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.

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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.

GAS Featured Poet: Michael Lee Johnson

 

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicago-land area, IL. He has 323 plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 7 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 653 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/

I Feel Lightning in Your Wind (V4)

Michael Lee Johnson

I feel light in a thunderstorm.

I electrify your touch through my veins.

I’m the greenery around your life 

that breathes your earth into your lungs.

I challenge all your false decisions and doctrines

with the glory of my godliness. 

I’m your syntax, your stoic,

your ears, your prize.

I walk daylight into your morning breath

allow you to breathe.

I let the technique of me into your brain cells;

from the top tip to the bottom

of small baby foot extensions.

I’m the banquet hall of all

your joys, damnation;

your curses, your emotions—

and you’re breathing with the wind.

*This poem converted into a song: 

April Winds (V3)

By Michael Lee Johnson

April winds persist

in doing charity work

early elbowing right to left

their way through these willow trees

branches melting reminiscences

of winter remnants off my condo roof 

no snow crystals sprinkle

in drops over my balcony deck.

Canadian geese wait impatiently for their

spring feeding on the oozy ground below.

These silent sounds

except for the roar of laughter 

those April winds—

geese hear nothing

no droppings from the balcony—

no seeds.

GAS Featured Poet and Musician: Stephen Philip Druce

 

Stephen Philip Druce is an eclectic poet

from Shrewsbury in the UK. He is published

in the UK, the USA, Hungary, South Africa,

Ireland, Canada and India. He has also 

written for London Theater plays and BBC

Radio 4 Extra. Contact Stephen on Instagram

@StephenPhilipDruce 

THE PIANIST'S FINAL FLOURISH

Rustling herds of marching embers

ooze a masquerade of tickled trenches

in seething dominion,

torched waterfalls - nourished by zephyr

mastery, lurch languid in a godly 

zeal of paradigm vanity,

sandcastle-shaped serpents

trigger spew a searing horizon

of tangled theaters in

screeching flower cages,

scalded in sodden shadow,

the swooping goose machine

scatters its crinkled chimes

in a sensory mist of

ragged tigers and skating

vulture dust,

the canvas hermit -

nurtured in chalice,

furtive in fountain,

splashed by ruby,

as the wilted maestro sits

in a solitude ceremony 

of feathered ferocity -

the pianist's final flourish.

BIRDMAN OF THE HIGHWAY

Birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite,

through roads that snake

in a club striptease,

over champagne lakes

in a cocaine breeze,

as fast lanes flock

to casino hills,

the mountains rock

the backseat thrills,

birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite,

through cocktail shakes

in tequila seas,

as the city bakes

the street girls please,

over lit-up clocks

and fairground shrills,

the prison blocks

are popping pills,

birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite,

the cat pimps chew on fat cigars,

the foxes in the ghetto croon,

the carpets laid for movie stars

are chewed up in the rat monsoon,

the hurricane

it stirred so well,

the whisky rain

and the ice hotel,

birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite,

the night owl serenades the scars,

of moonlit lizards in desert dunes,

the rabbits shoot at speeding cars,

the bats rap to the nightclub tunes,

the riot flames

they cry farewell,

the mob that shamed

have smoked in hell,

birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite.

GAS Featured Poet and Musician: Neil Flory

     Neil Flory is the author of mudtrombones knotted in the spill (Arteidolia Press, 2023).  Nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize by swifts & slows, Flory’s poetry has also appeared in various other journals such as Superpresent, Sleet, shufPoetry, Down in the Dirt, and Fleas on the Dog.  Flory is also a composer of experimental music and a pianist whose enthusiasm for improvisation in live recital settings knows no bounds.  He lives among the wooded hills and lakeshores of Western New York State with his wife, published poet and fiction writer Elaine Flory, and their three hyperactive cats.

  

Light

 

Paradox/miracle of afternoon light through bare branches

 

Hope/death of Hope, like trying to cross the raging river on 

a thin cracking log barely stretched from bank to crumbling 

bank

 

Here we are in the midst of it, but we can’t harmonize 

an intimation

 

My single shadow interwoven with the countless forest-shadows,

another constant from the ancients (I notice them every day despite

our cheap technology, ever erroneously exalted, popular myths of its 

distinctions flashing vivid high definition across screens the 

size of continents)

 

And each found himself in his own subterranean tunnel.

Dim lamps every fifteen feet or so, significant gaps in their 

coverage. Leading to who knows where.  The belly of the 

mountain stretches on, our path until discovering a fabled shaft 

of light instantly the spark shift as even the thought brings it all 

blazing back, the leafless giants, twining myriads of shadow-dances, 

cool spring air on the back of the neck and blessed steep resistance 

of the hill again immersed, in this midst.

 

And finally what does it matter if yes, it soars too far above 

our understanding’s reach? Perhaps that was never our true 

harmony in this at all, stagnant mirage shining instead to 

futile long distraction in divergent heat.  

 

No, we won’t turn.

Step again now, in all trust; there won’t be another crack.

All you need now is to focus forward and balance, in fullest experience

we can harness of all resounding fact of every woven shadow rendering

in vivid sharp relief the miracle (yes, paradox unforgotten) of afternoon 

light the size/scope/life of warmth of this whole open 

vibrant world

 

Neil Flory · apparitions of deep memory (recorded live)