nine months

by Roseanne Freed


nine months since you left us, in my grief
I surrender to junk food and an evening
glass of wine with chips.

                                    such excitement to watch you grow
                                    inside me, to feel you moving about
                                    first as little flutters like a mouse, 

I know the wine is a crutch,
but it’s just one glass and I need it.
Like I need coffee in the morning.

                                    later when a hand or foot 
                                    punched out my belly,
                                    Pa and I shared tears of happy,

I’m thankful for the corona virus fashion
of pants with elastic waists to hide
the pandemic pounds on my bum and belly.

                                    I played classical music
                                    to my welcome guest, ate healthy, 
                                    did yoga, swam twice a week at the Y,

You also loved swimming.
My daily swims in our pool
helps my sad.

                                    I discovered unconditional love
                                    at your birth, and such nachas
                                    as you grew fat from my breast.                    

Your spouse gave me your favorite sweater.
Wearing it doesn’t comfort me—
it just reminds me how wrong this is.


* * * * *

Poet Roseanne Freed was born in South Africa and now lives in Los Angeles. She loves hiking and shares her fascination for the natural world by leading school children on hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains. Her poetry has been published in Contrary Magazine, Verse-Virtual, ONE ART and Blue Heron Review.

 

Why did we obey her edict?

by Roseanne Freed


The sun still rises the birds still sing,
but my daughter is dead.
One in three Americans have lost

someone to the Corona Virus.
Am I selfish mourning my child
if she didn’t die from Covid-19?

Is my grief different from theirs?
I feel their sorrow, but I feel mine too.
Is it ok if I weep far from my pillow?

They couldn’t be with their loved
ones when they died.
Neither could we. Mahalia refused

to accept she was dying,
didn’t want any tears or pity
at her bedside, left strict instructions

at the hospital— No visitors!
Her father and I obeyed
our stubborn daughter’s

wishes like a government edict.
But now all our unsaid words
of farewell hang heavy

on our hearts, and we ask ourselves:
Were we right to stay away?
Why did we stay away?


* * * * *

Poet Roseanne Freed was born in South Africa and now lives in Los Angeles. She loves hiking and shares her fascination for the natural world by leading school children on hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains. Her poetry has been published in Contrary Magazine, Verse-Virtual, ONE ART and Blue Heron Review.

 

The short story of an American girl

by Mara Buck


I dream that she is my daughter.
I shake her and shake her and she will not rise.
Wake up darling. I have written a poem.
I have painted a picture. I have put forth a theory.
Yet she does not rise.
There is no magic—
only tears and spent cartridge casings
on the schoolroom floor.

Your daughter goes out one day, springtime-excited,
jazzed for the future, your baby, your own.
So alive that the air sparkles around her.
So innocent that Disney bluebirds encircle her head.
She laughs, See you later… but she never does.
Small metal fragments pierce her precious holy skin,
and you cannot protect her.
For your daughter goes out one day,
and you relive that moment,
a road to be worn thin with the traveling years from now.
And they, they may tell the story,
but for you it will not matter—
because for you it will always remain,
one Tuesday morning in May.

In the United States there have been many school shootings. May 23, 2022 nineteen schoolchildren were murdered in Texas. The ripples of such grief are profound.

* * * * *


Mara Buck writes, paints, and rants in a self-constructed hideaway in the Maine woods. Finalist for the Gravity Award, recently short-listed for the Alpine Fellowship. Winner of The Raven Prize, Scottish Arts Club Short Story Prize, the Moon Prize, F. Scott Fitzgerald Prize, Binnacle International Prize and others, with works in numerous literary magazines and print anthologies. The ubiquitous novel lurks.

 

Practicing Absence   

by Meg Campbell


A student showed me how her Cambodian grandmother
taught her to walk on the balls of her feet
with such deliberate lightness,
not a tap or swish escaped.
Hayley floated across my living room floor as a spirit, 
accompanied by delicate, resounding silence.

