A Treasure Chest, poem by Terri Miller (LOST AND FOUND Poetry and Prose Series)

A Treasure Chest
by Terri Miller

A treasure chest
of whispers from the past
lost.

In a home with
devastating memories!

When my mother and brother
went to their
final resting place.

The family home
was padlocked by
the bank.

It took several years
to obtain entrance
into the home, just

to find rubble three
feet high in
every room.

I frantically looked
room by room, on
my hands and knees,

to find pictures of
memories past.

As I cleaned the
rooms, I reached my
goal.

Recovered the pictures
obtained
foreclosure at last.

PHOTO: “Box of photos” by kaboompics.com, used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: In July 2016 I returned home to Rhode Island from Florida. Finally, able to settle the estates of my mother and brother. They died in 2012. This process took me four years to enter the family home. In the end all I wanted to retrieve was the pictures.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Terri Miller was born and raised in Rhode Island, but now resides in the country part  of Florida. A country girl at heart, she has been writing since grade school. In 2013, after the death of her brother, her poetry became darkened. Around 2015, the darkness lifted. She is a lover of life’s simpler things. Her inspiration for poetry is rooted in faith and family, in love, nature and words.  She believes life is poetry waiting to be written!  What she looks at seems to make her write. She can’t wait to get her thoughts written down, but it’s not always at the right time, because there are so many other things that she should be doing. Like anything else, she is a work in progress and is presently under Major Construction. She has recently been published in the Awakened Voices literary magazine, Silver Birch Press, and Wild Women’s Medicine Circle. Follow along for inspiration or for simple enjoyment at Mia’s Wisdom and My Poetry Express.

Grandpop’s Hat, poem by John Carney (ME, IN A HAT Poetry and Prose Series)

Grandpop’s Hat
by John Carney

Look at the delight on that face
Peeking out from under the officer’s hat
Swimming over my little boy head
For a moment feeling large like him
The man I knew my Grandpop to be

The uniform fit a man well over six feet
Trim, yet angular and muscular
Aging, but still physically formidable
To a boy of five, draped in his work clothes
The pride of a grandson swelled me so they fit

The moment, captured in the photograph
Is all I have left to remember the moment
Even after the injury that slowed the man
Him, suddenly aging much faster than me
The pride still fills the face, remembering…

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: The photo, taken by my mother, is of me in my grandfather’s security hat and uniform.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The photo of me when I was five sits on a piece of furniture in our living room.   The picture always brings back fond memories of staying at my grandparents’ house and watching my grandpop get ready for work. I don’t usually wear hats, but this call for submissions brought this picture of my childhood joy to mind.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Carney has been writing as self-expression for the past eight years. He began writing as a way to pass time on the train and his passion has been ignited by the reward of finding the blank page filled with ideas, emotions, and thoughts that somehow make their way through the pen to the paper. He has recently begun writing and editing short stories from his youth, and working on his first historical fiction novel.

A Picture of Maud, poem by Lynn White (MY PRIZED POSSESSION Poetry and Prose Series)

A Picture of Maud
by Lynn White

I had a sister once.
Her name was Maud.
She never grew old,
never even grew up.

My father cried…

I never knew her,
never even knew of her.
But I know now.
I have a photograph
so I can see her,
picture her as she was.
And I won’t forget that
I had a sister once.
Her name was Maud.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Maud with her brother and our father, about 1923, in Sheffield, England

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: A few years ago my half-brother’s eldest son got back in touch with me via an online family history site. I phoned him and two weeks later he was at my front door. It was the first time we’d met in almost 60 years! He brought with him a load of photos of my father and his first family, which was wonderful — I didn’t even have a photo of my father. The photo here was very special. Until that moment I had never heard of Maud, didn’t know she had existed, had no idea that my father had a daughter as well as a son from his first marriage. It remains a prized possession. I wrote the poem as a tribute to Maud at the time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places, and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy, and reality. Her poem “A Rose For Gaza” was shortlisted for the Theatre Cloud “War Poetry for Today” competition 2014. This and many other poems have been published in recent anthologies, including Stacey Savage’s We Are Poetry: An Anthology of Love Poems, Community Arts Ink’s Reclaiming Our Voices, Vagabond Press’s The Border Crossed Us, Civilised Beasts and Vagabonds: Anthology of the Mad Ones from Weasel Press, Alice in Wonderland Anthology from Silver Birch Press, and man other rather excellent online and print journals. Visit her on facebook and at lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com.

