Tuesday, March 17, 2020: National Women's Month: Diana Rosen's poem "Spider Woman"

Spider Woman

She tats filaments for her web, delicate

beaded threads, attached to a prized corner

until a mosquito hovers too close. LUNCH!

Her spinnerets exude just enough liquid to spin

her geometric magic to stretch a new web

from the wall to the back of the sofa. WHAM!

Her new web collapses under the indifferent mop

of the cleaning lady attacking dust balls, dirt,

the detritus of life behind the couch. TRAPPED!

She struggles within the confines of the ropey mop

now shaken onto the porch where our heroine hits

the silk to safety, spies her next snack magnet:

a ceiling lamp she camouflages with filigreed radial

lines, graceful orbs, urgent gossamer touches like a

painter hurrying to finish before the oncoming rain.

© 2020 Diana Rosen

"night spinner" by marie c lecrivain

Bio: DIANA ROSEN’s forthcoming publications include an essay in the anthology, “Far Villages,” and poems in The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Existere Journal of Art & Literature, Words for the Wild (UK), the art and poetry anthology, “Book of Sighs,” and her hybrid of prose and poetry will be published by Redbird Chapbooks as "Love & Irony". Recent publications include a flash fiction in The Jewish Literary Journal and poems in Poesis Journal and As It Ought To Be Magazine. You can view both her fiction and nonfiction work on www.authorty.com/dianarosen

Friday, March 13, 2020: National Women's Month: Mona Jean Cedar's poem "We Women March"

WE WOMEN MARCH

WE WOMEN MARCHed (PAST)

WE have fought this WAR BEFORE (SAME”Y”)

& we WILL FIGHT & WIN AGAIN

WE who DON’T BELIEVE in

US VS THEM

MIGHT MAKES RIGHT

the MOST TOYS WIN

We do (+) BELIEVE in

TOGETHER is (+) BETTER

LOVE CONQUERS all

GREEDY is (+) EVIL

WE KNOW

ALL PEOPLE are EQUAL

MAN WOMAN & CHILD

ALL WILD ANIMALS

EQUAL

ALL HAVE the RIGHT to LIFE

WE WOMEN MARCHed

As MOTHERS

to TEACH OUR DAUGHTERS

of THEIR HIDDEN POWERS

THEIR SECRET ARMIES

stand WITH THEM ALWAYS

WE WOMEN MARCHed

WITH MEN who COMPREHEND

‘T IS THEIR DUTY to DEFEND

the DIGNITY of ALL WOMEN

She who BIRTHed them LIFE

WE WOMEN MARCHed

Well, more like MEANDERED, MINGLED

FRIENDLY FEELINGs FLOWING FREELY

RELIEVED; NO NEED to DECEIVE

w/FALSE FAÇADE

JOYOUS TO SHINE

IMMERSED IN A SHINING SEA

WE WOMEN MARCHed

to SUPPORT OUR MOTHER EARTH

to CALL for HER PROTECTION (CARE)

this GLOBE OUR BEAUTIFUL HOME

WE WOMEN MARCHed

to SHOW the FEW

OUR MILLIONS

NOT to INSTILL FEAR BUT AWE

KNOW! WE ARE HERE!

And we’re not going anywhere. (LEAVE) (-)

WE WOMEN MARCHed

WE have fought this WAR BEFORE

& we WILL FIGHT & WIN AGAIN

NEVER AGAIN ACQUIESCENT

SILENT SUBSERVIENT 

WE ARE DEFIANT NOW

© 2020 Mona Jean Cedar

Bio: Mona Jean Cedar composes poetry and choreographs with American

Sign Language (ASL).She is an RID certified ASL interpreter, has an AA

in Dance, a BA in Deaf Studies from CSUN, attended The National Theater

of the Deaf, and the Julliard School in NYC for Theatrical Interpreting on

Broadway. With her musician/circuit-bending husband they’ve performed 

at Burning Man, in Europe and the USA.  She’s the resident interpreter for

the National Poetry Slams. She co-founded the ASL Cabaret – a celebration

of ASL performing artists and  is director of Pas d’ASL – a dance company

choreographing with sign languages from around the world.

Two Poems by Jack G Bowman "After Watching 'Behemoth'' and "Impeachment Proceedings"

After Watching Behemoth

Phosphorous, radium enlightenment

Uranium 238 smile,

the scientist from the NRC

watches the sky,

mystery crashes in the atmosphere

wonders in sci/fi;

‘if aliens are changing the atmosphere so it’s easier for them to breathe’

or if that’s just another excuse for greedy, heartless sapiens

to pollute the planet 

sad, acid, fog tears, burns, scars

Earth trembles

waits for another large asteroid,

already past due

or some new dangerous giant to come up from the ocean depths

to do a little payback.

