MockingHeart friends! Happy August.
Can you believe how fast the year is moving? Submissions are now open for MHR 7.3, the Fall 2022 issue of MockingHeart Review! You can submit from today until August 31st.
This issue’s theme is Heartbreak. There are many ways this concept can be interpreted, and just for kicks, here’s a useful article on the concept to get things started. When you’re ready, send your poetry and/or artwork our way! We look forward to experiencing it.
We hope you’re staying healthy, happy, and inspired. Keep on creating, friends–and as always, thank you for the excellent work you do in the world.
Tyler Robert Sheldon, Editor-in-Chief
MockingHeart Review 
Rest
Driving to the High Sierras
On the plaines a stop and go, with a lonely red blinking light
The James Dean Memorial Intersection, middle of nowhere
Driving a California highway into sky
Moving through ranch country and tumble weeds
To thin air scrubbed clean by mountain redwoods
Bedded clouds slide silent across a heaven
A postcard view from Inspiration Point
North of Lake Henderson
To scatter a mother’s ashes
To say goodbye to a wife
Scattered over a deep green bush
Guarding a ten foot camp cross
At that moment of release
Wind comes from the valley to take her
A good end after four years searching
For her “lovely place somewhere”
Held by redwood giants, protective trees
While two daughters say goodbye
A husband grieves
Knowing someday he will return
Crossing the intersection one last time
Where the road sign says:
“James Dean, dead at 24
Cut short by speed
After only three films:
Rebel without a Cause
East of Eden
Giant”
The girls return to L.A. and K.C.
Back to their lives and loves
And he will, one day, remain
Top of the mountain with her
As the wind will take him too
To reunite under the deepest of blue skies
Dan Pohl
Bio
Dan Pohl is a professor of composition and creative writing at Hutchinson Community College in Hutchinson, Kansas. As a Kansas poet, Dan writes about the people and natural rural country that surrounds him. Much of his work and publications are found online typing “Kansas poet Dan Pohl.”He lives in the farming community of Moundridge, Kansas.
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Excellent poem, Dan! I hope you’re doing well. Be sure to send in some work during our reading period (and we’re open until August 31)!
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