INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Paul B Roth
Duane Locke
Alan Britt
Silvia Scheibli
Steve Barfield
Duane Locke
Alex Ferde
Kristina Krumova
Richard Gartee
Lyn Lifshin
Gale Acuff
Alicia Mathias
Sunday Eyitayo Michael
Running Cub
Laszlo Slomovits
Shutta Crum
Solomon Musa Haruna
Elisavietta Ritchie
Yuan Hongri
Helen Grigya
Fahredin Shehu
Karyn M. Bruce
Michael Lee Johnson
Keith Moul
Jennifer Burd
John Grey
Rekha Valliaypan
Fred Wolven
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2019
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 51 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
NIGHT AND HER SISTER
Ellie was a party girl, flickering under
the Queen Street lights on Saturdays,
the night clubs shouting, taxi back
to a rickety flat in a half-lit road, beneath
the nearby industry’s dense breath.
But there was home-ache, always was,
for the farming village near the Irish Sea,
where nights download their textures:
the autumn evenings’ smell of hay;
in January, the crackling tang of frost.
Now a home-ache to be near her sister,
a vicar in that farm-flanked parish,
riven by a crisis of soul and faith,
knowing the nights which smelt of harvest,
but knowing too the aridity, the heart’s clash.
Ellie wanted to be home, be there,
in the spirit’s night, for the woman torn
by faith’s low cry and reason’s call.
THE WOODPECKER
She’d made the decision. That was that.
It was now another working day.
Drinking coffee, she could hear,
that morning, the chip of a woodpecker
on the apple tree in her parents’ garden.
Walking down the path, she could see
bark chippings, thought then of the copse
where Jason once, two years ago,
carved his and her initials in oak bark.
(“Oh, Jase, come on, we’re nineteen now.”)
The bus to town merely rumbled.
But her heart lurched when she saw
the driver, the same comedian
as last year drove the coastal shuttle bus.
Jason and their walks along the Parrog.
The working day OK, white screen,
routine and diurnal numbness.
But lunch time it was Mario’s, the sounds
of youth’s and love’s espresso.
The home bus more or less a quiet thing,
but home, garden, and again, chip.
Again. Chip. Chip. The woodpecker.
Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.
Robert Nisbet, Haverfordwest, Wales