Because I’m a Naysayer

by Laura Ann Reed


My friend says, There are some stories
that shouldn’t be told, as if they were sharp-
fanged, long-clawed furies, best stowed away
in a locked, casket-shaped box—everyone
better off.

Because I’m a naysayer I say, no,
and I tell her a tale about a garnet ring
in the form of a rosebud on a twining vine,
a ring my great aunt kept hidden in a shoe
when she escaped the Russian pogroms.
How she later gave it to my mother
who knew I longed to wear it on my hand
but shook her head—even when I pleaded,
even when I promised not to lose it.
Even when I begged.
How, when I was grown, I stole it
from her dresser drawer and how she found
my hiding place—under a pile of bright scarves
and stole it back. How we never spoke
of what we’d done.

I tell my friend how my mother’s hillside home
burned to ash in the Oakland firestorm,
how for days I scrounged in vain
through mounds of soot-choked dirt.

How she said, There’s a thing or two
about the ring, a story, you should know,
remind me when we talk again.

How she called
a week before she died, and when
I asked, said she didn’t have the time.


* * * * *

Laura Ann Reed received a dual BA in French/Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently completed Master’s Degree Programs in the Performing Arts, and Psychology. She was a dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area prior to assuming the role of Leadership Development Trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She and her husband now reside in western Washington. Her work has been anthologized in How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, and has appeared or is forthcoming in MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, and Willawaw, among other journals.

 

Midlife Crisis

    after Motherhood by Georgia Douglas Johnson

by Denise Fletcher


(To the baby I never had.)

So now, here I am, living with regrets
and having a midlife crisis.

Please forgive me for not giving you life.

Please forgive me for not giving you a
chance to breathe and live.

I never knew until it was too late that
my tubal ligation would be such a
source of regret; And yet, it is.

Maybe I was being selfish?
Maybe I was.

I never wanted you to suffer with
the deep emotions that are passed on
from generation to generation; the
mental illness that runs in the family.

I never meant to have a life so stripped
of the joy of babies and love and tears. 
I miss the moments we could have shared.

My mother warned me too late, all because
I had refused to tell her what I had planned.
Was she right after all?    She said: “You
will never be fulfilled as a woman, if you
don’t have a baby.”         “Time will tell.”

The die is cast. What’s done is done. It is never
that simple. These things come with a price.

Oh, the life lessons we learn too late.
I am still alive and here,
    but so sad that you are not.


* * * * *

Denise Fletcher is a freelance writer and artist. She received a B.S. in Recreational Therapy from Minnesota State University, Mankato with a minor in Psychology. Her creative work has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals including: Florida Bards, Bards Against Hunger, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Open Minds Quarterly and other various publications in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. She currently lives in the Tampa area.

Walking my fuzzy-faced dog   

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso


Nights like trains that never
move anywhere engines stalled
no reasons arrive at my dark window

that ache missing your voice
stuck here in undesired time
why can’t I be where you are

why this chain of endless days that keep
on working keep on driving where ever
wash coffee cups and sticky plates

sort scrambled stupid laundry
as if anything makes sense
walking my fuzzy faced dog.


* * * * *

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.

Mushroom Chronicles     

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso


The mushrooms in the photo aren’t
cooked or chopped or sautéed
in a black iron pan

the stove’s spattered from whatever fried
last night too tired to notice the mess
whatever she can manage after work

is just throw something
on the fire get rawness out
wait until onions turn

that cookbook term ‘translucent’
eat by the drowning drumming tv
rolling quasi-obscene rosaries of ads

political smears blistering lies
telling you to order your doctor to
mend pain with whatever they’re selling

no these are aesthetic mushrooms
circling through time like half-tutus
at the rotting base of a great tree

vibrating in forests drunk on
sun-filtered silence loftiest
branches exhaling sounds

hypnotic to a dreamer’s ear
meditative hum of phosphorescent
fungi singing through the night.


* * * * *

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.

