A Different Perspective, the Happiness of Hylas

by Jeannie E. Roberts

—after Hylas and the Nymphs, a painting by John William Waterhouse (1896)*


As if sculpted from gypsum or talc
you 
the specimens of physique

 gather as seven 
unite as one

the goddesses who govern over pure water 
emerge amid aquatic herbs 
surface between bundles of green

where auburn hair flows 
holds the flowers of Nymphaeaceae.

Before you 
virility kneels 
fetches the quench for Argo’s crew

exalts 
and enlivens your view.

Immersed in the clarity of freedom 
black hair flows 
where eight specimens of physique

unite as one 
glide across a wellspring of grace

 gladden within the mystique 
of a naiad pond. 
Lily pads glow in the romance of mythos.

* * * * *

*Here is a link to Wikipedia's "Hylas and the Nymphs:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylas_and_the_Nymphs_(painting)

Jeannie E. Roberts lives in Wisconsin, where she writes, draws and paints, and often photographs her natural surroundings. She's authored five poetry collections and two illustrated children's books. Her newest collection, As If Labyrinth - Pandemic Inspired Poems, was released in April 2021 from Kelsay Books. She’s a teacher, an editor of an online literary magazine, and is listed in Poets & Writers. She’s an animal lover, a nature enthusiast, and an equal rights advocate. 

 

Zeus Wife #2
Themis Writes From Bankruptcy Court

by Laurie Byro


Zeus? That Clod really cooked my goose. Six children,
all daughters, and very attractive (yeah they took after “the bomb”
me). Hey, like me, they have big boobs, big dreams and big

daddy bragging about all his property. What IS a mother to do?
I maxed out Bank Americard on daughter #3’s wedding. AAA
Master went with #5.  Chase (now that name is a hoot) is being

utilized for my youngest darling. Between us chickens
that one belongs to the tribe of Sappho. Wouldn’t you know
they want “hers and hers” embroidered on everything.

Almighty Zeus, the tacky statues of them in lip locks, the
doilies with chocolaty mints. I should have my head examined
or in a noose. So I plead, Zeusie pooh, Zeus. My money girdle,

can you set it loose, somewhat? Float me a loan, pretty please.
He glowers, threatens showers, and not bridal. I sidle
up doing the “come hither: begging don’t reign on our parade.”

Instead, he orders a hail storm on the day of Baby Girls’ nuptials.
Yes, over their bed. Just kill me now, right? Baby Mama Drama,
I am not even certain if he’s my legal spouse. Lying-spider.

Eight-timing louse.  So here I be, declaring bankruptcy. Pity me?
Just, don’t tell him. It will be easier to make payments
once I refinance. The price tags of true romantics. They’re dear.  


* * * * *

Note:  Themis was the titan Goddess of divine law. She bore Zeus six daughters.

Laurie Byro has seven collections of poetry published, most recently: Hopeless Romance, (Cholla Needles Arts), Deux & Other Sorrows and La Dogaressa and Other Poems (Cowboy Buddha Press). Four books of poetry were published prior to this, among them Gertrude Stein's Salon and Other Legends (Blue Horse Press) and The Bloomsberries and Other Curiosities (Kelsay Books): both contain work that received a New Jersey Poetry Prize. Laurie lives in New Jersey with her husband where she has been facilitating Circle of Voices poetry discussion in New Jersey libraries the last 23 years.

Rejection Slips

by Laurie Byro


Dear Poetess: (we are a male dominated publishing house. We save Poet for
the genuine masculine pronoun, writer for the transitional “all others.”)

Thank you for your enthusiastic 8 poem submission to Ovid Quarterly (we prefer
3 poems and stop reading after 2 strophes) and while we were riveted on your

New-age feminist posies, especially the brilliant “Hot Flash in the Time of Trump”
I am afraid for this moment in time (and any future moment of this Presidency)

we are allowing them more time to mature (although the word fester certainly
comes to mind.) A more suitable period um otical, (journal is the better word,

we thinks) would be "Fiorello Power, Little Flowers, big noises" or even
“Off Kilter—a handbook for the criminally insane.” Fear not, you were not among

the slush pile, but we do receive a daily drizzle of nasty submissions
that are sometimes even more alarming than yours.

We are grateful for a slightly more conservative approach and so perhaps
your subscription to “The National Review” has expired? (Naughty girl, wakey wakey.)

We DO encourage you to purchase our journal (why not capitalize on desperation?)
and please feel free to resubmit 3 poems in 3 months (making it easy for you to remember Sweetness). We feel strongly additional poems from you will allow us time to reconsider

(and possibly to forgive and forget.) As ever, best

(wishes that you will have one or more psychiatric evaluations, or better still pen
a manuscript entitled “Get Thee To A Nuttery: How the Bard and Freud veered

my poetry to the right”) we remain your waiting with bated breath editors,
forever ready and eager with a red pen, a red cap, and a very-wide red tie.

PS—We can’t promise a personal note each and every time, Cupcake, but with this entry?
YOU have inspired us.


* * * * *

Laurie Byro has seven collections of poetry published, most recently: Hopeless Romance, (Cholla Needles Arts), Deux & Other Sorrows and La Dogaressa and Other Poems (Cowboy Buddha Press). Four books of poetry were published prior to this, among them Gertrude Stein's Salon and Other Legends (Blue Horse Press) and The Bloomsberries and Other Curiosities (Kelsay Books): both contain work that received a New Jersey Poetry Prize. Laurie lives in New Jersey with her husband where she has been facilitating Circle of Voices poetry discussion in New Jersey libraries the last 23 years.

