Nov 2011

Already Gone - Sisterhood Triptych, Carolyn Owen Sommer

Already Gone

She hasn’t forgotten – entirely –

his insouciant manner, the indifference

he displayed for the finality of

their condition. The transformation

did not occur overnight, but slowly,

at times with the patience needed to thread

a needle in the dark. She remembers

claustrophobia, grasping at straws –

that out-of-reach hand-hold that would keep her

from free-falling off of an alpine peak.

His voice, silky smooth, whispered of wanting

her happiness; foretold of her fortune –

all with words she did not notice as his

good-bye until he was already gone.

Siobhan

Morning Song

                        for Robert’s mother

The loft of leaf joined to limb, the green heat

of noon tucked in the hems of tree, air slow,

its swelter and flow an unwavering clock

of light sifted twig to twig to dull cast

of dusk. And voices say to eat. The moon

is halved. Voices say to rest. Waxing

must wait for the wane. For the barren box, slight

only in earth’s dirt heart. Pinpricks of night wither

at the heron’s rasp. Shapes havoc sullen screens.

Don’t wake me from this wide sea tiding out

to ocean. I follow the whale’s great tail.

I follow in wake the small boy who grips

firm the fin. I will follow him to water’s

deepest night, when from sight lost, form lingers,

then crests the current home, and I too rise.

Lisa Higgs

Memories

  

Fall and school has started up again with our actions of

throwing, laughing, jumping and sounds…

wait! Wait! “Give him back his ball,” I am yelling;

backing a junior across the grounds.

He is a freshman and he is still just beautiful,

And he is mine. My little brother.

The three years class difference is paramount as

I see him the target- Not now, not ever.

Memories.

When we hear the stories and relive the stories from parents,

Do we even know their truths?

Standing by, at 2 ½ as he is born.

Suppose? Just suppose I admit, I don’t recall?

I towered him forever, to that day

I watched over him for always, has never gone away

So many tales and a little one followed too – so I had double duty

And was the task of love, true.

Memories

Mamma was nearing 19 when Bill was born

She was an old one, 21 with the baby surprise

Stories of begging Daddy for me, as she was full 16

Nearly. Dearly.

Brother Bill, 70 last month, my mind smiles to him

He grew 6 ft and gave me five kin, left the Air Force after the defend

On to Langley he helped America strong

Now, his decisions in moving along.

He leaves comfort of satellites and secrets

He enjoys his baby as he does year 12 of school

My brother, my friend, music and words we share

Nothing like joy of having him here.

Memories

The boy backed across the yard, probably only a couple strides

Was always loved and we both take pride of being friends-we never set aside.

The days still moving and memories glow

As Brother announces, “I am going to go”.

If everyone has a brother with these times shared

You are blessed beyond

I have not one, but two and this is the old one I share with you.

Happy retirement, October 31, Brother Bill.

Barbara McDonald

The Value of Memories

Breeze sifts through open windows, stirs the curtains.

Scents hidden in the folds of memory

fill the space, push against it, invade.

An image of what once was finds it way

out of that place holding all her secrets,

exposes lost dreams and forgotten hopes.

Of all she values, it is those she holds

within her darkest desire that she relives.

She recalls the lingering sensations …

a trail of fingertips across belly and breasts;

the scratch of nails along her spine.

She no longer lies to herself – or others –

memories are to be cherished

for what they gave us – what they give us.

Siobhan

Afternoon Poem

I tend to the mundane tasks

of talking books and phone calls
listening to the monotonous conversations
children and ailments

activities planned

not mine

I wish to be outside

under the clear blue sky calling

from the window while I toil
how I can last til the end of the day?

Wait, I’ve got mail

A poem arrives
words filled with magic

take me far beyond the clouds

far beyond the mundane

the day’s end is not so far

K.A.T. Corrigan

Brave New World, Lynn Hotes

Brave New World

I-80 leads nowhere

she wants to be elsewhere

this warm spring night

she should be sprawled across some flowered sheet,

sweet scents

wafting through windows newly screened.

Instead, pinned behind the wheel

she clutches her last nerve

steers between behemoth trucks and constructions

rebar wrought by satanic one-lane satirists.

Tires slap black

pavement’s white lines

define this second

then the next

beat becomes hypnotic

Shit! She almost falls asleep,

is saved by her daughter’s voice,

“I’ll read to you, if you want me to.”

They’d lost the trucks a few miles back;

the small car glides

with an ease not felt before.

A huge full moon is on the rise

but the girl opens the glove box door

for light, and begins to read in a steady voice

a book she’s surprised she likes,

not being what her mother calls “a reader” —

always followed by the silently implied “like me.”

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.

“That’s Al-du-ous” her mother hums.

“Whatever. Chapter One.”

Despite her mother’s claim to know the way

the author says his name,

this is a book she hasn’t read.

“I never liked science fiction,” she says.

Her daughter excels in science and  math

a consolation for mother-mapped paths

that will not be tread.

Their exit looms near the end of Chapter Three.

The tedious journeys’ longed for escape

seems less important now

than the fate of fictional eggs.

The daughter puts the book away

and the mother marks the place

where something brave and new has hatched.

Corrine Frisch

A Poem for Jane, Ellie Unterbrink

A Poem for Jane

Dead calm August 6 a.m.

Cape Cod colored canvas

boats bob

through mists of coffee steam.

Gulls circle and cry,

but this is a Midwestern sky

ample enough cover

to harbor inland seas of green

tassels flag across the masts

in my picture window scene.

But you say

"write a poem for me."

So I inventory the fleet,

harvest one

and christen her "The Jane,"

a seaworthy name.

Like you, not the flashiest craft.

She wears the patina of a storm or two.

Yet when the wind comes up,

she's the one

who'll see you home.

She has good bones.

New England bred

prairie transplant

sails across my page,

"The Jane."

Corrine Frisch

Painting the Muse, Sheri Ramsey

Painting the Muse
 

Is it the shadows behind that make your eyes
glow this way, an inner chiaroscuro
weave of golden beam and ebon shadow
shining through, rife with love, cerulean—
or is that lazuline?—rich blue, open
invitation, inclusive magnetic
center of my gravity—just as is
that silver-grey silence behind your voice,

between your words . . . rare, violet and silken
nebulous of geometry—curves sans
cubes, corners, hard angles. This against skies
somehow familiar in their alien
vistas. As though emitted by your gaze;
All which hint untold stories, poems unpenned.

David Pitchford

anxious

her soul feels

weak like

early-morning fog

bullied away

by the afternoon.

bruised by fits

of obsession,

her mind incessantly

hums of insanity

nestled softly

between once-

coherent thoughts

and

a lingering passion,

still hoping

that one day

she will get

better.

Nikkie Lynn Prosperini

Anniversary 

It was six months before her twenty-second birthday.

I was nearly forty. So long ago.

She was here for a job interview and I was a visitor. Encounters escalated into conversation, coke and popcorn. We were in free flow, So long ago.

Ah, the reflection of disco dying in eighty-one, while getting to know you, getting to care.

A cactus transplant, celebrating joint-ownership of a 5 quart pitcher and balancing the mind.

Meeting the families-meeting the families and street tours of Lewisburg. Papaw’s wide smile and arms opened to visits, arms opened to aging.  My heart still presses on his image. Thank you West Virginia as you house the root of my being, the connection to my heart.

Learning, Growing, Knowing…

Moving. Your undergrad assembled as I moved the corporate stick around the State. We broke into University – Illinois on schedule and took a pass at acceptance to Vet school. Had a bigger school to attend- as again, the corporation took us to the banks of the Ohio, where Pete Rose was still famed and chili had given Cincinnati prominence. 

Another new house and water enough to wind surf and sail. Two small beaches as there was sand and gravel. Friends forever branded on our being and we settled in for the Vet school scene, back to Illini.

She, so skilled found time to sew, stencil and bake. She so kind, finding time to love and read and such differences she would make.

I give up the Corporation and take up the University, along with my new business birth.

Gardens planted, flowers bloom and life moves to visits of Paris and Piccadilly and our parent’s places.

We graduate Wisconsin and have flourished in this scene. 

Throwing a family and friend party without spare and soon after pack for out there…

A month-long externship gave call to the place and spending that first job here was not to be replaced. Grand Junction, CO lacks glamour and elite but it has open spaces and outdoor life with weather not beat.

Back to Illinois and open our own – aw, you never know a business partner until you have one and selling back our piece of that pie; No regrets, no regrets - given a decade, BIG city goodbye.

We looked at Santa Fe, Austin, Asheville and Prescott and Seattle too. Oh, we looked it all over and knew what to do- for the need of simplicity; City life has pluses but farm life has our pulses.

That first year, she was their Kennel gal and now – she is their Boarded internist. Home, included working again at that first Vet clinic. That first place, so long ago.

I believe I will continue to look out at the pasture, cut some fresh flowers and say that having now caressed my mind, I believe it has only been a few days. Not so long ago. Each hour is mine, ours and I will remain blessed with my life for I have you.

Happy Anniversary

Barbara McDonald

If They Only Knew

If only they knew how the wind blows in the trees

and a soft whisper of ecstasy blows In the air.

If only they knew how to be surreal.

To open their minds and dream dreams of yearning and love.

If only they would listen to the soft drumming of hope which beats in their insides, longing for one thing, more powerful than the strength of any muscle well built.

If only they could feel the power which intimidates the body and soul and scares the laughs of liberty from the lungs leaving no breath left to spare.

If only they could feel what it’s like to have an aura of emptiness thrashing your insides.

To free itself of an eternity of isolation.

If only they could live a meaningful life,

taking pre-cautious steps, but allowing enough leverage to break and be free.

Free of madness and undeserving persons, shifting themselves into the world

without common sense, but with pride, and prejudice against others.

If only they knew that helping others is not something to be punished

but rather, rewarded and reprieved.

If only they knew that happiness is not something that comes and stays.

If only they knew that happiness is likely to take it’s bags,

quickly escape the depths of despair which removes it,

and go away; far away.

So far, that only a miracle could bring it back.

If only they knew that miracles do not go to the non-believers.

If only they knew that miracles travel to the persons less fortunate and less desirable. The ones who truly need that gracious blessing.

And, if only people could understand the importance of letting such miracles escape their bare burdened hands to go to the needy.

Then the world could know a little better how I feel

and how those like me feel.

How that imperativeness could be unchained and unraveled.

But for now,

All that’s left to say are words of wisdom, which will be withered by the time they are understood.

Withered like the hands of a woman with the life closing behind her.

If only they knew how the wind blows in the trees

and a soft whisper of ecstasy blows in the air under a tree as I write away my soul until the very end of time. 

Elizabeth Choat

Perhaps, Dennis Morris

Perhaps

I, intrinsic daughter, cry into the nightless night and 
     so

Discreetly a tear falls from my cheek.

A reflection catches itself

In a spinet of webs and

Alone in anguish,

A spider sits.

I ache at the thought of resounding pain and

Forced into happiness among the trees,

Grins of masked eyes stare at me and

Wait to smile.

Perhaps the Earth moves slowly without a

Thought of despair and

Perhaps we make of it, unintentionally, a horrific

Time warp of shattering volts.

I can make of my life

A happy swamp filled with flora for a thousand.

But my bones,

A barren wasteland of hope,

Are left to quake the earth for billions of centuries to come.

Elizabeth Choat

Memories of Street Corners, Kathy Pippin Pauley

It Was a Younger Town

Memories of street corners depress him.
Where the Walgreens department pharmacy stands --
southeast corner, 5^th at South Grand --
a used car lot thrived for decades in earlier days.
Then a Top’s Big Boy Restaurant sprouted and grew.
It became a favorite rendezvous for almost 30 years.
His dear hearts and pals came for the salad bar, Slim Jim platters and milk shakes

after movies. The joint hummed!
And from downtown it was a breeze, a straight shot south on 5th to connect again

with friends for the breakfast buffet
after Sunday school and second services.
He had the makings of a responsible adult at the time.
Before the dance studio – South Grand at Glenwood --
thrived a second-hand store before
the office supply store before
the Avenue Food Shop before
the Sugar Bowl,
hangout of his older sister.
Sometimes he tagged along once with her
and her boyfriend, Mom and Dad insisted.
What a jukebox they had!

Today’s lifeless, dusty, pot-holed asphalt and dirt --
southeast corner, 4^th at South Grand --
was home to a Ponderosa Steak House in the 70s
turned computer store
turned another charity second-hand store
that suffered before moving waaaaaay out to
the west side and thriving.

The airport past the southwest fringe of the city --
nudged to oblivion by encroaching residential developers --
was sold by airport owners for handsome profit
They banked their riches and moved out of town and why the hell not?
They hadn’t prospered, really prospered,
since the new airport opened north of the city back in 1947.

Grocery stores were once close-in to the south side --
Piggly Wiggly and later Eisner at MacArthur at Ash,
Jansens’ I.G.A. near 1^st at Outer Park
National on Jefferson near Walnut,
Kroger – 2^nd at South Grand,
A&P –  7^th at South Grand across from Stuart School --
all gone broke or relocated west, leaving less and less
of a central city that glistened and sang in mercantile plenty.
Today it's abandoned by gutless wonders who grew queasy at the sight of brown,

who left behind residents trapped
by modest means and citizens proud of the city and unwilling to migrate away

from loyal neighbors who sneak peeks from cracks in curtains drawn closed and

watch sullen
malcontents in baggy pants and scowling faces
shuffling down the center of the streets; never on the sidewalks past empty lots

gutted of homes and squealing children
and left to rot in festering puddles.
 
The northwest corner, Pasfield at South Grand
was a Watt Bros. pharmacy with a soda fountain
that served cherry phosphates and chocolate Cokes and
sundaes any day of the week.
He rode there on his bike from home.
Later it was a King Harvest Food Coop, then
a gift boutique, then a fitness training club,
and today empty of life, but not of memories.

The northeast corner, Whittier and Ash, five lots north of
his childhood home on Whittier, two and a half blocks
from the duplex he owns today, the home he is afraid to see
NOT because he is afraid the experience will kill him but
because he is afraid the experience will not kill him;
He yearns to walk south to gaze like a thief,
on walls and grass that were his, his,
to see what was once a meticulously gardened yard
with the maple tree he purchased as a sapling
at a Lawrence grade school Arbor Day sale,
the house, the only safe harbor he would know down deep!

He didn’t love it for the 21 years he lived there,
didn’t praise his parents for their sacrifice.
One day he will summon the courage
to walk two and a half blocks almost straight south
and tour the alley he roamed regularly until
he was 10 years old or so and grew up a little past that phase.
Today as he lives, the grown man he hears the echoes of his childhood neighbors,

so close, so far away, friendly.
He holds in his nostrils traces of the fragrances
of his friends’ homes, Jay Bruninga, Phil Daykin,
the Wilsons, Wendy Booth, Marcia Blizek, Paul Tack,
Tom Keeslar, Charlie Allen, Nancy Gibson, Karen Gernenz,
Don Arenz, Greg Pease, every trace loved as gold
and everyone moved away.
In his dreams he looks into the yard from the alley,
reaches out from his heart and steals more happy memories,
sees the back door and one last time, savors
remains of molecules he shared with brother Bill,
sister Dorothy, Mom and Dad until
everybody moved out of town but him,
and the world changed;
and the world grew up around him . . .
and the world grew on without him . . .
and he remained
the same.

Job Conger

PICASSOng

Red pretauge on canvas white,
Streaks of saffron center right,
From left corner sprouts a plem
Floral postiquodiem.
Kladar races neck and neck
With the banye bisolek.
Orange disks in motion glurge;
Toward the fading dree converge.

(chorus)
Lend your ears and voices true
To the mellow illusdrew
We shall cloy mo talikong
Celebrate an abstract song

Hut in shadow on a rise --
Fuscia nordank misty fies --
Over deep cerulean blue
Stolden pax kalam pocue
Creatures dance hodaigren lape
While the natives flir kanape
Vopan is the chanter king
Harvest green and bresaling

Lend your ears and voices true
To the mellow illusdrew
We shall cloy mo talikong
Celebrate an abstract song

Framed in sweet melodic hues
Catholicspro  te  stant  sjews
Recognize with warm delight
Wonders of the shenegite
We’ll connect to what we can
From the palette’s laudigan
Symbol scanbee what yewill
Cata  pondewin   dasill

Lend your ears and voices true
To the mellow illusdrew
We shall cloy mo talikong
Celebrate an abstract song

Job Conger

Desert Isle

Millions tend to this populace isle

And factories fill its water-bound ’scape.

Countless capital clerks its deeds they do file,

Countless criminals its maids they do rape.

A thousand machines belch pois’nous black smoke.

A thousand breadless souls swallow only hope.

Yet for me ’tis a desert isle alone

In an empty sea, a solitary home.

Like Crusoe, mine is infinite labour

And not for escape to equal barrens,

But merely to be alive and no more.

My wilds are Eden-not—but fetid fens.

Blooms are not parti-colour’d roses gay;

All ashen soot of black and dungeon grey.

I both long for and fear finding one morn

An alien footprint on the beach alone.

Would Friday the slayer of blackness be,

A white-white knight of Arthurian lore,

Or dread cannibal sent to consume me?

His chain-mail’d mount trampling me the more.

Best then to avoid that long stretch of beach

And stay in my cave void of sun and leech.

For hope is the labour most infinite—

Golden love the treasure most beyond my sight.

Ted Morrissey (in the persona of fictional 19^th-century
                       British author Margaret T. Haeley)

Senectitude’s Memento, Chris Martin

senectitude’s memento

cobwebs cluster in arid daybright corners

gauzy sunskein threads

driftsome and tender as nape-sung flesh-whispers

fluxsome as shadow’s slip

          senility’s silken grit sifted and diffuse

          recalling affairs unsettled

          errands unfinished

          matters accumulated

                    confected corollaries yet to pass

                    sunset wrinkles

eventide’s glow

velveting the advance of twilight

eclipsing the incomplete

     dusking evanescent the trappings undusted

spiderwebs stretch across humid moonhazed dreams

gossamer nighttide constellations

lissome and elusive as fossa vein-wisps

fleeting as hoarfrost’s lace

          youth’s shimmering mesh latticed and lambent

          recalling dew undisturbed

          earth-breath unharmed

          dampness refulgent

               dawnsoft droplets yet to last

               sunsquint tears

horizon’s flush

mourning the passage of moonshade

illuminating the intangible

     trapping fugitive the dustings undusked

Joanna Beth Tweedy

First Glance

The onion seems to be an underrated vegetable

its appearance is deceiving

remove the nondescript first layer

revealing a soft and tender fragrant body

that can only be seen if one searches

it can be sliced, chopped or diced

be used as a condiment, ingredient or side dish

rarely is it an entrée

even in its translucency its flavor is not mistaken

though it often is overlooked

taken for granted

it is always in the vegetable bin

ready to serve

ready to add that extra something

quietly murmuring

peel me

K.A.T. Corrigan

Caught out of Time

(A Portrait in Words)

A diverse collection of poets and writers, some

with talent, and those whose talent is to listen.

They both reach for idealistic heights of artistry.

1960’s too-cool daddies and way-too-cool momma’s

with floppy leather hats, like Dylan wore, returns

for another encore.  Except now, its dread-locks being

sported by hot young men, only sure of one thing,

the girl hanging out next to them.

Our hopes and dreams of flower-power, peace and love,

though faded out, echoes and glints on young faces,

still trapped in cocoons of naiveté.

The smell of fear, its strong and wet, and it

lurks at the back of their minds.  The fear of

self-loss suffocates, they keep their eyes tightly

shut against the daylight of reality.  They long for

more of those experiences not yet lived.  Hunger.

Defiant symbols sewn on leather jackets,

the yin and the yang, worn like a charm against evil.

As if it will straighten out the crazy upside down

times that we live in today.  Recollections of peace

signs that we thought would save the world.

Like the next generation of Woody Guthries,

they sing about the down-and-out, the lost and

forgotten.  Maybe they'll find their way, if

they can just sing them home.

A chess game being played at the next table.

The man’s long, thin braid courses down the side

of his face.  He calculates his next move.

He checks out his mate.

Philosophical heart beats of writers who dare

to express thoughts that only their pen has seen.

Poets with profound statements.

Smoke hangs thick; inhalation of oxygen limited

to shallow breaths, at the coffee-house

Caught Out of Time.

The crowd thins out, bound for other places.

Searching for the next stop, Daddy,

Where they can just be cool.

Janice J. Robinson

Hearty Spirit of Maine

The wood pile reflected preparation

as smoke curled from chimneys,

relaying forced hibernation

under snow piled to the window sill.

Captured towering firs

witnessed winter beating against panes

and obliterated the long road,

disconnecting the neighbors in Maine.

Undermined by nature’s elements,

the people down under yielded,

and with Grandma and napping babies

envisioned a bountiful summer.

Amid friends seated round,

where covered dishes abound,

a bright-eyed toddler

giggled through Irish complexion.

Mud squishing between impish toes,

when her kitty is flung to the wind,

she discerns how it lands on its feet

and climbs back into her lap again.

Pam Miller

Love Note

Diamonds dance

on moonstruck Pacific,

like ecstasy,

now reflected in your eyes.

Pam Miller

Middle-Aged Madness:

What Happened When A Middle-Aged
Woman (With Osteoporosis) Lost Her
Mind And Tried To Learn To Roller Skate
In The Driveway


Wearing protection
Left wrist splint from last winter
Right wrist splint from the car accident last spring
Roller skates from a yard sale


Borrowed protection:
Husband’s bicycle helmet
Sister’s volleyball knee pads
Friend’s elbow pads


Supportive friends on each side
Worried husband, interested neighbor
Momentary distraction
Comedy action:  flying feet,
Bruised bottom, hurting head.


Supportive friends on each side,
Worried husband, interested neighbor
Removing useless splints
Knee pads, elbow pads, helmet.


Sitting in cushioned comfort
Fiction favorites, origami and Audubon
More distraction
From the result of comedy action.


Sanity returns, limping.


Vicki Bamman

Sand and Snow

I am buffeted by alternating winds from either side

of my sparsely forested path along a slender ridge of mountain,

struggling to remain upright with wind, birdsong, call of distant gulls

and rhythmically pounding breakers ringing in my ears, stinging my eyes, filling my lungs with
gasping breath the scent of pine and salt from the sea.

My surrealistic dream scape expands before me on either side

as I traverse along this needled spine of mountain ridge,

catching sight through trees of dancing dunes of sand on my left,

while on my right wind whips swirling drifts of blowing snow.

To where I walk or from where I've come I do not or cannot recall.

My attention is riveted upon remaining upright

as I walk between blowing dunes of sand and drifts of snow.

Nancy Ganguli

In the Deep Blue Sea

For years I have proclaimed

I want to come back in my next life

as an organized woman,

preferably a thin one who doesn’t sweat,

but the main requirement is:

     ORGANIZATION.

But if denied my human form,

I wish to come back as a

     dolphin ... 

a female dolphin, a popular

female dolphin, clicking and whistling

and singing my loquacious dolphin-self

through the deep blue sea,

gossiping, eating,

playing, frolicking,

fucking with reckless abandon,

                                    

                   soaring ...

       up,                       left, right

            down,

       

AND ... there would be no clutter ..

NO NEED FOR ALL THAT ORGANIZED

                  HUMAN CRAP!

No toilets to clean,

no papers to sort

no bills to pay,

no dishes to wash!

Did someone say thin?

HELL with thin!

I am Nancy, the dolphin,

plump, blubbery, beautiful,

swimming and joyful,

naked and free,

far away

in the deep blue sea

 

     up,                    up,

           down,                down

                      left, right ...

Nancy Ganguli

Falling, Linda Post Lucas

Seeds

Fall trees...are spitting

seeds...twirling

leaves...and I...

sit on a branch my mind,

fall asleep and breathe...

as fall trees...spit more

leaves...eating sky...and I...

twirl, breathe...

and leave...a seed.

Anita Stienstra

The Wrist Watch

You are the hands I watched turn

day after day, year after year

as if the movement of my being

relied on their rotation, and I was

nothing without you to tell me I existed

in this point in time, at this place

performing any particular job or task.

I despise you. I keep you

in my coffin of a jewelry box

to remind me not to care so much

about things that look alive

and helpful, hold me captivated,

but really only clasp

around my wrist like a hand cuff.

Anita Stienstra

Familiar

Just before bedtime I let Max,

my Benjy terrier, slip past me.

