So this is hope
                 After Ted Kooser

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma 


Lit by a single half-moon window,
a throng of disparate objects
lines every inch of garage shelf space.

Their indistinct shapes bear down on me
like the sound and fury
of a conclave of despots.
 
Is this clutter really what summons
the mournful strains
jabbing from the shadows?

Solving that riddle is like
trying to paint the shape
of gathering clouds.
 
A baggy piece of this puzzle
catches my eye. White, plastic, pillowy,
a sack of Asiatic lily bulbs.
 
After their delayed arrival last fall,
perhaps it was too late to plant.
Or was it that illness, other sirens,
 
one pursuit toppling another,
that caused them to drift
inside this debris field?

Between my fingers, they crackle and groan,
dare me to settle the question of whether
life still exists inside their papery hulls.

So this is hope. Here in a dingy space,
softly suggesting I might still find
flowers inside.

Its presence so unobtrusive until
it shoulders its way out of the cacophonic din,
unscathed from years of living
 
between war and peace,
thistles and lilies.


* * * * *

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, Plants and Poetry and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

 

Genesis and Embryogenesis

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma 

i
And so it was written that in seven days
God created the sun and the moon,
curled the clematis vine, periwinkled
its flowers blue and plumped coral
the petals of peonies. Light fell
on patterned butterfly wings, glossed
hummingbird bodies, and night moonlit
the feathered antennae of the moth.
Lizards basked in radiating desert sands
and beneath the waves,
cephalopods
swerved in and out of shadow.

ii
In seven or so real Earth days,
a woman’s body transforms an ovum
into an implanted blastocyst. We call this
embryogenesis.
But don’t say the egg
is fertilized     
by the sperm
as if she waits dreamily at the doorway
to the fallopian cavern musing
about distant possibilities. Of the millions of sperm
on their way up the river, she calls only
a couple hundred. And though we cling
to the tale of the speeding destrier
penetrating the fortress through sheer grit,
science now thinks the egg chooses
which one may enter her, if any,
then pulls him in through a window,
hidden from the light.


* * * * *

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, Plants and Poetry and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

LAVENDER SKIES

by Amy Ballard Rich


Under lavender skies she flew low;
she recently learned the art
of staying under the radar

Now more than ever
she will look before leaping
into any new company
she wants to keep

Close calls are everywhere;
better to memorize plants and herbs
than to rely on anyone
or anything else

Remembering how and where your roots are,
deeply buried for thousands of years,
will help you fix your gaze ever upward
to find hidden rainbows
behind
the tears clouds are shedding
as they watch a powerful few
try and choke our freedoms
out of us


* * * * *

Amy Ballard Rich is a retired preschool teacher, living in Berkeley, CA. When not writing she can be found hugging both trees and her chosen family. She is still waiting for her attempts to smash patriarchy to bear fruit.

 

Red

by Abigail Davis

 
As a little girl,
my mother did her best
to protect me from men.
 
Red became a color
I could not wear
on my lips,
on my nails.
“But why?” I persisted
as she struggled to explain
in a way that appeased
my tiny, growing brain.
 
“Provocative”
was the word
she was searching for:
a word
I could not understand at four.
 
“Why don’t you try pink?”
I did not want to try pink.
“Red is for grown women”
she’d say,
but what she meant was,
“If you wear it, men will see you as grown.”
 
Yet here I am
at 27,
a year of abstinence,
six weeks of unshaved legs,
divorce papers in the mail,
trauma within the confines of my heart,
and red staining my lips.
Tell me,
is this what provocative looks like?
 
 
* * * * *

Abigail Davis is a preschool teacher living in North Carolina. Her poem, “Where Love Died,” can be found in One Page Poetry’s 2023 Anthology. She has a passion for expressing emotions through writing whether it be poetry, journaling, or short stories. Her joy is found in seeking solitude in nature, as well as witnessing the antics of her two beloved cats, Tylee and Azula. 

Your Grip on Me

by Abigail Davis


Your grip on me
was not solid. Not steel
or iron or wood. But tendrils
of smoke that clung
to the innerworkings
of my soul, attaching themselves
to my patterns
of thought, blurring
my memories, suffocating
my hopes and dreams, and
hazing over my reality.
 
 
* * * * *

Abigail Davis is a preschool teacher living in North Carolina. Her poem, “Where Love Died,” can be found in One Page Poetry’s 2023 Anthology. She has a passion for expressing emotions through writing whether it be poetry, journaling, or short stories. Her joy is found in seeking solitude in nature, as well as witnessing the antics of her two beloved cats, Tylee and Azula. 

 

The Funeral

by Bhanusree S. Kumar


My aunt’s body
Lay on the porch
Beneath marigold wreaths
Left by guests and kin.
The crowd was sparse
As she bequeathed
Only chiffon sarees
And a plywood desk.
A few socialists
Carried the corpse
To the backyard pyre
To complete the rites.
Once her bitter son
Lit the wood,
The crowd dispersed
For tea and snacks.

The next morning,
A priest prepared
Ritual rice balls
For ravens to feast.
They were doused in ghee,
And served on plantain leaves,
With flecks of sesame
And rings of durva grass.
The ceremony ended
With the priest receiving
A scanty fee wrapped in
A crinkled betel leaf.
 
Meanwhile, the spirit
Relished sweet manna,
Free from onus,
Beyond galactic time.


* * * * *

Bhanusree S. Kumar is a writer from Kerala, India. Her poems have appeared in The Gorko Gazette, Topical Poetry, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, The New Indian Express, Lions’ Voice and Heart-Bytes. Besides writing, she enjoys listening to classical music and dabbling in watercolour painting.

A Troubling Memory

by Bhanusree S. Kumar


When the kettle whistled,
my mother jolted from her reverie
and hushed the flame
with a swift, anxious sweep.
In the living room,
guests awaited the festival's remnants—
sweetmeats arranged with precision
on ornate silverware.
Her hands, unsteady from neuropathy,
balanced a tray of katlis,
while daintily adjusting the shawl
that concealed the bruise on her neck
from the previous night’s scuffle.
But when the cloth slipped
and bared the wound,
the crowd took to pretence
and indulged her husband in
a discourse on highway traffic
as if violence were banality.
When the house quietened,
I rushed to bed,
hoping sleep would alchemize
the grim tableau
into art with gravitas.
When the world dissolved,
my lookalike appeared
with a red balloon,
only for a buffeting wind
to snatch it away
from her tender grip.


* * * * *

Bhanusree S. Kumar is a writer from Kerala, India. Her poems have appeared in The Gorko Gazette, Topical Poetry, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, The New Indian Express, Lions’ Voice and Heart-Bytes. Besides writing, she enjoys listening to classical music and dabbling in watercolour painting.