​Flourish and Decay
 
A fawn is to a doe as a minute to an hour, each an insinuation of a maturity hard won. 
The albumen of an egg may be dispersed in water and the future foretold according to the nascent shapes. Oomancy, divination by eggs, was once widespread.
A white-tailed deer is fashioned to prevail, defying the maxim sink or swim. Endowed with hollow air-filled hair shafts, the even-toed ungulate floats without resistance, impervious to drowning.
A doe at daybreak surrenders her fawn to a hidden bed, retrieving her secret cache at dusk. The aloneness of the fawn cracked open by daylight is as the loneliness of a relic expelled from a silver egg.
Speculation: Within the vault of the precious egg may reside the baby teeth of Jesus, the Virgin’s milk evaporated, velvet from a buck’s antlers, the tatters from Mary’s veil, the hollow hair of a deer.
Fact: Antlers are the fastest-growing living tissue on earth.
Fact: The fawn, at birth, has four lower incisors.
Certainty: Fawns arise and crest in spring and high summer, the season for bucks of antler development and growth. The fading of the spots runs apace with the shedding of the velvet enfolding the propulsive branches, tines, beams, and points.
The curve of a fawn’s haunches, the slope of an egg, the globe of a vase yearning for the circularity of a crystal ball, the orb of time, the hungry capacity of a measuring cup—all are wanting.
Having eyes on the sides of the head gives deer a wide field of vision, so wide that they are even able to see behind them when they are facing straight ahead.
The hours to a fawn are as the ounces to a measuring cup, the seconds in an hourglass, the increments of fluid in a vase, the snippets that lend a reliquary its purpose, the promise of an egg.
The fawn will sup on the algae. The rust will consume the chair. The egg has swallowed the relic. The liquid in the measuring cup has congealed. The future, ever restless, plays tag with the algae-tinged vase, once a sanctuary for long-stemmed roses.
“Ruminant,” a word worthy of deer, originates in the Latin ruminatus: “to turn over in the mind,” or, more prosaically, “to chew the cud.”
 
Sharon Kirsch
 
Sharon Kirsch is the award-winning author of two books of creative nonfiction: The Smallest Objective, a mother-daughter memoir, and What Species of Creatures, a work inspired by historical writings about birds and “beasts.” She has lived in the US and the UK and is currently based in Toronto, Canada, where she volunteers as a caretaker for feral cats. You can visit her at https://sharonkirsch.com.
 

​I
You pulled me through
the crowd, Vincent,
your wild eyes.
Tugging at my soul
like the moon at tides.
The smell of paint on your hands.
The anguish of your linen 
shirt. Startling. Coarse.
We stare at each other. Breathing.
In bold brush strokes.
Unholy hues. The passion
of our faces. The secrets
of Paris, Arles, and
Saint-Rémy. The infinity.
Of infinitesimal 
splashes of truth. Of sun
and wheat in different
golds. Of gray-green skies.
Of deepness. Everywhere in us.

​II
Draw me into the forest.
Deep. Where trees 
and undergrowth capture me.
Like a madness. 
Where lavenders and grays
jump out of the bark. Gently.
Where greens
beckon with mysterious
mouths. Where we see
only a hint of a path. 
Only a whisper 
of beyond. And the calm.
The penetrating calm.
The unexpected light
we brush into the leaves
to save ourselves.

III
Take me to the sea. In four boats
we float as one. Huddled. Brave.
Waiting on the beach.
Sand scrubbing our painted
bows. Waiting for fishermen
to fill us with life. 
For the steely blue water 
to lap at our sides like brushstrokes.
Like blessings that drip 
from chalices into the mouths
of peasants.

​IV
Set me down. Like a bowl of quinces
and lemons, pears and grapes, we 
are of singular hue. And yet many
intensities. In our yellowness
we outlast the putrid smell
of rotting fruit in harvest fields.
Shine in the bowl
like perpetual sun.
Roll like the roundness
of the planet.

V
In the end, make me
the wheat. Boiling 
and churning. You and I,
we feel, we live. We swallow
the reaper whole. In gulps
of amber, waves of truth.

​Linda Holmes
 
Linda Holmes has been writing poetry for years, but is new to the publication arena. Her poetry has been accepted at the Monterey Poetry Review, Spank the Carp, and The Avocet, and she has won several first place and other awards in the Tennessee Mountain Writers annual poetry contests. She is also the author of a non-fiction book about the experiences of an ancestor who fought and died in the Civil War. The book, If I Am So Lucky: A Portrait of a Man in Perilous Times, 1862-1865, was published by Heritage Books, Inc. in 2023.

​When Magritte Wasn’t Looking

When is an apple an apple?

When it is not a painting of an apple.

Or, when its high chartreuse makes us disbelieve its waxen sheen, and size, larger than the palace behind it.

It tells us something.

That, it is an apple overgrown, overcome with itself, so vast, it drowns all sense of time, emits
a faint perfume from the skin still sealed tight.

Compare this to a baked apple.

Its skin shriveling as sugar bubbles out of its core

Gurgles from its bulbous green body,
trembles in the heat of a roasting pan,
settles once it hits the cool air,

its pulp ready to receive the spoon that scoops out its heart.

​Maria Lisella

Featured on The Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress, Maria Lisella is the sixth Queens Poet Laureate, an Academy of American Poets Fellow and has visited 62 countries. Recent work appears in: Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice; and NYC through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here and in First Literary Review-east, LIPS, New Verse News. Her collections include: Thieves in the Family (NYQ Books),  Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). She curates the Italian American Writers Association readings, is Poetry Editor for VIA. https://poets.org/poet/maria-lisella