Nobody Knew

by Alicia Thompson

I think of planning to get up off the floor. Or am I planning to think of it? I imagine each step in minute detail. Slightly shifting my weight onto my left hip, starting to move my hand to the right, but I do nothing. A moment later the messages are becoming more insistent. You must move. Get up.

            Mum always used to say I could never make a decision. But I proved her wrong with Len. We’d known each other since we were kids. He’d always been sweet on Celia Hollingworth. They got around together all through school and it was understood by everyone that his father being a boiler-maker, he’d follow him into the trade and she’d make the perfect wife. Funny how fate can make a few quick flicks of the wrist. And suddenly you find yourself on the floor.

            The pain is starting to throb. I need to distract myself…thinking about other things helps, but when it gets bad, it’s like I need to talk out loud or shout. I know what’ll happen if I start talking to myself…Marion’ll walk in and think my cheese has finally slid off the biscuit. You’d think after such a long life I’d be able to dredge up one bloomin’ song…so many locked away in my brain, but the words won’t come. Only silly things. Oh dear, what can the matter be. Seven old ladies got locked in the lavatory…they were there from Monday to Saturday…

            It was the war that did it, of course. Who ever heard of calling people up by a random ballot? And for a war nobody cared about in a place no one had ever heard of. I wrote to him when Celia got married. Just newsy stuff, nothing personal. Well, he wrote back. Such long letters about the country, politics, the Yanks…all sorts. His descriptions were so lively I felt like I was there with him. I still read them sometimes and wonder who wrote them. The person who penned them never came home.

            A fund raiser went round for him the week before he was returned. Staying back in the hospital after the presentation group left, I sat on the end of his bed and we talked until the nurses started giving me the evil eye. It was then that he asked me.

            She stayed in there far more than she oughta, all to get rid of superfluous water…Marriage is hard work. That’s the thing girls today don’t realise. During the hard times I found strength in unlikely things. I remember living off a smile from Dr Kemp for weeks. And I always found comfort in the regularity of the night soil man coming on Sunday nights, whistling as he clanged the lids. I never felt happy going to sleep until I heard him. You hang onto these solid things when the life around you slides and cracks. If you can find enough real, hard things, they might just start to lock in and stop everything else sailing around…She went in to repair a suspender, it snapped up and ruined her feminine gender…

            It only started when he lost his job. Of course, I was partly to blame. I didn’t understand what he was going through. He wanted to up sticks and leave this small-minded town but I couldn’t. Not with Mum so ill. I think he had an argument with someone on the way home that first night. Dinner was cold on the table and I was out in the garden when I heard the door slam. It was my fault he’d been fired, he said. There were no single men, so married men without children were next. Called himself a luckless bastard with a wife like a fallow field. I know he didn’t mean what happened. It’s like he was seeing someone else. Not me. Never me.

            She was drunk as a skunk when she came through the door, the stalls were all full so she peed on the floor…       The kettle turned itself off automatically ages ago. The teabag can sit in its cup unattended. Like me. I am aware of wetness on my calf, soaking my stocking: the water that sent me down here to count my blessings for a while.

            I thought about leaving him. Visiting Mum at the home usually turned me though. I often wondered if she’d bullied me into staying whether I wouldn’t have left immediately. But it’s easy not to make a decision when you have nowhere to go. There was a certain comfort in having no choice. And there were good days. I always remind myself of that. She only went in to make herself comfy, and then she said “Girls, I can’t get my bum free…”

            Time has slowed into a foggy stasis—how long have I been here? What has happened outside in the world since I’ve been examining the diamond-patterned linoleum and gazing up at the wooden panels of the kitchen cabinets? I turn to rest my cheek on the lino, deeply scratched in places—we never did get round to replacing it. I know that when I become serious about upward leverage my hip will explode in spangles of pain, a rampant argument between the joints as opposed to the current drone I am trying to block out.

            I keep an ear open for Marion. Most mornings she comes through the gap in the fence and taps on the window and we have tea together out in the sunroom. She goes to her daughter's on Wednesday...is today Wednesday? No, Tuesday, I'm sure. 

            Her urge was sincere, her reaction was fickle. She hurdles the door she'd forgotten her nickel...

            I'm sure it's Tuesday.      

            I can’t understand children these days. All pasty-faced cave dwellers. I know I wouldn’t be in the house all day if my legs were up to it. Marion has a granddaughter, Jessie. It was her eighth birthday the other day and she was given a digital camera. Of course she already has a mobile phone. For security, her mother says. And of course she has her own TV in her room where she can watch her own shows—it had to go somewhere after they got the plasma screen. Lucky there was enough room, what with the computer being in there already. I think nine might be a little young for her first car, but of course I don’t say anything. What do I know about this world of modern communication anyway? She hadn’t been living according to Hoyle, was relieved when the swelling was only a boil…

            Marion is on the email. Says she knows how to open mail from Stephen and how to send a reply. Stamps would be cheaper, she says, but at least she knows they always find him. Plus her handwriting isn’t what it once was. No one puts pen to paper these days—although my niece Annie loves those little square sticky notes. It strikes me that a lot of written communication comes in tiny squares these days. Does anyone bother to remember anything any more?

            She went in, in a heck of a hurry, when she got there, it was too late to worry…Some things you remember better than others. Some you deliberately forget and some you remember differently to other people. I often wonder about that. Marion still says her worst night ever was seeing me running down the street tearing at my nightie. She can be quite dramatic at times. All I remember is finding him and calling the police. I felt as cool as a cucumber. I remember sitting down on the back step and holding Len’s bloodied hand in mine and saying, ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.’ I don’t recall the police arriving. You can’t remember everything.

