Al-Khemia Poetica: A Women's Arts and Writing Journal: October 2024

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Thursday, October 31.2024: Emma Lee's "Neutrals Don't Suit Anyone" and "Keep it Real"

Neutrals Don’t Suit Anyone

A one bed flat is hardly

likely to be kitted out

ready for a House Beautiful

photographer, but even here,

the run-down part of the city

smooth textiles in neutrals,

cover windows, except one.

A flash of gold, a brief sunny

spell picking up its glittery

strands. The sort of fabric

that could be a barely-there

dress which outshines

the outsized sequins

complementing the huge

hoop earrings, tall beehive,

platformed stilettoes

siren red smile, heavy kohl

worn by someone out

for a night of drowning

sorrows, a few hours

before tottering home

to a single bed. A kitchen

that would just about cope

with a hangover busting fry-up.

A shower to flatten hair

to accommodate a wireless

headset, an office suit, a smile

that never reaches the eyes.

Keep it Real

Slick suits and shades slide across a stage,

the singers’ mouths obscured by headset mics,

the choreographed moves muffle accents.

In a standing room only venue where the roadie kicks

the amp into action, the sound engineer compensates

for the quirks of a cobbled-together set-up. A broken

string could throw the rhythm, a spilt beer could

electrocute a guitarist, the crowd could drown the vocals.

The suits shimmy off stage and are ushered to a dressing

room where they wait to be bused to a hotel. Wash,

rinse, repeat. Every minute scheduled, accounted.

The men in jeans, faded tees, rough shirts step over

the sticky patches, taped wires, plug in, limber up.

There’s an hour’s workout ahead. Music thumps against

a ribcage, loosening the heart’s imagination before

it’s burnt by a stubbed cigarette, leaving smoke.

It’s too easy to say the suited choreographed

singer/dancers wouldn’t last five minutes in the bar.

Their lyrics an opaque gloss of unknown lives.

The bar band shy off stage, stamped applause

vibrates through the floor. This is their moment,

a hyped audience vibrant in the post-gig shadows,

band absent, music still thrumming through the amps,

kept alive by the memories of people now drifting home.

Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020) and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea, (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com.

Friday, October 25, 2024

Friday, October 25,, 2024; Jan Steckel's "The Fire Game"

The Fire Game

I didn’t set out to be a rage-a-holic,

but it crept up on me, what with

certain friends and family

turning out to be rabid

abled supremacists and all.

I didn’t start out with burning contempt

for my fellow Americans, for other poets,

for Republicans, for the entire South,

for the unvaxed, the unmasked.

I just smoldered until I burst into flame.

I want to smother it in human kindness,

but every time I start to get there,

another disabled or elderly friend

drops dead, or the ERs fill up,

or somebody gives me shit

for wearing a mask to a party,

and I just want to unhinge my jaw,

yell “Dracaris,” and incinerate

the whole freaking fiesta,

then crawl back in my cave.

Jan Steckel’s debut fiction collection Ghosts and Oceans came out from Zeitgeist

Press in 2023. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a

2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist

Press, 2018) won two Rainbow Awards. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks

(Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist

Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative prose and poetry have appeared in

Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Assaracus and elsewhere.

She lives in Oakland, California.

Friday, October 18, 2024

Friday, October 18, 2024: Cynthia Linville's " This Connection is Not Private," and " Alone at Midnight: In a Field in the Rain"

This Connection is Not Private

She feels like she’s been struck

breathless

into a blue so intense

she can’t imagine any other color

She seems to be standing on a river

The sky is falling in a thousand tiny rainbows

salted with stars

She tells herself, it’s just a story:

Cinderella bootstraps

Overnight sensation

a story that repeats

over and over

in a meteor storm of falling stars

She feels like a star

maybe already falling

She tries to bring the stars inside

tries not to dissolve inside that storm

But she, too, is story

maybe just a story

just another story on the internet

Alone at Midnight: In a Field in the Rain

Lightning sparks a repeated prayer

against darkness. In the thunder,

she senses a path between centuries,

a narrow approach winding through shadows.

