The Light in Guernica 

after viewing Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937
 
Spain                 bombed
numbers of dead 
ciphers burned into horseflesh
brother against brother
mi hermano ya no es mi hermano
 
Picasso paints 
in black             white-hot slashes 
His stallion rages against his master 
a soldier cremated alive
light of interrogation cross-examines
battle nightmare crucifies the canvas
 
La bombilla   burning bulb of war      
illuminates a small pueblo      giant 
on the map of war
house ablaze
burning bodies heap into a pyramid of flesh
families joined again  in death
 
Pablo paints the darkening 
eyes that look               but
do not see the oil lamp’s small flame
hands that grasp                      but
cannot reach the white blossom
brothers in blood
carnales
White bull stares ahead to a world 
beyond mourning

**

Luz en Guérnica

al ver  Guérnica, Pablo Picasso, 1937
 
España            Bombardeada  
            suma de los muertos
            cifras quemadas en carne de caballo
                        hermano contra hermano
mi hermano ya no es mi hermano
 
                         Picasso pinta
             en blanco y negro       al rojo vivo
salpica ángulos mientras su semental patea
             brama contra su amo
             un soldado incinerado vivo
luz de contrainterrogación
batalla pesadilla crucifica el lienzo
 
Luz quemante de guerra         la bombilla
ilumina un pueblo chico                     gigante
             en el mapa de la guerra
casa en llamas
cuerpos ardientes en una pirámide de carne
familias unidas de nuevo        en la muerte
             Goya ronda los escombros
 
                        Pablo pinta
             ojos que miran pero
             no ven la llama pequeña del candil
             manos que buscan       pero 
             no alcanzan la flor blanca
             hermanos en sangre
             carnales
El toro blanco mira hacia un mundo más allá del duelo
 
Pablo pinta la penumbra
 
Maura Harvey

A binational resident, Maura Harvey finds home in Victoria B C and San Rafael, California.  Maura’s years in Mexico, Spain and Uruguay inspire her bilingual poetry; her world flutters by in butterflies, shines in Cuban rhythms, sings of family, friends, forgotten flowers. Sometimes her recuerdos are coloured in deep tones of sorrow and love; other times she pays homage to the present, faces its challenges and injustice, prays for a better future.

Goya's Goat Painting
 
A half moon is up, and I'm half awake
alone in my cell. I think of drawing
a thing I saw, which had woods and women. 
Lone wanderers facing a decision.
 
The sky is half lit by some unseen sun.
As usual, in the fields not far, the goat-
a hungry fucker,
as usual, bleats . . . waiting to gorge on grass.
 
Solely Saturdays, I think of this noise
every winter a small, single bah
on a dark old field, there are certain things
every kid is too curious to ignore.
 
Sometimes, we should walk away from such noise. 
Sometimes, had we walked, we wouldn't be in hell.

​Breathing Goya's Oil

Many people block the painting,
   but not the smell.
Many people will die this moment
   but I don't know them. They wait to be shot
in a line, hands up, it's dark and silent.
   Though I don't see this, people's black backs crowd
in and block, a daytime sea of darkness.
   So I get closer,
all night, and like a bone, I stick my head out.
   I'm in line, hands up, lights fade and quiet. I
call out under the shadow by the smell.
         Right then, I wake. A rain taps in the dark,
         light and chronic, exhaling oil-rich earth.

​Alive on Goya's Black Wall
 
I wake up, after rain,
   not in bed.
I feel touched, in all directions, 
   caught by my love handles, he takes my hand.
Papa stop!
   His eyes bulge ... frenetic ... that suspect me?
Papa's beard swings like a tick-tock clock.
   This fisherman's hook, then my head chimes loud ...
blood pregnable on lips that kissed me once.
   Breath drunk in the dark, how no one and no
flood will clean tonight's sky of black holes. My
   breath smells like summer air in dark woods.
      Always again, that dream comes ...
      always still, in that painting peace comes.

Akiva Israel

Akiva Israel is a prison poet and an artist doing time in a prison for men. The author of Scholar by the Warsaw Fire, and other multidimensional artwork, he was at one point diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in childhood. Today, he is mistreated and misdiagnosed in the State Prison, where caricatures of his condition and orientation impact those in his situation across the country.

