At the Spring Dawn
Angelina Weld Grinke

I watched the dawn come,
     Watched the spring dawn come,
And the red sun shouldered his way up
    Through the gray, through the blue,
Through the lilac mists.
The quiet of it! The goodness of it!
     And one bird awoke, sang, whirred
A blur moving black against the sun,
     Sang again--a far off.
And I stretched my arms to the redness of the sun,

Stretched to my fingertips,
     And I laughed.
Ah! It is good to be alive, good to love,

     At the dawn,
         At the spring dawn.

(At the Spring dawn appeared in Negro Poets and their
poems in 1923.) Angelina Grinke, born in Boston February 27,
1880, was a journalist and poet. Her work was collected in
several reviews and anthologies. She died October 1958.
 

Voices of the Night Air

The night is still as the house
in the painting,
but many sounds eco
in the ears; voices of wind;
like the silent cry of the stars.

Absent voices of sane dream,
like the snow field in the calm winter nights.
Or, is it still there but the ears?

Why the vain search?
Empty the ears,
sing a song for the new door in the mist.
A sudden voice: who? who?

©Byung A. Fallgren

Some Rich Person

is me with some pennies in safe.

A dying rich man offered me a gold,
if I divorce and remarry after he's 
in heaven, which I stepped aside and 
let it pass, for I am rich with some pennies
in safe, with my hubby who ends every
spoken words with a chuckle, and pukes 
at a party.

A distant sis says she'd share her fortune,
if I 'pologized her and ask.
Sorry blooms in my garden all season,
but ask for more than a penny doesn't.

You can throw a square line 
and choke me,
but it would be vain;
better toss a little silver
you don't need;
for me to find love and all. 

©Byung A. Fallgren 

from the roof
melting snow drips
grateful mind

in the lawn
pumpkin seeds sprout
for spring only

grandpa's favorite
sitting in the back yard chair
sun bask, naked

baby rabbit hides
behind the purple iris
assuring sun

©Byung A. Fallgren 

Exodus
by Effie Lee Newsome

Rank fennel and broom
Grown wanly beside
The cottage and room
We once occupied,
But sold for the snows!

The dahoon berry weeps in blood,
I know, 
Watched by crow--
I've seen both grow
In those weird waters of Dixie!

Exodus appeared in the Crisis XXIX, no. 3 (January 1925.)
Effie Newsome, born January 19, 1885, in Philadelphia, 
was a poet from the Harlem Renaissance movement.
She's the author of Gladiola Garden, Poems for Second 
Grade Readers, published many poems in the Crisis,
and other leading journals from the Harlem Renaissance. 
She died in 1979.  

Climate
by Meghann Plunkett

It felt familiar, your mouth moving
     up my side like gale warning. My
        arm calico-mammatus clouds--
Blood brought to the surface.
Now I understand my childhood 
home. Releasing shingle after shingle
   into brutal air. Our front door
torn and flat in the yard. Violent 
gusts whipping through the marshes--
   the back of your hand.
       of what I have unlearned 
this was the hardest.
One sandpiper singing 
still, desire does not have to leave you ruined.

Ms. Plunkett is the winner of the Missouri Reviews Jeffery
E. Smith Editors' Prize and Third Coast Poetry prize.
She works as a television writer on various Trip the Lights
and Shondaland production.  

 

what has no good eyes
nor has ears?
a dictator who is and a thing else

it dulls his sense of discerning
right from wrong
hot vain dream

what will he do
now all alone?
turn to a cat and yowl?

Beauty of human nature blooms in the ashes

thunder spirit-storm bellows
above the flame
burning forest of the cities

March snow piles
on the rubbles and ashes
cawing lone crow

©Byung A. Fallgren

Morning sun and the Lake 

they 
whisper to each other
every morning
of their tears
all night long

©Byung A. Fallgren

This was published in The Weekly Avocet #465, 10-31-2021.

The Delusional Old man

He's been eyeing on the family compound hillside,
prying on the nightly feud. He grows greed to own 
the place. Only if he can coax the landowner to abandon it.
Fool's dream.

He sprayed the fire-seeds over the compound
to scare the landowner, flee the homestead,
burning the house and all, leaving the children and
elders shiver in the cold.

The villagers rescue the landowner with the food and
warm clothes and build a shelter on the lot,
rebuke the old man for what he has done.
I only tried to stop the family feud, says the old man.

What should the villagers do with the old man?   
Take him to a mental hospital, says the boy.
You are my smart Ukraine boy. Grandma hugs him tight.
But, the boy continues, you didn't tell me why 
we are here in the train subway in this cold night. 
And why do they bomb outside?
I just told you, son. 

©Byung A. Fallgren

The Weekly Avocet–#482 is here. (This last for a week.)
My work “Wyoming Wind” appears in this issue.