Couple in Winter

by Joan E. Cashin


Night: original snowfall, the thick curtain
Falling between us.  
We pace home, two lone scouts brooding,
Two vapor trails disappearing in the dark.

We step out into a crater of street-light,
Faint orange hues with the light humming,
Reverberating, flickering, he says, as if from a magic wick underground.

Morning: fresh drifts, vulnerability.
First step at the front door, plunging
Through more snow 
Before we hit the brick walk. 
We venture out to find paths in the white terrace,
Egos pared back, spirits expanding. 


* * * * *

Joan E. Cashin writes from the Midwest, and she has published in many journals, most recently in MONO, VITA BREVIS, MONTHS TO YEARS, and LITERARY YARD.

Freyja's Distaff

by Lisa Creech Bledsoe


It sometimes begins with the sound of bees, or the breathless silence
after Maria Callas finishes Casta Diva. It doesn't take an oracle—

or Emmylou Harris wending her way through Poor Wayfaring Stranger—
to conjure death's proximity. Freyja says their names as she chooses half

of all the dead, though she's not a stickler for rules and often
brings home more. She never/always sees the forces amassing

against someone she loves. Remember that night in the 24-hour
doughnut place, back when they still let truckers smoke inside?

We staked out the back corner and drilled him until we believed
he'd make it through finals, hours away. We arrived in the exam hall

reeking of cigarettes and sugar, throbbing with immortality.
Later we smoked a celebratory bowl with a friend whose bong

had a Norse name. Fenrir or Frida, I think, but it's been an age.
She loved him like we did, and the shock of finding him flung, boyish

and broken at the crossroad, never made any kind of sense. Neither
did the other, who kept marbles in a jar to mark a journey of two years,

then four, then six, before it ended/began. That one was surrounded
by every sort of petition. Freya hardly notices the presence/absence

of prayers or offerings. Most religion is horseshit, anyway. Try Just Plain
Love for a change. Remember how we hooted through Shaun of the Dead,

loved the way he and Liz got back together in the face of a zombie apocalypse?
What it takes to keep a relationship together all these years, despite

a shocking amount of collateral damage. Did you ever wonder why
there are two heroic paradises? Valhalla gets a Brückner painting and

Led Zeppelin, while Fólkvangr gets pretty much nothing. Another man/woman
thing, Freyja muses. Conquerors write the history. She sings their names

as she chooses half/all the dead and directs them toward warm, capacious
barns where her cats stretch in the sun, and the milkwort hasn't been renamed

for a virgin, or Freyja herself recast as a whore by holy men. I wept
when I heard my grandfather sing Man of Constant Sorrow under the stars,

years before he died. Somehow he untied time, pulled it loose from the needle,
and now it is wonderfully cast in every color on the floor of the universe,

leading everywhere/when. Immortality doesn't mean never dying. It is
a pile of work, like gathering up the dead. When sheet lightning flickers

over the mountain, I think of them all, and especially you. How we will
hear bees, and the song of our names, and it will be right now again.


* * * * *

Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. She is the author of two books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Chiron Review, Otoliths, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, among others.

Website: https://appalachianground.com/ 

 

The Woman in the Mirror

by Grace Hickey


Last night
I smashed
the patriarchy
out of my mirror
broke it into a
million pieces
so that it can no longer
project lies
unto my being
                                                 
I allowed the shards
 to make my hands bleed
                                                         

                                                            watched
in spite
                                                            of myself
                                                            as my humanity
                                                            spilled out all over the place

I wrote
a new narrative
with it






one they will probably call
radical
scrawled it down on a piece of paper
recited it to every being I know
shouted it to my ancestors
                                                                         I wanted to remember
                                                                         the person
                                                                         I was before
                                                                         I mistook
their expectations
                                                                          and longings
                                                                          
for my own



wish I could crawl in
and go looking
for that young child
bring her back
to what she always knew
to be
true
                   

               there
                        is
                              a
                                 little
                                         girl
                                                in
                                       there
                                       somewhere
 

longing for validation
       only I can give to her
        if only she could
                                                see
                                                       me
                                                               now

                                                                                       
shattering stereotypes
with my existence
using my words to speak truth
my heart to heal
my mind to make art
and most days I am too focused
on making the world beautiful
to even care
if the world is looking at me
any sort of way
that shit is irrelevant to me now
                                                                                           until the internalized misogyny
                                                                                           creeps into the hollows of my brain
                                                                                           sets up camp
                                                                                           in the place I used to live
                                                                                           but these days
                                                                                           only visit
                                                                                           now and again
                                                                                           


each time I return
she is always there waiting for me
filled with empathy
and compassion
for only she knows
what I have
unlearned
dismantled
and rebuilt




                                                                                          to be able to look at my reflection
                                                                                          and see the mosaic
                                                                                          that is she
                                                                                          in all of her complexity
                                                                                          and multidimensionality
                                                                                          someone I love so deeply
                                                                                                       

the woman in the mirror.

