Thursday 31 March 2022

 

The Pursuit

by Alexis Garcia


Where do you go to find
Something that isn’t lost?
Is there a place where 
Souls go to recuperate?
After the existential dread sets in
Most things that consume our every waking minute
Cease to matter
You examine your life and come to the
Realization that we are all just matter
A collection of cells
Sent to take up space
Programmed to continuously reinvent ourselves
But where do the discarded parts go?
How can we be so sure that what is left in the past
Must stay in the past?
You could try to recreate who you used to be
From the fragmented bits 
But it won’t be the same
Can we really move forward if
We keep leaving ourselves behind?


* * * * *

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.




Wednesday 30 March 2022

 

HOW I VOTE

by Dian Sousa


I vote for Anaconda
its name a slither of magic.

I vote for the tree
in which it sleeps,
for the sharp birds
who warn of its waking.

I vote for the river,
for its silvery gods,
piranha who bite
clean to the pearl of bone.

I vote for the canopy and the cloud
one slick, one drunk
I vote for the song and the shade,
for the rain that washes,
for the wind that ushers us home.

I vote for our home
the blue one
to which we all belong.
None more than the other.
Whose every name is as
beautiful as every other name.

Neofita.  Hamid.  Treyvon.

I vote to belong equally
to this country on our blue earth,
understanding that a country
is just an imagination
whose limits become its borders.

I vote for a country
that praises the borderless
imagination of blue;
its oceanic mind
and cobalt heart.
Not so much a vote—
but a declaration of reverence.
I vote for empathy and imagination
to become our new currency.

I vote to put Winona La Duke on the twenty dollar bill
and Audre Lorde on the hundred.

I vote for poets
who say moon
smiling as they drown
because they are lunatics.

I vote for lunatics
because they seldom have homes.

I vote for the saints who shelter them
because they are lunatics.

I vote for the lunar cycle
moving in the belly of women.

I vote for Woman—
same as the Earth.

I vote for the round of her hip,
for her wholeness,
for her skin like mud
and her laugh like bread.

I vote for mud and bread
because they are both good.
To walk.
To eat.
To levitate
in joy
we could at least try—
together. 
The girl in the biblioteca
and the boy in the mosque

I vote for what feeds us—
the little fields full of kale,
the coconut tree and the deer-skin drum

I vote for the deer and the Labrador,
for the appaloosa,
the wolverine,
and the forty foot snake
even though it scares me.

I vote for the people—
but never for the ones wearing suits.
They scare me.

I am afraid of their suits.
Their suits are uniforms
formed against us.
Their lines held by the ledger and the gun.

But their words are useless.

They hold no moon.
No Earth.
No seed.

They do not speak the language of beauty.
They have said nothing beautiful in a thousand years.
 
I vote for Beauty—
for the ragged, courageous people who make it.

I vote for their raggedy dance
and for the dirt under that dance.

I vote for the dirt,
for the water,
for the single cell,
that became a fish.
For the fish
that crawled to land,
opened its mouth
and took a breath.

I vote for that breath.
I vote for the hope in that breath.
For its improbable song
that sang us to our feet,
for our feet that walked us into being.

I vote to continue being

In hope.
In beauty.
In love.
I vote for us.


* * * * *

"How I Vote" is from Dian Sousa's book The Third Power: Poems from the San Luis Obispo Women's March 2017-2020.

Dian Sousa is the reverend and head mother of The Center for Mystification and Delight. She offers her poems as anthems in the matrifocal revolution. She hopes they will help dismantle the heave, ugly walls of patriarchy. She has written three books of poems and is at work on a fourth. Her most recent book is The Marvels Recorded In My Private Closet (Big Yes Press, 2014). She is a recipient of a 2019 Luso-American Fellowship to the DISQUIET: Dzanc Books International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal.

Tuesday 29 March 2022

 

Do you still believe in spring?

by Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong

 
A lonely bird knocks 
on a kitchen window
 
Is there still a world? Deserted school 
playground, buttercup lip gloss, unopened,
 
cold french fries, uncertain future
Hope like rotten lemon juice
 
An ambulance siren sings 
Red and white glitter against 
 
sidewalks Tonight someone 
dies alone A patch of lotus
 
flowers exude fragrance 
Sunrise yellow, tea green, salmon pink
 
Though some think it dead, its seeds can
germinate for thousands of years

 
Later the lotus blooms 
magnificent in the deepest mud
 
I pray this poem finds in your darkness, 
hands reaching through ghost light
 
In the remaining space of this postcard
I write, I still believe in love


* * * * *

 
"Do you still believe in spring?" was inspired by the students of Tanya Ko-Hong's Fairfax High School Poetry Workshop during the pandemic. It was part of a virtual poetry reading (7 April 2021) performed in conjunction with artwork WE,OUR,US by LA Metro artist Susan Silton, for the future Metro Westside Purple (D Line) Extension Wilshire/ Fairfax Station.

