Storyboards on the Diagonal

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


The old boards through the bog
Will be replaced
The trail crew has hauled in clean new boards, lying pathside

I will miss my old companions, weathered and rotting
With moss growing thick between them
They often land me in the murk

Yet they meld with the fern fronds lining the ancient path called the Diagonal
The parade of wildflowers passing the season baton
Trillium to goldthread to jewelweed to aster

These old boards have borne the weight of moose mothers and calves
Of bear mothers and cubs
And me on skis, their ice filled cracks deep under snow

The new bog boards will be the last I know
May I live to see them grow old and soft
With moss springing green between them
 

* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and The Joy of Forest Bathing. She began writing poetry during the pandemic and had the good fortune to discover Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site featured several of her poems during 2022, including “How to Silence a Woman,” which won the February Moon Prize. Melanie wishes Beate’s readers a joyous new year!

If I have loved you

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


Aren’t there those who so purely share your stratosphere
That you need not friend them on Facebook
Or even call when you’re in town?
What’s to be gained from rehashing old magic
Reminding you both that you have moved on?
If I have loved you, I hope you know


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and The Joy of Forest Bathing. She began writing poetry during the pandemic and had the good fortune to discover Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site featured several of her poems during 2022, including “How to Silence a Woman,” which won the February Moon Prize. Melanie wishes Beate’s readers a joyous new year!

I Like My Coffee at 3 PM on a Saturday
            after Sei Shonagon’s Hateful Things

by Valerie Frost


When you’re about to make a right turn at a red light and the car in front of you is going straight.

When you choose the shortest checkout line and a manager is summoned for a transaction issue.

When you see the blue Working on updates 0% complete don’t turn off your computer screen.

When you go to Starbucks at a random coffee time and there are twenty cars in the drive-thru.

When clothes not labeled “dry-clean only” shrink 10x their original size after you wash them.

When someone spells your name wrong in an email, but your email address is your name.

When an automated phone system says That’s not an option, goodbye after you press 0.

When someone has decent looking hair on a rainy day (curly girl problems).

When you spend over $5 for a cocktail and don’t taste any alcohol in it.

When every new movie release claims to be the best movie of the year.

When the security fingerprint locks you out of your own phone.

People who argue with you over opinions.

Owing money at tax time.

Overdraft fees.

Potholes.


* * * * *

"I Like My Coffee at 3 PM on a Saturday" was first published in Anser Journal.

Valerie Frost is a Garden State native now living in Central Kentucky. Her poems have appeared in Eastern Iowa Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, and Anti-Heroin Chic, among others. 

 

In Bo, The Jetty is Called a Groin 

by Terry Donohue


In Bo, the jetty is called a groin. 
At low tide, its base reveals clusters of sea anemones, mussels, and fragments of shells.

I walk to shake away the incompleteness of the workday.
Leave the next chapters to be encountered tomorrow.

A lady sits on a rock smiling at her yappy little dog running around in circles and then down the beach and back. Yappy sees me, then runs up, yapping, growling, and lunging. 
The little bugger aims to get behind me, trying to nip my ankles. 

I turn to face it and say, go away! Yappy growls more.
I am now annoyed, and distrustful.

The smiling lady reluctantly gets up from the rock she had been sitting on, walks over, and says, “Oh, don't mind my sweet little Peanut; Peanut is harmless.”

“I have heard THAT before! I have been bitten by a so-called harmless dog before. Would you please take Peanut back with you?”

Yappy Peanut grows more fierce. Smiling lady says, “Oh! I see! You have a psychological issue.”

I ask her, “Do you think my psychological issue is at the root of Peanut's behavior? Peanut is going for my ankles!”

Smiling lady answers, “Yes, it is your psychological issue that Peanut senses and I feel sorry for you.”

Calmly, I say, “Get your damn dog on a leash! Dogs who bite people with psychological issues can still be picked up.”

My stomach dropped, I walk away. 

The tide has turned, coming in fast, matching the anger I truly feel as the water swallows up the sea anemones, mussels and fragments of the broken day.


* * * * *

Terry Donohue is a poet, a short story writer, an artist, a curator, a real estate broker, and the mother of a grown son. Terry currently lives and works in Bolinas, CA, an enclave of many artists. Passionate about the arts, Terry enjoys photography, writing, poetry, and origami art in her free time. She comes from a strong creative background, having worked in the Chicago theater scene after graduating with honors from SUNY Oneonta and was an Arts Columnist for the Point Reyes Light.  

SOUL OF THE MEKONG

by Lorri Ventura


The Mekong River hums 
Happy to host the morning’s floating market
A woman stands tall
In her dilapidated sampan
Sun’s rays dance
Atop her non la hat
Wisps of gray hair wave beneath its cone
She poles deftly
Through a cluster of similar vessels
None look water-worthy
Yet all bob jauntily
Their bows decorated with brightly colored eyeballs
Painted there to ensure a safe homecoming
The woman’s sampan groans
With the weight of baskets made from water hyacinths
Overflowing with freshly-harvested rambutans —-
Red, eyelashed fruits
Vietnamese treasures
Nearby, a boy squats in a sampan laden with chilies and bananas
And a family offers pimply-skinned guavas from a vessel
That wobbles, low and heavy in the river
All nod respectfully as the old woman glides past
She greets no one
Yet blesses everyone she passes
Her skin as silt-colored as the river she commands
The soul of the Mekong shines through her eyes


* * * * *

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. She is a two-time winner of Writing In A Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.

 

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

by Lorri Ventura


Daddy shot the family dog
Because it looked at him the wrong way


Mommy’s ribs
Like two rows of broken wishbones
In the x-ray


Shut up, little girl, and swallow the Benadryl
So you can sleep through the yelling
Fifty-five years later
Oral meds still taste like terror and rage


Those are just baby teeth
It’s okay that Daddy knocked them out
You’ll grow new ones
And he had a hard day at work
Poor Daddy


Daddy’s handgun lived on the hutch
Always oiled
Always loaded
Often brandished in our faces
To keep us in our places


Pray, sweet child of mine, Mommy said
You are my little angel
Daddies can’t kill angels
They just like to try
The little girl refused to pray
To a God who sees
Without helping


* * * * *

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. She is a two-time winner of Writing In A Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.

Make Believe Love

by Stephanie Shafran


In this story
she is nursed on
fairy tales
big-breasted Barbies
with hourglass figures
wed stiff-shouldered Kens
always a head taller
than their beautiful
blond mates

In her games
Barbie and Ken
hug and kiss
dress and undress
his frozen lips
reach again and again
for the plastic glow
of her rouged cheek

pretend love
tastes sweet to a young girl’s
never-kissed lips

In this story
Barbie never
nags at Ken
the way her mother snarls
at her father at daybreak
“Why can’t you be normal,
stay asleep instead of blasting
the room with light to read those
high-brow books?
It’s two in the morning
for Criminy sake!”

At eight years-old
she wonders
why the word
normal
lingers in the
silence so long
as she prays
for sleep to swallow
the lump swelling in her throat

In this story
she conjures a canopy-covered bed
with rose-colored sheets of silk
where Barbie and Ken
sleep soundly
in each other’s arms
happily ever after


* * * * *

A member of Straw Dog Writers Guild and Florence Poets Society, Stephanie Shafran resides in Northampton. Her writing appears in journals such as Earth’s Daughters, Slant, Persimmon Tree, and Silkworm. Anthologies featuring Stephanie’s writing include A 21st Century Plague:Pandemic Poetry, published in 2021.

Stephanie published the chapbook Awakening in 2020.