Today I recalled her demonstration
of invisibility, of being absorbed into absence
because I was in a tugging contest with myself.
What to keep? What to give or throw away?
As I cleared shelves, I realized this burden,
should I forfeit it,
would fall to my daughters upon my death.
But if I pretended to be dead now
& the person deciding what to save, what to release,
I might spare them wondering why I had,
like my mother, saved years
& years of academic planners. 
I tossed them out.

Imagining my absence has been on my mind
in the form of offering attentive, vibrant silence
when before
I interrupted often to proclaim
unsolicited ideas and advice.
Aspiring now to visit from the land of quiet. 
Stillness. Calm.

This is new.

I draw inspiration from my mother and grandmother
who visited without divulging judgment
on my life or home.
Guests. Perfect guests. 
So like a wild horse to be tamed,
I must bite down upon a bit.

They will be fine, my daughters.
They will flourish.
We have come to the bend in the road
where they no longer need me.
They will miss me. But they no longer need me.

This is a practice of coiled self-discipline,
imaging myself departed.
There is no dread, no weariness.
Instead a sense when I do step across,
the ground will feel familiar.
It shall hold and I shall walk upon it 
without causing any sound. 


* * * * *

Meg Campbell is the author of two collections of poetry, Solo Crossing and More Love (Midmarch Arts Press, NYC). 

Venus of Willendorf  vs. The Dinosaurs

by Dian Sousa


I am not the Venus of Willendorf. True,
I have resembled her—a time that still holds
its ample beauty. A time when—round as a small earth,
a full brown moon—I lived only to feed the stardust
seeding its bones inside me.

I said to those bones I will grow you.            
With love, I said yes to bring my sons to the world. 
I said to my body, now you may. Because
I was born in my body and I assumed it belonged to me
and because I had the privilege I said Yes.
Now is a good time. And that was the end of the conversation.

I did not ask the bronto-mano-saurus
on the corner praying in judgement.
(I do wonder though how judgement
can ever hold enough love to become a prayer?
And how, of course, these bronto-mano-sauruses are not extinct?)

I did not ask the HobbyLobby-saurus in the flag t-shirt,
waving an Old Testament if now would be a good time
for me to give birth. (To give implies freedom, yes?) 
Also, how could the HobbyLobby-saurus
possibly know if I was ready? Did he have the history
of my health folded in his fanny pack?
A copy of my financial records tucked into his bible?
Did he hold a highlighted map of my history and circumstance?

I did not ask the governor of Texas or the legislature of Mississippi
or the Supreme Court. I asked only my body because it is mine.

And then I stopped asking because I am NOT the Venus of Willendorf.
No woman is. We are not Venuses. Not idols. Not even goddesses.

We are women of the 21st century grown deep,
grown rooted to our power (most of us)—despite

the screeching fascist-o-sauruses
who so violently want us to believe
the luminosity of the universe has sculpted us—but not them—
to live as they say we should live—which is barely.

How bleak. How brutal it has been
to stay where they put us.
To vote when they let us.
To be the gender they assign us.
To be the one color that makes them comfortable.
To be breed and be quiet.
To grow wise and be ignored. 



I’ll say it once more like a horrible cheer
my life depends on.

I am not the Venus of Willendorf
with her with heavy belly
and pointed nubs where feet should be.
How will she run after the children?
How will she hold them
with her forgotten hands?
How will she sing to them with no mouth?

Who will help her?
Will you, my dear indoctrinated dinosaurs?

She doesn’t speak English.
I’ve never seen her with a man,
and I doubt she has a job.

No. Women are not Venuses of Willendorf.

But I do wonder Dinos, what will it take
to make you less predatory?
Will you beat your undemocratic
guns and bombs into plowshares
if we suture our eyes closed, unscrew our feet?
If we fill our mouths with mud
and bury all the words blooming there?
 
Shall we try yet again to swallow
your bitter laws, dilute our strength
until we become your very weird,
tiny idea of woman?

No. Never again Tyrantuses.
Take a look around. Count the women.
Look into our eyes. Up here.

Every single one of us holds the history of Woman.
From Lilith to Lucy. From Ocean to Earth. 
We are the history of resilience incarnate.

