Saturday 30 April 2022
who has left this delicate cotton cloth
handsewn with care
to fit a young girl’s shape
with its small white buttons
its white lace collar
pinned at the shoulders
on this worn clothesline
behind this empty farmhouse?
the cloth is thin
and made for dense summer days
when this tree above
would have been fertile green
when there would have been
birds singing
a song for rising
a song for resting
a song by which to wander
a song to call the children home
more empty than the broken chairs
on the collapsing porch
this abandoned house
will soon be embraced by wild
come to claim, consume, console -
one day, it will call this cotton dress
with its blue satin ribbon about the waist
to rejoin the brown earth
this empty white dress
uplifted and released
ascending and descending
in the chilly breeze
* * * * *
Victoria Twomey is a poet and an artist. Her work is written in a direct style, reflecting both a deep emotional well and an intellectual exploration of time, death, and their spiritual connections. She has appeared as a featured poet at various venues around Long Island, NY, including the Hecksher Museum of Art, The Poetry Barn, Barnes & Noble, The Pisces Cafe, Borders Books, and local radio. Her poems have been published in several anthologies and on the web, including Sanctuary Magazine, BigCityLit, PoetryBay and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her poem "Pieta" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Friday 29 April 2022
Emergency Preparedness
by
Jennifer Mills Kerr
take
a toothbrush
take
a flashlight
take
your child’s hand
take
your passport
take
your prayers
take
your wedding band
take
comfort in
your
sheltered heart
the
love you carry within
take
comfort in passing time
your
contact list, your breath
take
comfort in your packed bag
your
ability to plan
though
the night is hot and
you
have far to go
you
will arrive--
time
makes it so--
now
breathe
now
pray
now
take your child’s hand
though
the night is hot and
you
have far to go
take
comfort in
your
sheltered heart
the
love you carry within
* * * * *
Jennifer Mills Kerr is a writer and poet living in Lake County, California. An
East Coast native, she loves mild winters, anything Jane Austen, and the
raucous coast of Northern California.
Thursday 28 April 2022
The Downward Glance
by
Jennifer Mills Kerr
I can’t sing to the moon
today except to say the
usual phrase: she’s
luminous, radiant–
like a celebrity shining
into the collective lens
with a cold and
distant eye.
Today I drop my gaze
to my wheezing cat, the
aspen trees yellow and
aching with thirst. I sing to
my neighbor’s abandoned
sedan sinking into the earth.
I sing to my aching feet.
I sing to ladybugs, to ants
I sing to dead leaves, to grit,
to dying plants. I keep singing
I keep singing through
my downward glance.
* * * * *
Jennifer Mills Kerr is a writer and poet living in Lake County, California. An
East Coast native, she loves mild winters, anything Jane Austen, and the
raucous coast of Northern California.
Wednesday 27 April 2022
In the Sixties before Seat Belts and Dr. Phil
by Sharon Waller KnutsonThat’s my school, he says pointing
to a sprawled out building where
children run and play on the grounds.
You’re a liar, his teenage mother trills
from the front seat. What a dummy.
Your school is in Manhattan Beach.
It looks like your school, doesn’t it?
I tell the toddler sitting between us
in the back seat of the Pontiac.
You are blind, Blondie. See the sign:
Santa Monica City Limits, my then
mother-in-law says with a smirk.
Hatred of the male child, her son
says as we build sand castles
with our nephew while they shop.
They don’t like me, the curly haired
cherub says as he plows his fist
into the twin towers and they collapse.
I like you both, I say and lift my
nephew in the air as his uncle
tackles me and we fall laughing.
I want to live with you, he begs
and my heart sinks like the sand
as he stands in the doorway crying.
I wonder if we had turned around
we could have prevented the disaster
that destroyed all of our lives.
* * * * *
Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014) and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021.). Her work has also appeared in Black Coffee Review, Terror House Review, Trouvaille Review, One Art, Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review, The Five-Two and The Song Is…
Tuesday 26 April 2022
Moon
Magic
by
Terri Mullholland
Cathy
told her mother she was taking the bins out. Her mother nodded, her eyes fixed
on the television, tinny canned laughter echoing around the room. Cathy sighed.
She wished her mother would take more interest in things, even if it were only
to wonder why her daughter was taking out the bins at midnight.
She
let herself out of the back door, ignoring the bins, and made her way down the path.
