top of page

Heading 1

TURTLE ISLAND QUARTERLY 25

Winter/Spring 2024

 

 

2 poems by LORRIE NESS, 2 poems by BILL GRIFFIN, a poem by PAUL J. WILLIS,

2 poems by ELEANOR KEDNEY, a poem by CHRIS ANDERSON,

a poem by KOLBE RINER, 2 poems by LIZ WEIR,

2 poems by JC ALFIER, a poem by JERRY SMALDONE

 

 

 

 

2 poems by LORRIE NESS

 

The Pond

 

was a cappuccino,

dolloped with frog egg foam.

It was partially cloudy then overripe plum.

It wore blossoms in the spring and a feather boa

after the coyote came to call. It was a chaos

of wings and runway. It was shattered by the eider’s plunge

and paddled back together with webbed feet. It was a siren song.

It was fog before mist, and star-pocked before dawn.

It was pewter sheen and invitation, motor oil

and irritation. It was swamp gas and bog.

It specialized in sunken keys, flooded waders and defeat.

It was a baptism, turned whole-body kiss. It was a curtain shutting

across the muck. It was the stink that never came clean —

the pond that visited our Maytag then never moved out.

It was cat-tailed and fox-drunk and brimming with the snot

from deer. It was a tongue-stippled turtle tea.

It was a rink for striders but an ocean to a paper boat.

It suffered a scum-capped adolescence

before it grew clear. Its guts were stirred by fish

then turned over with our oars. It was ice and hockey blades

then buried in snow. It was four inches thick

before it grew thin. It was an insatiable hunger

licking the dock. It was a diver’s delight

and a bullseye that could never bruise. It was a funhouse mirror

when we couldn’t face the truth. It was a warm welcome

for our poles’ angle, our ankle’s dangle.

It was chalked in pollen on a day without breeze.

It was the ripple of a dragonfly landing on my line.

It was one circle expanding around another —a bluegill’s mouth

whirlpooling just below.

 

 

 

 

Tornado Warning

 

Transformers blow and the cloudbank lowers,

flashing its bloated green belly. A pickle jar jostles

 

against the jelly in the door then settles

as the compressor sputters & stops. Hinges struggle to hold

 

the shutters against the walls. Flapping

crows funnel down, huddle wing to wing along a wire.

 

Outside the stillness of the house, the squall is churning

across the field. Heifers gather below a lone tree,

 

because the cattle that saw a bolt split the sycamore last spring

are no longer here to usher them away.

 

The chimney whistles a lullaby, and the sky lays down

along the ground. Winds switch,

 

rush backwards into the storm even as it advances.

It’s an approach/avoidance conflict. I face

 

the western horizon as the siren wails. You call my name

from the basement door, but I do not turn

 

from the window. I watch the clouds curl, the animals

hunker low. Just a few seconds more.

 

 

 

Lorrie Ness is a poet working on the east coast of the United States. Her works can be found in numerous journals, including Palette Poetry, THRUSH, Trampset, Poetry Online and Sky Island Journal. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. Her chapbook, Anatomy of a Wound was published by Flowstone Press in 2021 and her debut full-length collection, Heritage & Other Pseudonyms will be published by Flowstone Press in 2024.

 

 

****

 

 

2 poems by BILL GRIFFIN

 

 

Inordinate Fondness for Beetles

 

The museum insects have kept their six

jointed legs, the decapods their ten, the too

numerous to count all theirs as well

and when they last flexed leapt crept

beneath a leaf, up a vine, flashed metallic

wingcover spectra, leafbrown spots,

did they ponder variation? was all

their desire to adapt? were they happy?

 

In the gift shop my grandson chooses

the collection arthropoda and wants to carry

plastic scorpion and centipede

in his pocket for our afternoon walk;

on the path a slug – he would love

to squish it, oh yes, but we kneel

and coax it onto my fingertip.

Unperturbed it extends slender

ommatophores and considers the boy

without judgement, and when

I replace it in the grass beneath

a leaf and suggest, He’ll be happy there,

the child I love nods.

 

 

 

Fireflies

 

Most often see a ghost when looking

      elsewhere: the man

invites her to come find them,

this woman whose name he learned

only this morning and now can’t recall,

come join him at the edge of the trees

above the stream where pale ghosts

      hover. Perhaps they will drift

up from hushed evening

when two people not a couple

step into darkness and the man

clears from his throat words

of apology or justification I know

      I’ve seen them here

but the quiet is complete.

 

On summer nights back home

the man’s wife points to Taurus

and at the edge of vision

seven sisters show themselves

most often seen when looking

      elsewhere, the Bull

so loud, the women subtle;

 

here night doesn’t fall, it hovers

behind them and gently

shoulders aside the last of day

to make space for breath

and one small blue nothing that enters

      to perfect the silence.

There’s one, he breaks it

and she breathes Hmmm

or maybe doesn’t; they see two,

three, more visitations

that luminesce to inscribe

their secrets in long slow cursive

      mostly seen when not looking.

