FLIGHT

by Tina Klimas


Is she still mother?

Restrained by IVs and
catheter bags and tubes—
she flies with the blue
of a jay, on the other side
of the glass. Inhales
earth and dying leaves,
perches on a wire.
Once a sparrow—part of
the workings of a flock—
now a jay—solitary
and shrill and waiting.
She becomes this jay’s
anguish—the void of what
is missing—the infants
swallowed by a bored feline
like an appetizer.

Was she still mother?

Sky, feathers—blue.
Leaves—red, gold.
Color—incandescent
like old-fashioned
ceramic Christmas lights—
shimmers through
the inconsequence of eyelids.
Because she knows now,
that she cannot make them
see this thing with the light,
she cannot share with them
this last thing—

is she still mother?

Agonizing cries surface and
recede. Theirs. Maybe hers. Or
the jay’s. But the blue is gone—
flown—and terror exposes her,
raw and gaping. She clutches
at the sheets. Her heart rusts,
like iron. Blood boils.
Fingers and toes snap off.
Her brain billows into
a great balloon. The world
tilts and her body will slide
into the abyss. And then—
the weight of an arm
across her chest. Warm feet
twine around her own.
A head nestles under her chin.
And she remembers—
the softness of baby hair,
making bunnies and ships
from clouds, gangly and graceful
adolescent limbs.

She is still mother.

She closes her eyes and sees
the blue jay wing away
to what happens next.


* * * * *

Tina Klimas's poems can be found in THEMA Literary Journal, Bear River Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Backchannels, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Willows Wept Review, and Glassworks Magazine. Her short fiction has also been published in several journals. She enjoys her writing life in Redford, MI where she lives with her husband and their dog.  

THE ILLUSION OF IDENTITY

by Tina Klimas


I have disappeared.
A lone bird, an ingredient,
blended into a flock.
We soar and dip as one
to the swell of Mendelssohn—
humid summer evening
slick on our feathers—to and fro
until the trees themselves dance.
Awe rises from below.
We are nature, choreographed
to human genius. Flight
is transcendence, is it not?
I am lucky, am I not? Or so
my flock assures me. And yet,
I yearn for them to see
how my feathers iridesce
in a way no other birds do.
They choose blindness,
for I serve a useful purpose
in this group—mother,
spouse, daughter, friend.
This should be enough, but I
cannot hear my own voice.
I lost it somewhere. It
bleeds out with the daylight
into a sky inundated with purple
velvet, a deep and lonely dusk. It
is absorbed into the heartbeats
of the birds around me,
beating their wings in joy
or furious survival. It
is swallowed by the might
of Mendelssohn and the arrogance
of a power of life
that plows over death and
individuality.
I could fly out alone
over the opalescent mystery of the lake
into a gathering darkness.
I would be watched
and pitied,
maybe thought a little mad.
When all is finally reckoned,
do I want to abandon
the fortune of love?
So I will remain invisible.
I am birds, not this bird.
And thus will I continue
to keep perfect time,
to someone else’s music.


* * * * *

Tina Klimas's poems can be found in THEMA Literary Journal, Bear River Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Backchannels, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Willows Wept Review, and Glassworks Magazine. Her short fiction has also been published in several journals. She enjoys her writing life in Redford, MI where she lives with her husband and their dog.

Night Moves, Reprised                                                          

by Claire Massey


The boy was a maverick
who shared with me,
a tongue of flame arcing through auburn hair
and amateur status in the ranks of lovers
that virginal summer of ’78. 
Exotica sounded in the clip of his vowels,
unheard where we lived in lower Alabama,
his just-divorced Dad
having dragged him from Chicago.

There was comfort, he claimed, in the words I wrote,
more comfort still in my neophyte’s crush,
both of us barred from the in-crowd,
badges of honor we sported,
both of us learning in exile. 

Tentative at first, then able, urgent,
we rehearsed night moves beside a brook in the country,
turned our backs
on its whispery disapproval,
turned up Bob Seeger on the boombox.

Tell me my budding poetess, what line do you like best?
Too tall and angular myself, I answered the part about her breasts,
firm and high on her chest and probably—small.

If I could recall
the S-blend in his name, McSween or Swan,
perhaps we could meet for lattes,
our twin bolts of titian hair gone grey,
our swimming hole diverted to make way
for McMansions’ jutting porches.

Over liberally sweetened mochas,
he’d still want to know,
What part of “Night Moves”
moves you most?

I’d lean into the faux-wood table,
remember the S-curve of his body,
how we spooned against this backwater.
Listening for the far-off thunder,
with all that lighting gone,
that working and practicing done,
autumn after autumn
closing my summers,
and still, no mysteries solved.


* * * * *

Claire Massey finds joy in discovering and supporting literary artists who further our quest for understanding of self and the world. Among other journals, recent work has appeared in Snapdragon Journal of Art and Healing, Lucky Jefferson 365 Collection, Halfway Down the Stairs, POEM, Persimmon Tree and Bright Flash Literary Review. She is Poetry Editor for the quarterly magazine, The Pen Woman. Driver Side Window, her collection of flash stories, poems, memoir vignettes and interpretive photographs, debuted in October, 2022.

Measured and pinned

by Rebecca Dempsey

 
Scans searched. Locked on
looking clear through
to the other side. Echoes
detected shadows. Patterns
traced, and vanished
under interpretation.
Currents passed through.
Reverberations of blood
rushed through limbs
to extremities. Recorded.
Described. Ascribed.
Machines peered through
flesh, scoured for clues,
in cells living and dividing,
made up of atoms, made up
of somethings close to
nothing. Parts prodded,
arranged, examined.
Dismissed after identification.
A close call. Shuddering
in a cold change room, 
felt, yes, but I wasn’t seen.
I wasn’t there at all.

 
* * * * * 
 
Rebecca Dempsey’s recent works have featured in Streetcake Magazine and Unstamatic. Rebecca lives in Melbourne / Naarm, and can be found at WritingBec.com, where amongst other things, she sometimes contemplates the creative traits she inherited from her foremothers.
 

 

 

poem

by Lisa B. Friedland


I love things that don’t make sense 
like trees
manhattan 
and the woman in stilettos pushing the baby carriage 


* * * * *

Lisa B. Friedland is a poet, musician, composer, and translator. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she finds her inspiration from nature, spirituality, culture, and relationships.
To find out more, visit lisafriedlandmusic.com

 

poem

by Lisa B. Friedland


i became an adult today 
singing in the rain
finding the hay at my back
the wind at my front 
do we even know why we're here?
a cherry tree
an apple blossom 
a sky full of stars
ever so softly 
sing us
home


* * * * *

Lisa B. Friedland is a poet, musician, composer, and translator. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she finds her inspiration from nature, spirituality, culture, and relationships.
To find out more, visit lisafriedlandmusic.com

End of January

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 
Don’t leave me January
In your deep I want to sleep
In your pale days I want to go on idle
 
In silent bursts of beauty
Snow-laced twig
Starry night
 
Let me cling to your forbidding cold
And your incubating dark
A little longer


* * * * *

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 Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site has featured several of her poems during the past year, including “How to Silence a Woman,” and “If I have loved you,” both of which won Moon Prizes. Melanie grew up in Vermont wandering the woods and fields and has never stopped wandering.