The moon was full and cast a blue-white glow over the garden. Cathy kept
looking over her shoulder, up at the darkened windows of the house next door,
wondering if someone was watching.
Cathy
moved in with her mother five years ago, after the break-up of her marriage. It
was working well; her mother needed someone to look after her, and they both
needed company. But Cathy could feel life passing her by. She watched the other
women her age in the street and couldn’t remember the last time she laughed.
She felt restless, ready to welcome something or someone new into her life.
Earlier
in the week, she had taken her mother to a jumble sale at the town hall. Cathy
spotted the fortune-teller as soon as she walked in. She was tucked away in the
corner, and everyone else seemed to be ignoring her as if she didn’t exist. She
found her mother a seat next to a friendly group of women at the cake stall and
bought her a nice cup of tea.
‘Back
in a moment, mum,’ she said, giving her a light kiss on the forehead, knowing
that sadly her mother wouldn’t notice if she was gone one minute or one hour.
The
fortune-teller had wild black hair and green eyes and was wearing a flowing
purple gown.
‘Ah,
I can see love on the horizon for you,’ said the fortune-teller as Cathy took a
seat opposite them at the table. ‘Cross my palm with paper money, and then I
can tell you more.’
Cathy
gave the fortune-teller a crumpled five-pound note and, when the fortune-teller
continued to frown at her outstretched palm, added another one.
The
fortune-teller smiled, opened the carrier bag at her feet, pulled out a white
plastic ball, and placed it on the table. It glowed like the moon as the
fortune-teller ran her hands over it and peered within. She said there would be
love coming from an unexpected source, but it was timid, shy; it might need some
coaxing.
‘It
might not be what you are expecting,’ said the fortune-teller, ‘just keep an
open mind.’
The
fortune-teller told Cathy to list the qualities she was seeking in a lover and
write them on a piece of paper. On the night of the next full moon, she should
bury the list under the moonlight and make a wish. Then love would find her.
Even
afterward, Cathy thought how gullible she was. The fortune-teller had probably seen
her come into the hall with her elderly mother, noted her unwashed hair, her drab
clothing, and told her what she wanted to hear.
But
despite that, here she was. Under the full moon, with a list made on a piece of
paper torn off her mother’s shopping list pad. She had crossed out ‘bread, milk’
and written ‘tall, dark, loving, kind,’ then, at the last minute, she added
‘shy’ – just in case.
Cathy
dug a hole in her mother’s flower bed, put the carefully folded list into the
earth, covered it over, and put a large stone on the top. Then she looked up at
the moon, glowing full and bright, and wished.
There
was a noise somewhere between the howl of a wolf and the bark of a fox. Then
something started moving in the bushes, something dark, something shy. She went
towards the buses, hand outstretched, ready to coax it out.
* * * * *
Terri Mullholland (she / her) is a writer and researcher living in London, UK.
Her flash fiction has appeared in Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Day
Fiction, Toasted Cheese, Full House, Severine, Tether's End, The Liminal Review,
and Analogies & Allegories Literary Magazine. When she is not
writing she can be found curled up with a good book and a cat.
Monday 25 April 2022
Cracked Sidewalks
by Rya Sheppard
I
said No, but he insisted
that
he inscribe his name and number
on
the palm of my hand, branding me
with
the black ink of his pen.
He
looked at me then, his eyes
yellow
and flashing
synchronous
with the lights
in
the club. His smile
like
a frown, his brows furrowed
and
teeth gnarled.
I
left then,
stepping
out into the crisp
air
of night, the black sky above
reflected
his face, and told me
to
run, so I ran,
cracks
in the sidewalk, tripping
stumbling,
threatening to break
the
back of the mother who
raised
me to fear no man.
I
fear this man,
I
fall on a crack in the sidewalk,
and
on my way down I see
a
daisy sprouting from
the
concrete, bright and white.
How beautiful, I think.
* * * * *
Rya Sheppard is a fiction writer from Kellogg, Idaho. She
studied creative writing at the University of Idaho and hopes to attend
graduate school in the fall. She spends most of her free time writing stories
and poetry or spending time with her cat, Zoey.
Sunday 24 April 2022
Conceiving
by Sam Barbee1954
There's no wrong side of the track in Appalachia, just the side called the homeplace.
The Ararat River ties everybody and everything together one way or another.
No reason to dwell on Big City dreams. It all boils down to the way things leave you.
