California Quarterly Vol. 50 No. 1, Spring 2024, Edited by Beverly M. Collins

 

California Quarterly, Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 2024

Edited by Beverly M. Collins. Cover Art "Blue Dragonfly and Pink Lily" by Beverly M. Collins

CONTENTS 

I Walked Down California	Paige Moreau	7
The Benefit of Doubt	Jan Mordenski	8
Siren Song	William Ray	9
The Closet Door Opens Itself	Ace Boggess	10
Longing	Linden Van Wert	11
Reborn at Glen Oaks Ranch	Dave Seter	12
Good People and the Old Blue...	Charlene Langfur	13
Heritage	William Mainous II	14
Behind the House	Gloria Keeley	15
Spectacle (in Arabic)	Abd al-Karīm Ṭabbāl	16
Spectacle (translation)	Randy K. Schwartz, tr.	17
Love Affair	Louise Moises	18
Native	Lance Nizami	19
I’m Dreaming Again	Anndrea Scroggins	20
Catholic	Henry Stimpson	21
Truth	Rosemary Ybarra-Garcia	22
At the Art Laundrette	Paul Willis	23
Mars stones	Gregory Cecil	23
Love Note to Guardian Angel	Dave Seter	24
Call It Us	Cathy Porter	25
Falling Stars	D. L. Lang	26
Perseids	Michael Potter	26
Picnicking with Dorothy…	Mary Ellen Talley	27
Lakes Basin—The Real Gold	Raphael Block	28
Rage	Claire Scott	29
After	Paul Willis	30
Spilling Seed	John Briscoe	31
Lost Love in Plaqueville	Marie Lecrivain	32
Walking Past Your House…	Cathy Porter	33
Learn	Greg Moglia	34
Quick	Lynne McNamara	35
Karma Dahlia	Jen  O’Neill Pickering	36
Music	Sarah Baker	37
Night Is Different Now	Lois Marie Harrod	38
Dear Tree	Michael Meyerhofer	39
The Day I Was Born	Dominik Slusarczyk	40
They Always Come Back	Ace Boggess	41
new summer hours	Gregory Cecil	41
Some Stories	Claire Scott	42
Hit On at the Pool	John Grey	43
Prescribed Burn	Jason Harlow	44
surmises of yellow	Gregory Cecil	47
Granddaughter	Doreen Beyer	45
Heimweh	Jeffrey Taylor	46
A Usual Day	Shamik Banerjee	47
She Knew	Claire Scott	48
Cradling the Grave	Lynda V. E. Crawford	49
Remembrance in Shades of…	Kathleen Gunton	50
A Foggy Sunday Morning	Joyce Greenberg Lott	51
To My Brother on His Birthday	Ellen June Wright	52
Under Water	Beverly M. Collins	53
Begin to Heal	Charles Harmon	54
Wind and Wonder	Shamik Banerjee	55
You Again	G.H. Mosson	56
After a Great Sorrow	Mara Fein	57
The Reunion	Laurie Hollman	58
Cover Art (Photo): Blue Dragonfly and Pink Lily, Captured on 7/8/2022. Canon Photograph by Beverly M. Collins, http://www.beverlym-collins.pixels.com.

 Contributors in Alphabetical Order                                               59

  CSPS Contest Opportunities                                                         59  

  CSPS Newsbriefs 2024, No. 1 by Maja Trochimczyk                  62      

  Publishing Opportunities with CSPS                                            65

  2022 CSPS Donors, Patrons, and Membership                            66

  CSPS Membership Form                                                              68       

 

Honeybee and Coneflower by Beverly M. Collins

EDITOR’S NOTE

It has been quite a journey to edit this issue, eye opening in more ways than I have room to list here. A big thanks to Maja Trochimczyk. 

None of us is ever done in our discovery of new things about ourselves and the corners within us that seek for our attention. Many of us stumble through our lives, being as misunderstood as the beautiful creature that graces the cover.

Let spring 2024 be a time to bloom a stronger awareness that our quiet relationship with ourselves is the true base from which all other relationships flower.