My Life Force, poem by Vincent Van Ross (MY PRIZED POSSESSION Poetry and Prose Series)

A. Van Ross (Father)

Treasa Van Ross (Mother)

My Life Force
by Vincent Van Ross

My prized possession
Is not the gold chain
I wear around my neck
Nor is it my collection of gems

My prized possession
Is not the sculptures and paintings
I have collected
Over the years

My prized possession
Is not the money
I have in my cash box
Or in my bank account

My prized possession
Is not my house or my car
Nor even the thousands of books
I have in my collection

My prized possessions
Are two frames
That hang from the walls
Of my living room

My prized possessions
Are the two pictures
Of my mother and my father
In those two frames

My mother and father
May not be with me anymore
But, they bless me from that wall
They are my life force which keeps me going

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My father A Van Ross (left) and mother Treasa Van Ross (right).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I lost my mother in 2001 and my father in 2015. But, they are still alive to me. I feel their presence in their photos that are hanging from my living room walls. I still kiss them and seek their blessings every time I leave my home as I used to do when they were alive. I feel as if they are peeping out of those pictures and keeping a watch over me and blessing me all the time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Vincent Van Ross is a journalist and editor based at New Delhi, India. He writes on national and international politics, defense, environment, travel, spirituality, and scores of other topics. Apart from this, he dabbles in a little bit of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and humorous writings. Vincent’s articles and features have appeared in over a dozen newspapers and magazines in India and Bangladesh. He is also a renowned photographer and an art critic. His poems are littered in anthologies and journals across the world and on numerous poetry sites and facebook groups on the web.

Perfectly Imperfect, poem by Lynn White (My Perfect Vacation Series)

Perfectly Imperfect
by Lynn White

It started when we stood hopefully
with our thumbs outstretched
by an English roadside,
heading towards Italy and Yugoslavia
without maps or money,
or sense of direction.

And we made it to Italy.
and swam off the rocks,
with a man we’d met in a cafe,
because he said we could.
And we swam and swam until two policemen came,
(one very stern and one very twinkly),
and said we couldn’t.
Nor could we leave the rocks without clothes on,
or with clothes clinging to our still wet bodies,
or lie on the rocks until we were dry,
in case we disconcerted the traffic or populace.
This being the main street in Trieste.

And we made it to Pec and lived
in a house ‘typique du Turque’
with a water pump in the garden
and a toilet, also ‘Typique du Turque’,
which made us very ill indeed.
But the parties were good and
the conversations interesting,
even though no one spoke English.
And we learned to speak some Albanian,
which was always handy.
And we survived to sit thirstily by a hot,
dusty roadside and fantasise
about the ice cold mountain water
streaming through the streets of Pec,
and even about the water pump in the garden.

And we made it back home.
We had got lost a lot,
but hadn’t got raped or murdered.
So far as we can remember.

What perfection.

PHOTO: The author (left) on L’Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris (1966) during one of her many European sojourns.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is an edited excerpt from a longer work. In the days when it was possible to leave one job at the beginning of summer and walk into another at the end, I made many similar trips, but this was the longest, most exotic and most exciting! Perfect in it’s ups and downs!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places, and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy, and reality. Her poem “A Rose For Gaza” was shortlisted for the Theatre Cloud “War Poetry for Today” competition in October 2014 and is published in Poetry For Change anthology by Vending Machine Press. Poems have also recently been included in Harbinger Asylum’s Literary Journal and A Moment To Live By anthology, Stacey Savage’s We Are Poetry: An Anthology of Love Poems, the Weasel Press anthology Degenerates, Voices For Peace, Tangent Literary Journal, Amomancies, Dawntreader, and various other on line and print journals and anthologies.

