The eighth Moon Prize* goes to Allyson Whipple's magical flash fiction "The Meditative Moon"—backdating to the full moon of April 11, 2017.

The Meditative Moon

by Allyson Whipple

The moon had grown restless. After eons and eons of the same routine, she had come to resent her responsibility to Earth and its tides. She was tired of asteroids and comets brushing against her, marring her skin. She felt old, tired, and dried up.

            The sun advised her not to make any rash decisions, and advised her to take up zazen, to calm her restlessness and help her find contentment with her place in the universe.

            On her hundredth day of meditation, the moon had a realization, and the realization was that meditation wasn’t going to help her at all. The sun had just suggested it so as to keep her in line. She was sick and tired of having to reflect his light or sit and shiver in his shadow.

            It took all of her strength, but she broke free of her orbit and went soaring through space like the ship that had once landed on her back and pierced a flagpole through her brittle skin. As though she was anyone’s territory. As the moon picked up velocity, the flag flew off and got sucked into a black hole.

            Now it was her turn to crash into a few planets and shake things up.

* * * * *

Allyson Whipple is an MFA student at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, most recently Come Into the World Like That (Five Oaks Press). Allyson teaches at Austin Community College.

* The Moon Prize ($91) is awarded once a month on the full moon for a story or poem posted in Writing In A Woman's Voice during the moon cycle period preceding a full moon. I don't really want this to be competition. I simply want to share your voices. And then I want to pick one voice during a moon cycle for the prize. I fund this with 10% of my personal modest income. I wish I could pay for each and every poem or story, but I am not that rich. (Yet.) For a little while only there will be two awards each month, on the day of the full moon and the day after, until I catch up with past postings.

Why 91? 91 is a mystical number for me. It is 7 times 13. 13 is my favorite number. (7 isn't half bad either.) There are 13 moons in a year. I call 13 my feminist number, reasoning that anything that was declared unlucky in a patriarchal world has to be mystically excellent. Then there are 4 times 91 days in a year (plus one day, or two days in leap years), so approximately 91 days each season. In some Mayan temples there are or were 91 steps on each of four sides. Anyway, that's where the number 91 comes from, not to mention that it's in the approximate neighborhood of 100.

The seventh Moon Prize* goes to Jill Crainshaw's poem "Biorhythmic Resistance"—backdating to the full moon of March 12, 2017. A reminder to live and breathe in difficult times. Congratulations on a shining poem of hope, Jill Crainshaw.

Biorhythmic Resistance

by Jill Crainshaw

The waxwings visited today. They
know when at winter’s spring-ward edge

to harvest our backyard cedar’s frosted
blue berries. Sometimes the luck of

wildness calls my eyes skyward, and
I see them, masked urban foragers

warming naked Jack Frost trees with
ephemeral browned-butter flames.

And then they are gone. They brush
still-cold blue skies with tails dipped in

sunflower yellow, leaving no sign 
they were ever here at all. But as I

watch them fly away, an ancient promise
caresses my face. When an uninvited

stranger occupies our terrace, holds minds
hostage to chaotic rhythms, desperate

to rewire fragile dreams to his own 
narcissistic gravity, this is how we

resist. We synchronize our wings to
creation’s pace and breathe in and out

the spiraling balm of hope. And then we
live as people who remember, who

know in the marrow of our bones:
the waxwings will visit again.

* * * * *

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.

* The Moon Prize ($91) is awarded once a month on the full moon for a story or poem posted in Writing In A Woman's Voice during the moon cycle period preceding a full moon. I don't really want this to be competition. I simply want to share your voices. And then I want to pick one voice during a moon cycle for the prize. I fund this with 10% of my personal modest income. I wish I could pay for each and every poem or story, but I am not that rich. (Yet.) For a little while only there will be two awards each month, on the day of the full moon and the day after, until I catch up with past postings.

Why 91? 91 is a mystical number for me. It is 7 times 13. 13 is my favorite number. (7 isn't half bad either.) There are 13 moons in a year. I call 13 my feminist number, reasoning that anything that was declared unlucky in a patriarchal world has to be mystically excellent. Then there are 4 times 91 days in a year (plus one day, or two days in leap years), so approximately 91 days each season. In some Mayan temples there are or were 91 steps on each of four sides. Anyway, that's where the number 91 comes from, not to mention that it's in the approximate neighborhood of 100.

Give Me That Grab-Bag Religion

by Lynne Thompson

                        1.

The world is a grabbag; the world

Is full of heathens who haven’t seen the light;

Do it, Mr. Missionary.

