Welcome to Lightwood magazine’s Issue #15. Our Fall (or for many of our readers across the world, our Spring) issue with over a dozen works by inspired writers, poets and artists. I’m sorry to repeat myself but: Difficult times continue where climate, political, and social challenges seem unending and often insurmountable. More than ever, we must remember the communicative and healing powers of art in all its forms. Our creativity helps define us and is one of the major links that connects us. Take the time to listen to yourself, each other and to our Earth. We can tap into our deep well of humanity and share our creative gifts. And stay well and enjoy the issue. Your support helps us continue. Laurence Carr, publisher.
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Welcome to the Fall issue #15 of Lightwood magazine
Welcome to Lightwood magazine’s Issue #15. Our Fall (or for many of our readers across the world, our Spring) issue with over a dozen works by inspired writers, poets and artists. I’m sorry to repeat myself but: Difficult times continue where climate, political, and social challenges seem unending and often insurmountable. More than ever, we…
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Artists in Space/ John Frederick Walker/ Book Art
“What one has done artistically often becomes apparent only in retrospect. I now see that over the past twenty years I’ve been largely obsessed with torn and broken books, caught in the moment when the volume is splayed open and offering to the imagination a fragment of the lost world that was once between its…
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Moving On: The End of the AIDS Crisis in New York City/ a memoir essay by Alan Sive
The last time I went to see Bob C. his mother and sister were there, and we sat quietly on the fire escape while his mother smoked a cigarette. Then I said goodbye to him. His mother took him back to Baltimore so she could care for him. He died on February 7, 1993 and is buried in…
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Random Toss and October Ride/ 2 poems by Sarah Wyman
Random Toss There’s that old story of a mass of starfish washed up on shore and the girl who wanders along by moonlight, lifting one randomly and tossing it back to the sea, a gratuitous act of salvation. The child’s determined grasp and intention to rescue apportions another length of life. The lift and tug…
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Chalk Song, a poetry book by Gale Batchelder, Susan Berger-Jones and Judson Evans; reviewed by Laurence Carr
It’s not often that we see a true collaboration in a single volume of poetry. We’ve seen a plethora of anthologies that bring together a number of poets and even volumes that address a single theme by various poets, each presenting their poems. But seldom do we see two or three poets working together, interweaving…
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Little Debbie Pantoum/ poem by Joanie Zosike
Life is steep and deep, Little Debbie Ain’t like the cookies you used to bake Got a hole in your pocket from scratching The scab will soon fall into your mouth Don’t taste like the cookies you liked to bake There’s no icing between to glue them together The scab is about to fall out…
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The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series: a Totally Subjective Retrospective (Part 3)/ a music review by Mike Jurkovic
The Rock n Roll Curmudgeon Rides Again The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series: A Totally Subjective Retrospective (Part3) Here’s where the fun begins! Coming in at numbers 9,8,7,6 (respectively but totally interchangeable) are The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue, The Bootleg…
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Flight Patterns/ poetry by Mary K. O’Melveny/ book review by Mary Beth Hines
Part lament, and part celebration, Mary K. O’Melveny’s collection, “Flight Patterns,” introduces readers to an array of birds—snow geese, bald eagles, mourning doves, and more—as it contemplates existential threats such as climate change, wars, Covid, human rights, and aging. The author’s appreciation for the natural world shines through in poems that grapple with human love,…
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Brooklyn Haiku/ poems by Gerald Sorin
a Brooklyn haiku or two or yet even more does that worry you no egg in egg cream nor is there cream in that drink why’s that you might think no root in root beer nor is there a beer in there why’s that, should you care ////// Gerald Sorin is the author of Irving…
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Haibun: A Guide for Writers by Roberta Beary, Lew Watts, and Rich Youmans/ book review by Thomas Festa
Haibun: A Writer’s Guide, by Roberta Beary, Lew Watts, and Rich Youmans/ book review by Thomas Festa The publication of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide, by Roberta Beary, Lew Watts, and Rich Youmans (AdHoc Fiction, 2023), may be said to mark the late arrival as an English-language genre of the prosimetric form invented by Bashō in late…
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Forecast/ poem by Robyn Hager
Where does the time go When the words fall Straight out of our mouths Cold fingers make typing hard Strenuous Even more than It already is Grinding down rock edges In the bitter wind chill of April, though the forecast Predicts sun all week I am reminded of my Awkwardness at close Encounters with the…
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From My Journals (Part 1) by Roshi Gregory Hosho Abels
From My Journals (Part 1) Feet on floor and over to the nearby window. My first interest on waking is the familiar view. I expect to see the familiar but peer out with curiosity, nonetheless. I look for anything in the early sky, that might forecast drama in store. The color of the sky is never exactly the same…
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Light/ poem by Matthew J. Spireng
Today I will visit as the first rays of the sun. I will touch you when you step from your house. You will sense something is different. You will touch where I touch as if to explain what you feel. I will come to you as pure light, turn to warmth on your skin. /////…
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Geraniums/ poem by Jo Pitkin
Shriveled and rusted, my mother saves the lost, reviving darkly spotted plants with paltry buds or blooms beyond hope. At the end of a season, she digs up blood-red geraniums we planted for my father, brings them home, repots them, freeing their bound roots. She prunes and deadheads, placing each stub tenderly in the sun-crammed…
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Collector of Lapsed Time/ poems by David Appelbaum/ book review by Laurence Carr
David Appelbaum’s new collection of poems, or I should say, one of several new collections, offers a title that immediately draws in the reader. Collector of Lapsed Time explores a wide range of subject matter, but consistently plays upon the theme of time and how time shapes the people and objects that are presented in…
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After Thomas James’s poem, “Letters to a Stranger”/ poem by Timothy Brennan
1. Within an hour we had formed his body Of aluminum bent with vices Over a Bible. The last thumb Was claimed at the baggage terminal. You should stand stiffly And hold your stomach in, In the house where you hide, Where soldiers replace the roof With clouds of pollen. Already, they have loosened its…
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Sky Burial/ poem by Stephanie JT Russell
The point is to be generous after you’re gone, though you’ve nothing more to lose. Even the old yak hauling your corpse up the butte is rewarded: once you’re slid off his back onto the icebound sod, the drover frees him, watches him amble away, snorting in and out, then in again, purest oxygen evaporating…
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Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos/ music review by Mike Jurkovic
The Rock n Roll Curmudgeon Rides Again Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos Craft Recordings You could always swear allegiance to the sound of Stax: the heart ‘n soul, the purity of real people singing real. Like Otis, the sharecropper’s son and part time well digger. The high school girl from the Memphis projects Carla…
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What’s what?/ poem by Susan Chute
Who do you think you are? The times are asking, you are who? I see myself in pictures and picas reflections in a merciless mirror I am not who you think I am Who are the neighbors next door? undocumented pilgrims from the Jordan their lesser hajj a Hudson landing to birth American daughters blossoming…
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Poison Ivy/ poem by Kim Ellis
Poison ivy flutters its glossy toxic leaves climbing up the double-trunk pine Buttercups, my granddaughter tells me, are harmful to horses, which explains why the white horse looks so picturesque among uneaten tall yellow flowers Deer won’t nibble cat mint or marigolds, or the leggy lavender. Someone—a woodchuck?––ate the echinacea, but the wild roses flourish…
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