​The Shaker Gift Drawing
​

If I play the question

If I ask it it a thousand times and then lose my voice

If it runs away like a greenhouse effect

If I successfully graft it to others

If I spread it like brodifacoum over the hills

will the search be over and will I know it or not know it

If I pay James Turrell five thousand dollars to visit Roden Crater

will the search be over and will I know it or not know it

If I have my birthday party at Marina Bay Sands this year

will the search be over and will I know it or not know it

If I step foot on Mount Etna

will the search be over and will I know it or not know it

If I ask the adiabat

the branching but closed system

will the search be over and will I know it or not know it

will it answer

If I mix Mister Hyde with a cryptid
 
and a siphonophore and a rat king
 
will the resulting yeti superaggregate
 
at first stir uncertainly and then come to life
 
and if I graft myself to this creature in a closed circuit
 
of erogenous zones and make of my persons a monster 

in an unending season will the search be over 

and will I know it or not know it
 
Will I have reached a higher state of verification

Will I have made contact with a numen

Will something of what truth is still out there bring

to my life a grinding accelerationism

The Tree of Comfort is a drawing made by Polly Collins

who was a Shaker

Fruit trees

networks and orbs

were common amongst drawings of this kind from this time from this community

and so were illusions of symmetry 

and radiation from everyday objects and organisms in the form of script

as if these things were divine dialogic hotspots 

If I play what feel like ideals with the fruit tree

will I hear fine script worthy of analysis or won’t I

If there is a way it can be every season at once

or every day of the year at one time

then there is a way that The Tree of Comfort is the one

I’m under now

in the shade and in the blazing sun 

Peter Milne Greiner

Peter Milne Greiner is the author of Lost City Hydrothermal Field, a collection of poetry and science fiction. PMG is an educator and community water quality tester in NYC.
​

 
Conquista de las Americas: 1995

“But the skin of the earth is seamless.” - Gloria Anzaldúa
 
This series of poems was written in response to the art series, Conquista de las Americas, by Raúl Guerrero (USA) 1995
https://raulguerrero.com/conquista-de-las-americas-series

Las Indias
 
Love is a native woman looking back from the mirror. 
The fat belly of angelic Cupid giggles as he dotes on his mother. 
 
She dreams of survival, her children’s future, kinship, companionship. 
The dreams of every earth-grounded woman. 
 
Populated by rivers, swamps and forests, 
whole communities, she cradles thousands. 
 
Admires her sun-kissed reflection in a moment of repose:
everything at peace, joy free as a stream. 
 
Love is a native woman looking within herself from a mirror.
 
Then, to the pale visitors she gives gifts of food, water, even golden trinkets. 
They bring with them irreparable tidings: War, Disease, Conquest. 
 
Proclamations and homilies of one all-mighty God, glory, the Spanish monarchies, 
a cross like a spear. Grim reapers’ scythes in men’s lustful eyes.
 
On her northeastern shoulder live the A’i people, Kofanes. 
Their ancestors were warriors so fierce they were feared by their neighbors 
 
and destroyed three separate Spanish armies. 
Resistance a legacy of necessity.
 
Ancestral history’s palimpsest effaced by conqueror’s pens.
Erased like a Quetzal camouflaged by its plumes in the rainforest.
 
As though she were only a reflection of Spain before a red curtain or golden door.
Genocide’s enactment her final act.
 
Love is a native woman kidnapped into a mirror.
 
We know love’s true genesis: original mother 
who carved space for her children, reflecting back from within them. 
 
Amazonas, Gonzalo Pizarro y Francisco Orellana, 1540

She sees you, not herself in the mirror.
Relaxed as the pock-marked, pidgeholed earth, 
she poses while her nude spine is mapped
by conquistadors, their punctures and wars.
 
Amazon, warrior woman, skin branded 
with foreign names, staked by outlandish claims.
Harbingers of massacres trace her 
to Lago de Parima, bloody lake of her hip,
 
near El Dorado, legended land of the golden king.
Her sacrifice for treasure that was never found.
Cut her along their dotted lines, you will find 
a drowned people inside her.
 
