What if I crossed the border after 50 springs, summers, falls, and winters? After all the learning, the forgetting, the labour, and lost loves, after all the growing pains, the births, deaths, and family joys and tragedies? What if I returned to the land of my youth, a much older man than the seven-year-old, wide-eyed boy? I will offer the best of me. Who will offer me the best of them? I will have to find a place to call home, a seat at a table where I will have my meals, a place where I could have a conversation with someone other than myself, a room where I could read and write, and most of all sleep. Who will break bread with me, help me decorate the house with books and flowers, with paintings and plants, and share stories, laughter, and wine from time to time? As I write these words, other words are being twisted, designed to make people like me to return to the place of our birth, if we are fortunate enough.
BUCKETFUL OF RAIN
If it is goodbye, I could use a bucketful of rain to drench this fire. Reduce it to smoke before this heart becomes ash.
Even the light trembles and the sun is blushing seeing this conflagration. I should have seen the signs but I hope too much.
Play that violin soft and slow. Speed up the pace as the fire spreads out of control. I can take the heat just a little bit longer.
LIMITS
I climb the branch to the flower; the spider-from-mars’ web-to-the-stars; I flow and fly with the wind further still; through time and newborn worlds; I allow my thoughts to remain on earth; keep the sun and magnifying glass away from me; even an ant has its limits.
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in Los Angeles.He has been published in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Chiron Review, Kendra SteinerEditions, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. His most recent poems have appeared in Four FeathersPress.
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Art by Frederic Edwin Church(1826–1900). From Public Domian
I WANT SPRING
As autumn begins I want spring. I don’t want winter. I don’t want summer. I want spring.
I am straying from the current season. I want to go away to spring.
Carry me off through all the bers, September, October, November, and December.
Take me away from the rys, January and February. I do not need to make any resolutions on the year’s first day. I do not need Valentine’s Day.
I want spring. I want spring all in bloom.
WHEN AUTUMN COMES
My hands are full living in solitude. I love a little less when I feel destroyed.
I feel anti-social when autumn comes. This is just a phase I have stretched out.
I inaugurated sadness. I curse the owl that predicts my fate. It does not like me.
I will love again. I feel it in my skin. I know it sounds absurd. But I will love again.
IN THE SHADOW OF NIGHT
Stumbling in the shadow of night where the scarcity of light bleeds over what could not be seen. It could be a monster or fiend or friend.
It is easy for me to pretend what is not there. I don’t really know if anyone is asking. What if it was me who is slower than most? I am not
some great thief who comes out at night. I am not brave enough to fight the monster or the fiend. I could face my friend with a smile.
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in Los Angeles.He has been published in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Chiron Review, Kendra SteinerEditions, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. His most recent poems have appeared in Four FeathersPress.
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Parry Lines was an ordinary fellow, so much so that even his friends couldn’t be bothered to find out his actual name and were content to call him “Parallel,” his nickname since childhood. Regular, indeed nondescript features were surmounted by his trademark bald pate; the most you could say was that occasionally he wore a bright plaid shirt in neon pastels to liven things up a bit.
Ten weeks A.G. (After Gherkin)
Yet his death (by gherkin) caused a butterfly effect that changed the world. Until the incident with the gherkin, the most notable thing that had ever happened to Parry was when his surprisingly dashing teenaged son had consumed an entire teacup full of gravy during Thanksgiving dinner. Honoured guests had watched in horror as Parry Jr. (PJ for short), notable for his twinkling hazel eyes and flowing chestnut hair, gulped down the rich, brown fluid–though they should have expected something of the kind when he poured the gravy from the pitcher on the table into the China cup ready at his place setting for after-dinner tea.
Present at that event, and at the gherkin incident as well, was Mrs. Honoria Tadpole, English professor and amateur sleuth. Her demure, conservative appearance (she always wore a smart, tailored suit–or at least the best the local thrift shop could provide–and had her silver-blonde hair cut in a perky, short bob) and her self-effacing manner and diminutive (if plump) stature belied the sharpest mind north of California. It would fall to her to unravel the complicated mystery that the local paper dubbed “Gherkingate.”