No matter what you do, we will help each other
have our children when we choose. If we choose.
Or we will carry on just as we are
because we are enough.

World made in the image of Woman is an abundance.

But I do wish I could understand
why this truth makes you so crazy.

Crazy to the bone with three capital K’s
and a cancerous machismo to the marrow. Man,
you bellow and roar and sink your claws
into everything that is not you.


Oh go on you insurgent-o-sauruses!
Wag your tiki torches, iron your robes,
count your money, shriek your petrified hearts out—
you have such little time left. See?

You don’t see.
You do not see the comet
just behind the clouds.
It has a tail full of rainbow fire.
It makes its own music.
You cannot turn it down.
You cannot goose step to it.
You cannot crush it with a tank.
You cannot barricade yourselves
in Idaho and hide from it. See?
You do not see.                      

We are the comet and the ocean
and the tides and the earth.

We are stardust same as you              
but your fear is blocking the light, 
blocking the brilliant life we could all have together.
Right here. Right now!

Poor us.  Poor Earth.  
I will even say poor you.
Poor archaic you.

Pour yourselves a glass of your favorite,
industrial-ag, hormone-enhanced warm milk
and say your final goodnights,
you ghastly oligarch-o-sauruses.


And who knows—perhaps in 30 thousand years
someone will dig you back up.
Maybe by then you’ll be filled with a radiance
and you’ll remember how to share it—
or at the very least— perhaps
you will have grown some breasts
and come to your damn senses.


* * * * *

"Venus of Willendorf  vs. The Dinosaurs" was written for the Women’s March SLO 2022. Here is a video link to the author's reading of the poem: https://youtu.be/nhuHRHnvdp0

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.

 Writing In A Woman's Voice is currently on summer solstice break until Sunday, June 26, 2022. Happy solstice, summer or winter, to all of you. 

 

If Herons Could Pray

by Cristina M. R. Norcross


I am free.
Every cell speaks of this.  
Even the wind knows how to reach me.
I see branches that sway and kiss the ground
like the blue heron in prayer.

This body—
this body
that houses equal weights
of wonder and fear,
does not yet know how to shed the morning paper,
the mirror's reflection,
the urgent messages left behind in sand.

I heard a wooden flute last night 
after several poets read verse
to celebrate the longest day.
With the flute's long, sustained notes,
the woods came closer to my blanket.
The sun slipped slowly behind marigold-tinted clouds.
The blue heron returned to pray.

He is waiting for me to stop for a longer rest—
for me to notice this freedom.


* * * * *

"If Herons Could Pray" was first published in The Lava Storyteller, Red Mare Press, 2013
 
Cristina M. R. Norcross is editor of Blue Heron Review, author of 9 poetry collections, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee. Her most recent collection is The Sound of a Collective Pulse (Kelsay Books, 2021). Cristina’s work appears in: Visual Verse, Your Daily Poem, Verse-Virtual, The Ekphrastic Review, Pirene’s Fountain, and others, as well as numerous anthologies. Cristina has helped organize community poetry projects, has hosted many readings and is co-founder of Random Acts of Poetry & Art Day. Cristina lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two sons. www.cristinanorcross.com

 

Reading from the Songbook of Self
(Inspired by Mary Cassatt’s painting, Woman Reading in a Garden*)

by Cristina M. R. Norcross

 
When I transferred schools,
moved up to Canada
and switched majors,
I discovered a garden within me.
I found Margaret Atwood,
Margaret Laurence,
Alice Munro.
Their words were blooms in my ears.
My world unfurled, opened up 
to these wordsmiths of the North.
My hands became green leaves,
new shoots of ideas reaching out,
sprouting, turning pages.
Mesmerized by Atwood’s characters surfacing,
entranced by Laurence’s divining rod of truth,
I, too, was coming to the surface,
finding my own words
in the rich soil of experience.
 
I scoured used bookstores,
sat in the reading nook of the library window,
scribbled found thoughts on the bench
near Parliament Hill,
found myself in cups of tea 
and blank notebooks,
took meditative walks 
through ocean waves of snow.
My quiet sanctuary was an 8-hour drive
from the life I once knew.
I was recreating the self, becoming,
one page at a time, one paragraph at a time.
Holding the knowledge of tomorrow
on my tongue like a salted caramel square,
I held the book of me 
close to my beating chest,
hearing music play,
as if for the very first time.


* * * * *

* Link to Mary Cassatt’s painting, Woman Reading in a Garden: https://www.wikiart.org/en/mary-cassatt/woman-reading-in-a-garden-1880 
 
Cristina M. R. Norcross is editor of Blue Heron Review, author of 9 poetry collections, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee. Her most recent collection is The Sound of a Collective Pulse (Kelsay Books, 2021). Cristina’s work appears in: Visual Verse, Your Daily Poem, Verse-Virtual, The Ekphrastic Review, Pirene’s Fountain, and others, as well as numerous anthologies. Cristina has helped organize community poetry projects, has hosted many readings and is co-founder of Random Acts of Poetry & Art Day. Cristina lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two sons. www.cristinanorcross.com

On telling my 13 year old grandson of the birth of his cousin

by Meg Campbell


Desmond arrived, I announce,
as Callum climbs into the front seat.
You’ll be 26 when he’s your age today.
You might not be here, Callum says.

When aged nine, Callum accompanied me
to receive an award etched in glass.
On the taxi ride home
he asked,
Can I have it when you die?
Take it now, I said.
Our gaze locked, our eyes moist.

Now driving, I insist,
13 + 68. It’s not that old.
He differs.
Graduating high school.  Probably not.
Or when Desmond’s 21.

That is the way now.
There are no crumbs to follow.
The birds have flown away
or to the highest branches
where I crane to see them
but cannot.
My eyes and joints
like a car in Havana
past her glory -
rusty but buffed.

Time, health too,
I add to my list.
I imagine how I will die.
Please not burned alive.
For all my morbid thoughts
I am happy.
Saw Baltimore orioles
at the feeder this summer.
Puffed chests of yellow.


* * * * *

Meg Campbell is the author of two collections of poetry, Solo Crossing and More Love (Midmarch Arts Press, NYC). 

 

This month, an additional Moon Prize, the 97^th, goes to Lorri Ventura's poem "A Child's Dreams."  


A CHILD’S DREAMS

by Lorri Ventura


In her dreams she drives an ice cream truck
And hands free fudgsicles to all the children
She cures cancer
Ends wars
Reverses climate change
And speaks all languages fluently.
She spreads kernels of beauty and hope
Wherever she goes
The way Miss Rumphius blanketed the earth
With lupine seeds
Best of all
She lives in a house full of cats
That purr her to sleep at night
So that she can save the world


* * * * *

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 96th Moon Prize goes to Marjorie Maddox's poem "Ode to Everything."  


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 

Fear Sleeps in a Lavender Pillowslip

by Louisa Muniz

 
Out of the corner of my eye
I watch her watching me.
 
When the moon is full in June  
she crawls into my lap.
 
I lull her to sleep. Drape her
in a faux fur throw.
 
 I Hail Mary for her. Full of grace
she shrinks to the size of a wrist.
 
I turn on the night-light. Spray
the pillowslip in lavender. 
 
Her could’ve, would’ve, should’ves fade away.

                                 ~

I wake to morning glories unfurling pink silk.
The almost summer sun is full-blown
 
in the green & growing of June.
I search everywhere. She’s ghosted.
 
Soon she’ll return fretting to be held.


* * * * *

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, Menacing Hedge, Poetry Quarterly, PANK Magazine, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem "Stone Turned Sand." Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020.

A DAY IN AMSTERDAM

by Gail Ghai


Today you took the train to Rotterdam
while I stayed comfortably in Amsterdam
nibbling on my savory breakfast in bed.

Later as I walked the slippery sidewalks
gorged with cobblestones, I had to dodge bellicose
cyclists while trying to balance my blue umbrella.

As I lunched on wine, Dutch cheese soup, brown bread
 thick as a duck’s belly, you inspected Delft’s hyacinth/white
pottery, but claimed you couldn’t choose one without me.

It was curiously quiet in the Jewish quarter when I
joined the afternoon tour. As we stood outside
the old Portuguese synagogue, a church bell suddenly

rang out three times reminding us of the Iberian Catholics
decreed that Sephardic Jews should: convert, exile
or be executed. A hundred thousand made their way to Holland.

At the Auschwitz Monument in Wertheim Park,
we each laid a stone for a murdered Amsterdam Jew,
so they know we still remember them, grieve for them.

Our tour ended at Anne Frank Haus where a tangle of tourists
taking selfies, greedily block the emerald dark doorway.
But I could only picture that moment when the Frank family

heard the jackboots crushing the stairs, their bookcase
yanked back, and Anne’s dark luminous eyes
gazing into those Aryan blue pools of death.  


* * * * *

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.

ABORTION

by Evie Sullivan

 
My father said, “Whore, you 
must end it before it’s too late. 
End it or I will kill you.”
 
“He means it,” my mother said.
 
I had no say about the 
life in my belly. It was theirs.
Their Big Problem. It wasn’t 
welcome. Had to go.
 
The bloody knitting needle 
failed to kill it.
So the ancient abortionist 
did it for free on the 
kitchen table, 
his instruments as
rusty as his skills. 


* * * * *

Evie Sullivan is of the generation of women who didn’t have access to birth control or abortions. As an early feminist, she fought for women’s rights in her native Austria and later in the USA, where she’s been living since 1982. 
As an actress, writer and therapist, she has kept one finger on the pulse of time and closely watches the developments of late. 
Now, she worries that misogynist lawmakers catapult women back into the dark ages. 
Her advice: keep fighting, sisters! 

i never got to say i’m sorry to the boy with green eyes

by Jen Schneider


we met over scrambled eggs and hash browns. his plate loaded with the #5: four eggs, four strips of meat, and potatoes. extra pepper. plus a double stack. i ordered the #2: one egg. two strips of sausage. i was under-consuming. my stomach in knots. unsure of myself and my bearings. he was in training. played midfield on the uni’s football team. i was wedged between three bodies in an undersized booth. his frame left room for one. the conversation carried tales of origins and aspirations. small town usa. cities on opposite coasts. farms with livestock. parents who trade on the big boards around the clock. coffee flowed alongside juice. sour orange clinked sweet apple as grapefruit winked. jukebox tunes tangoed alongside casual banter. he was quiet. so was i. as the plates cleared and the chatter subsided, his eyes, kind and a deep green, locked with mine. we joked over green eggs & ham. homesickness, too. two tired irregulars in a city that never sleeps. we became inseparable. freshman pairings turned sophomore sizzles. fried eggs & pan-fried potatoes. heads in books of politics and war. eyes on each other. junior then senior year knots. four years in. found ways to share four seasons. train rails, bus routes, oversized texts on undersize desks. survived scares and semesters. within and without campus limits. late nights at the twenty-four-hour gym. he always in training and perfecting all plays, though the fields changed. from city concrete & astro-turf to stock markets & cryptocurrencies. he always had a love for the game. also thought i was a real catch and said so. was eager to tie all knots. i hesitated as he hurried. time on both watches. myself, persistently undertrained. ultimately i said goodbye over voicemail. then collected my trash. cleared my plate as if i had ordered a daily special. easy as that. he wrote & road all rails. to rekindle & reclaim what we’d had. he no longer quiet. just sad. i regret my poor performance, especially after all that time. i failed to even say a proper goodbye. 


* * * * *

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups.

