PAUPERS CEMETERY

by Lorri Ventura


Turkey vultures
Venture beyond a nearby landfill
Circling evocatively above the paupers’ graves
On Mayflower Hill.

Grave markers resemble key heads
Bearing not names, but numerals
A potter’s field
Stretching from a trash-strewn roadside to a forest

Unnamed graves embrace the insane
Forced to sew their own burial shrouds
While hunched on cots
In the nearby state hospital

Alongside them are infants and children
Resting eternally with strangers
In group plots
To conserve space

The earth comforts the nameless poor
Their dreams curtailed by monsters
Bearing melodic names—
Diphtheria, Dropsy, Dysentery, Dementia, Despair

Beneath numbered iron markers
Lie the forgotten, abandoned, and lost
Lives perhaps un-noted
But not without value


* * * * *

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.

Ode to Everything     

by Marjorie Maddox
                                                                                   

Enough of the lamentations.
                        Open the window and sing!
            The world is awash with
world: color-dripping globe always
tilting into some Ah! or another,
clouds stretching wide plump happiness,
            even in the noisy stage-show of showers,
            such sunny ovations.
                        And the birds—
overpopulating every poem—
swoop here for free—
swallow, hawk, robin, gull, eagle—what else
can be written but wings that wave
horizon to horizon?

And enough of windows.
                        Praise doors! Step out
            with arms open, and eyes gathering
            vim and vision: grandeur
trailing from worm and woodchuck,
branch puzzles of woods, open boat of breeze—
all brimming with Hey!
            and Hallelujah!
                        and Celebrate! such green giving
of thanks, such miraculous mercy of earth:
calm valley and even this rugged, rocky chain
we climb now as family, claiming praise as respite,
holding close each breaking day, dangerous
                        yet divine in all
                        its gorgeous glory.


* * * * *

“Ode to Everything” was previously published in Plough.

Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 13 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (Paraclete), and Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts), an ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Karen Elias—What She Was Saying (stories, Fomite); 4 children’s and YA books—including Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises (Finalist International Book Awards), I’m Feeling Blue, Too! (a 2021 NCTE Notable Poetry Book), and Rules of the Game. See www.marjoriemaddox.com

 

Terrifying in its Grief

by Laura Ann Reed


For more than a year I’ve been haunted
by a photograph I keep in a blue folder
labeled Holocaust. From time to time
I open the folder and stare at the faces
in this group of Jews forced to meet
the camera’s eye.

In the foreground a child, no more
than four or five, crouches—
head tilted to one side. She’s too young
to know she won’t live until night,
when the moon will hang in a clouded sky.
Too young to know the meaning
of the name, Auschwitz.

She huddles in her winter coat. One hand
grips a shoe, as if to keep her balance.
The other holds a piece of paper. Is it a document
she’s been told not to lose? Her birth certificate?
Or could it be a drawing of her cat, made
before the soldiers came?

She doesn’t know the world will throw her
down a well, doesn’t know she’ll sink
down and further down, clutching at stones
in unrelenting walls, crying out
for her mother’s hand—
Doesn’t know her mother
will be far away.

Little girl who left behind a name I never knew,
you step forward from the photograph
addressing me, asking me to sing
of how your life was taken. Now I sing
after a year of hesitation—afraid
my voice wouldn’t carry well.

I sing because to remain silent
is to make triumphant the evil that swallowed you,
is to listen forevermore to the unending message
that shapes itself from such silence.
And even singing of darkness is singing,
a bell rung.

I ring this bell in your name
that I don’t know. In your memory.
Because I who do not know you,
remember you. I remember
how the world enshrouded you in shadow—
this world, terrifying in its violence.
Terrifying in its grief.


* * * * *



Photo credit: Bernhardt Walter, Jewish Women and Children from Subcarpathian Russia Colored by Dana R. Keller, photograph (in the public domain) from the US Memorial Holocaust Museum.

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.   

Spring Clean-up

by Linda Trott Dickman


The ground hasn’t seen it in so long. The ivy, the bramble, the wisteria, choking life, movement, new growth. Today, the light played. It poured over the ancient brick fireplace, uncovering more than memories. It cascaded over the barn showing the faded red, in need of painting.
The heirloom jonquils spread their arms waving to the daffodils hemming the foundation.
Trees drank it in, feeling the breeze on their skin warming to the idea of spring.
The truck left once, twice, three times. With it, went the tangle of hurt, the ache of loss, the pain of plans never realized.


