Fluctuating Tides

By Francesca West

Tides in the ocean

All the water, always there.

Pulled high on shore

Only to rush out and leave the rocks bare.

I fill myself up with ideas of who I am.

I strip them all away to see what’s really there. 

This water, constant oneness, 

Never separates me from myself.

Now ready to give up determining 

If I am great, or lessened,

Depending on where I break along the shore.

Tides in the ocean cannot sway me anymore.

Visions of Paradise

by Francesca West

I have visions of paradise,

But do actions reflect that in my daily life?

It’s the sunshine I give up for storm clouds.

The drops of rain I let rise above the cooling ground, 

Yet, like the sun, paradise is always around.

I get concentrated on chasing the rain away,

Instead of letting it hit me like a crashing wave,

A tsunami washing over how I mentally behave.

These visions are far beyond the pain I could live in.

To always want the sun’s assurance shown 

While blocked from brightness

By the walls of an inner prison.

Because the mindset I manifest 

So often puts my power on low,

To have the budding leaves on trees

And how they should grow,

But not in the shadows,

And I stand alone,

Crying, I’m a helpless victim to what these clouds do!

The ones I know, grew, and use that block out my own view.

They are water of attachment to self-abuse.

You can live in darkness, escaping the sun,

Or become still within where

The Source has won.

My ego is alive and dying every day.

I see these visions of paradise rise 

Every time I calm my brain.

Scattering glimpses of the sun’s brilliant rays.

I know life’s looking at chaos either way,

I’d rather grab the warmth of change 

Than live with this complacent rain.

See the clouds dissipate,

The trees realizing they don’t have to wait!

For they can live with a sun that’s shining, 

But they must first make themselves 

One the sun can be finding.

It’s called creating Spring,

The Emotional Awakening.

Our collective ritual

by Kashiana Singh

Invitation to my nectar, I give in ritual
You flow with secrets of my belly
You spin inside my chambers
You are a sound to my vacuum
Moaning I release, your absence
You are my deepest love, bleeding
I dance, as you flow full into the earth
Creating an echoing voice, of fertility
Goddess healing deep within her womb
You return to me, my virility in healing
A reclamation of the cosmos to my womb
You flow confessional, my muscles reclaim
As they constrict and contract, shredding
Life as it pulses its way, cyclical
You flow in rich flourish, I restore, reclaim
My warmth now a place of authentic lyrics
Unleashed, received at my feminine altar
A collective ritual, purging our spirits
Of restrictive blocking, bringing alive
Our sacred, rejecting disharmony

Discarding rituals of limitations
Our collective blessing, journey with the moon

* * * * *

Kashiana Singh, 51, is a management professional by job classification and a work practitioner by personal preference. Kashiana’s TEDx talk was dedicated to the topic - Work as Worship.

Her poetry collection, Shelling Peanuts and Stringing Words dips into very vulnerable and personal contexts but also explores the shifting tectonic plates of the world around her.

She is from India, now lives in Chicago and bridges the miles by regularly etching her thoughts on her poetry blog – kashiana.wordpress.com. Her work has appeared regularly on platforms like OnMogul, Literary Yard, Best Poems. She is in the process of gathering her second collection of poems.

Sweet Home Alabama

by Kashiana Singh

99 years today 
Does Alabama realize the 9 minutes 
9 impeccable minutes that take away 
her dreams about other possibilities 
it takes just about that much 
to abort her fragility, to extinguish her 
it takes just about that much for him 
to man up, be aroused, lose presence 
of mind and meaning, to be werewolf 
it takes 9 seconds or less, to eliminate 
all that lies inside her veins, her eyes 
it takes just a few abuses, to riddle 
her mind with a lifetime of screams 
in 9 mins a woman’s womb is ghosted 
with vultures and a clawing desire of 
men sanctioning their own degradation 
men who exist with a phallic domination 
like the animal, who exists by primal needs 
in 9 mins, a woman is tattooed in dark 
images of fetus thrown to the devil 
sacrificed to the altar of an earth, where 
9 mins can lead to 99 years, if a woman 
chooses 
a sombre existence 
over a solemn birth 
chooses 
a constellation 
over blinking nightlights 
chooses 
the impossible journeys 
over obvious exit signs 

9 mins of her life, annihilates 
her into a wreckage and we 
still chest thump pro-life theories 

Sweet Home Alabama

* * * * *

Kashiana Singh, 51, is a management professional by job classification and a work practitioner by personal preference. Kashiana’s TEDx talk was dedicated to the topic - Work as Worship.

