My Body as Rock Creek Park

by Deborah Hefferon

 

My body meanders through

the city on a sweet braided network

of nectar-reconnaissance:                                               wild,

 

wooded, quarried, and scrambled.

Smooth as packed sandy soil,

its eroded banks echo a Kingfisher’s scolding.

 

My body is like the shallow cap

of the red oak’s acorn, a patchwork

of outcroppings, panic grass and nettles,

 

rising to the crowns of white oaks,

strumming with cicadas,                                             darting

among blue damselflies.

 

Half a billion-year-old rippled

rock angles through polypody ferns

and paw paw                                         leaping              down to the wooded

 

stream valley, splashing into clarity.

My body is a therapist, a refuge,

a samara                                               whirling                        in full flower          and in bud.       

 

* * * * *

Deborah Hefferon is a recently retired cross-cultural communication trainer in Washington DC who morphed into a full time writer during the pandemic. She has had poems and essays published in Prospectus: A Literary Offering (spring 2021), Teach. Write.: A Writing Teachers’ Literary Journal (Spring-Summer 2021), District Lines (Winter 2018, Politics & Prose, Washington, DC), Ekphrastic Review (2020), Story64, anderbo.com, The Washington Post Sunday Magazine, and other print and online publications.

Winter

by Andrea Smith


The crunching snow
The signal to doom
The rings and the clicks
The voice at the other end; tiresome, exasperated
The howling wind
The shoveling grazing the pavement
Tires screech; the shock simmers
the settling slush
or a slip on a patch of ice
purposely or accidentally
Felt in a frantic frenzy
crackling fire cozy for two
or the sound of collapse
Every word topples my faith
The moon blasts a message
I bypass and listen to nonsense
My thoughts grinding into insanity
As the wind picks up
I fear this is my discontent
Half of my heart frozen
Shattered like a felled icicle
The droplets in tune with my broken heart
This is humiliation exposed
Boots dragging through the snow
The whoosh of snowballs
I am assaulted with chilly conversation


* * * * *

Andrea Smith can usually be found telling Alexa to play her favorite songs. She empties her mind by telling stories. The mother of two lives in Delaware County, Pennsylvania with her cat (Simba). She is best known for her cooking skills and reading books. She also writes non-fiction on uncomfortable subjects and other topics from books to true crime.  She finds joy in wine and knitting. No blog yet, but stay tuned.

Owed

by Reena Kapoor


I have answers for the complacent ones, who lounge in their stupor
Bleating on: What can we do? we are too little, too weak, too far away…
What answers do I give to those who were battered themselves
Whose bones were hacked, lives torn up like secondhand trash
What do we tell those who cry: I was there.
It was me they felled; the rest simply walked away…

I think of you often and wonder what dreams you left unfinished
How much your mother cried, or couldn't—even as she bled
When your father stopped breathing, every breath hurt so much
Whither those you touched now drift, emptied by humanity's betrayal

Yet there were those who simply left you for dead, near dead
"What could have we done?" "We are but helpless..." Indeed!
"It is the system that's so rotten" they most boisterously proclaim
Then secure their homes to rebirth the same wretched filth

Maybe the sleeping wrath you woke will howl unto hell
Maybe the world will move on—unmoved
Maybe one day you'll come back, seek us out for an answer
Was it me or your dharma that was raped that day?


* * * * *

*dharma = duty/ righteousness in Hinduism

Author's note: Originally this poem was written for “Nirbhaya,” who was fatally raped and brutalized in India on December 16, 2012, but applies to any girl or woman who suffered a similar fate while we stood by. Molestation, rape and sexual assault of women in public spaces is often written off rather euphemistically as “eve teasing” in India; while things have marginally improved in terms of awareness, this type of violence continues to shake the country’s conscience all too often.

Growing up an “army brat” in India, Reena Kapoor feels lucky to have lived all over the country. Reena has been muddling with poetry for over a decade. Arrivals & Departures is her debut poetry collection. Her poems take the reader on journeys through a multitude of places and time periods. Reena can be found at her blog https://arrivalsanddepartures.substack.com/. As the 2020-21 playwright-in-residence for EnActe Arts, a Bay Area theatre company, four plays by Reena were produced in April 2021. Reena’s photography can be found on Instagram at @1stardusty.

 

MOTHER/DAUGHTER DAY

by Michelle Meyer

 
I pulled my hand out of her hand
somewhere around Maurice’s, Cinnabon or
possibly Orange Julius.
 
