Issue 157
the wolves are blind
VW Beetle in junkyard
Columbia, Missouri [Triptych]
Michael C. Roberts
Please use the pointing right hand icons to move through the issue. It's just a thing we have.
Sarah Carleton, Willie Carver, Dagne Forrest, Richard Fox, Howie Good, Devony Hof, Jill Jepson, Gary Kruse, Cam McGlynn, Ted Mico, John Johnson, Lesley Lambton, Marcus Ten Low, Jeremy Nathan Marks, Amy Milin, Michael C. Roberts, Brad Rose, Jacob D. Salzer, Hilary Sideris, Lynn Strongin, Mike Taylor, Philip Venzke, Kelley White
The Note
Friends,
I hope you won’t mind if I use The Note to pay tribute to one of the most important people in my life. Patrick Murray, PhD, passed away in July at the age of 90. I met Dr. Murray when I went to college at 18, attending what was then State College of Arkansas, where he taught philosophy and chaired the small department. I took Introduction to Philosophy with him, along with a few other courses during my time there. I wish I had taken more.
Dr. Murray always entered class with a smile, dressed in a simple business suit and tie. He would stand behind the podium and teach. The effect was captivating—you could tell by the demeanor of a room full of undergraduates. Equally memorable was his consistently respectful behavior toward his students.
I entered college as a good, but not outstanding, high school student. I had no clear sense of direction for my studies or my life, though I had vague ideas about becoming a psychologist—which I ultimately did.
One day, I asked Dr. Murray a question. I don’t remember the question, and it doesn’t matter. What I do remember is his reaction: his eyes lit up, and he asked me, “Mr. Wisely, have you by chance been reading David Hume?” I had not. I probably was only a few years out of reading Archie Comics. But there was something magical in that question and Dr. Murray's belief in the possibility that this 18-year-old from small-town Arkansas might have been sitting around reading David Hume. He asked as if he were speaking to a colleague. I have never been able to fully explain the effect it had on me, but it was profound. Dr. Murray set me on a course of becoming a serious student. This is part of a story about how a B/B+ high school student became valedictorian of his college class and got admitted to a fine PhD program at age 21. (To this day, I don't know what the admissions committee at the University of Memphis was collectively thinking. It may have been a clerical error.)
Dr. Murray’s teaching instilled in me a deep admiration for excellent teaching, and, I must admit, a disdain for poorly prepared instruction and disrespectful treatment of students. These attitudes persist to this day.
I’m not sure I would have achieved the professional success I have without his influence. In fact, I’d bet against it.
It was only after I took my last class with Dr. Murray that a classmate mentioned he was an ordained Baptist minister. I was shocked. In his teaching, he had never said—or taught—anything that would have revealed him to be a religious person, not to mention a Baptist preacher. When presenting arguments for and against the existence of God, he offered no hint of his own views. In fact, if someone in class challenged a philosophical against the existence of God, he would defend the argument when appropriate. Or defend the argument for God, when someone made a clumsy attack on it. Not long after, Dr. Murray left academia and was later ordained as an Episcopalian priest, a role he held until his death. This means he spent decades comforting people in their struggles, an often-overlooked aspect of religious leadership in this age of understandable skepticism about religion.
I graduated admiring Dr. Murray but failing to go by and speak to him before I left campus. Over the years, we exchanged a few letters before losing touch. I had written about my appreciation of him, but it never seemed enough. About 12 years ago, while driving across Arkansas, I stopped at a McDonald’s near Brinkley. As I sat at a table with a cup of coffee, I looked across the "dining" area and saw Dr. Murray sitting with his family. I hadn’t seen him in 35 years. I wasn’t sure it was him at first, but then he smiled, and I recognized him immediately.
I went over, apologized for the interruption and tried to express what he had meant to me. Judging by the look on his face and the warm handshake, I think my message landed.
When I recently learned of his passing, I discovered that he had written a book on grief. I’ve been doing a lot of work in the area of grief lately, so I have been searching for resources and material for a particular project. I found a used copy of his book, now out of print. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a little treasure, full of the kinds of insights I needed for my work in this area. Another gift from The Reverend Doctor N. Patrick Murray.
Rest in peace, Dr. Murray. And thank you.