 

on memories made of stamps & wings :: ready, set, release

by Jen Schneider


i collect and carry memories like stamps, baseball cards, & coins. always in search of missing links. grateful for spontaneous interactions solidified in curious ways. moments stamped of dates that dance then disappear. streams of syllables on am radio. ice-cold lemonade on a blistering hot summer day, ten cents a pop. the memories wrap and warm, no matter the season. in thoughts heavy of daily duties. to-do lists regulated by predictable pings. the memories playful. partial to games of hide and seek. each memory applies rules and terms of its own making. colorful bouquets of butterfly weed and chinese lantern plants. bushels of daisies. coneflowers and red roses. pink tulips and yellow daffodils. quick, pluck then trim. inhale. consume scented layers – of life, love, and longing. some heavy like maple syrup. others sweet, with a tangy crunch. of freshly picked granny smith apples and autumn orchards. sometimes sour. unanticipated spice. double plays. invasive weeds. in small pockets of air where gusty winds blow. flowery fabrics – shimmery satins the color of blue jays, gentle cranes, and crafty crows. shadows linger in layers wrinkled of travel, trials, and time. testaments to the severity of the sometimes spontaneity of memories worn on and of shoulders. stretch, then lift, then breathe. settle and resettle. embrace flight. wings flaps. curious creatures chirp. a small mouse scurries across the attic floor. a family of birds stirs in a nest. new life awaits, ready to hatch, in wooden eaves. on the eve of a new dawn. memories continue to flutter. in shoeboxes. of broken text. of bruised luggage. on shoulders. 

ready. set. release. 
 
     1.   The oldest item you own
     2.   A souvenir
     3.   Something stored in a shoebox
     4.   The scent of memory
     5.   The flavor of memory
     6.   The sound of a favorite lyric
 
wings flap as cardboard boxes store __1__. time marches on as dust settles. on _2__ and _3__. baseballs clink metal bats. oils in palms and leather gloves glisten. lights cast soft glows and rainbow hues. air scented of __4__. breath flavored of __5__.  half-priced concert tickets curl. damp lyrics kiss parched lips. a blade of dried grass brush lashes.  __6__ blanket shoulders heavy of memory. wings flap. ready. set. release. in flight.


* * * * *

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Recent works include A Collection of Recollections, Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups.

 

The Jig is Up

The Jig is Never Up

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


The Jig is Up

The jig is up, girls
You’ve had your rebel decades

Of schooling and choosing
And public song

It’s back to the inner sanctum with you
Where I decide which rhythms govern

Why don’t you ever see me coming
When I carry so openly and aim so well?

You’re so easily ambushed
Distracted by sweet nothings you can’t help but love

The Jig is Never Up

The jig is never up
Those nothings are ours

We carry, we carry all
Carry and love, even love what we cannot carry

Here you come again, and we see you coming
Maybe we can’t stop you, we rarely could

Yet what lasts is ours
And yes, what’s ours is yours


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is an award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and The Joy of Forest Bathing. She began writing poetry during the pandemic. Writing in a Woman’s Voice has featured several of her poems during 2022, including “How to Silence a Woman,” which won the February Moon Prize.

 

Everything perfect

by Ronna Magy

 
I’ve been obsessed lately with teapots, the silvered kind, served by waitresses in nice restaurants, handle, lid, and a knob. You sit across from a woman, white cloth, China cups.
Talk of Your day? and the cat? Things weighed more easily before the plague and the war.
Counts of dead bodies, wearing a mask. That trip to Italy along the Amalfi Coast, aqua-marine waters lapping sides of the boat. How a friend met a woman, they’d had an affair. 
 
The white linen napkins, crystal chandeliers, purple lilacs and pink roses blend in with the tea. And the waitress comes to pour more time. 
 
And for that moment you are suspended in sundrenched space, eucalyptus leaves    fragrancing the room. No clock ticks on the brocade wall, only a mirror that scallops the Venetian canals, manicured plantings imagining circular roads. Everything ordered, nothing out of place.  
 
How everything is perfect, and then, it is not. Pandemic and war intervening to kill and maim. 
Afternoon conversation infused with tea. Time silvering moments before taking them away.


* * * * *

Born in Detroit, Michigan, writer Ronna Magy calls Los Angeles home. In her poetry, Ronna combines roots in the rustbelt, and a belief in social justice. Her work has appeared in: Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Writers Resist, Artists and Climate Change, American Writers Review, Persimmon Tree, Nasty Women Poets, Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere.