 

The man juggles his next word,

drops it irretrievable, walks

back up the hill.

 

The woman remains.

 

 

 

 

Bill Griffin is a naturalist and retired family physician in rural North Carolina. His ecopoetry collection, Snake Den Ridge, a Bestiary, unfolds in the Great Smoky Mountains. Bill’s favorite quotation concerns the 20th century biologist JBS Haldane, who when asked if his breadth of scientific knowledge had enlightened him about the nature of God, stated, “God has an inordinate fondness for beetles.” Discover Bill’s microessays, photos, and a hundred Southern poets at http://GriffinPoetry.com.

 


 

**** 

 

 

a poem PAUL J. WILLIS

 

 

 

Most Days,

 

 

my work is going to quiet places.

No one talks there but the trees:

sequoias speak the lowest notes.

You’d think they would be octaves

 

higher, given their reach,

but the resonations rise from deep

within their trunks, deep

inside the fire-scarred hollows

 

near the duff.  So I walk among them

and listen to their reverberations,

the rumping and thumping

of double-bass boles beneath

 

the staccato twinkling of dogwood

blossoms against an impossibly blue sky.

I put what all the trees are saying

into my ear and hike back home

 

with my head tilted on one side

so the silence does not spill away—

water brimming in a spring,

ready to pour out the words.

 

 

Paul J. Willis is a writer, essayist, retired professor of English, and former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California.

 

 

 

****

 

 

2 poems by ELEANOR KEDNEY

 

 

Empty

 

Tell me how to empty myself of the day, every night.

Put down the carton of sun-spoiled raspberries

I waited too late in the season to pick.

Stop running my fingernail in the scratch

on a window I tried to clean with the wrong cloth.

My moan at the misaligned fireplace doors

that were perfectly placed

until I said yes to a little more adjustment.

 

Tell me how to empty myself of the night, every morning.

Release the memory of a fist breaking furniture

at 2:00 a.m. Waking

from the same dream I’m choking.

The coyote killing the rabbit

near the patio.

 

And let me tell you how to sip coffee or tea

while watching the sky open

into ribbons of bright blue.

Kiss the good gentle dog on the forehead.

Pray over your food for all that gave its life

so you may live.

 

I’ll tell you the night is passage

to a deeper self that can cross over to other realms.

Put a glass of water by your bed—

a nightmare can be quenched should you wake.

Remember the moon’s healing soft light

fills you when you’re empty.

 

 

The Helpers

 

The old dog was ready to die. 

She no longer howled earshot

 

of a siren or barked at coyotes.

She stopped tossing a rawhide chip

 

into the air or playing chase

around the couch when I’d come home.

 

We lay on the carpet, 

and I looked into her eyes. 

 

They held an inner light.

That night, a Screech-Owl perched

 

on the backyard fence as we took slow steps

in the cool dark. Along the chain link, 

 

under muted moonlight, a diamondback

rattlesnake in a resting coil—its body in a ball, 

 

the rattle tucked. Jackalyn paused and stared

as though the snake wasn’t there, 

 

already on her way to an unveiled place

I couldn’t see. I was less afraid of death.

 

 

Eleanor Kedney is the author of Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020), a finalist for the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and the 2020 Best Book Awards, and the chapbook The Offering (Liquid Light Press, 2016). Her book Twelve Days from Transfer is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press (March, 2024.) An award-winning poet, her work has been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. Kedney is the founder of the Tucson branch of the New York-based Writers Studio and served as the director for ten years. Based on craft techniques utilized in her books, she developed and facilitates the “Writing Toward Forgiveness” workshop. She joined the board of the Tucson Poetry Festival in 2021. Eleanor lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband, Peter Schaffer, their dog, Fred, and their cat, Ivy.

 

 

****

 

 

a poem by CHRIS ANDERSON

 

 

The Pilot Whale

 

Riding my bike to school I see a whale

that has followed a boat into the locks.

It surfaces quietly, broad back glistening,

 

sleek and black in the oily water.

I was crossing over on a narrow bridge.

In the distance, the spires of the city.

 

I was on my way to the university,

to the books and the seminars and all I was

trying to be.  But now something sleek

 

and black has broken the surface—

a Pilot Whale—caught, big as a pickup,

curving and diving along the steep walls

 

of the lock, until the level finally drops

and it can swim away, back out

into the broad, bright waters of the sea.

 

 

Chris Anderson is an emeritus professor of English at Oregon State University and a Catholic deacon.  His new book of poems, Love Calls Us Here, from Wildhouse Press.

 

 

****

 

 

a poem by KOLBE RINEY

 

 

stir

 

I think I was born a child / of the sea / born, like water / fluid— / once one way / then another / Each night / asked the sky / to teach me how / to hold myself / in place / teach me to become / immovable // She sent me a lover / to show me / to keep still / the way she taught him: / focused on the pleasures / The steam rising / from the lake / in summer / Us fighting rising / with it / our pale chests / like whales breaching / moon-drenched / moon-sharp / The spray of sweet-salt / from a steady prow / a light-dark fin / in its’ crest / The sound I hear / when I hit the water / same as stars / popping in my mouth / and it parting / around me / like smooth ripples / in green volcano / glass.

