poetry

Prego – Ingrid Wendt

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Ask for something, Per
favore, please, the answer is
Prego. Please.

Thank you, Grazie, thank you,
you say. Instead of you’re welcome?
Prego. The answer is please.

Prego, listen, here in Italy, every
time you think you’re polite, this lift
of the verbal eyebrow, this rise

and fall of the voice like a hand
on its way to your shoulder, insistent
lifeline picking you up,

letting you go
again. No problem! Prego
pulls up the covers and tucks you in.

Cape of Saint Martin. Communion
wafer on each Italian tongue. Prego.
Please, Prego, I pray to you,

Prego, don’t
worry. Let me
do something for you.

(Photo: Assisi, 2002)
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Hole In the Head Review

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Emily Dickinson once defined poetry this way: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?”
Who am I to disagree with Emily Dickinson?
The Hole In The Head Review is an online literary/arts review that will publish in early 2020. My intent is to publish poems, prose poems, photographs, paintings and other works of art that make me feel as if the top of my head were taken off. I anticipate publishing a new issue every two months.
Work submitted will be reviewed by established writers and artists and notifications will go out no later than 30 days after submission or the submission fee of $4 will be refunded.
An online journal has modest start-up expenses – primarily website design/hosting and the cost of one year subscription to Submittable, the online tool for submitting works.
Any assistance you provide will be greatly appreciated. Your support will be recognized prominently in each issue.
Thank you. Peace and all good things to you all!

Donate via GoFundMe here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/hole-in-the-head-review?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

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New Moon in November – W.S. Merwin

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I have been watching the crows and now it is dark
Together they led night into the creaking oaks
Under them I hear the dry leaves walking
That blind man
Gathering their feathers before winter
By the dim road that the wind will take
And the cold
And the note of the trumpet

birds black crow

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Around Us – Marvin Bell

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We need some pines to assuage the darkness
when it blankets the mind,
we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly
as a plane’s wing, and a worn bed of
needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,
and a blur or two of a wild thing
that sees and is not seen. We need these things
between appointments, after work,
and, if we keep them, then someone someday,
lying down after a walk
and supper, with the fire hole wet down,
the whole night sky set at a particular
time, without numbers or hours, will cause
a little sound of thanks–a zipper or a snap–
to close round the moment and the thought
of whatever good we did.

When I Am Among The Trees – Mary Oliver

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When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.

Pity The Nation – Kahlil Gibran

/ Bill Schulz / 2 Comments

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose stateman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

— Khalil Gibran

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing – William Butler Yeats

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Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.