Travel, poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, painting by Edward Hopper

TRAVEL 
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.

PAINTING: “Compartment C, Car 293,” oil on canvas by Edward Hopper (1938).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry. During her career, she was one of the most successful and respected poets in America. Like her contemporary Robert Frost, Millay was one of the most skillful writers of sonnets during the twentieth century — and also like Frost, she was able to combine modernist attitudes with traditional forms, creating a unique American poetry. Her middle name came from St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, where she was born. Friends and family called her Vincent.

Oh Blessed Season, poem by Chris Forhan

OH BLESSED SEASON
by Chris Forhan

Summer strode slowly in clownish festoonery, forgiving everything. 

Blessed was the fruit of its womb:  slumbering bees, blossoms’ furious purple effusions,
clouds scattered like napkins late of lips moist with cream and champagne.

Chiffon was a word heard often then.

Oh, to live like that again, operatically bored with the reckless long business of becoming.

To loll on a ridge above the jostling gondolas,
to sprawl in a field amid the ruins of lunch, the crumbs and rinds,
to be slaked by a final swallow of wine and feel safely ravaged and awry,

to joy in the horses’ forelocks, beribboned with blooms of sweet everlasting—
a distraction from the black, inapt cast of their eyes,

that sequestered look, as of something they’ve seen and not forgotten yet.

(Originally published in Slate)

“Oh Blessed Season” by Chris Forhan appears in the Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY, a 220-page collection of poetry and prose, available at Amazon.com.

teenagers down the shore, poem by win harms

teenagers down the shore
by win harms

memories of the ocean
sweet spring sweat trickles down my forehead
the sand stings my legs, as a crosswind
creeps up from behind
the salty sea is cold, numbing my bare feet
i hear my friends giggling ahead
and i laugh for no reason at all
you look at me and smile that secret smile
and for one moment we are alone in this
i can’t remember the taste of you
but i know i’ll understand you again
i get higher with the thoughts of days to come
we are sleepy with excitement
last night is so incredibly far away
we were older then, parading like sophisticates
we are young again, spinning in the sun
the past doesn’t matter and
the skeletons don’t feel like dancing
i am mapping out my life
and i want to see you there
with your eyes sparkling like the sea
we walk the boardwalk with the wind in our hair
creating everlasting impressions in time

Photo: “Summer Down the Shore” by funflash, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (16×20 metallic prints available at etsy.com)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: win harms is a poet living in France with her professor husband. She hails from the state of the cowboy poetry contest, but she has lived pretty much everywhere, including many psych wards, and considers herself a survivor of the struggle. The chaos has ceased and now she spends her time doing needlepoint and laundry, but longs to share her words with the world. As of last year, she left her roaring twenties, and is now feeling fecund and free. “Teenagers Down the Shore” and other poetry by win harms appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology, available at Amazon.com.

Free on Weds., 9/18, Kindle Version of Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology

To celebrate the last week of summer — though in Los Angeles, summer never really ends — we are offering a FREE Kindle version of the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013. The collection features summer-related poetry & prose from over 70 established and up-and-coming writers around the world — including some classic authors from the past. 

Find your free Kindle of the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology at Amazon.com. (If you don’t have a Kindle device, get free kindle reading apps for your computer at this link.)

We would appreciate any reblogs, tweets, or Facebook posts about this offer! 

Reverence, poem by Julie Cadwallander-Staub

REVERENCE
by Julie Cadwallander-Staub

The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat
 and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.
In all the days and years that have followed,
I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced
the same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:
my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups’ voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light. 
***
“Reverence” by Julie Cadwallander-Staub appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology — a 220-page collection of poetry and prose available in a free Kindle version on Sept. 17 & 18, 2013. Find your free Kindle of the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology at Amazon.com. (If you don’t have a Kindle device, get free kindle reading apps for your computer at this link.)

We would appreciate any reblogs, tweets, or Facebook posts about this offer! 

Photo: “Fireflies at Night” by Sierra, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Free 9/17 and 9/18: Kindle Version of Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology

To celebrate the last official week of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) we are offering a FREE Kindle version of the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 and Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013. This offer is good in all hemispheres! The collection features summer-related poetry & prose from over 70 established and up-and-coming writers around the world — including some classic authors from the past. 

