GAS Featured Poet: Andrew Weatherly

Andrew Weatherly lives in Asheville, North Carolina where he hears inspiration from dying trees, Hawaiian shirts, fires, and other poets.  He is blessed to teach kids to think for themselves, dance in the streets, and slip off to pilgrimages to sacred mountains.  

He’s been published in Belle Reve, Axe Factory, Former People, Danse Macabre, Visitant, Cordite, BlazeVox, the Literary Nest, Commonline Journal, and Crack the Spine. Look for more of his poetry upcoming in ClockwiseCat and Delta Poetry.

Galactic Bread Crumbs

He asked, “In what direction do the dead fly off the earth?”

Perhaps it is not they who fly

but stay gently still in space and time

no longer expanding

as earth rotates, spins around the sun

the solar system gaining speed

moving on in the galaxy’s arm

in twirling motion out from some

hypothetical Big Bang center

and the souls left behind

like a trail of crumbs in the forest

planetary refuse remaining

leaving a trail of dead where we have been

but not to return

taking with us only earthly atoms

while their spirits set free

in the void

left behind 

telling tails

 

Quaker Graveyard

simple gray stones 

three inches above ground 

several set at six 

one stone nine inches above the earth: such Pride

tiny rocky islands surrounded by succulent jade grass 

 

Four hundred souls buried here 

so like my living Quaker parents 

marking days in pages read and pondered 

words thoughts feelings of lives 

as simple as ink 

black on a white page

 

As I left home to visit my parents 

I considered how to leave my home 

so the cat wouldn’t tip it over.  Then

truck packed, eight hours to drive—and suddenly

dozens of poetry books flipped, plopped 

off end table, the cat dozed, the phone ringing!?!? 

 

Tonight exhaustion driven  

still blacktop caffeinated 

listening to storm gently roiling 

frogs laugh in koi pond out back 

my headboard: 

hundreds of books stacked on sides 

beside bed full shelves many upright 

plenty angled, sliding away like asphalt    

spilling over floor 

no need for a cat to tip them over

just an aging man and woman 

measuring wealth 

by words on pages of Wordsworth, 

thoughts on the Quaker circulars, 

feelings of Danticat, Churchill, Atwood 

rarely rising more than three inches above another

 

GAS Featured Poet: Mark McCormick

Mark McCormick is a writer, painter, and yoga instructor living in San Francisco. Professionally, he is retired from a corporate career where he managed large digital design teams. He has a fledgling TikTok channel @markdoespoems. 

I Just Wanted to Say

 

I want to say something about magic

                                                                  But I don’t know what to say

Except once I was reading a poem about a peacock

                                                                  And one landed on my deck.

 

I want to say something about ghosts

                                                                  But I don’t know what to say

Except when I was eighteen I saw one

                                                                  And he was wearing a brown plaid blazer.

 

I want to say something about lust

                                                                  On that I’m an expert.

It made me break the law once or twice

                                                                  And that’s all I’m saying. Wait for the movie.

 

I want to say something about God

                                                                  Only I’m afraid.

But once on the Ganges my boatman’s oar

                                                                  Thudded on a dead body floating.

 

I want to say something about mother

                                                                  But is there anything left to be said

Except once I had a drowsy therapist suggest I should just accept her as she is

                                                                  I rolled my eyes and never went back.

 

I want to say something about whiskey

                                                                  But dad was the authority

There must be fifty ways to hide your liquor

                                                                  I hide mine behind these lines from time to time.

 

I want to say something about truth

                                                                  But I have no idea where to start.

 

I’m 57 now; check back 

                                                                  In 50 years and I’ll try.

 

Before I go I want to say one more thing about 

                                                                  Mothers and God and the spirit and ghosts and death and truth and the Ganges and whiskey and whatnot.

I released a candle on a flower on that river, then your ashes in the heat of the flames by the crematory ghats

                                                                  I cried once and for all. Finally I got you to India. 