This is a big ol' issue of Right Hand Pointing. We went though a period of several months when I was thinking we might be winding down. Submissions weren't as plentiful. Then, I guess somebody somewhere must have said something nice about us, because submissions have been pouring in for some months now. Before I knew it, I had accepted more pieces than has been true for some time. More than is my custom. My thanks to all contributors and, as always, our wonderful team of editors: F. John Sharp, F. J. Bergmann, Annie Stenzel, Bill McCloud, Steve Klepetar, and Ina Roy-Faderman.
Enjoy the read.
Dale
Jeremy Nathan Marks
Sundown Road
The moon,
forever young,
beckons the corn.
Even at dusk,
I prefer the eastern
porch where I touch
the waxing cabbage
moths who greet
a velvet dark.
Howie Good
Last of the Ninth
I had the kind of soft, doughy appearance as a kid that often attracts cruel attention. There was one time in Little League, though, I swung at a pitch out over the plate and connected. The ball hit off the school on a fly. The other kids on the team were delirious, jumping up and down and hollering and laughing. Our coach, Mr. Freeman, gave me the homerun bat to keep. It was a practically brand-new 30-inch Louisville Slugger, Rocky Colavito signature model, with a dramatic black barrel tapering to a slender handle of contrasting white wood. My parents weren’t there to see. They never came to my games. Not once. They are dead now. Mr. Freeman, too. And Rocky Colavito.
Howie Good
The Killers
A detective with a face as rumpled and droopy as a Basset Hound’s stands in a trash-strewn lot between a vacant warehouse and a shuttered rope factory, staring glumly down at the battered corpse of a young woman. His foremost thought is that we are mired in a war of all against all. He searches the pockets of his raincoat for a cigarette, remembers he has quit smoking, and sighs wearily. Three pairs of patrol officers are setting up wooden barriers around the crime scene. Flies crawl into the corpse’s half-open eyes and mouth. The detective hears more sirens approaching. He asks if anyone has a cigarette. Meanwhile, today’s rain is falling on yesterday, where you shoot first and shout “Police! Hands up!” afterwards.
Lynn Strongin
In the Frozen Blue of Appalachia
IN THE FROZEN BLUE OF APPALACHIA,
She continued to burn.
At the cusp, age twelve, her stammer had begun
Now she hardly got out a sentence.
Out her window quail were shuddering
Even their shadow blew like lit matches
She had two sinks so made a darkroom
Negatives hung
By clothespins. She was a thirteenth century girl
Anointed in the blue of Appalachia, fearful of being touched.
Apocalypse fearful.
Cam McGlynn
The Ship of Theseus
If we are forever renewed,
these bones remaking our blood,
this skin sloughing off the old,
these muscles reknitting our myelin,
then how does my tongue
still remember the taste
of your skin?
Brad Rose
Perseverance
The dead are dreaming of us, again. In fact, they’re thinking of turning their dreams into a Broadway musical. Meanwhile, like a bent boomerang, I’m going the distance. I’m thinking it through. I’m sticking with it. Life is beautiful. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Amy Milin
Friend’s House
Thanks for the clothes
(though they're a little long).
My feet are half-socked;
granola mouth feels odd
the morning won't regret us.
Ted Mico
The Bends
Coming up too fast
faintness becomes us
better than we are.
Our tongues swell above—
blood bursting speechless
from diver’s disease
a bent-double dialect
20,000 leagues at the back of the throat
we recall verbatim
that voice swallowing
all the r’s rolled in mouthy mouths
like loose change lost
to the abyss where metal words
fluent in blue sink
when we’re done with them.
Ted Mico
Iris on Fire
My daylight savings machine turns on,
gathers all the sun in the world,
binds it, places it on a bookshelf—
sunlight opening like knowledge
at the local library. We look up
in opposite directions, watch
one big black eye where the sun
used to be, our day, nighted,
our thoughts, lightless. Waking sun
that was given, now misgiving.
We look up eclipse: from the Greek,
meaning abandonment, downfall,
in pages only our black eyes can see.
Ted Mico
Sirenomelia
Any fool can get into an ocean
it takes a goddess to get out of one
– Jack Spicer
Land-life is slippery
so she gets up
the way a ship sinks
barefoot stumbling
with the newness of legs
her pink scales
falling more than I can bear,
the ocean made flesh
leaves goodbye salt
in all my soft places.
Tide slow-folds
the beach between us,
light between her legs,
not mine, united,
unlearning to swim
the ocean opened by that
look of the freshly drowned
as her screaming blue
normal washes me
up on the sand.