            The third old lady was little Miss Draper…she went inside, and there was no paper…all she could find was a bricklayer's scraper…

            I wish Marion would hurry up. She must be gassing on the phone. I can just see the top of the magnolia tree out the kitchen window. There’s a little bird that’s been hopping around a lot these last few days. Got some babies, no doubt. I watch her agile little flits and hops and think how lucky she is, but how short her life. But then, living long is not all it’s cracked up to be. Len must have known that.

            She was known as a world renowned farter…she went in and played a sonata…

            I think I’ll just lie here a little while longer.


* * * * *

Alicia Thompson is an Australian writer. Her debut novel ‘Something Else’ is coming out with NineStar Press in October 2021. Her website is www.efolio.com.au and you can find her at aliciathompsonauthor on Instagram and Facebook

 

A Bucket of Love
            for my grandchildren

by Claire Scott


Once upon a time ago she came
at the last light of day with a bucket
and a long wooden ladle, passing
out punch in paper cups to the kids
in the park before kids weren’t allowed
to take food from strangers before kids
had to be accompanied by parents at all times
before kids had to be home before dusk &
the old woman stirred & poured & said nothing
simply passed out Dixie cups filled with pink love.

Pin flowers in your hair, hang haloes
from the tops of apple trees, sing praises for
the old woman wearing a tattered cardigan,
a red wool cap & shoddy sneakers,
for sure an avatar of Kuan Yin or Tara
or the Virgin Mary, for sure sorely needed
in this worn & weary & wrinkled & wacked-out world.
Call to her, send a prayer & I know she will come
with her wooden ladle & bucket of love.
I saw her there that time ago, I swear.


* * * * *

"A Bucket of Love" was first published by Quill and Parchment.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and The Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.         

Strong Will

by Claire Scott


I sat for hours staring at the spinach on my plate
refusing to touch the disgusting pile of green
I insisted on wearing my pumpkin costume to school
long past Thanksgiving
in third grade I ate only mac and cheese
in college I wanted to marry you but you didn’t fit
the mold, no Princeton or Stanford
no medical or law degree in sight so
my parents refused to pay for a wedding
said I was ruining their lives, destroying their dreams
so we started a business selling magic wands
that people said no one would buy
no one believes in magic anymore they said
but the business flourished, and we went
to Paris for our honeymoon, spending lazy
days in the Louvre, nights on the Left Bank
the sky salted with stars

I miss you with your pointless puns and shapeless
songs, sung in some unknown key, you who remembers
I like lemon in my tea, Schubert sonatas, snapdragons
and the science section of The New York Times
your shoes a-jumble in the hall, a scramble of books
by your chair, your unwashed Warriors cup on the counter
the way they were that night the phone rang
as I was putting honey-glazed salmon in the oven
opening a bottle of Old Vine Zinfandel
today, my love, I will will you back


* * * * *

"Strong Will" was first published in Talking River Review.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and The Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.          

 

The Good Girl Soldiers On

by Cynthia Anderson


My brother turns the key in my back
and I’m off, a mechanical doll—
Look at me go! You’d never know

I’m not real. My sleep eyes close.
I eat real food, cry real tears.
Chatty Cathy! My brother claps,

frowns when I stutter and stop.
I’m a locked drawer, a diary,
an army of one. Down below,

my German forebears thwack
their belts. They’re waiting.
They’ll wait till the Rapture.

Because there’s no girl
as good as me.


* * * * *

Cynthia Anderson has published ten poetry collections, most recently The Missing Peace (Velvet Dusk Publishing, 2021). Her poems frequently appear in journals and anthologies, and she is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. In 2020, she took up short form poetry and since then has been exploring haiku, senryu, cherita, and related forms. Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens. She makes her home in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park. www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com

The Clearing
Late Summer 1938

by Raine Geoghegan


We used to walk out together on dark nights, to get away from the talk of war.  Ee’ called it the ‘mothering darkness’ and said that nothin’ could ‘arm us while we were together. I would trip over stumps and stones and ‘ee’d tighten ‘is grip and say. ‘Yer alright wiv me.’ We talked a lot about each of our dad’s, things they said, and their mannerisms. Mine would pretend ‘ee was boxin’, ‘is fists would come up an’ ‘ee’d lunge at yer. Alf laughed and said ‘ee knew a few chal’s that used to do that. ‘Is dad used to chew on a matchstick then spit it out on the floor, funny ‘cause now I look back that’s exactly what Alf did once we was married. As the black of the night lifted and the moon sneaked through the clouds, we saw what was in front of us, we saw it clear as day an’ when we came to the clearin’, I leaned in close, smellin’ the fresh scent of soap on ‘im and the woody smell of the poove. ‘Ee said:

    ‘Look at that moon Ame, there ain’t nuthin’ like it in the ‘ole world’ 


* * * * *

Glossary: Chals – men; Poove – field.

Raine Geoghegan, M.A. is a poet & prose writer of Romany, Welsh and Irish descent. Nominated for the Forward Prize, Best of the Net & the Pushcart Prize, her work has been published online and in print with Poetry Ireland Review; Travellers’ Times; Under the Radar; SkyLight47; Poethead and more. Apple Water: Povel Panni was launched in 2018 listed as a Poetry Book Society Spring 2019 Selection. They Lit Fires: Lenti Hatch O Yog was published in 2019, Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her full collection, The Talking Stick: O Pookering Kosh will be published with Salmon Poetry Press in 2022.

