WHAT I’ll NEVER FORGET

by Nancy Smiler Levinson

I swiped a ten-cent pack

of bareback picture trading cards

from Woolworth. Oodles of poodles,

but I could just as easily have picked

kittens or ladies in summer hats.

My girlfriend, Selena, and I

had ridden the streetcar downtown

and got root beer floats at the lunch counter.

After that we watched caged canaries

and tiny turtles with painted shells.

Then we wandered up and down the aisles.

That’s when I took the pack of cards

and tucked it in my little straw purse.

I didn’t know why.                                   

I could have paid the dime.

Selena told her mother, who called my mother.

Selena told her mother everything.

And she did everything her mother

told her to do and say.

Selena was very pretty, fluttery lashes,

no braces on her teeth, Bermuda shorts and tops

perfectly ironed, always wearing

a hair ribbon or set of barrettes

that matched every outfit.

I don’t remember if I was punished or not,

probably rebuked never ever steal again,

besides what would people think. And my mother

went on, as she did for years to come,

about Selena, why couldn’t I be more like her.

* * * * *

"What I'll Never Forget" was first published in The Evening Street Review (Fall 2018).

Nancy Smiler Levinson is author of Moments of Dawn: A Poetic Memoir of Love & Family, Affliction & Affirmation, as well as stories, poems, and essays that have appeared in Voice of Eve, The Copperfield Review, Third Wednesday, Burningword Literary Journal, Jewish Poetry Journal, Poetica, several anthologies, and elsewhere. In past chapters of her life she published some thirty books for young readers. Nancy lives in Los Angeles.

Gambling with Life

by Anissa Sboui

Like savage rats

Throbbing to exist

Crawling to survive in a

Chaotic city…

On the eve of the revolution

Something broke out

The smell of death

Void prevails

Fleeting innocence

At a distant boarding school

In the nick of time

Femtochemistry

Darkness enters

Light swiftly departs

The monotonous meal ends

Some still starving

Who cares?

Daydreaming butterflies

Sleeping, tired they are

Would tomorrow be better?

Warmth and care?

Sourourahma owe

Their loss of life…

Inseparable

Never know

Lying down

Dying there’d please them

What a cruel world!

Doom marries loss

Fire shows up

It does cross

No boundaries,

Encountering no defense.

Set on fire

Plunging in mire,

Destiny

Death satire.

Wait here to save

Preserve the boss

He won’t dismiss

Won’t step down.

To hell, traumatized childhood,

Burn to keep his ilk alive

Await nothing

Aspire nothing

As nothing loves nothing

The Waste Land:

You know nothing?

Do you see nothing?

Do you remember nothing?

* * * * *

Note: Sourourrahma: Sourour and Rahma are 2 schoolgirls, victims of burns during a fire in their boarding school in the region of Kasserine, Tunisia on the 6th of February  2018.

Anissa Sboui is a Tunisian poet, University teacher and a PhD research scholar.

To Love and Be Loved

by Jeannie E. Roberts

Before this hiding, what did you want?

Behind this veil, what do you fear?

Is your heart troubled? Why are you here?

Have you lost hope, vanished from sight?

What do you want? Where is your light?

Have you been lonely? Is seclusion your truth?

Are you weary of living? Can displacement

take root? Have you stopped holding tokens?

Are you done catching crumbs?

When will you heal, be whole to the sum?

Before this hiding, what did you want?

Behind this veil, what do you fear?

Could love be your purpose, what's missing, 

my dear? Beyond this hiding, try finding

a door, send love through the keyhole,

keep sending, send more. What do you want?

Why are you here? To love and be loved,

the answer is clear.

* * * * *

Jeannie E. Roberts has authored six books, including The Wingspan of Things (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), Romp and Ceremony (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Beyond Bulrush (Lit Fest Press, 2015), and Nature of it All (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She is also author and illustrator of Rhyme the Roost! A Collection of Poems and Paintings for Children (Daffydowndilly Press, an imprint of Kelsay Books, 2019) and Let's Make Faces! (author-published, 2009). Her work appears in print and online in North American and international journals and anthologies. She holds a B.S. in secondary education, M.A. in arts and cultural management, and is poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. When she’s not reading, writing, or editing, you can find her drawing and painting, or outdoors photographing her natural surroundings.

