What the Moon Said In the world that you live in it is said that I rise and fall with time. This is untrue. I am here, in my world, all of the time. Sometimes my Sister Earth shelters me from our Mother Sun. Sometimes I shelter Her, but I am here all of the time, and I have witnessed unusual events in your world. They happen when the dark begins its overnight passage, when my Mother, my Sister and I rest from our collective labours and grant one wish to each living thing on Sister Earth, on one of my full Moon nights. On this particular twilight a cancer-ridden wife lies next to her cancer-ridden husband. Hospice waits outside the bedroom. The wife says: “I want to dance again in my ruby red shoes with you. I want to be pretty again. I want you to want me again.” The husband says: “I want to dance again in my favourite blue suit with you. I want to be handsome again. I want you to want me again.” And so it was granted. The pretty white swan in her ruby red shoes and the handsome bear in his favourite blue suit found each other as they had the first time, waltzing the night away in a blue moonlit meadow, lush with moist aromas. Dancing, swooning, caressing, waiting for the arrival of a different sun. No Earth, no Moon. only Light. Stork Rein Stork Rein: "I had the fortune of being taught by a fabulous high school English teacher who brought The Waste Land to class for reading and analysis. My poetry neurons began firing then and have yet to be stilled. I count among my influences Tony Hoaglund, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ada Limon, and Nick Flynn. My poems have been published in Remington Review, Mono Magazine, and The Citadel. I live in the alpine community of Mount Shasta, CA, where I practice the art of the long marriage with my wife Erika, while assembling a cookbook of recipes for couples."
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A Penny's Worth From the time she was an infant, the auburn that crowned her had been an affront to piety. It was the amber of ale overflowing the barrel, the scarlet of the strutting rooster’s comb, the escaped flame that devoured the thatch. Her mother had scraped it back daily from her forehead, tamed it with spit and soapsuds, locked it tight in maiden’s braids. Words had been her forbidden joy. She’d kneaded dough, flicking furtive glances over her brother’s shoulder as he sat, hunched and resentful, quill scratching like a bewildered chicken. She’d echoed the letters in her head as he stammered their names, memorized the clumsy shapes he made. In her mind, she unblotted them, gave them wings, imagined flying with them to other skies. She etched them in the flour with a fingertip, then quickly smoothed them away when her father loomed. Too late. The slap rattled her teeth. The only reading she was permitted were the names in the family bible. Their faded trails were like the leavings of undernourished black snails: tracks from a grim-lipped past to colourless inevitability. Rainbow words shouted from posters in the town; she flew like a hummingbird to their sweet promises of far away. Threw off her apron one day, loosened her braids, and raced after the gilded carriages and the great draft horses in their red-plumed bridles, her ears closed to her father’s bellows, her brother’s jeers, her mother’s righteous snifflings—more for the loss of a light hand with pastry, if truth be told, than a daughter. “Penelope” she’d been named. Its primness had sat awkwardly on her, a lace collar on a falcon. Now she learned to dance in tasseled silk and spangles. “Penny Bright” they called her, as she somersaulted like a spun copper coin. “Heads!” the crowds would roar. “Tails!” a few would snigger, their eyes small with desire. One day, amid the shower of farthings and ha’pennies, a gold sovereign fell, wrapped in a perfumed note laced with promises like spun sugar. Country-trusting still, she met him, loved him, followed him to the room in the spoiled city, beside the reeking river. In return for her body he gave her words; praised the graceful lines of her hand as it struggled with the pen, the new-fashioned steel nib gleaming in the candle-light. As her novelty tarnished, he came to her less and less. The coins on the dresser rang with contempt as they fell. A breeze crept through the torn window-lace and ruffled the letter wedged in the mirror frame. Her name on it was a wraith’s whisper; still, it had flown to her, found her- just three words inside from her newly-widowed sister-in-law: “He’s gone. Come.” She snatched the paper from the frame, rubbed her forefinger around the rim of the ink-bottle, and overwrote the eight letters with five. No timid snails’ wanderings these: bold and dark, they stormed across the envelope’s sky-blue, filling it from horizon to horizon. His cane and glove lay on the floor where he’d dropped them in his hurry to return to the frilled drawing room of respectability. She picked up the glove and swept the coins into it. They barely filled one finger. Let the wind be her coiffeur; her hairbrush would serve another purpose. She swung it and smashed the window pane. Fish-stinking air poured in, the whiff of salt in its heart still striving. And from far off, the promise of different air, leaf- and clover-laden. Beads dripped from her broken necklace like orphaned tears as she strode outside to where the fishers were labouring. “Penny Farthing” they’d hoot when she walked by, the sum they figured of her worth, the price they wished they had. They had turned at the sound of breaking glass. Their mouths opened to taunt her, then they saw her eyes and the cane gripped in her fist, and were silent. The polished