Tuesday 31 July 2018


I Am Tired Of . . .

group poem by women in a detention center


I am tired of waking up for nothing
I am tired of county time
I am tired of this hell hole
I am tired of authority
I am tired of being disrespected

I am tired of asking for things
I am tired of asking and being ignored
I am tired of being belittled
I am tired of the bullshit
I am tired of asking for anything

I am tired of asking for things we
     shouldn't have to be asking for
I am just plain tired of you
I am tired of being treated
     like a chained-up mutt
I am tired of this cell I'm in all day
     and night
I am tired of being unimportant

Monday 30 July 2018


They Came Across

by Elise Stuart


Standing in line,
two children and their mother
hold hands.
The girl has long black hair and dark eyes
that have seen too much, too soon.

She holds her younger brother
with one hand.
He is small, skinny,
his brown skin dirty, eyes glazed,
his stomach empty, so long.

Her right hand holds her mother,
who whispered last night,
"We'll leave in the morning
and go
where it's safe."

Her mother's lip is still swollen,
her cheek, bruised and purple,
her husband's marks of ownership.
She moves slowly, while her daughter
watches and listens to everything.

She gives their names at the front of the line,
"You may cross the border," they say.
In a moment of hope, of joy,
she squeezes
her daughter's hand.

After they walk across, an armed guard says,
"Your children will need to go over to that building."
"Without me? ¿Por qué?"
"We are a family.
I have relatives . . . "

The man reaches down, tries to separate hands,
ones that have brushed back hair from eyes,
wiped tears from cheeks, made food each day.
She pleads, "Mi familia, mi vida."
Her daughter's grip tightens.

The guard takes them out of line,
to the side where no one can see.
He takes her arm, squeezes hard.
"This is the new policy
in this country."

He wrenches hands apart,
pushing the children along in front of him.
When he opens the door,
the sounds of sobbing and voices calling "Mami, Papá"
leak out.

The mother covers her mouth with her hand.
Her daughter looks back at her,
accusing her, eyes becoming hard,
like stones,
only a tear betrays her.
           

* * * * *

When Elise Stuart moved to New Mexico in 2005, her heart quietly opened to the desert. She found beauty in the river, the rocks, and in the way small, yellow flowers grow in arroyos. Her writing was revived, changed, from living not far from the Gila, in the southwest corner of the state.

She was named Poet Laureate of Silver City, NM in 2014-2017 and gave over one hundred poetry workshops to young people in Grant County schools. Students designed poem flags, expressing their own work, and the flags were hung in coffee shops, libraries and in old folks' homes.

In the spring of 2017 her first collection of poems was published, Another Door Calls, which tells of her intimate relationship with the natural world. In the summer she wrote about the most arduous and meaningful relationship of her life, and published My Mother and I, We Talk Cat. She continues to write poetry and short stories, while waiting for rain.


Sunday 29 July 2018

I Am

group poem by women in a detention center


I am a mouse
I am a dog
I am doing my time
I am a mother as well as grandmother
I am a free spirit

I am a princess
I am gonna make it
I am a flower waiting for the sun
I am a believer
I am loyal

I am dark light
I am saved
I am searching
I am a child of God
I am free

Saturday 28 July 2018


THE MAN ON TOP

by Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard


Immigrants, especially Muslims, are vicious snakes
who will inevitably turn on their protectors

he pronounces, inventing enemies, his words
            a scepter that banishes
disagreement from his minions, erases thoughts.
             His emptiness is surrounded
by nobodies who engage in repetition. Photos
             of him exulting, scatter
like leaves in the wind. They are everywhere.
            His game shuffles
us like cards; thousands of little children
            who crossed our border
in search of safety remain separated from
            their parents, weeping,
and imprisoned in warehouses and cages.
            Like a whirling top
he keeps changing his phrases, But all will be
             well he repeats.
 We will have national security, we will be
             great, forgetting
 that history, suffering, and guilt are circular.
            Targeting discourse,
has eclipsed our thoughts and evil is in love
             with its plots, sees them
like business deals, and to speak out against
             them is a great risk.


* * * * *

Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard is the author of 9 poetry books, two of which have won awards, as well as a number of non-fiction books on women and human rights, (Revolutionizing Motherhood; the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) human rights, social justice, illness and grief. She is a former professor of Political Science and Poetry, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Studies Program Brandeis U. Her latest collection of poems is The Flame of Life (Human Error Publishing, 2018).