A Korean version follows below.

 
 아직  봄을 믿습니까 ? 
                    
 
외로운 새가 부엌 
창문을 두드린다
 
세상이 아직 존재하나 학교
운동장뜯지 않은 미나리 립글로스,
 
차가운 감자 튀김불확실한 미래
썩은 레몬 주스 같은 희망
 
구급차 사이렌이 노래하고
반짝이는 빨강하얀 
 
불빛이 인도에 반사하고
오늘 누군가  홀로 죽어 간다 
 
진한 연꽃의 향내가 진동한다
해같이 노란 잎같이 연한연어같은 분홍 
 
우리가 죽었다고 생각하는 연꽃 씨앗은 
수천 후에도 발아가 되고  
 
가장 깊은 진흙 속에서 
연꽃은 반듯하게  피어난다
 
시가 어둠 속에 있는 당신에게 
손을 뻗어 신비의 빛에 닿기를 기도한다
 
엽서의 남은 공간에
나는 사랑이라고  쓴다

Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong is a bilingual Korean American poet, translator, playwright, and cultural curator. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. Tanya was the first Korean-American recipient of the Yun Doon-ju Korean-American Literature Award and the 10th Ko Won Memorial Foundation Literature Award in 2020. Weaving together two cultures, Tanya’s poetry gives voice to multiple generations of Korean and Korean-American women. Her most recent collection is The War Still Within  (2019, KYSO Flash). www.tanyakohong.com


Monday 28 March 2022

Haven

by Nina Keen


            At the end of the street, there's a clearing full of dead shrubs and sky. To get there, I pass the find a job you'll never find a job screech of my mother and the house of the old woman my sister thinks is a witch and I can stand here, for a long time on the dirt in the scent of dry sage borne on the weaving wind from the canyon. My cat followed me here today just as he does all the days that I’m not smoking. Something is written on both of us, maybe in our yellow eyes, that says stay away or love me I know you'll stay away. But here we're a part of the landscape – the empty beer cans and faded dollhouse and the coiled snakes that sleep feet away from my roughened bare ones. I picture us, my cat and me, in the dollhouse on the stones that made me bleed the first time I came here and we're miniatures of ourselves and locked away with no one looking in. That's how it feels to be here: me and him and me, him rubbing against my furry legs.


* * * * *

Nina Keen received her Master's degree in English literature from Loyola Marymount University. Her flash fiction pieces and poetry have appeared in LA Miscellany, The Fifth Di, and Coffin Bell Journal. She enjoys old fairy tales, modern horror, and all kinds of poetry. Nina currently lives in Los Angeles and enjoys going for walks, drinking lots of coffee, and collecting tiny trinkets.


Sunday 27 March 2022

Fatigue

by Nina Keen

                                                                                                                       
He talks so much.

Sometimes I hear his voice in my dreams:
"Did you remember to wash the pan?
Did you put your things away?
When will dinner be ready?
Did you know the earth was made
by a fist of steel and hot liquid fire?"

He would know because he's been there,
or so I imagine:
standing on some infernal mountaintop,
eyes wide open, a multitude of thoughts
racing in his mind,
he's waiting for the first human to be created
so he can unload unto them from his mouth.

I'm supposed to be a woman,
I'm supposed to be his.
But all I want to do is
not have to be.

A warm spring afternoon,
pink blossoms are swirling in the breeze.
A soft yellow light spills through
the curtains, jerry-rigged,
on our single-paned windows.
I find the mattress lying on the floor,
lined with my stuffed animals and
baby blanket,
I take all of them up in my arms,
close my eyes,
and cohabit with them,
their living-dead space:
Asleep, not dead, asleep, not alive.

I'll
paint glassy black eyes on top of my
lids,
and let him talk to her
while I sleep and
take care of this terrible
fatigue.