 

 

Kolbe Riney is a queer poet and nurse from Tucson, Arizona. Their work is featured or forthcoming in Tinderbox, Passages North, Stoneboat Journal, the Chestnut Review, and others. They were nominated to the Best of the Net and their manuscript, “mythic”, was shortlisted for the 2021 Sexton Prize. Learn more: kolberiney.wixsite.com/website

 

 

****

 

 

2 poems by LIZ WEIR

 

 

Capitalism

 

In the barn owl’s

regurgitated pellet— 

three bleached skulls

of lowly field workers

each worked clean 

as an empty pocket.

 

The hungry owl 

consumes small lives, 

uses the best—

spits up the rest.  

 


 

A Tip into Ample Time

         Writers’ Residency, Mallard Island

 

A gift of five days—precious time

given as a gift to write. But—

brain stalls. Head, blocked.  

Taut as hell, I stalk to the island’s point,

stretch out on sun-warmed rocks and listen 

to the wordless being of other lives:

a blue jay shrieks harsh warnings,

restless Rainy Lake slaps against rock. 

White pines rustle in brisk wind. 

Ants, certain of their unwritten path,

reroute around me. At eye level,

their legs are like wires, backs 

polished black, each intent,

upon completing the day’s work.

One tugs along a brown beetle 

three times its size and struggles 

to haul it over pine needles 

lodged a cleft of rock.

 

Up I sit and, with a pine needle, lever

ant and beetle over the blockage 

and pray for just such providence.

 

 

 

Elizabeth Weir grew up in England. Her first book of poetry, High on Table Mountain, was nominated for the 2017 Midwest Poetry Book Award. Her second book, When Our World Was Whole, was published at the close of 2022. Her poetry has appeared in Turtle Island Quartely, Adanna, Comstock Review, Evening Street Review, Gyroscope and North Meridian Review.

 

 

****

 

 

2 poems by JC ALFIER

 

 

Street Evangelist

 

She wears a tee-shirt that reads Make Disciples,

fancies herself urbane and witty,

her spiritual intelligence running on feral.

 

At home, she hangs a tambourine

on an upper corner of a pierglass mirror

inherited from her aunt’s estate.

 

A clamshell on her vanity holds castanets

her preacher won’t let her play in church —

swears it’s just Heaven’s hunger for music

 

that drives her to make believers

among songless souls. This good-time girl

of worn-out elegance,

 

makeup a total rebuke to moderation.

When out in the dimmer provinces

of the night-struck city, and some wayward soul

 

casts a shadow she’s not had the pleasure to save,

she’ll beseech them, in the gospel’s sinewy pleas,

if they’re ready for the street-born

 

surrender to the reborn life.

Awaiting their reply, her neck cocks to one side,

strands of hair in a windfallen lilt,

 

her face bearing the soft countenance

of the figurehead on a spectral ship,

hoping they’ll show for tomorrow’s sunrise service —

 

her would-be disciple’s mind impenitent

but reaching back to childhood

where the sun prisms frost on a bedroom window.

 

 

 

September Moment for a Woman Who Loved to Keep Her Distance

 

With her brassy laugh and smoky innuendos

   still hanging in my head, I need to walk alone the rails

      of trains no longer trundling the turning earth —

 

Missouri Pacific or Baltimore & Ohio —

   through switchgrass and scrub pine,

      crossties crumbling like shallow graves,

 

bluestem and buttercup erasing ballast stones,

   my footfalls striking their single chord

      to un-vanish echoes of coal and sleeper cars.

 

This early frost sheening the foliage around me

   explains how the moments could pass,

      barely noticed, on the threshold between seasons,

 

like the scent of woodsmoke that reaches me now —

   a blue glow just cresting the treeline,

      trimming the sun to a rumor of light.

 

 

JC Alfier’s most recent book, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press (2020). Journal credits include The Emerson Review, Faultline, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. He is also an artist doing collage and double-exposure work.

 

 

****

 

 

a poem by JERRY SMALDONE

 

 

Moffat Tunnel

 

As I climb

I try to hear my heaving breath

chorusing to the wild rush of the river

just over the ridge of thick pine 

 

A mile up the trail

burst into a cut clearing

assaulted by the loneliness

of a broken down cabin

 

these homesteads everywhere,

on cattle trails and windblown farms,

in dusty arroyos and on barren mountains

ten thousand feet up. They lived here...

to make a living two miles high?

 

I reach down among the

shaved timbers

lying like broken dreams

and pick up a rusty nail,

 

roll it in my hands

squeeze it

for life, for memory

     

the sting of settlers' luck

burned against my skin,

into my broken soul.

 

 

Longtime Denver poet Jerry Smaldone spends most of his time babysitting grandson Elijah, volunteering, working around the house, thanking God and contemplating world madness from the living room window.  "As the body collapses, the soul expands."

bottom of page