The Taylor Trust: Volume 4
By Jim Fuess
Volume 4 of The Taylor Trust is ready for your enjoyment at
http://issuu.com/the-taylor-trust/docs/ttt_volume_4
THE OLD MAN AND THE FARM
Will Johnson sat on his farmhouse porch. His heavy, white eyebrows narrowed above his gray eyes. The expression on his weather-beaten face was forlorn, making him look older than his seventy-five years. With a red handkerchief, he mopped the beads of sweat from his forehead. All summer he had waited and waited for rain — still no rain was in sight.
This was his life — the farm with its corn crop. It had been good to him. But this year, the land was parched from lack of rain. He’d never made much off the hundred acres he lived on, but it was his land; he was born here. He couldn’t remember a drought as bad as this one.
Will frowned as he stared at the small, red barn. His thoughts went out to Anna, his wife who had died here fifty years ago, giving birth to their only child. Their newborn boy died later that same summer. And now for half a century he lived alone. He communicated little with the outside world. Once every two weeks he would go into town with his old pickup truck for the usual supplies he needed — bread, canned goods, breakfast cereal, and a newspaper. The animals on the farm were few, four cows, a dozen hogs, and three dozen chickens.
Will stood, stretched his long arms, and walked to the back of the house. In all his years, he had never experienced a drought as bad as this. Never — never had the summer been this hot! He tried to remember when it had last rained. Was it six weeks or seven? He seated himself on the log fence and gazed at the three apple trees behind the dried-up brook. He thought about his long years on the farm and how he’d had to struggle to produce a corn crop. This summer, the work was wasted!
When the early evening chores were finished, Will sat down on the farmhouse porch steps. He pulled out the red handkerchief from his pocket and proceeded to dry his sweaty forehead. He looked at the cornfield as the setting sun won another battle with his crop. Another hot day — with no rain!
Will heard the sound of a bird — a suffering bird. He stood, and walked toward the noise. And there, at his feet, was a young sparrow. Its one wing was broken. Carefully, with his big hands, he picked up the bird. He took it inside the house and placed it in a tomato box. He poured some breakfast cereal into the box. He watched the sparrow as it pecked at the food.
Outside on the porch, Will leaned against the railing, and he remembered how kind his Anna had been to animals. Once she had quoted something to him about birds. Something from the Bible. It had been a long time since he’d read the bible, or prayed.
He went inside the house. And in the bedroom, he opened the bottom dresser drawer. There in the corner of the drawer was Anna’s wedding dress. On the neatly folded dress was the Bible she used to read to him after the evening chores were done. He picked up the Bible and closed the drawer. He walked to the window and opened the Bible. He began to read: Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? (Matthew 6:26).
Outside on the porch, Will watched the rising moon. He thought about Anna and her deep faith in God. The rain would come. Of this he was sure.
Raymond John Flory has been writing and contributing inspirational works for many years. His poetry and prose have appeared frequently in The Christian Writer’s Pen, Cottage Connections, Conquistador, and Writer’s Gazette among many others. He has established an award program for fellow poets called The Explorer Award. Formerly a longtime publisher of a poetry and short prose periodical called Explorer Magazine, he lives and writes in South Bend, Indiana. See his poetry on page 50.
A Second
A second of scorn
Turns years of affection
Into enmity of eternity.
A second of innocent love
Turns two souls
To oscillate, live and die together
In all fair and foul.
A second of opportunity
Transforms penury
To disproportionate property.
A second of mistake
Puts life at stake
And debars one
From any give or take.
A second of adversity
Makes diversity to know
What is unity?
A second of carnal burst:
Relationship exhibits no trust.
A second of ejaculation
The world is sitting
On the volcanic mouth of
Population explosion.
Biography: Vivekanand Jha is a poet and research scholar from Darbhanga, Bihar, India. He is Diploma in Electronics, Certificate in Computer Hardware and Networking, MA in English, and is also doing Ph. D on the poetry of the noted Indian English poet Jayanta Mahapatra from Lalit Narayan Mithila University Darbhanga. He is son of noted professor, poet and award winning translator Dr. Rajanand Jha (Crowned with Sahitya Akademi Award, New Delhi). He is the author of four books of poetry: Hands heave to harm and hamper, Spam: A Satire on E-Sex, Songs of Innocence and Adolescence, My Poems Falter and Fall and Time Moves Clockwise Only. His works have been widely published in the magazine round the world like Pagan Imagination, P & W (Poetry and Writing), Danse Macabre, Vox Poetica, Writing Raw, Whisper publication, Tribal Soul Kitchen, Winamop, Literature India, Mother Bird, Retort Magazine, Holy Rose Review(HRR), Munyori Poetry Journal, Flutter Literary Journal, Taylor: Prose & Poetry, The Fullosia Press, Eclectica Magazine, Write Between the Lines, The Adirondack Review, Eudaimonia Poetry Review, Nagaland Post, World Audience Publishers, The Morung Express, Fresh Literary Magazine, Maverick Magazine, Cliterature, Spoken War, Inclement Poetry Magazine, World Salad Poetry Magazine, South Jersey Underground, Mississippi Crow Magazine, Pink Mouse, Censored Poets, Reflections, Future Earth Magazine, Pandora’s Imagination, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, CANTARAVILLE Quarterly Magazine, Locust Magazine, Carpe Articulum Literary Review, Bonny Berries. Apart from that he got his poems published in the following anthologies: The War Against War Anthology, Ed by Prince Kwasi Mensah ( Mensa Press, USA), Anthology of Canadian Stories IV, Edited by Ed Janzen(Canada), Anthology on the theme of America Ed by Vernon McVety Jr., We come from one place, an anthology edited by Prince Kwasi Mensah ( Mensa Press, USA), Savant 2010 Anthology, Ed by Rose And Alan (England) and Anthology of Science Poetry, Ed by Neil and Zara(Canada) and Poetry Anthology Ed by Dr. Ram Sharma(India).