The Artistry of Andrew

by Jeannie E. Roberts

it's the way the moon smiles

or is it the sun that beams

above the strong stance

of zebra striped and stippled

atop blades of grass 

it's the way white rouses

black and black answers

back with spatial distinction

it's the way it breathes with

ready line and the freewheeling

design of a child's hand

it's the way her heart holds

a magic place a sacred space

for her son and his first-grade

painting

* * * * * *

"The Artistry of Andrew" first appeared in Silver Birch Press. 

Jeannie E. Roberts has authored six books, including The Wingspan of Things (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), Romp and Ceremony (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Beyond Bulrush (Lit Fest Press, 2015), and Nature of it All (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She is also author and illustrator of Rhyme the Roost! A Collection of Poems and Paintings for Children (Daffydowndilly Press, an imprint of Kelsay Books, 2019) and Let's Make Faces! (author-published, 2009). Her work appears in print and online in North American and international journals and anthologies. She holds a B.S. in secondary education, M.A. in arts and cultural management, and is poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. When she’s not reading, writing, or editing, you can find her drawing and painting, or outdoors photographing her natural surroundings.

Rosh Chodesh Aftermath

by Anita Pulier

Rosh Chodesh, the day celebrating the arrival of the new Jewish month, has long been recognized as a woman's holiday.

We have come to

a tribal meet up:

women welcoming a new moon.

This gathering reminds us

of the 60s and long dormant labels,

feminist, radical, activist.

We introduce ourselves to

strangers and friends,

atheists, believers, sceptics.

We bow to ancestral wisdom, 

cycles and moons,

tie ribbons on trees,

form a circle, hold hands,

listen, look up,

speak of the women

who raised us,

share stories, not all good.

After a pot luck dinner

and a poem or two

about aging and death.

We talk, visit, sip wine.

Not much else happens.

We gather empty casseroles

dig out car keys,

and buckle up

which is when we

find ourselves smiling

at that sliver of moon 

a bit surprised that

something so old

can seem so new.

* * * * *

After retiring from her law practice, Anita Pulier served as a U. S. representative for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at the United Nations.

Her chapbooks Perfect Diet, The Lovely Mundane and Sounds Of Morning as well as her book The Butchers Diamond were published by Finishing Line Press. Anita’s poems have appeared both online and in print in many journals and several anthologies. Recently she has been the featured poet on The Writers Almanac.

Right

Group poem written by women in a detention center

I'm in good health.

I'm in a good mood.

It's a new day.

I've found myself in happiness.

Everyone has their own rendition,

but when it's up to God

He will mend this one.

I'm thinking of my beautiful mother.

I'm missing both of mine so much!

I miss her soft, caring touch,

her voice, her laugh,

the things she taught me

stay forever in my mind.

If I had a flower for every time

she crosses my mind, I'd be walking

in a never ending garden

matching the beauty in her gaze.

I love the joy in my heart

(when it is there!).

It shines like the sunshine

on a cloudy day.

It speaks to my mind of joy

and love, of happiness and fun.

It's like adrenaline coursing through

my body, starting in my veins,

thrashing into my arteries

and forcing my heart to soar

with the finest spark

of love from above.

I love the sound of women's voices.

They're oh so very sweet,

soft, happy, but still strong.

They teach us of love, caring

and joy. The words they say

we can hear forever . . .

the words they say.

Red, supple, sometimes crazy,

the only thing to keep a man at bay.

Pregnant in Grad School

by Rachel Wagner

I got pregnant at the start of my final year of grad school. I didn’t know it at first. And even when I did, I only told like one person at work. But what didn’t show from my belly must have shown on my clothes. Must have shown on my bruised fists, my empty smiles, my back standing up performatively straight. I was wearing short skirts and sneakers not giving a fuck. Huge slits and thigh high socks. Ponytails. Creeping into class. Clamoring at my desk. Never standing while I taught. Slumped over in a chair, or crying alone in a shared office. Having text arguments between classes, or basically just whenever my baby’s dad took a sip.

Everyone started to know near the end of that fall semester. By December I was limiting my caffeine, even though I wanted to drink like three free cappuccinos at the department’s get together thing. Over winter break, I’d get my student evaluations. A row down of what my ex-students would have changed said: the professor. Whatever. So I said it on the first day to my new students: I’m pregnant but I’m not due until after classes end. Everyone looked at my stomach in a panic until the end of the sentence.

Finally started wearing clothes again. Skintight dresses with four-inch heels. I wore that outfit to a conference in May with my stomach all bubbled up, and I was fucking it up. I read from a condensed section of my thesis. It was the most developed thing in the room. Then I went home and coming from my room was a huge cloud of black&mild smoke. I happened to also uninvite my drunk ass man that day, so he went and got mad. I took off the shoes and got into a real fight with him then. Out in the hall my dress would end up on the floor with me still in it. Punching him raw. Fingerprints on my throat on my skin.

