hungry fire…
hungry fire
quiet mist
dangerous goddess
come heave elaborate words
© 2021 Maria A. Arana
self-terror
diamond is bitter juice
metallic bang
instead of
mechanical worship
problem
machine before flesh
previous play
© 2021 Maria A. Arana
Maria A. Arana is a teacher, writer, poet, and proofreader. Her poetry has been published in various journals including Spectrum, Big Windows Review, The Kleksograph, and Cholla Needles Magazine. You can find her at https://twitter.com/m_a_Arana
Testament
I, being of sound mind and body, do hereby relinquish all hope of being other than who I am.
She put the pen down and looked at what she had written. It wasn’t her will she was writing, she realized, now that the words had hijacked her. It was her will. The cornerstone of will power and her much vaunted willfulness. Her will and testament: all she had to say about who she was and where she was going. And relinquish…that was the keeper. It sat well on the tongue.
I relinquish all right to opinions that are not mine, and all interest in opinions about me.
I relinquish any and all effort to make someone love me who does not, desire me who does not, or even like me. There is no perfume that will make me smell sweet to the wrong person, no shine that will make me his sunrise, not if he wants the moon. I surrender my need to be right, my need to be perfect, my need to be good.
I relinquish the knight in shining armor, the feeling that I’m owed something, the fear of failure and the fear of success.
I relinquish tomorrow, which will come on its own terms, and I relinquish yesterday, which is only shadow and scent. I empty my hands of all of my maybes and relax my fingers from perpetual grasping.
I relinquish the struggle, the blind cat fight I get into with everything I don’t understand. I surrender to the beauty of my soul’s own dream
This is my will and testament, and my will is thy will – the will of Spirit and my spirit – and I won’t let anything as small as my fearful personality fuck it up.
I sign here in faith and ink.
© 2021 Deborah Edler Brown
Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist, and author. Her work has appeared in such publications as Nimrod, So Luminous the Wildflowers, poeticdiversity, Altered Lanes, Blue Arc West, and Sisters Singing: Blessings, Prayers, Art, Songs, Poetry & Sacred Stories by Women. Her poem “Cubism” won Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize, and her fiction has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Deborah was born in Brazil, raised in Pittsburgh, and earned her degree in Creative Writing from Brown University. She resides in Los Angeles, where she is busy building communities among her characters and readers.
Night Strains
last night, the nutria in the river interrupted
my contemplation of the swooping little brown bat’s
jagged ellipses and riffling wings.
i wanted to stand on the bank and watch bat skim
until night blended her completely in.
but the nutria swam a little past me, then circled back,
slapping her tail hard as she dove, then swam further off and back again
to the small clearing i had climbed down to, repeating herself
until i grasped my unwelcomeness and knew--
looking down at my smooth, bare legs--
i wanted no part of any battle. so i climbed back up the dike,
dodging blackberry brambles.
today, i learn of the campaign
to trap and euthanize nutria and how aggressively
they bite and scratch. in my mind, the guinea pig ears
and upturned nose ride above the current, comical profile
unaware of the danger i might pose or knowing
that she has the better of me.
© 2021 ann tweedy
Ann Tweedy's first full-length book, The Body's Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in 2016. It earned a Bisexual Book Award and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks: Beleaguered Oases (2nd ed. Seven Kitchens Press 2020); A Registry of Survival (Last Word Press 2020); and White Out (Green Fuse Poetic Arts 2013). She currently serves as a law professor specializing in the laws relating to Native American Tribes. Read more about her at www.anntweedy.com.
Until This Moment
Forget everything you’ve known
until this moment- the unblemished
apples- smooth and shiny-
the tempting oranges- their peel
bright and warm as if sunshine
had just discovered them-
the luscious strawberries, their deep
red, looking as if it had just come
from a farm located at the edge
of town, not from distances
involving days of traveling
through several highways.
Forget breathing is the task
that keeps you alive- what helps
you face each day-
your face exposed to rain, to snow,
to chilling winds, to a warm spring
carrying a kiss-
Forget that breathing used to be
what you did naturally, besides those
other busy tasks- going
to the grocery store for milk
and bread- always aplenty- until
this moment – or the drugstore
if you needed refills or beauty
products- or the hair dresser-
another way of buying beauty
or walking to the park without
having to worry about doing the math-
particularly measurements.
You walked- end of the story.
Summer had the added beaty
of wild sunflowers
in bloom- but now you must look back
and front, measure and keep your distance
and when you come to the sunflowers,
they seem to be the only ones around,
the only ones that will hear your voice-
and the wind swirls around the blossoms
as if gathering strength to echo your thoughts-
Thank God for blooming things
that do not mind our touch.
© 2021 Nydia Rojas
Nydia Rojas’ work has been published, among many other literary magazines, in the Wisconsin Academy Review, International Poetry Review, Revista/ Review Interamericana, and Palabra. Her work has also appeared on line in poeticdiversity, Your Daily Poem and Rigorous and in the anthologies Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest and I didn’t know there were Latinos in Wisconsin. She is the author of the chapbook Stealing Daylight.
Cloudy With a Chance of Cello
I sit in the living room with my mother to work out
my anxiety
the way it tastes and feels, I thought I wanted to be everything
all at once
my teacher brags that she’s found
that Golden Ticket
my peers listen in for rumors, launch them as a curse
when chocolates
not passed around It’s just for show, I explain to my mother,
explaining nothing
last night
I was out of my skin to try on my favorite dress
Crazy,
I thought. I laugh when my mother stares at me
on stage
everything all at once: mise-en-scène behind me holy
I miss my cue
when the conductor breathes; her baton a semaphore;
a single note
struck upon my cello; my mother smiles, grateful that I wasn’t aware
was out of tune
of all the ways to enter, my mother
calls for
Cloudy with a Chance of Cello, and I am ready to go home.
© 2021 Ilari Pass
Ilari Pass holds a BA in English from Guilford College of Greensboro, NC, and an MA in English, with a concentration in literature, from Gardner-Webb University of Boiling Springs, NC. Her work appears or forthcoming in Rat's Ass Review, As It Ought To Be, Triggerfish Critical Review, Kissing Dynamite, The Daily Drunk, Unlikely Stories, Rigorous Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, Common Ground Review, Free State Review, Rejection Letters, and others.
I Will Go Politely
I have clung to the earth’s surface for 80 odd years.
Congratulations, you are blessed, how lucky to be alive.
Meaningless number, vacuous words
run fluid through my brain.
To augured aches and pains
I sent no invitation.
With stealth
they crashed the party.
Lest I stiffen like old leather
I practice yoga;
walk a half mile to my mailbox;
ride my bike, even after toppling to the pavement.
Sleep, once blessed, is punctuated
by bathroom bladder patrols.
I no longer lie in the arms of Morpheus;
he has found another lover.
Pills and doctors’ visits irritate my life
like sand on a beach blanket.
Mental power outages surge
through thoughts, memories.
Nature is my plastic surgeon:
pendulous breasts, cellulite dimpled thighs.
Tattoos insult my resculptured body:
wrinkles, brown spots, varicose veins.
The artifice of heart stents, implants,
forestall entropy, a shrouded word for death.
Grumblings enumerated, I am packing my suitcase with gratitude.
Alone, not lonely, I will go politely.
© 2021 Fay Loomis
Fay L. Loomis was a nemophilist (haunter of the woods) until her hikes in upstate New York were abruptly ended by a stroke three years ago. With an additional nudge from the pandemic, she now lives a particularly quiet life. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers, her poems and prose recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Closed Eye Open, Love Me, Love My Belly, Rat’s Ass Review, Ruminate Magazine, HerStry, and Sanctuary Magazine.
Balance of Discipline and Utter Abandonment
I take a book and notebook to the cafe, Intelligentsia several times
a week. An industrial collage of wood beams; and steel; and light
through clear and opaque glass. High ceilings, gray floors, squares
of cement. Skeletal steel shelves bracketed to the walls. The rest of
the light from compact high functioning clear bulbs. Glass and steel,
accents of wood. Skylights. There is an expectation of copper, but
one searches to no avail. Blues, jazz, and electronica over the
sound system.
Baristas vary from un-maked-up jovial young women to stern men
in their late thirties. A determined ascetic, rather German, definitely
masculine vibe but the non-harsh light softens and fills space between
fine and various straight lines of wiring, pipes, and scaffolding. High
tech lightbulbs suspended on fine steel wires from the wood beamed
ceiling, slant of skylights, large aluminum funnels and pipes affirm
mysterious functions of their own, one thinks of trapeze artists, an
abundance of pattern like birds in formation above the espresso
drinkers who look as determined as the baristas over their Apple
laptops, lined up one after the other on the stainless steel counters.
