Aging

by Joan Leotta


I’d like to age like this year’s Valentine roses, now past their expected prime but still beautiful. Bouquets from previous years have withered, died after a week, but these go on and on, walking in beauty as if each day they salute sunrise with their own pollen. A few have browned at the edges of their orange-yellow splendorous petals. Yes, the leaves have browned and crackle like paper, but the roses themselves are not only lovely but are now exuding an aroma strong enough to pulse through the dining room into the kitchen, to wrap me in its heady scent of love remembered, each time I sit down for my morning coffee. It seems to me that scent, so rare in purchased hothouse roses, is even stronger now than when the roses first came home with my husband’s grin. When I stroke a velvet petal, I think again, how I want to age like these roses—soft yet strong with the aroma of love even in old age.

* * * * *

Joan Leotta tells stories on page and stage. Her poems, essays, articles, and short stories have been or are forthcoming in Visual Vee, Verse Virtual, Plague Papers, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Pine Song and others. She has been a Tupelo 30/30 writer and a Gilbert Chappell Fellow.
She performs personal and folk tales of food, family, and strong women in libraries, at schools, in museums and at festivals. To relax and think up new tales she walks the beach, collecting shells. You can connect with her on Facebook. Joan Leotta.

 

My daughter’s body

by Eve Louise Makoff


Arms tightly folding me
Into soft as a pink shell 
Sweet as the night Jasmine 
Pouring over sandstone planters 
As we walk, the moon over the mountains
Silhouettes of curving bodies
Or guitars singing of erasing history
Enveloping new paths
Insisting to exist 
Rejecting decimation
Sweet milk in a potter’s teacup
Like the mother I never had


* * * * *

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

The #9           

by Annie Klier Newcomer

                                                                                               
Some memories breeze in and stay
like unexpected guests still in the kitchen
at 2 A.M. My new spouse disapproves,
demands I get rid of them,
then slips upstairs.

I usher the group to the front porch,
and say good-bye. As I fix a drink,
one returns, rocks back and forth
on the swing, snuggles up with the cat
who easily attaches to any lap.

I join them outside and now can’t
go back in, at least not
while I remain fixated
on the #9, which always was
my deceased husband’s favorite.


* * * * *

"The #9" was first published in Interpretations by Columbia Art League Ekphrastic Journal and is part of Annie Klier Newcomer's brand-new poetry collection Comets: Relationships that Wander (Finishing Line Press, February 25, 2022).

Annie Klier Newcomer teaches poetry classes at Turning Point, a Center for Hope & Healing in Kansas City, Kansas. She also helps coach chess for After-School Programs in mid-town KC. Annie writes as a way to connect and to add value to her life. Presently she is an editor for Flapper Press Poetry Café and a member of the Key West Cigar Factory Poetry Group.

Nepali Microcosm                

by Annie Klier Newcomer
                                                                       

It all depends on the order you land in
and the sherpa you end up with.

If you make the right choice,
you get to live. Guess wrong, you die.

Shuffling your feet pointed upward,
you hold on tight to your dream like a haiku

hemorrhaging words. It’s hard to catch
your allotted 5 breaths per step

when you look down a 6,000 foot valley
death drop. Growing up I was fourth in the line

of a dozen young children. I side-stepped
many disappointments, like hikers on Everest

stepping over bodies who will never leave
the mountain. Often I could not see my mother

though she stood 5 feet tall at the summit
expecting us all to arrive. My dad, at base-camp,

knew better. He understood the crashing and burning.
Yes, and because he knew this, he wept watching us

squatted down on boots skiing out of control
off the mountain, he, with too few arms to catch us all.


* * * * *

"Nepali Microcosm" was first published in I-70 Review and is part of Annie Klier Newcomer's brand-new poetry collection Comets: Relationships that Wander (Finishing Line Press, February 25, 2022).

Annie Klier Newcomer teaches poetry classes at Turning Point, a Center for Hope & Healing in Kansas City, Kansas. She also helps coach chess for After-School Programs in mid-town KC. Annie writes as a way to connect and to add value to her life. Presently she is an editor for Flapper Press Poetry Café and a member of the Key West Cigar Factory Poetry Group.

