips that had

both blessed and cursed

me; only wonder

at such stillness,

the chill rising

as if from an autumn

lake I could not swim,

and the heaviness

when I lifted her

at the shoulders

to put her scapular

into its proper place—

one square of stitched

brown wool above her

heart, the other

between the blade

of each smooth shoulder.

Before I eased her down

against the stainless

gurney, I kissed the flesh

at the back of her neck

where blood had gathered

like a bewildered

tribe before a sea

that had not yet parted.

John, the Beloved Disciple

Lord, let me rest my head

above the prison

of your temporal heart,

its blood psalm swift

as winnowed flames

that clear a field

for someday’s harvest.

Let my own heart sing

in faultless synchrony

and so be hidden

in the selfsame song.

Let me take

the Magdalene’s place

at your feet,

caress the bones

that will be shattered

like tablets of stone.

Let me place my hands

upon these wrists

that will lift you

to each staggered breath

in the failing

pre-Sabbath light.

Master, let me

press my mouth

to the tender space

between your ribs

which will be opened

like a sepulchre

that cradles nothing

but a hollowed

winding sheet,

as if the man

once laid there

walked out

into the garden,

unclothed

and unashamed.

Lucifer, Falling

To be suffered

spirit into matter

to be unloosed

from perfection’s tedium

into the wind’s shrill

hammers

into gravity’s harsh tug

toward

to be made flesh

suddenly struck

match-bright

with pain

and with desire

the gift

of your sweet

diminishment

Frank Paino earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His fourth book, Dark Octaves, won the Longleaf Press Book Prize and is forthcoming (Winter 2024). His chapbook, Pietà, won the Jacar Press Chapbook Prize and was published in 2023. Frank has received a Pushcart Prize, The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. His poems have appeared in a variety of literary publications, including Crab Orchard Review, Catamaran, North American Review, World Literature Today, Briar Cliff Review, Lake Effect, and a number of anthologies. His website is https://www.frankpaino.net.

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