seas

by Isabel del Rio

who would not want to live in the Moon

when it has

so many seas,

made from our very own dust and with

names that I can only

dream of:

the sea of nectar

sea of serenity

sea of foam

sea of vapours

sea of fecundity and sea of cleverness

sea of moisture

sea of humour

sea of clouds

even a lake of sleep

and only upon the sea of tranquility did Apollo astronauts walk

* * * * *

"four hundred times" is from Isabel del Rio's poetry collection The Moon at the End of my Street (published by Friends of Alice Publishing, 2016)

Isabel del Rio is a bilingual poet and writer living in London.  She has published fiction and poetry in both English and Spanish, and has worked extensively as a linguist and journalist.  Her writing has also appeared in anthologies and online magazines.  Her most recent published work of fiction is Zero Negative, a collection of short stories on the subject of bloodshed, and her latest poetry book is The moon at the end of my street.  Her forthcoming works are two collections of short stories and a novel.  She regularly takes part in readings and performance poetry events. Website:  www.isabeldelrio.com

BACK-BURNER LADIES               

by Lynea Search

Hello darlin’, I’m just callin’

Callin’ you to set things straight

Well you’ve been on the run

I hear you found someone

And this time the lady won’t wait

I hope you’ll understand

You’re such a special man

I know your other women would agree

But I can’t take any more

Of what you’ve got in store 

Baby, I’m tired of being . . . (one of your)

Back-burner ladies

Simmerin’ in your maybes

Givin’ you time

To make up your mind

While you were only playin’ a game

Stove-top stand-in

Love-burned mannequin

Now I’m ready for a lover

Who will give me

A front-burner flame

Hey now baby, I don’t think you see

Now I’m wise to your ways

And though you say you care

I just don’t think it’s fair

And someday honey you’ll have to pay

So now I’ll say goodbye

And I’ll try not to cry

While you’re out lovin’ somebody new

And if she says I do

Hope she’s enough for you

‘Cause I’m no longer

Spending my days (as one of your)

Back-burner ladies

Simmerin’ in your maybes

Givin’ you time

To make up your mind

While you were only playin’ a game

Stove-top stand-in

Love-burned mannequin

Now I’m ready for a lover

Who will give me

A front-burner flame

I said I’m ready for a lover

Who will give me

A front-burner flame

* * * * *

© Lynea Search

Youtube: Backburner Ladies

Girl Upon a Time

by Leonore Hildebrandt

Sky is a woven rug, a measured opening––

a “window,” from wind eye.

Hinges are smooth as ligaments,

and her fingers leave oily prints.

You may wear this tale

like a hat, a wondrous little hat

from the pelt of a mouse.

A canopy of swallows. The river’s steep banks.

The girl runs with the boys, then hides

in sprawling hedges––beech and rhododendron.

She knows a place to slip into––

lower the bridge, walk the sheep and fox,

cows and knights in procession to the fields.

The moat deepens. Look, poor Rapunzel’s

long braids uncoil from the sill.

The girl is looking under leaves

for mice and spiders.

She rips her sandwich for the dogs,

calls them her strays.

On a narrow sidewalk,

a little hairy man blocks her way

with his scales and knives.

She tries to run, sand sucks at her feet,

she stumbles, falls into the air's updraft––

her dress spreads like a sheet.

A girl is a cloud of dust.

In the yard, metal posts are sunk into holes.

On rainy days, they fill with water and bugs.

She hears of storm petrels, lit as lamps––

oily flames mounted on sticks, a wick shoved down the throat.

Things one cannot pronounce another way.

Clamor in the street––voracious brooms

suck in leaves and garbage.

The many worlds are falling––the seven brothers,

three sisters. She hides, counts her fingers.

This is the dry tongue of utterance.

                                                                                   

But the second son still goes out into the world

to learn about fear. At night,

bronzed in smoke, the seven ravens return.

The girl slips through a fence.

She is falling toward the upon-time,

against the luminous wind eye.

Her dress is woven into the sky.

In the sallow wax of morning, street lamps are bright nebulae.

The window’s stern eyes relent to swirls and river snails.

Worms bore holes,

scattered in the wooden frame.

She blows the dust, pulls up her hair.

* * * * *

"Girl Upon a Time" was first published in SWWIM, 23 October 2017 and is part of Leonore Hildebrandt's new collection Where You Happen to Be, (Deerbrook Editions, 2018)

Leonore Hildebrandt, https://leonorehildebrandt.com/, is the author of The Work at Hand, The Next Unknown, and Where You Happen to Be. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, Poetry Salzburg Review, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. Winner of the 2013 Gemini Poetry Contest, she received fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Maine Community Foundation, and the Maine Arts Commission. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Germany, Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine, and spends the winter near Silver City. She teaches writing at the University of Maine and serves on the editorial board of Beloit Poetry Journal.

Rock Me

by Leonore Hildebrandt

I have always done things the hard way––

cutting through razor wire, sitting in protest

until the cops yanked us by the hair.

After turning down the millionaire,

I boiled the baby’s diapers on the wood stove––

but in summer I danced into the pale light of morning.

