The Cloud

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


The clean smoke of the cloud
Drifts over and through us
As it starts to rain
Like a sideways kiss
Little more than mist

We are back in the mountains,
You and I, after forty years gone
And I am seized with a fever to climb and explore
And never go back to the city

We are old but still sure-stepping over root and rock
Tell me, have we come home?

I knew you were the one for me when I lay down in the snow,
Behind this house,
Age 21, temperature: zero
And instead of calling out my craziness
You lay down next to me
And we stayed side by side watching the clouds
Drift over the high peaks

Back from a graduation trip to Greece
You met my plane in Montreal
And we couldn’t keep our hands off each other

That was another knowing
Followed by the best sandwich ever
On thick white bread with butter
That you made and handed me on the back porch steps

I knew for certain then that we were home
Are we now?


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley grew up wandering the woods of Vermont. She is the award-winning author of seven nature books. Melanie lives near Washington, DC where she leads nature and forest bathing walks for Smithsonian Associates and many other organizations. She is author of City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, The Joy of Forest Bathing and, most recently, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and Resilience: Connecting with Nature in a Time of Crisis. Melanie has been a longtime contributor to The Washington Post and frequent guest on NPR and its affiliates. She began writing poetry during the pandemic.

 

You Would Never Know
(Too Wild for the Suburbs)

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


Who would have thought that I
Wild flower child
Would land in a suburb

Yet here I am, reining myself in
To the proper level of decorum
Picking up the morning paper clothed

Mowing the lawn
Serving on boards with lawyers
Where I feel like the Lorax

“I speak for the trees!”
As I travel the sidewalks
I seek constant contact

With hedges and shrubs
Brushing my body against them
Especially fond of the prickly ones

Walking under low-hanging ginkgoes
To feel their leaf fans in my hair
Squatting outside shucking corn over the compost pail

Which is emptied on Mondays
I remember giving birth in this position, twice
I can binge watch Netflix with the best of them

But between episodes
I’m out talking to the toads in the cellar hole
And waiting for the moon to rise

I have to scrape more mud off my shoes than most
But otherwise you would never know


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley grew up wandering the woods of Vermont. She is the award-winning author of seven nature books. Melanie lives near Washington, DC where she leads nature and forest bathing walks for Smithsonian Associates and many other organizations. She is author of City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, The Joy of Forest Bathing and, most recently, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and Resilience: Connecting with Nature in a Time of Crisis. Melanie has been a longtime contributor to The Washington Post and frequent guest on NPR and its affiliates. She began writing poetry during the pandemic.

Miriam Dancing—After a Painting of Miriam by Marc Chagall

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt


I never danced like this.
Decked out   baring my breasts
for some man’s pleasure.

Who does he think I am?

One of Gaughin’s native girls?
Part of his harem?  All of us circling,
hands clapped  above our heads.

Who am I to him?  A muse?  A figure
plastered on a white canvas board?
Roses  doves anemones swirling round.

I am not his feckless dream.

What happened to the desert?
To my feet pressed into sand?  To timbrel and lyre?
To my words echoing off pink rocky cliffs?

To songs spilling from a woman’s mouth?
To light spilling from clouds?
To a chorus of hallelujahs

quenching an unquenchable thirst? 
I say no more throttled tongues.
I will sing, be still, then dance.


* * * * *

Here is a link to the painting that inspired the poem: https://www.wikiart.org/en/marc-chagall/miriam-dances-1931

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a retired SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English SUNY New Paltz. She has published works in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Cream City Review, The Vassar Review, and other journals. Two volumes of poetry were published by the Edwin Mellen Press: We Speak in Tongues and She had this memory.  Her poetry volume, Foraging for Light, was published by Finishing Line Press.  Most recently her poetry chapbook about Bess Houdini was published by Palooka Press.  Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Check out her work at hudsonvalleywomenwriters.com

The clutter

by Emalisa Rose


Those frames from the flea market
that the purple haired lady sold for
a dollar. Most of them warped;
the glass, full of scratches.

Six cups in the cupboard, from
our trip to Las Vegas, drawings of
dice on them, chips on the handles.

The drawer of lone socks, inkless
pens, non-stick sticky pads, and
the four old remotes, for the old
school tvs. What were we thinking
by keeping them?

Open the bins, toss out the crap.
Let us get free of the clutter.

* * * * *

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and hiking. She walks with a bird group twice a month through the neighborhood trails. She volunteers in animal rescue and tends to cat colonies. Her work has appeared in Writing in a Woman's Voice, Spillwords, The Beatnik Cowboy and other grand places. Her latest collection is On the whims of the crosscurrents, published by Red Wolf Editions.

Isolation in D Minor

by Louisa Muniz

 
Wet newspapers, dirty laundry
& recyclables pile up for days.
 
The sun hides under a wet dress.
 
The ants persevere. Push
bread-crumbs across the floor
 
to the sound of God’s pounding fist
in Mozart’s Requiem D Minor.
 
Droning fridge, barking dog
ticking clock rim the day.

The fortune cookie reads,
the fortune you seek is in another cookie.
Yet, I have been blessed in this life.
 
Blessed art thou amongst…
Will only the meek inherit…?
 
The cloudless sky babies itself blue.
When the sun offers her self-care
 
I prep the soil, soak the bulbs.
Plant the snowflake flower
nose up for late spring bloom.


* * * * *

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, Menacing Hedge, Poetry Quarterly, PANK Magazine, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem "Stone Turned Sand." Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020.

 

The White Oak

by Louisa Muniz

 
Father sits on the stoop
looking all—bull thistle,
pepperweed, hawkweed—
difficult to manage.
 
After two shots of Bacardi
to quell his quiet suffering
I sneak away. Follow the trail
 
of leaves, grass & bramble
into the woods. I find my place
under the deep shadows of trees,
silent specters, welcoming arms.
 
The White Oak bends & bows
beneath the bloated clouds.
 
It asks for nothing.
 
When the tawny-gray caterpillar
crawls across the wet moss
I remove my socks & shoes,
steep my feet in the chattering brook.
 
When it’s time to return
I hopscotch home.
 
The song of the thrush
beckons me to stay.  
 

* * * * *

Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, Menacing Hedge, Poetry Quarterly, PANK Magazine, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere. She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem "Stone Turned Sand." Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook After Heavy Rains by Finishing Line Press was released in December, 2020.

The Impartial Absolution of the Bering Sea Islands

by Lisa Creech Bledsoe


Once, these islands were mountains. Once
we walked the ice between, following bear
and the banshee of the wind.

A warming sea has swallowed the land, hidden it
in her green and dark skirts
split here, or untied, ice melted and flown.

Above the cold: the smell of rot and musk—
of dissipation. Or recovery. A whale's
rib accedes to the creep

of lichen, its cancellous length
by breath and vestige
declining, then emerging into fox prints.

During the war twenty-nine reindeer were brought here
then left. In twenty years, there were six thousand,
then none. A single winter took them.

Over and again I go back—
to whales, to pallid snow, to fog and ash
and things that disappear: the bunting's

arcing flight display, floating
downward toward nests in talus
slopes and shrinking snowfields. 

I have come here not by thought or abandonment
but by resistance. Here a body is frozen
before it grows buoyant.

Before the seed opens, three days. After
it bursts, three days. Walking home over sea ice
we work to become unfastened, then empty.


* * * * *

Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. She is the author of two books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Chiron Review, Otoliths, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, among others.

Website: https://appalachianground.com/