* * * * *

Nina Keen received her Master's degree in English literature from Loyola Marymount University. Her flash fiction pieces and poetry have appeared in LA Miscellany, The Fifth Di, and Coffin Bell Journal. She enjoys old fairy tales, modern horror, and all kinds of poetry. Nina currently lives in Los Angeles and enjoys going for walks, drinking lots of coffee, and collecting tiny trinkets.

Saturday 19 March 2022

 Writing In A Woman's Voice is on equinox break. New posts will resume on March 27, 2022. 

Friday 18 March 2022

This month, the 91st Moon Prize goes to Melanie Zipin's poem "Move."


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.


Thursday 17 March 2022

It’s as if

by Brooke Herter James


Under the full worm moon of March
the meadow mice scamper
across a field of light,
the ewe leans her wooly chin
on the split rail fence,
the pig ambles out of doors
on her cloven hooves,
the donkey refuses
to lay down in the hay
and I, in my bare feet,
stand in the doorway
of soft midnight,
in a moment that opens
wide like a prayer
under the first full moon of March —
it’s as if we can hear the sap rise.


* * * * *

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.



Wednesday 16 March 2022

 

Proof of God

by Myra King


I always wanted proof of God
even as a child
I remember my mother's eyes as I hid a note
in the dry dirt of our backyard
written words - mine - asking God to take the paper
if you are really there
my mother told me God does not work like that
you should not question
her eyes squinted the sun and me in turn
a look as if someone she was unsure of wanting
could not share her belief
years later at her graveside with my final proof of if or not
I recall her long last months
cruel duality of cancer and dementia
when she was only enough of herself
to pray in little girl voice every day
for Jesus to take her
she was ready now ready for this to end
her eyes squinted me that look
now a shared betrayal to her faith 
that she still half clung to
even like a child


* * * * *

Myra King lives on Worlds End Highway in South Australia with her rescue greyhound, Sparky. Her poems and short stories, many of which have won awards, have been published in print and online, in literary magazines, anthologies and papers including Puncher &Wattmann, October Hill NY, Islet, Boston Literary Magazine, Rochford Street Review, EDF, Heron's Nest and San Pedro River Review. She has won the UK Global, the US Moon Prize and been shortlisted for the US Glass Woman Prize and the Scarlett Stiletto SINC Sisters In Crime AUS. http://myrakingprofile.webs.com/ 



Tuesday 15 March 2022

Turn around and gone      

by Eve Rifkah
                                                     

she found herself on the wrong balcony
looking in

she had stepped out
              under reflected glare of city light
leaned over rail      looked up
and down empty street

turned       to step back     inside
now dark                
                    all the faces gone
                    glint on glass
                    the kaleidoscope of dress spun
                    in a fusion wine-y drift
                    gone

now darkness other side
fists on glass     a beat
                     a keen pours over the balcony
                     washes down the streets
                     slides off walls dwindling
                     into this dark night


* * * * *

"Turn around and gone" is from Eve Rifkah's 4th book, Lost in Sight (Silver Bow Publishing, 2021).

Eve Rifkah was co-founder of Poetry Oasis, Inc. (1998-2012), a non-profit poetry association dedicated to education and promoting local poets. Founder, and editor of DINER, a literary magazine. She is the 2021 recipient of the Stanley Kunitz award. She lives in Worcester, MA with her husband and cat, Bela.


Monday 14 March 2022

The Widow of Fajes Grandes

by Eve Rifkah


Whitecaps rise and fall as distant dolphins.
I once shook my fist, spat at the sea – Feh!
the devil in blue the devil in green-gray grabbed
my Josef – mine – What am I saying?
With the sea there is no mine.
Taught heaven hell, God and devil
out there is only air and sea
one breathes or doesn’t.
The sea took my man spun in sail and oar
and splintered keel. What kind of payment was that?
I say Feh on the priests
no God can heal my empty bed.

I turn my back to the sea
the ache snakes up my stomach
fills my throat with spume  
turn away     tighten robe    put kettle on
grind coffee    slice bread
pull out bucket and brush
clean these old tiles again
the wash water bites me cold    
I force again my hand
my flesh into the vastness
into the depths that I know has bottom
I will not fall in.


* * * * *

"The Widow of Fajes Grandes" is from Eve Rifkah's 4th book, Lost in Sight (Silver Bow Publishing, 2021).

Eve Rifkah was co-founder of Poetry Oasis, Inc. (1998-2012), a non-profit poetry association dedicated to education and promoting local poets. Founder, and editor of DINER, a literary magazine. She is the 2021 recipient of the Stanley Kunitz award. She lives in Worcester, MA with her husband and cat, Bela.