Recalling that cool October evening, those sweet night clouds hid everything but moonglow. I escaped laundry that night, chores next morning. Grabbed that flicker of neon in his handsome stories. By trade, he was a carpenter. Not broke down fretting over bad yields, or bad weather. Chestnut hair. Blue eyes. With him, never again would I scour ditches for pop bottles. No counting green stamps for sugar or salt. No more sitting with young 'ns while the rest went to socials, or to church. For that one moment, I stepped away.
No sister ever told me nothin about the way things was, worldly things that is. Just cooking . . . and then it was add salt, or too much salt. Could've learned that on my own, too. When mama died, I'd just turned eight: she would've told me what was what. And if he was living, Daddy would have got his Winchester and prodded that boy all the way to the Baptist Church, right through the town . . . probably right at Christmas time. That would've been beautiful, candles flickering behind stained glass, church-bells sounding across the snowy clearings.
For June, it's a gray morning. The air in this room is dead-still. There's a bush outside my window, a holly with some green berries. A thundershower made the berries glisten. The prickly leaves shed the rain, drop at a time. Up home, the same kind of bush speckles the meadow, like family gathering in July for the reunion. A picnic with checkered table cloths over barrels. Each aunt brings her specialty. Cousins, and children of cousins, all running into the sun.
My sister, Virginia, says I gotta get past this. Time will help me forget. The secret will heal. Mama told me once: I'd just as soon see my girls cold in the ground than cast shame on this family. Well, that's fine. I ain't ashamed. Not sure what I am, but have seen some of the Big City. I wish I could've seen my baby. Smelled my baby.
1972
There. Different and brighter than all the rest. There is my wishing star. The first I see each evening, the last one gone by day. Long as that star shines, I know you're okay. Little one: you're eighteen today. Makes you an adult by hill code. Younger than your daddy was. He was twenty-one when he swooned me, and twenty-one when he slipped out of town. Eighteen is a good age. Can be a strong age. I was eighteen when we had our minutes together.
My motherness tells me you're a girl. Oh, could we share stories. But those years was stole from us by a thief in the night. One that slips away with a piece of you when the lamp burns low.
You'd think, four youngins later, I'd feel less for you, but no way! I want to give you your blood: bring you here where they lay, tell you their stories, stone by stone. By God, I do. Hold your hand, lace fingers, comb curls into your hair.
It's your birthday. So, I visit these graves. Seems a bit strange, don't it. But it soothes me to see these fifty, sixty kin. There's Mama, Daddy, the others, too. Now, my Daddy, he would've taken you to raise. In a heartbeat. Bought you butterscotch. Told you stories. Made sure you had a fine Easter dress, white and pink, and a pretty bonnet to match. Nothin' like that brother of mine: Gotta give it away, give it away, away, away, all he’d say. I could've taken good care of you.
I try forgettin' my birthdays, but never yours. Each year, I make it here to this meadow, and just sit between the long shadows of our stones. Night is flying in, and the trees in the heights are crying down in their roots. But, one year, I hope I see you come a-traipsing out from those red oaks and ironwoods. I'll pluck the burrs from your chiffon. Smooth out tangles in your hair. And we can stroll down the road, just a ways, to the homeplace. That day will be my proud day.
The dust will settle itself while we walk.
1994
So many autumns ago, a seer told me my child would find a way right back to me. So much to do, now. How can I tell my others? Do I tell? Tell my first he's my second, my only boy has a brother?
I read this letter, over and over. I didn't know the child was a boy – must tell him that. Of course, how could I have done any different? I gave him up. He wasn't mine no more to fuss over. Can it be? Lord, somebody pinch me. My deep secret is out in the sunshine. How did he find me? Now my husband always told me if he was the child, he'd have to find his mama.
Forty years. Forty years, I've wondered, and, I guess, waited. Oh, me, I'm an old woman now. I'm silly and . . . I don't know what. How could he feel any good towards me? He has to. He has to. I'll tell him everything. No . . . I can't tell him everything. Oh . . . I'm addled. I'm going to him. He said to when he sent that picture. I wonder if his wife knows? I do not want to make trouble for this boy.