* * * * *

Linda Trott Dickman has been writing poetry since she was ten years old.  She is a recently retired school librarian.  Linda is the author of Robes: The Art of Being Covered, The Air That I Breathe and Road Trip, Road Trip-On the Road Again. Linda’s poetry has been published on-line, in several anthologies, international journals.  She is the coordinator of poetry for the Northport Arts Coalition (Northport, NY). Linda teaches at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and leads a poetry workshop for adults at Samantha’s Li’l Bit O’ Heaven coffee house in East Northport, NY.

 

SERGEANT DARIA FILIPIEVA

by Marguerite G. Bouvard


A Ukrainian army combat medic who
was decorating her new apartment in Kyiv
with pink carpets and fluffy curtains,
now sleeps in the basement of
a building converted into the headquarters
for the Territorial Defense Forces,
muttering to herself during the constant
thud of bombs, the screech of
missiles, remembers sitting in the middle
of the shattered glass of her new
apartment thinking "I will help everyone
I can," during a brief respite, and now
teaches soldiers how to do tourniquets as
she holds her country in her medical kits,
her assault rifles, and her heart, reminding
us that strength lies within ourselves.


* * * * *

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.

RITUALS

by Marguerite G. Bouvard


            Just below the altar
in Greek and Russian Orthodox churches
             are rows of candles,
and in the streets of Kyiv after the Russians left
            are rows of blown out candles
rows of shattered apartment buildings, corpses,
            rows of candles blown out
with no place to bury them with rituals, or grace,
            but plastic body bags,
in the mass graves of dug trenches, no place to go
            when fleeing, and the red cross
convoy with food and medicine for Mariupol stalled
            one day, after another, after.....
Say their names over and over again; of the child,
            of the mother, father, brother, sister;
Anna, Daniela, Anastasiya Anatoly, Vladysav
            so they will not disappear
in silence. Open the doors of your hearts
            where the light of candles
shimmers with their memories, always with love.
             

* * * * *

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.

 

Door Wide Open

by Laura Ann Reed


When my husband lunged for the phone
and carried it out of the room, I guessed
it was his sister with news about their dad.
I had dinner on the stove, but I wanted
to be with him if the news was bad.
So I set the pans on trivets and ran
out of kitchen and through the house
after him. He wasn’t in the living room
or bedroom. Then I saw light coming
from the master bath—and since the door
was wide open I marched right in, prepared
to find him phone in hand, crying. I planned
to take his arm, to stay with him and tell
him all those things he told me when
my father died. But there he was, sitting
on the john with his jeans around his feet.
He looked up at me as if seeing a ghost.
I backed out fast, mumbling, Sorry!
I know plenty of couples who likely
think nothing of seeing each other pee
and poop, no big deal. But that’s not us.
We have a lot of Puritan in our blood.
I’d just finished getting food onto plates
when he came back, leaned on the counter
and cleared his throat. In that old teasing
voice, he said, Well, I guess I can come
into the bathroom when you’re on the pot.
I turned from the stove, almost grateful
to see his grin. He stood framed in the glow
of late-day sun streaming through the pane
behind him, his head haloed by rosy light.
Oh no you won’t, I said, Not if you want
to live. I kept my tone quiet and calm.
Because after all, his father was dying.


* * * * *

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.  

 

DRINKING ALONE

by Dian Sousa

 
A tiger sucks a bone in the cage of a jungle-themed bar,
breathing in the pure chemical air of a Las Vegas casino.
The tiger makes no sound. He doesn’t smell like grass
or heat. I should stab him with an olive fork.
A woman walks by. She is Done-Up-Tight!
Her stilettos, carved from brutalized redwood,
could be used to bring down a bear. If her fingernails
were lashed to the end of a spear she could kill a fox
or a wolf, and how fine that jacket would fit.
The woman scratches on the glass of the tiger’s cage
and purrs that old song, What’s new pussycat?
I should knock that woman down, take her pulse,
ask her two questions about the solar system
and seven about the Pacific Ocean.
I am drinking alone and doomed,
a one woman massacre, but this is as close
as I can get right now to quench my thirst
in our lost communal river.
The screeching parrots hold to a beat here
and every cocktail comes with a potato chip
shaped like an ocelot. I order another Bloody Mary
from the bartender. He is wearing a pith helmet
and a sleepy yellow python as a scarf.
I should set his hat on fire and dangle a rabbit
in front of the python to see if either man or snake
is truly alive. But I forgot how to make fire.
And where would I get a real rabbit?
I look around for a magician,
but the good ones are all invisible.