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WRITER’S GUIDELINES November 2008
TRISHA NELSON March 2009
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ABOUT THE POETRY MAVEN November 2008
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A WRITERS’ COMMUNITY November 2008
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untitled December 2008
The Taylor Trust Volume 4
ELEPHANT MEMORY
The Arab traders’ Serendib,
Walpole’s Serendip,
that Land of Kandy !
The Sacred Tooth Relic of Sidhartha—
rescued from his funeral pyre,
hidden in the hair of a Princess,
to reside on a golden lotus blossom
in the smallest of seven caskets.
Annually, at the Esala Perahera Festival,
it rides through Kandy
on giant elephant back,
midst dancers,
processional pachyderms,
two by two,
each pair painted,
robed the same.
Each pair proud
as if possessed of
the secret of the centuries.
Though the “Zoological Park”
where I witnessed
the reenactment was filthy,
the elephants
danced enchantingly,
processed as if kings of the world,
not a one at all clumsy.
Perhaps they were pleased
to rise above the muck.
Perhaps they remembered
their part in
the Esala Perahera Festival.
When I had “morning tea”
at the Hotel Mt. Lavinia
(where the Raj is still in flower),
my coffee tasted of parched peanuts.
I smiled in memory of,
in honor to,
the Giant Elephant of the Sacred Tooth,
the pachyderm pairs.
by Lynn Veach Sadler
Former college president, Dr. Lynn Veach Sadler, editor, poet, fiction/nonfiction writer, and playwright, has published widely in academics and creative writing. She and her husband have traveled around the world five times; she was writing all the way. Sadler has a full-length poetry collection and novel forthcoming; has six chapbooks published; and has won The Pittsburgh Quarterly’s Hay Prize, tied for first in Kalliope’s Elkind Contest, was a runner-up for the Spoon River Poetry Review Editor’s Prize Contest, and won the Poetry Society of America’s Hemley Award and Asphodel’s Poetry Contest. See her story “Going the Last Mile” on page 142 of the print version of The Taylor Trust.
The Taylor Trust Volume 4
SCENES OF HUNGER
man sits on park bench
with worldly possessions
offers food to birds
a bird with one leg
enjoys the sunshine
on cluster of rocks
calm morning
an egret stands changing
shape of its neck
perched on rocks
birds shift their weight
trying to fish
by Eve Jeannette Blohm
Award-winning poet Eve Jeannette Blohm’s work has appeared in Parnassus, SeLa Vie Writers Journal, Cochran’s Corner, Poets at Work, Lucidity, Lone Star Magazine, Bell’s Letters Poet, and United Amateur Press. She was a featured poet in Haiku Headlines, Poets Fantasy, and Simply Words and voted distinguished poet in PAW. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she also appears in Who’s Who. Blohm writes in New York. See print version of The Taylor Trust or Hubpages for a review of her chapbook, Around the Corner.
Why Not?
An angry man raised his voice
in front of my new wife.
“Don’t want to talk about it.”
Why not?
“What’s the sense of talking about the past?
What’s done is done.”
I only asked my father to tell me about his father.
Only.
All I knew told once:
“He escaped the czarist draft.”
And this:
My father was late for school.
He told the teacher:
“I had to go to court.
My folks got divorced today.”
My grandfather. I met him.
Once.
He lived far away.
California.
The Wonderful World of Disney.
I saw it on T.V.
My favorite was Frontier Land.
Davy Crockett.
I had a coonskin cap.
My grandfather. He had cancer.
He came to us in Boston.
He went to the hospital.
Then our house. Now one-armed.
He showed me Soviet Life. Looked like Life magazine.
“A good country,” he said. “Good to workers.”
He died in California.
Twenty years later,
I only asked my father to tell me about his father.
“Don’t want to talk about it,”
Why not?