For now, I've got to sleep. I see that moon and that moon sees me. Each ripple in this old pane had heard my midnight talk, time and time again. There's a night's-worth in every inch of glass in this house. Tonight, I'm opening the sash, and fillin this house with the mountain's peace, and the bite of the bright leaf, and fillin the holler with my pleasure. I'll count every star, dance with every bluet, count all I got down to the spider in the cupboard. The seer told me. Yes, she did. One day I could rest easy, complete in this life. I like this night air sifting over me. Mama's comforter keeping off the chill.
* * * * *
Sam Barbee has a new collection, Uncommon Book of Prayer (2021, Main Street Rag). His poems recently appeared in Poetry South, Literary Yard. His collection, That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), was nominated for Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best 2016 poetry collections; a two-time Pushcart nominee.
Saturday 23 April 2022
Cocktails
by Laurie Byro
She follows him, clever boy, he is the miracle, a Pied Piper of every town,
witty,
handsome, adorable, a woman's dream. After a while, her friends stop
speaking to her, turn away, tune her out, envious, she says, of her good
fortune.
She sees him anyway, despite the two restraining orders, despite the words
hurled like stones: bitch, trash, spider-cunt. The bruises are like a
painting,
Starry Night with all those swirling colors. He dances like that, laughing
the words skim over her head like stones, he is magic. Soul-mate, eternity.
The love-bite on her stomach, at first bloody hot, almost a proof, his
declaration of ownership. It is sexy, red, throbbing-lipstick but as the night
fades
to purple, maybe not so sexy, not so tender. Was his passion a wilding-almost
like that poor girl in the Park? What was wrong with wanting one last meeting,
a cocktail? Words drip and slide down her back like icicles but still she
thaws, he is so sweet really, like a frosting. No one understands. Those silly
books:
Co-Dependent? No! More..... and more and more. She tells her friends, when
they don't hang up, she'll go to her grave believing. That. He loves her,
really.
She just feels it in her bones.
Hear lies, hear lies,
here lies.
* * * * *
Laurie Byro has seven collections of
poetry published, most recently: Hopeless Romance, (Cholla Needles Arts),
Deux & Other Sorrows and La Dogaressa and Other Poems (Cowboy
Buddha Press). Four books of poetry were published prior to this, among
them Gertrude Stein's Salon and Other Legends (Blue Horse Press)
and The Bloomsberries and Other Curiosities (Kelsay Books): both
contain work that received a New Jersey Poetry Prize. Laurie lives in New
Jersey with her husband where she has been facilitating Circle of Voices
poetry discussion in New Jersey libraries the last 23 years.
Friday 22 April 2022
Wherever I May Find You
by
Carol Sadtler
You groan as you roll in the bed tonight. Our long bones align,
parallel, yet impossibly connected; how we turn and turn
in that paradox.
I remember the man in a Wisconsin campground, who tried to make sense
of us—two tall women in a pup tent. “What are you? A couple of…
schoolteachers?”
I remember two chicory coffees, two beignets, lying side by side
one New Orleans morning when we wished two daughters
into being;
I remember the lines in my father’s forehead, creased in contradiction:
“You’re working women; who’s going to take care
of your children?”
I remember so many years of filling out forms that never fit
our family, crossing out father writing mother
twice;
I remember crossing a continent to find a place that would marry
us, choosing whose name fits the line labeled groom
at the registry;
I remember that your sister’s spine fractured with the slightest
strain, and how the metal pins in my mother’s hips glowed
in her x-rays;
In my dream, our bones shatter; fragments
laid in the ground to dissolve and mingle
in earth, in air.
* * * * *
"Wherever I May Find You" was first published in The Tishman Review.
Carol Sadtler is a writer and editor who receives her best ideas on, in or near
the water. Her poems and reviews have appeared in One Art, The Humanist, Bangalore
Review, Sky Island Journal, Big City Lit, The Inflectionist,
Writers Resist, RHINO, Pacific Review and other publications. She
lives in Chicago with her family.
Thursday 21 April 2022
In the Jardín Etno-Botánico
by Carol SadtlerSnaking through mesquite
and saguaro, a long line
of jibber-jabber, pink-
necked tourists muffle
the words of the Zapotec
guide who shows us
a geometry of amaranth
and maize
we have always planted
in sacred shapes and symbols
A couple is squabbling
and teenagers flirt
as we troop through
a greenhouse of orchids
and damp
we capture the rain as
we always have, and cool
in summer with geo-thermal
Outside in the healing
garden, she picks a leaf
from a flowering plant—
crushing delicate green
with her fingers
smell this chepil—
a seasoning and vegetable
my people have eaten
for thousands of years
People wander and chat
while she tells the old stories—
what flourished and what
remains. Every time
she says—Oaxaca—
soft syllables float
from the back of her throat
then blossom and linger
still
* * * * *
"In the Jardín Etno-Botánico" was first published in the Bangalore Review.