* * * * *

Grace Hickey (she/her) is an emerging writer from Fredericton, New Brunswick, located on the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq and Peskotomuhkati peoples. She is currently a fourth-year student at St. Thomas University in the Bachelor of Arts Program. Grace loves to be creative and has always enjoyed expressing herself through her writing as it helps her connect to her truth. You can follow her work on Instagram @graceelizabethhickey.

 

A Walk with my Almost-Four-Year-Old Grandson

by Brooke Herter James


He gathers questions as we stroll
down the pebbled beach,
why the ocean is deep
and where the moon sleeps,
why clams need water,
why hot dogs are called hot dogs,
where the fire goes when it goes out
and Why is this periwinkle orange?

He doesn’t seem to mind my I’m not sure
as he plops treasure after treasure
into his red plastic pail.
Later, as he arranges them
on a blue-striped beach towel,
a seaside display he calls his museum,
he waives the mussel shell entrance fee,
promising he will teach me about everything for free.


* * * * *

Brooke Herter James is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Widest  Eye (2016) and Spring took the Long Way Around (2019), one prose poetry/photography collection, Postcards from Montana (2020) and one children’s book, Why Did the Farmer Cross the Road? (2017). Her poems have appeared in Mountain Troubadour Poetry Journal, Tulip Tree Review, Orbis and Rattle, as well as the online publications Poets Reading the News, New Verse News, Flapper Press, Typishly and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. She lives on small farm in Vermont.

 

Surfer Boy

by Alexis Rhone Fancher and Dion O'Reilly

 

He taught me to eat raw fish, to mix wasabi and soy sauce into a thick green slurry, use ivory chopsticks to dip the sushi without severing it from its rice bed. Clumsy at first, soon we were feeding each other morsels of mackerel, a bite of raw shrimp, salmon sashimi, slippery on the tongue. Easy then to slip into his bed, already besotted with things raw and delicious. Those were the days I was free for the taking, men schooling around, and me, the wide open sea.   He began at my feet, told me not to look at him; I stared at the mirror on his closet door, watched his reflection devour me like bait. You have a beautiful cliTORis, he marveled. It’s pronounced CLItoris, I said. There was a wetsuit in the closet. A surfboard rested next to the bed. On the wall, pages torn from Surfer Magazine — mammoth, lapis lazuli waves dwarfed lone surfers as they shot the curl. A metaphor. We drank a bottle of saki, and then another. He showed me the St. Christopher medal around his neck. He was named for that patron saint of wanderers, but he stayed put until November, when the surf turned cold and the money ran out. Christopher sold off his stuff for traveling cash; dishes, linens, the radio. I like to travel light, he said.   A few nights before Chris left for Maui’s Banzai pipeline, we spent my last fifty on tequila and limes, invited a few of his surfer buds for a final aloha. Before the night ended I went down on one of them while Chris watched. All of us, bombed out of our minds. That guy kept calling, telling me how hot I was and how he wanted to “return the favor.”   Just drop me off here, Chris said when I pulled up at the Hawaiian Airlines terminal at LAX. He removed the long, silver chain with the St. Christopher medal from his neck, placed it over my head. Hey, he said, his lips brushing mine. It’s been real.


* * * * *

"Surfer Boy" was first published in Interlitq (spring 2021). Written with Dion O’Reilly.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Cleaver, Diode, Duende, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetry East, Pedestal Magazine and elsewhere. She’s authored five poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019), and EROTIC: New & Selected (New York Quarterly Books, 2021). Another, full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, was published in 2021. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

 

“SWEET TOOTH”

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


The man in the window is cheesecake;
if I could soar across Main St.
and land in his arms, I’d eat him for dessert.

He’s caramel poured in those low-slung jeans,
a Sugar Daddy™ (‘lasts forever if you lick it right’).

He’s marzipan, clean-cut, the jut of his hipbone
reflecting the sun. I’m come undone

by the clockwork of his days,
his devil’s food dismount from that Shimano aluminum bike,
how he disappears inside the foyer.

If he were mine,
I’d ride him like a stolen bicycle.