Lesley Lambton
Pass/Fail
What if, when we get to the Pearly Gates,
the question is not: how good were you, how bad?
But how much did you pay attention?
Name me forty-three species of trees?
Ten words for snow and why?
Five types of kisses for babies?
Which star would be best to guide you home?
And, which to give you comfort
if you had no home?
Kelley White
Flabbergasted
Row houses do not always make for good
neighbors. Tonight my downhill
neighbor is playing the blues
show, which I appreciate, though
I can’t hear the lyrics, and her dog barks,
and mine barks, and someone’s wood
smoke stings my eyes. It’s quiet. But
I’m revved up. Even the blues don’t calm
me—last week that same downhill
neighbor she left a bag of dogshit
on my steps—which, apparently, is
the approved thing to do if you think
your neighbor doesn’t clean up after
their dog—but I do, I do, I do, and my
little pound dog never poops until we’re
in the woods, never this close to home.
She doesn’t believe me. Of course.
And her dog, well, it’s a pit bull mix.
I’ve seen what it does. I know what
it can do. My dog is a little mutt found lost
on the street. So what is next on our agenda.
Well, I’ll just listen through the instrumental
interlude.
Marcus Ten Low
light through the window
of a poor man's house
i mean,
the light's okay, burning a urine
yellow. window is stiff, square,
and doesnt travel well, so leave it
shut. its raindrop stains are proud tears,
the glint is superficial.
i worry incessantly
the glass of it will shatter,
leaving me with crumbs in my hands,
if ever i slam it too hard—
i worry for you, walking among
sunflowers on the other side,
your smile wider and wider,
your soiled feet stepping, dainty,
maybe returning.
Michael C. Roberts
Click any photo below to enlarge.
John Johnson
Illusory Continuity of Tones
About to embark on a journey, a woman forgets her face in a mirror. She’s in a hurry, ready to leave, but the simplest things keep falling into her hands. She looks up through a hole in the sky at a plane inventing itself in the mouth of a baroque cloud. Soon the sun will climb down, infusing the air with allusion. Arrangements will be made, a list drawn up of things that go nameless. She’ll commit to memory where she parked the car, but the machinery of cells, though they transcribe letter by letter, will disorder the copy so as to make it sticky and true.
John Johnson
Persistence of Vision
It was about that time. We followed it down a deer path to a horseshoe bay where the wings of vinegar flies diffracted light in fluorescent colors. Everyone brought parasols and pink erasers. “That’s nice,” someone said. By which he meant ignorant or wanton, fastidious or shy or pleasant. Or something else.
They say the anemone opens under the influence of wind, and nearly everything, even concrete, is self-healing. That notwithstanding, there’s an ullage needs looking into, a volume above. It follows first principles (primary shapes, Platonic solids). Like a flea comb it has fine teeth. Like an isometric exercise it pushes against itself and doesn’t move.
Devony Hof
cicada
we shed our exoskeletons in early summer
on a fence outside the emptying dorms,
our burnished legs warping the light like
a discordant harmony. reflections of
wings shudder in hollow rows of eyes as
we descend on the midwest, burning
seventeen dark years with ignorant fury.
Sarah Carleton
Nether Ballad
And so I sank under drift and under garden
to where my feet were shod in cold,
my breast in mud, numb, clumped
at the root of water.
Then I, bride of banner song, braided my hair
with feather and dung and outran fear
on undersea hooves.
Only then did I view hills and count
the stuff of home—egg, Lego,
table of glass—that made for me a ladder.
Philip Venzke
Another Way To Look At Love
My skivvies. Your panties.
Captured by laundry pins
onto the sisal clothes line.
The wind whips them.
Every time they twist by
each other, they wave.
Willie Carver
Love Poem from the Other Side of the Living Room
How can I get y'all to believe me
when I tell you how love feels
at nine o’clock on a work night
in the second decade of marriage?
Headphones in, he counted down
the debut of a video he had excitedly
told me about a dozen times over
coffee when I wasn’t listening
but his excited words rayed open
their own oscillant skins with such joy
that just hearing him count
from my exhausted armchair
bought as a set with his sofa
I prayed a deep thanks
to the women who
taught him numbers
Dagne Forrest
The Empty Room
The bell unanswered
rankles the air, molecules
set spinning unseen,
settling like radium dust,
dark tailings of words unsaid.