Friday 27 July 2018


The twenty-sixth Moon Prize on today's full moon goes to Lisa Marguerite Mora's exquisite poem "Illuminated Manuscript."


Illuminated Manuscript

by Lisa Marguerite Mora


Cracked face of a clock frozen
to the wrong minute,

outside a restless grimy tide washes
through shallow footprints
now they are puddles, and sand crabs
scrabble for sustenance.

I could be like them lost in the certainty
of sand and oxygen and angry
wayward waves. They comprise the universe --

excoriating wrench and rhythm, yes I could be lost
to the riptide's deadly yank, my limbs, my head lolling, no longer
fighting.

It would be easy.

But recently there is this other (me) that can frame
the whole scene and all its visceral misery

within a border of twined flowers as in an illuminated
manuscript

the page laden
between my fingers.

It is but one page.

Where do I suspend disbelief?


* * * * *

"Illuminated Manuscript" was originally published in a slightly different form in Literary Landscapes, a publication of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society.

Lisa Marguerite Mora has had work published in Rattle, ONTHEBUS, Rebelle Society, The Urban Howl, Cultural Weekly, Public Poetry Series, Literary Mama, and California Quarterly, among many others, including a Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Prize and in 2017 tied First Place for Dandelion Press Micro Fiction Contest. Recently she has finished a first novel and is at work on her second. Lisa studied with author Carolyn See at UCLA where she received a Bachelors in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis. A story editor and consultant, she also conducts creative writing workshops in the Los Angeles area.


Thursday 26 July 2018


Awaiting the Ferry

by Devon Balwit


For the first hour, you are mostly
            with us, head turning

where we point, tongue lathing
            social conventions,

but as the evening wears and you weary,
            you retreat, eyes

cadaverous, each breath a squeezing
            of bellows.

By night’s end, when you topple
            to the floor, it fails

to surprise, you already so far
            along the dark road

we’ve no clue how to regather you.
            Body and soul

have little use for one another, yet
            the knot’s not simple

to unpick. We lift your walker
            across mud and root, settle

you in your seat, pay Charon’s fare
            to home you.


* * * * *

Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and three collections out, among them: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (A collaboration with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic); Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders); and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, Queen's College Quarterly, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Red Paint Hill, and more.


Wednesday 25 July 2018


Already Too Late

by Devon Balwit


The artist’s canvas shows it plain,
the rot behind the assurances
that all is OK. Far from it. We are
already gangrenous, the necrotic
creeping from our wounds, walls
gauze over bruises. Every surface
has been pounded, God revealed
as an angry smith. This rage
is the sound that keeps us awake
at three a.m. The door swells
outward with lingering questions. 
Far from lovely, the carved blossoms
scrolling its edges evoke the obsessive
rooting of the hygienist deep in our gums.
And what of the hand, reaching
its limp kerchief around the frame?
Is she a mourner arrived too late
or the deceased come to staunch
the very tears she made flow?
Perhaps she’s back for the blown
wreath, wanting to be remembered
as other than wilt and browning.
(after Ivan Albright’s “That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door)")

* * * * *

Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and three collections out, among them: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (A collaboration with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic); Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders); and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, Queen's College Quarterly, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Red Paint Hill, and more.


Tuesday 24 July 2018


A Singular Drive…285


by Lynne Zotalis


My physical address is Iowa
but my spirit dwells in the mountains
where eons past roots took shape
across this barren desert-scape
sage brush, pinon, scrub oaks, ponderosa pine
foothills ascending to rocky climes
softly hued clay gradually blending
to deep green, grayish blue crest,
distant outline, celestial covering frosts peaks
defining the separation with shaded mounds
earthly to ethereal but it’s all one
in this treasured tierra, my center
an anchor with cords to the sky.
I live in between, a true Gemini
Midwest to Southwest
How am I blest with such?
Hearing secrets only my soul comprehends.
Voices that softly suss with whispers
swaying branches nudge tumbleweeds
along fence lines to congregate, commiserate in arroyos
Heavenward I drive   285   the road rising
my chest inhales oxygen along with awe
I am content
imbued with enchantment.