Carol Sadtler is a writer and editor who receives her best ideas on, in or near the water. Her poems and reviews have appeared in One Art, The Humanist, Bangalore Review, Sky Island Journal, Big City Lit, The Inflectionist, Writers Resist, RHINO, Pacific Review and other publications. She lives in Chicago with her family.
Wednesday 20 April 2022
The Gang of Twelve
by Alison HurwitzThese days, we’re over it.
These days, we Princesses don’t let others
denouement our stories for us.
Who wants some twisted Brother Grimm
or prim Hans Christian Anderson
to put in a prince who shows up rescuing, revealing
and congealing all the magic we would rather not display
into some jello mold of Happy Ending, preserving every
tale that we’ve enchanted in a jiggled dome of aspic, impotent,
just a dish to shimmy on the baroque extravaganza of a banquet table,
a wedding feast that presents us as the final piece de resistance,
well-greased, a piglet to be carved, consumed,
our stories rendered, melted down, and used
to feed a flame that will extinguish all our names,
hours later in complying sheets, the stultifying marriage bed.
Why should we be discovered and uncovered by some
upstart adolescent who styles himself investigator,
who’s intent on fingering his eager-breathing curiosity
through every fold of mystery we’ve hidden?
He is no match for twelve of us, with his obviously borrowed cloak,
his clumsy bumbling attempt to creep invisible. Did he think we could
not see his footprints through the scattered silver gold leaf-litter, all his
obviously oafish tracks trudged through our secret kingdom in the moonlight?
Over confident, he pauses, drooling wetly at our royal brilliance,
our magical magnificence. Too late. Did he assume we wouldn’t rate
his weight in that last coracle, and wait for him to disembark,
then fall upon him, glittering, the diamonds in our wild and unbound hair
sparkling like a troop of shooting meteors, signalling extinction of this kind
of fairy tale, spelling out the end of his own clever-seeming countenance?
He thought we played the harp back in the upper world, strummed decorous
arpeggios; in fact, we are sharp bird-women, harpies free to peck away
his eager eyes and leave him blindly wandering in circles.
We pass him bloody, aimless and confused, stripped
of arrogance and agency, forced to get lost, while we continue up the hill
and enter through the castle gates to meet our partners, do our nightly dancing.
If you are listening through some other means of manly-murky magic,
here’s a fair and clarion-clear warning: Do not attempt to follow us.
We’ll make you wish you’d never heard our story.
“Happily Ever After” isn’t on the menu.
So glad we’re clear on this. Next time you’re in our neighborhood,
be sure to visit, share a meal with us. Enjoy your quivered Prince Ambrosia,
your wobbly Jello Salad. We’ll make it just for you.
* * * * *
Alison Hurwitz is a feminist, non-traditional wedding and memorial service officiant, editor and poet. Her work has most recently been featured in Global Poemic, Words and Whispers Journal, Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus Volumes 1 and 2, and received an honorable mention in Tiferet Journal’s annual poetry competition. On the second Saturday of each month, Alison facilitates a free online poetry reading, Well-Versed Words. Poets interested in appearing on Well-Versed Words may contact her at wellversedwords@gmail.com. She lives with her husband, two sons and rescue dog in North Carolina. Find links to her work at www.alisonhurwitz.com.
Tuesday 19 April 2022
Inheritance
by Alison HurwitzOh, Too Much. Why do I always
seem to get the seat right next to you?
You with the hairspray, the life story,
the throw cushions, the buffet. You with
the body (parts of which
I’m borrowing,) every layer saying something
you insist I hear, you with your tongue-swollen
modifiers, your squirrels stealing every bite
of food I saved for feathered scarcity. Your words,
their Too Much light and sound and brightness,
the way they come too close and pinch
my cheeks and say how much I’ve grown.
Too Much, you’re frenetic. I wish you’d give me
space, someplace far and dark and weightless,
a moon where every word can crater its own ending,
where one small step can be both shuffle in the dust
and leap. Why am I, your daughter, left behind
to go through all your pockets? Why must I talisman
your leavings? Why am I never enough?