Cliche

by Alexis Garcia


For as long as I could remember
I always imagined what I could be
Maybe a better, more stable version of me?
But it never crossed my mind
That there would be a chance
I could become a cliche
A timeless trope
The one to make constant excuses
For someone’s awful behavior
Who assigned me this part?
The one who runs from the truth
That is so difficult to stomach
That I’d rather live a facade
The one who blames herself
Instead of the other person
For how things have transpired
I never thought I’d see the day
When I would become a cliche


* * * * *

Alexis Garcia is a queer Hispanic writer from New York, NY. She graduated from Manhattanville College in 2017, where she studied Creative Writing and Criminal Law. Currently, she works as a paralegal at a personal injury law firm. A few of her poems have been published in the anthologies UNITED: Volume RED and UNITED: Volume HONEY with Beautiful Minds Unite LLC and Upon Arrival: Threshold with Eber & Wein Publishing. She has had more of her poems accepted for publication in Ariel Chart, Third Estate Art, Door is a Jar, Mixed Mag, Air/Light, along with other literary magazines.

Bess’s Lament*

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt


I didn’t know he was a magic man, a shape-shifter. When I met him, he was Erich, trapeze artist, diminutive Jew. I knew he liked strudel, stuffed cabbage, his mother’s babka. He held me with his bird fingers—cupping my chin—teasing me with his flashing eyes. I dreamt he was small enough to fit in my pocket. Fold him up in quarters like a white handkerchief, to keep him near. 

In the beginning, I was his magic girl. Swish. I hear it still. The whoosh of the black cloth over the box. The infinite darkness just for a moment. Stepping out, I smiled. Released from danger. Never scared. Never scarred.

Then he became Houdini. The only trace of our act together, the way he twined and untwined my curls at night. I had my own disappearing act. He dazzled, unlocked manacles, handcuffs, climbed out of milk cans, trunks, coffins. My upside-down man unleashed himself from a straitjacket in midair as I held my breath.

I wanted to always be his gamin girl, to keep a small flame for him, before and even after death. Do ghosts have breath?

In my old age I became what I always was. A forsaken angel with wings of stone.


* * * * *

*Bess Houdini was the wife of magician and escape artist, Harry Houdini.

"Bess's Lament" is part of Jan Zlotnik Schmidt's collection Over the Moon Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini (Palooka Press, 2021).

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a retired SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English SUNY New Paltz. She has published works in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Cream City Review, The Vassar Review, and other journals. Two volumes of poetry were published by the Edwin Mellen Press: We Speak in Tongues and She had this memory. Her poetry volume, Foraging for Light, was published by Finishing Line Press. Most recently her poetry chapbook about Bess Houdini was published by Palooka Press. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Check out her work at hudsonvalleywomenwriters.com.

 

An Ode to the Lonely Boy

by Padmini Krishnan

 
He sits in front of the table,
waiting for a breakfast
that would never come.
He closes his ears, but
his father’s chilling angry voice
seeps through the gap
between his fingers.
His mother returns the wrath this time,
her honeyed voice surprisingly husky,
incoherent and almost masculine.
He hears a loud crash,
followed by a splash of water
and then silence.
 
His stomach burns for lunch.
Fear warring with intrigue,
he peeps into the kitchen
at the pretense of filling his water bottle.
But the kettle is empty,
its contents dripping on his mother
who sobs quietly in the corner
of the kitchen, her head
buried in her arms.
 
He meets his parents for dinner.
An epitome of civilization,
his father asks
if he needs help with his studies.
All smiles now, his mother
serves him lunch.
If not for the salty noodles,
her swollen eyes and
the anger still lurking in the corner
of his father’s eyes,
the boy would have thought
he had imagined everything.
 

* * * * *

Padmini Krishnan was raised in India and now resides in Singapore. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Stonecrop Review, Page & Spine, Tinywords Haiku, and The Literary Yard among others. Her e-chapbook, Pinewood Hills, was published in Proletaria.

