Better Than Starbucks February 2021

By Better Than Starbucks

Better Than Starbucks February 2021
The Interview — Jeffrey Alfier by Tobi Alfier and Five Poems by Jeffrey Alfier.

Featured Poems: out to kill rabbits by Jack Henry, Bitter Honey by Steven Willett, Dig by Allison Thung, The lost garden by Susan Sklan, Archetypical Desiccation by R. Gerry Fabian, The Inhabitants of Paradise by Janet McCann, and An Abstraction on the Tangible, With Trees by Carol Casey.

Sonnet Contest Top Ten: Barbara Loots, Armen Davoudian, Catherine Chandler, Kit Rohrbach, Enriqueta Carrington, Ciarán Parkes, Mark J. Mitchell, Richard Wakefield, Mercedes Webb-Pullman, and Max Gutmann.

Free Verse: Glen Armstrong, John Dorsey, Howard Gershkowitz, Diane Webster, Larry Pike, Greg Huteson, Catfish McDaris, Sue Fagalde Lick, Sudhanshu Chopra, Alan Cohen, Michael Ceraolo, and Ash Slade.
Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin: Douglas J. Lanzo, Jessica Wheeler, Mathew Wenham, Manoj Sharma, Armando Quiros, Stefanie Winton, Sarah Calvello, Kenneth Lynn Anderson, Dennis Maulsby, Carrie Ann Thunnell, Denise Shelton, Carlton Holte, R.K. Singh, Bill Dee Johnston, Sandy Brian Hager, Goran Gatalica, and Rachel Zempel.
Formal Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch: Richard Wakefield, Robert Donohue, Tad Tuleja, Max Gutmann, Marly Youmans, Neil Kennedy, Bruce McGuffin, Judy Koren, Kiersta Recktenwald, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Richard Lorr, Russell G. Winick, Drew Nathaniel Keane, and Mary Kipps.
Poetry Translations with Susan McLean: Yun Wang translating Li Bai, Jerome Betts translating Anonymous, and A. R. Bekenstein translating Paul Éluard.
Poetry for Children with Robert Schechter: Nina Parmenter, Lorna Davis, Diana Murray, M. Rory Daws, and Kate Williams.
International Poetry: Kalyani Bindu, Ziaul Moid Khan, Shifali Gulati, Kushal Poddar, and Fizza Abbas.
African Poetry: Soonest Nathaniel, Banqobile Virginia Dakamela, Nnadi Samuel, Ndaba Sibanda, and
Lind Grant-Oyeye.
Poetry Unplugged: Bruna Gushurst, Gale Acuff, Scott C. Kaestner, J. Tarwood, and Gavin Bourke.
Experimental, Prose, & Form Poetry: Sydney Hazen, Paul Ilechko, Gene Twaronite, and Rich Ives.

Fiction: Houses of Straw by Benjamin Davis
Flash Fiction: Domestic Duplicity by Victoria Lynn Smith
Creative Non-Fiction: The Desert Air by Pamela Cottam
From The Mind: A Sort of Poetic Manifesto by Tom Merrill

Cover: Page from a Priest’s Book by Betty White
Photograph by Andre Beneteau

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716259876

Book preview

I

Copyright

Better Than Starbucks

February 2021 Vol VI No I

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 Edition: ISBN 978-1-716-25987-6

Editor-in-Chief Vera Ignatowitsch

Founder & Publisher Anthony Watkins

Advisory Editor Tom Merrill

Section Editors:

Kevin McLaughlin (Haiku)

Susan McLean (Poetry Translations)

Robert Schechter (Poetry for Children)

Copy Editors:

Elaine Wilburt, Christy Burbidge

Cover Image:

Page from a Priest’s Book by Betty White

Photograph by Andre Beneteau

Background pattern Description automatically generated

Table of Contents

Seven Featured Poems

out to kill rabbits by Jack Henry

Bitter Honey by Steven Willett

Dig by Allison Thung

The lost garden by Susan Sklan

Archetypical Desiccation by R. Gerry Fabian

The Inhabitants of Paradise by Janet McCann

An Abstraction on the Tangible, With Trees by Carol Casey

Sonnet Contest 2020 Winners and Honorable Mentions

First Place

Second Place

Third Place

Honorable Mentions

The Interview February 2021

Jeffrey Alfier by Tobi Alfier

Five Poems by Jeffrey Alfier

Free Verse Poetry

Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin

Formal Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch

Poetry Translations with Susan McLean

Poetry for Children with Robert Schechter

International Poetry

African Poetry

Poetry Unplugged

Experimental, Prose, & Form Poetry

Fiction

Houses of Straw by Benjamin Davis

Flash Fiction

Domestic Duplicity by Victoria Lynn Smith

Better Than Fiction!