Nueva Galicia, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, 1535
 
horned masks grimace
corn spills from fields 
Coronado's war horses stampede in hills 
hooves echo among canyon walls
apocalyptic shadows 
 
La Florida, Cabeza de Vaca, 1528 
 
Swamp lily, gila monster, egret. 
The swampland is a new land for the white man
where alien plants and wildlife breed and thrive.
The bosom of life. Willows sweep 
lacy and sweet across her face
in dark contemplation.
Impenetrable, Spaniards scorned.
 
Mexico, Hernán Cortés, 1517
 
Deadly winters. 
Continued hunt for gold and slaves.
Trade lined up like a factory: 
donkeys, hats, people, and pearls. 
 
Tributes under the Aztecs, 
under the Spanish, bloody transfer 
of imperial power indebting the people.
 
Who is in the mirror? 
La Malinche? 
La Llorona? 
The image obscured.
 
Peru, Francisco Pizarro, 1531
 
Incan princess, cotton yield, 
gold stamped from her very throne. 
Plague and weapons of steel invade. 
Military campaigns sponsored from Spain
raged by ravenous captains.
These common thieves steal everything
they get their hands on. Art becomes artifact,
crops—exports, lives—meat 
butchered quicker than livestock. 
They cannot be trusted.
They will never be satisfied. 
 
Panama, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, 1513
 
Balboa claimed the whole of the ocean blue
and its entire underwater abundance for Spain.
"El Mar Del Sur" he renamed it. Confused 
seeing for possessing, as men tend to, 
or for a natural preamble to ownership. 
 
A man, pulled by his hair, is choked with melted gold.
Venus gives a long sigh, a lost look, her love of war waning.
Men murdered like dogs by war dogs, 
mastiffs in armor, bowels trail from fanged mouths.
 
Brown queen, indigenous queen,
earth-goddess, sky-goddess
and all first goddesses, for you 
the ocean cries and heaven lies prostrate.
 
These men who rape, raze, and reposess
try to hurry your oblivion, but you persist. 
Both the beginning and the end entire, you 
sound the endless outcry for resistance and redemption.

Janel Galnares
​
Author's note: "In Raúl Guerrero’s Conquista de Las Americas Series (1995) paintings, Diego Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus (1647-51) is made into a post-colonial map of “Las Indias”: the Amazon, New Galicia, Florida, Mexico, Peru, and Panama."
​
Janel Galnares is a poet, teacher, and editor from Tucson, Arizona. Her work and translations have appeared in Poetry International, riverbabble, Madwoman Etc, among others. She is currently Editor-in-Chief for Harpy Hybrid Review and a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Poetry Center.

​Instead of a Jigsaw

She tends to knit with a cloudy sky . No needles. Her pen suffices. The clouds are sent in waves of foam frothed fluff so her pencil moves to her inner sea in rhythmic  syllabic meanders echoed and  mirrored in patterns of sky.

many blue scraps
to patch a farthingale
heavenly ballgown 

There are spheres behind. Moons and bubbles. She presses the fabric on top and their marks shine through. Transparent moons, opaque bubbles exert their pressure through the surface. Zigzags and waves. Waves and zigzags. Points into curves.

jagged edge 
caress of a fingertip 
around the traces 

Not so different from the art this window frame holds   Shades of blue interspersed with tints of grey and all smudged through with a dust of pink.  Dust from a rose in a bed from Chelsea as clouds swell to bloom as ephemeral selves in drifts of atmosphere in dance of the brush .

bleak day
on the feeder bluebirds
peck sugar plums 

Diana Webb

Diana Webb is a widely published award winning  haiku and haibun poet. She edits the print journal Time Haiku and reviews books for the journal of the British Haiku Society, Blithe Spirit.

Gavage
 
Todo el mundo conocía a la mujer gorda del cuarto piso. Pocos la habíamos visto, pero sabíamos que estaba allí.
 
Todos los inquilinos habíamos coincidido en el ascensor con algún repartidor, hundido bajo una torre de pizzas o bolsa tras bolsa de cerdo moo shu y arroz frito. Sabíamos que se dirigía a la suite 409.
 