                        2.

God’s neon advertisement: The sermon this morning

will be “Jesus Walks on Water.”  The sermon tonight:

“Searching for Jesus.” It’s miracles in the A.M.,

gone to crap by o’dark-thirty. Any congregation

that understands that is just the place for me.

Check out Sunday night’s bulletin: The Church

will host an evening of fine dining,

superb entertainment and gracious hostility.

In another: Don’t let worry kill you—

let the church help. Finally, someone is listening!

Even listening when I come to sing:

The senior choir invites any member of the

congregation who enjoys sinning to join the choir.

I tell them I’m an alto and always in demand.

                        So, 3.,

I’ve found my holy temple. The king of kings,

his minions, and all their silly pastimes

designed to return me to the fold,

devised to aggravate my faith:

The Associate Minister has unveiled

the church’s new tithing plan—

I’ve already upped my pledge, now up yours.

* * * * *

"Give me that Grab-Bag Religion" was first published in Beg No Pardon (Perugia Press, 2007).

Fear, that good hallucinogen
after your diagnosis we walk the shoreline in humid July

by Ellen LaFleche

  

The clouds are murky dark as Rorschach blots. 

I see something witchy in the ink,
swirl of robe, handle of broom.
A cauldron bulging with brews that could cure you.

You see a woman in the murk.
Hipped and droop-breasted,
damp hair drizzling down  her back.  

Thunder prowls in from the west,

a fanged animal growling for the kill.
 

The ocean is all foaming smoke and hissing cinders.
A mermaid leans over the prow of a wave,
ghost nets shawled around her shoulders.  

Lightning tasers the surf. The zap,

the crackling flash. 

The ocean splits in fiery half.

Gulls glow in the sky's X-ray chamber.
I see your irradiated face bones -
the animal trap of your jawline,
the twin knives of your cheeks.

You see my winged pelvis,

that good guardian angel.
You kneel on a carpet of kelp
and take her into your arms. 

* * * * *

Ellen LaFleche is the author of three chapbooks: Workers' Rites (Providence Athenaeum), Beatrice (Tiger's Eye Press) and Ovarian (Dallas Poets Community Press.)  She won the Tor House Poetry Prize, the New Millennium Poetry Prize, the Hunger Mountain Prize, and the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Prize.  She is an assistant judge for the North Street Book Prize and a freelance editor.  She is currently finishing a manuscript tentatively titled Walking into Lightning with a Metal Urn in My Hands, a collection of poems following the death of her husband to ALS. "Fear, that good hallucinogen" is part of that work in progress.

HALE-BOPP

by Pat M. Kuras

Shortly before her stroke,

I brought my mother

to the driveway

beside our noble pine

and pointed

to the Japanese comet,

a fuzzy speck

in the sky.

One night,

a year later,

I stood beside her grave

and imagined

we were together

looking at the majesty

of Hale-Bopp.

Now there was a comet!

* * * * *

Pat M. Kuras has published poems in Crab Creek Review, Misty Mountain Review, Nerve Cowboy and One Sentence Poems. She has two chapbooks of poetry: Hope: Newfound Clarity (2015) and Insomniac Bliss (2017), both from IWA Publishing Services.

First Morning

by Catherine Alexander

            You tell your husband you want to get away. You need time to think about the marriage. Two decades of living together. He says let’s end it right now and be done. He’s angry, but he doesn’t clench his fist.

            You move out ten miles away to a sunny apartment on the third floor facing Moon Bay. The first morning after all the boxes have been stacked on the carpet, you look out to see a blue heron posing, as if frozen, on a piling. You abandon the boxes and take the stairs down to visit the heron. You say your name is Jane and you’ve just moved here. That your sixteen-year-old daughter is furious. And that you’re afraid of being alone.

You look around. The neighborhood seems so strange. Your mind returns to the empty kitchen, your empty stomach. The fridge is clean, but bare. You didn’t take time to find the closest supermarket. Right now you’d do anything for coffee and a warm Danish.

            The bay water is full of lily pads and frogs. Cherry trees are budding. Looking up at your apartment from the bay, you spy your bicycle on the deck where the movers have put it. You have an idea. A short ride takes you to a little coffee shop three blocks away.

Turns out it’s a small market with a coffee stand in front where you get a warm cinnamon roll and coffee with real cream. With the first taste, the sweetness of the roll and the bitterness of the coffee comfort you.

In the store, you find milk, bread, eggs and a box of tissues. By the checkout are a few white writing pads about the size of the paperbacks displayed to the left of the counter. You set one pad among your purchases as you scan the book covers.