She feels a repeated blue presence

floating languidly.

Flickering starlight, seen only

in deepest darkness, is leaving traces

everywhere, is pulsing inside her:

a god’s strange silver feet

dancing across the sky,

dissolving what once was.

She feels ravenous, eating nothing,

overjoyed to be turned upside down,

enfolded into the sacred. Scarred,

but not scared. When asked about it later,

she doesn’t have to answer.

Her psyche is shaped differently now.

Cynthia Linville’s work has appeared in numerous poetry anthologies, and her two books of collected poems, The Lost Thing and Out of Reach, are available from Cold River Press. She served as Managing Editor of Convergence: an online journal of poetry and art for ten years and as Poetry Editor of Poetry Now for two years. She has received three mini-grants from Poets & Writers to perform in collaboration with musicians. Linville has taught in the English Department at Sacramento State University since 2000. You can see more of her work at CynthiaLinville.com.

Friday, October 4, 2024

Friday, October 4, 2024: Beverly M. Collins's "Cost of Knowing" (with accompanying art)

“You can’t take on everyone’s confusion and wear it. Don’t ask so many questions. The answers may surprise you in a bad way,” Sylvia’s grandfather barked down at her, as he held her hand on a walk home from school when she was six years old.

“They may indeed,” She whispered softly to herself, at age 43.

On this New Jersey cool early-autumn day, she remembered that childhood moment while seated, like a cat ready to pounce, on the edge of the bed in her bra and panties, with a tan- colored bed sheet loosely tangled around her. The sound of water assured that her husband

Aaron was still in the shower. Finally, a moment to spy at the call history in his phone. To look was to question. She wished she had not looked and didn’t know he was, once again, calling “that woman” almost every day. Sylvia ached so bad that her hands trembled and let go of the phone. It slipped down the side of the covers and into the floor.

She didn’t know which part was worst, the bitter taste or the texture of betrayal. This was her second attempt at happily-ever-after. Her first marriage of 4 years had ended over, (you guessed it) infidelity.

Does anyone marry and not cheat? After all of the talks and promises. She once hoped their couple’s therapy had worked wonders and ended his tryst. But, knew what this information meant for their 14-year union.

Gripped by fear at the idea of another divorce, her heart pounded as she suddenly jumped up, raced to put on her oversized sweater, sneakers, and blue jeans. She wanted to run, stomp, kick, and scream. but for now, would settle for a run. A chance to pull herself together, flee the anguish momentarily and dash through nature; old trees, life that had planted itself, pushed down

deep roots and was happy in their spot.

Many times, she had leisurely strolled this path. This time, along with the quick pounding sound of her steps, Sylvia noticed the sharp movement of birds from one spot to another, dust and seeds that sailed in need of a new place to take hold, they were like her. Everything in her felt jittery and uprooted. The “knowing” was already doing a number on her chronic twitch in her cheek.

The Broken-hearted-first-things-first. Sob hard where no one can listen. Everything else; the confrontation, the heated arguments, the packing, uncertainty, loneliness, the expressed concern from relatives, the lawyers, the reshuffle of who-gets-to-keep-who of their longtime friends, hurtful division of assets, the giving-back-of-each-other’s-family members, rumors of what happened, and the long road to healing, would begin later. Just for now, she ran as hard as she could and let a rivers-flow-of-tears dry from open wind.

Bio: Beverly M. Collins, author of the books, Quiet Observations: Diary thought, Whimsy and Rhyme, and Mud in Magic. Her poems and short stories have appeared in publications based in USA, England, Ireland, Australia, India, Berlin, Mauritius, and Canada both in print and online.

Winner of a Naji Naaman Literary Prize in Creativity (Lebanon). Collins, three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and a prize winner for the California State Poetry Society; One of three winners of the June 2021 Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge (Chicago). Her photography can be found on the cover of Peeking Cat 40 (UK), California Quarterly, on Fine Art America products, iStock/Getty images, and more at beverlym-collins.pixels.com.