Move

by Melanie Zipin


sometimes
going at your own pace
            in your own words—
feels so right
more than right
beatific­— divine

but then,
you share it

it’s easy to say don’t
but you want to
some part of you
even
needs to

and then,
someone
(with the best intentions)
suggests…
your step might be better
slightly faster—
or slower…

maybe it needs a bit more
of this, a slight dash
of that

a step to the right
is a straighter path
but left,
and then a few steps back
might be better still

make it clearer
cleaner
crisper
shorter
longer
right

they’re trying to help
but you discover
everything
that felt
so right
to you
so connected
between you
and all
that sustains you
is somehow
wrong
or, at the least,
not right—
enough

and now,
you Can’t Move
you’re twisted
because you want to,
you really, really want to
get it right

is their right
better
than your right?
because, if it is
you want to
see it
you have to
feel it
you need to
know

you try to
change you
you rearrange you
alter your step
revise your tone

but that doesn’t
fit right either
now, everything
is out of order
and steeped
in doubt
you’re not sure
whose voice
to listen to
there’s no clear path
no way out
you Can’t Move

it’s easy to say
listen
to your own
but we rely
on each other
and everyone
has intuition
a sense and sensibilities
they just don’t all
come from the same place
at the same time

so many ways
to think about it
nature, nurture
big things don’t matter
little things are beasts
and now, I can’t breathe
so now,
I Can’t Move

have you felt this?
you were dancing,
sometimes, flying
falling, flailing,
laughing, weeping,
gathering every bit
and rolling on
putting the pieces
into pictures
in ways
that felt to you
that meant to you
that spoke to you

but now,
you Can’t Move
you can’t decide
which way to go
which pieces
should stay
which pieces
should go
if the order
is ‘right’

if you should listen
to the ones
who said,
go up
or down
or over
or under
or less
is more
fill in every hole
so we don’t miss
leave gigantic holes
so we can leap
and feel like bounds
discover new
break the rules

how much to take
how little to leave

it’s a blurred
recovery
murky and shadowed
always someone
looking over

a squillion decisions
even more unimagined
outcomes

until
finally,
hopefully,
eventually
just one
step
whispered or vociferous
infinitesimal or titanic
outside
in any direction
face to the sun
or head in the clouds
eyes open, or closed
spinning or still

to start
again
where I am

at my own pace
in my own words


* * * * *

Finding beauty, even solace, in the everyday, multi-media artist, Melanie Zipin, composes her musings from the material that surrounds her. Taking an early departure from her inner-city roots, the high deserts of New Mexico provide ample opportunity for such an introspective watcher. Her writings are an amalgamation of joy and sorrow, reflecting on the commonality of our individual contrast.

Zipin has one son and lives with her husband, far from the concrete, thankful for the rainwater that sustains them, in a house they built from hand-piled mud, where she makes art and music, and writes and writes and writes.

Memo to Younger Self

by Joan E. Cashin


In the small house with the big windows 
and the tea cup on the side table,
her heart broke.  He broke it.
The old story, infidelity, but it felt new
and the hurt was big,
so big she thought the windows would blow out.
But the house is still standing, windows intact,
and when she thinks of his name,
she repeats it softly to herself
and wonders why he ever meant so much.


* * * * *

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.

 

This month yields a second Moon Prize, the 90th, and it goes to Louisa Muniz's poem "Isolation in D Minor."

Isolation in D Minor

by Louisa Muniz

 
Wet newspapers, dirty laundry
& recyclables pile up for days.
 
The sun hides under a wet dress.
 
The ants persevere. Push
bread-crumbs across the floor
 
to the sound of God’s pounding fist
in Mozart’s Requiem D Minor.
 
Droning fridge, barking dog
ticking clock rim the day.

The fortune cookie reads,
the fortune you seek is in another cookie.
Yet, I have been blessed in this life.
 
Blessed art thou amongst…
Will only the meek inherit…?
 
The cloudless sky babies itself blue.
When the sun offers her self-care
 
I prep the soil, soak the bulbs.
Plant the snowflake flower
nose up for late spring bloom.


* * * * *

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.

 

This month's Moon Prize, the 89th, goes to Melanie Choukas-Bradley's poem "How to Silence a Woman."

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.

 Writing In A Woman's Voice will resume on Friday, February 18, 2022 with this month's slightly delayed Moon Prize. 

 

Eidolon

by Karen Jones


Worship not this Mary,
her alabaster pose,
hard skin, veil,
robes of stone.

She’s graven, trapped
as a golden calf,
sacrificed according to
an image in our minds. 
She’s perfect, she’s dead,
no thoughts of her own,
no flesh and blood,
no living womb.

Is this God’s vision? 
He has broken
his own Command,
and she stands cold
upon her pedestal. 

Once she was alive.
Blemished, but so wise,
warm, and whole.