I guess that’s what I wanted to say after all.

 

 

GAS Featured Poet: Jim Ferguson

 

I started to write with serious intent in 1984 during a period of illness and convalescence. Due to a bump on the head I had developed an epilepsy which luckily diminished, and I was able to live free of medication and other restraints from 1990 forward. During this period I lived in Paisley, Scotland. In 1986 I joined a writers’ group that met weekly on Monday evenings in Paisley Central Library. The group was tutored by poet and critic Tom Leonard who was immensely inspirational and from whom I learned a lot about the politics of language. Some of us formed ourselves into a group called Itinerant Poets. We published several pamphlets and did readings throughout central Scotland, mostly in the Paisley/Glasgow area. My closest partners in this endeavour were the poets Graham Fulton and Bobby Christie: we published work by Ronald McNeil, Christine McCammond, Brian Whittingham and Margaret Fulton Cook.

I have always enjoyed writing poetry and prose. My starting point was with poetry and short stories. Over time I began to write longer prose pieces and have written five novels to date, three are unpublished. Two were published in short print runs by small presses: Punk Fiddle (2012) and Neither Oil Nor Water (2017). My first poetry collection, The Art of Catching a Bus and other Poems was published by Ramsey Kanaan’s AK Press in 1994. Since then I have published five other collections, numerous pamphlets and a couple of CDs.

I have contributed poetry, short stories, essays and criticism to academic books, literary anthologies and arts magazines, including: Air, West Coast Magazine, Variant, Nerve, Cutting Teeth, Minted, Common Sense, The Purple Patch, Edinburgh Review, Scottish Child, Rebel Inc, Billy Liar, The Echo Room, The Wide Skirt, Harry’s Hand, Blade, Cerasus, Dog, Dreich, Gutter Magazine, Metachrosis Literary and New Writing Scotland. I also had work in the Clocktower Press publications, Folk and Zoomers edited by Duncan McLean in the early nineteen nineties.

I gained a doctorate from the University of Glasgow for my biographical study of Paisley poet and songwriter Robert Tannahill (1774-1810).  More recently I have been working in collaboration with artist Louise Malone, poet Derek J. Brown, musicians Carol Jamnejad, Brian McFall, and others, as part of The Glasgow Literary Lounge Arts Collective which was formed out of an idea conceived by the late Ruby McCann: under this banner we have hosted many live events and produced loadsa FnB videos. 

I live in the East End of Glasgow and tutor a weekly creative writing group at Glasgow Kelvin College.

Jim Ferguson 11 September 2023. 

This is a list poem

 how the world’s horrors scream at you

and how the middle-classes avoid and ignore them

and how the workers are seduced by soaps

and how the homeless and dispossessed know it

and how the poets drink to oblivion

and how the comedians think their lives serious

and how the novelists write only pulp

and how the insane are mostly in prison

and how the newspapers strive to cover it... ...up

and how the oligarchs conspire to deceive

and how the religions rush to look the other way

and how the tv won’t really show it

and how the footballers don’t know the price of milk

and how the snobs watch the cream curdle

and how the athletes compete for the money

and how the bureaucrats use forms to hide it

and how the internet is too free to tell it

and how the musicians sing nothing but pop

and how the bankers are rewarded for fraud

and how the politicians pretend nothing happened

and how the fiddlers basically fiddle

and how the junkies are mystics in tatters

and how the smokers pay all that tax

and how the gangsters are really all police

and how the police are all really gangsters

and how the teachers are not free to teach

and how the stupid are the first to condemn

and how the pious are sexual oppressors

and how the drunks are poets in disguise

and how the arms dealers blow off your legs

and how the rage at injustice rages no more

and how the universe floats on inside us

and how the spies are always your neighbours

and how the whole fucking thing is mendacious

and how you can’t even trust your own self

and how real success is to merely survive

a little longer

                       than the person

                                                  dying in the bed

                                                                              next to yours  

Our Planet, Our Home

 