The Desert Air by Pamela Cottam

From The Mind of Tom Merrill

Contributors to this issue

Seven Featured Poems

out to kill rabbits

the first day we dressed out

in P.E., in high school, a senior

boy punched me in the face,

called me a queer, and a chorus

of other boys howled in derision.

a rabbit sits atop a grassy

knoll, eats grass and watches

for danger.

at 16 i had yet to accept

my awkwardness,

long legs and gangly arms;

acne, sadness, and general

ineptitude.

a rabbit hides during daylight, in

thick bushes or down holes

in the earth, fearful of predators

and potential death.

throughout 10th grade everyone

picked on me, put me in a corner,

bullied me into complete sorrow.

yet i learned to run, to shout them down,

to fight without remorse,

to keep secrets

locked down tight.

coyotes and wolves and kids

with rocks stalk the rabbit, but

if the rabbit is smart, they

stay safe.  they must always

be smarter than those that wish

them harm.

by senior year i reached full

height, full strength.  mind

quick and nimble and more clever

than bullies.  i outgrew the noise

of high school, but not before

breaking bones and crushing souls.

a rabbit cornered can be a fearsome thing

and they will fight for survival when

running away is no longer an option.

just after winter break my senior year

i found myself in front of the damning

gaze of a vice-principal, his face red,

voice rough from yelling.  i had become

the bully.

a rabbit’s life is short due to so many

predators. life in the wild is

always a struggle.

upon graduation i left high school,

never looked back.  i still break bones

of predators,

out to kill rabbits.

Jack Henry is a writer/editor based in California. Recently he has been published in Ariel Chart, Rusty Truck, Scarlet Leaf Review, Horror Sleaze Trash, alien buddha press, and elsewhere. His next collection, driving w/crazy, will be released by Punk Hostage Press. Visit jackhenry.wordpress.com.

Bitter Honey

Bodies fill graves, graves grow honeycomb, earth rests

  lightly on its sodden cells, time swells

bones broken to pollen, death’s redolence, leaving

  nothing behind but bitter honey.

Only the dead know how to taste bitter honey,

  the taste that restores their strangled cries.

For a moment the cries are melodious with loss,

  then silence wrings their voices again.

Dig deeper. Beneath the graves lie even more

  ancient bodies hardening into rock.

Time layers the sediments, strata crack, bend

    and rupture under memory’s fire.

Millennia on millennia of erosion

  expose petrified amnesia.

Wind, sun and moon now pass serenely over

  indecipherable fossils waiting

for bodies to grow into armies, fill graves

  and join their amnesty of memory.

Steven Willett is a retired Classics professor specializing in ancient Greek and English versification. Much of his work has been in poetic translation in many languages.

Dig

When they handed him the changol and told

him to dig, he dug. Hard and deep like his life

depended on it. They said to dig for sustenance

of ten, but he dug for sins and sorrow of one.

Beyond the tarp, rain beat down on ground

like drums he used to play as a child—

insistently, aggressively—overflow bleeding

into his sheltered patch, turning soil to mud.

He had stood too long in the same spot and so

began to sink, borrowed boots engulfed in

red and brown as earth reclaimed him. They

promised he could wash off in their stream.

Atonement is fat that feeds seeds of good a

self-proclaimed sinner sows. Forgiveness is

the fruit it bears. Do good not for good, but to

be good. He picked chilis, beans, and basil.

Allison Thung is a writer from Singapore. She writes for the same reason she knits — to make sense of what would otherwise just be loose threads of thought and yarn. Allison has poetry published in Eunoia Review. Her website is www.allisonthung.com.

The lost garden

She carried the garden inside her

so she could take it with her across borders.

The lemon tree settled and its roots

grew down one leg.

Lemons, she thought, are always useful.

A Norfolk pine kept her standing straight.

The bamboo she kept in a pot,

so it would not take over everything.

Her mother’s lavender clasped her heart

and urged it to keep beating.

Passion fruit vines grew out with her hair.

In the midst of her grief,

blue and red parrots flew out of her suitcase.

Susan Sklan is a social worker and published