* * * * *

Karen Jones is a teacher, poet, and life-long learner from Corvallis, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, Circle of Seasons, Cirque Press, and other publications. Her chapbook Seasons of Earth and Sky (Finishing Line Press) was released in 2020.

 

“We Are All Hopper Paintings Now”

—Jonathan Jones
The Guardian, UK (27 March 2020)

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

That’s me, solo table at The Automat, staring into a cold cup of tea; me, just out of frame, driving up to the lonely pump jockey in Gas. My sister says I have a “bad picker,” that my type (well-hung and irresponsible) is very very bad for me, and she’s right. I wouldn’t know a good guy if he snatched me up off the street in broad daylight, I tell her. My point, exactly, my sister chides.

I decide not to tell her about the stranger I’m chatting with online. He wants to send me on a train trip, meet him in Detroit, all expenses paid, and I admit, the thought makes me wet. That’s me, the woman reading in Compartment C Car, hurtling cross county toward a brand new life. I text him that I love Detroit, that I’m a fool for muscle cars. He says he’s a poet and an artist and a Buddhist. That he hasn’t owned a car in years.    

I confess, romance never ends well for me. Sometimes the loneliness screams so loud I want to drown myself in a tawdry romance novel with a sappy ending, or a bottomless glass of rye. Sometimes I want to hitch a ride with a comely vagabond, a poet from Michigan, drive off into the sunset. I lived 15 years with a Lakota Sioux medicine man on Pine Ridge Indian reservation in SD, he texts. Lived on a deserted tropical island off the coast of Thailand, in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Kathmandu, traveled Europe, lived amongst Bedouin Arabs in the Negev desert. I text back a smiley face and wait. I want to hitchhike to Tierra del Fuego, he responds. Wanna go?   

If only he knew! I’m the woman staring out the bay window in Cape Cod Morning, desperate for my latest true love to reappear. He said he was going to the store for bread, gas up the Chevy. Be right back, he said. The cloudy sky mirrors my mood. I wait. And wait.    

You should know better, my sister says. There are no rescuers anymore. I know that. I’m the usherette leaning against the wall in New York Movie. I’ve seen that film a dozen times; I’m lost in reverie. Dressed in a thoughtful blue uniform, rebellion looks like the strappy-assed shoes, half-hidden on my feet.

* * * * *

"We Are All Hopper Paintings Now" was first published in NYQ Magazine, Spring issue 2021.

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

 

 

A Day at the Beach

by Jane Druzhinina


Standing at the seashore, gazing ahead...
Seagulls floating on the waves, caught in their everyday game with the unsuspecting fish,
the survival of the fittest.
Young couples walking on the beach hand in hand,
to be young, in love and oblivious to the notion of time. 
Time...
the uncountable grains of sand,
the dust of time.
The power of the emerald blue,
the weakness of man...in the end, the weakness of man.
The nature’s perfect design,
the failing body.
The eternity of this scene,
the air infused with the bitterness of ageing.
The bronze sunset,
the dying wish.


* * * * *

Jane Druzhinina lives with her family in Sandy, Utah. Her poems have appeared in The Cynic Online Magazine and Because We Write Magazine.

 

WILD GEESE

by Frances Browner


We all used to gather in the Wild Geese,
our home away from home.
Had we grown wings and flown?
Or were some of us forced to take flight?

Many were rooted to the bar, on the same seat
every night, looking out onto Broadway.
There were no theatres here, no neon lights,
only a wide road and a park on the opposite side,
red brick apartment blocks to the left and right.

We were a family of sorts, our homeland binding us
together - laughter, craic, banter. There was despair
too in some eyes, little spoken of, unless at four o’clock
in the morning, when the bar was quiet, one or two left.

That’s when the stories came spinning,
when loneliness set in
and relationships slung together, with hope.

We got married young, an older Irish lady
told me, because we wanted to make a home,
away from home.

* * * * *

Frances Browner, creative writing tutor, lives in Greystones, County Wicklow, where she curated Poets Wall 2020 and Poetry Trail 2021. Her fiction and memoirs have appeared in magazines and were broadcast on Irish radio. Poems have been published in Ogham Stone, Boyne Berries, Bray Arts Journal, Skylight 47, Ink Sweat & Tears, Tales from the Forest, Ulster Voice, Cold Coffee Stand, Poems on the Edge, Poetry24, East Hampton Star, Montauk Sun, South Wales Evening Post, and Live Encounters. A haiku won Local Voices, 2020, and collection, Roots & Wings, was launched by Revival Press, 2019.