Impeachment Proceedings

His peacemaker role now becomes a resistance martyr

flames of frightened villagers march to storm the castle

he sees them, feels the mob blood rise

it is exciting, easy to join in

so he backs off

his one reflective desire

to observe; takes over,

intellect overrules the immense emotional wave

there cannot be too many mistakes

or the castle will send its soldiers to stomp the rebellion

storm troopers and with vengeance and sharpened blades

death, makes the man curious,

to watch at a distance

they no longer pretend to listen to him

the walls must come down,

the king must be tried and hung

and the land must become fertile again

maybe… maybe.

Jack G. Bowman is a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT MFC42855) poet, composer, artist and performer in Southern California. His poems have been widely published in small presses across the US, UK, India, Mexico, and on the internet since 1991. He has written reviews for Poetix and poeticdiversity, and he was a member of the poetry groups Third Person Singular, Duotribe, and The Furniture Guild Poets. In recent years, he's been published in Altadena Poetry Quarterly, Spectrum Anthologies, and Fevers of the Mind. In 2016, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Poetry Collections

1. Thanatos on a Southland Freeway

2. Paranormal Libido

3. Incarnate Canals of Mars

4. Unnatural Fire

5. Diamonds in the Sand

6. Vision and Presence

7. Moths Singed by Moonlight

8. Serpents in the Stratosphere

9. A Walk into Darkness

10. Red Velvet Apocalypse

11. Other Realms of Being

12. Incandescent Silence

13. The Troublesome Tales of Frank Macabre

14. Ego Syntonic Jasmine

15. Metamorphic Consequences

Psych Workbooks

The 8 Week Self-Esteem Workshop

The Dilemmas of Men

Reading People

Mariano Zaro's Decoding Sparrows

There’s an infinite number of reasons to write, as well as read, quality poetry. The most important, in my opinion, and based on my experience, are the following: love of language, development of one’s spirituality/empathy, and to document the deeper moments of human existence. To be able to harness all three in a poem is a challenge, though every poet I’ve ever read strives to do their best. Very few poets consistently succeed, and one of those is Mariano Zaro. His work, over the years, has been a steady journey toward this poetic trifecta, and his newest collection, Decoding Sparrows (© 2019 What Books Press), is proof of his mastery.

     Decoding Sparrows, divided into three parts, contains personal accounts of people who populate Zaro’s universe; family members from his youth in Spain (“Decoding Sparrows”, “Old Petra”), friends and lovers (“Convenience Store”, “The Crown of Youth” ), as well as strangers in passing who’ve left their mark on his poetic consciousness (“Nun Eating a Small Apple”, “Street Vendor”). 

    Zaro’s minimalist style and dialogue launch the reader right into the heart of each poem, where they become one with the person who’s interacting with Zaro. It’s a powerful and unique synthesis of reader, poet, and subject, most notably in the poem, “They Say Fire is the Tongue of God”, where Zaro takes a Benedictine Anglican monk, Brother George, to the remains of his monastery, which burned down to the ground during the Tea Fire (2008), in Santa Barbara, California:

Past fire extinguished inside cold volcanic rocks.

Future fire in lightning, war, and funeral pyres.

Present fire in this combustion that we are.

I drive Brother George to the monastery.

To the place the monastery used to be.

This is his first time back here

after the fire destroyed it all.

I bring my dog Cooper with us, because he loves

Brother George, because he may help

sort out the path of grief.

It’s hard to believe, Brother George says

when we arrive, standing at the edge of the road.

   The tower was there, he says, pointing

     at the air on a clear Saturday morning.

Workers have removed the rubble.

Brother George walks into the dark, flat ground.

The library was there, he says. The refractory,

the pantry, our rooms, the main chapel.

The bell is still standing, lifted on a tall, uneven tripod.

A bell big as a horse’s head, all bronze but humble.

Almost embarrassed by its survival.

Brother George rings the bell, three times,

and the sound, violent and soft, rolls down

the mountains that open like a throat.

Cooper gets agitated, starts barking at the sky,

eyes furious, leash tense. I kneel down and

cover his ears. It’s okay, it’s okay, I say.

Brother George leans his forehead against

the bell, suffocates the last breath of sound,

and all is quiet again, inescapable.

© 2019 Mariano Zaro

     Poetry is a gateway to empathy, an ever diminishing commodity in this present age. Zaro’s Decoding Sparrows will help keep readers in touch with their humanity, as well as their humility, the two best qualities that make us, as a species, worthy of survival.

Decoding Sparrows, Mariano Zaro, © 2019 What Books Press (www.whatbookspress.com), ISBN 987-1-5323-4145-8, 111 pages, $17.95

© 2019 marie c lecrivain

Wyatt Underwood's poem "To Computers and Oz"

computers
I discovered you in 1965
you were eighteen and I was twenty-three
I felt like I had stumbled into a Norse doom
doom was what the Norse called fate
so it didn't have the grisly connotations doom has in English
but computer languages were like riddles, like puzzles
and I was asked to learn them, make them mine
then tease computers into solving problems we'd invented
how fast would a rocket climb?
how fast would fuel boil away?
how much fuel would a rocket need to...
oh!  I felt like a wizard solving those
and thrilled to take on the next ones
how does the spacecraft aim its camera?
and keep it from pointing at the sun?
and later how to use what we knew of gravity
to turn nothing more than doppler sounds
into probable locations of the spacecraft
it wasn't magic but it felt that way
and, better than magic, it worked
ah, computers, that was the trick of you
whatever we programmed you to do, you did
and that let us map the surface of the moon
and plan the trip to Mars and later Jupiter
the world was good then
I could and did forget Vietnam
Central and South America
it was just that one day when I looked up
the magic failed
I was a little tool in a big box of tools
and we were busy fooling people that we were doing good
we were the curtain the man used to disguise his tricks
and once the curtain began to tatter for some of us
soon it tattered for too many
and people no longer wanted to pay for the curtain
or for the man behind it
but by then he'd made himself indispensable
he and his minions swept away the shreds and bought a new curtain
velvet instead of linen
and it still works today
when Vietnam has become Afghanistan, Iraq, and whoever else we add
the man behind the curtain is busier than ever before
and I have lost the ability to see how he spreads good works
as well as so much misery
come on, Oz-makers!
weave us your spells again!

© 2019 Wyatt Underwood

Wyatt Underwood has been participating in the Los Angeles poetic communities since late January 2010.  He has published six books of poems and has had a collection of his poems published by World Stage Press.  He co-hosts or hosts at three sequences of open mics - at the Encino - Tarzana Branch Library, at the Westwood Branch Library, and at Beyond Baroque in Venice.  He participates at maybe a dozen other sequences of open mics scattered around Los Angeles.

Matt McGee's "Remember Captain Save-A-Ho"

This Memorial Day, remember me. I fought twenty-two years in a different war. Local bars and the scene of social tragedies were my front and an AT&T cell phone was how I was radioed into battle, night after night after night.

Everyone had my number stored and they all knew my rank. They’d memorized my name, or some version of it (Matt Cab, Cab Matt, Taxi Matt, Matt Taxi – however they stored it in their cells), and honored my loyal service, year after year.

Night after night as drama struck - and it struck often, I’d be pulled away from another hot meal, another hour’s sleep, another family event. I believed they’d called me specifically, not any other random driver, perhaps out of loyalty but definitely out of need. Everyone needs a friend when they’re hitting rock bottom.

This Memorial Day, remember the friend who always showed up for the pivotal moments in your life, and pulled you out of a few that almost turned tragic. The next time a ride share driver refuses hands-on help in any given situation, remember who used to pull you out of the bushes, held your rings as you dove into a fight, handed his ID to the cops and said ‘I’ll take him straight home.’

This Memorial Day, think of me as you tap on an app. By doing it, you’re voting with a collective voice to announce that my years of sacrifice and loyalty were just fine.. but ultimately aren’t enough. When you tap, and see a price that’s below mine, know that it is the death knell to a way of life that once served us both very well.

After 26 years in the car sales business, my friend Jill retired last weekend. “Nine out of ten people who come into my showroom say ‘thank you very much’ then go buy a car somewhere else.” Ninety percent of her daily labor has been spent educating the car-buying public so they can then tap on an app, and buy a similar car cheaper someplace else.

For years, people have been calling to price shop. One woman I’ve known twelve years called last Wednesday; my price was $4 higher than her app. After twelve years of friendship, she went with.. the app. She still had the gall to call me from the backseat of her ride to ask what places in town were hopping.

This Memorial Day, remember Captain Save-a-Ho. Because starting this week, you’re going to see one less taxi on the road. You probably won’t notice as you’ll likely be burning a stare into your palm, and the car he’s bought looks like almost any other on the road. And in accordance with your preferences, he will no longer leave his driver’s seat to help you.

His new car is comfortable, air conditioned, and doesn’t smell of 400,000 miles of sweat and bodies. He’s enjoyed his vacation, but now it’s time to join the ranks. And he won’t feel like he’s leaving anyone behind.

That was already done years ago.

© 2019 Matt McGee

                                                   
                                             (c) 2019 marie c lecrivain




Bio: Matt McGee writes short fiction in the Los Angeles area. In 2019, his work has appeared in Biograph, Gnashing Teeth, Otherwise Engaged, poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, and his story ‘The Rebirthing Shed’ will appear in Zimbell House’s 1929 anthology. When not typing he drives around in a vintage Mazda and plays goalie in local hockey leagues.