the planet Earth is reading old books

as if to know our world better

as if to understand how

hearts come to burst apart

when questions physicists might ask

about light and electricity and radiation

 

and magnetic fields are all related just like

any other family, full of upstarts, wayward sheep,

 

who would have thought, all fingers and thumbs,

in the grey-green light of day, for all of us,

 

a suite of equations reveals some invisible force ─

in night’s dark-matter, in mysterious musical stars

 **

  

so the planet Earth breathes and says

there’s violence in the winds and floods

in solar flares and supernovae,

damaged hearts look out with innocent eyes

 

the earth rotates ─ a massive magnet

falling through space as continents drift

 

hift and buckle    break           apart

cracking the crust of everything

considered real in dreams of permanence ─

folk and fauna flock to higher ground

 

or busily pray to save themselves

naively smiling, children stare

 

terrifyingly terrified at the wall of fire

that speeds unbound toward them

**

Earth holds all the properties of matter in hand

while we’re trying to understand that rock

 

can bend and ice can flow and lava too, from vast

volcanic pimples, some like Arthur’s Seat

 

are now extinct, no pyroclastic or igneous spew

to roll forth over Edinburgh New Town

 

how regally it sits, a planned affair,

when we walk out and take the air

madly trying to calculate the age of the Earth,

before the shock of revelation

 

places the dice in the hands of gravitation,

she is weak but momentum is strong ─

to look abstract science straight in the eye and ask,

is progress fair? (or fare?)

while doubting doubt itself,

the old rich cling to certainty while uncertainty is king

 

GAS Featured Poet: Karen Warinsky

Karen Warinsky began publishing poetry in 2011 and was named as a finalist for her poem “Legacy” in the Montreal International Poetry Contest in 2013. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, books and lit mags/blogs, and she has participated in many online open mics including Rattle’s Poets Respond and Ó Bhéal.  She has three books, Gold in Autumn (2020), and Sunrise Ruby, (2022), both from Human Error Publishing and Dining With War (2023) from Alien Buddha.  Her work centers on mid-life, relationships, politics, and the search for spiritual connection through nature, and she coordinates poetry readings under the name Poets at Large.

Find her at karenwarinskypoetry.wordpress.com

Real Heart

 

Because I had a real heart

I understood for too long

accepted too much

missed some clues.

 

Because I had a real heart

wounds went deep

words meant more

sounds scratched and bit.

 

Because I had a real heart

it was layered over for protection

with durable material 

strong as steel

keeping out debris, rain, wind,

staying cold

preserving the insides

like a refrigerator.

 

But it’s not a self-defrosting fridge.

 

It’s an old-fashioned heart. 

Bring the hot water, a towel,

the knife to chip the ice.

It might take an hour.

 

Bring a book.

 

 The Burning of Old Love

 

Unwise to let it fester,

spiral notebooks crammed with

old feelings 

revealing too much pain

too much loss

my hasty cursive running on the lines,

an arroyo of emotion.

 

It had to be released, I know,

but it’s a decade later

and some decent poems 

now sit in books,

on the net,

shared on stage,

time now to tear the pages out

throw them in the woodstove,

let some of the secrets turn to unpublished ash. 

 

Believer

Now that I love myself

fully

to the max

there’s no one good enough

no one I’d rather wait for

at a sidewalk café,

stumble into at a restaurant, a store,

no one better than me to run an idea by,

take out for a treat,

offer half of my donut to

(maybe I’ll just save it for tomorrow)

write a poem for.

Wish, oh wish I’d had this true love

of self

all those years ago

when I pinned so much on you,

gave you the cream, the first bite, the biggest slice,

waited quiet, silent, for the yes

as you put your lips around all that was offered,

indulged yourself at my banquet,

watched for

the nod, the smile that said

you would grant your time, your breath, 

for a bit

before saying

it was time for me to go home.