Remembering Winter

Winter, my old friend...

I see you beyond the hill

Autumn's last leaf swept away

My shoulders shake with chill

Are my bones just getting old?

They say you're on the way.

Even the clouds have lost their fluff

They seem so flat, so grey.

Yet, I recall a winter past

When cold couldn't halt my play

And the crunch of snow beneath my boots

Brought smiles to my day.

As snowballs landed at my feet

Thrown by admiring boys

Placing me on center stage

I can hear their swishing noise.

As days grow short and cold winds blow

I glance at the orange sun

Remembering so long ago

When winter just meant fun! 

© Shelly Sitzer, 2019

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Prophecy: A Recipe

You’ll need a fish and some sequins,

 a bottle of good wine, sugar,

rock salt, a bag of mints, and maybe

an orange or two. This is not

a comprehensive list. Improvise a bit.

If it were meant to be simple, anyone

could do it. Are you still listening to me?

Good. Now you need to build a boat.

Not a real boat, an imaginary boat.

Exactly 12 feet and 4 inches long.

It should smell like pine trees

in your boat. You must stack coins

edge to edge. Bind them with candy

floss. It doesn’t matter what color.

It just needs to be sticky. You have

too many questions. Why would I know

when the flood is coming? Who said

it would end in a flood? I’m just telling

you to build a boat in your mind.

No easy fixes I’m afraid, but you can

eat the fish. Sequins make everything shine.

You’ll figure out the rest or you won’t.

© Ellie White, Originally Published in Peatsmoke

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Sunglint Butterflies

The moment exists

and slips my grasp today

as it does on many

As present bliss is lost

in time that will not be detained

even if I resist the flow

An unseen force is moving

through me...and I question

if the current knows the stream, or

if consciousness can recognize

living as it seems

Is simple awareness reality

and living just a dream?

Or is the truth of Being

somewhere inbetween?

Human born, we are born to see

that balance is a mystery,

a cosmic dance...

Siva, getting down, getting on,

getting free!

Destined for more

than a meal and a mate,

we must daily choose our fate

and fell the power of the stream...

for we are carried, after all!

Yet, it's up to us to paddle

and not to drift, for ultimate

enlightenment

Sunglint butterflies scintillate their flight

upon the windrift soul of water

flowing over stone...

I'm on the bridge, above the stream...

again, the Sun is bursting

light and water over me!

© Gerry Sackett, 2019

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Senile Ghosts

The whiff of Pall Mall

floats across the room,

drifts in front of my eyes,

drawing a steep river bank and us 

skinny-dipping in shallow water.

The fragrant sketch revives

a hopeful evening.

Senile ghosts haven’t wised up

and crashed my Halloween party.

They thought they could change the world

but broke their wings in drunken binge

while skinny-dipping in shallow water.

The ghosts believe they run the world

because the moon agreed to swim along

in the river of missed opportunities

and misread observations,

hiding the ripples of wrinkles

below the silver rays.

The tops of maples and oaks

gleam orange and gold; 

the berserk ghosts dash down

the steep riverbank

like headless chickens.

With increasing alarm,

I open the doors and windows,

praying for a draft to carry away

the whiff of Pall Mall.

© Helen Kanevsky, 2019

Image courtesy of The Spectator

Dazzling Dinoflagellates

We gather when the moon is hidden

in earth shadow, stand in a group to hear facts,

take advice, don life jackets that cover our lungs,

our hearts.  We drive toward a cove at the

salt sea edge where the plankton proliferate,

persist in a small shallow bay with its twisted neck

to the sea, its reef a wall that holds them in.  These

bright, tiny organisms, single cell, simple we call them,

beckon us to witness their wonder. Under wisps

of night light we load into kayaks, follow one

dim beacon. Only paddle sounds dipping, dripping,

pulling on water.  Last light tucks under the earth,

dark descends fully, fills the space that holds us. 

The enchantment begins.  Under every boat

a lining of light, each paddle's dip is a brush

painting sparkle.  Even the fish surface

in small blue spotlights, descend exposed.

These uncountable beings dance ghostly

glimmering with every splash we make.

I sink my arm in the cool cove, skin glows

blue.  Lift lighted water in both cupped hands,

let it fall back twinkling into the bay, dots of glitter

on my fingers, my palm -- I am holding starlight.