Interviewed by the features’ editor, as the criminal trial of the alleged murderer dragged on, Mrs. Tadpole was asked the inevitable question of how it had all started. The interview took place in Mrs. Tadpole’s well-appointed parlour, a room replete with Victorian bric-a-brac. With characteristic hospitality, she poured out a strong brew of BC Bold to accompany the delicate sandwiches (ham, egg, and cucumber) and homemade oatmeal cookies that were her signature “high tea,” known to local islanders as a four o’clock tradition at the old manse where Mrs. Tadpole rented a small suite.
“Now, Mrs. Catchpole, I understand you were part of the original party that travelled to Moany Bay,” the interviewer began.
“Tadpole,” Mrs. Tadpole corrected. A veteran instructor of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, she was used to misspellings and mispronunciations. Marpole, Rumpole, Toadpole: she had heard and seen it all, and could make the necessary correction without even flinching anymore. She cast her mind back almost three months to a mid-summer weekend off British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.
She began with an allusion to classic culture: “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…”
Sadly, the features’ editor of the Island Gleaner failed to catch the reference to Gilligan’s Island, one of the best sit-coms of the 1960s. Mrs. Tadpole had been a toddler when the series was first aired, but its popularity throughout her childhood made it a touchstone for, really, almost everything in life, according to her observations. She knew that some people accorded such a status to the iconic, original Star Trek, but what did Captain Kirk have that “the Skipper” did not? Not much, thought Mrs. Tadpole.
The premise of Gilligan’s Island was classic: a small number of people, randomly-assorted, stranded on an island together with no real prospect of deliverance. After all, wasn’t that just the paradigm of human existence? You didn’t need to be an English proffessor (though Mrs. Tadpole was one, of course) to figure that out.
That fateful weekend, when the seeds of the gherkin incident was sown, had been rife with undertones of Gilligan’s Isle.
Breathing deeply of the fresh Pacific breeze, the passengers sat out on the deck of the vessel as it hugged the rugged BC coastline. The rushing water behind the Skirmish flumed out into a fan of spray, while the murky depths offshore spat out seals and sealions–even the occasional humpback whale–with random irregularity. Black bears hid among the rocks and evergreens in the uninhabited areas; cabins dotted the beaches in the populated areas of cottage country. On the way up the coast, the party of friends and family had composed their own version of the theme song, with each member of the group assigned to a role from the original cast. Mrs. Tadpole was the Professor, of course. Never mind that the community college where Mrs. Tadpole worked had opted not to accord academic titles to their teachers, or that the original Professor in the TV series was a man. (As Mrs. Tadpole had been known to say to her first-year college students, we live in a post-gender, post-glass-ceiling world. And if we don’t, we should).
Aboard the Bayliner, Skirmish, Parry Lines was the Skipper, and his hapless, gravy-drinking son was typecast as the irrepressible Gilligan, full of mischief and ridiculous ideas. Mrs. Tadpole could only hope that her adorable niece, Mary Anne (same name as her Gilligan’s Island counterpart!), was immune to his sauce-swilling charms.
The Millionaire role was assumed by the reclusive entrepreneur Deadhead, Mickey Garcia (if that were in fact his real name), accompanied by his charming wife, Penelope, a voluptuous brunette. Together they had built an empire founded on tribute bands and biopics. The rumour mill had it that there was trouble in paradise, but no one outside his immediate family had seen Mickey for years, so it was difficult to substantiate the gossip.
The cast was fleshed out (so to speak) with a bona fide movie star, the internet sensation who began as one of the central figures in a YouTube series called Project Man Child (“For the price of a cup of coffee… you can buy this underemployed househusband a cup of coffee!”) and had gone on to a viral barrage of TikToks under the sobriquet of “The Naked Gardener”. Mrs. Tadpole was relieved (as no doubt were the others) to note that all the passengers aboard the Skirmish, including this one, appeared to be fully clothed.