Find your free Kindle of the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthologyat Amazon.com. (If you don’t have a Kindle device, get free kindle reading apps for your computer at this link.)

We would appreciate any reblogs, tweets, or Facebook posts about this offer! 

Free on 8/16/13: Kindle Version of Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology

To celebrate Charles Bukowski’s summer birthday, we are offering a free Kindle version of the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology on Friday, August 16, 2013. The collection features summer-related poetry & prose from over 70 established and up-and-coming writers around the world — including some classic authors from the past. 

Find your free Kindle of the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology at Amazon.com. (If you don’t have a Kindle device, get free kindle reading apps for your computer at this link.)

We would appreciate any reblogs, tweets, or Facebook posts about this offer! 

Afterwards I Stayed Out for an Hour…Poem by John Brantingham

AFTERWARDS I STAYED OUT FOR AN HOUR BEFORE THEY MADE ME COME IN
by John Brantingham

I must have been eleven,
(or maybe I was twelve)
the first time I noticed a satellite.

It was the first really warm day of summer
in 1982 (or maybe it was 1983)
when the wind coming off the desert
had blown the smog out of L.A.
and the street lights
seemed to glare less than
usual, and that satellite crossed Orion,
the one constellation I knew, until it
got lost behind the orange
tree in my parent’s backyard.

By the time I’d climbed on
top of the garage to see it
again, it had vanished, and I
stood staring at each star individually—
squinting at each one, comparing
all of them to the stars nearby
making sure they stayed still—to see
if they too would lose their
grip on the night
and fall away into the sky.

PHOTO: “Orion Nebula Crossed by a Satellite” (celestronimages.com)

In Praise of Dogs Who Howl at the Moon, poem by John Brantingham

IN PRAISE OF DOGS WHO HOWL AT THE MOON
by John Brantingham

Some nights,
everything on Earth is loose,
and you feel yourself slipping off gravity’s
mooring, slipping off into
the night, feel the moon’s going to grab
you and pull you out into space
and slingshot you past Mars and Jupiter
out to where Pluto
and all the rest of the solar system’s losers live,
out where you will never see
you wife laugh the way she
laughs when you do your impression of her father,
laugh the way a person can laugh only
when it’s funny but she’s ashamed too,
laugh with the wild joy of a bear
waking up after months of sleep—
on those nights you want to grab onto something
wedged deep and tight as a burr in a furry ear
and scream your complaints at the moon
as the dogs howl
and the bears roar and everyone shouts
together—you want to yell that no one
belongs out there in the cold with Pluto
that we belong here where summer love is
and anyone who loves and howls
is one of Earth’s favorite children.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  John Brantingham’s poetry and fiction have been published in hundreds of magazines and venues, including Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Pearl, Tears in the Fence, Confrontation, and The Journal. His books include East of Los Angeles and Let Us All Pray to Our Own Strange Gods (forthcoming from World Parade Books). He works at Mt. San Antonio College, where he teaches English and directs the creative writing programs.

“In Praise of Dogs Who Howl at the Moon” and other poetry by John Brantingham appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology (June 2013), available at Amazon.com.

Illustration: “Luna and the Moon Wolf,” watercolor by Gretchen Del Rio. Prints available at etsy.com.

The Night We Were Gods, poem by Larry D. Thomas

THE NIGHT WE WERE GODS
by Larry D. Thomas

They hung by thread
just above our heads
in the entryway,
five hummingbirds
of clear red glass
 
covered with glitter.
Absentmindedly,
we brushed them
with the tips
of our forefingers,
 
rubbed our eyelids
and smeared them
with galaxies
of tiny stars.
For several hours,
 
till we showered,
and never even
noticing, we blessed
everything we touched
with crushed light.

….From Larry D. Thomas: New and Selected Poems (TCU Press, 2008). “The Night We Were Gods” also appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology, available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, served as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate.  He has published twenty collections of poems, the most recent of which is Uncle Ernest (Virtual Artists Collective, Chicago, 2013).  His Larry D. Thomas: New and Selected Poems (TCU Press, 2008) was long-listed for the National Book Award.

Illustration: “Red Glitter Hummingbird” ornament, available at christmasplace.com.