* * * * *
Alison Hurwitz is a feminist, non-traditional wedding and memorial service officiant, editor and poet. Her work has most recently been featured in Global Poemic, Words and Whispers Journal, Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus Volumes 1 and 2, and received an honorable mention in Tiferet Journal’s annual poetry competition. On the second Saturday of each month, Alison facilitates a free online poetry reading, Well-Versed Words. Poets interested in appearing on Well-Versed Words may contact her at wellversedwords@gmail.com. She lives with her husband, two sons and rescue dog in North Carolina. Find links to her work at www.alisonhurwitz.com
Monday 18 April 2022
About A Dog
by
Julie Wise
It began with a bang
maybe a whimper
I don’t remember
I do know that it ended
as it always does
words flung like bones to the dog
(we don’t have a dog)
Cue screen door slam
mosquito hum
simmering clouds
darkening sky
The sun will rise
(as it always does)
I will fill the holes you left
in the walls
(as I always do)
and clean up the debris from our
once upon a time
I wish we had a dog
Sunday 17 April 2022
This month, an additional Moon Prize, the 93rd, goes to Lorri Ventura's poem "Sixth Station
of the Cross."
SIXTH STATION OF THE CROSS
by Lorri Ventura
First Fridays were for praying
At the stations of the cross
The petite young mother
Chapel cap pinned to her hair
Rosary beads clicking against her
fingernails
She pulls along her little girl
Whose rubber-soled Buster Browns
Squeak the entire length of the
tiled church aisle
While she twirls her ponytails
And practices crossing her eyes
To make the time pass more quickly
But when they arrive at the sixth
station
The little girl always forgets her
boredom
And stares at the image of Veronica
Wiping Jesus’ face with a cloth
His visage appears on the fabric
The way the funnies in the
newspaper
Slide onto her Silly Putty
When she presses it against the
newsprint
The child is drawn to this station
Because it shows a female
Doing something important
This legend somehow gives her hope
For her own future
At home, she gingerly presses a
washcloth
Against her Chatty Cathy’s face
Pretending the doll’s upturned nose
and freckles
Materialize on the terrycloth
The child becomes a woman
Who passes judgment on the Church
That itself has judged and excluded
so many
Yet she clings to her belief that
the Divine
Lives within all
And that the image shown on
Veronica’s cloth
Shines within us whenever we show
love
* * * * *
Lorri
Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in
Massachusetts. She is new to poetry-writing. Her poems have been
featured in several anthologies, in Red Eft Journal, and in Quabbin
Quills.
Saturday 16 April 2022
This month, the 92nd Moon Prize goes to Dian Sousa's poem "How I Vote."
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.
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.
Friday 15 April 2022
Thursday 14 April 2022
WHERE
by Susan Tepper
Your arms hold secrets
the papers destroyed
white envelopes
folded
as you would
love letters or a list --
Could be simple
milk, eggs, tea
Or could be the part
where you stop to think:
where have I been
* * * * *
"Where" was first published in Nixes Mate Review and is part of Susan
Tepper's collection Confess (Červená
Barva Press, 2020)
Susan Tepper is a twenty year writer who works in all genres, and
the author of ten published books of fiction and poetry. Her new play "The
Crooked Heart" concerns artist Jackson Pollock in his later years and is
forthcoming. www.susantepper.com
Wednesday 13 April 2022
HEARTS
by Susan Tepper
Determined to stop all feeling
we drive our hearts
deep into winter
as if they are the hearts
of vampires
And, we, the mighty
possessed of hammer & stake
have the right to banish
this crude interloper
this heart
done-up in scarlet, no less—
A fusion of veins and vessel of
dreams sweet and bitter
this heart
destined to follow its
natural course
dragging bewildered body
behind in its wake,
or simply sitting still
as a statue in the park.
Dare we sentence it
to wither
alone
in dank chambers
* * * * *
"Hearts" was first published in Lyrical Somerville, The Somerville
Times and is part of Susan Tepper's collection Confess (Červená Barva Press, 2020)
Susan Tepper is a
twenty year writer who works in all genres, and the author of ten published
books of fiction and poetry. Her new play "The Crooked Heart"
concerns artist Jackson Pollock in his later years and is
forthcoming. www.susantepper.com
Tuesday 12 April 2022
NO DIFFERENCE
by Marguerite G. BouvardFor me there is no difference between
the inside and the outside; the green flames
of a large plant that is reaching for
the sky on my kitchen table, the trees
telling their stories of drought, rain,
the passage of wind through
their branches, the quiet music rising
from their infrasound. The fishermen
flinging their nets inside the sea responding
to the ebb and flow of tides, that also
take place inside ourselves, how
certain moments can lead us
to the mystery of infinity.
