Better Than Starbucks March 2020

By Better Than Starbucks

The Interview: James D. Casey IV & Five Poems. Featured Poems: Gail White, Puma Perl, Hadi Panahi, Ndaba Sibanda, Jeanne Shannon. Nikki Grimes. Free Verse: J. Tarwood, Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich, Judith Kelly Quaempts, Timothy Robbins, & more. Haiku: Jason Ringler, Robert Beveridge, Devin Harrison, Kenneth Cahall, & more. Formal Poetry: Richard Wakefield, Jared Carter, Kathryn Jacobs, Jennifer Reeser, & more. Free Verse: Ciarán Parkes, Emily Tsai, & more. Poetry Translations: Catherine Chandler, Joris Lenstra, Chris O’Carroll, & Michael R. Burch. Poetry for Children: X. J. Kennedy, Renée M. LaTulippe, Kenn Nesbitt & more. International Poetry: Kushal Poddar, Fizza Abbas, Kalyani Bindu, & more. African Poetry: Ikechukwu Obiorah, Ngozi Olivia Osuoha, Symon Maguru, & more. Poetry Unplugged: Tom Merrill, Nels Hanson, Barbara Daniels, & more. Experimental & Form Poetry: Ashby McGowan, Pamelyn Casto, Ethan McGuire, & more. Fiction: Kevin P. Keating, David Dobbler, and Judith Kelly Quaempts. CNF: Fred D. White.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781678177386

Book preview

II

Copyright

Copyright © by Better Than Starbucks. All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Contributing authors retain copyright to their works.

First Printing: ISBN 978-1-67817-738-6

Editor in Chief Vera Ignatowitsch

Founder & Publisher Anthony Watkins

Section Editors:

Suzanne Robinson (Free Verse)

Kevin McLaughlin (Haiku)

Susan McLean (Poetry Translations)

Robert Schechter (Poetry for Children)

Copy Editors:

Elaine Wilburt, Christy Burbidge

Cover Image:

Orchard Bordered by Cypresses, 1888

by Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)

Table of Contents

Five Featured Poems

Formal Poetry by Gail White

Free Verse by Puma Perl

Haiku by Hadi Panahi

African Poetry by Ndaba Sibanda

Experimental Poetry by Jeanne Shannon

Bullet-proof Backpack by Nikki Grimes

The Interview March 2020

James D. Casey IV by Anthony Watkins

Five Poems by James D. Casey IV

Free Verse Poetry with Suzanne Robinson

Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin

Formal Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch

Free Verse Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch

Poetry Translations with Susan McLean

Poetry for Children with Robert Schechter

International Poetry

African Poetry

Poetry Unplugged

Experimental & Form Poetry

Fiction

The Pietà of Saint Blaise by Kevin P. Keating

More Fiction

Roman Candle by David Dobbler

Flash Fiction

Final Season by Judith Kelly Quaempts

Better Than Fiction!

This Is Your Captain Speaking by Fred D. White

From The Mind of Anthony Watkins

Contributors to this Issue

Five Featured Poems

Editor’s Choice

Formal Poetry

The Last Speaker of Akkala Sami

(Marja Sergina, the last known speaker of Akkala Sami, spoken in villages on Russia’s Kola Peninsula, died on December 26, 2003.)

I didn’t mean to let it slip away,

but when there were no reindeer to be fed

or children to be called, the words began

to fade. It was too easy just to speak

my second language. For a while I used

Akkala Sami in my prayers. I thought

it must exist because God wanted it,

so he would like to hear it. Now I know

that God can do without a lot of things:

Kola, the reindeer, all my people, me —

and when I’m gone the words will all be gone,

unless the sounds are somewhere, like the light

of long-dead stars. But now I think the words

will die with my own voice, and that ends that.

The last one who will hear it is my cat.

Gail White is the resident poet and cat lady of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Her books Asperity Street and Catechism are available on Amazon. She is a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine (lightpoetrymagazine.com).

Publisher’s Choice

Free Verse

The Way the Lights Hit Bodega Alley

Summer light hits metal gate in Bodega Alley

The vets play cards and the women drink beer

Old-school hip-hop blasts from speakers in the park

Kids run through the sprinklers, screaming

as cold-water hits burnt skin

The closest they will get to an ocean this summer

When they’re old enough to ride alone

They’ll F train to the next to the last stop

Get off at the parachute jump

If the steel doesn’t get them first

The elderly push by in walkers

Heads leaning left

Touching shoulders

I walk with Diva the Wonder Dog

Talk to her out loud, sometimes,

forgetting if I talked to anyone else

today or yesterday or last week

Oh, yes, there was a phone call

Somebody wanted something

Forgot what it might have been

We search for the Ding Dong truck again

But there is only the icie cart man

whose flavors all taste the same

Lemon, no different from rainbow or coconut

We circle back through Bodega Alley

A short woman, barely reaching my waist

Stops me, asks if I speak Russian

She needs to find the supermarket

I don’t need language to point in the right direction

I don’t need the summer light to see

the bullets and knives that built

the chairs in Bodega Alley

The Ding Dong truck is gone for the day

Vanilla and chocolate taste the same.

Puma Perl is an award-winning poet, writer, and journalist, with five solo collections in print. The most recent is Birthdays Before and After (Beyond Baroque Books, 2019). She performs regularly with her band, Puma Perl and Friends.

Editor’s Choice

Haiku

Three Haiku

Hadi Panahi is a PhD student from Tehran, Iran. Hadi is in harmony with his environment and shows the depth of a cow’s gaze.

The barn,

the humid air,

and the gaze of the cow

Throwing a few stones,

our hands hurting,

calm is the sea

A Summer noon,

the male lion yawning

in a zoo cage

(This haiku’s first two lines set up the third with great dramatic effect. —K. McLaughlin)

Hadi Panahi

Publisher’s Choice

African Poetry

Whirling in the Open in Bulawayo

Outdoors in one worthy season

Barbequed meat and all — served

Babies crying, smoke one reason

But their feasting moms unnerved

Beautiful happy souls hooked on meat

Roasted to perfection, what a delicacy

Without Afro-music the party is incomplete

Bulawayo, a fabulous food haunt and fantasy

Ndaba Sibanda’s poems have been widely anthologised. He is the author of The Gushungo Way, Sleeping Rivers, Love O’clock, The Dead Must Be Sobbing, Football of Fools, Cutting-edge Cache: Unsympathetic Untruth, Of the Saliva and the Tongue, and Poetry Pharmacy.

Publisher’s Choice

Experimental Poetry

Escape to Taos

Come and write

Where magpies chatter in the trees

and blind bees gather in the orange-glory flowers

in Taos

New Mexico

where houses fly away toward Cassiopeia and Orion

One-bedroom

(airs and voices in the summer woods

residual and enduring

guest house

illusion of moving water)

wireless

the blue floor of evening hovering.

Internet

Bell sounds and the cool

transparent notes of Ming Shu flowers.

fireplace

Nothing of permanence quite remains:

fire flicker, tremble of flame

large portal

everything in transition.

Why do we suddenly remember?

grassy grounds

The age of memoir requires a memoir journal,

with apple trees    flower beds    sycamores

droll stories cutting through the world

like knives through butter.

First published in At the Horizon Line.

Jeanne Shannon grew up in Virginia and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she writes poetry, memoir pieces,