Before I could stop him, he fled

across the porch, down the snow-

packed stairs and vanished.  Hours

later, he still hadn’t reappeared

so I got in the car and crept down

sepulchral streets and alleys

seeking a glimpse of his golden fur.

Pulling back into my driveway

I caught sight of a dog standing

on the glistening gravel as if waiting

for me.  A first I thought it might be

my prodigal, but this dog was immense,

white as the full moon and regal,

an ermine-clad Wenceslas. 

He gazed as if he knew me,

eyes emanating an unearthly power.

Beside me up the steps he glided

and would have followed me inside

but I turned and said No.

With trembling fingers I closed

the door and secured the bolt,

hoping he’d just go away.

The rest of the night I shivered

on the daybed beneath a moonlit

window, listening for familiar footfalls.

Pat Martin

Homeless in Arkansas

From the very beginning I was in love with

the natural world. My nursery rhymes were

wind blowing through treetops, gurgling

streams, the croaking

of bull frogs from pond-side. I sucked

on silky stems of wild mint and crawled

through fragrant fields of strawberries.

Once in awhile I’d help Mother fill a bag

with blackberries or red raspberries

sagging on a fence row. Often we slept

on a blanket under one of the dippers

so close I thought I could touch it

if only my arm were longer. I’d fall

asleep listening to crickets and tree frogs and

an occasional hoot-owl. Others

who had homes sometimes fed us. 

We’d trek over the foothills from one

to another, I a toddler nestled

between Mother’s warm breasts,

not knowing I was poor.

Pat Martin


 

Love on a Summer's Night, Rose Hutchcraft

Flirt of Flickering Fireflies

on the Sangamon

hundreds
of male

fireflies

wink in unison

through navy

august night

across the

riverbank

hundreds

of female

fireflies

return

the splendid

unison winks

the flirt of

flickering

fireflies

pulsing against a

blanket of dark

excites

voyeurs

like me

Jean Staff

Summer Midday on the Pond

Lulled by lap, silk upon her bank,

still lies morning pond

—senses vagabond.

By noon her sandy ass winces rosy,

winces randy and sore

with sun’s spank.

Swaddled Bobolink, so nest cozy,

chirp chirps a snore.

In waddled grass,

duck royal does nap

with nary a thought that dog, cat

and  brat…do not.

Maiden flowers, manifold,

winking, they  tease

the   frantic showers

of bold bachelor bees

aswirl, atwirl

the red, gold, the please,

and stink, of the girl musky curl.

To nimbus cloud,

pink nippled thru white chiffon,

moppet  willows bawl for a drink,

as old granny breeze, cognac tippled,

stifles a salty yawn.

Then see them crawl,

their green skin rippled,

the jump high crowd

with  mump-eye faces that stare

and plump-thigh legs that sprawl

lily pad pillows.

Beware! By blink unseen,

shadows slink serpentine

thru the foxtail tall and blonde,

thru the rosette veil of steam.

While far beyond

the pale of pole and net,

fishes sink into unfathomed wet

Dream—Summer Midday on the Pond.

Jean Staff 

Survival

“Can’t you read?” snapped the monkey.  It waved

a threatening baton over the yellow tape; I stepped back

in surprise.  “It says, police line, do not

cross,” the monkey said.  “This means

you.”  “Who put you in charge?” I snapped

back.  No simian with a badge makes

a monkey out of me.  “Evolution is running

backwards,” it said.  “Darwin died and made me

god.”  “Not mine,” I answered.  “What’s the crime here?”

“Building a better mousetrap, with malice

aforethought.”  It raised a paw, pushed

the uniform cap back and scratched

its head.  “What do you know

about this?”  “Nothing,” I said.  “I never

fore thought in my life.”  “None of you

did.  That’s the crime.”  “You’re contradicting

yourself,” I pointed out smugly.  “That’s my

prerogative,” it answered, “now you move

on, there’s nothing to see here.”  “I want

to see the mousetrap.”  “You can’t, it’s been

impounded, expounded, and re-

pounded.  Also classified, eyes only.”  “Whose eyes?”

I asked.  It answered, “That’s 

the question, isn’t it?” 

Liz Huck