GAS Featured Poet: Bart Edelman

 Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023.  He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles.  His work has been anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others.  He lives in Pasadena, California.

How to Howl

 

Tell yourself it’s normal—

Quite natural, this time of year.

Invite the moon into your bedroom

For a smoke or a tipple;

Perhaps both, if available.

Consecrate the event with a prayer,

And then howl, as required,

Until you reach the welkins.

Think Ginsberg, should you dare.

Put your shoulder to the wheel,

Turning when necessary.

By now, I must imagine,

Your new friend is no stranger.

You can both engage

In any wolfishness you desire—

Reaching a fevered pitch.

At some point, before dawn,

Your throat might give out,

Yet not your desire to wail

A few more exquisite hours.

And the ever mercurial moon?

It’s already summoned home.

But don’t worry, my friend.

You need it no longer.

 

The Wagon

 

On the wagon?

Off the wagon?

And whose wagon is it?

Never quite sure

Where I should be,

This time of night,

When everything’s so still

You can hear your heart

Thumping, beat after beat,

Like a backward kangaroo,

Unable to navigate his way

Out of the front yard.

I suppose I should know

How to stay sober by now.

How to go cold turkey.

But the chicken in me

Won’t ever fess up

To the comical truth:

I have no desire

Living through a life

Without a measly drink.

So there you have it.

Can’t say it ain’t been said.

And the wagon?

Gone, once again.

Café Insomnia

Open all night long

For tethered thoughts,

Twisted carnival dreams,

Racing through mindless chatter—

From sin’s almighty refuge

To dawn’s distant light.

Bring us the sleepless mess

You can’t deliver anywhere else.

Mail without a street address,

Unstamped by man or machine.

Believe me, we aim to please,

Offering one strange brew

After another, perchance,

Until you’ve had enough,

Shaking off the next demon,

Huddled in the corner booth,

Waiting to chat you up.

When departure hour arrives,

Don’t expect a bill;

After all, it’s on the house.

Please come again, soon,

And remember, of course,

We never close.

 

 

 

GAS Featured Poet: Jason Ryberg

 Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO

with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named

Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks,

near the Gasconade River, where there are also many

strange and wonderful woodland critters. 

Tanka

 

 Event Horizon 

 

I’ve heard there is an

event horizon waiting,

quietly, at the

     hollowed-out hearts of typhoons,

     tornados and hurricanes.

 

 

 White Noise 

 

A city full of

transient winds, and a head

     full of birds (with a

     mainline hotshot of all the

     white noise of the universe).

 

 A Few Good Laughs and 

     a Comfortable Grave 

 

In the end, don’t we

all just want a little bit

of dignity and

respect, a few good laughs

     and a comfortable grave?

 

 

 

 Night Mail 

  

He’d told us he’d been

out delivering the late

     night mail of dreams (like

     paper lanterns set adrift

     on the dark river of sleep).

• 
  

Su Zi's Review of LIKE ZEROS, LIKE PEARLS by Lola Haskins

 

The Benefits of Bookfairs 

Local communities hold a variety of events, and perusal of these listings will often yield bookfairs, either as independent events or in conjunction with craft fairs, or other forms of small market. Of course, the literate person ought to attend such events: it does take quite the effort for these solo artists, or small collectives to write the book, have it in handheld form, and then transport to the event, where they hopefully sit all day, waiting for you.  The genres offered at book fairs will vary; author displays often mirrors their genre-- authors of horror might have a display of black cloth, or go as far as to costume; certainly, children’s authors might have a pirate or a puppet; and local history authors can sometimes offer a fascination of research-intensive nonfiction. 

And then, sometimes, there’s a literary author: present because that’s home turf and they are sitting at a table with a stack of books as well. At the 2026 Sunshine State Book Festival, among the half a dozen tables for poetry, there was Lola Haskins. Unquestionably a citizen of the literary community in poetry, Lola was there with many books, including the 2025 Charlotte Lit Press release Like Zeros, Like Pearls, a trade-sized, perfect bound, full-length collection—a volume that includes two pages of acknowledgments and a bibliography.