We were having one of our Mother/Daughter days.
They were always at the mall.
Madonna was always singing Like a Virgin.
 
It was 1984. I was 14. I was
awkward.
 
She reached for my hand to reassure me, to say,
I’m always here for you. To say,
Don’t grow up just yet—don’t go
into that dressing room as my only girl and emerge
as your own woman.
 
I let go
of her hand.
 
I let go
of her hand and grabbed a pair of stirrups—
the kind that everyone at school was wearing.
 
I walked into the dressing room and
I changed.

* * * * *


Michelle Meyer is a freelance copy/content/blog writer specializing in performing arts, boutique, and specialty business. She has written, directed, and produced numerous live theatre skits and plays and her poems have been published in Australia and the Midwestern region of the U.S. When Covid season struck in 2020 she facilitated a 52-week collaborative online installation of women’s visual art based on 52 of her poems from The Book of She, a collection of character vignettes devoted to women. Find the whole book on Instagram @meeshmeyerwrites

Sweet Refuge

by Djehane Hassouna


Unable to wrap her small arms completely around me,
She attempts to comfort me as best as she can.
Building a nest for my heart, wiping my tears with
Her tiny hands, she says, “Mina, don’t cry! I love you
And I won’t let anything bad happen to you!”
Throughout the years, constantly encouraging me,
Her sweet smile was my only hope as she whispered
Softly, “May God help me build a palace for you!”
Thankful, I replied, “You are my palace and my crown,
My Heaven and my sunshine! You are my everything!”
Her presence causes sadness to vanish, anxiety to fade,
And problems to disappear! Like a shining star,
She fills my world with light. She has always been
My constant source of joy, my reason for happiness,
My only expectation for the Future! Away from her,
I stop being alive! When I see her, I radiate bliss!
I wish I could grant her every wish, brighten her world,
And give her as much joy as she’s given me!
“Tu es mon cadeau du ciel!” I keep repeating,
And I mean every word...


* * * * *

"Sweet Refuge" is part of Djehane Hassouna's poetry collection Rainbow of Emotions (Tellwell Talent, 2020).

Djehane Hassouna began her poetic journey in Egypt. She expresses her feelings thus mirroring her life through poetry in French and English. As she writes, her emotions transform into verse, and Djehane becomes one with her poetry.
Djehane received her BA in French from Catholic University, her MA in Comparative Literature from Vermont College, and her PhD in Romance Languages/Literatures from University of Pittsburgh.
Djehane is patient, resilient, and her creativity has no bounds.  She continues to write poetry despite her struggle with Parkinson's disease… In 2020, she published her first book of poetry, Rainbow of Emotions.

 

You

by Shreya Dhital


You appear and
the furrow between my brows 
leaves a grin in its wake 


* * * * *

Shreya was six years old when she first discovered the magic words can create. To further explore words that could be strung together to structure meaningful sentences and captivating stories, Shreya began her journey as a writer. 

Seen

by Rebecca McSwain

 
In countless photographs, behind the lens,
she was invisible, or at most a shadow to be edited out
as necessary, e.g. from the plaza at Santa Fe, late afternoon. 
She was absent from Bodega Bay, where sea lions swam suspended in crystal waves,
and again not there in Idaho, at the dark lake just south of Coeur d’Alene.
She was not present on a Sonoran desert ridge at twilight,
nor at dawn in a field of Kansas sunflowers.
 
Then in a too-bright eastern room (Vermont),
one picture that hung on a noncommittal white-washed wall
showed her reflection in the windshield of a truck,
a blurred shiny woman, small camera in hand.
A mistake.  But still, there she was.
That had been the day when
near an escarpment above the Guadalupe River
one of her fellow travelers, a geologist,
casually reached out to touch on something
universal and timeless.
 
She knows by now that human stories, pictured,
take the eye in unexpected directions.
Solid form and high-gloss color
lead into amorphous shadows, deep and black,
 
and the missing parts of an image of herself
might finally become clear,
when her eye connects them all,
finding and seeing, leaving nothing out.


* * * * *

Rebecca McSwain has been an archaeologist, an editor, and a medical transcriptionist. Her poem "Normal" was published in The Hiram Poetry Review. Spring 2021. As Madalyne Della, her story "A Hat and a Mirror" was published in Scribble online and nominated for a Pushcart prize.
Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Contest, anthology publication forthcoming.