* * * * *

As a freelance contributor and member in the Iowa Poetry Association, Lynne Zotalis’s poetry has been published in Lyrical Iowa for ten years running. She is a member of the Peace and Social Justice Writers Group at the Loft in Minneapolis, MN, with contributions to their chapbook and Turning Points: Discovering Meaning and Passion in Turbulent Times. Her poetry has appeared in Tuck Magazine and Poetic Bond VII, and Lynne was one of six winners of the RH Cunningham short story contest published in the book Life Dances. All available on Amazon.


Monday 23 July 2018

Cat Eyes

by Sheena Pillai Singh


That Autumn night
An empty castle
night owls sang
I lost my track...
A shining armor
deep blue eyes
stopped my way
held me close…
His gaze on me
I could sense
his breath on hold
I longed for light…
His secret wish
blew me hard
his tooth and nails
crushed my soul...
Those cat eyes
a swollen lip
still haunts hard
I gasp for breath.


Sunday 22 July 2018


I am changing

by Sumati Muniandy


I am changing
I value myself more
I don’t want to crack my head thinking over the things I can’t control
I am changing
As I choose to move away from the toxic people
I value peace over confronting people
I save my argument
I am changing
For my own betterment
As I want to please my inner feeling
I can’t please everyone around me
I am changing
I choose to remain silent in front of fools
As they don’t have the brain capacity I have
I am changing
I treasure my freedom
My own ability
My talent
I am changing
As I don’t want to change others
And the onus is not on me
I am changing
I live my life as though there is no tomorrow
As I am responsible to my own happiness
And I move on.


* * * * *

© Sumati Muniandy 2018

Sumati Muniandy is currently an educator and a writer. She holds her Master’s Degree in TESOL from University Southern Queensland, Business Administration from University Putra Malaysia (UPM), Diploma in TESL from Maktab Perguruan Ipoh and Diploma in TESOL from London Teacher Training College. She has written a number of articles on various topics in The Star and New Straits Times. She has also presented papers in conferences. Writing is her passion and she writes her real life experiences to inspire others. She believes that everyone has a story to tell.


Saturday 21 July 2018


Of Flesh, Not Stone

by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach


Remember, you tried. Not that this is any
consolation. Even now, writing it
feels like the opposite. You’re referring
to distance. You tried to keep it
better than your mother or hers. Tried
to find the middle ground where his head
can meet your chest without being bound
or sinking. Where it can rest as flesh,
not stone. Tried to keep that place
where your hands reach without touch,
to be okay with the empty space between.
—you   water    you you water you       water you—
Remember the time you asked to kiss him
and he said, no mama! pushing your face away
with his hand’s heel and then his foot’s.
Remember how you listened. Let him choose
anything else over what he is made of.
—water   you water    you water water    water—
Remember? The bathtub was only half full
when he slipped and asked you to kiss
his soapy ear lobe so the pain would stop.
But it didn’t. Not really. Remember, you tried.


* * * * *

"Of Flesh, Not Stone" was previously published in Cleaver.

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, where her research focuses on contemporary American poetry about the Holocaust. Julia is the author of The Bear Who Ate the Stars (Split Lip Press, 2014) and her recent poems appear in Best New PoetsAmerican Poetry Review, and Nashville Review, among others. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Construction Magazine (www.constructionlitmag.com) and when not busy chasing her toddler around the playgrounds of Philadelphia, she writes a blog about motherhood (https://otherwomendonttellyou.wordpress.com/).


Friday 20 July 2018


Those Who Give Birth to Goats

by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach


Only one out of ten people born in a year of the Goat finds happiness (十羊九不全) ~ Chinese folk saying

Some would drown
theirs as soon as they
were born. Luck won’t come

with age, they’d say,
and death in water
proved far easier

than milk. Some would
cut theirs out early
to change the animal

while others would stop
making love altogether
and wait for the goat

to pass. Give birth
under the horse, they urged,
in its calla lily mouth

and mane of jasmine,
in brackish yellow heat.
A goat, they said, is raised

for nothing more
than slaughter, an arid field
of withered primrose.

But his heart
is nothing
like the sound

of goat or horse hooves.
Between breathing
and drowning, he listens,

silver and quiet, balanced
on the ribs
like on the ancient frame

of an unbuilt house.  


* * * * *

"Those Who Give Birth to Goats" was previously published in Midway Journal.