In these times, when many projections and news reports can induce a fight-or-flight response within us, I fully relate to the sentiments expressed in the poem “Heimweh” by Jeffrey Taylor.

He questions, “What’s the cost of living in a city I don’t like?”  Take in “Granddaughter”  by Doreen Beyer who views the child as “The little girl whose father’s eyes now settle behind her own.”

I must emphasize, each featured poet included here sparkles as they express the diamonds that are their individual voices. They share what they have lived through and observed; they express their deep, personal response to life.

I praise their bravery and send heart-felt good vibes to their artistic continuum. I hope they always value the light they shine with, and may the readers enjoy and devour their feast-of-words offered in this issue of the California Quarterly.

  Beverly M. Collins                                                   California Quarterly

Burbank, California                                                 Volume  50, Number 1

 ABOUT THE EDITOR

 Beverly M. Collins, author of the books, Quiet Observations and Mud in Magic. Her works appear in publications based in USA, England, Ireland, Australia, India, Berlin, Mauritius, Lebanon, and Canada.

A 2019 Winner Naji Naaman Literary Prize in Creativity (Lebanon), 3 times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, prize winner for the California State Poetry Society; 2^nd placed; June 2021 Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge (Chicago) and performed duties as a guest editor of California Quarterly.

Her photography can be found on: The cover of Peeking Cat 40 (England), California Quarterly,  Fine Art America products, iStock/Getty Images, Shutterstock, Adobe stock and more.

www.https://beverlym-collins.pixels.com

Regal Butterfly by Beverly M. Collins

NEWSBRIEFS, NO. 1, SPRING 2024

The California State Poetry Society was established in 1972, but its 50^th anniversary is celebrated in 2024, since the 50^th volume of the California Quarterly appears this year. So far, we have decided that the CSPS will not hold any in-person events; though a Zoom reading is being considered and anniversary publication plans are in progress.

In 2023, the California State Poetry Society held its Elections of Officers. All currently serving officers agreed to extend their terms and all were re-elected for two years, 2024-2025. Twenty-six ballots were received; one was blank, so 25 votes confirmed the CSPS Officers: Maja Trochimczyk (President), Richard Modiano (Vice President, Communications), Richard Deets (Vice President, Membership), John F. Harrell (Treasurer), and Ambika Talwar (Secretary).  Thank you for your confidence and trust! We will continue working to safeguard the excellent quality of our publications, promote poetry and art.

Monthly Contest Winners of 2023. Alice Pero, the CSPS Monthly Contest Judge, selected the following poems from submissions received each month. The first prize is a minimum of  $10; all prize-winning poems will be published in the CSPS Poetry Letter No. 1 of 2024, in PDF format emailed and posted on our website, and copied on our blog. Congratulations to all the winners!

January (Nature, Landscapes):

   1st Prize: Gurupreet K. Khalsa  “Slip Your Mind Into the Water”

   2nd Prize: Joe Savishinsky  “Orchard in Autumn”

   3rd Prize: Colorado Smith, “Spirit-Bears of British Columbia”

February (Love): No award.

March (Open, Free Subject):

   1st Prize: r g cantalupo, “The Art of Poetry”

   2^nd Prize: Ed McManis, “Thirtieth Anniversary”

April (Dreams, Mythology, Other Universes):

   1st Prize:  Lucia Kiersch Haase  “I Have Dreams”

   2nd Prize: Gurupreet K. Khalsa  “Provisional Identity”

May (Personification, Characters, Portraits):

   1st Prize: Allison Burris, “Two Good Witches”

June (The Supernatural):

   1st Prize: Gail White, “The Ghost in the Restaurant”

July  (Childhood, Memoirs):

   1st Prize: Jane Stuart, “When Memories Fade”

August (Places, Poems of Location):

   1st Prize: Jiang Pu, “Hakone Garden”

   2nd Prize: Michael Shoemaker, “Stargazing at Capitol Reef”

September (Colors, Music, Dance):

   1^st Prize: Joan Gerstein, “Grayscale of Truth”

   2^nd Prize: Stewart Breier, “Hellstorm, Stars & Angels”

   3^rd Prize: Kevin Madrigal Galindo, “the rhythm of the wind”

October (Humor, Satire): No award.