 

This month, a second Moon Prize, the 81^st, goes to Lindsay Rockwell's pair of poems "Some days."

Some Days

by Lindsay Rockwell


Some days

she loves nothing.
The water pressure too much, or too little
makes her heart feel small.
The church bells heavy her load.
Fire in the stove stares back, hot and mean.
Wet grass sticks to her soles.
Her limp worsens.
Her hip needs mending. The first
shadows of morning prick and prod
so she folds herself into herself
a rumpled woman wanting.
What’s worse, the distant din of children’s 
raucous whoops and hollers careen the breeze
in yellows and reds, crowd her brain
like a faraway train’s wail or a fog horn’s howl.
Her bones buckle beneath the weight.
The bakery’s scents wend their way
inside her tiny heart, small as a bluebird’s
beating as fast. The gallow of her chest
darkens with a heart too small to fill.
Her Ma calls from the wrap round porch
her voice a lilt, a maze of mess, a labyrinth of promises kept 
and promises broken. The darling of her eye, no matter.
Salt that stings her wounds.
Cantaloupes round themselves toward their tapering stem.
So do raspberries, their odd morula selves, stain the earth.


Some days 

she loves it all.
The water pressure’s perfection pummeling
makes her heart feel huge.
The church bells carry her load.
Fire in the stove gazes back.
Wet grass licks her soles.
Her limp lighter today than yesterday.
Her hip needs mending, one day. The first
shadows of morning kind and amber
so she folds herself upon herself
a spectacular woman wanting.
What’s more, the distant din of children’s
raucous whoops and hollers careen the breeze
in yellows and reds, dazzle her brain 
like a faraway train’s hymn or a fog horn’s beckon.
Her bones balance beneath the weight.
The bakery’s scents wend their way
inside her voluminous heart, large as a horse’s
beating true. The temple of her chest
luminous with a heart that fills and fills.
Her Ma calls from the wrap round porch
her voice a lilt, a mess of maze, a labyrinth of promises kept 
and promises broken. The darling of her eye, yes.
Salt that cleans her wounds.
Cantaloupes round themselves toward their tapering stem.
So do raspberries, their odd morula selves, found in a bowl, waiting.


* * * * *

Lindsay Rockwell won first prize in the October Project Poetry Contest in April 2020 and has been published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Perceptions Magazine, The Center for New American’s Poetry Anthology 2020 and The Courtship of Winds. She is currently the poet-in-residence for the Episcopal Church of Connecticut as well as host for their Poetry and Social Justice Dialogue series. As a medical oncologist she has been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and coauthored In Defiance of Death: Exposing The Real Costs of End-of-Life Care (Praeger, 2008). 

 

This month, the 80th Moon Prize goes to B. Lynne Zika's poem "They Were Just Being Boys."

 

They Were Just Being Boys

by B. Lynne Zika


Debbie Ball was the first girl in Loachapoka, Alabama,
to stop wearing a padded bra.
She had her red sequined majorette uniform
taken in at the bust
and laughed and threw back her hair and said,
“It’s what I got born with.”

Bill Woody was captain of the football team
and tended to speak with the assurance
of the only son of the town’s newspaper family
and the first of his friends to sport a hard-on.
Bill said what Debbie got born with
was a revolving door.

After college, Bill tried pipe sales, gambling,
and a stint in Hollywood
modeling for an agency specializing in GQ types.
I had steak and salad with him at Musso & Frank’s one night
and caught up on old times.
Red Ray got shot in a hotel room outside of town
by a jealous husband.
Hugh Shiffler became an MIA.
David Boote went into his daddy’s shoe business.
I said, “Bill, whatever happened to Debbie Ball?”
Bill snorted over his Caesar salad and said,
“Debbie Ball was a whore.
She once gang-banged the entire football team
in Red Ray’s trailer after the game.”
I said I thought that was just an ugly rumor,
the kind started by small-town boys.
Bill sawed off a piece of steak and said,
“Nah, I was there.”
I said, “Bill, what’s the difference between Debbie Ball
and the boys who screwed her?”
Bill looked at me, a little amazed,
and said again, “Why, she was a whore.”

The candlelight caught the red of my melting Bloody Mary.
I saw the flash of Debbie’s sequins on the field,
the fire on the ends of her baton twirling in the sky
and spinning down and down
past her open hand
to the white chalk numbers on the 50-yard line
and Debbie, bending to retrieve the fallen wand,
bowing to the crowd.


* * * * *

B. Lynne Zika’s poetry and essays have appeared online and in literary and consumer publications, including globalpoemic, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene, Poetry East, ONTHEBUS, and The Anthology of American Poets. In addition to editing poetry and nonfiction, she worked as a closed-captioning editor for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. She received a Pacificus Foundation Literary Award in short fiction. Her photography has received several awards, including the 2020 Top Creator Award from Viewbug. Her images may be viewed at https://artsawry.com/.

Archaeology of a Wedding

by Cynthia Anderson


Under it all, a four-year-old
grins ear to ear as she holds
her bride and groom dolls,
tiny arms like flagpoles.

Later, she doesn’t wear white.
In an orange orchard,
by an almond tree, the minister
laughs while they kiss.

Each year deposits a layer
of rock—fights, leavings.
A woman alone in her room
stares at the floorboards

as one by one, her friends
find gold. So as not to be
forgotten, she decides
to marry the moon.