That the book has “A Modest Bibliography” (71) belies the arc of this work, which is divided into three sections, occasionally adorned with a discrete illustration, and which sometimes cites these sources in the poems of the text. That the poems employ research might remind an astute reader of biographical poems, and these poems are biographical; however, the lives portrayed here are more than marginalized, to many readers these lives are invisible. Haskins addresses the invisibility of these lives in a four-paragraph prose preface that states,” [...] the only time I noticed insects was when they called attention to themselves by being beautifully marked or by attacking me “and then says “suddenly realized that ignoring whole worlds wasn’t okay”. With an epigram from the 14^th Dalai Lama about teaching children to “love the insects”, and much cultural information about the key-to-life species to our life on earth being bees, Haskins dedicated volume causes us to consider immediately what sort of worlds we notice, want to read about, and how that consideration can be meditations in poetry.

The work’s title is the last line of the poem, “Poem Ending with an Image from ‘The Mustard seed Garden Manual of Painting (1782)’ ” and begins with, “Only after the twelve instar are/ the ears of her legs ready to listen” (28). The assonant repetition of “instar are” has both a slant repetition in the poem with the stanzas ending ‘her/her/herself” but echoes with ancestral recognition of Ishar—she of the eight-pointed star, the planet Venus, the Mesopotamian goddess (in a general definition) of love, beauty, sex and war.  That this, and many of the poems in the text, concern themselves with insect reproduction rituals gives the poems here both beauty and a sense of the macabre.

Meditations on the lives of insects throughout time and culture are considered in these poems. In “Cricket, Vietnam”, a single stanza poem of two sentences, we cross both the globe and cultures:

Snowy tree crickets

synchronize their songs

until leaf, branch and core

are one repeating

 tremble. When Yen

was asked

to define moonlight,

in pearl and dim blue

she painted this.

                         (56)

While the poem’s opening lines include four consonant repetitions of  S, the repetition through the poem is on the assonant E of “tree/leaf/repeat” that also includes “crickets/ tremble” and the rhyme of “when Yen” that shifts consideration from sound to color and the meditation of listening to that of painting.

Ekphrastic considerations are fully at play in this work: Haskins begins at personal observation, delves into research, and considers the juxtaposition of lives in each poem. The author’s biography includes collaboration with other artists in music, and it ought to be no surprise thus that the auditory world is a strong element in this work. Haskins has long been a literary light, and the author website has prompt delivery.  As we consider our beleaguered planet, our extreme storms and images of homes washed away, Haskins asks us to consider the other lives, small and without much notice by our gargantuan doings, that are nonetheless cohabitants of our world as well.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago. Check out her author page on Amazon.

GAS Featured Poet: Bob McAfee

 Bob McAfee is a retired software consultant who lives with his wife near Boston. He has written nine books of poetry, mostly on Love, Aging, and the Natural World. For the last several years he has hosted a Wednesday night Zoom poetry workshop. Since 2019, he has had 141 poems selected by 57 different publications. Two poems nominated for Best of the Net. His website, www.bobmcafee.com, contains links to all his published poetry.

Quiet Is

the doe hidden in tall grass,

the lion stalking by upwind;

the January bear dreaming of salmon,

his belly anticipating the Spring spawn;

the winds mellowing in the hurricane’s eye,

the seagulls flailing to hold the attic of the sky;

the trees talking at midnight, willows whispering  

prophecies as the moon slides behind the tamarack;

the city settling in after the bars have closed,

the early morning garbage trucks still sleeping;

the tom cat trying to make it home

through suburban coyotes howling in pantomime;

the patrol car parked behind the Piggly Wiggly,

the cop nursing his empty coffee cup;

a man, lying catty-cornered on his king-sized bed,

alone in perfect isolation.

My Mother’s Hair

She lies in a hospice bed, 

her hair spilled out around her head,

longer than I ever remembered, so white 

it looks blue in the afternoon sunlight

pouring through the windows, glistening.

My daughter applies a damp sponge 

to the cracked lips and tongue, 

raises the head so the lush 

hair leaps to the waiting brush,

relates all the day’s events 

in a voice of great intensity,

just in case Mom is listening.

After a while, my grand-daughter, a nurse, 

takes over, expertly pulls and smooths,

every stroke well-practiced and rehearsed;

this is not the first dying woman she has soothed. 

My mother went to the beauty salon each week, 

her hair a sea of lacquered wave and frozen curl,

but now it looks so soft along her cheeks

I could bury my young boy’s face in its carefree swirl.

My great-granddaughter, age four, 

as though death is commonplace,

leans to kiss my mother’s face 

with deep concern.

I lean toward the bed and hear soft singing, a lullaby,

and I resist the urge to cry 

as I await my turn.