Signs of Life

Jim Ross

---

Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after leaving a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, since retiring he's published nonfiction, poetry, and photography in roughly 150 journals and anthologies on four continents. Publications include Bombay Gin, Columbia Journal, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, The Atlantic, The Manchester Review, and Typehouse. He’s recently published photo essays in Barren, Kestrel, Litro, New World Writing, So It Goes, and Wordpeace. “Signs of Life” is Jim’s first published “visual poem,” but he’s trying to push the boundaries of what qualifies as a “visual poem.” Jim and his wife—parents of two health professionals on the front lines and grandparents of five preschoolers—split their time between city and mountains.

Midlife

Cynthia Shutts

We are both terrified of loneliness in middle age
So, we snag the first driftwood that happens by
I carve you into a piece of art for the mantlepiece
And you use me as kindling

---

Author’s Note: I am extremely inspired by trees and wood in every form. But It's the origin story and transformation into something completely unexpected that I enjoy the most.

---

Cynthia Shutts is a midlife poet, enrolled in Hollins University's MFA in Children's Literature program. When she is not in Roanoke, she loves photography and travel.

Six Poems by Ali Asadollahi

1

In honor of peace
Solely binge drinking
Solely stagger dancing

The bullet passing through the vineyards
Never hits the target

2

Nor that sturdy tree
Nor that frisky little boy

No longer know how to stand

The old man’s staring at the cane
The cane’s staring at the old man

3

Yellow in green
Black in white
:
Fall stabbed the spring in back
Night cast a shadow over the day’s corpse

Leave “red in blue” for later

One day
I'll throw the history books into the sea

4

Smile...
May this smile hold me up

I’m a broken wall
Pick up that picture frame
See me collapse

5

God created your feet
Man invented the wheel

Who knows between the two lines above
How many mines are concealed?!

6

A lady’s silk gown
Day of mourning on the butterflies’ calendar.

---

Ali Asadollahi was born in 1987 in Tehran, Iran. He became interested in poetry in 2003, and since then he has devoted his time to poetry. His first book, A to Z, was published in 2010. In one of the most reputable Persian literary magazines of the time, the book was praised as "Best Young Poetry Book of the Year." To date, he has published five poetry books. His latest book, The Coco’s Tale, was nominated for the prestigious Iranian poetry book prize, the Ahmad Shamlou award, in 2019, but he withdrew in protest of the severe censorship of books in Iran. Ali Asadollahi is currently researching ways to create Persian dramatic poetry.

Read an interview with Ali Asadollahi here.

Blue

Doug Van Hooser

The neighbor’s dog, Blue, keeps barking
so I decide to keep trying.
Be relentless as the dog’s loneliness.
To try again like the fungus
that each year reappears on the oak stump.
It finds reason in dead wood.
The ceaseless despair of the dog
shuts off like a faucet
and becomes an unbridled torrent
of leaping, wagging joy
at the sound of a mumbling muffler
tied under a faded blue Toyota
dinged with dozens of small wounds.
I would like to be so pleased.
Be greeted by my ambition.
Consummate my desire.
Eliminate the whine of repeated attempts
and shake the hand of success,
even if it looks beyond me
and continues down the line
of all its guests.

---

Author’s Note: One of our neighbors last summer decided to open the slider of an upstairs room to a small balcony during the day. The dog found it and from the minute the owner left in the morning until the minute the dog heard the mumbling muffler of the owner's car in the afternoon, the dog howled and barked his loneliness for multiple days in a row. One of the beauties of writing is connecting one's (here, the dog's) emotional response to a situation to another person's unrelated response that has a mutual characteristic. In this case, the dog's relentless lonely barking and his over the top joy both connected with me.

---

Doug Van Hooser's poetry has appeared in Chariton Review, Split Rock Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, After Hours and Poetry Quarterly among other publications. His fiction can be found in Red Earth Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Bending Genres Journal. Doug’s plays have received readings at Chicago Dramatist Theatre and Three Cat Productions. More at dougvanhooser.com

Letter to John Upon Returning to Hilton Head

Bridget Gage-Dixon

Time seems to have stalled here, Spanish moss still reaches down from branches, the saltwater is still warm against my skin, and all the houses continue to stubbornly disguise themselves. As I peddle the thin paths cut through the trees, I become the girl I was so long ago, the one too long ignored, willing to break her body against the sharp edges of a forbidden boy. This hardly helps.

I ride these paths now following my own fourteen year old. Her spine curves cleanly beneath skin that shines with beads of salty water. She is stronger than I was, does not seem susceptible to boys whose breath is a brilliant mix of Michelob and Marlboros. She hasn’t yet sidled herself up against a boy eager to consume her innocence, hasn’t eagerly offered it up.

I’ve wondered often where you are now, if time has tempered your radiance. If, like me, your waist has thickened, if your spirit’s grown the thin shield the years have constructed over mine. You were the boy I warn my daughter about, all desire, using language like a lasso, your will an alluring noose I willingly slid myself into.

---

Bridget Gage-Dixon has had a life-long love affair with poetry that began with rewriting nursery rhymes and fairytales. She progressed to having her poems included in Poet Lore, Inkwell, The Cortland Review, and several other journals. She lives in New Jersey where she teaches and dotes on her grandchildren.