White Dress on a Clothesline

by Victoria Twomey


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.

 

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.

 

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.

In the Sixties before Seat Belts and Dr. Phil

by Sharon Waller Knutson

 
That’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…

 

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.

 

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.

Conceiving

by Sam Barbee


1954

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. 

 

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.

 

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.
 

In the Jardín Etno-Botánico

by Carol Sadtler

 
Snaking 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.
 

The Gang of Twelve

by Alison Hurwitz


These 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.

Inheritance

by Alison Hurwitz


Oh, 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

 

  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

* * * * *

Julie Wise is a writer from Ontario, Canada. Publications include articles in MOST magazine and Living Well magazine, a bi-monthly newspaper column on the environment, and several blogs. Her writing focuses on life, loss and the magic in between. She is currently querying her debut novel.

 

 

This month, an additional Moon Prize, the 93^rd, 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.

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.

 

 

 

Hello

by Julie Wise

eyes searching
     meeting

we tumble like children
       into each other’s arms

 and in the murmur of
       hello

       I hear

 the countdown to
        goodbye

        * * * * *

Julie Wise is a writer from Ontario, Canada. Publications include articles in MOST magazine and Living Well magazine, a bi-monthly newspaper column on the environment, and several blogs. Her writing focuses on life, loss and the magic in between.  She is currently querying her debut novel.

 

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

 

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

NO DIFFERENCE

by Marguerite G. Bouvard


For 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.

 

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.

 

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.

Walking my fuzzy-faced dog   

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso


Nights 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.

Mushroom Chronicles     

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso


The 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.

 

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.

 

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.