oak felt smooth and strong. It would beat off thugs, help her over slimed steps. It would write “farewell” in the mud. Donna Shanley Donna Shanley studied literature and languages at Simon Fraser University, and then (of course!) wild orangutans in Borneo. She lives and writes in Vancouver, B.C., where she can see mountains and sometimes, a half-inch of ocean. Her flash and micro-fiction has appeared in a number of magazines, including Vestal Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Milk Candy Review, and The Citron Review. Instructions From a Leaf on Dying It’s easier than you think and gentler. Return your borrowed solidness back from where it came, unafraid. Let your colours blaze with late-stage splendour, then fade. Hold nothing back. Did you forget, for a moment that there was a time before and a time after? We are the brief in between. Already, you have bridged yourself across this time, as you were tasked. You have done well. Arriving at this other side implies no wrong turn. We are seasonal beings and forever is not a season. Assume a treetop view. Loosen. Loosen. Let go. Don’t you know it’s beauty all the way down? K.E. McCoy K.E. McCoy’s poetry has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Speckled Trout Review, Riverbed Review, Eunoia Review, Willows Wept Review and other outlets. She is a past Pushcart Prize nominee and second place winner of the 2023 Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Contest. She is the niece of the photographer whose art inspired this poem. Larry Hartford has worked as a professional photographer for over 40 years. He currently lives on a 10 acre farm in the Skagit Valley of Washington and continues to create images. Night Children primeval twilight cultivates diverse spirits tiger stripes orphans Aravalli Range wolf packs foster feral girls and boys abandoned city dwellers embraced by canid surrogates that nuzzle orphaned babes, comfort flailing arms, warm bare feet, sing hairless naïve pups asleep wild jungle youngsters walk upon four limbs like paws knees and elbows scarred innocents untamed howl at the moon join furry brethren wailing, growling, celebrating until early dawn’s symphony hushes the lupine choir which shifts its attention to nurturing foundlings… tutoring young Mowglis to hunt and play spiritual Lycans welcome the lunar allure crave transformation Sterling Warner A Washington-based author, poet, educator, and Pushcart Nominee, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in such literary magazines, journals, and anthologies as the Danse Macabre, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s volumes of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps: Poems, “Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci (2023) and Abraxas (2024)--as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. He currently writes, hosts “virtual” poetry/fiction readings, and enjoys fishing and boating along the Hood Canal. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa holy Mary. mother of God. strung up in a Polish monastery, wounds tracking like tears of blood. who disfigured you? who do we blame? that rampaging mob of bandits and brigands, like army ants, heads bulging, antennae bent, monstrous mandibles-- dissenters who mutilated the face of a woman in love with her people? or did that second band of vandals, armed with brushes, paints and suspicious intentions, cause a greater harm? sloughing off damage, they gave you noble features: a sharp nose, thin lips and a voice, we imagine, too high, too demanding. transfixed, now an image of an image, twice removed. still, we strive to live lives imitating art, looking back at you in silence, the silence of stone statues and monastery walls, the silence of the devout at prayer, of stars less bright and of candlelight, the silence of eyes and looks no one hears. silver frame, silver shroud, a visage irremediably marred by scars-- we search your face, effaced, and still we look for love. John Davis John Davis is a Canadian living in the US. He spent ten years in Toronto as a graduate student and assistant professor in Political Theory at the University of Toronto. His best memories, however, occurred in the (same) seven years at the Open Studio, working with Don Holman and Otis Tamasauskas. He also spent time with other artists and art historians. Several years of his graduate student time was devoted to Art and Politics, as a tentative thesis. He often writes poetry in response to art. Judith Returns to Bethulia Judith is nonplussed and dressed to the hilt: plushly plumed velvet hat, milky white skin draped in loops of gold, neck guarded with inlaid jewels. Her bodice is snug and shoulders bare, sleeves embroidered wrapped in cords, a hint of skirt with pleats blood red. Judith’s slender fingers wrap cold-forged steel: finely etched, iron guard, blade unclean with pinkish hints from passing through. Her other hand grips General Holofernes’ severed head by umber hair; brows surprised, drooping eyes dimmed, ever silent mouth agape. His unshaven neck was left unguarded, seduced by Judean wine. Judith returns home to Bethulia besieged—heads held high, all relieved. James Morehead James Morehead is Poet Laureate of Dublin, California, host of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast, and has published several collections of poetry including canvas, portraits of red and gray and The Plague Doctor. James' poem "tethered" was transformed into an award-winning hand drawn animated short film; "gallery" was set to music for baritone and piano, and his poems have appeared in the Ignatian Literary Magazine, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, 