People watching from the stairs. I guess they were scared cuz no one ever quite got around to helping get him off me. I mean if it was me, bro would have got jumped that minute. All I got was a couple comments from some women the next day, talking about, you didn’t make a sound when you fell, you’re tough. I was standing there with someone’s life hovering over my lap like, huh. I moved out that weekend, belly and all. Then I missed graduation because I got sick from the AC at my new place the next day.

* * * * *

Rachel Wagner is a writer from New Jersey, currently living in Newark. She has two books out—Abandonment Issues: Alive in New Jersey and Back Like I Never Left: Dating as a Single Mother. She's also a writing instructor at Seton Hall University. More of her work can be found at Rachel-Wagner.com.

The Vocation that has Chosen Me

by Holly Day

There will never be enough time to catalog

all of the dreams of the things in my yard

in my house: the fat squirrels that roost in the trees outside

the sparrows that peck at insects in the air conditioner

the mice that live behind my stove, the spider curled in wait

in the corner of my room.

They whisper their stories in Morse code raps

clicking mandibles and tiny, clawed feet, demanding

I stay up just one more hour, one more hour to trap

their thoughts with my pen, in words I can remember.

When I dream, it’s of dust mites and fleas

bits of cheese left out on the counter, the warmth

of the summer sun, an explosion of flowers

the songs of the stars and a terror

of vacuums. There will never be enough time

to transcribe my cat’s demands, the hopes and dreams

of the blind voles in my basement

all of these things I need to write.

* * * * *

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), while her newest nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies and Tattoo FAQ.

AND THEN THE SKY

by Katherine West

Ground level, nothing

enters the wilderness, except feet—

horse feet, human feet.  We start

at the river and work our way up

and through how many worlds?

From yellow willows through pink mini-canyons

through tawny and scarlet grasslands made by

fire and decorated with skeletons

to foot-tingling vertigo cliffs dropping

from white heights straight down to

vertical death straight out to horizontal

eye-flight—180 degrees of mountain waves

lapping at the sky.

And just like being lost at sea, I can feel

the lack of humanity.  My human

radar finds nothing to ping against, no

roofs glinting in the sun, no

distant roar of traffic, or guns,

just the last of the falling leaves ticking

against each other like light rain on the roof,

catching the late sun like a flock of distant

birds at five o'clock.

Behind me, the pale half-moon rises silently

in the afternoon east—and I remember

how she rose with Venus on Halloween

when the first cold came and

made them very  bright—still brighter

than the new, too-fast moving, human

Stars that surround them—and I remember

that there is no wilderness in the sky

as the F16s detonate their weekly flight.

* * * * *

"And Then The Sky" was first published in New Verse News which nominated it for a Pushcart Prize.

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near the Gila Wilderness, where she writes poetry about the soul-importance of wilderness and performs it with her musician husband, Yaakov. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, and New Verse News.

WILDERNESS WITHIN

An Ode to the Gila River/Wilderness

by Katherine West

I have heard that one cannot recognize a soulmate until the soul inhabits the body.  I have heard that ancient shamans practiced "soul retrieval."  I have heard desalmado  in Spanish, to be unsouled.  We don't seem to have this verb in English, and yet we have the disease. 

I have lived in wild places, but I have not been wild.  I have lived in the jungle where there is no sky.  I have lived in mountains where sky speaks in spectrums of color and mackerel textures.  I have lived in dim canyons waiting for sun and avalanche.  My body lived there, waiting for its soul, its soulmate. 

I have heard there's a gene for belief.  I have heard it's a matter of neurotransmitters.  But God is not my problem, not my equation to balance.  I am the telegraph operator, the receiver and sender of messages, of codes, of SOS.

I have spent years, no, decades tuned to the wrong frequency, to static, to a litany of commercials for Self.  I spent one week with the Gila River, one week with uninterrupted rippling over stones and pooling into eddies, into the empty wells of my life, filling them day and night until they overflowed and drowned everything that was not soul.  Soul.  Savage.  Wild.  Wilderness.  Soul.  Soulmate.

* * * * *

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near the Gila Wilderness, where she writes poetry about the soul-importance of wilderness and performs it with her musician husband, Yaakov. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, and New Verse News, which recently nominated her poem, And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize.