Moonflower

by Caitlin Hyslop-Margison


I look at myself through a kaleidoscope of eyes.
None of them are mine.

I think that my soul has been filled to the brim
with other people’s tears.

I have donated my body to a science that strips the meat off my bones
and calls it “getting to know you”.

I take up someone else’s thoughts
with a thread and a needle,
poking tiny holes in my skin
and painting my lips with the blood.

I remember a little girl sewing a shroud and settling it
over her face,
so that when she tries to feel the contours of her bones
she can only run her hands through the folds of another skin.

She traced tattoos on her mind of hands open to the sky,
waiting for praise in any language.
We are still wrapped in longing,
she and I.

The sea unfurls without ceasing at the pull of the moon,
so I fit my mouth around the stem of an evening primrose,
and my petals open beneath the sky –
inky black, and scattered with winking stars.


* * * * *

Caitlin Hyslop-Margison (she/her) is an emerging writer from Atlantic Canada. She is currently a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of New Brunswick and is pursuing a dual honours degree in sociology and history.

House

Caitlin Hyslop-Margison


Pebbles take root in my spine
like little seeds of glass.
Bloodstains bloom out of seeping wounds
as the seconds and years tick past.

Roots rise and entangle my feet,
up from the treacherous ground.
The trees have ancient memories,
their whispers a drumbeat sound.

Over the edge of a cliff,
out in the black iron sea,
a maelstrom waits to grasp its prey,
and yawns around pointed teeth.

The bite of the salt spray stings
the open sores on my lips,
so I spit out the flood and swallow the blood,
and wait out the solar eclipse.

I cloak myself in the shadow
of tales unheard and untold;
light a quivering flame made of pity and blame,
and raise it to fend off the cold.

When I sleep I dream of a house
small and sturdy and sweet
with a trellis of poppies kissing me softly,
wood floor worn under my feet.

I’ve conjured these walls from smoke,
and to ashes and dust they will go,
but the fire has burned the salt from my skin
and the sweat glistens clean on my throat.


* * * * *

Caitlin Hyslop-Margison (she/her) is an emerging writer from Atlantic Canada. She is currently a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of New Brunswick and is pursuing a dual honours degree in sociology and history.

Choosing Flight

by Nonnie Augustine


I thought I was dying from time to time.
Having withdrawn to a nub, I sent my actress out to chit-chat,
wear silly hats, play Bingo, dance on Wine down Wednesdays
if the piano player’s music rocked enough or had a bluesy,
dirty rhythm and if I’d drunk enough Merlot.
In wheelchairs or sitting with walkers at their elbows,
they laughed and clapped for (at?) the aging dancer still able
to move her hips, arch her back, play with her arms and shoulders.
Their pleasure in my foolery gave me joy beyond the actress’s ken.
But always then the retreat to my two rooms,
the blue-gray recliner, my sensitive cat,
the night’s movies or European crime series.
How long these nights were!

My brother Robert called from Philadelphia
and blew this life apart when he said:
“Move! Move with me to Tucson!
Get the hell out of that sterile place you’ve landed.
Take the risk. You used to be a risk-taker.
I’m moving to Arizona in the fall.
You can do it, too, Sis.”
And I did. And I have.

I often wake here before sunrise. I want to.
I feed my cat and make myself a cup of rich coffee.
Then out to the deck to feed the doves, quail, and songbirds.
Hummingbirds sip nectar just above my head and I’m
delighted with them and their tiny, precious, efficient feet!
The woodpecker trumpets his happiness with the seeds
in the feeder hanging from the Palo Verde branch.
After dark, Javelinas may visit. They have messy habits
and are not pretty, but they travel together in whole families
and I like them for this.
The actress has not come to Tucson with me.
I’ve no need for fakery in this new place.
Robert and I go to the Rillito farmer’s market,
we go out to dinner with his old friends, we make plans.
I chose to fly to the Sonoran Desert. I chose to thrive.


* * * * *

Nonnie Augustine is the author of two books of poetry: One Day Tells its Tale to Another and To See Who’s There. The former was named by The Kirkus Review to “Best of Indie 2013.” A treasured achievement for her was being awarded The Glass Woman Prize from Writing in a Woman’s Voice in 2016. She graduated as a dance major from Juilliard a long time ago. Since 2002 she has been writing poetry and short prose. There is also a novel, which lives in a big wicker box in her closet. Her blog is “Augustine’s Confessions.”

 

Before the Cherry Blossoms at the Tidal Basin

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 
Tidal Basin trees laden with bud
Still tight red
With a small flame of greening gold at the tip
 
To what will you open
This spring?
A world still mad with war and hate
 
This year—attack on Ukraine
On this cold day
We are as tightly bundled as your buds
 
Circling the Basin
In hooded wraps, walking under black twigs
Etching all the memorials
 
Jefferson, FDR and MLK
And an obscure memorial to the
“Forgotten founding father”
 
Who, along with his fellows,
Forgot to include everyone
War and Peace ricochet
 
Around the Basin
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself”
Blossoms of friendship
 
Between Tokyo and Washington
Pearl Harbor Hiroshima
“I have a dream”
 
The sun is setting
A vee of geese flies overhead
Bundled humans return to their vehicles
 
You will soon bring the magic once more flowering trees
Yet again your blooms a metaphor, never quite real to us
As the tides rise around your roots
 

* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is the award-winning author of seven nature books. She 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. Melanie has been a contributor to The Washington Post and frequent guest on NPR and its affiliates. She began writing poetry during the pandemic. Her poem, “How to Silence a Woman,” received the Writing in a Woman’s Voice February moon prize.

THURSDAYS

by Kathleen Chamberlin


Thoughts of Thursdays past
Float through my mind
Like leaves softly carpeting the stream.
When wintry winds whipped white caps
Across the sullen sea, silver and sun soaked
While I idled within the window, watching,
Waiting for who knew what.
Waltz music flooding the room
Inviting me to leave the outside world alone
Ignore wind whispered longings those Thursdays moaned.
Mesmerizing melodies in 3/4 time
Entice my limbs to whirl around the room
Wrapped in the warmth of phantom air.


* * * * *

Kathleen Chamberlin is a retired educator living in Albany, New York with her husband and two rescue dogs. She turned to writing creatively during the pandemic quarantine. Her writing has appeared in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Open Door Magazine, The World of Myth Magazine and the anthologies The Book of Black, Breath of Love and Snowdrifts. In addition to writing, she enjoys gardening, genealogy, and grandchildren. 

Just what I need in plague season       

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso


Dead crow on my fender
parked here barely ten minutes 
likely fell from that crab-apple’s wide 

branches stretching across the sidewalk
scattering blossoms and a funeral bird

just what I need in plague season
first glance looks like clotted fabric
or rain-soaked flowers blown down by

sudden gusts but it’s an innocent 
black bird on my rain-splattered car

dustpan slides this feathered soul
into a trash barrel while I shiver
inside my rain-soaked jacket 

see other fear-masked soggy humans
mailing bills with nervous gloved hands

feel the vibration of pandemic fire
silent invisible messenger   
threatening sickness and death   

though gloomy discouraged lonely
I’m here for whatever 

incomprehensible reasons
a cranky being walking
around sad-singing alive.

* * * * *

"Just what I need in plague season" was first published in Bluepepper.

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work appeared in U. Mass. Review, The New Yorker, Ibbetson Street, MomEgg, Ploughshares, Sumac, Bagel Bards, New Boston Review, WomenPoems, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Review, Constant Remembrance, Cambridge Artists Cooperative, etc.  Her stories, one a Pushcart nominee, were published by Southern Women’s Review, Tears and Laughter, Broadkill Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, etc.  Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Červená Barva Press, and another poetry collection, a story collection, and a novel are in the works.

 

last icicle hanging

by Jill Crainshaw


it broke free
or did it let go
just as I walked by
mulling over the frailty
durability 
vulnerability of 
human life

we create
find
hope for 
each next foothold 
as we pick our way across
cloud-camouflaged dreamways

i retraced my steps
to take another look
the icicle stood 
a stalagmite now
sun-slick
waiting
like me
to birth another spring


* * * * *

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.