Friday, June 13, 2025: Diana Rosen's "How to Write a Love Letter"

 

how to write a love letter

 

it should     singe     leave an edge

blackened  by fire   not destroyed

not all    ash    its  beautiful, inked 

words    proof of your passion

that fire   in your body    that slow 

fire    of desire    deep wanting

quenched only    by warm  kisses

touch skin on skin  relished or 

savored      consumed     when  if

you     ever      can meet       again

© 2025 Diana Rosen

Diana Rosen is a poet and flash writer whose hybrid book of poetry and flash, High Stakes & Expectations, was conceived, written, and published during the lockdown, no doubt to avoid laundry. She lives in Los Angeles where her "backyard" is the largest urban green space in the U.S., Griffith Park. She writes commercially about tea. Please visit her portfolio site, authory.com/dianarosen

Friday, May 30, 2025: Loretta Oleck's "Wonder Woman"

 

Wonder Woman

Teenager in NYC, 1977

I was Wonder Woman—Jordache jeans skin-tight like stockings

tucked into worn-out, stiletto boots.

 

Fifteen, but could easily work my way into Studio 54's VIP room

where Grace Slick and Lady Divine were snorting lines.

 

I was embraced as their mascot because I smudged thick ink black

under my blue eyes and was the spitting image of Wonder Woman,

 except, I didn’t have her powers.

 

It was the seventies, and I had read, cover to cover, Our Bodies, Our Selves.

Discos were mine—fields where asses were grabbed, shooting ranges

where sex was snagged, strange, deranged theme parks where mental looting

and body arson were formidably encouraged.

 

Einstein said—If you want your children to be intelligent read them fairy tales.

 

I don’t remember female heroines, but I guess they had to be princesses,

or at the very least look like Wonder Woman.

 

Steinham said—The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day;

a movement is only people moving.

 

And people sure did move, shaking their booties in shiny silver hot pants.

I boogied under pulsing strobe lights, having no idea my body had rights.

Why did I not hear the words of Steinham, Brownmiller, Millett?

After all, it was the seventies, and I had read, cover to cover, Our Bodies, Our Selves.

I wish someone had said—Take off the damn cape and crown, girl, the tiara and gown, girl.

I wish someone had told me—There is no happily-ever-after.

© 2025 Loretta Oleck

Loretta Oleck, is a Pushcart Poetry Prize nominee, Westchester County Poet Laureate finalist, and author of three poetry chapbooks. Her work has been published in reviews and journals worldwide. Her poetry has been performed at the Hudson Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hammond Museum, and others. She was a Finalist in the Poet’s Billow: Bermuda Triangle Prize, Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize finalist, First Honorable Mention in New Women’s Voices Series Chapbook Competition, runner up for the Los Angeles Poetry Society Poetry Contest, finalist in the Jack Grapes Poetry contest, among others.

Friday, May 16, 2025: Jennifer M. Phillips's "Venus At the Little Acropolis"

Venus At the Little Acropolis

Under the plastic acanthus and laurel

swagging in grandmotherly curves

from the acoustic tiles,

in the hypothermic mood lighting

bluing the corrugated columns

and marblesque tabletops,

the combo strikes up Nisiótika

and the expat Kikladic-islanders grow misty-eyed

over their wine, hummus, and oktopadi.

This is the just warm-up act

under the Parthenon prints from Roma,

and the Venus De Milo wistful

that she could never again maneuver

tsatsiki into that pouty mouth.

Most of those not Greek here would tell you

they are Lebanese, politic at the current

Middle Eastern fraught moment,

but the table in the corner are riotously Egyptian

fêting Teta's eightieth birthday,

the nephews perspiring and the uncles

reminiscing about Oum Kalthoum

though this is Joan Baez country,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, where imports from everywhere

wash up comfortably cosmopolitan.

And now the star attraction over the baklava:

Fatima the belly dancer who can shiver

the gemmed scimitar across her abs

hands-free (a trick Venus is watching closely).

She arches and shakes her mile of glossy mane back

and the men mop their foreheads with their hankies

as she shimmers across the floor in rubied sandals.

She bows and they sprint up to tuck big bills

into her bedleh just slowly enough for lust

and quickly enough for family propriety,

and then it is our turn to dance. The bouzouki

jangles. The bodies shimmy and swirl

until Jadd rises and clears his throat and the dancefloor,

makes a toast and friends and strangers cheer.

Then the rhythm shifts, the tune is Leylet Hob —

Night of Love — and Teta rises the way a volcano presses from the sea,

shakes out her black skirts of ancient loss and her own

hip-scarf wine-dark as the Aegean or the Nile

and begins an undulation from her core

as though the earth were rearranging herself

or the tide rolling up the estuary.