© Marti Snell, 2016

(Snell, Martha E. “Dazzling Dinoflagellates.” Streetlight Magazine, Fall, 2016. Issue No.19, Web 16 October. http://streetlightmag.com/2016/12/09/dazzling-dinoflagellates-by-martha-snell/)

Bioluminescent Algae at Vieques Bay, Puerto Rico
courtesy of jenonajetplane.com

Moon Landing +50

It rained most of that week

So we couldn’t see it anyway

with the naked eye

And the grainy TV imagery

and the muffled voices

From a quarter million miles away

This orbed story seeming so alien

to my lifeguard lifestyle

and the big concert

Coming up in a couple weeks

over in New York State

Or that moony girl

who kept draping herself

         on my white guard stand,

Recalling that when Apollo was announced

We believed what the President said

before Vietnam

And Watergate and stagflation

Opened a continental latrine trench

Between the government

and the people,

Nearly failing to mention that this was only

another Frontier story

another land grab

Of empty spaces occupied by nothing

or mere heathens thus

Ripe for that special Christian rapacity

         forgiven in advance

for bringing the Word

to the wilderness,

Awakening too late to the bitterly plain

         truth that that savage

wisdom is what we needed

All along to keep this singular

blue pearl

From becoming a charcoal-dusted

cratered place

Where a white man’s bootprint

lasts a million years.

          © Bill Prindle, 2019

Apollo 11 bootprint, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

ON THE FREE FAKE TROLLEY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE

I am ashamed

That I am mostly disgusted

By two fortyish lovers

I scrutinized on the city's free fake trolley.

She scoured out his nose and ears

Over and over, devotedly,

Wiping the goo on her shorts.

Did she judge the goo to be his gift

Or at least her exemplary achievement?

She is as focused as a  deluxe surgeon.

Her not-ugly face never gets bored.

His head relaxes on her steadfast lap.

In his near-ugliness he is smiling.

The process lasts throughout the ride.

He also does not get bored.

She is the mother cat whose job

Is to preciously clean her kitten without stop;

Or is this vision

A sort of Pieta'?

Are they utterly in love,

In love above most other lovers?

Are they so free they can do such stuff in public;

Or are they bizarrely unashamed?

I devoted myself to staring:

Can my disgust be discussed?

Or do I admire such ugh-ness?

The clothing of the unwary  pair

Verged on being rags.

Will they be inexplicable icons

In my brain?

           © Stephen Margulies, 2019

CAT Trolley, courtesy of nbc29.com

Natural Love

Great bursts of chemical oozings

slide through ventricles

and disperse,

unhinge my sternum

and part my lungs

so my heart can push

at the thin skin of my chest.

My cranium becomes elastic, inflates,

its crown swelling - 

a transparent formation of overhead eyestalks -

giving me dizzying heightened sight.

My brain swims in its extra space.

My eyeballs bob back

and bounce off my

frozen-taut tongue.

I hear each deafening slide of cloth,

each rock-grinding foot shuffle

and each cyclonic breath-breeze.

I can hear your hair growing.

I can smell your hair growing.

The veins of my limbs

sprout bristles like crystals,

that sting then leave a numb ache.

Arms weakly waver and sway,

palms glowing warm

emitting waves of wet essence,

while cool fingers wake into

novel functions as antennae,

extending to sense airborne clues,

seeking any molecule of you.

My feet have grown suction cups.

I'm vacuumed to the spot.

It is all so lovely. 

And how I long for more.

           © Laura Seale,  2019

Jellyfish, photo by CarbonNYC
from Wikimedia Commons

Note Taken About My Body (After a trip to Sam's Club)

My left side leads my right side

and it has always been this way,

from, I suspect, mother’s womb

until, I expect, I find the grave.

My left foot anchors my right foot

each time I begin to walk steps.

Then I feel it solid on the ground

before I forward shift from the left.

As left hand hooks it, right hand plays

note found first before pluck or strum.

From this arrives one more tune

likely that again I sing and hum.

But so you say my left ear

hears a bit better than my right.

Well no surprise do I feel

always left carried the work and fight.

And from the womb to grave I go.