Sunday 13 March 2022

 

A Daughter’s Vow

by Traci Mullins


I won’t care if you ignore me, hide your face behind a book, the only sound the ice cubes, tinkling in your gin.

I won’t care if you neglect me, leave Pop-Tarts for my dinner, the only sound the television, babysitting again.

I won’t care if you abuse me, remind me I’m your biggest mistake, the only sound your slap across my face, stinging me with shame.

I won’t care if you displace me, let your lover steal my place, the only sound a knife’s blade, hollowing my heart.

I won’t care if you betray me, play dumb at his seduction, the only sound your hiss, accusing me of lying.

I won’t care if you erase me, punish me for truth-telling, the only sound your silence, making sure I pay.

I can’t afford to want a mother.

I would care.

So I won’t.

I won’t.


* * * * *

Traci Mullins, a non-fiction book editor by day, has been writing flash fiction since 2017. Her stories have been published in three anthologies, Panoply, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Boulevard, Cabinet of Heed, Potato Soup Journal, (mac)ro(mic), Blink-Ink, Ellipsis Zine, and many others. She was a two-time finalist in the London Independent Story Prize competition.


Saturday 12 March 2022

Moonhood

by Sara Backer


Friend after friend moves
into the motherhood,
my hand unthinkingly dropped.
Though full friends before,
mothers need other mothers more.

As bystander, babysitter,
I only witness
that fierce bond, that richness,
the wonder, the children
who shape their lives.

Our context wanes, the distance
between mothers and Minervas
goes unspoken.
Grandchildren double
the distance.

Let us few, the childless,
often maligned as selfish or shrewd,
claim for ourselves the least-liked moon:
snow moon, bone moon,
bare moon of winter.

A moon for women who couldn’t
or didn’t—unable, afraid, or wise.
In bare rooms, we’ll cook bone soup.
Nourished by marrow,
no longer outcast.

Later, we’ll welcome the daughters
of others into our moonhood, 
and show them the magnitude
of night—of shadow, ice,
and sparkle.


* * * * *

Sara Backer’s first book of poetry, Such Luck (Flowstone Press) follows two chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt (dancing girl press) and Bicycle Lotus (Left Fork) which won a Turtle Island Poetry Award. Her writing was recently honored with a prize in the Plough Poetry Competition. She lives in the Merrimack River watershed amid white pines, red oaks, and black bears.


Friday 11 March 2022

 

My Name Is Miriam

by Shelly Blankman


A world of dreams imploded by age,
my mirrored face gazes back at me.
Summers of buttercups would soon be over,
the sweet taste of life, too, would wane.
This is the sum of me, I thought.
This is who I am.
But who am I really?

My Hebrew name is Miriam
Its English translation, rebellious.
I am named for my grandmother's sister.

No one calls me Miriam.
She exists no more.
Her story like so many others,
their lives told in anything that survived:
Homes looted in Nazi raids, leaving behind
shards of glass, photos, and papers
shredded and burned.

Nothing left to share, no one left to share them.
Ghosts of children, too.  
A stuffed bear matted with drool.
A crushed game board, 
Stick-figured cats on crumpled paper.

And Miriam, like so many others,
robbed of strength and spirit,
no way to stand, nowhere to go,
mired in the mud where life used to be,
where men toiled
and women cooked
  and children giggled
and teachers taught 
  and rabbis chanted. 

Burning embers are all that remain
where skeletal villages are living graves
spit on by brown-shirted boys, barely men,
air thick with the stench of the dying, the dead. 
A fortunate few able to flee, jammed 
in a barge destined for dreams in America.

Among the chattel, my grandmother,
Miriam’s sister, her dress so lovingly stitched,
now stained and grimy, sagging on her four-foot frame,
so tiny against this monster war that had choked her childhood,
and in its wake, sweet Miriam.

In this barge prison, my grandmother, 
masking pain and loss like so many others
on the boat that day, headed in fear for freedom
hanging onto a frayed rope of hope through fickle waters,
hearts pounding with each ocean wave.
Like others, she cries and no one hears

My own grandmother, carrying only her small carpet pouch
filled only with a few photos, maybe a coin or two 
from her beloved Austria.

Dreams of freedom mixed with fear.
No family or friends waiting to welcome her.
No one to say, “Cry on if you want, cry if you must.”
Invisible tears. No one must know her pain.