He strips down to sweetmeat, Monday through Friday, 5 p.m.
“Happy Hour,” when

he hangs the bike on the wall.
And me, happy to watch his muscles ripple.

He stretches out on the bed, my creature of habit,
his O’Henry™ straining against its wrapper.

This I know:
He’s an all-day sucker.
He doesn’t believe in drapes.

* * * * *

"Sweet Tooth" was first published in PLUME, 2018. Text and photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher. 

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Cleaver, Diode, Duende, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetry East, Pedestal Magazine and elsewhere. She’s authored five poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019), and EROTIC: New & Selected (New York Quarterly Books, 2021). Another, full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, was published in 2021. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

26 A to Z Unalphabetized Ways To __ Fake / Take / Make / Bake __ Five

by Jen Schneider

just when it seems there is nothing more to do/say/fear/be, a random drop/lyric/note rings. it’s the door. perhaps a delivery. no. only the television. or was it the phone. either/or. neither/nor. a distraction all the same. just when it seems there is nothing more to want/need/form/see, a random distraction/attraction/refraction shine. it’s the light. perhaps a bird in flight. a knitting needle – size eight / perhaps ten - in rotation. purl. purr. a kitty. no. only the fly. or was it a flea. either/or. neither/nor. a daily special all the same. inhale/exhale. breathe/relieve. tip. tap. nails on keys. soles on souls. quarter notes stream. time takes no cautions. days take no dare. just when it seems there is nothing more to ___, there remain many reasons ways to __take/make/bake__ five.

26 A to Z Unalphabetized Ways To __ Fake / Take / Make / Bake __ Five

1.     knit numbers of wool and cotton

2.     untangle quilts of letters and lyrics

3.     broadcast blessings over broken whole grain bread

4.     chop, dice, and simmer syllables on ice

5.     notify no one

6.     hail a taxi with moxie or by proxy (pay no regard to its unorthodoxy)

7.     dig for basement bands and five of a kind hands

8.     scrap hokey chatter & scrape cookie dough batter

9.     treasure sweet & sour tastings

10.  absorb aromatic offerings of lilac and honey

11.  quiet quickening beats beats beats / replace with retreats

12.  order spice racks from annatto to zedoary

13.  fuse recollections of photos past

14.  yank stray fibers from head and hand

15.  gaze with hesitation. graze without reservation

16.  recite / repeat / reimagine -- just take five

17.  multiply memorabilia manufactured of moments past

18.  veil shadows that loom and sounds that linger

19.  eyeball mannequins of heels and hose

20.  journal figures of sticks, prime time flicks, and evening candle wicks

21.  inhale. inhale. inhale.

22.  eXclaim not / eXhale / eXclaim not / eXhale

23.  whistle tunes of quartets & quarter time

24.  listen for lyrics that linger as basic trios transform time, space, & place

25.  pause ponderings. pause longings. pause meanderings.

26.  yield to oncoming traffic of mind and motor

* * * * *

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of Invisible Ink (Toho Pub), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming Atmosphere Press).

 

i carry your heart [& hand] with me [even as we close / i leave / they shutter the shop] 

by Jen Schneider

wood framed doors bear signs written by/of hand in sharpie font. streaks & smudges of black/red/blue ink. greetings / all are welcome / open for business / we are / sale. hammers knock. plywood covers. affronts on grammar. all grammar welcome.  

bargains to/of/for the people. the community. comrades always at war. most wars unseen. series of quips, quirks, and quiet pleadings with no sound. stretched scotch tape [now curled] a mask for the emptiness within. of spaces where shopkeepers [early risers/bakers/stockers] [late night fillers/checkers/supervisors] hang/hung chimes over doors [like mistletoe] now unhinged / dangled goods, goodies, goblins, and giveaways [hard & soft] [of chocolate candy, peppermint twist, & and salt-water taffy nuggets] 

beats punctuated by markers both silent & unfamiliar. tense periods. i carry your heart in my back pocket [the one I no longer have / that fails to cease] [receipts / purchase orders / to dos / dues]  

i carry your pulse in my being [the hum of the soda – pepsi & coke - cooler / the ding of the front register – home to nickels & dimes / the soft squish of the dark olive berber (or was it beige?) carpet]  

i carry your fibers in the cotton of my faded navy khakis & crisp red polo (company issued). layers of laces. layers of rubber soles. swept dust in corners. cotton socks & sockets heavy of tears (& tears) squish / squash / squelch.