“What’s the sense of talking about the past?”
by Neal Whitman
Neal Whitman was a teacher in his paid profession, but now his non-paying profession is poetry. Over the past four years, he has published more than sixty poems in journals such as MacGuffin, Vermont Literary Review, Avocet, Pedestal Magazine, Magnapoets among more than twenty others. He lives in Pacific Grove, California, and in nearby Carmel is a volunteer docent at the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. He has been a guest poet at the Sacramento Poetry Center and next year will be the “Third Thursday” guest poet in Point Arena, California. Neal writes a monthly feature, “Poetry Prof,” for the online journal, Getting Something Read and is an editor for Pulse, a medical humanities journal. He also has published poetry in the International Journal of Healthcare and Humanities. The two haiku that appear on page 132 in the print version of The Taylor Trust Volume 4 were awarded honorable mention in the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society 2009 contest judged by two haiku masters in Japan.
The Taylor Trust Volume 4
VISITATION
Do you sleep with your limbs spread out and bare,
Your body open to intruding kisses
Across the plains and crevices you wear?
Cut from the tropical sun’s humid air
Your nakedness is made for midnight blisses.
The muscles twitching stir and then perspire
A moonlight dew beneath the open window
With tell-tale signs of an arterial fire;
An occult purple flame that rises higher
Enrapt in silken rolling sheets of shadow …
Soft raindrops patter on the edge of your breath
Stirred by my touch, for I am the West Wind
Who blows upon your skin of hyacinth
Impregnating, then bringing dreams to birth
With each gush licking on your turning bend.
by Santiago del Dardano Turann
Santiago del Dardano Turann says, “The basic facts of my biography are rather straightforward. I was born in April of 1968 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in rural Butler County. I have worked blue-collar and retail jobs my whole adult life and do not have a college degree, yet since beginning to submit poetry in August of 2007, my work has been accepted by fifty journals.”
THE TAYLOR TRUST
BURNING LEAVES
(Avarégetés)
By the ditch running along memory road
there’s always a mound of burning leaves.
An upside-down meteor shower: sparks
take off toward heaven with a wheeze.
Bundled up smoke slips off, ready
to play the part of a future ghost,
or steam rising from a pot of stew put out
in the snow to cool at a childhood post.
Cracking twigs and brown-boned leaves
and homeless trash bags in intimate touch,
the wind keeps fumbling with the smoke
as if nervously looking for a mislaid watch.
I want to send a telegraph into the future
with the message the smoke signal weaves,
but, evading my punctuating rake, the message
burns up with the mound of leaves.
by János Szentmártoni,
Poet: János Szentmártoni was born in 1975 in Budapest where he received his
education and still works as the poetry editor of Magyar Napló, a leading Hungarian
literary review, as well as the editor of a publishing house associated with the magazine,
which puts out a yearly anthology of current poetry. He was already recognized for his
unique voice as a university student and has been ever since at the forefront of
contemporary Hungarian poetry. At age twenty-three, he was included in a selection
of emerging Hungarian poets in Filling Station, a Canadian magazine of poetry,
in Paul Sohar’s translation.
Translator: The talented Paul Sohar was able to pursue his life-long interest in literature when he
left his job in a chemistry lab. Published in many venues, he has seven books of
translations from Hungarian. His latest work, True Tales of a Fictitious Spy, is
creative nonfiction about a Stalinist gulag in Hungary.
The Taylor Trust Volume 4
The Winds of Change
Fall is the stepping stone to winter
Before the harsher winds prevail—
A time to think about the future
And perhaps prepare the Christmas mail.
Nature slowly stops her blooming
On the hills and Valley slopes
Anticipating cold and snowing
Calling out our dreams and hopes.
There is wisdom in the seasons
As they quietly seem to merge—
Just as falling leaves have color
Minds can learn to cope and surge!
By Wanda Weiskopf
The Taylor Trust: Summer Issue – July to September
http://www.mp3.com/artist/drew-bennet/songs/
VIEW THE LATEST ONLINE ISSUE BY CLICKING ON
http://issuu.com/the-taylor-trust/docs/ttt_summer_2009_vol_3a
(See a poem from this issue below.)
REMEMBERING MÁTRANOVÁK
(Mátranováki emlek) by János Szentmártoni,
translated from the Hungarian by Paul Sohar
Visiting relatives. Mountains. Ducks. Picnic fires.
Childhood. Air you can bite. Dreams.
Aunt Anna’s breakfast: bread and butter, salami, milk.
Uncle Karcsi a striking figure
~ after dinner he makes the violin sing.
Summer. Well water.
Palko gives me a ride on a tractor up into the mountains.
Wild boar tracks. The gleam of antlers. Wings.
The entrance hall is big enough
to accommodate a pig slaughter in winter.
There are two girls. One is too young yet.
The other is always around. Always pestering me.
A few years younger: an age gap not to be bridged.
I tease her. Make fun of her country dialect.
In the woodshed I whisper to her: I’ll be a writer.
Wide open, glistening pair of eyes.
Short summer dress. Dirty blond hair.
Jewelry-fine feet bathing in sunshine.
She rewards my secret with one of her own:
the village boys are jealous of me.
My indifferent shrug hurts.
To keep from crying she digs up a cassette player.
Dance. La Isla Bonita.
Dance. Dance under the afternoon sun.
Dance. She’s dancing. For me. For me alone.
On the train going home, and then for years to come,
I feel, yes: this is romance.
And I often ask her to dance.
