Flying Island

Ten Cows      for Nancy who saw it first In a fenced pasture,   after brunching   the morning away      under October sun, ten black cows relax   at noon in a folded posture,  favoring a lean to the left while chewing their cud   in a state of ruminating  indifference—the white noise of Highway 46,  the stacked panorama             of cumulus clouds— all in all the signs of a  healthy herd just outside Ellettsville, Indiana. And that’s good enough.  A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He has new poems in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, Tipton Poetry Journal, American Journal of Poetry, I-70 Review, South 85 Journal, and Midwest Review . His latest chapbo...

Asana     a posture in hatha yoga Who can deny the stippled beauty of spring trees budding green, or fuller yet, summer’s flourish     becoming the safe fires of autumn, the cold bonfires of hills and forests, mountainsides burning  to a bareness of dance and pose,          the annual asana of leafless limbs revealed thick and thin, multi- angled, jutting out from trunks barked according to species,                         their skeletal reach a held  grace deserving human pause.    Roger Pfingston is the author of Something Iridescent , a collection of poetry and fiction, as well as five chapbooks, the most recent being What’s Given , available from Kattywompus Press. He has new poems in The American Journal of Poetry, I-70 Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, 85 South, and Sh...

            Tableau   New Year’s Eve, 2020 Emerging snow-blurred out  of the woods, the doe at dusk fulfills our unspoken wish,  though still limping, moving ever closer to stare at the two of us having dinner lit by a new ceiling light, the globe’s hue dialed to a soft sepia, the gift of a handyman friend  who’d asked if we might  prefer degrees of brightness after four decades of on/off. With a centerpiece of lilies,             the table is a simple choice  of fish and rice, bread and wine, glasses raised to the pending year,  the doe, for now, still there. Roger Pfingston has poems in recent issues of Sheila-Na-Gig , Dash , Hamilton Stone Review , Tipton Poetry Journal , Innisfree Poetry Journal , and Valparaiso Poetry Review . His chapbook, What’s Given , is available from Kattywompus Press.

Walking the West Side  Bloomington, Indiana Having confirmed with each other over breakfast  what day it is, we are walking a slow mile     on the west side—the winsome mix of local artists,     their front-yard galleries. My mask dangles from one ear, my wife’s pulled down  below her chin, at the ready should someone  appear up ahead or from behind,  or suddenly step out the door full-featured. Grateful for a day’s reprieve from the hurricane’s spinoff storms, we walk  the four points of the compass, taking in  the yard signs— No Hate , Buy Local , th e amusing Helicopter Rides $20.00 — as well as the Little Free Libraries, some  achieving objets d’art . We stop to read the spines— pristine, tattered—of each librarian’s modest offering, New Age Baby Names missing its cover. Our final block, the brightly worked gardens of longtime dwellers…hostas and grasses, zinnias, phlox, purple asters…but the morning stoppe...

      Miss Tindall in a Time of Drought Making their rounds, the twins appear to see what’s up.         On her knees, trying to save  the garden, she picks mint for tea,     crushes a leaf for their noses.         She shows them how to               deadhead daisies and zinnias.           When their mother calls         they leave without a word, leaving her to lean back  and rest, watching them go,  bright shorts and sneakers,  unlike last week’s sweet goodbye  when they handed her the sky  scribbled with rain and folded   like mail. She studies the hole  in the forefinger of her right  glove, wondering with a sigh  what it is she does that she  might do otherwise. Roger Pfingston is the author of Something Iridescent , a collect...

JULY 5 … and still they punctuate the night with their leftovers , the distant pops, the star- shattering booms, spiders and jellyfish hanging, dissolving over lakes, oceans, countryside, clusters of aerial chatter, the flight of animals, wild, domestic, yelps and whines, hugging the ground, digging, diving to escape the god- awful whatever it is, though see    how they glow,       the children’s eyes,          their upturned faces… and now the lull, the is-it-over-look-around… one bright, tiny fuse…someone’s Lady Finger…. Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. His most recent chapbook, What’s Given , is available from Kattywompus Press. New poems are appearing this year in I-70 Review , U.S. 1 Worksheets , Innisfree Poetry Journal , Dash , Passager and Front Range Revie...

The Photographer Considers His Mother’s Gift His mother was a squatter well into her eighties, adept at crouching to a tight fold: rummaging a bottom cabinet for that now-and-then pan, edging the grass away from the sidewalk, even patiently removing the tough-minded dandelions in the rock driveway, her stand against Roundup and other killers of flora and fauna.        Genetics, of course, but also his early years of watching her do what comes natural… thus his tinkering with the underbelly of the mower or just hunkering   down because it feels good—a meditative stretch at the lake’s edge—and always those butt-low shots like yesterday,    moments after a truck pulled away in the Kroger parking lot, oil slick shining up at the camera’s eye— a rainy-day puddle glazed with a dark rainbow. Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and...

Absence by Roger Pfingston My wife and I miss Carole, our next-door neighbor, and Elmer, also our neighbor who lived across the road. Elmer for his daily banter, a mechanical wizard with mowers and such, a sharp-eyed nonagenarian who roamed his yard, hose in hand, flushing the tunneled darkness of moles uprooting his grass. Carole for her resolve against cancer while tending myriad flowers, her front yard the plotted absence of grass. So recent their going, sometimes we pick up the phone or glance out the window before we catch ourselves. A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He is the author of Something Iridescent, a collection of poetry and fiction, as well as four chapbooks: Earthbound, Singing to the Garden, A Day Marked for Telling, and What’s Gi...

Musing Half Asleep by Roger Pfingston Pleasantly redundant, birds chip away November darkness, though some, like the crow, are more industrial. Imagine sitting down at a table of crows, half a dozen blabbing non-stop like one of those talk shows, no commercials unless you count another day’s molten birth in a lingering drought, the slow- passing clouds dialing down the light on a gleaming spread of frost … icing on a burnt cake. --------------------------------------------------- A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He is the author of Something Iridescent, a collection of poetry and fiction, as well as four chapbooks: Earthbound, Singing to the Garden, A Day Marked for Telling, and What’s Given, the latter recently published by Kattywompus Press.

First to Arrive Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center/Bloomington, IN by Roger Pfingston First to arrive, he sits listening to the building, the irregular ticks and hums, the occasional snap like something contracting under winter’s grip on this June night. It feels good, this aloneness with warped wood floors, limestone walls. He begins to take on a kind of ownership, as if he could be where he wants when he wants in this building, huge with friendly indifference, letting him sit and be at the top of the stairs, no voice but his outside the dark room that becomes whatever others need it to be, Terpsichore being tonight’s honored guest. Bio : A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He has poems in recent issues of Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Innisfree P...

Buckskin, Indiana by Roger Pfingston Back home after walking the creek, he sits with toast and a mug of coffee, savoring               a blue                          heron morning:  how it lifted at his approach, leading him on, indulging his presence with a slow wing spread, the short repeated flights to the water’s edge, until he turned back, the heron knowing more than he could follow, the window now, framing the steady gaze, the fenced-in beauty of horses. Bio : A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He has poems in recent issues of Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. New poems are scheduled to appear in Poetry East a...