Jill Jepson
Brother
They say you were too young to remember, but you remember.
The blue-veined eyelids. The miniature-marshmallow toes. The eyes of no particular color. How a tiny bubble formed on his lips. How he wrapped his elfin fingers around yours and held on tight.
They tell you a three-year-old cannot create memories. But you still see the polished bars of his crib. The blue clouds on his blanket. You still smell his alien baby scent. You were supposed to be sleeping, but you came down the stairs. You opened the heavy door. You stood on the chair to look inside the crib. And you whispered, brother.
When he was gone and the crib stood empty and was finally discarded, the room unused, full of the dust of grief, you waited. You did not ask because you knew with a deep certainty that you were not to ask, ever. So you waited. You came down the stairs. Again and again, you opened the heavy door. It was a long time before you realized he would never come back.
They say you were too young to remember. But you came down the stairs on a moonlit night, and he held your hand. And maybe he didn’t look into your eyes with a great and knowing wisdom. And maybe you didn’t speak in some language known only to the two of you. And maybe he didn’t call you sister. But he wrapped his fingers around yours, and you know now what it meant. That you will always be his link to the living.
Gary Kruse
Glad to Be Here For a While
When I was young, we called it gravity
and now, the weight of stars,
the force of the great celestial dome.
It’s what pushes down, precisely,
on the atmosphere.
And as well, upon our shoulders.
A force that pacifies that pernicious urge
to go swimming off to the moon.
Richard Fox
Pastoral
Winter, come slow me down—the black walnuts &
the osage orange are coming down hard;
the bucks are in rut & crashing through the brush
to get to their mates.
I never expected the sky to lower its head so close.
Fire burns upwards on Earth, & not in all directions
like on Pluto, which we’ve disowned.
Richard Fox
The Finches
Please forgive me, then forgive yourself:
in the hedge, the finches lock into a fist,
& this is my heart;
two finches—two fists—& I am a penitent.
There are not enough feathers in the world
or gods in the pantheon
to lift me even one inch.
Hilary Sideris
Nonno Vincenzo
Vincenzo wants his son,
Daniel, a pure product
of Upstate, to name his
unborn child Vincenzo.
I tell him it’s bad luck unless
you’re dead. Besides,
Dan’s adamant: It’s either
Grant or Nate.
A final vowel is fine
as long as it keeps silent
like the e in Anglicized,
two-syllable Fanone.
Vergogna—shame!
Tonight in Brooklyn,
doors will slam, Deruta
bowls will break.
Hilary Sideris
Vincenzo as Pinocchio
Vincenzo’s turn
to change the sheets:
Sí sí, he will, he will
tomorrow & tomorrow,
insomma, soon. A week
goes by before I shriek
puzzano—they stink!
Then we don’t speak.
The longer his nose,
the louder he snores.
For laziness—pigrizia—
Pinocchio grew asses’
ears, a tail. Vincenzo
says he’s sorry, but I
only hear him bray.
Jacob D. Salzer
A Tanka
re-reading her letter . . .
in the wake
of a crashing wave
the deep bass notes
of a whale
Mike Taylor
Turk Street
You tilt the high town sidewalks,
driven mad by godliness,
then sprawl, snoring
at the feet of passersbys—
perhaps the wolves are blind tonight,
a lamb will find you first.
Contributors
Sarah Carleton writes poetry, edits fiction, and plays the banjo in Tampa. Her poems have appeared most recently in Gleam, Door Is a Jar, and SWWIM, and have received nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her first collection, Notes from the Girl Cave, was published in 2020.
Willie Carver is a hillbilly poet. He has poems in Another Chicago, Smoky Blue, Miracle Monocle, Good River, and Salvation South, among others. His collection, Gay Poems for Red States, is a Top-Ten Best Book of Appalachia, Top-Ten LGBTQ book by the American Library Association, and 2024 Stonewall Honor Book.
Dagne Forrest is a Canadian poet with recent work appearing or forthcoming in Pinhole Poetry, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Unlost, The Inflectionist Review, december magazine, and On the Seawall. Her debut chapbook will be published by Baseline Press in 2025.
Richard Fox has been a regular contributor of poetry and artwork to online and print literary journals. Swagger & Remorse, his first book of poetry, was published in 2007. A visual artist and poet, he holds a BFA in Photography from Temple University, Philadelphia, and lives in Salt Lake City, UT.