Y observamos a su marido venir de su coche con múltiples paquetes extra grandes de Lucky Charms, Oreos y Pepsi.
 
Yo llevaba una década en el edificio y sólo la había visto un puñado de veces. Roberta casi nunca iba a ninguna parte, pero, una o dos veces al año, la veía. Eran ocasiones penosas de presenciar. El andador que necesitaba, apenas podía sostener su cuerpo. Arrastraba los pies y se agitaba, avanzando con dificultad por el pasillo, con peligro real de caerse. Henry era un hombre de tipo delgado, enjuto y pequeño. Ella, una mujer gigante, con rollos sobre rollos de grasa y carnes colgantes. Era trágico y grotesco, algo que hubiese sido mejor ocultar a puerta cerrada.
 
Naturalmente, todos nosotros residentes vivíamos ocupados con nuestros respectivos trabajos, los desplazamientos diarios y nuestras familias, y rara vez pensábamos en Roberta y Henry. Había cotilleos de lavandería entre los inquilinos, comentarios inteligentes sobre los cubos de reciclaje rebosantes con restos de comida para llevar. Había simpatías ocultas por Henry.
 
Yo mismo había sentido lástima por Henry durante muchos años, imaginando el estigma que cargaba valientemente sobre sus hombros mientras soportaba la glotonería de su mujer. Pero un día me encontré con él en la tienda y algo en su forma de dirigirse a la joven dependienta me hizo cambiar de opinión. La reprendió por algo intrascendente, como si fuera la ayudante, y su tono controlador me sorprendió mucho. Después de aquello, hice todo lo posible por mantenerme alejada de Henry.
 
Fue un fin de semana que Roberta se cayó en el aparcamiento, intentando llegar a una furgoneta taxi. No había ni rastro de Henry, sólo ella y el andador que se tambaleaba peligrosamente bajo sus carnosas patas. Todo el mundo la observaba: hacía sol y la gente paseaba a sus perros o daba patadas a la pelota en el césped con los niños, y la lavandería -como todos los sábados- estaba repleta. Nos quedamos mirando, encandilados por el accidente que podía ocurrir en cualquier momento, a medida que ella se acercaba a la furgoneta. Nadie, ni siquiera los fornidos obreros de la construcción, hubiesen podido ayudarla a levantarse.
 
Y entonces ocurrió el accidente. Roberta se cayó.
 
Fue terrible de ver, una película atroz, a cámara lenta. El peso de ella, empujando hacia adelante, con sólo unos pocos metros más hasta el vehículo. Se resbaló, el andador se apartó de ella, el tobillo se le dobló, se oyó un terrible crujido y luego un gemido profundo y gutural, como el de un globo que suelta todo el aire o una vida. Y cayó, como una montaña, rodando y rodando sobre el asfalto como una avalancha.
 
Todos nos quedamos paralizados durante unos instantes, y luego nos abalanzamos sobre ella a la vez. El taxista se bajó. Todos miramos a la mujer junto a la que vivíamos y con la que nunca habíamos hablado. Los ojos saltones detrás de su cara hinchada nos miraban sin pestañear. Tenía la boca grasienta, y la abría y cerraba sin emitir ruido alguno. Eso me entristeció como nunca antes.
 
Fueron necesarios otros momentos de confusión y conmoción para darnos cuenta de que teníamos que llamar a alguien. Una señora se inclinó y preguntó si Henry podía salir a ayudarla. El cuerpo de morsa de Roberta se agitó un poco y emitió un sonido parecido a un eructo. El mecánico con su Beagle acabó marcando el 911 en su móvil. La Sra. Xi iba a buscar a Henry, pero optó por buscar agua para Roberta, de modo que me tocó subir a mí. Oola, la señora grande y colorida de África occidental, vivía en la cuarta planta, así que también me acompañó. En el ascensor, mientras se ajustaba una de sus bufandas, me dijo algo que me heló la sangre. «Esa chica es víctima del leblouh, como yo lo fui».
 