Her poetry collection, Shelling Peanuts and Stringing Words dips into very vulnerable and personal contexts but also explores the shifting tectonic plates of the world around her.

She is from India, now lives in Chicago and bridges the miles by regularly etching her thoughts on her poetry blog – kashiana.wordpress.com. Her work has appeared regularly on platforms like OnMogul, Literary Yard, Best Poems. She is in the process of gathering her second collection of poems.

Happy day after the full moon. The forty-second Moon Prize, goes to Joani Reese's haunting poem "Elegy."

Elegy

by Joani Reese

Like sinews stretched until they snap,

I finally reach that no return. 

I banish man-child from my home,

and toss his troubles to the curb 

as rage cements his fisted heart

that once fluttered beneath my own. 

A hardened man, he won't admit 

rash choices formed his bitter mien, 

and if he ever loved someone, 

his mirrored body sat that throne. 

I finally extract my life, 

aware he'll never own his fate; 

he'll stumble 

forward, fall alone, 

his troubles blamed on everyone.

How strange to think, innocent, young, 

he was my laughing, blue-eyed son. 

Each angry man leaps from a boy 

tempered by existential harm. 

Embracing hate, his ire thrums, 

this one who never caught the ring, 

nor sang a song, nor loved someone. 

A frightened boy dwells in this man 

who claims he can control the storm; 

he'll realize, but far too late,

he's just another wind-tossed pawn. 

Drug ravaged, drunken, stumbling on, 

a sunken wraith, an eidolon,

his threnody's a sorrow song,

a dirge lamenting damage done. 

All kindness gone, he's flown apart,

a puzzle piece lost in the dark. 

I stand detached and mustn't grieve

his leaving or lie to the truth. 

I have no time for a fresh start,

prepare for years missing that heart 

that once beat softly, safe 

beneath my own.

Happy full moon. The forty-first Moon Prize goes to Paula R. Hilton's beautiful poem "Cherophobia."

Cherophobia

by Paula R. Hilton

is a ridiculous word

for my condition: Fear

of happiness. For months,

I refuse to admit

pleasure can live

in a world without you.

But today, on the trail

we used to hike every

morning, an old man

in white sneakers

and belted blue jeans

got my attention.

He waved me toward

the clearing where he

stood, staring, into a jungle

of pines, magnolias

and live oaks, thick vines

twined around their trunks.

Spanish moss,

soft and gray, dangled

from the oaks’ branches,

whispering Florida’s secrets

into the late January breeze.

I don’t know why I chose

to stand next to this elder

as if he wasn’t a stranger.

Maybe it was his conspiratorial tone:

 “Ever see a pileated woodpecker?”

“Not outside of photographs.”

The ease of my answer,

another surprise. Since

I lost us, I’ve tried not to speak

to anyone I don’t have to bear.

I followed his gaze

to the upper mid-point

of a slash pine.

“There’s the nest.”

He turned, pointed

to where our trail makes

that curve we love.

To the precise spot

where our woods

grow wilder still.

“I lost sight of it.

That’s the direction it flew.”

His eyes, the color

of searing summer

beach day sky, framed

by white lashes,

crinkled. Smiled.

“Hope you find it.

It’s a wonder.”

There was kindness

in the squeeze

he gave my elbow

before he disappeared,

leaving me to my quest.

Though I never spotted

the woodpecker, its body

the size and color of a crow,

never got to see the white stripes

running down its neck, or its

flaming red crest, I did,

finally, hear it, hidden inside

our favorite tangle of trees,

tapping, rapping, knocking.

* * * * *

Paula R. Hilton is a novelist who explores the ways deeply flawed people can still be forces of good in the world. Her fiction, essays and poetry have appeared on The Feminine Collective and NPR's This I Believe website as well as in a number of literary journals, including Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, The Tulane Review and Ellipsis. Hilton's debut novel, Little Miss Chaos, received the Kirkus star for books of exceptional merit.