Being me requires this will be so.

© Dennis Wright,  2012

"Walking Man" by Alberto Giacometti

My Rebeccas

In my youth there was Rebecca standing on a hill of snow.

Other boys fought for attention but her smile was just for me.

The frozen city was our playground.

Our exploits were the stuff of legend,

Until our friendship faded into time.

In my teens there was Rebecca reading poetry in class.

She was kind to me when others found it amusing to be cruel.

We would talk until the break of dawn

And exchange desires and secrets,

Until our romance faded into time.

Away at school there was Rebecca studying rare works of art.

Wild, intense, and passionate and interested in me.

Our days were filled with ecstasy.

At night we dreamt about the future,

Until our liaison faded into time.

In my middle years there was Rebecca working in a crowded office.

Her energy and beauty sliced through monotony with ease.

We were partners, friends, and lovers

Fusing intimacy and insight,

Until our marriage faded into time.

In the end there was Rebecca living with me in a home.

All her trials and tribulations made her as strong as she was wise.

We laughed and cried through all our stories

And cherished moments spent together,

Until we both faded into time.

© Ben Siegan, 2019

Optomotor

I’m watching a creature who watches a screen

a watchman who watches and knows what he’ll mean

when they ask and he tells, and he tells and they ask

about purpose that’s pickled in each daily task

And the music of quicksand like metal will melt

when the crucibles bellow the furies they felt 

They say it’s for knowledge, but knowing is cheap

I can know the whole world if I get enough sleep

A moron can learn all past works of the dead

and still in the present have shit in his head

To understand anything is to understand less

so damn all deductions and let’s make a guess

or profess our stupidity, straight and sincere

find clarity clearly in all that’s unclear

So, do I believe this? Eh, I don’t know

It could be that today is especially slow

I oft throw off caution and except what I mean

when I’m watching a creature who’s watching a screen

© James Cole, 2019

The Gloves

I am a frustrated compulsive shopper.

Without regard for the announced Christmas sale,

I buy a pile of colorful gloves to soothe myself.

Gray woolen gloves,

blue dress gloves,

green leather gloves,

red rubber gloves,

clear surgical gloves,

white wedding gloves,

and a couple of mittens.

I lost my gray gloves in my American history class, 

when I grasped that Cherokee has not always been a brand name,

but women and children sent away in winter with their bare hands.

I lost my blue dress gloves when my boyfriend married my best friend.

They honeymooned in Paris and adopted an abandoned child.

I lost my green leather gloves in a hospice

where my dying father told me that he didn’t love me.

I lost my red rubber gloves in my new boyfriend’s kitchen

when it became clear that he treasured me as a cook.

I lost my clear surgical gloves in the operating room 

when I decided to stop hurting dogs.

I kept my white wedding gloves 

because my granddaughter loves to play with them,

and I gave her the mittens to keep her hands warm

because this is the only thing 

I can do to make her happy on this cold day.

© Helen Kanevsky, 2018

ANTORINI luxury gloves,
from Wikimedia Commons

St. Agatha Waits for Peter

The National Gallery, Edinburgh, 2015

It’s true. I did not need 

them, the mounds of flesh 

where my children should have 

fed, their milkteeth nibbling 

cracked skin, suckling little drops of 

blood with every gulp of milk. 

Still, as I lie bleeding, 

my breasts carried away in a bowl 

(perhaps given to a hungry dog)

I want them back. I send a prayer 

like a stumbling child to heaven. 

I wait in the blooming red.

           ©️  Ellie White, 2016

(First published by |tap| magazine, 2016)

The martyrdom of St. Agatha
by a follower of C. Welcome
from Wikimedia Commons

Rain

When I rain

I rain on plastic tents

stretched over heating vents

where the homeless sleep on cold nights

in the cold, cold cities.

In southern towns

I pound tin roofs—

slanting shanty roofs

across the railroad tracks.

There I drum a slum song

to children asleep in one bed.

Under the bridge,

an old man in a dirty sleeping bag

slips into a drunken doze.

He dreams of better days

when he was a young buck,

dancing like rain

on top of the world.

© Peg Latham,  1993

Rain in Kolkata
Photo by Monster eagle
from Wikimedia Commons