It’s not her, then,
but the child who cries
after last night’s dream:

a couple in white
runs up the street,
pulling the trunks
for their honeymoon.


* * * * *

Cynthia Anderson has published ten poetry collections, most recently The Missing Peace (Velvet Dusk Publishing, 2021). Her poems frequently appear in journals and anthologies, and she is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. In 2020, she took up short form poetry and since then has been exploring haiku, senryu, cherita, and related forms. Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens. She makes her home in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park. www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com

Junk Drawer

by Emma Foster

Four years old, but I’m tall enough already to yank the drawer back. I peer over the edge and gaze in awe at the miscellaneous memories. The junk drawer has its own arthritis, with rusting hinges, flaking paint, chock full of what Grandma tossed in there without thought. It holds the simple things I love, tucked in its hidden places: paperclips, dull, green-bodied pencils, pink and orange eraser caps. I snag a stray nickel. I doodle with the pencils, make paperclip chains while Grandma does the dishes and gazes out her kitchen window.

Thirteen years old, I’m already surpassing my grandma’s education. I thrust my hand into the canopy of dented paper scraps, looking only for necessity. I manage to find a pencil, gone soft with age, graphite end snapped off. Grandma begins a search for the pencil sharpener, as if she knows that she has one. “This is too much for me,” she mutters.

Nineteen years old, and I wish I knew as much as Grandma once knew. She set us all down once, over Sunday dinner, saying her time was near. She tossed down notepads, “Make a list of things you want in my house.” It takes us two years, and when we’re done, Grandma places them where she places everything.

Twenty-two years old, I had kept my list in the junk drawer. We clear out the last of her things, shoving our pain back until nothing is left. I glance in the junk drawer and find it empty. 


* * * * *

Emma Foster graduated from Cedarville University with a degree in English and minor in creative writing. She's been published in the Cedarville Review, Voices of the Valley Literary Journal, Ariel Chart, and she is forthcoming in Sledgehammer Lit and Nailpolish Stories. She is currently a finalist for the WOW! Women on Writing Flash Fiction Contest. 

Some days

by Lindsay Rockwell


Some days

she loves nothing.
The water pressure too much, or too little
makes her heart feel small.
The church bells heavy her load.
Fire in the stove stares back, hot and mean.
Wet grass sticks to her soles.
Her limp worsens.
Her hip needs mending. The first
shadows of morning prick and prod
so she folds herself into herself
a rumpled woman wanting.
What’s worse, the distant din of children’s 
raucous whoops and hollers careen the breeze
in yellows and reds, crowd her brain
like a faraway train’s wail or a fog horn’s howl.
Her bones buckle beneath the weight.
The bakery’s scents wend their way
inside her tiny heart, small as a bluebird’s
beating as fast. The gallow of her chest
darkens with a heart too small to fill.
Her Ma calls from the wrap round porch
her voice a lilt, a maze of mess, a labyrinth of promises kept 
and promises broken. The darling of her eye, no matter.
Salt that stings her wounds.
Cantaloupes round themselves toward their tapering stem.
So do raspberries, their odd morula selves, stain the earth.


Some days 

she loves it all.
The water pressure’s perfection pummeling
makes her heart feel huge.
The church bells carry her load.
Fire in the stove gazes back.
Wet grass licks her soles.
Her limp lighter today than yesterday.
Her hip needs mending, one day. The first
shadows of morning kind and amber
so she folds herself upon herself
a spectacular woman wanting.
What’s more, the distant din of children’s
raucous whoops and hollers careen the breeze
in yellows and reds, dazzle her brain 
like a faraway train’s hymn or a fog horn’s beckon.
Her bones balance beneath the weight.
The bakery’s scents wend their way
inside her voluminous heart, large as a horse’s
beating true. The temple of her chest
luminous with a heart that fills and fills.
Her Ma calls from the wrap round porch
her voice a lilt, a mess of maze, a labyrinth of promises kept 
and promises broken. The darling of her eye, yes.
Salt that cleans her wounds.
Cantaloupes round themselves toward their tapering stem.
So do raspberries, their odd morula selves, found in a bowl, waiting.


* * * * *

Lindsay Rockwell won first prize in the October Project Poetry Contest in April 2020 and has been published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Perceptions Magazine, The Center for New American’s Poetry Anthology 2020 and The Courtship of Winds. She is currently the poet-in-residence for the Episcopal Church of Connecticut as well as host for their Poetry and Social Justice Dialogue series. As a medical oncologist she has been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and coauthored In Defiance of Death: Exposing The Real Costs of End-of-Life Care (Praeger, 2008). 

 

The Dead Bird House

by Lorette C. Luzajic

We followed the long sky for hours. We were the only ones on the road. The white cotton bolls blooming beneath the blue were like a mirage. We passed a crooked little church, covered in spray on prophecies. Tagged, jagged, bedraggled, so many ghosts in the dagger branches. The dead went with me everywhere, no matter where I was going. I did everything I could to make sure no one I loved felt they had to compete with those who had no fight left in them. But when you bury everything before now, you long for what’s long gone. It was there at the back of my mind every time the sun started setting on the bay. The shadows descended through the pines along the cove just before we landed home. There were always scattered starlings on that lawn with so many birdhouses tangled in the trees. Why that was so was a mystery. I cast my bets on the obvious – poison - sure the old hermit who lived there was a sadist. But you said fate took its own turns. The dead birds might have preceded the occupant and maybe they scared her, too. It was a generous view of her life and people’s pasts in general, and I took it. Said maybe you were right and left it there. But inside, I knew the thing wasn’t outside of me, it was something coiled tightly within, this darkness that drew death to me. I didn’t say it of course, how I wanted something else to be true and real, to give you only the thing I had always wished about myself. I wanted to be easy to love.

* * * * *

"The Dead Bird House" is published in print in Lorette C. Luzajic's new book, Winter in June Mixed Media Books, 2021).

Lorette C. Luzajic is a writer and artist in Toronto, Canada. Her prose poetry and small stories have been widely published, in The Citron Review, Unbroken, Cleaver Magazine, MacQueen's Quinterly, and more. She is the editor of The Ekphrastic Review. Her most recent book is Winter in June (Mixed Media Books, 2021).

 

I Hope You Are Wrong

after Hypnosis, by Claude Tousignant, 1956*

by Lorette C. Luzajic

I hope you are wrong, but I fear you are right, my friend said. She picked at something on the checkered gabardine of her lapel with great focus. I had shared my view that the Chauvin trial verdict would end in flames no matter what it was. It was seldom my way to talk with anyone about all that went on in my mind, preferring to observe the world around me.  But I had a long-time and unique bond with my friend and enjoyed being able to talk nuance and hear honest and conflicting ideas. In any event, we both had mutual acquaintances in the vicinity, and they had already vacated, as if they had been warned of a typhoon, as if the forest on fire was already there in the city centre, and of course, it was. People say it is black and white, my friend said, but it isn’t. She had moved on to the scrutiny of a ring finger hangnail. It’s not that way at all. It is gray and yellow.  I was really trying to understand what she was nervously trying to convey, meaning to listen carefully, but my mind jumped immediately to a giant Tousignant print we’d once had in the foyer. It was a minimalist affair in just those colours, all pristine geometrics: a slim stripe of daffodil yellow beside a rectangle pool of fresh paved asphalt. I’m not sure now where the thing came from. It was faded and framed cheaply in utilitarian plastic, possibly left over from the tenants before us. Even so, I liked it. I was always drawn to more complicated paintings, with many layers and a variety of motivating factors that figured into the big picture. But the contrast in Claude’s colours was perfection: the tidy veneer over the dark void of our human soul on the one hand, the purifying pale fire on the other. 

* * * * *

Here is a link to Hyposis: https://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/works/17672/

"I Hope You Are Wrong" is published in print in Lorette C. Luzajic's new book, Winter in June Mixed Media Books, 2021).

Lorette C. Luzajic is a writer and artist in Toronto, Canada. Her prose poetry and small stories have been widely published, in The Citron Review, Unbroken, Cleaver Magazine, MacQueen's Quinterly, and more. She is the editor of The Ekphrastic Review. Her most recent book is Winter in June (Mixed Media Books, 2021).

The Charm

by Miriam O'Neal


This noon, finches claim the feeder—
muddy scarlet house-, and golds in their winter drab.
They flick away the titmice and juncos
who lurk in the privet, grey on buff
or black on grey, who must dart for seeds
while the finches chaff their fill.

I used to wait for him on my perch, hope he’d choose me,
thought I didn’t know how a boy decided.
And no one bothered to explain I was unnerving—
my bookishness a charm of words made most boys flounder.
The years have passed and that bird’s flown
to wives wedded and left, and fledglings

spun in nests of promises, then discarded. And I,
settled as a stone, unwinged?
What should I do with this happiness?


* * * * *

"The Charm" is from Miriam O'Neal's collection, The Half-Said Things, which will come out Spring 2022.

Miriam O'Neal lives in Plymouth, MA. Her collection, The Body Dialogues (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020) was nominated for the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Mass Book Award. A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, O’Neal was named Finalist in the 2019 Princemere Poetry Prize, the 2018 Ablemuse Poetry Prize, and several international poetry competitions. She translates Italian Poetry too. Poems have appeared or are coming out soon in Lily Poetry Review, River Heron Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Nixes Mate Review, and elsewhere. Listen to recordings of her work and/or order books at www.miriamoneal.com (or through her publishers or amazon.com).

Grace

by Nina Heiser


the curve of her neck
arching like the lift
of the gooseneck loosestrife
we planted in border gardens
of a home that
briefly passing with a promise
of permanence an illusory forever
was once ours

tiny white blossoms delicate
as the lace the Irish women tatted in their time
those women who waged solitary wars
shedding their sorrows in silence
cold in their knowledge of life’s
fragility

crystal dancers embroider
her lashes
lids landing in that line of lower cilia
to kiss her cheeks
soft pink petals uncurling
the hint of a smile dewy tender
opening to receive the day
raising a child’s smile
luminescent and alive

pale as new
snow  
holding all colors
she straddles the line
calls on rainbows to follow her
still      she     dreams
Sufis spinning silken circles
flashing beats
stomping
time

I hear chimes singing
from lowered branches
through cinnamon breezes
I sit unmoving
in a womb of memory
the space between us
filaments of darkness
filled
wide shining
this love
this animating
light


* * * * *

Nina Heiser is a poet, writer and retired journalist currently living in central Florida and New York. Her work has appeared in Tuck Magazine; Cadence, the Florida State Poets Association Anthology; Vociferous Press anthology Screaming from the Silence; Embark Literary Journal; and Gargoyle Magazine. Her poetry and photographs have been featured in Pendemics Journal, and Of Poets & Poetry.

isn’t it pretty to say so

by Nina Heiser


she was a wonder she was a
knockout she was unlike anyone
who came before she was
a difficult woman she was
my mum

Vega to your fuchsia-lipped sun
you who were velocity
and I a blur unbudging
at constant motion
the falling vulture felicity

there is no third eye
in the delta
where our river
split and spread
‘swoosh away that kiss

you were the fire and I
the shadow-stranding star
that vessel lost in its own
gin-soaked beauty

I pray to the darkest angel
the mother of us all
who we say does her best
though we believe we know
it is not good enough


* * * * *

Nina Heiser is a poet, writer and retired journalist currently living in central Florida and New York. Her work has appeared in Tuck Magazine; Cadence, the Florida State Poets Association Anthology; Vociferous Press anthology Screaming from the Silence; Embark Literary Journal; and Gargoyle Magazine. Her poetry and photographs have been featured in Pendemics Journal, and Of Poets & Poetry.

I am the hero for once; this is what it feels like?

by Daisy Bassen


Why won’t you wait for me?
I’ve been trying so hard
To catch up and you keep running.

The moon with her secret face,
The tides, the lover
Who’s been hurt and cannot forgive;

The future that is not guaranteed,
My own death, with her secret face.


* * * * *

Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, and PANK among other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net Anthology and for a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

Questions to answer, from daughters and other people; none are multiple choice

by Daisy Bassen


How old were you,
When you were a little girl?
Is it too sentimental
To contemplate?
I haven’t mentioned violets,
How they grow wild,
Not declared a weed,
Too pretty for that.

The petals are spread
Wide open, impatient
For bees.
You’ve already seen something
Like this, Georgia O’Keeffe,
Porn, if you imagine the woman
Isn’t getting paid 78 cents
On the male dollar,
If she didn’t have a Brazilian,
Furred like a violet’s throat.

My daughters ask questions
I answer. I answer questions
They don’t ask, guessing—
Wrong so often.
No one fires the weatherman
When the snow doesn’t come.


* * * * *

Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, and PANK among other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net Anthology and for a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

 

PUZZLE ZEN

by Lynne Zotalis


During the pandemic I’ve done oh, probably a hundred jigsaw puzzles
in an effort to stay sane, to clear my troubled mind.
Outward appearance is a quick study and …
we can learn lessons anywhere, if we’re open. From a puzzle? Why not?
I say I’m a fairly good judge of character, listening, assessing an aura, a vibe,
body language, direct eye contact. Not that I jump to conclusions
but I’ve learned to trust my initial reaction.
At this age I don’t have a lot of time for games or lies or Republicans. And yet
like the puzzle you have to be patient, sensing where something might work,
a certain turn or twist might be fitting. Looking for the subtle alteration of hues,
from grayish blue to hazy pink darkening to purple, lavender and cobalt.
Barely perceptible you might notice a broadening concept
where you could come at it from another angle. But you have to observe
and concentrate to catch the slight nuance.
I am so stuck in my ideology, my convictions
but I know rigidity and confrontation will not promote equanimity.
Who responds to force? I certainly don’t.
You can’t jam those pieces into compliance. Maybe it would fit if turned slightly,
if looked at from another angle or with a brighter light.
You have to keep picking up another and another, a measured response
trying to find the one that gently slides into that larger picture.
None can be discarded and how sad we are at the end to learn that a single one
is irrevocably lost.
Each time I dump the box of a thousand onto the table to begin the process
I have to trust that the separated conglomerate of pieces will come together at the end. And in a better future, the one that I envision and believe for,
I have faith that every shape and color will paint the world with acceptance, respect, inclusion and grace.
We need each and every piece to complete the beautiful landscape.  


* * * * *

Lynne Zotalis’s short stories have won publication for three years in the R.H. Cunningham Short Story Contest through Willowdown Books. Her poetry has appeared in Tuck Magazine, writinginawoman’svoice, The Poetic Bond VII, VIII and IX, and Lyrical Iowa. Her grief recovery book, Saying Goodbye to Chuck, promotes an interactive method of incorporating a daily journal to enunciate the readers’ personal grief process, available on Amazon. Her latest book, Hippie at Heart (What I Used to Be, I Still Am) and the rest of her publications are listed on the Amazon author page. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DC6GZ7T  

 

The Call by Remedios Varo, 1961*

by Karen George

 
The fire-woman heads for the burial
chamber exit, surges past the gray-green wall
 
of ancestors—bark bodies fossilizing. Her frame
a towering flow of molten copper garments,
 
her pointed feet echo triangular tiles
she glides over. Her aura a fever vapor,
 
effervescent. She self-resurrected, spurred
to step onto the highest rung of essence.
 
Her hair rises, a blaze, a reverse lightning strike,
its tip licks Jupiter spinning in the night sky,
 
harnesses its velocity, magnetism,
its moon’s 400 volcanoes.


* * * * *

Here is a link to "The Call by Remedios Varo, 1961:" https://www.wikiart.org/en/remedios-varo/the-call

Karen George is author of poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and forthcoming Where Wind Tastes Like Pears. Her work appears or is forthcoming in in Adirondack Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Mom Egg Review, Gyroscope Review, and I-70 Review. She reviews poetry at Poetry Matters: http://readwritepoetry.blogspot.com/. Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.

Fledgling

by Karen George

 
Four mornings in a row, water aerobicizing
at the Y, I follow a small black bird rise, capsize
 
in the high pane of blue, one wing askew
in frantic thrash. I pummel limbs in water
 
deep, thick, unwieldy as my body and arthritis.
 
Day 5, the framed cerulean empty. I flail
 
in viscous waves of my own making, wonder
about buoyancy, currents, gravity. What resists &
 
plummets us, lifts & cradles us. The peril,
the wealth of hollow bones.
 

* * * * *

Karen George is author of poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and forthcoming Where Wind Tastes Like Pears. Her work appears or is forthcoming in in Adirondack Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Mom Egg Review, Gyroscope Review, and I-70 Review. She reviews poetry at Poetry Matters: http://readwritepoetry.blogspot.com/. Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.

J/M

by Gloria Mindock


J loved fake names.
He was a burnt-out novelist.
Wrote too many stories about
horrific blind dates.
He was a wild man.
Too many plastic bags in his kitchen.
He would kill you, burn you, pretending
it was love.



M, an elementary teacher,
went out with J
She thought he was popular,
would bring her wealth.
M was wrong.
Her fate lay at the water’s edge.
An alligator.


* * * * *

"J/M" is part of Gloria Mindock's poetry collection Ash (Glass Lyre Press, 2021).

Gloria Mindock is the author of Ash (Glass Lyre Press), I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me (Nixes Mate Books), Whiteness of Bone (Glass Lyre Press), La Portile Raiului, translated into Romanian by Flavia Cosma (Ars Longa Press, Romania), Nothing Divine Here (U Šoku Štampa, Montenegro), and Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson St. Press). Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into eleven languages. Gloria is editor of Červená Barva Press and was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.

A/K

by Gloria Mindock


K sliced open his stomach.
“Blood drips,” he said.

His heart was biting for love.
He had a deadline to make.

Do not misinterpret this.
Immorality is rationed.

His story ended before he could do any more.



A heard he died.
Water was quickly thrown on the ground.

She needed to put out her fire.
A looked towards the field.

Saw a cow just standing there.
She would only eat salad sprinkled with basil.


* * * * *

"A/K" is part of Gloria Mindock's poetry collection Ash (Glass Lyre Press, 2021).

Gloria Mindock is the author of Ash (Glass Lyre Press), I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me (Nixes Mate Books), Whiteness of Bone (Glass Lyre Press), La Portile Raiului, translated into Romanian by Flavia Cosma (Ars Longa Press, Romania), Nothing Divine Here (U Šoku Štampa, Montenegro), and Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson St. Press). Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into eleven languages. Gloria is editor of Červená Barva Press and was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.

Learned Ladies

            After The Chess Game, Sofonisba Anguissola (1555)*

by Carole Mertz


The artist positioned young sister well. She stands
“center stage.” Her delight, as you can tell, reveals

that big sister holds mama in the clutch. And mama, not
troubled much, looks calmly at her viewer, blithely aware

of nurse standing by. But nurse may have nudged a move
and steered the girl toward her first conquest. Both sisters

know what’s about to happen. They stare until the act
is done. Black is positioned, solidly in place. Big sister,

though doubtful, will soon have the king and young
sister can’t wait to witness the win.


* * * * *

*Here is a link to the painting: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Chess_Game_-_Sofonisba_Anguissola.jpg

"Learned Ladies" appears in Carole Mertz’s Color and Line (Kelsay Books), a 2021 collection of ekphrasis and poetry in other forms. Mertz’s poems are in Prairie Light Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Mom Egg Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Society of Classical Poets, Eclectica, and elsewhere. She is editorial assistant at Kallisto Gaia Press and enjoys critiquing poets from across the globe. Carole, a classical musician, resides with her husband in Parma, Ohio. 

 

Lethe’s Slim Threads Caught

by Carole Mertz

                   
                        I.

Birds flew in across the hearthstone

     out again across the fields

Buds of memory lapped at her feet

     stealing away molested

and unprotected thought

     How to snare and nurture

the fleeting

                       II.

Heart and hands ached for the recall

     reaching out to no avail

clutching pale slabs of empty air

     “Yours for the taking,” winged creatures

taunted and scoffed. Swoosh! she swiped              

    at the thieves, murderous in her rancor,

wiped the blood on her sleeve

                        III.

Where will you go with your unprotected

     mind, with whom share the

minuscules you’ve known? Certainties, those

     rarities, often rendered as lost,

and beyond recall. Yet that single certainty,

     that singular small thing to which you cling,

will not change. It lingers as sure as a song


* * * * *

This poem appears in Carole Mertz’s Color and Line (Kelsay Books), a 2021 collection of ekphrasis and poetry in other forms. Mertz’s poems are in Prairie Light Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Mom Egg Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Society of Classical Poets, Eclectica, and elsewhere. She is editorial assistant at Kallisto Gaia Press and enjoys critiquing poets from across the globe. Carole, a classical musician, resides with her husband in Parma, Ohio. 

I wish I could ask her

by Emalisa Rose


It has purple wrens on it, with filigree
branches. I wish I could show her; she’d
laugh. 

But she passed several months ago. She’d
tell me how warm I would be and to just
buy one already.

This one’s velour with a triple lace collar,
long sleeves with cuffs to keep out the cold
on those nights of first frost, when winds 
whip the willow.

And snugly I sleep, though
the bare nights of February.

I wish I could ask her, what I’d never ask
anyone, in my fear to acknowledge, with
the pink in my hair; tattoos on my sleeve
and one or two piercings in unusual places.

I wish I could ask her -
what it’s like to get old, Mom?


* * * * *

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and birding. She volunteers in animal rescue, helping to tend to a cat colony in her neighborhood. Living by the beach, provides much of the inspiration for her art. Her work has appeared in Writing in a Woman's Voice, Spillwords, and other fine places. Her latest collection is On the whims of the crosscurrents, published by Red Wolf Editions.