Underwater Haibun

Confucius said, The beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right
names. Here’s a few: patch reef, fringing reef, barrier reef. Fire corals, lace corals,
Gorgonians. Leaf and plate and sheet corals, flower and cup corals. Encrusting,
mound, and boulder corals. Branching corals, fleshy corals, brain corals. Black corals.
Here’s a few more: oil spills, climate change, ocean acidification. Overharvesting,
coastal development, habitat destruction. Bleaching. Crown of thorns. Algal blooms.
Then these: catastrophe, disaster, endangerment. Extinction. Disgrace.

                      the coral reef now—
                      ash trays the morning after
                      a wild party

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Tim Tomlinson is the author of Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse (Finishing Line Press, 2015), Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire (Winter Goose Publishing, 2016), and This Is Not Happening to You (Winter Goose Publishing, 2017). Recent work appears in Big City Lit, Columbia Journal, Litro, and the anthology Surviving Suicide: A Collection of Poems that May Save a Life (Nirala Publications, 2021). He is the director of New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. Tomlinson teaches writing in the Global Liberal Studies at New York University. 

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Alex Jones After Trial


At home, he harkens back 
to nature via back yard,

licks non-psychotropic 
back of frog, wishes he

could turn to anything 
else, opens only third eye 

he’s ever known, goes 
from gaze to yellow haze.

Revelation comes despite
everything that is him. 

What if human race 
made up of sleeper agents

trained from womb to crib 
to sofa, joining millions

of cells they call families,
working for open conspiracy

code named Mother Earth,
waiting to be called back in.

If he’s right, then he is
also alone, last free man,

apart from entire system. 
He prepares final request

for handlers: keep body
above ground, away from 

One World, unabsorbed, 
unassimilated, left whole.

—Submitted on 09/20/2022

Chad Parenteau is the author of The Collapsed Bookshelf (CreateSpace, 2020. His poems have appeared in journals Résonance, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including Reimagine America (Vagabond Books, 2022) Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series, and serves as associate editor of the Oddball Magazine.

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Of Thee I Sing

They sing the traditional notes 
if it is, if it is, if it is,
it is if, is it if, if if if 

	and I (d’oh) get stuck way behind, 
so               (lalala    re     ti)                fa,
	me  (mi)  me.

I slobber notes as if my uvula
were throwing off bitter tonic.
But they, if it is,
		        spit them out
as cleanly as discarded teeth,
so porcelain white because
they sucked off our blood first.

· · ·

Hope Fill

Hope gathers in my mouth
but I don’t know how much
it will take to fill it. Molars
grind as if sanding anxiety.  

My tongue feels swollen as 
if allergic to such emotion.
Taste buds also are confused
by sweetness bitter-tinged.

I mistakenly bite my inside	
cheek. The blood dries up
to let hope fill my mouth.
I gulp air, more than air. 

I can’t hold my breath long,
but hope, o hope, I can hold. 

· · ·

The Red Cap and the Pussy Hat

                               (with apologies to Edward Lear)

I
The Red Cap and the Pussy Hat oft disagree
   while ignoring their sinking boat, 
as they proclaim to be sailing sea to shining sea
   yet common ground they don’t note.
The Red Cap pondered riches high above,
   And said to the Pussy Hat under the stars:
“O enemy Pussy! O Pussy, my enemy,
   What an ignorant Pussy you are,
         You are,
         You are!
What an ignorant Pussy you are!”

II
Pussy Hat said with a scowl, “Cap, you’re so foul. 
   I know you want to rule everything!
But you seem harried of a world so varied
   and so you won’t have me under your wing!”
They went on their way, four years to the day,
   In the land where every swamp thing grows,
And just as it should the Stylish Fascinator stood
   To proudly sing, “The Pussy, she knows.
         She knows,
         She knows!”
To proudly sing, “The Pussy, she knows.”

III
“O’ Fass,” said Cap, “Unwilling to stop your shrilling?”
   “I will indeed sing,” said the Fascinator, “I will.”
So what could they say, but kept on their way
    and glimpsed fat turkeys on Capitol Hill. 
Were they so blinded, everyone strong-minded?
   Red Cap and Pussy Hat thought each a buffoon.
Yet hand in hand, all across the fabled land, 
   We chanced on the learned and the loon, 
         The loon, 
         The loon, 
We chanced on the learned and the loon.

—Submitted on 09/19/2022

Ronnie Sirmans is a metro Atlanta newspaper digital editor whose poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Plainsongs, The American Journal of Poetry, What Rough Beast, and elsewhere.

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Looking for Answers

          I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
          I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
          into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
          how to be idle and blessed 
                                                                     —Mary Oliver

Yesterday’s walk—fish scale clouds.
Three woodpeckers calling loud,
flying tree to tree following one another. 
What do you call a trio of good-omen birds in flight?
What do we name these clouds scaling through sky 
in scalloped arcs like the shimmery 
flat side of an ocean dwelling fish?

What do you call the feeling 
when everything seems akimbo and in limbo;
really neither here nor there.
Almost to spring, yet temperatures still plummet
turning snowmelt to ice.
Almost at war; the world on edge.
Pandemic ravishes in places; is calming down in others. 
Folks don’t know what to do—mask and distance, 
or step back to “normal.”

I’ve fallen out of practice how to gather; 
have settled back into hermitic ways,
finding comfort in aloneness; 
unease at the thought of “in-person.”
What do we call it, to feel lost
in the midst of every day; in the midst of your life;
your precious life.

—Submitted on 09-17-22

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of the chapbooks Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Survival Part 2 Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Verse-Virtual, Sheila-Na-Gig, Amethyst Review, Moist Poetry, Tiny Seed Journal, Bloodroot Literary, and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies, including Support Ukraine (Moonstone Arts, 2022) and Covid Spring II (Hobblebush Books, 2021). Her full-length debut, Every Small Breeze, is forthcoming from Indolent Books.

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Nobody Noticed

Jesus came back on TikTok since
two hundred forty characters  
couldn’t raise the dead.  
He was hoping three minutes
would be enough to regroup 
all the MIA Christians
who’d stopped believing
in anything—especially themselves.

If only their ears had been eyes
the first time—they could’ve seen
what I really meant.
Even though they’re
glued- together stardust,
humans just weren’t
built that way.

They made him the first bloody
telegraph pole—
sending a message
that endured two millennia—
until the digital age.

Then hucksters with toothy smiles
and slicked back hair played
fast and loose with all
his humble truths
to keep the cash cow mooing—
they preached heaven
could be here on earth—
as long as the price was right.

His video was a simple one
no gangsta rap or dancers
writhing to primal beats
just a sad-eyed bearded soul
preaching worldwide brotherly love—
he didn’t stand a chance.

This time there were no angry mobs—
neither crowds nor riots appeared—
not even a single thumbs-up. 

· · ·

Ambivalence

The future is
never present
while looking 
at the past 
only ghosts
of lost chances
that restlessly
haunt the
temporary now 
as they dispatch
the immediate
to misty realms  
of unnoticed
and forsaken
opportunities
where the light
of day is
forever cloaked
by shadows
of promises
waiting to 
be born

—Submitted on 09/04/2022

N.T. Chambers‘s poems have appeared in Grassroots Literary Magazine, In Parentheses, You Might Need to Hear This, Nine Cloud Journal, The Elevation Review, Wingless Dreamer, Months to Years, New Note Poetry, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Quibble Magazine.

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Diaspora
Eight bars for Greg Pardlo						

Accepted to your master class while ignorant of what 
besides a Pulitzer you were, I stopped to get your book, 
and after being charmed by that first poem on being born, 
was daunted by the density of learned allusion in your work;

so, locked out of the Promised Land of meaning for the sin 
of being shallow, I started leafing forwards from the back, 
trying, like the hotel thief who jiggles every doorknob, 
to find just one unlocked, to burgle for its billfold sense, 
the keys and coins left on the desk, the lacy bra inside 
the dresser drawer, the belted pants across the chair, 
the cell phone plugged and glowing on the bathroom sink; 
and there, I found your poem about the Quaker Parrots 
living in the ballfields wide and graveyards deep of Brooklyn, 
and that began a recognition hometown comfort groove.

I recognized those parrots and my Brooklyn in the one 
where you had walked.  Your voice became a ticket to a reading 
where Whitman, Moore and Auden, Hart and Lourde 
were sipping wine and pocketing the pretzel snacks for later; 
and the only thing that poems have ever done, 
to make a way for someone I could tumble talk to native tongue 
to tongue, came fresh as a baguette in a bicycle basket.

So, when I heard your call that I should raise my eyes to see 
those parrots in the trees, I shouted like a congregation
that I have raised my eyes to a Midwood, Brooklyn sycamore 
on the walk we’d take around my parents’ block to smoke some pot 
before Thanksgiving dinner, and I have seen the stick nest 
of the Quaker Parrots jutting like a beaver lodge 
above the leaf-strewn lawn of the Orthodox Jews 
who invaded our assimilated neighborhood 
in the decades since we siblings moved to Jersey 
and Connecticut, unaware that Kings would rise again.

And I have heard their noisy chattered ruckus, though to me 
they sounded less like Dizz and Bird at Minton’s Playhouse 
popping peanuts than like housewives calling deli orders out 
to countermen in lab coats and smudged white paper side caps 
on a Friday at Blue Ribbon while their cars were double parked 
on Avenue J.

So, when my sister touched my sleeve to pass the roach to me,
I pointed, as first one and then another, green as Kool Aid
showed up at the dark mouth of the nest and pulsed their wings, 
then flew away, and asked her are those parrots, or a figment of the weed?
And, when we got back to the house from our pre-Thanksgiving walk, 
my Uncle Fred and Cindy’s boyfriend Robert watching Dallas
play the Giants in the kitchen, dipping crackers in the baked brie 
before the guests arrived, I told my mother, peeling carrots for the crudité, 
there were parrots in the tree outside the Berson’s house, and she said, 
Arthur, darling, Berson moved out years ago; the yahmmies live there now.

So, I was riffing on diaspora, on everything that smacked at me, 
even on your epigraph, which said that love is as a hundred thousand, 
which put me distantly in mind of Lear, whose heart 
would break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere he’d weep 
for loss of child’s fealty as a kingdom he was banished from, 
but only as a quote that you might know, 
and not because it really fit, since sometimes, 
when you solo, you wind up into a cul-de-sac and lose a measure backing out.

Those winter, still-dark mornings leading to your master class
I labored by the yellow lamp beside my desk, to trade these eights with you, 
to raise the sort of ruckus that a Pardlo parrot might, 
to lay my song on top of yours, to see your parrot avatars of love 
to answer back with something from my nesting past 
that sang a siphoned song, then finish with a bit about the cognoscenti 
who nowadays give Quaker-Parrot tours to day-trip hipsters, 
who are made to sign agreements to keep nesting sites a secret, 
lest the poachers catch and turn the parrots into pets, the very pets 
they were meant to be when they were shipped from Argentina,
as the legend goes, some sixty years ago, and their crate broke open 
on the tarmac at Idlewild, whence they came like all of us, to Brooklyn.

—Submitted on 03/05/2022

Arthur Russell won Brooklyn Poet’s Poem of the Year for 2015 and was runner up for the same award in 2021. He placed second in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award from The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in 2021. He is co-editor of The Red Wheelbarrow, an annual journal published in William Carlos Williams’s hometown of Rutherford, NJ.

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.