Howie Good is a writer living on Cape Cod. His newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.
Devony Hof is a poet and playwright from Palo Alto, CA, now based in Chicago. Her poems have appeared in recent issues of Right Hand Pointing, Wildroof Journal and Synaeresis. Follow her on instagram @devonyhof or check out her website, devonyhof.com.
Jill Jepson is the author of Writing as a Sacred Path and Women’s Concerns: Twelve Women Entrepreneurs of the 18th and 19th Centuries, and the editor of No Walls of Stone: An Anthology of Literature by Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Writers. Her work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, A Woman’s Path: Women’s Best Spiritual Travel Writing, Gordon Square Review, and other literary journals.
Gary Kruse’s poems have appeared in Litbreak, Poetry Now and the anthology, Voices 2020 published by Cold River Press. He lives in Northern California.
Cam McGlynn is a writer and scientific researcher living outside of Frederick, Maryland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in One Art, Molecule, Open Minds Quarterly, and Cicada among others. She likes made-up words, Erlenmeyer flasks, dog-eared notebooks, and Excel spreadsheets.
Ted Mico began his writing career in London as an editor at the seminal weekly music paper Melody Maker. His poetry has recently featured in Slipstream, Lumina, Arboreal, Iliot Review, Blood & Bourbon, Pure Slush, and Parcham. He’s edited three books of non-fiction and is a regular attendee at the legendary Beyond Baroque poetry workshop in Venice, California
John Johnson's poems have appeared most recently in The Collidescope, Hidden Peak Press, The Prose Poem, and Right Hand Pointing. He is co-translator, with Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales, of Plagios/Plagiarisms, the poetry of Ulalume González de León, winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award for poetry in translation.
Lesley Lambton was born in the North East England but lived in Connecticut for many years. She recently moved to the Isle of Man in the middle of the Irish Sea. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and journals including the Connecticut River Review and The Worcester Review.
Marcus Ten Low is an eco-ethicist and artivist who aspires to be "kind to all beings". He posts often on social media @antibreeder1m and has been published numerous times by Quadrant, The Big Issue (Australia) and the Animal Justice Party (Qld). He has been incarcerated over 20 times in Australia.
Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada (for now). His most recent book is Caucus Country (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Jeremy works in adult education and literacy and basic skills.
Amy Milin is a writer of fiction and poetry from New York City, currently wandering the woods of rural Pennsylvania. There she runs Swift Waters, a startup retreat and residency for writers and artists. She has been published in Joyland Magazine. Find her on Instagram at @swiftwaters_creative_retreat and @amy.mylin.
Michael C. Roberts is a sort-of retired clinical child/pediatric psychologist. He makes photos with cheap cameras to produce a dreamy soft focus on film. The cameras allow double exposures in the camera, vignetting, light leaks in reddish or whitish clouds along with scratches on the film. His photographs have appeared in American Psychologist, Health Psychology, The Canary, Images Arizona, Burningword, The Healing Muse, and elsewhere. His book of photographs is Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga is available on amazon.com.
Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. He is the author of five collections of poetry and flash fiction: Lucky Animals, No. Wait. I Can Explain., Pink X-Ray, de/tonations, and Momentary Turbulence. WordInEdgeWise is forthcoming. His website is www.bradrosepoetry.com
Jacob D. Salzer is a Pacific Northwest poet and editor who primarily writes haiku and tanka. He is the author of a 2024 award-winning chapbook, A Lost Prophet: Haiku & Tanka from Brooks Books. He is the current managing editor of Frogpond: The Journal of the Haiku Society of America.
Hilary Sideris is the author of Un Amore Veloce, The Silent B, Animals in English, and Liberty Laundry. Her new collection, Calliope, is forthcoming from Broadstone Books. She works for CUNY Start, a program for immigrants and first-generation college students at The City University of New York.
Lynn Strongin is an American poet currently residing in Canada who has published more than two dozen books. Lynn's new book of poems, Kiosk, is just published in England.
Mike Taylor is a writer / artist living in San Francisco. His work has appeared recently in Trash Panda, Chrysanthemum, and Orchards Poetry Journal.
Philip Venzke grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. His chapbook Chant to Save the World was published by SurVision Books. Another Rules to Change the World was published by Finishing Line Press. His third The Chronicles of Little Zero was published by Alien Buddha Press in August 2024.
Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.