No tenía ni idea de a qué se refería, pero cuando llamamos a la puerta de Henry y no encontramos a nadie, y volvimos al aparcamiento con las manos vacías, me enteré de cómo las jóvenes de Nigeria y Mauritania son encadenadas durante meses y alimentadas a la fuerza con cerros de cereales y grasa animal por sus madres, con el fin de engordarlas para el matrimonio.
 
Me explicó que se trataba de una costumbre antigua, que aún se practica en regiones rurales remotas, y la comparó con la forma en que los gansos son alimentados a la fuerza en las fábricas para la supuesta delicadeza francesa del foie-gras. Gavage.
 
Roberta probablemente nació y creció aquí, en Scarborough. Pero justo cuando empecé a protestar por la declaración de Oola, recordé haber hojeado un artículo sensacionalista sobre una chica cuyo novio quería que comiera cantidades obscenas de comida. La pareja lo llamaba «alimentación erótica». El novio decía que era un asunto de humillación y sumisión.  Quería que engordara tanto que no pudiera moverse y tuviera que depender completamente de él.  Me disgustó la historia y pasé la página. Nunca volví a pensar en ello, hasta ahora.

Los paramédicos estaban trabajando con Roberta cuando volvimos y los inquilinos estaban todos reunidos a un lado del solar. Oola me preguntó cómo la meterían en la ambulancia, y le dije que probablemente estaban entrenados para subirla con algún tipo de polea. Pero de todas formas resultó ser demasiado tarde. No quería quedarme ahí afuera mirando, -eso no estaba bien-, y tampoco podía hacer algo más para ayudar, de modo que entré.
 
Henry no apareció hasta más tarde. El Sr. Xi lo llevó a la morgue. Resultó que Roberta había tenido un derrame cerebral masivo.
 
No pude quitarme la sensación de que ella había estado intentando escapar.

Lorette C. Luzajic, translated by Rose Mary Boehm


**

Gavage

Everyone knew about the fat woman on the fourth floor. Few of us had ever seen her, but we knew she was there. 

Every tenant had been in the elevator with a delivery guy, toppling under a tower of pizzas or bag after bag of moo shu pork and fried rice. We knew he was headed to suite 409.

And we saw her husband coming from his car with multiple supersize packs of Lucky Charms and Oreos and Pepsi.

I’d been in the building for a decade and had only laid eyes on her a handful of times. Roberta seldom went anywhere, but once or twice a year there was a sighting. They were painful occasions to witness. The walker she needed could barely support her frame. She shuffled and heaved, inching laboriously along the corridor, in real danger of toppling over. Henry was the skinny sort, wiry and small. She was a giantess, with rolls upon rolls, and hanging fat lobules. It was tragic and grotesque, something best hidden behind closed doors.

Of course, most of the residents were busy with their manufacturing or custodial jobs, their commutes and their families, and we didn’t think about Roberta and Henry often. There was laundromat gossip among tenants, smart remarks about the recycling bins overflowing with take-out refuse. There were muffled sympathies for Henry. 

I had myself felt quite sorry for Henry for many years, imagining the stigma he bravely shouldered while enduring his wife’s gluttony. But one day I ran into him in the convenience store, and something about the demanding way he spoke to the young clerk changed my mind. He berated her for something inconsequential like she was the help, and his controlling tone took me by surprise. I did my best after that to steer clear of Henry.

It was on a weekend that Roberta fell in the parking lot, trying to get to a van taxi. There was no sign of Henry, just her and the walker that teetered and veered dangerously under her meaty paws. Everyone saw her then: it was sunny and folks were walking their dogs or kicking a ball around the grass with the kids, and the laundromat was always busy on Saturdays. We watched, compelled by the accident that could so easily happen, as she heaved herself toward the van.  No one, not even the beefy construction workers, would be able to help her up. 

And then the accident happened. Roberta fell.

It was terrible to watch, an excruciating, slow-motion film. The heft of her, pushing forward, with just a few more metres to the vehicle. She slipped, and the walker moved away from her, and her ankle turned, and there was a terrible cracking sound, and then there was a deep, guttural wail, like all the air being let out of balloon, or a life. And she went down, the mountain of her, rolling and rolling down onto the tarmac like an avalanche.

We all froze for several moments, and then everyone rushed over all at once. The cab driver got out. We all looked down at the woman we lived beside and never spoke to. The pinhole eyes behind her swollen face stared out at us unblinking. Her mouth was greasy as it opened and closed soundlessly, and something about that made me sadder than I’d ever been.

It took another few moments of confusion and commotion to figure out that we would need to call someone. One lady leaned over and asked if Henry could come out to help her. Roberta’s walrus-body shook some then, and a sound like a belch rang from her. The mechanic with his beagle eventually tapped 911 into his mobile. Mrs. Xi was on her way to find Henry, but decided to fetch some water for Roberta instead, so I was appointed to go up. Oola, the big and colourful lady from West Africa lived on the fourth floor, so she came along, too. In the elevator, adjusting her many scarves, she told me something that chilled me to the core. “That girl is a victim of leblouh, like I was,” she said. 

I had no idea what she meant, but by the time we knocked on Henry’s door and found no one there, and returned to the parking lot empty-handed, I learned how young girls from Nigeria and Mauritania were chained down for months and force-fed mountains of grains and animal fat by their mothers, fattening them up for marriage. 

She explained that it was an old custom, still practiced in remote rural regions, and compared it to the way geese are force-fed in factories for the French supposed-delicacy of foie-gras. Gavage.

Roberta was probably born and raised right here in Scarborough. But just as I started to protest Oola’s declaration, I recalled skimming a tabloid article about a girl whose boyfriend wanted her to eat obscene amounts of food. The couple called it “erotic feeding.” The boyfriend said it was a humiliation and submission thing.  He wanted her to get so fat she couldn’t move and had to depend on him completely.  I was disgusted with the story and turned the page. I never thought about it again, until now.

The paramedics were working with Roberta when we returned and the tenants were all gathered to one side of the lot. Oola asked me how they would get her into the ambulance, and I said they were probably trained to hoist a pulley of some kind. But it turned out to be too late anyways. I couldn’t stay outside to gawk then, it just wasn’t right, and there was nothing more I could do to help, so I went inside. 

Henry didn’t turn up until later. Mr. Xi drove him to the morgue.

It turned out Roberta had had a massive stroke.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been trying to get away.
 
Lorette C. Luzajic
 
Editor's Notes: This story responds to Fat Betty in a Chair, by Ducian Kay (USA) contemporary.

This story first appeared (in English only)  in The Galway Review.

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, once for the Best of Net. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. A new collection, Life Stuff, has been scheduled by Kelsay Books for February 2024. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Lorette C. Luzajic is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review. She reads, writes, edits, publishes, and teaches ekphrasis. Two of her flash fictions have appeared in Best Small Fictions anthologies. Her columns on food and art in Good Food Revolution have been nominated seven times for Best American Food Writing. Lorette is an award-winning mixed media artist with collectors in forty countries so far.

The Brioche Eaters
 
You
appear 
so
detached.
 
Do you even feel your daughter lean
-or are you already past feeling?
 
The Dauphin fingers curtains
of an empty cradle.
Does he feel the chill
of the empty throne 
he will never fill?
 
An infant flails
against your breast--
the décolleté that charmed all France.
Your lovely throat lacks a necklace?
No matter.
Madame la Guillotine will provide.
 
Lebrun has tried so hard
to paint you wise and kind,
Enlightenment mother, à la Rousseau.
 
But you all look so bored.
 
Ensconced in velvet,
feathers and fur,
far from Parisian riots,
starving peasants, 
and rotting crops.
 
“’Let them eat cake!’”
you proclaimed.  
 
              So they blew out the candles
              and took off your heads.

​Cynthia Storrs

​Cynthia Storrs teaches, writes, and paints in Nashville, TN.  Educated in the US and UK, she has served on the board of Poetry West (CO), Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Committee, the Pikes Peak Arts Council, and now on the Board of the Poetry Society of Tennessee. Her poetry has been published in three anthologies, Critique, Tennessee, and on-line. She has also published scholarly articles on bilingualism, biculturalism, and acculturation. Cynthia loves art history, theatre, landscape painting, and chocolate.  