There were men, there were women––

mostly I lived more fiercely than that,

my head full of road-songs, the secret of seeds,

Masters of War. Once I climbed an oak tree

I had planted thirty years before. The leaves,

like orange hands, pulled me high and higher.

When I went fasting in the woods,

the hours would open their mouths wider,

the verge of the pond carried on endlessly.

I know of padded cells and stifling nightmares.

But age is ageless. So rock me––like glass,

we are sharp, molten, shattered, redone. 

It’s like the death penalty––

once you have handed it down,

then do it, already. Don’t let it drag on.

* * * * *

"Rock Me" was first published in Gemini Magazine (First Prize in Open Contest) April 2013 and is part of Leonore Hildebrandt's new collection Where You Happen to Be (Deerbrook Editions, 2018)

Leonore Hildebrandt, https://leonorehildebrandt.com/, is the author of The Work at Hand,The Next Unknown, and Where You Happen to Be. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, Poetry Salzburg Review, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. Winner of the 2013 Gemini Poetry Contest, she received fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Maine Community Foundation, and the Maine Arts Commission. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Germany, Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine, and spends the winter near Silver City. She teaches writing at the University of Maine and serves on the editorial board of Beloit Poetry Journal.

Who are you in my dream?

by Judith Michaels Safford

Who are you in my dream?

I am the raven of your night

who snatches every broken heart you toss.

The one who stashes them tight in

your nightstand drawer,

the wounded hearts from childhood pain,

your broken heart from youth’s self-disdain,

and the hearts you’ve brushed aside like bread crumbs

when you thought you’d had enough and, yet, dissatisfied.

They sleep not, but lie in wait at the gate of each dream.

“Can you see me now?” They cry.

My wings spread wide as your protection

until your eyes feel safe to open.

And, even then,

I carry you.

* * * * *

In 2006, Judith Michaels Safford discovered a radio program on writing poetry. She followed the prompts and mustered up the courage to press the send button. She was invited to read and a door was open that had not previously existed. She finds that her emotions express more easily through poetry. Judith self-published her memoir in 2009. Don’t Sell Your Soul, Memoir of a Guru Junkie. Encouraged by a published poet-friend, she embarked on self-publishing a book of prayer poems. Joyful Surrender, A pilgrimage. Judith continues to practice a 23-year career as a licensed massage therapist. Today her home is Glenwood, New Mexico, where artists of many kind reside. Touching others with hands and poems brings a tremendous satisfaction of purpose to her life.

Chromosomes: Y-axis, solving for x

by Betsy Mars

Another night like the one you left

hanging, silenced. 

Another midnight chorus of why why why

shallows my breath, 

resounds in my brain -

beating, beaten.

The dangling ex ex ex, uncrossed: 

for wives, for chromosomes,

for kisses

shared or not -

a knot around your neck,

a not for your future, a not for your son

a knot in my throat, a not for any answers, 

X'd out. Suspended, 

with no hope 

to know your whys ways. 

* * * * *

Betsy Mars is a southern California poet who is in a perpetual battle with change – finally coming to some kind of a truce, and at times even love and acceptance. She is an educator, mother, animal lover, and over-excited traveler. Her poetry has been published in a number of places, both online and in print, most recently in Sheila-Na-Gig, The Ekphrastic Review, and Red Wolf Journal. Writing has given her a means to explore her preoccupation with mortality and her evolving sense of self.

Sub Rosa

by Betsy Mars

What’s in a name? A tale of many things
past and present.
As it happens, when I think
I remember childhood taunts
and oft-told stories of
the origins of my names, juxtaposed:
On the one side,
a beloved grandmother/mother surrogate
and on the other, an incontinent doll, Betsy Wetsy.
A savior, a cow, and a seamstress
all merged together under pressure to form
a multifaceted but conflicted image of what a
Betsy was
Davy Crockett’s gun. The woman who nurtured
the woman who nurtured me. A magic bus.

Betsy was expected to be rejected
for my middle name, Andrea.
More sophisticated, I was told,
but also indicative of dysfunction:
a tribute to my mother’s psychiatrist, André,
the man who nurtured the woman
who was neglected by her father
and rejected by her mother.
Not a common story in my white collar,
aerospace engineer, stay-at-home mom neighborhood.

What’s in a name? A chocolate bar
by any other name would taste as sweet.
The sound of Marsbar was cloying
and repetitive, alternating with
allusions to little green men and Uranus,
such ridicule unanticipated by my grandfather
as he abandoned his unspellable, unacceptable
name at the entry point
by force or by choice in favor
of the simplicity and grace and unbloodied
history of Mars, the God of War.

What’s in a name?
Had I arose by any other name, I would not be me.

* * * * *

"Sub Rosa" was first published by Silver Birch (July 2, 2015).

Betsy Mars is a southern California poet who is in a perpetual battle with change – finally coming to some kind of a truce, and at times even love and acceptance. She is an educator, mother, animal lover, and over-excited traveler. Her poetry has been published in a number of places, both online and in print, most recently in Sheila-Na-Gig, The Ekphrastic Review, and Red Wolf Journal. Writing has given her a means to explore her preoccupation with mortality and her evolving sense of self.