2nd Place - Oprelle Oxbow Poetry Contest 2022, Citron Review, Prometheus Dreaming, Cathexis Northwest Press, and other publications. Morning in a Pine Forest Fresh off the brush, the pewter-blue of dawn slips through a slouch of pine and spruce, reaches out to touch a broken trunk perused by a sleuth of bears: a mother and three cubs. That's the painting. A nature scene from two of Russia's greatest. Of course, it's more than that to me. It's a window in which I lose myself just by looking in . . . the way the white of mist invests the forest's silhouette, or how one cub, up on its hindlegs, seems dumbstruck by the brightening mid-sky, the thought that day has come again with nothing to explain it. Thomas Farr Thomas Farr is a poet whose work explores the interstices of nature and spirituality, with a particular interest in haiku sensibilities and wilderness poetry. He appears or is forthcoming in River Heron Review, Aôthen Magazine, Wales Haiku Journal, Kyoto Journal and elsewhere. He tweets [X's] @tfarrpoetry. Apocrypha Frozen yet unfixed, ice swirls Around the boat, which cleaves the water With a stoic prow. Stoic too, a man stands in the light (Though it was a starless night) And in silence, leads the land-bound charge. The wind sets the tempo; Rearing horses balance In a background winter waltz, But the others are out of view. The others are but apocrypha. B.D. Cannon B.D. Cannon is a student and poet from Massachusetts. He has previously published in the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge and loves to spend time in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Drum Bridge If you want to know them, as you have said, you must look beyond the darting swallows, through the trellised wisteria curtain, beyond those pilgrims crossing the drum bridge in the train of history, whose steep arch compels them to slow down and acquire a proper mind for rituals of tea. There they are, on the far bank of the pond, the new people of Edo, merchant and artisan, pleasured by the floating world, soon to vanish in the tunnel of time. They are there, deep inside the shrine, the ground of Shinto, where the plum trees murmur in meditation and rocks converse with stones. But what is a drum bridge where no drum beats, you ask. Then you should know it’s also called a moon bridge, reflected on still water, describing the circle of a full moon. See that reflection as subconscious mind, and think how little you can know about anyone from any place from any age, when half of everyone hides from being known. And you say you know me so very well. Wade Cook Wade Cook lives on Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The Louisville Review, Broadkill Review, and The Orchards Poetry Journal. He graduated from Dartmouth College, where he studied creative writing with Samuel Pickering, the inspiration for Mr. Keating, the iconoclastic teacher in the film Dead Poets Society. He lived in Japan for a decade, working as an advertising creative supervisor with Dentsu and studying Japanese at Waseda University in Tokyo. Woman – Ochre for Willem de Kooning I’ve watched you two, my saviours, for 27 years. And I am no fly on the wall, oh no . . . not with these bold breasts and broad brownish brushed body parts – I am the most commanding presence in the bedroom with the door closed, notwithstanding the passion in front of me. I am the secret centrepiece of the whole house. I’ve seen it all from your bare nakedness to your hungry consumption of one another, as if no one else existed, or no one else was watching. . . those moments you tried to forget me. But you never could, could you? Those transient peaks of passion you found in each other could never match the thrill of the bumpy ride from Tucson to Cliff after withdrawing me from my academic prison. Thank you. What did I inspire in you two? What did you inspire in me? Quietly, the creator admires what you did. The goal is not to study as the pompous academics arrogantly proclaim while most objects of purported study are parked in storage bins absorbing darkness. The goal is not for masses to wander by chewing gum and listening to ear buds while making snap decisions about what is good and what is not. On no. . . the goal is to love . . .to see. . .to feel . . to worship . . .to come skin-to-skin and soul-to-soul . . . to find true intimacy. I was born again by your physical love. We became the threesome, the menage a trois, making violent, unrelenting love like the bold, broad, and powerful strokes from where we all began – the friction of creativity, the swapping of familiar fluids like paint dripping off the palette and onto the canvas. You saw me naked just as I saw your bare, sweaty, entwined, bodies, and heard your panting and screaming as you erupted . . . like when you eagerly hurried down the museum steps, with Woman Concealed, feeling the pinnacle of passion as you burst into the cold Tucson morning. Ronald Zack Author's Note: In November of 1985, the William de Kooning painting Woman-Ochre was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art by a couple, a man and woman visiting the museum at opening time. The painting was found in 2017 after death of the surviving spouse of a New Mexico couple. The painting was hanging in their bedroom, behind the door, visible only from inside the bedroom when the door was closed. Ronald Zack is an attorney and nurse practitioner in Tucson, Arizona. He was raised in Detroit and now lives and works in Arizona. He is currently studying poetry in the MFA in Creative Writing program at the Mississippi University for Women. |
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