At least, all whom she could see wore conventional travelling attire: Mr Garcia, recovering from surgery and groggy with heavy opiates, was shrouded in a blanket and wearing dark glasses. He slumped a little to the side, and his heavy breathing attested to a well-earned reputation for napping as a pretense in order to ignore his surroundings.
As Mrs Tadpole later told the Gleaner interviewer, the real concern of the trip quickly emerged: not the rapprochement of Mary Anne and Parallel Jr., but the burgeoning, even violent antagonism between Parry Sr. and Penelope Garcia, whom the latter insisted on calling “Cherry” with a suggestive leer while her husband languished in his bunk. “Is he grateful? Or just dead?” quipped Lines. One night, Penelope went so far as to brandish a knife in Lines’ general direction and had to be restrained by Mrs Tadpole and Mary Anne in tandem.
Although Madame Garcia was the only one to meet his taunts with open animosity, no one was spared the self-proclaimed wit of Parallel Lines.
He had the nerve to call Mrs Tadpole’s beloved niece, whose sunny disposition was outshone only by the sweet, fair face that perched above her perfect figure, “Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary” –nothing could have been further from the truth! Of course, Mary Anne merely smiled and shrugged it off, as if no insult could penetrate her cheerful exterior … but others were less armour-clad.
The bully referred mercilessly to the Naked Gardener as “Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef” (whom he slightly resembled) a slur that obviously got under the man’s skin (“I couldn’t boil an egg to save my life!” he protested angrily. “That’s not my brand at all! He’d better watch his back…”).
Even Mrs. Tadpole (surprisingly resilient after having been bullied through her shy youth as resembling a chubby little toad) came in for her share of abuse, rechristened as “Mrs Toad” after making her one of specialties, toad-in-the-hole, for her shipmates. (Once she discovered that the galley of the Bayliner was stocked with a potato ricer and La Ratte potatoes, there was no holding her back. A ring of caramelized onions surrounded each serving dish, with two nut-brown sausage-ends sticking out of the centre, for all the world like a couple of froggy eyes.) “No one calls me Toad,” she intoned ominously.
Cruelly and unaccountably, Parallel Lines saved his worst tirade for his own son. Recalling that terrible moment of youthful folly, that mind-gripping shame that only time could heal, the father saluted the son like a champion hog-caller summoning his prize sow. “Sooooo-Eeeeee! Want some gravy with that?” Alternatively, he would break into song to the tune of ‘Hey, Jude’:
"Au jus, Just make it fat, Take some gravy And make it wetter..."
It was pitiful to see the boy’s response, especially in front of Mary Anne. His pale face was suffused with a ruddy glow beneath his chestnut fringe, and hot, angry tears rose in his sensitive, hazel eyes.
“I’ll kill him,” PJ muttered under his breath.
And now the tranquil Mary Anne, who couldn’t have cared less about any vitriol directed her way, was at last roused to fury in defense of her maligned and helpless friend. “I’ll do it for you!” she offered. “By G—!”
Two Hours B.G. (Before Gherkin)
Suffice it to say, no one was all that distressed when Parallel Lines failed to return to the Skirmish after an afternoon in the seaside village of Egmont (pronounced with an “egg” and not an “edge”).
Penelope had steered Mickey off in a collapsable wheelchair they had stowed on the boat; “the millionaire and his wife” were off for lunch al fresco, heading for a picnic table in an accessible, though private, spot. Roast beef sandwiches and condiments, along with champagne and a couple of plastic flutes, had been assembled into a decorative yet sturdy straw basket which the amazon-like Penelope slung easily over one arm as she manouevred the wheelchair down the forest path.
The movie star had gone in search of Egmont’s famous cream cheese cinnamon buns, hoping to be recognised at the Forest Cafe by someone who would do a double take and exclaim, “Hey! Wait! Aren’t you that man child?”