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, where her research focuses on contemporary American poetry about the Holocaust. Julia is the author of The Bear Who Ate the Stars (Split Lip Press, 2014) and her recent poems appear in Best New PoetsAmerican Poetry Review, and Nashville Review, among others. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Construction Magazine (www.constructionlitmag.com) and when not busy chasing her toddler around the playgrounds of Philadelphia, she writes a blog about motherhood (https://otherwomendonttellyou.wordpress.com/).

Thursday 19 July 2018


Where do I start?

by Mary Wescott


The Bible is the word of man.
God is not a Father.
Human bodies, once dead, do not return to life.
I am alone and afraid to die without doing what I came here
To do.

But what is that?
Once I asked a teacher the purpose of human life.
He said, “it’s faith.”
Faith in what?
Someone else’s story?


* * * * *

Mary Wescott Riser worked in Virginia independent schools for 30 years, most recently as Head of School at James River Day School, a K-8 day co-ed day school in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she served as Head for ten years. Mary received her B.A. in English and Philosophy from Georgetown University and her M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Oregon.  She writes the education blog “What’s Best For the Children?” www.maryriser.org. Mary and her husband, George, live in Covesville, Virginia and have two adult children.



Wednesday 18 July 2018


The first evening on earth

by Mary Wescott


The first evening on earth
Finds you walking the outskirts
Of a mining town in Montana.
Moonrise baubles over the Divide
Chasing the indigo clouds.
A quickening breeze from the western valley
Meets you where you stand.
No one praises your footsteps.


* * * * *

Mary Wescott Riser worked in Virginia independent schools for 30 years, most recently as Head of School at James River Day School, a K-8 day co-ed day school in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she served as Head for ten years. Mary received her B.A. in English and Philosophy from Georgetown University and her M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Oregon.  She writes the education blog “What’s Best For the Children?” www.maryriser.org. Mary and her husband, George, live in Covesville, Virginia and have two adult children.

Tuesday 17 July 2018


Broken Connections

by Myra King                                 


Abby dips her toe in the bath like someone testing the water at the beach. But she does not stop, and plunges in with the rest of her body. The water smells of vinegar (her mother had told her it was the best disinfectant) and she glances at the empty bottle sitting on the floor. White brand from the supermarket. Everything she buys is on special or home brand. When there are eight to feed it is a struggle to make any money stretch far enough.
The latest hit song echoes from her transistor radio like applause. We shall overcome, we shall overcome…we shall overcome…someday…
Abby shivers and lays back, sees her stomach, which is slightly swollen, sitting above the water like a tiny white island.
The water is so cold. The sort of cold you could only find down south. Like her mother would say when the tourists came for their warm winters in her home town of Leonora, Western Australia. ‘Look at those people, off to the swimming pool and its only twenty-five degrees. They must be from down south.’
When Abby met Brandon, one of those visitors from South Australia, and he told her his profession she thought it was the most romantic thing she had ever heard. A lighthouse keeper. Such a noble calling. Saving all those people.

Now she hunches in the bath with her knees drawn up under her chin, arms wrapped around them in a sort of sitting foetal position. Immobilized. But she knows she has to move soon, make her arm reach out for her bag, the one with the paisley tapestry design, the one chattering with pins, needles, reels of cotton of every hue and all the buttons of her lifetime. Lost shirt buttons found long after the shirt had been made into rags. Buttons unpicked from babies’ garments little more than dust-cloths. Material covered buttons so big that she had let her children teethe on them. Everything has its use. Some have several. Her mother taught her that too.  

Before running the bath and getting the vinegar from the pantry, Abby had waited until her youngest boy, Hamish, was tucked up in his cot. Everything normal. The same bedtime story: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. ‘So much food he eats, mama.’ Then the plaintive and predictable, I’m hungry, so she’d gone to the kitchen, hoping she wouldn’t wake any of the other five children while she looked for something she could bring him. She prayed Hamish would be asleep, and he was, by the time she returned with a half cup of watered down milk. Then she’d put her mind on hold, readying it for the final task of the evening.

They live so far from anywhere. A white stone cottage coupling with a lighthouse of the same construction, on an island outcrop. Twenty acres wide. And they have been ‘working for the lights’ for so long now that Abby has almost forgotten what before was like. The only other people living on the island are an old couple, inured and comfortable in their seclusion. They rarely socialise.
Their only communication is a thin radio connection in predetermined hours. The operator on the mainland goes home after 7pm.
Abby’s husband, Brandon, is up in the tower. Checking, always checking. The light, with its many facets has to be kept burning. The ships have to be saved. He is their lifeline.