* * * * *

"Drinking Alone" is from Dian Sousa's book The Marvels Recorded in My Private Closet (Big Yes Press, 2014).

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 heavy, 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.

LAST MONDAY

by Dian Sousa


‘There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love ever showing itself…
— John Muir

Through the broken window of the shipping department,
the fat, poisoned hip of a cloud thrusts its black flesh and bursts.
It rains steroids and gasoline. And we are so thirsty.
We try not to drink, but we always do.

I tell my shipping mate, Marcos,
it's the end of the world, man.
 
No, he says, it's just Monday.

Every Monday is the end of the world.
After the inebriated revolution of Saturday
and the utopian nap of Sunday,
we are caught again like small dogs and sun-bloated lizards.

Lined up collared and costumed, even the children,
whom we swear we will still recognize, but never do.
Dream-gutted, we ignore the itch
and have grown accustomed to the hollow.

When the steroids kick in, I ask Marcos
the same question I ask every Monday,
Hey man, where the hell are the animals?

Marcos always answers,
Don’t drag them into this, again.
And please stop drinking.

But today he says, be quiet.

Something wild has been spotted in the lobby.
She is wearing a rough crown made of oak leaves and mud,
wrapped in a blanket of grass and green feathers,
she sniffs at the air, does not like what she smells.

She is not alone. Children ride on her back.
Their hair is wet and full of leaves; their little costumes are shredded.
We can hear them praying loudly to the ocean,
praising the rising wave and the spiraling winter sky.
Their heads are turned in our direction as if they recognize us.

Marcos, I say, I am going out to meet them.

But Marcos is already gone.
He’s used the box-cutter to slice off his tight collar.
He’s broken all the light bulbs and smashed the office chairs.

It is as hushed and dark as the slow heart of a tree.
But then I hear it—a hoot, a whoop, a howl.

I run after him, but all I catch
is the flash of his white flank sprinting toward the lobby.

The lobby, when I reach it, is full of dirt.
Thick saplings bust through the floor.
Jack-rabbits and deer leap from the utility closet.
There’s a Great Horned Owl perched on the stool
of the collapsing information desk.

I find Marcos at last, dreaming
at the edge of a newly freed river.
He points to a thick-bellied cloud about to burst.
We open our mouths so wide
we can see each other's souls again—
empty cups of light filling in the new rain.


* * * * *

"Last Monday" is from Dian Sousa's book The Marvels Recorded in My Private Closet (Big Yes Press, 2014).

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 heavy, 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.

ACE OF DIAMONDS

by Gail Ghai


Luck is where you find it, my father used to say.
He arm-wrestled another pilot for our mother’s ornate
diamond engagement ring,

Hung a rabbit’s foot keychain on the rear-view
mirror of his ’51 Pontiac Chieftain
where it swung like a fuzzy white promise.

Thursdays, he played Poker. 
Friday nights, Bingo.
Saturday, the horses.

Once he tied for a jackpot:
a 1958 Chevy Impala!
His consolation prize,

a 32-piece set of Mel Mac
that he tried to hammer-smash
out of frustration.

Indestructible turquoise cups,
lemon plates, tangerine platter
that tinted our table each morning.

He looked for luck everywhere.
Between high silver wings of his Cessna.
Deep in his secretary’s cleavage.

But luck like the seasons can change colors. And when
cancer trumped him that early emerald spring,
he refused to believe that his luck had run out.

He kept booking flights. 
Kept gambling on his garden.
Ordered more rose bushes.

A double red bloom called Ace of Diamonds.
The brochure claimed: It’s good for
resisting diseases.


* * * * *

Gail Ghai is a poet, teacher, workshop leader, and author of three chapbooks of poetry as well as an art/writing poster entitled, “Painted Words.” She has served as Poet-in-Residence for the Pittsburgh Cancer Caring Center, North Allegheny School District and the International Poetry Forum. Awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination and a Henry C. Frick scholarship for creative teaching. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, JAMA, Descant, Hektoen International Journal and Burning Wood Journal. She is moderator of the Ringling Poets in Sarasota, FL.