Mrs Tadpole and her niece decided to go for a refreshing swim in the brisk waters of the bay, washing off the grime of shipboard life before stopping at the Village Green Room for a bowl of veggie curry soup and some fresh, hot rolls.
As for PJ, he declared himself too upset to leave the Skirmish, and was hoping to curl up with a graphic novel, a diet soda, and a bag of Doritos, to forget all his cares for a few hours while the rest of the party looked around Egmont Village.
But where was Parallel? It was time to cast off. If they didn’t leave soon, they wouldn’t make it to the Coastal Lodge before dark. And–not to mention–P. Lines was the skipper!
“I’m perfectly capable of getting us there,” insisted PJ, fortified by his power nap. “I’ll bet you anything, dad’s holed up at the Drifter Pub, and he’ll crash at the hotel there. I’m sure he’s as tired of us as we are of him. Let’s just go. We’ll all have cooled off by tomorrow morning, and I’ll swing back and get him then, bring him up to the Lodge for the rest of the weekend.”
The plan sounded good, and all agreed to it willingly. Off they set for the rustic cabin someone had dubbed the Coastal Lodge in hopes (quite justified, as it turned out) of charging a tidy sum in AirBnB rates. Never mind that it featured a remote outhouse and a camp kitchen; the setting was beyond beautiful, and the (now) congenial group looked forward to beach and forest walks, blazing bonfires, and midnight swims. Mrs Tadpole insisted on taking charge of the outdoor kitchen: she had brought the ingredients for her famous moussaka and looked forward to the challenge of cooking it in a casserole dish on the barbecue. PJ and Maryanne diced feta, tomatoes, onions and cucumbers for a Greek salad, while the movie star tried in vain to get a cell signal and the millionaires played cribbage by the big bay window in the cabin.
Parallel Lines could cool his heels at the Drifter until morning, thought PJ and crew.
G.T. (Gherkin Time)
“So,” said Mrs. Tadpole to her interviewer, “Can you guess who did it?”
“Uh,” said the Features editor. “Nope.”
“I’ll give you a hint: don’t ask who was the perpetrator. Ask who was the victim!”
“Well, that would be Mr. Lines, would it not?”
“Would it? What if the wheelchair-bound invalid, Mr. Garcia, was really Parallel Lines in disguise?”
“But–”
“He was wrapped in a blanket, wearing dark glasses and a mask, slumped in his chair. And there was a switcheroo.”
“A what?”
“A switch. In the forest.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered. Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Blackmail.”
“You’re blackmailing the unlikely lovers? Parry Lines and Madame G?”
“No, they’ve been blackmailing me. But it’s time to come out. My trans-formation is at hand!”
“Mrs Tadpole! What a story for the Gleaner–and for the world! May I be the first to congratulate you?”
“You may.”
Deborah Blenkhorn is a poet, essayist, and storyteller living in Canada’s Pacific Northwest. Her work fuses memoir and imagination, and has been featured in over 40 literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
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Mountains are baked into the earth, caked with mud, green grass, rocks and dirt.
Somewhere between trees and brushes, howling wolves belt out nature’s blues.
Blades of grass, smooth, and rough pebbles, lead to the edge of the mountain’s
peak. In the fog, in the pines, a lone wolf keeps to itself as birds
sing all day long, far from the towns, cities, in the baked mountainside.
FINEST PAINTBRUSH
Unfold your finest paintbrush to night’s blackboard, with gentle strokes fill the darkness with starlit skies. In the morning clean your paintbrush, dip it in orange, red, and yellow colors to paint the blue skies for the amusement of lovers and friends, even strangers.
Do not languish in apathy. Bring that paintbrush around and cover every square inch of the canvas that surrounds us. Unleash your Leonardo, your Michaelangelo, and your Vincent. Splash the skies like Jackson, spread out like Diego and Frida. Make the roses blush and open.
