GAS Featured Poet/Photographer: Jerome Berglund

 

Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, Kingfisher, and Presence. His first full-length collections of poetry were released by Setu, Meat For Tea, Mōtus Audāx press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Yavanika.

TWITTER, BLOG, INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK

1.

2

I said Charlie Parker

not Katy Perry!

...yelling

into other room

at the NSA 

3

inventory

a man 

on the roof 

making

many bright X’s

4

that guy 

beating his kid in the supermarket 

going to kill him later 

in a short story 

our teacher confides

5

GAS Featured Poet/Artist: Lorie Greenspan

Lorie Greenspan is a poet and artist residing in southeast Florida trying to keep herself and her plants cool during the broiling summer of 2024. Her poetry, including her video poems, have been featured previously in GAS as well as other anthologies and poetry journals. You can see her art on Instagram: @loriegreenspan; her video poems are available on YouTube: @LemonDropPoet.

A tribute to those who climb

Three Studies From Inside The Room 

While Plants Try To Grow in Florida

When The Heat Index is 109 

 

1.

If I were a garden I’d grow

texture out my ears, fluffy velvet

nostrils welcoming shade

my arms would be full hydrangea

a crush of petals

dried out just as pretty, dried out

still strong enough to stand solid in a vase

my face a daisy

my legs tall foxglove

curvy stripes of floppy green

dead all too soon

free of things that annoy.

We all have those flecks

we’d like to pick off ourselves but can’t, our arms

don’t extend that far, remember,

we’re hydrangea puffs,

soft as bubbles             afraid to be crushed.

 

 

 

 2.

Nothing as green ever breathed here.

Clamped tight, trapped in prison

wanting for water

grumpy from air-conditioned air

full-on fists seeking their space

then music floats through walls, and

makes their days steady in pulses

of rhythm light, enter

Bach’s soothing caress

these plants on stands

should thrive in summer

now behind shades cutting the sun’s glare

ungiving these walls but the melody of the violin

takes the air and plumps each breath, if only summer

were as forgiving

if soldiers could hear such music

there would be no war, instead

orchestras on battlefields

boots marching toward Bach

and his violin

in heat of summer, loneliness and anger

a riot of heady fists, all leaves await their time,

oxygen fingers and bayonets, not captured but four walls for a cell –

music calms

green nothings. Wait here, breathe.

 

 

 

3.

The bird

is a scream

from a mouth

darting

diving

from the light

pole,

who bleeps

at light

when they

need to see?

Who cries

in birdsong

when life

isn’t hard enough?

If birds

were vowels

they’d be

never-ending

oooooooooooooos . . .

a sound

the heart

makes

when

it’s done

screaming

GAS Featured Poet: Jan Wiezorek

 

Jan Wiezorek writes from Michigan. His debut poetry chapbook, Forests of Woundedness, is forthcoming this fall from Seven Kitchens Press. Wiezorek’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming, in The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, Lucky Jefferson, The Broadkill Review, LEON Literary Review, and elsewhere. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and authored the teachers’ ebook Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). Wiezorek’s poetry has been awarded by the Poetry Society of Michigan.

Not the One to Ask

 

I am not the one to ask about that. 

And I don’t know why life goes 

as it does, or where to put emotions, 

how they fit, if they do, in my brain 

like omens from a brown hawk called 

Northern Harrier, circling around, 

circling back, ten feet off the ground, 

as prayers heard in the sometime 

heights of me—where I can’t seem

to relax on a page of word-wings—

no, I am not the person to ask omens 

to show us how, partially, and then 

in full confusion, winging, dipping 

our way, shaking the limbs, no one 

asking why because we’re not 

the ones to ask. Even so, even if you 

were, how could you speak the words

—or even tell me what they mean?

With Evidence

 

After weeks with no evidence

of activity, I removed twigs

from the wren house. I cleaned

and rehung it outside the gazebo

near the back porch. It caused 

the wrens to sing and, it seems,

to panic. So many sticks to fill 

the house again. So many hours 

of fidgeting with the smallest 

pieces, to fit them through the hole. 

This is what celebration is in song

—like dryer lint traded for spider’s 

egg sack. But, I hope, it will be

a fit home. With so many dummy 

houses—wrens filling birdhouses 

with twigs so other birds can’t use 

them until such time as this—

maybe this is the time and place 

for birds to live here—so we can 

make writing the social act it is 

meant to be. You read and listen, 

and I sit with you, on a porch 

—with evidence.   

GAS Featured Poet: Gale Acuff

 

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Slant, Aethlon, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Chiron Review, George Washington Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write., Oracle, Hamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, Westerly, and many other journals.

     Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.

F-150

 

After Sunday School today I was so absent

-minded as I walked home I walked clean by

my house, my father's house that is, that is

my parents' house but maybe my house, too,

I've lived there only ten years but still filled

it with a lot of life or all I could

in a decade's worth of time so how come

I walk right past without realizing

where the Hell I am? I was damned near down

-town by the time I caught myself gone too

far so I turned around but instead of

marching back home I froze in position

like a good little Christian soldier might

and awaited my next order but it

never came until I saw Miss Hooker

driving toward me and of course past and

if she'd wanted to run me over I'd

have helped her, helped her like a target does

the archer or shooter, at least sometimes,

by just standing there ready to take what

-ever's fired its way but Miss Hooker drove

her Ford F-150 right past me and smiled 

and waved and slowed down and waved some

more but I didn't move even my face,

I just stood and gazed through her and saw

us together in the future, married

I mean, and that's a lot to see in just

a split-second but more than I've ever

seen before, don't ask me why I can't make

sense, I'm in too much love, what's wrong with that

 

is that I'm 10 to her 25 and

though we have a future we can't share it

like I'd like to and what I saw inside

her eyes was I saw myself being

buried and Miss Hooker standing over

me, crying like crazy, weeping it's called,

and me old but looking asleep but I'm

dead, I guess you had to be there

and I almost was but then I came back

from the dead or almost-dead and hurried

home and just barely avoided missing

Sunday dinner. Tuna casserole. Christ.