For over an hour, I’ve been watching
the sun arrive at its height of suddenness.
How gradually that summit is achieved.
How constant the sun in its cornucopia nuances
of dawn. Maybe the first and last sermon
we see, the fumbling after words a kind
of incantation the day accepts as a prayer,
the night hymn forming in the west.
"And now we wait.”
-Byron Hoot
Enjoy the Mediterranean light before sunset.
Talk among the crashing waves with equal abandon.
Dive in the sea with architect friends.
Why not enjoy both worlds of land and water at the edge of Athens?
I depart from the present on the ship;
travel the stairs to dinner,
hold woodgrain rail for balance.
I ran back to the upper deck of the Stavros Niarchos
in time to draw sailboats cruising on.
The waves are strong and full,
reaching Piano's building;
Athen’s investment in the numbing sea,
book volumes shift, swell, sink.
Find the ladder, slide it over,
reach the uppermost books before the hull cracks.
Library shelves float already on the perimeter;
glass rails are invisible.
In both a library and a theater, the music rooms are alive
with silence. Ensconced in the red velvet seats,
every door opening surprises the senses,
delightful, polished, curving wood.
In the ballerina's box, the dancers unfold themselves,
crane animals about to fly.
Smooth, not slick, like walking over a wave-crusted beach,
step aboard, the marble floor is sand.
The glass cantilever, the boom, extends the craft:
Five stories perched between the city and sea docks.
What the water offers as new life, the building gives too.
Siggrou Avenue is the deck;
the Greek street lifts at the bow and meets the water.
A building never visited becomes familiar.
Everyone sees the ocean the same way, running to meet the waves.
Over the port of Piraeus, the wire pulleys hold down the sail.
The lines clank as the building moves -the sea view!
The aquamarine sky floats just below the surface.
Cruising below the ship's vessel,
the roof is the glistening white hull.
There is great joy in finding the architect's secret.
The Piano Workshop gave Athens a new building,
a new Agora to mimic a cruise liner.
I arrive at the upper deck and my friend grabs the rail,
her long sun-streaked hair blowing to realize:
This building is sailing.
-Kellie Cole
Kellie Cole is a licensed architect practicing in West Virginia who teaches architecture at Fairmont State University. Kellie's poetry has been published in Whetstone, Fairmont State University's publication, Voices From the Attic, and River and Stone Anthology of Short Stories.
The death of my father is nearly a month
away – 31 years. The haunting of longing
has begun. The end of his life was nothing
like the fullness of it. How apropos he
died in the fall, his favorite time of the year.
What do I miss most? Perhaps the way he clasped
his hands together after the good-bye hug and kiss
on our necks as if another victory – a triumph of love –
had been won. The visitation this year, early, has begun.
-Byron Hoot
It is fall and ghosts walk
in the wind among fallen
leaves, mist, and fog more
easily than any other time
of the year -- the season
of visitation of the dead:
people, desires, dreams,
the what-if conclusions
never realized. In any given
moment, a ghost can brush
a heart as it passes by.
That which never dies walks
upon the earth September,
October, and November
Because men send their daughters away to marry great men
I never see Athena
But ancient Athens, galleries of sculpted busts
a looming view of the Parthenon
twenty-first-century glass and steel,
all architectural monuments that bow to corruption.
So does the entry canopy
a protruding trapezoid
itself lifted from the earth
a gem not pilfered.
The interior of the building left hollow
what's beneath this ground
the excavated remains on display
that lend truth to the myths.
The ancient goddess finds her way to the surface
face skyward to the open, airy heaven path
body trapped in a past, an unpredictable future.
Excavation proves centuries
fixed as modern-day life moves.
Greek relics connect
the once living stories
with the here and now.
This museum is an inversion; the question,
the inside of reason taken from the Acropolis
mounted by fluted stainless columns
the carved marble metope stories
a young woman taking the virgin procession
moving with her peers toward a staged performance
honoring deities at their feet
catching a glimpse into the foothold.
-Kellie Cole
Kellie Cole is a licensed architect practicing in West Virginia who teaches architecture at Fairmont State University. Kellie's poetry has been published in Whetstone, Fairmont State University's publication, Voices From the Attic, and River and Stone Anthology of Short Stories.
The wind among the trees,
the birds flying leaving
and taking their shadows,
here and now trying to keep
at bay there and then
and the mystery how the two
need each other. How I am
nothing without you, you
nothing without me,
how two make one,
the paradox of time
and eternity. Suspect
the prayer – “Not my will
but thine” – has nothing
to do with surrender but
is a battle cry right
before a victory.
The way two make one
and nothing’s lost.
-Byron Hoot
That trap__
Shouldn’t have
Checked it before heading
Off to church, but we did.
No groundhog but worse,
A skunk, hind leg clasped
Firmly, stared with beady eyes
As we approached garden’s edge
Standing there in our wool
Suits knowing it inhumane
To wait, Uncle Ralph said,
Sam, get the gun.
Meaning, of course,
An old Remington 22
By the fireplace_
The double barrel
Was fetched instead.
Uncle Ralph glanced at his watch,
Shrugged his shoulders,
Reluctantly accepted the shotgun,
Turned, aimed and fired,
We’ll take care of it when we get back
For one eternal hour
Seated in the pews
Of that small church
An uncomfortable congregation
Imagined the sulfurous
Stench of hell was upon them….
We feigned innocence,
Knowing it was really upon us.
-Wayne H. Swanger
midnight sweat
midnight vomit
crying and clutching the trash can
no school for me
mother’s blanket-wrapped sadness
predawn on the front porch
watching the school burn
four fire departments couldn’t stop the blaze
what could a woman in a blanket hope to do
that they couldn’t?
“good news,” she whispers
smoothing back my tangled hair
wiping the fever away with a cool cloth
“no school for anyone”
I am from plant-scented candles
From yarn made for crocheting and jars of stored food
I am from a mix of red bricks and tan parts etched into thick walls
With creaky halls moving on their own
I am from a quiet yet loud house echoing with sounds all too familiar
the old trees that don't go on for long
Whose long-gone limbs I remember
As if they were my own
I’m from modified passed-down recipes and dark-ish hair
From Meghan, Evan, Rachel, Melissa, and Gorman
I’m from overly cold rooms cold as a rainy autumn mornings
and messy closets brimming with random junk
And from skipping breakfasts
I’m from stories told years later and the “scribble monster”
and “beans beans The more you eat the more you toot” and patty cake
I’m from nothing specific
I’m from Charleston, West Virginia and Cincinnati
And skyline chili and sweet pepper-filled spaghetti
From my dad's first fight
ending with him crashing into a dumpster
with a bloody nose and a loud bang still going through his head
Magnets collected over the years some having family photos
and others with small pretty rocks attached
Stuck to the side of the fridge
By Iva Reynolds Sep 15, 2023
Occasionally I get Fig Newtons.
Not too often because they take
me back to what is only a memory
of when the dead in my life were
alive, when I was a boy,
when Mrs. Heinz – who didn’t
have two dimes to rub together –
would have a box when Dad
and Mom would make a call,
park the car on this side of the wooden
bridge that crossed the stream
to get to her house and life.
I should relish such memories,
the near resurrection of memory,
the dead nearly alive. I have
to say the longing for the dead
to rise again fills me with deep
sorrow, that melancholy joy
for what has been not to be again
and say sometimes when I take
a bite in a voice barely audible to me,
“This is the day the Lord has made.
Rejoice.” And can barely swallow.
-Byron Hoot