PULL THE BLINDS
Pull the blinds, outside our illusions live as birds, their monotonous song
fill the skies. I love them. They are fragile. With their wings they are safe.
I pull the blinds. It is like taking masks off. For days I close the blinds. For days I leave them open. For all I know, I just pretend
there are no blinds. I do not care about what happens outside in the light or darkness.
I pull the blinds for the last time.
Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poetry has been featured in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Mad Swirl, Rusty Truck, and Unlikely Stories.
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I am not young anymore. In the evening, I stay home. I have no bouquet of flowers to offer for any beautiful girl.
In the evening, I keep to myself. I buy no roses for anyone. I write no love poems. I do write a few for the birds.
I prefer a silent evening. I prefer sleeping a little too much. The birds sing me to sleep. Their song pushes through my window.
I am not young anymore. I pick at my scab I got from picking oranges, not from picking flowers for a beautiful girl. If you did not know, the orange tree has sharp thorns.
I LOVE YOU
There is one thing I will never say to you. And if I say it once, I will not say it again. I will not say the one word I want to say to you. There was a time I knew nothing. Even my eyes gave me away. I settle for what we have if it is just for a little while. Let’s face it, a little while might be all I have left. The hourglass has the sand near the bottom. It will not be long when I get too old or sick for you. I watch the sky from my window. It goes from light to grey to black. I am living this life one day at a time. What is lost I will never get back. There is one thing I want you to know. I will not say it to you today or tomorrow.
MY OWN BOOK
I brought my own book for a ride. I took it and stopped at 9th Street pretending it is where it wanted me to stop. I read a few poems to a man that was just got off the train. One line I read made him laugh. He asked me to stop before he threw up.
The man did not like my poetry. He told me not to quit my day job. That thought never crossed my mind, and poetry was never a second job. I got back in my car and drove my own book home and put it away in the bookshelf for the night to sleep.
Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poetry has been featured in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Mad Swirl, Rusty Truck, and Unlikely Stories.
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I live close by to the Brighton Jetty. Going for a walk there gives me my daily dose of sunshine and smiling faces, soothing me when I feel lonely. Sometimes, I’ve gone and bought a lemon sorbet or sausage roll, eating it whilst seated on a bench overlooking the jetty. On summery days, families play in the shade under the jetty, making memories that will last a lifetime. At sunset, you can see couples strolling hand-in-hand, stopping only to snap selfies against an impossibly photogenic crimson sky. From dawn till dusk however, when you walk upon the jetty, you’ll see fishermen, and the occasional fisherwoman. They have set up camp with foldable chairs and boxes of fishing gear. They sit slumped with their nose in their phones, waiting hours for a bite. Dismembered crab claws and fish guts add to the stained cement, making for a grotesque and pungent scene of nautical carnage.
Many years ago, if you walked out to the end of the jetty on any given day, you may have seen an unusual sight, a trolley with two blanket-covered chihuahuas snuggled in it. They belonged to an old man who sat and fished nearly every day. The tiny dogs were swathed in raggedy blankets and nestled within a trolley. One had a stained camo baseball cap on while the other had a beanie. They were equipped with tiny life vests, perhaps on the off chance that they decided to stumble into the sea. Instead, they sat shivering in the ocean breeze, staring with bleary eyes far out across the sea. Their wise pink eyes must have seen far beyond space-time.
Jetty Dog by Vela Noble
I had been a teenage artist with my heart set on an art school in California at the time. I plopped down in my baggy jeans on the fish-stained concrete and sketched the dogs with a pen. My agenda had been that acceptance into the school required a portfolio of artworks all drawn from life. Noticing my gaze, the old man hobbled proudly over to me and showed me an oily newspaper clipping in his wallet.
‘Look, my dogs ended up in the newspaper!”