My grandmother, so small and frail at seventeen.
Her high-top shoes, scuffed with mud.
What would her mother say?
She shudders at the thought.
Her mother is gone. Her father, too.
Nine brothers and sisters left behind
in distant snaking smoke.

And her dear, sweet Miriam–her sister and confidante.
Her anchor to life, itself. Like the rest of them, a hellish life
cut short in a gas chamber, cement walls etched
in fingerprints by desperate Jews struggling to escape
only to be dumped in a mass grave.

Now, generations later, the smoke long cleared,
I carry her name. Miriam. Hebrew for rebellious.
Yet, how could Miriam rebel? How would she? 
How could she? No voice. No power. 

I am bound to rebel where she could not.
I am bound to remember her, all others who died with her,
and all those who would have been born for generations to follow
if only she had lived. 

I am bound to speak for those muted by fear
to show strength for those who cannot.

I am bound to rebel.
My name is Miriam.


* * * * *

“My Name Is Miriam” was first published by Poetry Superhighway.

Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland, where she and her husband have filled their empty nest with three rescue cats and a foster dog. Their sons, Richard and Joshua, live in New York and Texas, respectively. Following careers in journalism, public relations, and copy editing, Shelly now spends time writing poetry, scrapbooking and making cards. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Super Highway, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Muddy River Review, among other publications. Richard and Joshua surprised her by publishing her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead.


Thursday 10 March 2022

Understanding My Mother

by Shelly Blankman


I’d tried to ward off age with dyes and creams  –
any cosmetic blasted by ads to make me feel
younger than I was, even as muscles and bones
became barometers of oncoming rain.

I refused to surrender to the enemy of time 
as my mother had. She had locked herself
in a prison of fractured memories, and that’s
where she stayed as we all grew up and moved away. 

She stopped shopping, dining out, seeing friends, 
hosting holiday meals. She watched TV endlessly. 
Once neatly dressed in freshly pressed blouses and skirts, 
she now lounged around the house all day in nightgowns,

content with her cats as her only companions – a shell
of her former self. I didn’t understand. Then the pandemic 
descended on humanity like a hawk on its prey, I could feel
the sadness of my mother course through my veins. I am 

the one imprisoned now because we all are. I don’t try
to defeat age anymore. I stay home, wear sweats or pajamas.
I watch TV and snuggle with my cats, the only ones safe 
to hug anymore. I don’t count crow’s feet or wrinkles or gray hairs.

I understand my mother now.


* * * * *

Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland, where she and her husband have filled their empty nest with three rescue cats and a foster dog. Their sons, Richard and Joshua, live in New York and Texas, respectively. Following careers in journalism, public relations, and copy editing, Shelly now spends time writing poetry, scrapbooking and making cards. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Super Highway, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Muddy River Review, among other publications. Richard and Joshua surprised her by publishing her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead.

Wednesday 9 March 2022

Water Woman

by Karen Jones


When dammed,
divert to a side channel. 
When narrowed, rise,
reconfigure rigid borders. 

When displaced, belly up,
surround the obstacle,
meet yourself again
on the downstream side. 

Enter the fissures
of the earth. Abide
in dark spaces. Emerge
in unexpected places. 

When frozen, flow silent
under the ice. When dried,
rise in invisible mist, reform
to a thousand clouds, 

rain softly on your own
desiccated veins
until you overflow
to a wide and welling river. 

Offer your voluptuous curves
to the shore. Reflect the power
of the sun, chaining and unchaining
shimmering infinities of light.


* * * * *

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


Tuesday 8 March 2022

 

Medusa

by Karen Jones

 
Granddaughter of Gaea,
she was beautiful in her youth.

Now her cursed face appears
in the upturned ball of the fallen tree
torn from the forest floor. 
She cried a splintering cry,
snake hairs yanked from the soil,
now all are broken, twisted
in every direction, a severed connection
to the underworld.

Her grimy eyes, hollow, dry,
dead on stalks, stare into empty air. 
Stones embed her cheeks,
but she no longer looks down.

Seasons turn. 
Vine maples root in her crevices,
Tendrils trace her brown forehead,
moss veils her face.  Water trickles
through trillium and fern, somewhere
deep beneath her body.

Life fills in.
She is beautiful again.


* * * * *

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

Monday 7 March 2022

Moonflower

by Caitlin Hyslop-Margison


I look at myself through a kaleidoscope of eyes.
None of them are mine.

