welcome to #81 of hedgerow! this week features collages by J.I. Kleinberg. as always, grateful to contributors & readers alike. enjoy…

 

with love & kindness,

 

caroline skanne
founding editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the candle and i
neither of us
in a hurry
 

the silence of the chair
before she arrives
to claim it

Zee Zahava lives in Ithaca, New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

under the cedar tree
he reads Rumi to his love
while overhead
a lone goose flies
crying for his mate
 

tall grasses
moving slow
in the wind
he says a benediction
under the ancient oak
 

she climbs
thirsty and tired
and finds again
the spring
rising from the rock

After decades of living in the States and Canada, Joy McCall now lives in her birthplace of Norwich, England, growing older but not much wiser.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

deep breath
my poem
my own

Margaret Jones resides in Wisconsin, USA.  She enjoys walking in the woods, binoculars in one hand and haiku notebook in the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

face to face …
the inquisitive hover
of a bumblebee

Julie Bloss Kelsey lives in Germantown, Maryland with her husband and three children. She enjoys writing short form poetry, crafting, and drinking decaf iced lattes. Visit her on Twitter (@MamaJoules).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we’d hide and seek
he’d stop and call “Gramma?”
… memories of little boy smiles
on the lips
of summer days

Nancy Cross Dunham lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, Michael.  Retired from the University of Wisconsin, she now writes poetry to try to figure out what she’s learned about herself, the world and the other people in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sartor

It’s hard to be sophisticated when depressed,
cufflinks, like top buttons, are a major challenge,
shoe-laces resist residual logic, only on
cruises are partings as wavy as mine,
eye contact is the least of worries when there’s
the heavy shab of my shoulders to take in,
the tumbleweed beard, trousers that might be pajamas,
yesterday’s shirt today, little bursts of aesthetic mayhem
heralding divestment from the self.

A former British diplomat, Daniel Roy Connelly has worked around the globe. He has acted in and directed theatre in America, the UK, Italy and China, where his 2009 production of David Henry Hwang’s M Butterfly was forced to close by the Chinese secret police. He is a professor of creative writing, English and theatre at John Cabot University and The American University of Rome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLUE NOTE

the blue note
lingers
shaping the darkness
of another night
without you

the cold wind
sings
she’s gone
she’s gone
she’s gone *

piled high
in this valley
of sorrow
broken promises
empty dreams

* ‘she’s gone’ is a blues song by Hound Dog Taylor

Paul Smith is a poet from Worcester in the UK. Alongside poetry Paul enjoys Japanese style ink painting, building cigar box guitars and playing old time blues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the collages in this issue was brought to you by J.I. Kleinberg —

Bellingham, Washington, freelance writer, artist and poet J.I. Kleinberg works and plays with words. Her found-word collages, from a growing series of over 1,100, explore the accidental syntax of unintentional phrases. She doesn’t own a television and spends a lot of time tearing paper.