Other Adelaidians had obviously also thought this scene was charming and worthy of being remembered. For simply sitting there in the salty air, the two dogs and their bristly bearded owner seemed to have become as much a part of the jetty itself as its barnacled steel beams. I visited the old man and his dogs a few afternoons while I was preparing a portfolio for art school, and then I was gone. Overseas to Los Angeles and other big cities and, for the longest time, I put my memories of little old Adelaide behind me.
This all happened a long time ago, around a decade to be precise. Fate had pulled me back to my hometown and back to my childhood home. Sometimes, when I stroll in the sunshine down to the jetty and sit there slurping my lemon sorbet, I almost expect to see that elderly owner with his two chihuahuas, perched in their rightful spot at the shaded end of the jetty. Instead, the newer generations of fishermen have taken over, more concerned with TikTok reels than fishing ones. I would love to know what happened to that old man and his two chihuahuas.
Vela Noble is a student at Adelaide University currently finishing her BA degree majoring in Creative Writing and Japanese Studies.
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In the evening at sea I fish the moon’s reflection. It is my recreation and my white whale. I never catch that moon but I like the challenge. The lost souls at sea sing throughout the night. They sing an old song lost for years. The song is a curse of course, a spell from the waning moon.
GONE INTO EXILE
Pretend I am not here. Pretend I am long gone. Imagine my leaving was no magic trick, but something ordinary. I do not feel my presence is at all necessary. Forget about me and do not expect my return.
FLY AWAY MOTH
Fly away moth To the moon Of the streetlight The hot bulb That is miles Away from the Actual moon Once you get To the light bulb Don’t let go You’ll be satisfied By the false moon Its bright light Warm and round Like a breast
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California, works in Los Angeles in the mental health field, and is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press). His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Escape Into Life, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press. Kendra Steiner Editions has published 8 of his chapbooks.
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World Poetry Day falls in March — the same month that houses the World Wildlife Day. Our beautiful planets’ flora and fauna, impacted by the changing climate, might have to adapt or alter. Part of the land masses are likely to return to rest under rising tides. And humanity, how will we respond or survive these phenomena?
We have here responses in poetry from our newly-minted section on Environment and Climate. We celebrate with poetry on our home and hearth, the Earth.
From Public Domain
We start with poetry on fires that seems to have razed large parts of our planet recently…
Poetry and Photography by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal
PUT OUT THE FLAMES: 01:12:2025
Rain is no consolation but it is as essential as sunshine, even more so as the white smoke and fire flow is what your camera spotlights for miles. So many dreams destroyed. Each helping hand is in need of rain, a sea of rain to put out the flames. Rain is no consolation but crucial.
WEATHER REPORT: 01:22:2025
Behind the tree The moon’s reflection On a cold Wednesday morning
The fires in the distance Still burn this winter season With no rain in sight in the West
Acres burn, homes burn And back in the South and East Freezing temperatures and snow
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California, works in Los Angeles in the mental health field, and is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press). His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Escape Into Life, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press. Kendra Steiner Editions has published 8 of his chapbooks.
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Let’s take flight like oblivion’s ashes I will find you in swirling breezes Let’s tear up the skies, you and me
On autumn days when skies are gray Show me your sadness, I’ll show you mine
What thoughts have you about me and you? I know we can live in harmony
Let’s take flight on autumn days when skies are grey like oblivion’s ashes.
LEFT WANTING
I am left wanting of everything the world takes away.
I don’t seek excess. I take a deep breath and turn off the lights.
I find a cozy bed, fall asleep, and I dream away.
I let everything go and sing a melancholy song.
CLOUDY EYES
I stand on the balcony crying rain from cloudy eyes. It is a steady stream. It becomes a storm being pushed by the wind. If I could, I would try to keep it all inside. But the rain falls out from cloudy eyes
like waterfalls. How it falls. How it falls out of control. I spray the crying rain with fierce strength. It becomes a raging flood. It falls and falls till the world ends.
From Public Domain
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California, works in Los Angeles in the mental health field, and is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press).His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Escape Into Life, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press. Kendra Steiner Editions has published 8 of his chapbooks.
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Borderless 