No one breathes. No one has moves like Teta,

who has fled across borders with babies on her hips,

made do, made love, mourned sons, built businesses,

and planted herself here in the city like a monument,

but step-turns like Isis fresh from the lotus-gardens,

and Jadd flushes and flashes his teeth like a bridegroom

and we are all fallen in love again at the wedding of the world.

© 2025 Jennifer M Phillips

Jennifer M Phillips came across borders early in life and is now a bi-national lifelong poet

living on Cape Cod, grateful for this Wampanoag ancestral territory. Phillips' work has appeared in over 100 journals and 2 chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), with a 3rd, Sailing To the Edges (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.) Her collection is Wrestling with the Angel, (Wipf and Stock Pub., 2025) Phillips has had two poems nominated Pushcart Prize.

Friday, April 18, 2025: Three Poems by Fay Loomis

 

                                                                   

© 2025 marie c lecrivain

 

Metamorphosis

In Memoriam: Joan Miller Bladden

where are you

dear sister

frozen bird

afraid to sing

in death

you open

your throat

fly

Ripped Path

sanctimonious

words drown me

fear drives a knife

into my heart

speak to me

of covert truth

Turn on Caesar’s Tables

Veni, Vidi, Vici. “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Attributed to Julius Caesar, 47 BC

I came, I saw, and I was conquered

beaten, burned, destroyed

And, like the Phoenix, I rose again

tempered by the fire

© 2025 Fay Loomis

Fay L. Loomis leads a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York, USA. Member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and the Rat's Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose appear in numerous publications, including five poetry anthologies. Fay is the author of Sunlit Wildness (Origami Poems Project, 2024) and Fragments of Myself, forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Monday, December 2, 2024: Pushcart Nominations (2024)

 

Here are the 2024 Pushcart Prize nominees. I wish them well, and much success.:)

1. Lorraine Caputo "A Weekend Escape"” (poem)

2. Beverly Collins Beverly M. Collins's "Cost of Knowing" (prose)

3. Kitty Jospé's "Someone's Birthday is Someone Else's Death Day" (poem)

4. Fay L. Loomis's  " Writing Poems While Asleep" (poem) 

5. Lisa Marguerite Mora's "Afterwards the Moon"(poem) 

6. LB Sedlacek's "One Hit Wonder"(poem)

Friday, November 29, 2024" LB Sedlacek's "One Hit Wonder"

 One Hit Wonder  

The corn stands tall
a deep grass green
brown decay on top
and I lean slowly
back in the chair
soft plaid, blue-green
waiting for my favorite
songs to play on
the old black rectangle
a radio that sits
on the dresser in
my parent’s green room
the shade lighter than
the green cornfield slaughtered
in fall stalks cut
down fresh fodder for
wild geese dining in
moonlight, the walking path
borders around the cornfield
laid bare walkers, bikers
exposed to the elements
and while the field
sleeps seeds are planted
anew in spring and
the corn leaps up
lashes out at sky
relishing its deep green
its hearty cycle of
repeating a popular tune.

© 2024 LB Sedlacek

Bio: LB Sedlacek is an award winning writer and poet. Her latest poetry book is Unresponsive Sky, published by Purple Unicorn Media.  Her latest short stories book is The Renovator & Motor Addiction, published by Alien Buddha Press. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize both in poetry. Her mystery book, The Glass River, was nominated for the Thomas Wolfe memorial prize. She also enjoys swimming and reading. 

Instagram:  @lbsedlacek

Facebook: @lbsedlacekpoet

Twitter: @lbsedlacek

http://www.lbsedlacek.com

Friday, November 15, 224: Lisa Marguerite Mora's "Afterwards the Moon"

Afterwards the Moon (when my cat died)

It was a large white disk low in the sky. It didn't glow. It was cloud color. And kind of defiant about it. I stopped walking down the slant of hill and said, wow.

What are you supposed to do with the moon? In another time, another era, maybe I would have raised my arms, or genuflected or offered something to the fact it was there, rising as it always promises to do.

Something real and solid but still ephemeral. Mysterious, because while reliable you never know when you’ll see it or where. Or what it will look like. The moon is hard to pin down.

I resumed walking, but looked for it again between the buildings. I looked. But the clouds had shifted and were darkening to blue. It was no longer there. I’ll never see it like that again, that size, that color, framed in just that way. The moon was gone. A single granule of time.

These moments as they slip by are baffling. Not designed to be held. The heat of life pressed against my chest, as I tenderly cradled its bones and fur. And then the life is gone, slips into invisibility. My eyes cannot adjust. My eyes cannot stay wide enough to take it all in.

Yet still I search the skies.

© 2024 Lisa Marguerite Mora

Bio: Lisa Marguerite Mora has been published widely including in Chiron Review, Rattle, Literary Mama, Public Poetry Series, California Quarterly, Rebelle Society, Serving House Journal, semifinalist Tom Howard Poetry Contest, First Place winner Micro Fiction for Dandelion Press. Nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her first novel is searching for a home while she writes a second.