Earliest Memory by Dennis Trujillo (Me, as a Child Poetry Series)

Earliest Memory
by Dennis Trujillo

I’m crawling in a wondrous cave.
Silver chair legs astound me
like stalactites. Yellow veneer
from upholstered chairs tinge
the ceiling where I dwell
innocent as a tiny god.
My mother, a humming presence
at the stove, sends up ancient
aromas. Cold surprise of metal
each time I touch the safety pins
that attach my stiff diaper.
I’m the baby. Little brother Steve,
who dies early, isn’t born yet.
On the sticky linoleum,
I spot a mushy bean—my infantine
brain says food, so in it goes.
Now in my sixtieth year, I find
it strange that beans have always been
my favorite food and that among
five sons, I’m still the baby.

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPH: Here I am at three months anxious to begin exploring caves. I don’t know why the memory in this poem stayed with me, but it is clear in my mind as if it happened yesterday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dennis Trujillo is a former soldier and middle/high school math teacher who happens to love poetry. Most recent selections are forthcoming or already published with Atlanta Review, Pearl, Slant, THEMA, The Lyric, Talking River, and The Old Red Kimono. He runs and then does yoga every morning to clear his head for reading and writing poetry.

When Trains Ran On Time by Martin Willitts, Jr. (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

When Trains Ran On Time
by Martin Willitts, Jr.

I rode a bike five miles on the edge of a road
between asphalt and ditch like a tightrope walker
just to see the trains switch.
Pass goldenrod, Johnny-jump-ups, and milkweed.
Among insect whir and truck whoosh vibrating me.

Isolation was my life; a train track narrowing
towards the horizon, the crossing bar lowering
while boxcars and cattle cars vanished.
I could see the man in the switch tower, watching.
Tracks would merge, converge, split
to destinations only a young mind could imagine.
If I timed it right, I could see the passenger trains
and faces blurring by, some waving at me.

The coal cars no longer come here. No cords of logs
like telephone poles. No cars on two tiers. No caboose
with a man waving a red lantern. They are gone.
My father called it, the romance of the rails.
Telling me about hobos riding on top the cattle cars,
being tossed off by enforcers, how the hobos would fall
like split cabbages. Telling me, hobos were escaping
to somewhere and did not care where they ended up.
Some lived for it. How Woody Guthrie learned music
riding the rails, listening to poverty like freight trains,
putting the simplest words to express the sadness and hope.

The trains do not come by here anymore.
I do not look for them, given up long ago
of them returning anytime soon. I am too old and lazy
to ride bikes five miles. The switch tower was removed
as an eyesore. They started removing the rails.
What I knew is disappearing into the horizon.
Ghostly memories of coal-burning train engines,
Steam blackened skies like narrow thunderclouds.
How they had different whistles: one for warnings;
one for All-on-board; one for kids waving like me.

The station is gone: The wooden cart for baggage;
the large clock big as a train wheel; the side-switch;
the ticket booth with a telegraph message; the oak floor
whose slats shined from polishing; the destination board;
the scuffle of feet; the hard benches; the anticipation.
I am an old-timer reminiscing about “back then.”
But I cannot help it, when that is all I have left,
my mind still spinning like a bicycle wheel
with baseball cards held by clothespins on spokes
to replicate the clacking of train wheels on metal.
My greatest fear is someday my memory will depart
towards that unknown distance, like milkweed seed,
and I won’t know enough to wave at the kid outside,
his bicycle tilted, wondering where I am headed.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: As a child, I lived close to a switch yard in East Syracuse, New York, where they had multiple tracks, some converging, and a train depot. I am old enough to have seen both a coal burning train engine and a “modern” train engine. I still live relatively close to the same place. However, I would like to think that this could be any place that trains stopped.  It was like living near a large scale Lionel train set for children. Sometimes, we live in memory as a real address. Too often I find myself referring to “the way things used to be.” When we no longer remember, it is when we stop living anywhere.

IMAGE: “New York Central Freight Yards, East Syracuse, New York (1910).” (Onondaga County Public Library collection.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Martin Willitts, Jr., has seven full-length collections including national ecological contest winner Searching for What Is Not There, and 28 chapbooks. His poem, “I Am Tired of Waiting” will appear in his forthcoming full-length collection, God Is Not Amused with What You Are Doing in Her Name (Aldrich Press). He won the one-time International Dylan Thomas Poetry Award for the centennial.