November (Family, Friendships, Relationships):

   1st Prize: Mia Kernaghan, “A Strange Chance”

   2nd Prize: Jeff Graham, “Though”

   3rd Prize: Carla Schick, “Today I Could Be Something I’ve Never Been”

December (Back Down to Earth – Time, Seasons):

   1st Prize: Thomas Feeny, “Fall Afternoon”

   2nd Prize: Jane Stuart, “December Melody”

 At its October 2023 meeting, the CSPS Board of Directors voted to increase the CSPS Membership Dues for 2024: Individual Membership (Domestic) from $40 to $45 and Individual Membership (International) from $60 to $65. At the same time, the institutional dues remained unchanged. 

The fourth issue of 2023 Poetry Letter was a farewell to three former Editors of the California Quarterly: Life Member, Margaret Saine, as well as Terry Ehret and Maura Harvey; the latter two continue to assist us on the CSPS Board. Since Maura is also a painter and Margaret a photographer, some of their artwork serves as illustrations. The issue also presented one of the Honorary Mentions from the 2023 Annual Contest by Gurupreet Khalsa, too lengthy for our journal. To round-up the poetry selections, I added an ekphrastic poem by Michael Escoubas and three poems by Hedy Habra. The Poetry Letter No. 4 of 2023 featured also three book reviews: two by Michael Escoubas—of No Matter How It Ends by E.J. Rode, and Genica by Neth Hass—and the third one by Joan Leotta, of a new book by Hedy Habra, Or Did You Ever See the Other Side? 

Frank Iosue, an Arizona poet who served as Annual Contest Judge in 2022, occasionally sends us links to his poetry videos and other audiovisual material. He wrote: “January 12, 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of the passing of my beloved wife, Mary Susan....To honor the occasion, I have uploaded a new video to my You Tube Channel, ImUpToMystic, featuring my reading of a short poem that I wrote in her memory, ‘A Note About Reuniting With You In An Afterlife,’ accompanied by music and images.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq9CbTxusl0. 

Iosue shared with CSPS a website by his friend and classmate at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, “poet, novelist and retired teacher, Will Schmitz” who created the Will’s Cards website that showcases many samples of his Poetry Postcards with imaginative self-made collages and short poems: www.rectrixrides.com.   

I edited the California Quarterly Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter 2023) with a painting by Marsden Hartley on the cover, and the issue was well liked by poets: “This is a beautiful issue.  Thank you very much for including my work.”—Bren Ohta, PhD. “Wow, I read these poems again and felt so small and insignificant, these words and these poets convey something I’m not sure I understand, and maybe never will, the power of poetry is something beyond who we are and who we yearn to be. Thanks again for all of your efforts on behalf of the California State Poetry Society and thanks for including me as part of your team”—Mark Hammerschick. “I’m very fond of the cover. I saw my first Marsden Hartley as a youngster at a reprise of the 1913 Armory Show in my hometown of Amherst, MA.  His work and some others surprised me that they hadn’t been more appreciated in the intervening years.”—Linden Van Wert.

CSPS Member News. Georgia San Li’s poetry chapbook Wandering explores émigré life through the prisms of myth, ambition, alienation, abandonment, and love.  Advance sales are available now at Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the 2023 Oxford Poetry prize and appears or is forthcoming in The Glacier, LIT Magazine, SWWIM, Willow Springs, CQ, and The Missouri Review.  www.finishinglinepress.com/product/wandering-by-georgia-san-li/.

Registration for the 2024 NFSPS BlackBerry Peach National Poetry Slam will close when NFSP reaches 44 entries or April 12th, 2024, whichever comes first. nfsps.us/product/965113. An adult registration entitles state poetry societies to send at least one youth poet (age 13 to under 21 by June 7th) to Youth National Poetry Slam. CSPS Board decided not to send any representatives, as our interest is in written not spoken word. Happy writing!

 ~ Maja Trochimczyk, CSPS President

Restless Blue Dragonfly by Beverly M. Collins