Tilted

by Roselle Kovitz


The slight tilt
of a painting,
a sign askew
sets my nerves on edge,
like there’s something off
with the world.
If only wars could be settled
by a gentle tip
up on the left
to level the conflict,
or pain could be subdued
by rearranging a lampshade
to hide a seam from view.
How about a cure for cancer
by tapping a pile of brochures
to line up all the edges?
Poverty—spackle over that
gaping hole with a graceful sweep
of white filler, a soft sanding,
touch of paint.

Could it be that there is
some sort of cosmic symmetry,
a master level
where the bubble is still
dancing side to side?
Or is change just as easy
as turning a seam
toward the wall?


* * * * *

Roselle Kovitz co-authored The History of Public Broadcasting with John Witherspoon, worked in public broadcasting, and as a communications consultant. She backed into writing poetry about a decade ago and enjoys the dance with mystery that writing, especially poetry, offers.

Passage of Years

by Lynne Zotalis


after a certain amount of time, logical, reasonable
passage of years
different for everyone, there isn’t a conscious sense
of death anymore, the loss
doesn’t physically hurt, more like rubbing
against a scar,
aware of the wound, memory telling the soul
what to feel. Ever present,
you graze the edge of my soul
with hammering silence. I keep distant,

my existence
apparently regardless
of the passage of years, a dozen years,
no longer black or dark,
gray, yes,
cloudy still, chilled
shades of imagination
not of regrets but rather
what might have been


* * * * *

Lynne Zotalis is an award winning author placing 1^st in the creative nonfiction category from Firebird Book Awards for Hippie at Heart (What I Used To Be, I Still Am). Her short stories have won publication for three years in the R.H. Cunningham Short Story Contest through Willowdown Books. Her poetry has appeared in  Nature 20/20, Tuck Magazine, writinginawoman’svoice, The Poetic Bond VII, VIII and IX, and Lyrical Iowa. Saying Goodbye to Chuck, a daily journal helping to enunciate the readers’ personal grief process along with her other publications are available on Amazon. 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DC6GZ7T  

Dear Midnight

by Jill Crainshaw


Dear Midnight,

Who do you talk to
when the wrens and robins
go quiet in a storm?
You know, when lightning
strikes every city in every land 
and ignites down deep darkness?

The tiny terrier and I
cock our heads—
She growls down deep 
in her belly suspicious 
at not hearing electricity
scurry through the house.

Rain tiptoes toward us
then chases us home,
silken hair flying out behind her.
She slips in with us as the
door slams with a sonic boom
and a single metallic flash of light—

Silence sidles in too,
scampers off into corners
and down deep into crevices
and we all peer out the window
at a sky homesick for stars.

Dear Midnight,

Can you tell us what it all means?
You, who wander fields and forests
seeking the fierce feeble embers
of once-fiery mornings—

The tiny terrier and I cock our heads.
Out there—
in the dripping down deep darkness
a train whistle melts 
into the rain-slick trees 
and a barn owl queries the night. 


* * * * *

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She enjoys exploring how words give voice to unexpected ideas, insights and visions.

Santa Monica Canyon

by Eve Louise Makoff


A Chuppah tunnel
on Sycamore Road
where branches swirl like bony cyclones
tween bodies hunch 
dragging on fragrant leaves wrapped in papers 
Tony with his Cheshire smile 
twisted ends held by girls with straight hair cascading down their backs
like a wedding of initiation we pass through this threshold together
holding hands as the sun splashes gold into the shining Pacific 
just down the road lapping on our sandy spots
waiting for our young bodies to dive in 


* * * * *

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

Beside the Bed/The Affair   

by Eve Louise Makoff

                                              
Wine glass swishing 
I whispered 
sweet longing
like a snake down a well
I smashed my life


* * * * *

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

A CHILD’S DREAMS

by Lorri Ventura


In her dreams she drives an ice cream truck
And hands free fudgsicles to all the children
She cures cancer
Ends wars
Reverses climate change
And speaks all languages fluently.
She spreads kernels of beauty and hope
Wherever she goes
The way Miss Rumphius blanketed the earth
With lupine seeds
Best of all
She lives in a house full of cats
That purr her to sleep at night
So that she can save the world


* * * * *

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.