FLIGHT

by Tina Klimas


Is she still mother?

Restrained by IVs and
catheter bags and tubes—
she flies with the blue
of a jay, on the other side
of the glass. Inhales
earth and dying leaves,
perches on a wire.
Once a sparrow—part of
the workings of a flock—
now a jay—solitary
and shrill and waiting.
She becomes this jay’s
anguish—the void of what
is missing—the infants
swallowed by a bored feline
like an appetizer.

Was she still mother?

Sky, feathers—blue.
Leaves—red, gold.
Color—incandescent
like old-fashioned
ceramic Christmas lights—
shimmers through
the inconsequence of eyelids.
Because she knows now,
that she cannot make them
see this thing with the light,
she cannot share with them
this last thing—

is she still mother?

Agonizing cries surface and
recede. Theirs. Maybe hers. Or
the jay’s. But the blue is gone—
flown—and terror exposes her,
raw and gaping. She clutches
at the sheets. Her heart rusts,
like iron. Blood boils.
Fingers and toes snap off.
Her brain billows into
a great balloon. The world
tilts and her body will slide
into the abyss. And then—
the weight of an arm
across her chest. Warm feet
twine around her own.
A head nestles under her chin.
And she remembers—
the softness of baby hair,
making bunnies and ships
from clouds, gangly and graceful
adolescent limbs.

She is still mother.

She closes her eyes and sees
the blue jay wing away
to what happens next.


* * * * *

Tina Klimas's poems can be found in THEMA Literary Journal, Bear River Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Backchannels, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Willows Wept Review, and Glassworks Magazine. Her short fiction has also been published in several journals. She enjoys her writing life in Redford, MI where she lives with her husband and their dog.  

THE ILLUSION OF IDENTITY

by Tina Klimas


I have disappeared.
A lone bird, an ingredient,
blended into a flock.
We soar and dip as one
to the swell of Mendelssohn—
humid summer evening
slick on our feathers—to and fro
until the trees themselves dance.
Awe rises from below.
We are nature, choreographed
to human genius. Flight
is transcendence, is it not?
I am lucky, am I not? Or so
my flock assures me. And yet,
I yearn for them to see
how my feathers iridesce
in a way no other birds do.
They choose blindness,
for I serve a useful purpose
in this group—mother,
spouse, daughter, friend.
This should be enough, but I
cannot hear my own voice.
I lost it somewhere. It
bleeds out with the daylight
into a sky inundated with purple
velvet, a deep and lonely dusk. It
is absorbed into the heartbeats
of the birds around me,
beating their wings in joy
or furious survival. It
is swallowed by the might
of Mendelssohn and the arrogance
of a power of life
that plows over death and
individuality.
I could fly out alone
over the opalescent mystery of the lake
into a gathering darkness.
I would be watched
and pitied,
maybe thought a little mad.
When all is finally reckoned,
do I want to abandon
the fortune of love?
So I will remain invisible.
I am birds, not this bird.
And thus will I continue
to keep perfect time,
to someone else’s music.


* * * * *

Tina Klimas's poems can be found in THEMA Literary Journal, Bear River Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Backchannels, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Willows Wept Review, and Glassworks Magazine. Her short fiction has also been published in several journals. She enjoys her writing life in Redford, MI where she lives with her husband and their dog.

Night Moves, Reprised                                                          

by Claire Massey


The boy was a maverick
who shared with me,
a tongue of flame arcing through auburn hair
and amateur status in the ranks of lovers
that virginal summer of ’78. 
Exotica sounded in the clip of his vowels,
unheard where we lived in lower Alabama,
his just-divorced Dad
having dragged him from Chicago.

There was comfort, he claimed, in the words I wrote,
more comfort still in my neophyte’s crush,
both of us barred from the in-crowd,
badges of honor we sported,
both of us learning in exile. 

Tentative at first, then able, urgent,
we rehearsed night moves beside a brook in the country,
turned our backs
on its whispery disapproval,
turned up Bob Seeger on the boombox.

Tell me my budding poetess, what line do you like best?
Too tall and angular myself, I answered the part about her breasts,
firm and high on her chest and probably—small.

If I could recall
the S-blend in his name, McSween or Swan,
perhaps we could meet for lattes,
our twin bolts of titian hair gone grey,
our swimming hole diverted to make way
for McMansions’ jutting porches.

Over liberally sweetened mochas,
he’d still want to know,
What part of “Night Moves”
moves you most?

I’d lean into the faux-wood table,
remember the S-curve of his body,
how we spooned against this backwater.
Listening for the far-off thunder,
with all that lighting gone,
that working and practicing done,
autumn after autumn
closing my summers,
and still, no mysteries solved.


* * * * *

Claire Massey finds joy in discovering and supporting literary artists who further our quest for understanding of self and the world. Among other journals, recent work has appeared in Snapdragon Journal of Art and Healing, Lucky Jefferson 365 Collection, Halfway Down the Stairs, POEM, Persimmon Tree and Bright Flash Literary Review. She is Poetry Editor for the quarterly magazine, The Pen Woman. Driver Side Window, her collection of flash stories, poems, memoir vignettes and interpretive photographs, debuted in October, 2022.

