Static and chitchat

by Melanie Choukas-Bradly
 

If I can avoid it I will
The static of chitchat
Talk so small it rattles and fades

I tell you tell he tells she tells
One up storytelling
With shallow laughter brackets

Leave the table with me now
And walk outside
The night awaits, all dark, all deep


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees and A Year in Rock Creek Park. Her book, Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons will be released in June. Melanie began writing poetry during the pandemic and had the good fortune to discover Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site has featured many of her poems, including “How to Silence a Woman,” “If I have loved you,” “The Water Cooler,” and “Muddled Grief,” which won Moon Prizes. Her poetry has also appeared in New Verse News.   

Waiting for Mastodons          

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


The large fruits are massed on the ground
Under the tree, routed and grooved like brains, brightly chartreuse
As if waiting for the megafauna of their co-evolution to return and feast

The wrinkled orbs are eloquent in their non-movement
No one disturbs them
The mastodon and the mammoth

Had a time that is not ours, once shared
With the Osage Orange, a tree stumbling into the future
With its hapless fruit

Mastodons can’t return to the electric green banquet
So fetchingly spread for them
On brown winter earth
A mismatch in time we are coming to know


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees and A Year in Rock Creek Park. Her book, Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons will be released in June. Melanie began writing poetry during the pandemic and had the good fortune to discover Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site has featured many of her poems, including “How to Silence a Woman,” “If I have loved you,” “The Water Cooler,” and “Muddled Grief,” which won Moon Prizes. Her poetry has also appeared in New Verse News.   

Knowing You're Gone

by Sandra Kohler


I go out on this cold brilliantly sunny
March afternoon to try to take my
power walk, a walk I haven't done
since your death two weeks ago.

The sun's brutal, its light not revelation
but obstruction, shutting down my eyes
in a manner which seems to echo the way
my climbing legs feel, awkward, unsure.

On the long steep hill up Tremlett Street
I feel my breath giving out, I'm afraid
my legs will fail me. Half the way up,
I stop, turn around, turn back, start

down again. I talk to the stone lion on
the porch of a house on Waldeck Street,
I mutter at the ugly yellow color of
the corner home of neighbors who

used to be friends and aren't. When
I get back to our house and go inside,
I expect to find you there, expect
to tell you all of the details, share

that walk with you. You're not here.
You won't ever be here again. I learn
my loneliness, my loss of all that
we used to share, again and again.


* * * * *

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music (Word Press). appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 45 years. In 2018, a poem of hers was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.

On the day of your death...

                                             by Sandra Kohler


I vowed to live without you.
I found your documents hidden,
I wrote lists of what to do
with your clothes, your books,
your possessions; I remembered
your body making love to mine.
I made up a story about your
childhood and laughed at it.
I sang songs that we loved
to listen to; I wept.


* * * * *

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music (Word Press). appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 45 years. In 2018, a poem of hers was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.

 

Glamour

by Rose Mary Boehm


Aunt Lil wore her black hat at a coquettish angle,
its little veil pulled over her forehead.
She was Arpège and blood-red lipstick,
long, pointed fingernails to match, nylon stockings,
everything I wanted to be one day.
She bought me ‘Schillerlocken’*.

My uncle was a lawyer,
a tall tree in a forest of lesser trees.
He seldom bent down to my ten-year-old,
somewhat undernourished body.
With a stentorian voice he hinted
that I was making a nuisance of myself
just by being a kid.
I found out later that he had always thought
my mother a creature of a lesser race.
She didn’t speak like one is used to hearing.

It was whispered behind fluttering hands
that Aunt Lil had been a barmaid.
Now she was the wife of a professional,
was perfume and lace, and a deep-red slit
replaced her mouth when she laughed.
Which she didn’t do often.

The idea that this childless couple would look after me
for ten days while my mother went back
to East Germany (in danger of being sent to a Russian
gulag if caught) to sort out the lives we left behind in a hurry
had been hammered out between the women.

Uncle Fried looked at me across the huge dining table
as he would a fly and frowned.
‘Has nobody shown you how to eat
with knife and fork, child?’
My voice not quite steady from fear:
‘We had nothing to cut, Uncle.’


* * * * *

"Schillerlocken" is a sweet, cone-shaped German pastry. The name was inspired by the typical curly wigs that men, like the German poet Friedrich Schiller, used to wear in the 18th century.”

"Glamour" was first published in the Rose Mary Boehm's collection Life Stuff (Kelsay, November 2023)

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit, July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

The Black Bird

by Rose Mary Boehm 


Holland. Fifty-five years ago.
The back garden’s lawn sloping gently
towards the dark water of the canal.
There is a willow, its soft, green arms
reaching all the way down to the grass.
And there are tulips.
Almost black tulips,
their slender stems choreographed in a silent dance.
And there is a six-months old little boy in his buggy.

Twitt, twitt, chirrp, twitt, caw, flutters and wooshes,
some sharp beaks are pecking at an intruder.
Birds flitting by or leisurely thumping the lawn
for worms, a duck doing its splashy upside-down bit
into the murk of the canal water
only to lift up its beak dripping with black muck.
More ducks paddle towards a goal
only they know, leaving in their wake watery cuts
that silver the quiet canal.
The occasional canoe, the paddles almost soundless.
I look out of the kitchen window.
My little boy has been too quiet
for far too long.
I stare.

His mouth pursed in concentration,
in his pudgy little fingers the shortbread given to him
by my friend as a peace offering.
One by one he feeds crumbs to a black bird of some size
that’s sits on the edge of the buggy’s tray, its head moving
nervously from side to side, or perhaps it’s just to see
his benefactor better. Both are intense, sometimes talking,
in holy communion.


* * * * *

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit, July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

The Attic is an Umbrella             

by Jen Schneider

 
with no springs but ample shade.
wingspan surprisingly wide,
metal clasps not yet retired --
 
a blend of weeds and wild things 
 
copies of Where the Wild Things Are,
Goodnight Moon, and Ferdinand
open to consume (conflicts
unresolved, plots unclear)
despite broken spines 
 
Sign Here!
 
contracts and constructs
clauses and canopies
 
and of infinite capacity for 
tears and torn everything – 

           a yellow slicker, size small, arms interlocked.
           photos of phantoms and fanatics. 
           DNA strands with lobster-claw clasps and faux beads.
            acid-washed denim with cherry patches on each knee
            overalls with golden threads on (s)worn seats.
            stuffed bears with no hearts.
            plucked sunflowers, now dry.
            chipped ceramic plates, three generations displaced.
            birth certificates marked Do Not Return to Sender.
            sealed envelopes with unfamiliar names penned in faded ink.
            undeveloped Kodak rolls. Caps closed.
            overexposed MRI films in yellowed envelopes.
            moth wings -- singular and tongue-tied.
            mice seeking twice-daily feedings.
            feral readings and nursery rhymes 
 
the attic is an umbrella –
 
its wooden rafters deceptively strong
its floorboards recently wired. a router
of some kind. wires conspire
alongside instinct
 
When!
 
a small hole in the far-left corner grows,
simultaneously light and shadow, origins
unknown -- a hungry crow, termites, mama
birds. shelter both proper and depersonalized.  
a welcome landing, unnamed
inhabitants consume all things,
 
I’m hungry! 
 
both wild and (re)tried,
amongst
items documented in handsewn
labels along collars and size-two Keds,
 
never (not yet) worn – 
 
the cotton blanket, knit by hand,
remains folded, in fetal form,
 
secure in blue Tupperware. hidden
from the impending storm
 
           Seek shelter! 
 
the attic is an umbrella –
ripe of unresolved conflict.
 
           last-place jerseys (tanks)
           keychains to locked doors
           stolen things (time)
           shells from unwelcome shores
           denim shorts (poorly sized) 
 
plot and pinch points breached
pop-up storms and breech births.
 
its metal spokes
rusted and untrusted. 
its contents soaked.
 
a puddle pools
beneath my feet of cotton
socks. the air cools. a bird
stirs. the sun winks in dotted
lines. the floorboard creaks.
 
Again!
 
I’ll patch none of it, I think
as the bird returns to sleep
and the realtor waits,
 
as if I could if I tried,
 
            Coming!   
 
the attic is an umbrella --
of shafts and springs
 
instead, I sit on a seat
of construction paper, legs
crossed, and contemplate
the shelter of places once
known -- forever young. 
 
 
* * * * *

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. Her most recent collection, 14 (Plus) Reasons Why published with free lines press, is now available.