* * * * *
Marguerite G. Bouvard is the author of 12 poetry books, two of which have won awards including the MassBook Award for Poetry. She has also written a number of non-fiction books on women's rights, human rights, social justice, grief, and has just finished one, Healthcare Workers on the Frontline of the Pandemic. Her poetry collection The Cosmos of the Heart came out fall 2020. Her latest poetry collection Shades of Meaning came out February 2022.
Monday 11 April 2022
Because I’m a Naysayer
by Laura Ann Reed
My friend says, There are some
stories
that shouldn’t be told, as if they were sharp-
fanged, long-clawed furies, best stowed away
in a locked, casket-shaped box—everyone
better off.
Because I’m a naysayer I say, no,
and I tell her a tale about a garnet ring
in the form of a rosebud on a twining vine,
a ring my great aunt kept hidden in a shoe
when she escaped the Russian pogroms.
How she later gave it to my mother
who knew I longed to wear it on my hand
but shook her head—even when I pleaded,
even when I promised not to lose it.
Even when I begged.
How, when I was grown, I stole it
from her dresser drawer and how she found
my hiding place—under a pile of bright scarves
and stole it back. How we never spoke
of what we’d done.
I tell my friend how my mother’s hillside home
burned to ash in the Oakland firestorm,
how for days I scrounged in vain
through mounds of soot-choked dirt.
How she said, There’s a thing or two
about the ring, a story, you should know,
remind me when we talk again.
How she called
a week before she died, and when
I asked, said she didn’t have the time.
* * * * *
Laura Ann Reed received a
dual BA in French/Comparative Literature from the University of California,
Berkeley, and subsequently completed Master’s Degree Programs in the Performing
Arts, and Psychology. She was a dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area prior to
assuming the role of Leadership Development Trainer at the San Francisco
headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She and her
husband now reside in western Washington. Her work has been anthologized
in How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, and has
appeared or is forthcoming in MacQueen’s Quinterly, The
Ekphrastic Review, and Willawaw, among other journals.
Sunday 10 April 2022
Midlife
Crisis
after Motherhood by Georgia Douglas Johnson
by
Denise Fletcher
(To the baby I never had.)
So now, here I am, living with regrets
and having a midlife crisis.
Please forgive me for not giving you life.
Please forgive me for not giving you a
chance to breathe and live.
I never knew until it was too late that
my tubal ligation would be such a
source of regret; And yet, it is.
Maybe I was being selfish?
Maybe I was.
I never wanted you to suffer with
the deep emotions that are passed on
from generation to generation; the
mental illness that runs in the family.
I never meant to have a life so stripped
of the joy of babies and love and tears.
I miss the moments we could have shared.
My mother warned me too late, all because
I had refused to tell her what I had planned.
Was she right after all? She said: “You
will never be fulfilled as a woman, if you
don’t have a baby.” “Time will
tell.”
The die is cast. What’s done is done. It is never
that simple. These things come with a price.
Oh, the life lessons we learn too late.
I am still alive and here,
but so sad that you are not.
* * * * *
Denise
Fletcher is a freelance writer and artist. She received a B.S. in
Recreational Therapy from Minnesota State University, Mankato with a minor in
Psychology. Her creative work has appeared in a number of anthologies and
journals including: Florida Bards, Bards
Against Hunger, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Open Minds Quarterly and other
various publications in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. She currently lives in
the Tampa area.
Saturday 9 April 2022
Walking my fuzzy-faced dog
by Nina Rubinstein AlonsoNights like trains that never
move anywhere engines stalled
no reasons arrive at my dark window
that ache missing your voice
stuck here in undesired time
why can’t I be where you are
why this chain of endless days that keep
on working keep on driving where ever
wash coffee cups and sticky plates
sort scrambled stupid laundry
as if anything makes sense
walking my fuzzy faced dog.
