ODE TO THOSE IN A TRAUMA CENTER WAITING ROOM

by Lorri Ventura


Together alone
While their loved ones undergo medical procedures
They stare blindly at a crookedly mounted TV
Offering soap operas at full-volume

They fan through dog-eared pages
Of months-old People magazines
And gnaw on ragged fingertips
As their lips dance with anxious prayers

Around them, an intercom crackles
Calling color codes
That trigger storms of scrubs, lab coats
And rattling service carts
Flashing past

They pace back and forth
Across threadbare carpeting
In front of an aquarium
Filled with colorful tropical fish
Placed there to provide cheer and diversion
But ominously message-laden
With two rotund goldfish
Floating upside down at the water’s surface

They pretend not to see the people
Who share the crowded room with them
Each one emotionally isolated and unprepared

Like those in the throes of surgery
Those who wait
Hover between life and death


* * * * *

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured in AllPoetry, Mad Swirl, Parapraxis, Quabbin Quills, and Red Eft Review. She is a three-time winner of Writing in a Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.

 

 

Snapshot
            -after the composite photograph Secret Garden
            by Karen Elias

by Marjorie Maddox


In the photo within the photo, the small girl waters the earth, 
the dirt-tinged past wedged between twigs in a garden 
fenced-in by stones and memory. The imaginary, the dead, 
the living—all crisscross like brittle vines. Who is looking out
at the world now? Beyond the bright blossoms, a coffin
looms small. Or is it a working well? At the edge of the yard lies

the future. Gray or green? The end of the story lies
in what we choose. The small child waters the earth.
Is she me? Is she you? She knows nothing of coffins
at the edge of the world, just keeps watering her garden,
the seeds she cannot see. She believes someone else looks out
for the rest of the earth, for her. She doesn’t know the dead

sky has something to tell her, the fragile dome already dying
the day pride and desire cracked Eden with the lie
of plucked dominion. All she wants is to look out
at the well at the end of her yard. There, beneath the earth,
more water hides. She believes this, feeds her garden
religiously. Will you tell her? Will I? Soon the coffin

looms larger; the stone wall cracks. Someone is coughing.
A child peers from behind a crumbling fence. Is she the new Eden, dying
again? But still, there is that old photo; the small child loves her garden.
Surely, she can learn to till and plant, to care for the creatures that lie
beyond the boundaries of her own square of walled-in earth. 
Surely, she can look within, then learn to look outside

her small plot. Will you teach her? Will I? A garden is a lookout
for the world, the view long. What will you build? A well? A coffin?
In the photo within the photo, a child waters a new old earth.
Will she replenish the dried-up well, follow the wisest dead
and recover Eden, detouring around all lies?
Will she sense the Christ child there, digging in the garden?

In the photo within the photo, the small girl waters her garden:
there is no fear or drought, no contamination. Look out
at the world. Look in at the sins of omission. Prophecy lies
just beyond our garden walls; the now rusted nails in the coffin
pollute even our wells. And yet, the small girl is listening. The dead
teach us this. Return with her to Eden. Show her the earth

can still bloom with God’s glory, can deconstruct the world’s coffin.
The dead rise up calling for mercy. Will you listen? Will I? The earth
waits impatiently. Outside/within us, the secret answer lies: Look—the Garden.

* * * * *

Secret Garden by Karen Elias

"Snapshot" was previously published in Caring for Creation: St. Andrew's Episcopal Church 2022 Poetry Contest Anthology, "Snapshot" (poem), "Secret Garden" (photo).

Professor at Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 16 collections of poetry—including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? (Kelsay); Seeing Things (Wildhouse); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (International Book and Illumination Book Award Winners); Shanti Arts ekphrastic collaborations Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (w/Karen Elias) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (w/Anna Lee Hafer www.hafer.work and others. is forthcoming. She also has published a story collection, 4 children’s books, and two anthologies (co-editor), and is assistant editor of Presence and host of Poetry Moment www.marjoriemaddox.com.

Karen Elias is an artist / activist who uses photography to record the fragility of the natural world and raise awareness about the climate crisis. Recently she has also been using photo-collage techniques to explore more complex and psychological aspects of our human connections to nature. Her work is in private collections, has been exhibited extensively, and has won numerous awards.  