i carry your image (the rectangular building’s far right / far back shelf of plastic trucks [later trains] & far left / far back shelf of plastic [later glass] bottles) in the galleries [galleys] of my mind. speeds always increasing. tallies never yielding. lottery tickets always on sale.  

i carry your flavor (vanilla, coffee grinds, griddle grease) / scent (sweat mixed of lavender air freshener & chicken soup in metal kettles) /sounds (light jazz, heavy chatter, ping. ping. ping.) in my belly/nose/canals. soda fountain glasses etched of prints of many nations, vinyl stool cushions molded of bums of many motions, radio dials turned [right / left / full rotations of both sun & moon] by tired hands.

i carry you / as [the memory of] you carry me [beat, pump, pulse, drift] across/over/thru moons of many moments.

turfs/hurts of tired mats/mall rats [of front & back doors] lie unencumbered.

feet squash faded W.E.L.C.O.M.E.[s]  


* * * * *

"i carry your heart [& hand] with me [even as we close / i leave / they shutter the shop]" was first published in unstamatic.

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of Invisible Ink (Toho Pub), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming Atmosphere Press).

 

Lily Ann Rose
January 23, 2022

by Paula R. Hilton

 
You would have been 89 today. As a teen,
you danced your way into risqué burlesque.
Shook your breasts performing in Scollay Square.
Wanted to be a star. Said, “It’s all I lived for.”
 
Underage, censored onstage. Arrested, jailed
for lewd, lascivious conduct. Memory made 
you laugh, roll your eyes. “Hauled away for 
shaking my butt in a club of questionable morals.” 
 
“My butt was covered with 50 yards of ruffles.
No way anybody could see anything. I was proud 
of those panties. Sheer, very sheer. Could make 
ruffles on my rear shake like lightening bugs in a jar.”
 
Three days in jail cell made you pull the curtain on 
Lily Ann Rose. You became a writer, wife, mother, 
grandmother with burlesque in your blood. “Banned 
in Boston, but I’ll sure as hell be a star in heaven.”
 

* * * * *

Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has appeared in The Sunlight Press, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Feminine Collective, Dear Damsels, The Tulane Review, and elsewhere. Her novel, Little Miss Chaos, was selected as a Best Indie Teen Read by Kirkus, and her first poetry collection, At Any Given Second, received a Kirkus star. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans. Read more of her work at paularhilton.com

How to Silence a Woman

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


Hold open only actual doors
Admire her dress
Revere fake breasts, sequester nursing ones
Start wars
Threaten wars
Invent male gods and creation myths
Close the priesthood
Deny the feminine divine
Display public statues of men
Disdain the round belly
Tell her she’s good
Tell her she’s bad
Overwhelm her with aggressive conversation
Question her competence
Remove her reproductive rights
Fill the world with loud noises
Drown her power
Burn her power
Ignore her power
Be her protector in a world in which she needs one


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley grew up wandering the woods of Vermont. She is the award-winning author of seven nature books. Melanie lives near Washington, DC where she leads nature and forest bathing walks for Smithsonian Associates and many other organizations. She is author of City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, The Joy of Forest Bathing and, most recently, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and Resilience: Connecting with Nature in a Time of Crisis. Melanie has been a longtime contributor to The Washington Post and frequent guest on NPR and its affiliates. She began writing poetry during the pandemic.

 

The Heron

by Laura Harper


In the early morning light a heron, tall and gray, hides in the grasses.
Its beak emerges, long, slender and strong.
The bird slowly lifts with long legs trailing.
Wings flap with great purpose until the heron glides to rest atop a sign: "DANGER—THIN ICE."
The full light expresses the complete beauty of its gently curving body, elegantly poised on the sign.
Later it stalks its breakfast, wading in the shallows in gangly jerking motions.
It is annoyed by red-winged blackbirds aggressively defending their territory.
The heron is a visitor.
The others are here every day.
They are fat, fast and strong—so sure of themselves.
The heron is delicate, uncertain.
The heron will feed and move on.
The heron is in transition.


* * * * *

Laura Harper is a retired attorney and a nature lover currently residing in Silver City, New Mexico.

 

BURY ME IN SAND

by Shikhandin

 
Bury me in sand
Forget about me.
Let salt wash away the flesh.
Let all the soft parts disintegrate
So nothing remains,
Save bare, bleached bones.

Don't bother to remember me at all.
A dinosaur skeleton
Would have told a better story.
 
So, do I regret this life?
No not really.
It never was extraordinary enough.
It merely ebbed and flowed,
Waxed and waned,
Much like the tides on a shore.
Nothing less nothing more.