* * * * *
Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work appeared in U. Mass. Review, The New Yorker, Ibbetson Street, MomEgg, Ploughshares, Sumac, Bagel Bards, New Boston Review, WomenPoems, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Review, Constant Remembrance, Cambridge Artists Cooperative, etc. Her stories, one a Pushcart nominee, were published by Southern Women’s Review, Tears and Laughter, Broadkill Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, etc. Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Červená Barva Press, and another poetry collection, a story collection, and a novel are in the works.
Friday 8 April 2022
Mushroom Chronicles
by Nina Rubinstein AlonsoThe mushrooms in the photo aren’t
cooked or chopped or sautéed
in a black iron pan
the stove’s spattered from whatever fried
last night too tired to notice the mess
whatever she can manage after work
is just throw something
on the fire get rawness out
wait until onions turn
that cookbook term ‘translucent’
eat by the drowning drumming tv
rolling quasi-obscene rosaries of ads
political smears blistering lies
telling you to order your doctor to
mend pain with whatever they’re selling
no these are aesthetic mushrooms
circling through time like half-tutus
at the rotting base of a great tree
vibrating in forests drunk on
sun-filtered silence loftiest
branches exhaling sounds
hypnotic to a dreamer’s ear
meditative hum of phosphorescent
fungi singing through the night.
* * * * *
Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work appeared in U. Mass. Review, The New Yorker, Ibbetson Street, MomEgg, Ploughshares, Sumac, Bagel Bards, New Boston Review, WomenPoems, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Review, Constant Remembrance, Cambridge Artists Cooperative, etc. Her stories, one a Pushcart nominee, were published by Southern Women’s Review, Tears and Laughter, Broadkill Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, etc. Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Červená Barva Press, and another poetry collection, a story collection, and a novel are in the works.
Thursday 7 April 2022
SIXTH
STATION OF THE CROSS
by Lorri Ventura
First
Fridays were for praying
At
the stations of the cross
The
petite young mother
Chapel
cap pinned to her hair
Rosary
beads clicking against her fingernails
She
pulls along her little girl
Whose
rubber-soled Buster Browns
Squeak
the entire length of the tiled church aisle
While
she twirls her ponytails
And
practices crossing her eyes
To
make the time pass more quickly
But
when they arrive at the sixth station
The
little girl always forgets her boredom
And
stares at the image of Veronica
Wiping
Jesus’ face with a cloth
His
visage appears on the fabric
The
way the funnies in the newspaper
Slide
onto her Silly Putty
When
she presses it against the newsprint
The
child is drawn to this station
Because
it shows a female
Doing
something important
This
legend somehow gives her hope
For
her own future
At
home, she gingerly presses a washcloth
Against
her Chatty Cathy’s face
Pretending
the doll’s upturned nose and freckles
Materialize
on the terrycloth
The
child becomes a woman
Who
passes judgment on the Church
That
itself has judged and excluded so many
Yet
she clings to her belief that the Divine
Lives
within all
And
that the image shown on Veronica’s cloth
Shines
within us whenever we show love
* * * * *
Lorri Ventura is a retired special education
administrator living in Massachusetts. She is new to
poetry-writing. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies, in Red
Eft Journal, and in Quabbin Quills.
Wednesday 6 April 2022
WOMAN
IN A NURSING HOME
by Lorri Ventura
The skin on
the backs of her hands
Looks like
lady slipper petals
Translucent
Tiny-veined
Fragile
She
scratches it incessantly
Buckled into
a wheelchair
By the
elevator door
In front of
the nurses’ station
Where the
staff
Park the
patients who don’t get visitors
Threadbare
pate pitched forward
Stained
hospital gown doing its job half-heartedly
Covering
body parts
That are
faded memories
Of what they
once were
Seemingly
asleep
Until the
elevator doors
Whisper
their announcement
Of someone’s
arrival
Then, only
then
Does she
become animated
Her head
lifts
Her smile is
almost rictal
“Hi hi hi hi
hi!”
She
sing-songs
“See me!”
Her unspoken
plea
I bend down
And
carefully embrace her
Telling her
she looks pretty today
Her fingers
catch in my hair
Her skin
smells like
Chicken
grease
Rheumy eyes
lock on mine
“Bless you
bless you bless you!”
She warbles
It feels
like a long time passes
Before we
release each other
I think she
just might be
The most
perfect human being
I’ve ever
met
* * * * *
Lorri Ventura is a retired special education
administrator living in Massachusetts. She is new to
poetry-writing. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies, in Red
Eft Journal, and in Quabbin Quills.