Ode to Almost-Silence

by Marjorie Maddox


Praise to the door clicking shut,
to absence warming up the room,

but not completely: fireplace flame still
spitting its lazy opinions, radiator

humming its calm, the floorboard’s creak
letting you know it’s still there

but won’t interrupt like the brash
morning jazz your husband plays

before coffee opens the ears
to thought and conversation.

Here: the louder hush of outside world
kept out—wind, occasional cat,

an emergency (not yours)
begging for someone else

to run, or fix, or bark commands
that can’t break into this cordoned-off

zone of chosen contemplation—
where, sometimes, even now, you hear

the memory of waves, the scratch
of sole on sand, the swirl of shells, and even

your chin lifting into salty air
as you listen not for the lost

and gone, but for what is
there and here inside

the ear and the empty
house, not empty after all.


* * * * *

"Ode to Almost-Silence" was previously published in The Grotto and Heart Beats and is forthcoming in the author’s book Seeing Things (Wildhouse, 2024). The author retains all rights.

Professor at Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 16 collections of poetry—including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? (Kelsay); Seeing Things (Wildhouse); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (International Book and Illumination Book Award Winners); Shanti Arts ekphrastic collaborations Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (w/Karen Elias) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (w/Anna Lee Hafer www.hafer.work and others. is forthcoming. She also has published a story collection, 4 children’s books, and two anthologies (co-editor), and is assistant editor of Presence and host of Poetry Moment www.marjoriemaddox.com

 

This month, another Moon Prize, the 135^th, goes to June Crawford Sanders's exuberant poem "Not Grimm."

 

Not Grimm

 

by June Crawford Sanders

 

 

I'm no princess but there's this one hill

on the way to my house that when

it snows then melts then refreezes

is as smooth as the fairy tale

glass mountain which was said to be

as smooth as ice and I'm not sure

a prince himself could ride up

even if I threw three golden apples

but if he did we sure could

have fun sledding back down.

 

 

 

This month, the 134th Moon Prize goes to Susan Isla Tepper's riveting story "Air Over Hanoi."

Air Over Hanoi

by Susan Isla Tepper

 
Soldiers are filing across the tarmac earlier than was scheduled.  We just de-planed a load of them from Guam, and now we stews are tearing through the Boeing 707, cleaning up as best we can.  Until a few bombs showed up on the planes, recently, Vietnamese ground service did the cleaning.  Not anymore. In a moment soldiers will be boarding and we don’t have our hats on yet.      
 
“Boarding!” comes over the intercom.  
 
Lana is rummaging through the overhead rack.  “Who put their damn crew kit on my hat!   It’s all crushed!”    
 
We’re proud of our hats with our wings pinned to them.  Stiff blue pillbox hats a la Jackie Kennedy.  It’s a reg to wear your hat during boarding and deplaning.  Even in Vietnam. The bulkheads have been yanked out turning passenger planes into troop ships.  A seemingly endless number of young boy-men to fill every seat.
 
I traded into this trip for the Honolulu layover.  I don’t hold this line. Girls way more senior than I am hold this line; though I can’t imagine why.  Despite the wet oppressive heat I still get a shiver down my spine as the first of the soldiers start climbing the metal stairs.
 
“Don’t forget to smile,” Margie is saying. 
 
She’s twenty-seven and thinks she knows it all.  I’m 19 and a half.  The youngest you can be to work for this airline.  I’ve been flying less than a year.  Mostly Madrid and Lisbon, sometimes London and Paris.  In London the hotel towel racks are heated.
 
I stand beside Margie at what is normally the first class cabin door; under normal circumstances.  The first soldier steps into the plane. He looks old around his eyes.  Margie and I smile saying, “Welcome Aboard.”  
 
Some smile back, some do not.  I start feeling terrible.   I’m sweating from my armpits, across my top lip, my scalp, inside my shoes and underwear.    
 
Last to board are the stretchers.  Margie keeps smiling; I have to give her that.  She smiles through the moaning behind barriers made from hung bed sheets, where the seats have been removed.  Medics assist those men.  I am told to keep out of their way.    
 
I begin feeling wrecked.   I didn’t feel wrecked when we came in for landing.  I had looked down, saw the fires burning here and there, the expanse of green and the paddies.  
 