 

 

Finding Calm
             Inspiration from What We Walk Towards by Kevin Brophy

by Julia Vaughan


Leads, chains, hats, flip-flops and sunnies
Poo-bags and lots and lots of training-treats
Are they lures or just plain bribery?
Plenty of sunscreen.

Two dogs exuberant and joyful, in their own wonderland
Dashing through the water’s edge
Pelting across the sand
Exploding away like released elastic bands
Seagulls escaping the excitement

Firm, hard sand underfoot. 
Striding boldly
Underground stream turns it soft and sludgy
Calf muscles ache, sand clings in-between toes
A slower walk.
Soon it’s firm, hard sand underfoot again.
Repeat the bold and striding walk.

Walk to “The Pole” and back
Embracing total bliss
Skies above pure blue, with very few clouds of fairy floss,
The sea ripples in sapphire, grey, azure, some topped with white caps,
Waves splooshing onto the sand, not a big swell, some little rips criss-cross.

Seagulls and magpies float in the air, zeppelins with wings and sharp eyes,
Gawking at the prancing dogs, hoping for a prize,
A missed treat, an easy dinner to gulp down. Very wise.
Life on the beach and on the ocean has no compromise.

Stepping over sea weed
Striding over the sand
Avoiding rocks
Watching the dogs
Watching my feet
Looking far away
Clearing mental blocks
Mindful, peaceful, calming and energising
Oblivious to any clocks
And yet also vaguely wondering, when is the next equinox?

High tides. Waters lapping the dunes. Low tides. Vast sandy beach expanse.
Up and down, like life’s rollercoaster
Near and far
A weird romance
The Black Dog chasing
But I’m choosing to walk towards joyful exuberance
Walking dogs on the beach


* * * * *

Julia Vaughan moved to Australia with her husband in 1989.  Having had 2 poems published, she dreams of more, and becoming an accomplished poet after attending inspiring U3A “I just don’t get poetry” classes, on the Victorian Surf Coast.  When not dreaming, she can be found gardening, and walking on the beach with her two Vizsla dogs.  (Woman in Red published by Otoliths 01Nov2021 and Words are Flowers published by Melbourne Culture Corner 01Nov2021)

The Cloud

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


The clean smoke of the cloud
Drifts over and through us
As it starts to rain
Like a sideways kiss
Little more than mist

We are back in the mountains,
You and I, after forty years gone
And I am seized with a fever to climb and explore
And never go back to the city

We are old but still sure-stepping over root and rock
Tell me, have we come home?

I knew you were the one for me when I lay down in the snow,
Behind this house,
Age 21, temperature: zero
And instead of calling out my craziness
You lay down next to me
And we stayed side by side watching the clouds
Drift over the high peaks

Back from a graduation trip to Greece
You met my plane in Montreal
And we couldn’t keep our hands off each other

That was another knowing
Followed by the best sandwich ever
On thick white bread with butter
That you made and handed me on the back porch steps

I knew for certain then that we were home
Are we now?


* * * * *

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.

 

You Would Never Know
(Too Wild for the Suburbs)

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


Who would have thought that I
Wild flower child
Would land in a suburb

Yet here I am, reining myself in
To the proper level of decorum
Picking up the morning paper clothed

Mowing the lawn
Serving on boards with lawyers
Where I feel like the Lorax

“I speak for the trees!”
As I travel the sidewalks
I seek constant contact

With hedges and shrubs
Brushing my body against them
Especially fond of the prickly ones

Walking under low-hanging ginkgoes
To feel their leaf fans in my hair
Squatting outside shucking corn over the compost pail

Which is emptied on Mondays
I remember giving birth in this position, twice
I can binge watch Netflix with the best of them

But between episodes
I’m out talking to the toads in the cellar hole
And waiting for the moon to rise

I have to scrape more mud off my shoes than most
But otherwise you would never know


* * * * *

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.

Miriam Dancing—After a Painting of Miriam by Marc Chagall

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt


I never danced like this.
Decked out   baring my breasts
for some man’s pleasure.

Who does he think I am?

One of Gaughin’s native girls?
Part of his harem?  All of us circling,
hands clapped  above our heads.