 

SIXTH STATION OF THE CROSS

by Lorri Ventura


First Fridays were for praying
At the stations of the cross
The petite young mother
Chapel cap pinned to her hair
Rosary beads clicking against her fingernails

She pulls along her little girl
Whose rubber-soled Buster Browns
Squeak the entire length of the tiled church aisle
While she twirls her ponytails
And practices crossing her eyes
To make the time pass more quickly

But when they arrive at the sixth station
The little girl always forgets her boredom
And stares at the image of Veronica
Wiping Jesus’ face with a cloth
His visage appears on the fabric
The way the funnies in the newspaper
Slide onto her Silly Putty
When she presses it against the newsprint

The child is drawn to this station
Because it shows a female
Doing something important
This legend somehow gives her hope
For her own future

At home, she gingerly presses a washcloth
Against her Chatty Cathy’s face
Pretending the doll’s upturned nose and freckles
Materialize on the terrycloth

The child becomes a woman
Who passes judgment on the Church
That itself has judged and excluded so many
Yet she clings to her belief that the Divine
Lives within all
And that the image shown on Veronica’s cloth
Shines within us whenever we show love


* * * * *

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. She is new to poetry-writing. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies, in Red Eft Journal, and in Quabbin Quills.

 

WOMAN IN A NURSING HOME

by Lorri Ventura


The skin on the backs of her hands
Looks like lady slipper petals
Translucent
Tiny-veined
Fragile
She scratches it incessantly
Buckled into a wheelchair
By the elevator door
In front of the nurses’ station
Where the staff
Park the patients who don’t get visitors
Threadbare pate pitched forward
Stained hospital gown doing its job half-heartedly
Covering body parts
That are faded memories
Of what they once were
Seemingly asleep
Until the elevator doors
Whisper their announcement
Of someone’s arrival
Then, only then
Does she become animated
Her head lifts
Her smile is almost rictal
“Hi hi hi hi hi!”
She sing-songs
“See me!”
Her unspoken plea
I bend down
And carefully embrace her
Telling her she looks pretty today
Her fingers catch in my hair
Her skin smells like
Chicken grease
Rheumy eyes lock on mine
“Bless you bless you bless you!”
She warbles
It feels like a long time passes
Before we release each other
I think she just might be
The most perfect human being
I’ve ever met


* * * * *

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. She is new to poetry-writing. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies, in Red Eft Journal, and in Quabbin Quills.

Comets: Relationships that Wander          

by Annie Klier Newcomer
                                               

She had an arrangement with God:
She’d make the introductions.
He’d keep us safe. She placed our hands

over, then pushed our fingers on
the cold rosary beads, helping us keep track
of our prayers. She reminded us

to round up our sins each week,
even searched for them with us between
the floorboards, then dropped us off at the Church

to deposit into the Confessional. This way we could
never stray, she reasoned, we’d know our way home,
always an orderly and fail-safe orbit to her house

and to Heavenly Salvation. She hadn’t counted
on comets. Didn’t figure they were there
at the beginning too. Hadn’t imagined her children’s

choices becoming paths for maverick objects wandering
through the universe: The Stargrazers that misjudged
the distance from the eternal Bright, obliterated. Comet

Hyakutake’s 14,000 year-interval before another earth viewing,
Halley’s short-term trajectory, still a 75 year wait,
and the Intergalactic that escaped entirely, never to return.


* * * * *

The poem "Comets: Relationships that Wander" won an honorable mention place in the publication Studio (Australia) and was first published there. It is the title poem of Annie Klier Newcomer's new poetry collection Comets: Relationships that Wander (Finishing Line Press, February 25, 2022).

Annie Klier Newcomer teaches poetry classes at Turning Point, a Center for Hope & Healing in Kansas City, Kansas. She also helps coach chess for After-School Programs in mid-town KC. Annie writes as a way to connect and to add value to her life. Presently she is an editor for Flapper Press Poetry Café and a member of the Key West Cigar Factory Poetry Group.