I think that my soul has been filled to the brim
with other people’s tears.

I have donated my body to a science that strips the meat off my bones
and calls it “getting to know you”.

I take up someone else’s thoughts
with a thread and a needle,
poking tiny holes in my skin
and painting my lips with the blood.

I remember a little girl sewing a shroud and settling it
over her face,
so that when she tries to feel the contours of her bones
she can only run her hands through the folds of another skin.

She traced tattoos on her mind of hands open to the sky,
waiting for praise in any language.
We are still wrapped in longing,
she and I.

The sea unfurls without ceasing at the pull of the moon,
so I fit my mouth around the stem of an evening primrose,
and my petals open beneath the sky –
inky black, and scattered with winking stars.


* * * * *

Caitlin Hyslop-Margison (she/her) is an emerging writer from Atlantic Canada. She is currently a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of New Brunswick and is pursuing a dual honours degree in sociology and history.


Sunday 6 March 2022

House

Caitlin Hyslop-Margison


Pebbles take root in my spine
like little seeds of glass.
Bloodstains bloom out of seeping wounds
as the seconds and years tick past.

Roots rise and entangle my feet,
up from the treacherous ground.
The trees have ancient memories,
their whispers a drumbeat sound.

Over the edge of a cliff,
out in the black iron sea,
a maelstrom waits to grasp its prey,
and yawns around pointed teeth.

The bite of the salt spray stings
the open sores on my lips,
so I spit out the flood and swallow the blood,
and wait out the solar eclipse.

I cloak myself in the shadow
of tales unheard and untold;
light a quivering flame made of pity and blame,
and raise it to fend off the cold.

When I sleep I dream of a house
small and sturdy and sweet
with a trellis of poppies kissing me softly,
wood floor worn under my feet.

I’ve conjured these walls from smoke,
and to ashes and dust they will go,
but the fire has burned the salt from my skin
and the sweat glistens clean on my throat.


* * * * *


Caitlin Hyslop-Margison (she/her) is an emerging writer from Atlantic Canada. She is currently a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of New Brunswick and is pursuing a dual honours degree in sociology and history.

Saturday 5 March 2022

Choosing Flight

by Nonnie Augustine


I thought I was dying from time to time.
Having withdrawn to a nub, I sent my actress out to chit-chat,
wear silly hats, play Bingo, dance on Wine down Wednesdays
if the piano player’s music rocked enough or had a bluesy,
dirty rhythm and if I’d drunk enough Merlot.
In wheelchairs or sitting with walkers at their elbows,
they laughed and clapped for (at?) the aging dancer still able
to move her hips, arch her back, play with her arms and shoulders.
Their pleasure in my foolery gave me joy beyond the actress’s ken.
But always then the retreat to my two rooms,
the blue-gray recliner, my sensitive cat,
the night’s movies or European crime series.
How long these nights were!

My brother Robert called from Philadelphia
and blew this life apart when he said:
“Move! Move with me to Tucson!
Get the hell out of that sterile place you’ve landed.
Take the risk. You used to be a risk-taker.
I’m moving to Arizona in the fall.
You can do it, too, Sis.”
And I did. And I have.

I often wake here before sunrise. I want to.
I feed my cat and make myself a cup of rich coffee.
Then out to the deck to feed the doves, quail, and songbirds.
Hummingbirds sip nectar just above my head and I’m
delighted with them and their tiny, precious, efficient feet!
The woodpecker trumpets his happiness with the seeds
in the feeder hanging from the Palo Verde branch.
After dark, Javelinas may visit. They have messy habits
and are not pretty, but they travel together in whole families
and I like them for this.
The actress has not come to Tucson with me.
I’ve no need for fakery in this new place.
Robert and I go to the Rillito farmer’s market,
we go out to dinner with his old friends, we make plans.
I chose to fly to the Sonoran Desert. I chose to thrive.


* * * * *

Nonnie Augustine is the author of two books of poetry: One Day Tells its Tale to Another and To See Who’s There. The former was named by The Kirkus Review to “Best of Indie 2013.” A treasured achievement for her was being awarded The Glass Woman Prize from Writing in a Woman’s Voice in 2016. She graduated as a dance major from Juilliard a long time ago. Since 2002 she has been writing poetry and short prose. There is also a novel, which lives in a big wicker box in her closet. Her blog is “Augustine’s Confessions.”