Abby presses her lips together and leans forward in the icy bath. She grabs the bag of many buttons and it slips from her grasp. She is mildly grateful that it remains closed and the contents have not been spilled. She retrieves the bag and places it on her knees. With hands which do not feel like they belong to her, Abby takes out one of the large cloth-covered buttons and places it between her teeth. Then she reaches in and takes out what else she needs.
Now she is someone else. She recalls what her mother told her to do. Her fingers delve and open, and she tries, with the rug-hook held tightly, to find the same pain she had felt when the doctor inserted that IUD four years ago.
It had not worked. Hamish was born with it grown onto his wrist like a bracelet.
He still bears the scar. But now, and she closes her eyes at this thought, it looks like a tiny question mark, whiter than his skin.
Abby clamps her teeth on the button. She feels the material slip a little, senses the structure of hardness beneath. Her jaw aches.
With fingers stretching, she pushes against herself, feels something burst in a lightning of pain and then it is over and just beginning all at the same time.
She lies back and watches the red, swirling from her as it warms the water. Her mother was wrong, she thinks distractedly, the cold water has not slowed the bleeding.
The batteries in her transistor seem to be fading, the voices like broken connections. But she sees the face of Brandon above her and, as if in a vacuum, she hears his cry. Now he is her lifeline.

Later she learns how he climbs the tower, flashes the light… three short, three long, three short… and thanks god that those he has saved so often are still familiar with the Code.


* * * * *

"Broken Connections" is part of Myra King's collection City Paddock & other stories.


Myra King lives along the coast of South Australia with her writer husband, David, and their greyhound, Sparky. Her poems and short stories, some of which have won awards, have been published in the UK, USA, Ireland and Australia in many literary magazines, books and anthologies. Myra has another short story collection, Uneasy Castles, and two YA novels: The Journey of Velvet Brown, and The Diaries of Velvet Brown, all published by Ginninderra Press, Adelaide, Australia. Her novel, Cyber Rules, was published by Certys UK.

Monday 16 July 2018


How I Learned to Cook

by Susan Tepper


Ingredients:
1 cup long hair
tsp of tea (British blend)
3 generous strips silk ribbon
Wire whisk
Cloves
Saucepan
Sifter
2 eggs
White candles
Fresh lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

                                    *

Set the table in advance using a nice cloth.  
Put out your best white candles. 
Blanch cloves in a saucepan on slow heat.  
Drain the cloves. 
Take a bath in scented clove water then shower for double cleanliness.
Rinse your hair with the fresh squeezed lemon. 
Towel dry. 
Slice off enough hair to fill a porcelain cup
add a teaspoon of tea
and place on the dresser to cool.  
Wind strips of silk ribbon around yourself fashionably. 
Salt and pepper to taste. 
Sift the loneliness. 
Using the wire whisk, beat the adultery with 2 eggs. 


* * * * *

More about Susan Tepper and her widely published work can be found at www.susantepper.com.


Sunday 15 July 2018


Drinking From the Rock               

by Lisa Fields


Driving toward 
mountain peaks                          
wreathed in pale gray fluff
we arrive inside drizzling rain,
and climb the steep path
Fog moves
in filmy tatters-
parting
to reveal wondrous towers of rock
concealed                              
by curtain folds
as the fog exhales

Surrounded by stone shoulders
one conifer stands
straight-spined, vibrant
Patiently,
it explains to us
the hidden water
it sips from veins
of rock

A memory arrives
I am a young woman
in a pretty summer dress
trying on sophistication-
borrowed from somewhere
immersed
in calculated flattery
I sip from the tall glass
re-filled beyond my comfort-
hoping
to please

Returning to the present
I wonder
if --
I will learn to wear my limbs with ease,
and like the lone tree in its reaching,
select only the essential


* * * * *

Lisa Fields lives in Southwestern New Mexico. Writing poetry expresses her desire to be immersed in a state of balance. Her inspiration comes from the joy of wild places and the challenge to live happily in the domesticated world. She is a contract writer for Quirine Ketterings, Professor of Nutrient Management in Agricultural Systems, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. In her home state of NY, Lisa served the farming community as an Extension educator for 10 years, and then worked for 10 years as a self-employed advisor.