OH GEE!

by Amy Ballard Rich


In my 20's,
me and other cyclists
relied on bungee cords
to tie up groceries, firewood,
university textbooks,
and whatever else
to our bikes,
as we headed out
into the cold Oregon rain.

Decades later in a big California city,
with new types of gadgets
to carry loads on bicycles,
I had a boyfriend
who asked me to get 5-6 bungee cords,
because he had exciting sex games
that needed them.
(The games were boring; he seemed to
be overcompensating for something.)

After that relationship ended,
I got rid of all the bungee cords but two,
and more decades passed.

Tonight I took out my trash to the curb,
in a windy Oregon coastal town surrounded by wild spaces.
I affixed a bungee cord
on my trash can to keep it shut tight from bears,
since my illness keeps me up for hours at night,
so I am not waking at 6 am to deal with trash.

Looking at how the bungee cord just barely fit over the trash can lid,
and hoping the trash collectors won't mind,
I smiled.

I wonder what happened to that bungee cord guy, anyway.


* * * * *

Amy Ballard Rich is a retired Montessori preschool teacher, currently living on the scenic Oregon coast. She has been published in numerous online and print publications, including everydayfeminism.com, Milvia Street Art and Literary Journal, and Penumbra Literary Journal. She has written two chapbooks and is contemplating a third. When not writing or editing, she can be found cheering on other poets, hugging trees, and trying to fight racism and bigotry.

 

Future Feminist Sister

by Abena Ntoso


I’ve been fully awake for decades,
insomniac really, and I am so relieved
to read this letter from you,
my feminist sister.
Let me get comfortable.
I’m going to sleep now as I read it.

You’ve written in cursive, a beautiful
style that reads like love and knowing,
though some of the words are blurred
by your tear drops or the tears
from a sweating glass of water.

You tell me what happened:
how everyone was assassinating one another
and the talented rain fell steadily against
palm trees and monuments,
how you escaped from a crowded aviary
thanks to your mastery of
jujutsu and dancing.

You admit the future is unprecedented
(as they used to say in 2020),
scripting in remembrance, in celebration,
in defiance, indefinitely wrapped
in woven wisdom and grace
gleaned from observations,
meditations, movements.

You explain that many wear critical masks
and dictate to you silently their devastating orders
which you inscribe as a tattoo
on the inside of their chests—
exhale—leaves a vacant memory
of how we could have been destroyed
had it not been for—inhale—our unique gifts.

I can finally rest now.
Reading your unsent message,
I’ve circled my favorite words,
those filled with freedom
and the perfume scent
from your handwoven scarves.


* * * * *

Abena Ntoso is a full-time high school English teacher and mother of two, originally from New York City, and currently based in Houston, Texas. She returned to writing after a 20-year hiatus, during which she worked as an educational technologist at Columbia University and later served as a dentist in the U.S. Army. Her writing has been published in The Wrath-Bearing Tree and Adelaide Literary Magazine.

Wide Open Spaces

by Jocelyn Olum


We climb up the mountain outside town
In the late afternoon.

Just the two of us
Watching the sunset paint the town red for a few moments,
And then settle imperceptibly into darkness behind the opposite hill.

“Beautiful,” you say, laughing, your eyes on mine.
I smile and duck my head, like I’m supposed to.

It is beautiful. There’s no denying that, the hills spotted liberally with cattle
The fog rolling over the undulating green landscape
The gentle ache in my legs from climbing and my old tennis shoes covered in fine brown dust

And then there’s you.
Sweaty, triumphant, and utterly familiar;
You’re standing on the peak beside me 
The echoes of your presence cascading down into the valleys and resounding
Back into the sky above us
Thick and beautiful and so all-encompassing it claims even the dirt under my feet for its very own. 


* * * * *

Jocelyn Olum is a student and a writer from Boston, Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured in Red Eft Review and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Blue Marble Review.

 

Street View

by Jocelyn Olum


city of origin
never changes. does it?
we’re young, still. fresh black tattoo memories
only just now fading into navy—
nothing real is ever more than semi-permanent.

and yet there are worn-out paper maps in the glovebox
—here and there are fixed locations—
nothing but outdated overlays of our childhood vision
history folded and folded and finally crinkled smooth.


* * * * *

Jocelyn Olum is a student and a writer from Boston, Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured in Red Eft Review and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Blue Marble Review.