​Destruction Revisited 
 
Four years of targeted destruction
followed by a rebuilding of society
and hope for what the future holds
we travel the road through the ruins
repairing the infrastructure of our humanity
slowly returning to a semblance of truth
re-establishing honesty as a virtue
love as a way of interacting
equality as a goal
building with stronger foundations
as after a hurricane
helping each other down the road
until we see the light at the end of the tunnel
as we emerge from the darkness
we see that the light is not hope
but merely the fire of the next battle
nothing has really changed
hope becomes despair
until we can muster our strength
knowing we will rebuild again and again 
and again

Mike Goodwin

Mike Goodwin is a retired high school mathematics teacher who  recently became interested in writing poetry as a result of attending workshops on ekphrastic writing at the local art museum. 

My Tongue Carbon Dates Your Skin: a Modern Triple Sonnet                       
 
I want to crawl beneath your flesh.  
But we are cloaked in opaque scarves, 
our hair flattened beneath white silk shrouds.
I want to venerate you, genuflect before you. 
No hair shirt groveling on shards of glass, no flagellation 
with cat o’ nine tails.  Are you forgery beneath this cloth?  
You taste of sepia and ivory lilies in spring. If I remove 
your scarf, will your face, your whole naked body, 
be imprinted on the cloth?  You are a Shroud of Turin 
without the crown of thorns, without the bloody brawl 
gripping your face. Your face placid beneath this mask.  
Still and soundless as a luna moth clinging to the porch light.  
Persimmon and pecan dust on your wings. We are both 
accordion-creased and windblown.  
 
A current vibrates between our mouths.  
Our foreheads rouged with sumac and sweetgum.                   
See how the wind has ruffled our hair.  
We are sightless lovers. My mouth rambunctious, 
restless. I am hungry for the braille that is you.  
You could be anyone.  The man hauling a bag of lemons 
over his left shoulder at the fish market.  The women 
whose stocking is shod through with runs. 
Repairs with daubs of clear acrylic nail polish, 
cauterizing the spread of the rip. 
The woman slumped at the laundromat, 
lighting stubs of cigarettes abandoned on the floor.                   
Her knees coated with dryer lint and shredded tissues.                  
How can we so misunderstand?  You are unknowable. 
 
I want to dismantle my tie clip, release 
the knot of burlap choke-holding my throat.  
I want to devour you.  Bitter herb of you.   
Lamb shank of you.    I paint my mouth 
with saltwater, search for your lips. 
Between cups of chardonnay and horseradish, 
you are charoset on my tongue: 
paste of walnuts and apples, pear and wine. 
You pardon all my iniquities with the come-hither tilt 
of your head.  The way you lean in to receive my tongue. 
But this is a hot August night and we are rootless trees, 
floating in the mangrove.  Our shrouds spiral salt tears
into the waterlogged mud.  Nests balance on our branches, 
still wet with the saliva of blue herons and roseate spoonbills.    

Marianne Peel

Marianne Peel loves poetry that literally makes her stop breathing.  She worked for thirty-two years as an English teacher, learning life lessons from her students as well as from Albee's Zoo Story, Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, and Shaffer's Equus. She loves to play Native American Flute and ukulele in the woods. She’s taught teachers in China for three summers, studied in Nepal and Turkey on Fulbright Scholarships, and has danced in the rain forests of Bali, Indonesia. Her debut book of poetry is No Distance Between Us through Shadelandhouse Modern Press.  She has a second full-length collection, Singing is Praying Twice, published in 2024, from the same publisher. 

The Fallen Angel

A remorse filled face,
Anger and tears,
Shielded by his ivory arm.
The first touch of earth,
Converting the pure holy wings dark.
Sounds of trumpets,
As the servants of God,
Celebrating their triumph.
Flying lavishly, 
Blowing Samael’s copper hair,
Leaving behind the newly throned Devil.

Devin Bulinda

Devin Bulinda is a student in Michigan, originally from the Philippines, having immigrated to America while  young. "I have always been passionate about writing and creating a ekphrastic poem was an assignment in my honours English class."