The bag easily fits into your Schwinn basket. You cruise home. After putting the eggs and butter in the fridge, you leave the bread and tissue box in the bag and rush to sit on the deck. You must not miss the heron. Bending over the railing, you spot the bird. Maybe you could try drawing it.

You go back in the kitchen and realize the white pad never made it into the bag. You paid for it, but there’s no receipt. You want to go back. But you worry about facing the clerk.

Just forget it. Don’t worry about a couple of dollars. You can always get a better notebook, once you discover where the big stores are.

Best to attack the boxes and put everything in its place. You open a few with a box cutter.

First box you tackle is marked “Dishes.” The busy pattern you never liked. But you put all the plates and bowls in the kitchen cabinets and go on to the next box, bedding that fits easily into the linen closet. Two boxes of books spill open. If only a pad were among them.

You break up the boxes you’ve emptied and stack them in the hall by the door, ready to go out.

But where is the recycle bin? You look out the window to check and glimpse that blue heron again. The bird turns toward you. What an elegant, proud creature. You’ve got to draw it. Better go back and fetch that pad.

You wheel the bike from the deck through the apartment and out the door. Seems like a long ride down the elevator.

At the little market, the pad’s still on the counter. The others are all gone. But the person behind the register is someone different. This one’s old, has a grizzled beard and glum face. Maybe he’s the boss and owns the store. Your heart begins to race as you point to the pad. The old man stares as if you’re an imposter. You try to explain that you just paid for this notebook, didn’t get a receipt and the other clerk forgot to include it in the bag.

The old guy doesn’t seem to understand English. You want to grab the pad because it belongs to you. But your heart pounds and the coffee you had earlier churns in your stomach.

In a minute there’s your chance. The old man turns around to straighten some Marlboros on the shelf. Now go for it. Snatch the pad and run!

Pedaling back home, you turn to see if the man might be chasing you. Makes no sense, a man his age. You arrive at your building, notebook in hand.

Up the elevator you go, through your apartment and out onto the deck. There you find the blue heron still sitting on the piling by the bay, right where you left it.

You pick up the pad and a pencil. But your hands tremble. Maybe the old man has managed to follow you and is downstairs. How crazy. All for a two-dollar notebook.

Relax. It’s only your first morning.

So you open the pad. It has no lines. Good. Your hand is still shaky. You tell it to stop.

And finally it obeys. The pencil in your hand glides over the blank page, creating the line of the heron’s long neck, just as it turns its head toward you.

Hello beautiful, you say. Don’t move until I’m through.

* * * * *

"First Morning" was first published in When Women Waken, Fear Issue, Fall 2015.

Catherine Alexander, Pushcart Prize nominee, has published stories in 33 literary journals, including North Atlantic Review, Rosebud (two successive issues), Bryant Literary Review, Rockhurst Review and won "Jurors' Choice" in Spindrift. National Public Radio has aired her work.  Her story, “Backyards,” was performed by Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle in TV’s CSI) in a Los Angeles Word Theatre production. She has taught fiction and memoir at Edmonds Community College, University of Washington, Horizon House in Seattle, writing conferences, senior centers and to homeless groups. She now leads a private class in Seattle. Living in Edmonds, Washington, with her dogs and a Maine Coon cat, she’s presently laboring over a novel.

THE NARCISSIST’S CONFESSION

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Before I was your wife I

was a narcissist.

Before that I was a dyke.  

Before you I loved an artist. Big

cock. No ambition. I wanted him

to change. His cock shrank.  

I poured sugar in his gas tank

to teach him a lesson.    

What civilized person  

acts like that?  

Before I was your wife I loved a  

woman. After sex

her scent lingered 

on my upper lip. 

Eau de Desperation.

But you, baby

smell like success, old

east-coast money,

Episcopalian bebop, those

blue eyes focused Godward when

you come.

It took me forever,

stepping on them to get to

you. Sometimes

I wonder how

I managed to climb

over all those

bodies.

* * * * *

©-Alexis Rhone Fancher

"The Narcissist's Confession" was first published in Poeticdiversity, 2014.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is the author of How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and other 

heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), and Enter Here (2017). 

She is published in The Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Slipstream, Hobart, Cleaver, The 

MacGuffin, Poetry East, Plume, Glass, and elsewhere. Her photographs are published 

worldwide, including the cover of Witness, Heyday, and Nerve Cowboy, and a spread in River 

Styx. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural 

Weekly. She lives in Los Angeles. Find out more at: www.alexisrhonefancher.com.