Outside a beckon of green suggests you are not actually in a building,
though it is quietly and unobtrusively air-conditioned. Or is it? The
atmosphere is focused, not busy; the vibe human and intelligent. An
old structure, brick exterior, built in the late 19th century or at the
turn of the 20th century it was probably once a ware house for milk or
meat. Now people younger than myself stare into their computers,
all MacAir, from the look of them, one after the other, reminiscent
of an assembly line. Perhaps for screenplays. This is a different crowd
from what used to be Abbot's Habit down the street, which has sadly
lost its lease after thirty some years. Or if it's the same people, they
look different here.
Through the speakers some sort of driving dramatic drum beats
and synthesized strings. In the background grind of coffee beans.
Bells now punctuate the music, gives the sense a moment of
epiphany is imminent. Metallic pound of the espresso portafilter.
A dog barks. They allow dogs here? How enlightened. Russian s
poken next to me, the young woman who shares the little table a
nswers me in perfectly accented American. Wish I knew another
language. French. For some unnameable reason it makes me feel
as though I am home. I have never been. I will get there yet. Paris.
It will thrum in my breast bone the slow movement of ancient stone.
Everything is energy, particles move at varying rates. Even me—my
energy sometimes buoyant, sometimes pools in shadows. Now the
music hums and whines, a saxophone, a harmonica. A Parisian feel
again. There was a chance to go when we were in the U.K., but too
tired to cross the Channel that winter. (Now Creedence Clearwater
blasts.) Had to make due with Windsor Castle. Prince Albert's
opulent memorial; Victoria's love for him vastly, intricately, widely,
deeply evident—her heart a jewel on display for generations to come.
Who can measure love?
The less you talk about it and the more you move away from the subject,
those who know you, don't. The deeper that cave within you, encrusted
with a scintillating no one can capture. Protected treasure. Words hack.
Indeed there are those who have brought the pick axes deigning to
clarify and pigeon hole and articulate what your own heart cannot. If
all the jewels of the kingdom were at your disposal, they would not
be worthy of the quality that vibrates under your sternum, the pulse
no music can capture. So you remain silent with epiphany.
Most of the time I feel wordless. Occasionally or frequently something
takes hold of me and I'll write a poem. It's not me as I experience
myself, but some other part that rouses and seeks to share something,
some observation or feeling. Half the time I wonder who this person is.
When I set out to write an essay or a novel, there is a "plan" but even t
hen I will have to let go into what decides to reveal itself. It requires a
balance of discipline and utter abandonment. It is difficult to talk about,
harder yet, to "teach."
Fifteen years ago I visited a tiny seaside village in Cornwall which was
famous for buffeting incredible winds you could lean into and you
would not topple over. People liked to do this, while standing on the c
liffs that overlooked the sea. The winds dared you. And if you were the
daring type you answered the call. We walked along the pathway high
on the cliffs and next to the gray and gold spliced ocean. The light was
incredible. Painters flocked here to capture what they saw.
Sometimes I think I could give up this housing and shoveling of words
into print, this sense of wordlessness only to be taken over by this other
person who "speaks" and says things I only at times half understand.
Sometimes I think before I die I will lean into the wind some other
way and fight for my dual citizenship and find my way back to that
village, invest in watercolors and teach myself to capture on canvas
another way to render images and feelings and observations -- to stop
seeking to make sense of it all with these hieroglyphics I've devoted
my life to. Color and shape would be a respite, the gold spliced Atlantic
and standing on a steep cliff in a steeper wind would wipe out the
roving restless wordless state, the strange angst of gestation.
I tell myself this story. But in the end, you see, even such an experience
as that would seek to become a story. Would demand to become words
no matter how wordless I felt. And I would be used again, cramping my
fingers around a pen or over a keyboard, while the elements danced
more madly than they dance here in languid Los Angeles, its still blue
air, its pronounced sunshine, the Pacific calm and barely lapping. And
in that charming English village perched on the edge of daily capricious
forces, my paints would dry up untouched because these hieroglyphics
demand everything. And they promise it to me over and over again just
as waves and wind hurl and announce themselves unendingly against
the eroding gem of a rock that is England, they promise to me just as much.
© 2021 Lisa Marguerite Mora
BIO: Lisa Marguerite Mora has won prizes for poetry and fiction. She conducts workshops and offers literary services https://www.lisamargueritemora.com. Publications include Chiron Review, Rattle, Literary Mama, Public Poetry Series, California Quarterly, Cultural Weekly, Rebelle Society, Serving House Journal, among others, a Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Prize, First Place winner Micro Fiction for Dandelion Press as well as an Honorable Mention. Though she still seeks a home for her novel, it has caught the attention of top agents. Her prose and poetry have been nominated for Best of the Net as well as a Pushcart Prize.