For take-off I strap in next to Margie on the (usually) first class jump-seat. “How many times have you flown this rotation?”  I say.
 
“A few years.”
 
“A few years!”
 
She scrutinizes my face.  “Someone’s gotta do it.”
 
“I suppose.” 
 
Finally the plane is beginning to cool off.  The cockpit door swings open and the flight engineer sticks his head out.  “Could one of you sweet things bring me a Coke.”
 
“Sure!” I unbuckle my shoulder harness, jumping up.  The Coke can is barely cool; but there’s no time to start cracking ice. 
 
He thanks me with a grin and a wink.  “We’ll have some fun in Honolulu,” he says.
 
On the jump-seat Margie is having a last cigarette.  “The no-smoking sign is lit,” I tell her.
 
“Hon, this is Nam not Dayton.”
 
I strap back in as music fills the plane: Up, Up, and Away.  The same old tune always played on take-offs and landings.  Everywhere.  Here it sounds strange, unsettling.        
        
Margie bumps the side of my leg with hers. “It’ll be fine.”
 
Suddenly I’m glad to have this senior girl beside me.  Even though she’s a little odd. She carries her own ashtray in her purse, taken from an armrest.  Behind her back the other girls laugh about it.  She catches me looking at the ashtray in her lap. 
 
“We all have our thing,” she says.  “What’s your’s?  Secretly married?”  That, too, is strictly against regs.
 
I shake my head.  “No. You?”
 
“Naw.  I date a pilot who’s married.”
 
I turn my head toward the cockpit.
 
“Not them.”  She smiles.  “They’re good guys.  Always with the jokes, keeping up morale for the men.”  She takes a few quick puffs. “My guy has a Rome trip this month.”
 
“Why don’t you bid Rome?  You have enough seniority.”
 
“His wife is on that trip.”
 
“You mean she’s working it?”
 
“Yep.”  Then the plane begins to taxi and Margie grinds out the cigarette in her little personal ashtray.  “How old are you?”
 
“Almost twenty.”
 
“You’ve got a lot to learn.”   
 
The plane shudders down the runway, gains speed then lifts, music soaring on the choral part, when the pilot breaks in staticky over the intercom.  “Welcome aboard ladies and gentlemen.  We are in the air over Hanoi.” 
 
A huge roar of laughter fills the cabin.  And we lift higher into the sky.    


* * * * *

"Air Over Hanoi" was first published by Gargoyle Online https://gargoylemagazine.com/susan-tepper-2/

Susan Isla Tepper is a widely published writer in all genres, and the author of twelve books and two stage plays currently in some form of production which changes periodically according to the covid stats. Later this year another novel titled ‘Hair of a Fallen Angel’ will be published. www.susantepper.com

 

(Self) Love Potion
Family recipe | Full moon required

by Marion Chiariglione


I.
Reach for your cabinets.

Get up on a ladder if need be
& find the strength to make this,
your own recipe.

Don’t deviate too much or you could lose
pieces of yourself only to be found
in someone else you’d call “soulmate”.

II.
Start with a pinch—2 or 3 grains—of confidence
obtained at the crossroads of external validation & emancipation.

III.
Do not confuse newly found attention for admiration.

IV.
Add in 1 cup of tears—careful!
These need to be collected on a new moon
after moments of unrecognizable abandon—

V.
Mix in 1/4 of trust issues.

VI.
Don't forget to add 10 grams of family trauma
& je-ne-sais-quoi
pulled from the depths
of ancestral secrets—no je t’aime allowed at the altar.

VII.
Extract from Maman’s body 26 years worth of self-deprecation
& from that lineage decide the amount of painful blood to empty out.
Commit—for once—to the feeling of abandon.

VIII.
Now, dirty your hands & take ownership of
the path you’ve walked for centuries.

Harness the power
of generations behind your eyes.

IX.
Mix all ingredients well—Watch!
Feel your selves come alive at the hearth’s
fire—center love within.

X.
Expect results three full moons from now.


* * * * *

Marion Chiariglione is a writer and artist from Avignon, France currently living in Columbus, OH. Her work as a poet explores what it means to build new identities, to relate the self to others and to embody and embrace one’s feelings. She holds a MS in Computer Science and has published scientific work as part of her day job as a Data Scientist at The Ohio State University. This is her first poetry publication.