Measured and pinned

by Rebecca Dempsey

 
Scans searched. Locked on
looking clear through
to the other side. Echoes
detected shadows. Patterns
traced, and vanished
under interpretation.
Currents passed through.
Reverberations of blood
rushed through limbs
to extremities. Recorded.
Described. Ascribed.
Machines peered through
flesh, scoured for clues,
in cells living and dividing,
made up of atoms, made up
of somethings close to
nothing. Parts prodded,
arranged, examined.
Dismissed after identification.
A close call. Shuddering
in a cold change room, 
felt, yes, but I wasn’t seen.
I wasn’t there at all.

 
* * * * * 
 
Rebecca Dempsey’s recent works have featured in Streetcake Magazine and Unstamatic. Rebecca lives in Melbourne / Naarm, and can be found at WritingBec.com, where amongst other things, she sometimes contemplates the creative traits she inherited from her foremothers.
 

 

 

poem

by Lisa B. Friedland


I love things that don’t make sense 
like trees
manhattan 
and the woman in stilettos pushing the baby carriage 


* * * * *

Lisa B. Friedland is a poet, musician, composer, and translator. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she finds her inspiration from nature, spirituality, culture, and relationships.
To find out more, visit lisafriedlandmusic.com

 

poem

by Lisa B. Friedland


i became an adult today 
singing in the rain
finding the hay at my back
the wind at my front 
do we even know why we're here?
a cherry tree
an apple blossom 
a sky full of stars
ever so softly 
sing us
home


* * * * *

Lisa B. Friedland is a poet, musician, composer, and translator. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she finds her inspiration from nature, spirituality, culture, and relationships.
To find out more, visit lisafriedlandmusic.com

End of January

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 
Don’t leave me January
In your deep I want to sleep
In your pale days I want to go on idle
 
In silent bursts of beauty
Snow-laced twig
Starry night
 
Let me cling to your forbidding cold
And your incubating dark
A little longer


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and 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 and had the good fortune to discover Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site has featured several of her poems during the past year, including “How to Silence a Woman,” and “If I have loved you,” both of which won Moon Prizes. Melanie grew up in Vermont wandering the woods and fields and has never stopped wandering.

3rd house on Court C

by Emalisa Rose


Replacing the old
with all new appliances
even the dishwasher
which rarely got use

new kitchen tiles
and we'd finally hired
the old window cleaner
after 26 seasons of
snowfalls, bird poop
and etceteras

fresh paint
new blinds
even some
flowerbeds planted

all for the new owners
all we delayed
doing for us, though

“they’lll probably
do the whole house
all over again, anyhow”

we both laughed.


* * * * *

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and crocheting. She volunteers in animal rescue. She walks with a birding group on weekends through the neighborhood trails. Living by the beach provides much of the inspiration for her art. Her work has appeared in Origami Poems Project, Spillwords, Writing in a Woman's Voice and other wonderful places. Her latest collection is On the whims of the crosscurrents, published by Red Wolf Editions. 

 

Sitting

by Ruth Ticktin


To be sitting eating breathing
In a land where democracy is shattering
Where con men spew crude lies
Is to be
A piece of sand on the beach
Abandoned washed away
After decades in play

To be residing next to
Creatures with guns
Children imbalanced
Society in upheaval
Is to be
A plate of food broken crashed
On the tile floor in abuse
No hope of nutritional use

To be witnessing wanton immorality
In a place of biblical plagues
Beset with bad choices dooming us
Is to be
A parcel of seeds strewn
Onto poisoned weedy earth
Blown away by torrential rains
Not a chance for purposeful gains

The hereafter a hope
Legacies a long shot
Giving has potential
Ignorance works for a while
Denial leads to repercussions
Breaking down the news causes
Breakdown of body soul senses

Potentially people are of saintly essence
If only
Greed were to be removed
We’d set off on a quest for goodness
Talking to folks and
Sitting to breathe
In stolen moments
Of human kindness


* * * * *

Ruth Ticktin has coordinated international programs, advised and taught English in Washington DC and MD since 1977. From Madison and Chicago, graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Ruth encourages sharing stories. Inspired by students, family and community, she is Author: Was, Am, Going; Recollections in Poetry & Flash (New Bay Books, 2022.) Co-editor: Psalm Contemplation (PoeticaPublishing 2020.) Co-author: What's Ahead? (ProLingua Learning 2013.) Contributor: BendingGenres Anthology 2018-19; Art in Covid-19 (SanFedele Press 2020;) WWPHWrites #4 (2021); PressPause Press #6 (2022).

HERMIT IN THE WOODS

by Lorri Ventura


Despite the rumor that she ate children
I looked for her
As I rode my horse along the overgrown, old lumberjack trail.
Once I saw her drifting toward me among the towering oaks.
At first I thought she was a rag-clad ghost
Her skin translucent
Waist-length hair colorless
And adorned with brown leaves.
Nostrils flared, 
My palomino shied away from her fusty odor.
As if possessed,
I slowly reached into my saddle bag.
Hands trembling,
I held out the carrot packed
As a treat for my mount.
The woman crept toward me
Then, fast as a beam of light,
She snatched with a vine-like hand,
And devoured the root tuber.
Subtly tugging on the bridle’s reins,
I backed up,
Worried that the specter was eyeing me
As her lunch entree.
But then she dropped to her knees,
Head bowed and hands clasped as if in prayer
Giving me both leave and benediction.
I never told my parents,
Knowing that they’d forbid me ever again to ride in the forest
But whenever I rode down that path
I packed an extra sandwich or snack
In case the woman re-appeared.
Never again did she grace me with her presence
No matter how hard I searched.


* * * * *

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. She is a three-time winner of Writing In A Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.

MARL GREY JUMPER

by Stuti Sinha


…And I want to dress every day in this boyfriend-style marl grey and white striped jumper.

i.

Your eyes widen as you walk in my direction/ I am taken by that/ unprepared to stun you in something so casual/ Your expression followed by intimately whispered affection gives me a tingle deep in my belly/ the ‘happy accident’ kind of tingle/ the small sprinkles of euphoria are big winners kind of tingle/

Like sitting on the office desk of a swanky young office/ in an unpretentious slouchy jumper/ jeans/ and white trainers/ legs swinging mid-air/ enjoying the misplaced quietness of that environment/ I take a small sip/ into the silken foam of a warm cappuccino/

ii.

In a few minutes/ this silence will crescendo to/ a business hustle-bustle/ the incessant ringing of multiple telephones/ voices talking in loud pitch/ over other voices/ the smell of cartridges printing/ (wet ink on paper)/ doors swinging into //repeating// open & close motions/ the receptionist’s dull voice clinically receiving calls on the board line/ (in practiced politeness)/ more coffee/ pouring from a dispensing machine into countless mugs/

Cold conditioned air/ coated with the smell of fresh paint/ there is always the smell of fresh paint/ in a paint manufacturing office/ like there is the smell of freshly baked bread at a bakery/ (I wonder if bakers are as tired of the smell of baking bread as I am of the smell of fresh paint)/ 

iii.

more sounds/
delivery boxes dropping with heavy thuds/ (on carpeted floors)/ feet shuffling/ more telephone ringing/ more voices/

It is no wonder then/ that this current silence is a small sprinkle of euphoria/ even sweeter than the 6 am silence of waking up in a house/ where everyone/ (the dachshund and the birds on the terrace included)/ is still sleeping/

Like the sweetness of this moment/ when you spot the jumper hugging my frame/ better than the collective sweetness of all those moments/ when I meticulously put myself together for you/


* * * * *

"Marl Grey Jumper" was first published in Moss Puppy Magazine.

Stuti Sinha is an Indian writer & musician, who lives in Dubai and writes primarily about the human experience and emotions. Passionate about travel, she loves to weave different cultures, including her heritage, into writing.

In 2022, she won the Westmoreland Fiction Award & The Allingham Poetry Prize. She also received an honourable mention in the Globe Soup Short Memoir Contest, and was long-listed for the Erbacce & Gloucestershire Poetry Contests. She previously has an honourable mention in the 2021 Haiku Competition by The Society of Classical Poets and has been published by several international literature magazines and small presses.

 

Disinclined 

by Susan Isla Tepper


The boy lit a match and studied the world.
No small side gardens
blooming, nor did he find
fences rough or refined
cascading colorful wildflowers
up from the lanes.
He didn’t see the soft houses
with fresh paint and
savory smells
out of kitchen windows.
He did not bear witness to
bombed or burned blocs
where the walls teetered.
Or even any that might
still be standing
at this particular time.
The boy saw a world succumbed.
Masses of clear high glass
glistened out, only out.
People were
wearing the best
and sashayed here and there.
The boy saw how
they’d be disinclined
to offer him a sip.
Out of their spigots of silver and gold.


* * * * *

"Disinclined" was first published by The Galway Review with a photo by Glenn Bowie.
https://thegalwayreview.com/2022/12/07/susan-isla-tepper-glenn-bowie-disinclined/

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty-year writer and the author of 11 published books of fiction and poetry and 2 stage plays. Her play The Crooked Heart concerning artist Jackson Pollock in his later years was presented as a staged reading on October 25, 2022 at the Irish Repertory Theatre in NYC. Tepper’s new satirical novel titled Office was published Wilderness House Press in December 2022. Another novel titled Hair of a Fallen Angel will be published by Cervena Barva Press in the spring. http://www.susantepper.com

 

Perhaps

by Somaah Edwards


Perhaps it was the way he smiled that
intrigued her demons,
or the smell of his impenetrable cologne that nibbled at her cravings.
Perhaps it was the way he said her name that tickled her hidden agendas.
Perhaps she wanted
more than just knowing
his birth name.


* * * * *

Somaah Edwards is a Guyanese poet and short-story writer. She writes on Instagram at @somaah.e

Prayer for Myself

by Lola Haskins


The moon is almost gone. Its edges
are clear and sharp. And I wish—
as fervently as grass grows, as full
of thirst as a doe nearing a stream—
that when for the last time night
comes to slide across my face,
it will let me be half so beautiful.


* * * * *

Lola Haskins' most recent collection—Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare  (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)—was featured in the NY Times Sunday Magazine. Past honors include the Iowa Poetry Prize, two NEAs, four Florida individual artist awards, two Florida Book Awards, narrative poetry prizes from Southern Poetry Review and New England Poetry Review, a Florida's Eden prize for environmental writing, and the Emily Dickinson/Writer Magazine Award from Poetry Society of America.

Leaving Belgrade

by Lola Haskins


           I am Croatian but my wife, Hana, she is Serbian.

Every day
Luka read in the papers the ads of willing assassins.

Every day
someone else spat in front of him on the street.

Every day
his position at the university became slightly less clear.

By the time
he decided to leave, it was too late to take anything but two cases.

The first
he packed with clothes, his, Hana's but only a few of Ivo's and Ela's

because
they were still growing. The second, Hana filled with what she could not

bring herself
to leave behind: her mother's tablecloth, her grandmother's salt shakers,

the cloth flowers
her sister had made her so she would not feel so alone in the new place. 

Luka emptied
that case and replaced its contents with so many outdated math books

he had
to sit on it to close it. When Hana protested her lost things,

Luka
told her, leave them, let's go. And she remembered how he'd worked

so late
all their married life, even on weekends, that she and the children hardly

saw him.
It was then she understood that wherever they settled, nothing would change.


* * * * *

Lola Haskins' most recent collection – Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare  (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019) – was featured in the NY Times Sunday Magazine. Past honors include the Iowa Poetry Prize, two NEAs, four Florida individual artist awards, two Florida Book Awards, narrative poetry prizes from Southern Poetry Review and New England Poetry Review, a Florida's Eden prize for environmental writing, and the Emily Dickinson/Writer Magazine Award from Poetry Society of America.

Yes it’s Difficult

by Millicent Borges Accardi

             from a line by Inês Fonseca Santos


And so the tirade extends like a chemical
mixture in an extruder.
It pushes and pulls back until the tail end
of the hurt is knifed off and another section
is extruded. After that, and then after that,
more after that’s, and the bulk of it is all bullshit.
We were once invincible and carefree,
able to walk the streets, ride busses and talk to each
other as close as if to kiss and kiss we did, with tongues
and teeth and then as a hello we kissed each other’s
cheeks on opposite sides, saying, “Yes I am with you”
and “We are the same.” But it was all so easy
then, and it was how we did things then,
dirty and up close and we breathed on each other
sighing air, sipping in fine water droplets
into each other’s lungs. As kids we ran over
to the Yannis family to catch chicken pox,
and leaned out the window to hug mom
when she got the mumps at 40. It was simple and sweet
and maybe how life was meant to be when we held up our
wrists, someone came to pick us up and whisper hush.


* * * * *

"Yes it's Difficult" is from Millicent Borges Accardi's collection Quarantine Highway (Flowersong Press, 2022)

Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer has four poetry collections including Only More So (Salmon Poetry Ireland). Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, CantoMundo, Fulbright, Foundation for Contemporary Arts NYC (Covid grant), Creative Capacity, Fundação Luso-Americana, and Barbara Deming Foundation, “Money for Women.” She holds degrees in writing from CSULB and USC and currently lives in the hippie-arts community of Topanga, CA where she curates Kale Soup for the Soul and co-curates the Poets & Writers sponsored Loose Lips poetry readings.  

After I Died

by Victoria Wiswell


After I nearly died or did die, depending on whom you ask, everything seemed new again, at least for a bit. You felt it, too. So much so that you broke from your stoic silence and spoke. "I want to start over. Things will be different. I will be different," you said, leaning your elbows against the cool metal rail of the hospital bed, awkwardly grasping my hands in yours. 

Drunk on the tonic of a second chance, bolstered by the hubris of thwarting death, I believed in the impossible. I believed in you. And it wasn’t a mistake. Your words bore truth, for a while at least. But as the days passed and it became clear I was likely to stay among us—that it wasn't yet my time to fall into the abyss of whatever lay beyond our last breath, your promise lost its shine. Your proclamation’s chrome finish was soon rubbed dull by the rough, relentless texture of our old habits. 

Within a month of my resurrection, we were back at it—throwing words like knives. Cutting flesh like surgeons. Hovering inconsolable over each loss. In a rare moment of calm, I caught your eye and saw you possessed the acute pain of a knowledge I, too, had gained: death is not the worst way to lose someone.

For months after we forged on, rising each day determined to honor the illusion we had agreed to make manifest. Only to drop each night onto the hard springs of our lacking. Lying side by side, wordless and separated by the rising wall of our disaffection. 

With hands held and swords drawn, we bravely inched deeper into the covenant of our failure. Until only our heads remained—bobbing precariously above the surface—both knowing what was coming next.

I don’t remember who slipped below first, you or me. I only remember the day the water was too deep and my limbs too tired. I expected to be sad—even afraid. Instead, a strange alacrity filled my belly. 

But still, what remained wasn’t easy. Before I could give in to the giving way, before I could drop your hand and drift into the airless space where only the dead can breathe, I had to look at you one last time. I had to see your face. I had to smile.

A Poet Can Blow Soap Bubbles

by Jackie Chou


A poet doesn't have to be 
a dark soul,
but can wake up each day 
feeling lucky 
to be who she is.
A poet doesn't have to be 
an old soul,
but can blow soap bubbles 
past the age of eighteen,
still daddy's little girl.
A poet doesn't have to be 
an outcast,
but can wear designer gowns,
belong to an elite crowd.
A poet doesn't have to shun 
the popular girls,
but can be one herself.
A poet can be someone
like me or you.


* * * * *

Jackie Chou is a poet from Southern California whose free verses and Japanese short-form poetry have seen the light of day in journals like Spillwords, Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest, Cajun Mutt Press, Highland Park Poetry, and Rat's Ass Review.  Besides writing, she loves to watch Jeopardy.

 

On the Cusp

by Rose Mary Boehm


It’s hard to wait. You expect so much, and your mum
has it all. She’s got Dad, she’s got the dresses,
the shoes, the lipstick… and when she puts you to bed
at night before going out she smells of forbidden things.

And now you’re 12. You just looked and saw your potential.
You understood your power. And you tried on you sister’s
red dress. Those shoulders… yes. Just right. A little blusher,
Mum’s lipstick. Tame that hair with gel.

When you look again you have a premonition
of what lies in wait for young women and become quiet.
While remaining determined, you have a moment of doubt.
You don’t know yet that on day the dress will have to come off.


* * * * *

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Taj Mahal Publishing House July 2022), and Saudade (Kelsay Books, November 2022) are all available on Amazon.
https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Bless the Broken Things

by Rose Mary Boehm


1)
The cuckoo clock fell.
I became a clock builder.
The cuckoo's voice had broken.
I learned how to heal a four-year-old heart.

2)
Christmas again.
Dolls disappeared.
They came back made whole.
I had loved them broken.

3)
Pregnant again,
forgot about unslept nights,
sore breasts and haemorrhoids.
Baby changed her mind.
The doctor says she was broken.

4)
Alone again.
He brought her home,
I made her bed to stay the night.
When I found out the truth,
something inside me broke.

5)
In Japan they mend broken things
with gold. The former fault lines become works of art
reminding me of the exquisite lines in the faces
of those who have healed.


* * * * *

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Taj Mahal Publishing House July 2022), and Saudade (Kelsay Books, November 2022) are all available on Amazon.
https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

The Versatile Lives of my Mother-in-law

by Isabel B.L


The best things my mother-in law has ever given me are six polyester mesh bags. Lace, silk, hooks and eyes are offered protection against tough denim, thick cottons and metal buttons. She also gives practical washing machine advice. Always do the zippers up to lengthen the lifespan of clothing. Specks of dust seize ostrich feathers. At the first spot of mildew, she pulls the trigger of her transparent plastic dispenser and shoots the culprit with a heavy duty homemade solution of bleach. Fifty years ago, she let her husband make the bed. But it was his last time.

Angela, my mother-in-law, inserts herself between the pages of a book I’m reading and becomes a stern bookmark. Don’t scribble in books. Is my boy’s dinner ready? Where are my grandchildren?

Angela perches upon my shoulders at a job interview whispering it’s too soon to return to work.

Angela helps me whisk butter and sugar, and still manages to give instructions as I beat her wire loops in a creamy, sunny whirlpool. When are you going to return to work? You don’t expect my son to be the breadwinner of this family, do you? I splatter batter across the kitchen bench and exhale deeply when the cake is finally in the oven. I cross my legs and thumb through a magazine, but my mind can’t focus on the latest trends in house and garden. I wonder. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I can burn every hurtful remark ever said to me. I follow the burnt cake fumes as they exit through my bay window.

Angela used to be tender until her boy, her sister, her friends smiled more than she did. A porcelain vase cracked when she carried the boy in her womb. Her body raged across the house like an out of control bushfire caused by arsonists. The arson, her husband’s first sweetheart. They don’t make glue like they used to. She sat down with her husband and they glued the sharp fragments together while he promised never to see the arsonist again. But even when pieces make a whole again, if one zooms in, a squiggly line appears. A wound from the past is still there reminding the owner, promises can be broken.

Angela enters the fibres of the tender Sirloin I was preparing for her boy. I sprinkle pepper and parsley over its reddish flesh. She crouches within a muscle cell. How does it feel touching the flesh of a slaughtered animal? It wasn’t the first time she mocked my vegetarianism. So, I grabbed the spiked hammer and throbbed the life out of her boy’s dinner. Her boy emits a hearty burp, wraps his arm around my apron and hits my cheeks with a sloppy kiss.

Angela’s eyes become greener, but I understand. The grass can sometimes be greener on the other side. There is a hurt woman within that tough exterior. Forgiveness and empathy arrive promptly when I think of flames, lovers and fragile walls of porcelain.


* * * * *

Isabelle B.L is a writer and teacher based in France. Her work can be found in the Best Microfiction 2022 anthology, Flash Fiction Magazine, Visual Verse, Cult Magazine and elsewhere. 

 

Stolen

by Myra King


She has misplaced her virginity. Cannot remember where or how, or when... The memory of her before lost in the archives of time, flitting around like something unamendable. Surely nowhere here she thinks, glancing sidewise at the Classifications: Autobiography. Romance. Crime. Self Help. She's not in a library, it's just three bookshelves at the end of the painted white corridor in Ward 10. Some of the stories are older than centuries and some are up to date, but who would write anything about her? She comes here every day. Reads passages from all her favourites. Takes them all out and then puts them back. Never sits down.

     Maybe these voices know. Where it is. Her misplaced virginity. Though she tries not to listen to them lately, not since they said they'd lock her in the bathroom. When she peed on her bedroom floor, the nurses made reassuring noises at her. Told her that no one would ever lock her in. "See," they said in unison, like twittering birds, and gesturing with open hands at the bathroom door with its blind handle, "there isn't even a lock to lock you in."
     Her dreams are locked in. They spin nightly to a Miss Havisham, Dickensian time, a desiccated wedding cake and tattered white dress.
     She touches Great Expectations with gentle fingers. A passage overrides her thoughts. She picks up the book and finds her marks. Every day begins the same.
     There's another pure laced dress out there, 90's fashionable, hers she is sure of it, cloistered in its plastic protection. Untattered, uncluttered, like some forgotten fairytale. But no forever after. And there's a man, handsome as a cowboy, but not as strong, out there too, who could not face her face after it happened.

     She sees that today there is a new book, remembers the author from her school years. She loves Thomas Hardy. Then she reads the title and her breathing quickens and her stomach feels like a fist. She smacks her forehead as if swatting a fly.

     Was it lost? Her virginity. Had it been ‘lost’? Not if it was taken. Then it would be stolen. Stolen. It's the quiet voice that says this. The one not loud enough to mind. Most days.

     She cannot recall when the words started inside her head. She thinks there were voices outside her head at the time she misplaced her virginity. Three of them, but young. Past the high slipping squeak of adolescent vocals. Perhaps not so young after all. And oh, so loud.
     She takes down the new old book from the shelf of Classics: Tess of the D'Urbervilles, blinks through the pages trying to snare her train of thought. Pauses at one scene - Hardy was so ahead of his time - she remembers this, but wonders why the R word with its simple four letters blurs her mind and runs away.

     She ignores the quiet voice. She has misplaced her virginity. Lost. To somewhere untouchable. So long ago... Surely, she thinks, it should not matter.
     She shakes her hair, tries to straighten the books to line their edges with the shelves' edges, measures perfection with flat palms held upright and outright like stop signs. It didn't help then and it doesn't help now. Her own voice raises crescendo. The words in her mind are tumbling, sparking behind closed lids. She knows the nurses will be here soon.
     She pulls down every book, fan-scattering pages, burying the newly arrived one, and then as footsteps come scurrying, slows her breathing, chooses a book from the pile, and begins again.


* * * * *

Myra King lives on Worlds End Highway in South Australia with her rescue greyhound, Sparky. Her poems and short stories, many of which have won awards, have been published in print and online, in literary magazines, anthologies and papers including Writing in a Woman's Voice, Puncher &Wattmann, October Hill NY, Islet, Boston Literary Magazine, Rochford Street Review, EDF, Heron's Nest and San Pedro River Review.

THROW LIKE A GIRL

 by Tina Klimas

“And though she be but little, she is fierce.”
—Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In all those long years
in a life of hiding—draped
in baggy clothes and careful speech—
may there be moments
of feeling mighty. Of being fierce.

Here she is, in a pristine uniform
and a baseball cap that almost
swallows her tiny face,
standing front and center
before coach—her stance eager,
electric, focused. Yet her hunger
remains largely ignored.
Coach occasionally tosses
a ball to her, which she returns,
each time, with a consistent,
powerful skill—remarkable
for one so young.

Instead, he targets
her teammates—little boys
who look like toddlers—
who sprawl out, fool around,
watch the kids on the slide,
call to my dog, sit in the grass
and pick at bugs, gaze at clouds.
One gets yelled at, gets up,
fidgets, misses the catch, scuffles,
winds up, and, like a ragdoll,
flings the ball. Which skids
on the ground to her feet—

the seed of bitterness dropping
into this moment. Does it
make her stumble? Does she wait
for praise that never comes?
Does the seed take root
to grow a lifetime of shame?
Because the balls will keep
coming—heedlessly hurtled
by boys who will refuse to stop
fooling around and pay attention,
who will grow into men
who will lob words at her,
at a different ball game,
about what they want to do
to her body.

Oh that, today, she sidesteps this missile!
Oh that the sun gilds her moment,
that she may be fierce.
So that she may anticipate
other golden moments unspooling
into her future. So that balls may
ricochet off of her might.


* * * * *

Tina Klimas's poems can be found in THEMA Literary Journal, Bear River Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Backchannels, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Willows Wept Review, and Glassworks Magazine. Her short fiction has also been published in several journals. She enjoys her writing life in Redford, MI where she lives with her husband and their dog.

YIELD —1. To bear fruit, 2. To surrender

by Tina Klimas


And here it is again
lying in ambush
at a flea market
in the rosy sun
of late summer—

a plaything, a paper kit
of stickers and games,
of dinosaurs and cowboys
with a flashy title
like fireworks, like gunfire
For Boys Only.

I am, we all are, in
adrenaline pumping,
body clenching, outraged
danger. The sleeping bear
stirs. But its rumblings
may as well be mute—
emitted into an oblivious
calm, in which everything
proceeds as usual.

The man beside me, studying
the crockery, ignores me.
My husband, two rows over,
nods and smiles indulgently.
My grown-up daughter tries to
convey understanding, while
simultaneously shushing me.

Okay.
So something must be misfiring.
With me.
Again.

A marauding army is not
coming to rape me. Nor
am I about to be chucked
into a Victorian asylum for
being hysterical. Not even
ten again and denied
Catholic church altar service

because I am a girl.

Just a bit of nostalgia, a toy.
Some believe this battle has been
fought and won. Of course,
it is not appropriate to
make a scene at an event
where everyone is united
in a common quest.
Life is, indeed, good.
Keeping the peace is a noble
and necessary endeavor.

The nagging but
is headed off, yet again.
And we eat greasy food
and buy more stuff.
What to make of these
passing moments when
it truly is the right answer
to behave and let it go—
when it always somehow
feels like
the wrong one?


* * * * *

Tina Klimas's poems can be found in THEMA Literary Journal, Bear River Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Backchannels, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Willows Wept Review, and Glassworks Magazine. Her short fiction has also been published in several journals. She enjoys her writing life in Redford, MI where she lives with her husband and their dog.

 

This month an additional Moon Prize, the 110th, goes to Gabrielle Yetter's thought-provoking poem "Why."


WHY

by Gabrielle Yetter


She tosses the lipstick-stained stub to the ground
Grinds it into the dirt with the heel of her stiletto
Inhales deeply
And turns back.
To one more man,
One more beer,
One more night of leering, groping, prodding, snorting
In the suffocating blackness
Where her soul vanishes inside an empty shell
And the wounds of her past sink into pits of pretense.

When the artificial smile and the artificial hair and the artificial nails
Reveal artificial canvases of pretend horizons,
All she can ask is
Why?

Then the door slams shut.
The lights go out.
Coins heavy in her pocket, she draws her coat tighter
To keep out the cold,
To keep in the pain,
To cover the scars
From probing eyes that pierce her skin once again.

Guarding her fractured heart, she walks
And walks
Footsteps echoing on the wet pavement
Until the key in her hand fits
And she stumbles down the steps,
Past her snoring neighbour spread out on the sagging couch
To the room where her treasure lies.
Eyes firmly closed with feathery lashes; ebony locks curled around the face of an angel.
A tiny hand.
Reaches out.
Holds, grasps, squeezes, breathes.
And she remembers.
Once again
The answer to the question,
Why?


* * * * *

"Why" is part of Gabrielle Yetter's new poetry collection And the Clouds Parted. 

Gabrielle Yetter is a former journalist who has lived in Bahrain, South Africa, USA, Cambodia, and the UK. She is author of Whisper of the Lotus, The Definitive Guide to Moving to Southeast Asia: Cambodia, The Sweet Tastes of Cambodia, Ogden the Fish Who Couldn’t Swim Straight, and Martha the Blue Sheep and co-author with her husband Skip of Just Go! Leave the Treadmill for a World of Adventure. Her poetry collection, And the Clouds Parted, was released in November 2022. She lives in East Sussex, UK and can be contacted at www.GabrielleYetter.com or gabrielle.yetter@gmail.com

 

This month's Moon Prize, the 109th, on today's Wolf Moon goes to Melanie Choukas-Bradley's magical poem "If I have loved you" summing up the wealth and rush of our all too short lives.


If I have loved you

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


Aren’t there those who so purely share your stratosphere
That you need not friend them on Facebook
Or even call when you’re in town?
What’s to be gained from rehashing old magic
Reminding you both that you have moved on?
If I have loved you, I hope you know

* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and 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 and had the good fortune to discover Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site featured several of her poems during 2022, including “How to Silence a Woman,” which won the February Moon Prize. “If I have loved you” was first published on New Year’s Eve and “Storyboards on the Diagonal” was published on New Year’s Day 2023. 

 

Domestic Life

by B. Lynne Zika


When I’m late for dinner,
when the soup is cold,
and he stands in the kitchen—
she’s late; she’s coming,
she’s late; she’s coming—
will he remember the morning sun
glazing my hair in copper and mica
so that he stood watching from the doorway
unwilling to leave?

When I forget to let the cat in,
when I open the windows and turn up the heat,
when I disappear behind a book, a mood,
a question not yet answered,
will he remember me in moonlight,
soft brush of night air
painting everything cool and silver,
his hand against the small of my back,
his lips brushing my forehead?

How long before the fire in his hands
cools to a friendly pat
and he stops aching for me in the night?
How long before yes, my darling
stretches in front of the fireplace
and wakes as an uh-huh and hmm?

I will leave him
before I watch the corpse of love
rot in the fields where we once made love,
night sky pebbled in quartzite,
the lady moon draping her hair around our shoulders,
singing us to sleep.
I will leave before the husbandry of pleasure
is buried in a compost of homemaking,
before household gadgetry
becomes the machinery of love.


* * * * *

B. Lynne Zika’s photography, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous literary and consumer publications. 2022 publications include Delta Poetry Review, Backchannels, Poesy, Suburban Witchcraft, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. In addition to editing poetry and nonfiction, she worked as a closed-captioning editor for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Awards include: Pacificus Foundation Literary Award in short fiction, Little Sister Award and Moon Prize in poetry, and Viewbug 2020 and 2021Top Creator Awards in photography. Website: https://artsawry.com/.

 

Dear Loretta,

by Sharon Waller Knutson

 
I was never a Coal Miners Daughter
from Butchers Hollow, never got
pregnant in my teens and never could
carry a tune but I worshipped you
when bare foot and pregnant you took the stage
in the sixties and shocked the country
singing songs you penned about birth control,
and fist fighting with floozies
who were sleeping with your husband
while birthing and bathing six babies.
I cheered when you humbly accepted eight
Country Music Awards including the first
female Country Entertainer of the Year
half a century ago. I worried when you
suffered a stroke and then fractured
your hip after falling off the stage
in your mid-eighties. I cried when barely
two weeks after you warbled
your last note at the age of ninety,
your successors, sixty something
redheaded Reba and thirty-nine-year-old
blondes Carrie and Miranda
sang your songs at the CMA Awards,
hoping your spirit would make one
of the blondes the first CMA female
entertainer of the year in ten years
and only the eighth in fifty-nine
years. Since they lost to a male,
please be an angel and finish
your work, Loretta.


* * * * *
 
Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published nine poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014,) What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021), and Survivors, Saints and Sinners and Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022). Her work has also appeared recently in Discretionary Love, Impspired, GAS Poetry, Art and Music, The Rye Whiskey Review, Black Coffee Review, Lothlorien Review, Silver Birch Press, ONE ART, The Drabble, Spillwords, Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review, and The Five-Two.

Distance Learning

by Claire Massey


As a child, she learns about endings, about unwanted beginnings. She remembers her father in the silvery bow of his skiff. He glides her over sandbars, through cloudless air and quiet water. They drift beside cordgrass and wax myrtle. She listens to a lullaby of slow drips from the paddle. He speaks. New wife, new baby, new life, another city. He will love her just the same. Of course, he will. She stops listening. She knows now he was young, susceptible in that way imperceptible to his daughter.

Her brother believes in Father Knows Best, philosophy is for sissies, all wars are necessary. He moves to Ohio. Kent State happens. He joins Veterans Against the War. A lifetime later, and still, he beats time on the wheel, sings with the radio, it ain’t me. I’m not your fortunate son. She knows now that distance transforms.

Her mother does not remarry. She puts herself through art school. She paints light in Italy, halos the heads of urchins, pensioners. Makes olive trees, gondolas, cathedral doors, glow. Her paintings sell. Christmas Eve prompts a phone call. You should have flown over, her mother says, heard the chorus. I’m sending you an oil of the candelabras. She knows now all mothers weren’t meant to mother.

Her lover said just give him time, the distance that creates perspective. For months she listens to break-up songs. I can’t make you love me if you don’t. Her father’s old maps are still in his trunk. She finds a good town and leaves first. She knows now what the gift of time costs.

Decades removed from her family of origin, her original lover, she strokes her skiff forward with ease, closes the distance to shore. She’s learned whitewater, how to dodge snags, run bars, stay upright in shoals, escape eddies that reverse the flow. She knows now how to read the currents that mean, she doesn’t have to paddle so hard.


* * * * *

Claire Massey finds joy in discovering and supporting literary artists who further our quest for understanding of self and the world. Among other journals, recent work has appeared in Snapdragon Journal of Art and Healing, Lucky Jefferson 365 Collection, Halfway Down the Stairs, POEM, Persimmon Tree and Bright Flash Literary Review. She is Poetry Editor for the quarterly magazine, The Pen Woman. Driver Side Window, her collection of flash stories, poems, memoir vignettes and interpretive photographs, debuted in October, 2022.

 

Beach Photo

by Claire Massey


I don’t remember
this portable playpen
from the 1950s
with fat, wooden slats
barely permitting
a view of the breakers.

Must have been my third
or second summer?
I look to be
a handful,
mid-century girl-child
howling for freedom,
a bar-rattling,
foot-stomping
rebel.

My mother watches
intently, looks to be
off-kilter,
losing equilibrium,
feet seeking leverage,
in the lopsided sand.

On a boardwalk distant,
my father levels a tripod,
narrows his focus,
closes an eye,
captures his subjects.


* * * * *

Claire Massey finds joy in discovering and supporting literary artists who further our quest for understanding of self and the world. Among other journals, recent work has appeared in Snapdragon Journal of Art and Healing, Lucky Jefferson 365 Collection, Halfway Down the Stairs, POEM, Persimmon Tree and Bright Flash Literary Review. She is Poetry Editor for the quarterly magazine, The Pen Woman. Driver Side Window, her collection of flash stories, poems, memoir vignettes and interpretive photographs, debuted in October, 2022.