Who am I to him?  A muse?  A figure
plastered on a white canvas board?
Roses  doves anemones swirling round.

I am not his feckless dream.

What happened to the desert?
To my feet pressed into sand?  To timbrel and lyre?
To my words echoing off pink rocky cliffs?

To songs spilling from a woman’s mouth?
To light spilling from clouds?
To a chorus of hallelujahs

quenching an unquenchable thirst? 
I say no more throttled tongues.
I will sing, be still, then dance.


* * * * *

Here is a link to the painting that inspired the poem: https://www.wikiart.org/en/marc-chagall/miriam-dances-1931

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a retired SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English SUNY New Paltz. She has published works in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Cream City Review, The Vassar Review, and other journals. Two volumes of poetry were published by the Edwin Mellen Press: We Speak in Tongues and She had this memory.  Her poetry volume, Foraging for Light, was published by Finishing Line Press.  Most recently her poetry chapbook about Bess Houdini was published by Palooka Press.  Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Check out her work at hudsonvalleywomenwriters.com

The clutter

by Emalisa Rose


Those frames from the flea market
that the purple haired lady sold for
a dollar. Most of them warped;
the glass, full of scratches.

Six cups in the cupboard, from
our trip to Las Vegas, drawings of
dice on them, chips on the handles.

The drawer of lone socks, inkless
pens, non-stick sticky pads, and
the four old remotes, for the old
school tvs. What were we thinking
by keeping them?

Open the bins, toss out the crap.
Let us get free of the clutter.

* * * * *

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and hiking. She walks with a bird group twice a month through the neighborhood trails. She volunteers in animal rescue and tends to cat colonies. Her work has appeared in Writing in a Woman's Voice, Spillwords, The Beatnik Cowboy and other grand places. Her latest collection is On the whims of the crosscurrents, published by Red Wolf Editions.

Isolation in D Minor

by Louisa Muniz

 
Wet newspapers, dirty laundry
& recyclables pile up for days.
 
The sun hides under a wet dress.
 
The ants persevere. Push
bread-crumbs across the floor
 
to the sound of God’s pounding fist
in Mozart’s Requiem D Minor.
 
Droning fridge, barking dog
ticking clock rim the day.

The fortune cookie reads,
the fortune you seek is in another cookie.
Yet, I have been blessed in this life.
 
Blessed art thou amongst…
Will only the meek inherit…?
 
The cloudless sky babies itself blue.
When the sun offers her self-care
 
I prep the soil, soak the bulbs.
Plant the snowflake flower
nose up for late spring bloom.


* * * * *

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.

 

The White Oak

by Louisa Muniz

 
Father sits on the stoop
looking all—bull thistle,
pepperweed, hawkweed—
difficult to manage.
 
After two shots of Bacardi
to quell his quiet suffering
I sneak away. Follow the trail
 
of leaves, grass & bramble
into the woods. I find my place
under the deep shadows of trees,
silent specters, welcoming arms.
 
The White Oak bends & bows
beneath the bloated clouds.
 
It asks for nothing.
 
When the tawny-gray caterpillar
crawls across the wet moss
I remove my socks & shoes,
steep my feet in the chattering brook.
 
When it’s time to return
I hopscotch home.
 
The song of the thrush
beckons me to stay.  
 

* * * * *

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.

The Impartial Absolution of the Bering Sea Islands

by Lisa Creech Bledsoe


Once, these islands were mountains. Once
we walked the ice between, following bear
and the banshee of the wind.

A warming sea has swallowed the land, hidden it
in her green and dark skirts
split here, or untied, ice melted and flown.

Above the cold: the smell of rot and musk—
of dissipation. Or recovery. A whale's
rib accedes to the creep

of lichen, its cancellous length
by breath and vestige
declining, then emerging into fox prints.

During the war twenty-nine reindeer were brought here
then left. In twenty years, there were six thousand,
then none. A single winter took them.

Over and again I go back—
to whales, to pallid snow, to fog and ash
and things that disappear: the bunting's

arcing flight display, floating
downward toward nests in talus
slopes and shrinking snowfields. 

I have come here not by thought or abandonment
but by resistance. Here a body is frozen
before it grows buoyant.

Before the seed opens, three days. After
it bursts, three days. Walking home over sea ice
we work to become unfastened, then empty.


* * * * *

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/