THE REFUGEE

by Leonore Hildebrandt


The refugee’s face is ashen,
turned one last time toward home.
The bed you slept in. The apricot tree.

My people once invaded your country––
World War II––your wheat fields
turned to mud––my father kept silent about it.

He bore his wounds. War is a disorder
caught between tremors and rigidity.
Shattered windows, blackened houses.

Your hands tremble when you hear
the invaders speak––intercepted messages,
spasms that emanate from your town as well.

At night the palpitations travel underground
like body waves. Emerging from smoke,
from hate and rubble––may we find one another.

May we rebuild our countries as one refuge.
May your hands be calm again.


* * * * *

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of the poetry collections Where You Happen to Be, The Work at Hand, and The Next Unknown. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, RHINO, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. Wordrunner eChapbooks published two of her poems in its 2017 Pushing Boundaries anthology. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Germany, Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine, and spends the winter in Silver City, New Mexico. LeonoreHildebrandt.com

 

This month, an additional Moon Prize, the 95^th, goes to Victoria Twomey's poem "White Dress on a Clothesline."  

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.

 

This month, the 94th Moon Prize goes to Sam Barbee's story "Conceiving."

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. 

Lighthouse 

by Elaine Sorrentino

 
On the other side 
of the bathroom door 
my mother whimpers 
 
forgetting I exist
the moment 
the latch catches, 
 
God, help me 
I don't know what to do 
I don't know what to do 
 
she prays.  Outside, 
I touch the wood lovingly
resting my head 
 
wondering 
how can I be her lighthouse 
when I am underwater myself. 

 
* * * * *

Elaine Sorrentino, Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, MA, has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Global Poemic, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, The Door is a Jar, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Library Love Letter, and at wildamorris.blogspot.com. 

Stillborn

by Frances Lynch

 
In a room at the end of the maternity ward,
I find my puffy-eyed sister in bed.
She tells me she must wait until the "baby" is "ready."
The doctors have outlined how a C-section is too risky. 
The OB/GYN claims this method allows the parents to get their minds around the situation,
to process what is happening,
as though there were some circumstance in which
giving birth to a corpse would be acceptable.
They knock you out for wisdom teeth removal, but not for this.
This is barbaric.
 
There is nowhere to sit so
I perch quietly on the built-in metal cooling unit at the base of the window.
It is an uncomfortable seat, but how can I complain?
Nurses enter carrying various birthing items.
One pushes medical instruments on a tray, another pushes a baby incubator/bassinet combo.
They speak softly. They do not rush.
They have done this before.
 
The doctor arrives.
She places my sister’s feet in stirrups which had been hiding inside the hospital bed.
My sister wears the fuzzy pink socks I gave her for Valentine’s Day last year.
My brother-in-law holds my sister’s hand.
She is instructed to push.
She is crying, from pain or grief, or maybe both.
 
Horrified in my makeshift ringside seat, I want the air vents to suck me in, carry me away.
Yet, I am riveted to the scene before me. 
With such preparations, part of me expects the child to be alive.
Instead, I watch them pull him out like a piece of rubber.
He does not move.
 
He is a mouth-open tiny corpse with closed eyes,
miniature hands, half-open, as if grasping something.
The doctor wipes off the gook, and wraps him gently.
“How does he look?” My sister peers at the bundle.
“Like he is sleeping,” a nurse says.
Except he isn’t, I want to scream.
“Is he all there?” my sister whispers.
“Yes. Everything has formed. Perfectly,” the doctor tells her.
Perfectly? What medical school teaches that dead babies are perfect?
Somehow I stay silent, frozen to my air conditioning unit.
My sister cries and gently touches her dead child’s hand.
Her husband starts to sob. It is more like a howl.
 
“Why? Why is he dead?”
 
There is no answer, only the desperate sound of my brother-in-law’s choking howls,
and the hum of the motor on the air conditioning unit beneath me.
I feel the uncontrollable banging of my heart.
Even the doctors have no idea how to heal a soul.


* * * * *
 
Frances Lynch is an attorney and writer in Tucson, Arizona.

 

Seeing

by Sandra Kohler


Nightmare recedes, flushed out of my body
by morning's walk, moving on streets where
mist is not falling but present, fine thickening,
medium we breathe as if it were simply air.