* * * * *

"Bury Me in Sand" was first published in Chanterelle’s Notebook, USA, and is part of Shikhandin’s poetry collection After Grief published by Red River, India, August 2021.

Shikhandin is the pen name of an Indian writer who writes for adults and children. Her published books include After Grief – Poems (Red River India), Impetuous Women (Penguin-Random House India), Immoderate Men (Speaking Tiger), and Vibhuti Cat (Duckbill-Penguin-Random House India). She has won various awards and honours, and her prose and poetry have been published worldwide. 
Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/shikhandin 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorShikhandin/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writershikhandin/
Twitter: @Shikhandintweet

 

Original Sin

by Emily House


The sirens didn't eat the sailors.
The sailors consumed the siren then

blamed her
 
when

they 

felt

shame.

The sirens didn't eat the sailors the sailors consumed the siren & blamed her when they felt shame.

Eve.

Lilith.

Sirens.

Witches.

Feminists.

Me.

Chambered Nautilus

by Brooke Herter James

      in existence for over 400 million years and often referred to as a living fossil,
      the animal lives in only the outermost chamber of its many chambered shell


I often think I grew up
in a house with too many rooms—

five for bath tubs, four for beds,
three for sofas, two for books,

and one for the stove in which
my mother cooked the cheese souffle

we ate in the dining room
on Sundays after church.

But perhaps I grew up
in a house with too few people—

a body that never filled its shell—
so when my brother went to Vietnam

and my sister left for Colorado,
we were down to four, counting the cat.

Then my father drove to NYC,
leaving my mother, the cat and me, too

many uninhabited chambers,
the weight of emptiness coiled at our backs.  

At the barely living end of a fossil,
all those shut doors behind us,

we sat on the front porch
in silence until I left for college

and, with the cat in a box on the backseat,
my mother moved to Maine.   


* * * * *

Brooke Herter James is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Widest  Eye (2016) and Spring took the Long Way Around (2019), one prose poetry/photography collection, Postcards from Montana (2020) and one children’s book, Why Did the Farmer Cross the Road? (2017). Her poems have appeared in Mountain Troubadour Poetry Journal, Tulip Tree Review, Orbis and Rattle, as well as the online publications Poets Reading the News, New Verse News, Flapper Press, Typishly and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. She lives on small farm in Vermont.

This month's Moon Prize, the 88th, goes to Heather Nanni's poem "A January Walk." 

A January Walk

by Heather Nanni


It is January.
The cold air bites my face,
not a full, open-jawed bite;
tiny bites, like a fish nipping my legs while I swim,
small, sharp stings on my cheeks
my nose
my forehead.

Walk. A walk will lift your spirits.

The Christmas decorations have been taken down.
The trees have been discarded, thrown to the ground
at the edge of driveways, waiting to be picked up
by men who will throw them
into trucks and deliver them
someplace to be chopped into dust.

It is gray.
There is no snow.
Just a gray sky
and a dry earth
and trees
lifting their arms, begging,
beseeching, reaching their skeletal fingers
grasping for
            grasping for…

Move along. There is nothing for you to see here. Only houses.

There are only houses
and naked trees.
Houses –
square,
one atop another
on small, ever so small, square, parcels of land.

How do people breathe? I wonder.
I cannot breathe.
Walking is supposed to help.

I watched Mom go mad.

When I was a little girl, my mother once said, “I want a house just like that.”
I knew it was death.
A death house.
I live in such a house. I bought it myself.

I realize death is a square.
A box.
A tomb
where you place yourself
and bury yourself alive.

Some people do not realize they are dying.
I am choking,
choking up the last bits of my womanhood.

Some people live in those boxes.
They are monsters.
They make noise and rattle the walls
and wake their neighbors.
They do not care.
It makes them feel strong.

I used to bring my dog with me, but she can no longer walk here.
She has been bitten too many times,
bitten by violent dogs,
sad creatures
kicked and broken by violent men.

I see those men, walking out of their square houses,
getting into their trucks – giant trucks
that make up for their small
characters.

It is quiet.
I don’t want to die here.

I see a black cat sitting atop a stone wall.
It is watching me.
I walk past.

Poor dear. I do not wish to bring her bad luck.


* * * * *

"A January Walk" first appeared on Heather Nanni's website, https://quirknjive.com/.

Heather Nanni is a writer and college professor who resides in New England with her husband and two children. She is the author of The Cat In The Wall and Other Dark and Twisted Tales of Women in Strange Situations and her creative and academic works have been published in Her View from Home, LD Access/AECOM Manual for Literacy Practitioners, Haunted Waters Press: Splash and on numerous commercial websites. Heather holds a bachelor's degree in English from Fordham University and a master's degree from the Applied Educational Psychology: Reading Specialist program at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Mute as the Mouths of Trees

by Louisa Muniz

 
Winter’s sky is bleached in silence.
Outside a red bird perches
 
on the icy fingertip of a branch.
Somewhere beyond the somber sky
 
lies heaven—
            mute as the mouths of trees.
 
Fifteen years you’ve been gone.
I still search for signs—
 
the smell of your perfume, a random coin,
a lockbox of breeze in the room.
 
The year you left I chased your shadow
in the wilderness of dreams.
 
            I’ve yet to friend uncertainty.
 
Listen how the wind pantomimes 
your name in the silent air.
 
Stay, stay, I whisper to the red bird.
Make your nest this way.
 
 
* * * * *

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, Menacing Hedge, Poetry Quarterly, PANK Magazine, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem "Stone Turned Sand." Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020.

Sixth Grade Homework Check

by Louisa Muniz

 
It was the last time I wore the white knit sweater
with the green Peter Pan collar. One-size-too-small
it outlined the budding breasts of my girlhood chest.
 
Earlier I complained to mother. She waved her hand,
no te preoccupes. But I worried when he summoned me
to check homework at his desk. Head down & arms crossed
against my chest, I stepped gingerly down the aisle.
 
Stand up straight! Keep your hands to your sides!
The students at their desks conjugated their verbs—
I gape, you gape, he/she/it gapes.
 
The floor beneath me opened, offered to swallow me.
Outside the window the rain hissed. The tender sapling
rooted fiercely into the earth.


* * * * *

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, Menacing Hedge, Poetry Quarterly, PANK Magazine, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem "Stone Turned Sand." Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020.

 

Haiku

by Cynthia Anderson

 
closed curtains
unable to stop
the full moon


* * * * *

 “closed curtains” was first published in Bloo Outlier Journal (December 2020).

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

Haiku

by Cynthia Anderson

 
frozen garden
Quan Yin watches
the last leaves scatter

 
* * * * *

“frozen garden” was first published in Presence 69.

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

 

 

Exhausting

by Eve Louise Makoff


Exhausting
To watch their eyes-
Their movements
As they watched me.
Prison guards. 

The first time I felt it 
St. Augustine Episcopal 
Grey ash on my forehead
Fleeing blue stained-glass to a brick courtyard
Thinking I wore death.
Death stares.

Holidays around sweet yams
Tart cranberries
Eyes watching as I piled my plate
My fleshy arms shaking under warning gazes
Be careful said shaking heads-
Or no one will want you. 

I learned early 
Being wanted was everything
I hiked up my red bikini bottoms
Flirted with blonde boys with knives for eyes-
Ready to carve.

I learned to whittle myself to zero
Leaving no flesh to macerate.
I lived in a bone cage
Of euphoria 
Of nothing. 

I almost disappeared 
Down a dark grotto.
Care or give up.
Watch eyes or despise.

Would you believe Jean Rhys saved me?
Sargasso seas 
Frangipani trees

Now you will see me in words


* * * * *

Eve Louise Makoff is an internal medicine and palliative care physician and a writer.

OBSERVING HOPE / Portrait of a Refugee

by Ave Jeanne Ventresca


his wife was not one to complain.
an ordinary person
who had crossed a border. only
 
a few dirty clothes in her bag, and a
picture in this frame, of a now
tattered childhood. but no complaining
 
did she exhale through her mouth. was it
because she didn’t understand the
new language
or because everything was
held deep below her skin, like an etching,
never to surface
from swollen clouds of this new environment. the eyes
 
of numerous children she holds in her pink
cotton pockets. keeping
them safe and warm
until she needs to see them once again.
 
she knows all birds are free here,
they are not displaced
and that thought gives her a few minutes of courage.                                               
it makes her one
who need not complain.


* * * * *

Ave Jeanne Ventresca (aka: ave jeanne) is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry that reflect social and environmental concerns. Her most recent collection, Noticing The Colors of Ordinary, was released in the summer of 2019. She edited the acclaimed literary magazine Black Bear Review, and served as publisher of Black Bear Publications for twenty years. Her award winning poetry (contemporary and Asian) has been widely published internationally within commercial and literary magazines, in print and online. Ave Jeanne was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for 2019.