Yorkshire by Alexandra Carr-Malcolm (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

YORKSHIRE
by Alexandra Carr-Malcolm

My love affair with Yorkshire,
is strange to the extreme,
the rain comes down in stair rods,
and puddles turn to streams.

Flint faced buildings stand proud,
the natives just the same;
hard with a directness,
reflecting poverty’s pain.

“Aye up love,” and “Ta duck,”
a mantra of the North,
a warmth and loyal passion,
found around the hearth.

Depleted coal face scenery,
ghost towns from the past,
mine the depths of politics,
betrayed by bluest lass.

Coal-dust mottled snowscapes,
contrast the wuthering heights,
bleak outstanding wilderness,
the slag heap moors by night.

My soul belongs in Yorkshire,
with Brontë, Hughes, and Moore,
this northern heart keeps beating,
‘til death doeth close the door.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I grew up in and around coal mining communities. My Grandfather, uncle, and cousins worked as miners. I saw the devastation caused in the 1980s when the coal mines were systematically closed down one by one. This left the once-thriving communities to waste away into ghost towns of poverty. As a child I had a fascination of the coal-dust mottled snow. Within hours of pristine white snow settling, it was soon speckled with soot and coal dust, as it melted it soon became a grey slurry of slush. The dominating slag heaps were an imposing sight on the skyline and became a rare elegant beauty when covered in snow.

IMAGE: “Frozen Canal” (Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK) by Darren Galpin. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alexandra Carr-Malcolm was born and raised in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. She now lives in Yorkshire, and works as a freelance British Sign Language Interpreter within the Yorkshire region. Alex has been featured in five collaborative anthologies by Dagda Publishing where part of the proceeds are donated to worthy charities. Her first anthology Tipping Sheep (the right way) was released in 2013. Currently, Alex is working on her second anthology to be released later this year. Her poems can be found on her blog www.worldlywinds.com.

Bangalore by Shloka Shankar (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

BANGALORE
by Shloka Shankar

I don’t remember
growing up in this city.
Two decades adding up
to nothing.
A faceless humanoid
craving for the same things
as everyone else.
I try repeatedly to fall
in love with you.
But I only remember
the skid marks on my heart
that haven’t healed.

PHOTO: “Cows, Bangalore, India” by Niels Photography. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in over two dozen international anthologies, including The Dance of the Peacock, Emanations IV, The Living Haiku Anthology, Family Matters, and publications by Paragram, Minor Arcana Press, Harbinger Asylum, Kind of a Hurricane Press, and Writing Knights Press among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku & tanka have appeared in numerous print and online journals. She is also the editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.

My Tuscany by Cari Oleskewicz (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

My Tuscany
by Cari Oleskewicz

Outside my window
Brunelleschi’s Dome communes
with clouds.
Outside my door
wine in jugs of straw
cheeses draped with honey.

I have no right to walk
ancient streets carved
by Renaissance ghosts.
I have no reason to suppose
I am a Florentine
worshipping the tombs of genius.

My Tuscany does not resemble
the land you see in movies.
This is no travel blog.
My Tuscany is the butcher’s
fingernails, stained with blood
and piazzas bleeding stories.

This is where the world
keeps changing. Medici watch
while creation blooms again.
This is where leather sells,
where immigrants peddle
trinkets for coin.

After living here,
how does one stop
living here?
After living here,
I must brace myself
for days that I do not.

IMAGE: “Florence Cathedral” (Tuscany Region, Italy) by Cari Oleskewicz. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cari Oleskewicz is a poet and writer based in Tampa. Florida, and Tuscany, Italy — depending on the season. Her work has been published in a number of online and print journals including The Found Poetry Review, JAB, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Five2One, The Commonline Journal, The Pedestal Magazine, Main Street Rag, Epiphany Magazine and Imitation Fruit Literary Journal. She is pursuing her MFA from the University of Tampa.