A neighbor is trying to start his van, opening
the hood. A car rushes down Tonawanda,
going the wrong way. The man fussing with
a car talks to the man I hadn't seen, who's out

on the porch at 83. He's managed to get his
van started, he'll drive off soon. A trio of
birds flies down the street; they too are flying
the wrong way. What was the nightmare that

chilled me? Living again in a different state,
the past turned ugly, difficult, in ways it was
not – or was it?  What I cannot remember
exists inside my consciousness as strongly

as what I can. I hear and don't see a plane.
I feel and don't see my past.


* * * * *

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press) appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The New Republic, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 45 years. In 2018, a poem of hers was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the new Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.

Her Voice 

by Kelly Sargent


I was born an identical twin in Luxembourg.
My miniature mirror followed me after I stretched our pungent means out
into a land perched on cliffs.
It’s another girl, the makeshift midwife from next door must have announced 
in French to a perspiring woman I would never call
Mom.

My three-pound twin arrived unexpectedly
with a cry that she would never hear
— she was deaf. 

It wouldn’t matter, though, that French words declared her 
    a second 
and an adoption agency asked nine months later if a couple wanted to 
trade her in.
One day, she would hear
with the nut-brown eyes, then lidded shut,
and speak a language that was already foreign to them;

foreign because they had four ears that weren’t broken,
or because

they had four ears 
that were broken. 

I have one broken and one not,

but I didn’t know which one was which
until 23 minutes ago
              when I considered it. 

The ten tiny fingers she must have clenched 
that would one day be 
          her voice
differed from the vibrations in her throat that assuredly joined in chorus with mine 
to fill that stuffy, damp and narrow room.

I wonder if the sweaty stranger or her neighbor counted them.


* * * * *

"Her Voice" first appeared in Cerasus Magazine and will also appear in Kelly Sargent's forthcoming poetry chapbook, Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, Summer 2022).

Kelly Sargent is a hard of hearing author and artist whose works have appeared in more than forty literary publications. She is a Best of the Net nominee, and her newest poetry chapbook entitled Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She wrote for a national newspaper for the Deaf, and currently serves as the creative nonfiction editor and an assistant nonfiction editor for two literary journals, as well as a reviewer for an organization dedicated to making visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors.

 

Fruits of Labor

by Kelly Sargent


I wrap your tiny hand around my throat,
            size identical to your own,
for you to feel the sounds vibrating within:

            blue-ber-ry

            ba-nan-a

            straw-ber-ry

You wrap your tiny hand around your throat,
           size identical to my own,
for you to mimic the vibrations 
           that form the consonants and the vowels that you cannot hear. 

Your index finger with the Snoopy band-aid searches for the “r-r-r”…

            blue-ber-ry?

I shake my head. Look at my lips, I sign.

            blue-ber-ry 

I watch the cherry Chapstick crack on your lips 
            as “blueberry” makes them pucker. 

Next,
            ba-nan-a ?

Umm, say it slower, I say. See my tongue?

You mimic and mash “n-n-n” against the roof of your mouth
            with a tentative nod and raised, hopeful eyebrows. 

Then,
            straw-ber-ry?

Hand on my hip. Hmm, remember Dr. Lane with her popsicle stick? Ahhh …

            But you open too wide.

We cover our mouths momentarily to stifle girlish giggles —
            We are, after all, hard at work. 

            blue-ber-ry

            ba-nan-a

            straw-ber-ry

                                           and repeat
            blue-ber-ry

            ba-nan-a

            straw-ber-ry

                                            and adjust 
            blue-ber-ry

            ba-nan-a

            straw-ber-ry

                                           and tweak
            blue-ber-ry

            ba-nan-a

            straw-ber-ry

                                           again 
                                           and again 
                                           and again 

            and once more
 
until —

         fruit never tasted
              so sweet
           in our mouths.


* * * * *

"Fruits of Labor" about the author working with her deaf twin sister first appeared in Cerasus Magazine and will also appear in Kelly Sargent's forthcoming poetry chapbook, Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, Summer 2022).

Kelly Sargent is a hard of hearing author and artist whose works have appeared in more than forty literary publications. She is a Best of the Net nominee, and her newest poetry chapbook entitled Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She wrote for a national newspaper for the Deaf, and currently serves as the creative nonfiction editor and an assistant nonfiction editor for two literary journals, as well as a reviewer for an organization dedicated to making visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors.