Letter to the Human Race

by Alexandria Wyckoff


Crushed soda cans never decompose,
the metal glints in amber light until it slices
into the throats and stomachs
of wildlife that mistake silver for food.

You cut corners, fragile
grass bends beneath oblivious
soles. The death of the blades
progresses with each step until
they can no longer use the sun to grow
and eventually give way to mud.

You drill deep down into the ground
hunting for black liquid gold. One misstep
and the oil skates across the salty blue water
drifting down to curious sea life that
becomes trapped in the slippery substance before
floating to the surface.

One accidental spark from your frivolous
party floats onto dry leaves, then swaying
grasses, finally to silent trees that never
scream, even as fire consumes their skeletons
until acres of ash and soot remain.

Mother Earth will swallow you,
we’re another species that needs to be purged
wiped away from the planet, just like
the prehistoric dinosaurs
that once trekked across fertile ground,

their only remains just dust and bones,
discarded beasts not destined
to live in this world, layers of dirt,
stone, and grass digest a forgotten species
we may become ourselves.


* * * * *

Alexandria Wyckoff has a BA in Creative Writing from SUNY Oswego. She has been previously published in Gandy Dancer, Planisphere Q, The Ana, The Pensieve, and Quillkeepers Press. Find more of her work at: https://lwyckoff2002.wixsite.com/alexandria-wyckoff

 

Daphne
(a retelling of the myth)

by Lisa Marguerite Mora


Rain runs

down the alley in the dark an endless race beyond my eyelids. A shock
of white illumination, next the shout of thunder, bellow

of a god about my shoulders. Strike of the here and now, of what is possible
and dangerous, and beautiful. I am rendered to my place in the universe.

I am less important than my plans and more important than I had ever conceived.
Once you looked down at me, I held your hand, and you would not release

my eyes, you would not let me go, you would not let me stop
seeing that you saw down to the bone, as if you'd known me twenty thousand years

and counting, ten billion breaths and now breathing another
and all this time I thought I was alone.

How do I reconcile the emptiness
now that you've named it?

And so love grows a filigreed tendril encasing my heart. Its urgent roots lay tiny suctions
—the pain of this moves into my marrow

reminding me I am not alone, but attached. Where I am, you are. What you think
I feel. Tears from nowhere, almost bruises, as you elbow through your life away

from me and memory, the unseen
prevalent and tender.


* * * * *

Lisa Marguerite Mora’s poetry and prose has been published widely and internationally including in Chiron Review, Rattle, Galway Review and many other print and online literary journals. She was a semifinalist for the Tom Howard Poetry Contest, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Sybaritic Press. Her micro fiction will be included in fine artist Lori Preusch’s forthcoming book Once Upon A Time - A Magical Storybook (Dandelion Press). Lisa has recently completed a first novel. She can be contacted through https://www.lisamargueritemora.com where she offers literary services.

I am not Tim Winton

by Julie Holland


I’m a writer, not an author, because I’ve not been published, yet, ever.
I came at it late, you see, at sixty, and from quite the wrong direction.
I’m privileged, I suppose, and hold a secret.
I’m homesick, a migrant.
It’s hush hush, quiet, a whisper. Shameful.
If you don’t love it, leave, isn’t that what we say?
Cloak in shadow, to heal. Cold inside, in forty degrees.
The school run helps, the citizenship, eight friends barbequing.
You’re not in the A team, and you suspect you’re not in the B team either.
Years pass. There are trips back.
You become the cliched invisible, the voiceless.
That old women at number twenty-seven from wherever.
The woman at the bar no one serves, until she gets nasty, and then everyone notices.
And then Covid. There’s no trip back.
An old face in the mirror. Hardly recognizable. Fatter but diminished.
How’s that even possible?
You’re a writer, sing a song of homeland.
Of Vikings. But that won’t cut it.
They want emerging voices, young voices, marginalised, facing the struggle head on.
You’ve had your say.
No.
Cut out the romance novels and the white-women-in-bad-marriage storyline, which do not represent me, and I’m underrepresented.
So, go on, speak yourself.
Stop speaking, you’re embarrassing your children.
Old woman wearing over-bright lipstick queuing in the supermarket.
Collecting prescriptions from the doctor.
Sitting alone in a café nursing a pot of tea.
My tragedy, is me.
For living a life that is not mine.
Homesickness, clawing deeper each passing year, that has no cure, but death.
I could ask for help. Yes.
The doctor wants a hundred dollars to talk about it. Let me tell you, don’t waste your dollar.
We’re old tits with lumps to be examined, and hysterical hysterectomies, with decayed teeth.
Whilst doctors the same age, with salt and pepper hair, flirt with chatty nurses.
Go home old woman. Watch television. Cry a little.
Balling tissues and dabbing spittle at the corner of your mouth. Forgetting words.
I will speak myself.
Can’t you read? It says don’t step on the grass.
The boy hit me in the face so hard my nose cracked and blood splattered over dirt, dripping over a broderie anglaise collar.
I beat him later, in chess club.
Van Gogh was mad.
Don’t say that. My lecturer tells me about his wife. Anorexic, fighting for mental health.
I’m the drunk girl, good as a boy.
The car breaking. The thud, the fractured skull nearly ending life.
The tearing episiotomy performed by a facemask.
Eyes like surgical instruments.
Not being prepared. Motherhood. The silence, when screaming.
University. Feminism.
Lying about who I am.
Because being a wife and mother is not enough.
The voice of the Other, condemning me with easy essays.
An artist without space.
A lecturer without nepotism.
Slipping into obscurity. Grown old, hearing the voices of Others growing stronger and louder.
Then the rejections, returned, unread.
I am not Tim Winton.


* * * * *

Commended in the 2022 Ethel Webb Bundell Literary Awards, Julie Holland lives and writes in Western Australia. She studied Visual Arts, received an MA, exhibited in many exhibitions, but her passion remains the written word.

 

Faraway Music

by Loretta Bigg


            I woke up to it late every Sunday, the blues calling me in São Paulo. Fourteen notes, simple and always the same on the last day of the week, played on unrecognizable instruments, like the tin, in Tin Pan Alley. First seven sweet tones, a long pause, a siren call, then seven more aching notes, mourning the siren, searching, calling, “Where are you? I can’t find you. Where are you? Love, I’ve lost you.”
            Fourteen tinkling sounds and then nothing more till the following week. I never heard a voice explaining, “These notes are me.” The music reached up to my apartment from the bottom of the world, but I could never find the source of it even though I searched the sidewalks, empty Sunday. But I only saw someone too late for the bus, a child playing with paper or a man driving a truck full of gas canisters.
            It wasn't sparrow song. I had never seen many birds in my poor little part of the great city. How could such a small life survive in this mass of cars 12 million strong called São Paulo? One dead starling, crushed on the sidewalk, just recognizable from my 9th floor window.
            But then my beautiful song passed by again, like mourning the little bird: "What happened? Why did you die?"
            How to describe a sound? Those notes filled me with aching desire, paused my coffee as I raised it to my lips. Made me forget I waited for Luiz to arrive or to cancel as usual: "Re-mem-ber. and come to me," the notes whispered. They felt like billowing sheets, belly sweat, or just the weight of him I missed so much. Eternal, we were, at least for a moment.
            I waited for the tune below to pass me by, then returned to my coffee and my newspaper. I tried to dissect how it played and paused and faded and then disappeared till the next Sunday. A zither? Soft as down. A feathered oboe? French horn? Stolen from the throat of São Paulo, a last bird or a woman's strangled plea? "Don't go yet. Please don't go yet."
            How to describe a melody in words, this string of blues that caught me, paused for a minute to be forgotten, then raised me up again in the middle of a toothbrush stroke, a held breath, the mystery of his eyes like ghosts on an empty pillow. A dirge, an elegy, an epitaph. "Where are you? I cannot find you." I waited for the answer, but the song stayed lost. And memories of him trembled in the zither strings, tumbling cataracts of water, kneading fingers on my shoulders, phantom mouth.
            I dressed quickly, hurried out into the street to catch it at last but could see nothing.
            One day, I asked Luiz about the secret of this passing music, but he wasn't really interested.
            "It's fourteen notes. You forget the past. You forgive. Once a week."
            "Sing it," Luiz said.
            But I could never imitate the sounds. They disappeared like water down the drain as soon as they passed my window. They were too simple to replicate.
            Luiz decided it must be a street musician in love with me. "Poor man, If he only knew how crazy you are." He shook his head and went back to sleep. I realized later that he couldn't connect what I was talking about with a tune he also heard every week.
            One morning, he lay snoring beside me, a two-note melody, boredom mixed with too much booze. I stared up at the blank ceiling, wondering what he was doing here still, why he hadn't left me yet. Wine on the sheets, white walls.
            I'd forgotten it was Sunday.
            Without warning, there it was, my faraway music, fourteen notes: "Life is hard. You'll survive, love." Then "All will pass, all will pass, love." My oboe, my zither, my unknown secret, I jumped out of bed to the window before it was too late, but saw nothing but a truck full of canisters.
            Luiz stirred. "What is it, what's wrong?"
            "That music, don't you hear it?"
            "What music?"
            "Faraway, like us, like... forever."
            And for once he listened, too, without that cynical look. The siren came, she sang for him.
            "Ah," he said, smiling. "You need gas?"
            "You know what this music is? It's been bothering me for forever."
            "It's been bothering everyone in Brazil for years." He turned back to sleep.
            I realized I was making a mistake, that I would lose something with his next words but I had to know. "I've always thought it was our song," I said.
            "Our song?" He looked at me like I was crazy again. "This isn't even a song, it's a cheap ad. It's the gas company. It's the guys selling those gas canisters. See down there, that man with the truck? Gas company music." And the notes drifted up to me again, metallic, below my 9th story window And I saw that, yes, it came from that truck, painted in peeling colors.
            "Why this music?" I asked, too late to stop. "Why this pretty song?" Of course it was just a jingle.
            "They used to have some kind of announcement but people got sick of it. So now it's this melody. See, it's Brazil. Even the gas company likes to sing, but it means nothing except. "Petro gas, you out of gas?"
            He laughed and turned his back on me again, white flesh brick wall I'd learned to face if I wanted him to stay. The music drove by one more time, Eros shot by his own arrow, falling to Earth, fading down the street: "I'm not yours, I fly away I am gone, so far away."
            Luiz soon stepped out of my life as nimbly as off an elevator.
            And I never heard my siren song again in that tinny jangle of notes.


* * * * *

]Loretta Bigg is a dual American/Canadian citizen. She has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and several short plays performed in Canada and San Diego. Published work: short story, Everyday Fiction; short story, second place TEAL writing contest; two listening text books with Lynx Publishing. She made the top 100 in the last Launchpad prose contest. Soon to be published in Ariel Chart. She is retired but still works as the troupe musician for Vancouver Playback Theater, and as a standardized patient (actor) for doctors and nurses.

This month, an additional Moon Prize, the 127th, goes to Jennifer Abod's perceptive poem "Huntington Beach, 2023."

Huntington Beach, 2023

by Jennifer Abod


I watch her brush
sand off a feather
with little girl fingers,
decide where to perch it
on the sand mound she built
near her mother’s beach chair.

She turns toward
an orange plastic pail,
dips in a  pudgy hand
pulls out some shells.

She rocks her head
back and forth,
discards a few,
lifts her palm to show
her distracted mom.

Mom is looking at the ocean.
Husband and son,
bare chests,
wet trunks,
play and laugh
in the pull and tug
of frothy waves.

I want to nudge that mother,
tell her to notice that child at her feet,
her delicate handling of seashells,
her deliberation over a feather.


* * * * *

Jennifer Abod, Ph.D., is an award-winning, pioneering feminist/lesbian filmmaker and radio broadcaster. She is a former Assistant Professor of Communication and Women’s Studies, and Corporate Media Specialist. From 1970-1976, she sang with New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band. She sings Jazz, weekly, in Long Beach, California, and is working on her first poetry collection.  Her poems appear in Sinister Wisdom, Spices and Seasonings, and One Art Journal. At One Art, find her poems “Envy,” “At the Indian Ocean,” “Rethinking Pink,” and “Dance Lessons.” Her poem, “Turning Point, 1979,” appeared in Metro Weekly. Visit her at jenniferabod.com.

 

This month's Moon Prize, the 126th, goes to Susan Isla Tepper's joyous poem "Happiness." May we all and often have such moments.


Happiness

by Susan Isla Tepper


There was one happy day
in that five year stretch
No— there must’ve been others
she argues with herself
but can’t convince
herself beyond that one day,
first day on the job
last to leave, locking the heavy
metal door with a key,
such a responsibility—
she had to practically kneel
on the sidewalk,
to reach where the lock was placed,
a potted red geranium bought
during lunchtime
nestled in the crook of her other arm,
briefcase on the pavement.
A rough position
for a girl wearing a new wide skirt
brushing the dirty sidewalk
yet that one day sticks out
as triumphant.
When she thinks back on happiness.


* * * * *

"Happiness" was first published in The Galway Review (May 29, 2023).

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

Incomplete Joy 

by Nancy K. Jentsch

 
I couldn’t know it would be 
the last phone call—cheerful, 
positive (thank goodness), mention 
of next week’s Thanksgiving plans, 
a new sweater on your needles. 
A month later I realized 
you’d shopped early for Christmas, 
bargained with delayed delight 
at giving your gifts. But it was 1981 
and every bit of joy had faded  
with fall’s waning. I remember 
the presents—the last things 
you’d chosen for me. There was 
a blouse—always an awkward fit 
that still clutters my closet. And 
a thesaurus, though you couldn’t 
know I’d once fledge as a poet. 
Years on, its thumb tabs, worn 
with searching, have not yet 
yielded a synonym for you. 


* * * * *

Nancy K. Jentsch’s chapbook Authorized Visitors and the collaborative ekphrastic chapbook Frame and Mount the Sky, in which her poetry appears, were published in 2017. Her collection Between the Rows debuted in 2022. Since she began to write in 2008, her work has appeared in journals such as Amethyst Review, Crowstep Poetry Journal, Tiferet Journal, and Zingara Poetry Review. In 2020, she received an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Retired after 37 years of teaching, she finds a bounty of inspiration in her family and her rural home. More information is available on her website: https://jentsch8.wixsite.com/my-site. 

My Mother’s House

by Claire O’Brien


My mother’s house in winter
smells of garlic and wood smoke.
She’s in the kitchen
stirring something sizzling.

Bangles clinking
on her red wine glass,
music wafting through the soft-lit rooms,
she’s smiling and the orange lilies gleam.

In jeans she’s padding down the timbered hall
framed by the fire’s glow,
giggling at my palms on the pane
she’s opening the door –

my nose sharpened by the cold,
the ice in my stomach melting,
bags dropped at the door
I slide into the warmth.


* * * * *

Claire O’Brien is an active nature lover and lives beside a river on the coast of Queensland, Australia.  She is an emerging writer who has won prizes in Australian Poetry competitions and writes poetry and essays.

Writing in a Woman's Voice is on solstice break this week. Posts will resume on December 24, 2023. Happy holiday season to all! 

 

I Wonder What I Would’ve Been in Another Life

by Kait Quinn


Hair still straight as a show horse's mane, I tolerate
another one of my husband's monotoned textbook
facts about space to completely obliterate the nebulaic
watercolor wreckage, spilt-merlot magic of it all.

The cicadas drone on beyond their ghosts
of spun copper, and I am a hot spring on a summer
day, boiling myself to ash 'til I have no skin to bristle
at his touch, no tongue to slip around the boulder

of his name. My only solace is my in-laws' Hill
Country house, out where blue skies yawn
over wine-stained roses, sunsets like valencia
fresh squeezed over cattled acres. I take over

the guest house to write poems lacking the urgency
of migration, solitary flights across the Atlantic,
Eve gnawing the pomegranate, the fig, then bathing
in the plasmic juices. Instead, I write odes to a man who

made my twenties a toxic bath, gave me babies—my babies
I'd bleed out for!—then made me raise them under
patriarchal law: blue for boys, pink for girls,
red drowning us all in a swimming pool filled

with my own ink blood. I collect them—
these clandestine love letters to myself—into a manuscript
I never get the nerve to publish because he might read them.
I rip each one to pieces, spread them out across the country

house that might someday be mine if I am velveteen good,
wildflower patient. A few here, beneath the floorboard
under the reading chair he never uses. There, in the cobwebbed
nook between two yellow bricks inside the hearth

it never gets cold enough in Texas to light. I scatter the rest
in the field, plant them like seeds I nourish into courage.
Bright Easter eggs for the daughter I covertly raise
under the wilds of Lilith to someday dig up, mismatch

into a story where I didn't stay but ran
barefoot home to the woods, moved to the mountains,
then the desert, flew alone to Budapest, and the only blood
I gave was to the poetry and the mockingbird, the crown

on my wrist, rubber band heart stretched from ulnar
to radial artery. Or, I bury them like the dead, drain the crimson
from my body, walk my inherited cemetery a pale morning
corpse. Art is all I have and even that, too, is dissolving.


* * * * *

Kait Quinn (she/her) was born with salt in her wounds. She flushes the sting of living by writing poetry. She is the author of four poetry collections, and her work appears in Reed Magazine, Watershed Review, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere. She received first place in the 2022 John Calvin Rezmerski Memorial Grand Prize. Kait is an Editorial Associate at Yellow Arrow Publishing and a poetry reader for Black Fox Literary Magazine. She enjoys repetition, coffee shops, tattoos, and vegan breakfast. Kait lives in Minneapolis with her partner, their regal cat, and their very polite Aussie mix. Find her at kaitquinn.com.

 

What Jamie Waited to Hear
Jamie, 1953
Cheyenne, Wyoming

by Anna Citrino


Howard, my first husband, was a tall man
with a small heart. I married him
because I was alone and didn’t want to be.

A temperamental man, Howard believed
in signs. If a raven flew overhead, someone
was going to die. When a neighbor found
a dinosaur bone in his field, something
dangerous was sure to come our way.

Usually, that was Howard yelling, 
throwing things, angry at what he wanted
and didn’t get. He thought he wanted me.

But I saw the signs and divorced him,
a story with an ending
he didn’t like.
 
My second husband, Frank, liked horses,
and worked with me on the ranch,
but fell in love with cigarettes, alcohol,
and the company of other women.
I divorced him, too.
 
My third husband, Alfred, loved farming
but let me do the work. I didn’t mind too much.
He smoked less, didn’t yell often or drink
every day and stayed around in the evenings.
 
Belonging. That's a strange word.
To belong to someone or they to you.
I’ve spent a lot of time longing, longing to be
someone to somebody.

None of my husbands have told me, “I love you.”
Neither do I say the words. 
So hard to say what I’ve scarcely
experienced or heard. 
 
When I did hear them one summer evening
sitting under stars with Alfred, instead of
telling him I loved him too, suddenly I grew silent,
absorbing the light shooting from a falling star,
its unasked brilliance plummeting across night’s violet dark.

Nothing had ever seemed so beautiful
or so brief.


* * * * *

"What Jamie Waited to Hear" is part of Anna Citrino's growing longer work of related poems. More poems from the longer work were posted here on November 10 and 11 and December 14, 2023, and two more will follow January 30 and 31, 2024.

Anna Citrino is the author of A Space Between, and Buoyant,  Saudade, and To Find a River. Anna taught abroad in six different countries: Turkey, Kuwait, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India, and the UK. Her work has appeared in Bellowing Ark, Canary, Evening Street Review, Indelible, Paterson Literary Review, phren-z, Poppy Road Review, and the Porter Gulch Review, among other literary journals. On most any day you can find her going for walks near the coast or biking on paths through rolling hills where she lives in Sonoma County, California. Read more of her writing at annacitrino.com.

Mistake
Adah, 1936
Cheyenne, Wyoming

by Anna Citrino


The clouds hung low to the ground, heavy, ready
to break loose in storm when Raymond stepped through
the door with his perfect buttons and shining belt buckle,
back straight, chin pointed, head held high.

My workday at the laundry was nearly finished.
I handed him his newly pressed clothes and he
inspected them with approval.

I thought I wanted a trim, firm man,
who appreciated order, knew how to take charge,
a stable man with steady work.

The world is full of disasters—
people lose their homes, their health,
the ones they love.
I’d lost Gerard long before I expected.
What I couldn’t bear after Gerard’s death
was the stillness in the house, the dust motes
hanging in the air’s static light.

I knew the prejudice against single women,
and had my own questions about where
my life would go if I remained alone.

I wanted better than that.

A coal or oil field worker smelling of mineral,
sediment under the fingernails that wouldn’t
wash out, a farmer, railroad man, or cattle rancher—
those men weren’t for me.

A clean-cut military man, Raymond seemed
a better option. He knew I was a laundry supervisor,
and what that suggested, said he wanted
a woman with experience.

After we’d married, though, he wanted someone else.

“Your hair’s a mess,” he’d bluntly pronounce,
“Don’t wear that,” or he’d bark, “Stop talking!”
then later ask why I never laughed.
.
Upon entering the house, he’d run his finger
along the door frame and tabletop to see how well
I’d dusted, and he followed me to work, concerned
I’d talk with someone he didn’t approve of.

What I don’t want to see is how, like Raymond,
I look at others and criticize
their clothes, how they should be cleaner
or their house better kept, how I fault those
whose voices are too weak or shrill—
how easily I find shame in others
when daily I see the hundred ways
I’ll never be enough.

When Raymond started sleeping around,
I quit cooking and ironing.
I wasn’t going to play that role.

I wanted the words to fling in Raymond’s face, curses
to cut through his self-perfection, his petty rules,
his delusion of control.

Instead, I ripped the buttons from his shirts,
drug his jacket through the mud,
slammed the door on the empty house,
went to the courthouse,
and filed for divorce.


* * * * *

"Mistake" is part of Anna Citrino's growing longer work of related poems. More poems from the longer work were posted here on November 10, 2023 and November 11, 2023, and one of three more will follow tomorrow.

Anna Citrino is the author of A Space Between, and Buoyant,  Saudade, and To Find a River. Anna taught abroad in six different countries: Turkey, Kuwait, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India, and the UK. Her work has appeared in Bellowing Ark, Canary, Evening Street Review, Indelible, Paterson Literary Review, phren-z, Poppy Road Review, and the Porter Gulch Review, among other literary journals. On most any day you can find her going for walks near the coast or biking on paths through rolling hills where she lives in Sonoma County, California. Read more of her writing at annacitrino.com.

Mommie Sunshine

by Mish (Eileen) Murphy


Your mom—
how like a dandelion was her hair.

Died of pneumonia last month.

She lived in Vegas with your sister,
the one who hears voices.

She made sure your sister
took her medicine.

Your mother sent me gifts, for example,
a mohair sweater I couldn’t wear in Florida.

And when she phoned, she always insisted on
chit-chatting with me first,

although you were her “golden boy.”
And now you say she was too clingy

and she suffocated you
and you don’t think about her
and you don’t miss her. But beware:

your memories about her will
rise to the surface
eventually

like all buried things.


* * * * *

Mish (Eileen) Murphy is Contributing Editor and emeritus Assistant Poetry Editor for CulturalDaily.com. She teaches English/literature at Polk State College, Lakeland, Florida. She graduated from New College, Sarasota, and Columbia College of Chicago.  A Pushcart nominee, she has published two poetry collections—Fortune Written on Wet Grass (2019) and Sex & Ketchup (2021)—and a poetry chapbook, Evil Me (2020). 

 

Huntington Beach, 2023

by Jennifer Abod


I watch her brush
sand off a feather
with little girl fingers,
decide where to perch it
on the sand mound she built
near her mother’s beach chair.

She turns toward
an orange plastic pail,
dips in a  pudgy hand
pulls out some shells.

She rocks her head
back and forth,
discards a few,
lifts her palm to show
her distracted mom.

Mom is looking at the ocean.
Husband and son,
bare chests,
wet trunks,
play and laugh
in the pull and tug
of frothy waves.

I want to nudge that mother,
tell her to notice that child at her feet,
her delicate handling of seashells,
her deliberation over a feather.


* * * * *

Jennifer Abod, Ph.D., is an award-winning, pioneering feminist/lesbian filmmaker and radio broadcaster. She is a former Assistant Professor of Communication and Women’s Studies, and Corporate Media Specialist. From 1970-1976, she sang with New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band. She sings Jazz, weekly, in Long Beach, California, and is working on her first poetry collection.  Her poems appear in Sinister Wisdom, Spices and Seasonings, and One Art Journal. At One Art, find her poems “Envy,” “At the Indian Ocean,” “Rethinking Pink,” and “Dance Lessons.” Her poem, “Turning Point, 1979,” appeared in Metro Weekly. Visit her at jenniferabod.com.

Circles and Lines

by Heissell Ramirez


Round and round the circle goes
Looping over and over onto itself
Circling an endless repetition
Infinitely bound by nature

Straight the timeline moves
Having only one beginning
Moving perpetually in one direction
Moments never exactly the same, by design

One year ending, another beginning
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, an endless cycle
Fall back, spring forward, fall back again and again
Infinitely bound, by nature

The firmness in your voice when you said “I do”
Wobbly steps after a life-altering surgery
Seeing her cold empty bed after the last hospital visit
Moments never the same, by design

Wake up, work, eat, sleep
Wash, fold, take out, put back
Shave, trim, cut, over and over and over
Infinitely bound, by nature

Your soft lips, pressing on mine every morning
A tank full of gas, a spotless shiny body shell
The savory aroma of fresh food filling the air
Moments never the same, by design

“How was your drive?” - “Traffic was so bad!”
“You’re on mute!” - “Can you hear me now?”
“How are you?” - “So busy!”
Infinitely bound, by nature

“I love you”
“You are my everything”
“The love of my life”
Moments never the same, by design


* * * * *

Heissell Ramirez is originally from a small town in Nicaragua and moved to the United States at the age of 6 and is a TV and Film media professional of over 17 years. She started writing poetry during the COVID-19 lockdown because “someday” will never come and “now” is all she has. Her previous works have been published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice and The Gorko Gazette.

The Squirrel

by Meg Rumsey-Lasersohn


I spoke to a squirrel as she gripped
Upside down to the bark of a white oak
And she said to me
Leave your husband
And live in the whorl of a tree
Collect the milkweed tufts when they catch in the grass
And line your home with them
Devour seeds, fungi, and even young snakes
You don’t need a sister or a lover
Fear the hawk instead of yourself
And I said mademoiselle
I have buried many things
But at least
I remember
Where I put them


* * * * *

Meg Rumsey-Lasersohn lives in Southern California with her beloved partner and animals. She writes poetry and grants for a legal aid non-profit, creates site-specific immersive theater with award-nominated company Die Cast, and reads a great deal of queer romance novels in her spare time. She is working on befriending the crows in the backyard.

The Lizard

by Meg Rumsey-Lasersohn


does the western fence lizard (who detaches
her tail when cornered or threatened) experience
phantom limb syndrome?

I am so afraid
that if we examined our bond beneath
a microscope it would appear
as a brittle constellation of loosely connected
segments

ready to pull apart at the first sign of danger
leaving me (disconnected) (twitching)
without meaning or consciousness

leaving you (I hope) (perversely)
to miss me like something a part of you
to miss me with an untouchable hurt

I will dance for the predators
if you will just miss me like that
(please, little sister)


* * * * *

Meg Rumsey-Lasersohn lives in Southern California with her beloved partner and animals. She writes poetry and grants for a legal aid non-profit, creates site-specific immersive theater with award-nominated company Die Cast, and reads a great deal of queer romance novels in her spare time. She is working on befriending the crows in the backyard.

FOR MARY OLIVER

by Sheila Koop


The full moon startled me last night.
Glaring and white against a navy sky,
an eerie almost ultraviolet light
bounced off our bathroom tile

and stripped me naked as the
tree outside the window where I raised my
fist against the light.

Relief arrived with the morning -
the sun shone, the snow bristled. 
Tiny berries on
the burning bush looked braver,
poised for the cardinal
who alighted on the fragile branches.
A celebration of amber red,
seeped into the air. We piled on layers

of wool and fleece
and stepped into the woods on our skis,
powder snow yielding to our bodies,
the cold as silent as the sky. 

This is where I heard your gentle voice -
in the space between the quill-like needles
of the white pine. Tiny gaps where crystals
of ice and snow catch sunlight.

A female deer hesitated in the woods,
shy,
her white tail tipped,
as if she could hear you too.


* * * * *

Sheila Koop writes poetry and short stories. Her inspiration comes from both natural and emotional landscapes and her early work has been published in the Wellington County Historical Journal, Rhapsody (2017 and 2018 anthology of Vocamus, Guelph). Her poetry and creative non-fiction have won first and second prizes for the Elora Writers Festival, the beautiful small town where she lives and writes.

Salt Water

by Barbara Santucci


My mother loved to perm my hair
when I was too young to stop her.
Its stink clung to my hair for days.
Tada, she’d say.
I’d look in the mirror and cry.
I tasted the salt of my tears.

My mother hated when I got sweaty.
Always running, running down the street,
running while playing red rover with my cousins.
I’d come inside, my face red,
clothes damp from sweat.
I tell you, I’d do it again and again.
I tasted the salt of my sweat.

I dreamt my mother pulled me
by the hair from the sea,
my body limp, twisting in the wind.
I wasn’t drowning, really.
But rather, drowning in the sadness
that I never really knew her.
I tasted the salt of the sea.


* * * * *

Barbara Santucci has a Masters In Writing for Children from Vermont University and has published three picture books with the W. B. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers and several poems in adult anthologies. Her work as a poet and freelance artist has allowed her to look closely at nature and all its beauty.

 

Fields

by Barbara Santucci


As you walked in the fields of autumn
what did you discover the day
crows rose out of dry corn stalks,
startling you, those mischievous pranksters,
their wings brushing the air,
their caws like crackling thunder?

As you walked in the snow rutted fields,
fields dead beneath the winter white,
what did you discover the day
you witnessed cardinals,
glorious globes of scarlet,
flashing tree to tree like Christmas lights?

As you walked in the fields of spring,
what did you discover the day
you made a path through the meadow,
dodging bees and grasshoppers,
feeling wild asters tickle the backs of your legs,
locking eyes with a white-tailed deer?

As you walked in the fields of summer,
what did you discover the day
your blood throbbed in your temples
and your heart raced as you tossed new seeds
onto the mud-smelling earth?
Was it joy?


* * * * *

Barbara Santucci has a Masters In Writing for Children from Vermont University and has published three picture books with the W. B. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers and several poems in adult anthologies. Her work as a poet and freelance artist has allowed her to look closely at nature and all its beauty.

 

A Dream About My Mother

by Cynthia Bernard


My mother is a barren field that somehow managed to have children.

                I am in the passenger seat.

Some mothers give birth, then take, take, take.

                My mother is behind the wheel.

Some mothers fall into tar pits of depression and linger there.

                The car is moving as if it’s having a seizure, jerking and weaving.
                Accelerating.

Some mothers are furious volcanoes; some mothers are distant ice-storms.

                There are children playing in the road.
                Balls, jump ropes, a plastic bat.

Some mothers make very small lives and then live them.

                She is holding up a newspaper in front of her face.

Some mothers tell many lies, new lies that fail to cover old lies.

                Her feet press the pedals at random. She is laughing.

I have had each of these mothers, sometimes.
Other times, none.

                I am trying to steer. So many children!

Now my mother has aged into a repulsive kind of old—
sits and complains, eats junk, grows ever more obese
on sugar-coated untruths about the past.

                I can’t reach the brakes.

She’s almost dead, having never really lived.

                Am I doomed to live this way forever?


* * * * *

"A Dream About My Mother" was originally published in Heimat Review.

Cynthia Bernard is a woman approaching her seventies who is finding her voice as a poet after many years of silence. A long-time classroom teacher and a spiritual mentor, she lives and writes on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco.

 

 

Floral Dream

by Lois Perch Villemaire


I wish to crawl 
inside the bud  
of a flower
before it opens
aware of the infinite 
possibilities— 
the hue,
the shape,
the fragrance
I could become.

I long to bloom,
feel the awaking,
the moments
as petals expand.
I want to absorb 
the energy of rain,
drinking in the nectar
through my roots.
I want to feel alive,
my face upward, 
caressed 
by the morning sun.


* * * * *

Lois Perch Villemaire is the author of “My Eight Greats,” a family history in poetry and prose published in 2023. Her work has appeared in such places as Blue Mountain Review, Ekphrastic Review, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, Pen In Hand and Topical Poetry. Anthologies, including I Am My Father’s Daughter and Truth Serum Press - Lifespan Series have published her memoir and poetry. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Lois lives in Annapolis, MD, where she enjoys yoga, researching family connections, fun photography, and doting over her African violets.

Such Joy

by Mary Eileen Knoff


I’m still here after ten year’s time
alongside this reed-lined pond
beyond my yard, down a stoney slope,

finding simple joy in

a row of goslings following parent geese
a great blue heron gliding behind green reeds
red-winged blackbirds standing watch in bare trees.

Some summer nights my sleep disturbed
by croaking frogs, I consider leaving,
then begin to miss their bark

as I miss the geese who gather and fly
off to warmer climes when chill winds bite
and the pond grows silent 

until one day

I spy noses peeking through the ice,
three otters come to play,
to tumble, nibble reed roots,

slip away.


* * * * *

"Such Joy" belongs to a collection Mary Eileen Knoff has been crafting over a decade while observing life on a pond beside her home in Redmond, Washington. Her personal pathway to life beside the pond crisscrossed the U.S., beginning with a childhood in southeast Michigan, winding through careers in teaching, freelance writing, editing, and the contemplative ministry of spiritual companioning. Observing the pond and writing about it has deepened Eileen’s commitment to a contemplative life. Some of Eileen’s earlier poems and reflections appear in Seasoning the Soul (2nd edition, 2018) and a Facebook blog Eileen Knoff, writer and soulfriend.
 

Sleek Shadows

by Mary Eileen Knoff


This sunny December Saturday
reedy fringe twins itself
in the still sapphire pond,

bent over like Narcissus, 
greedy to glimpse
its own reflection,

so brilliant today 
these sleek shadows seem,
I almost take the twin for real.


 * * * * *

"Sleek Shadows" belongs to a collection Mary Eileen Knoff has been crafting over a decade while observing life on a pond beside her home in Redmond, Washington. Her personal pathway to life beside the pond crisscrossed the U.S., beginning with a childhood in southeast Michigan, winding through careers in teaching, freelance writing, editing, and the contemplative ministry of spiritual companioning. Observing the pond and writing about it has deepened Eileen’s commitment to a contemplative life. Some of Eileen’s earlier poems and reflections appear in Seasoning the Soul (2nd edition, 2018) and a Facebook blog Eileen Knoff, writer and soulfriend.

 

Christmas at the Teardown

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

 
The house dumbly waits for demolition
The tree in the yard already down and gone
 
In a night landscape of Christmas cheer
The property is the dark spot on the block
 
Anyone could see the house was too small
For the neighborhood
 
In a world where war destroys homes
This one falls to aggressive affluence
 
 
* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and The Joy of Forest Bathing. She 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,” and “The Water Cooler,” which won Moon Prizes. Her poetry has also appeared in New Verse News.    

 

Heartbeat

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


My heart sloshes like a clogged drain
On the echocardiogram
As I lie on my side gazing at the Black Hills
On a map placed to distract old hearts during testing

The doctor tells me
That one of my valves is like a rusty gate
And I have right bundle branch block
As twisted as it sounds

May this heart carry me along
For a few more years
Perhaps with the aid of a surgeon’s scalpel or pacemaker, or better, on its own

Last week your mom sent me a recording of your heartbeat, little one
Beating with tiny confidence into an uncertain world
Hearts coming, hearts going, the beat as everlasting as we hope it to be


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, Finding Solace at Theodore Roosevelt Island and The Joy of Forest Bathing. She 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,” and “The Water Cooler,” which won Moon Prizes. Her poetry has also appeared in New Verse News.    
 

Happiness

by Susan Isla Tepper


There was one happy day
in that five year stretch
No— there must’ve been others
she argues with herself
but can’t convince
herself beyond that one day,
first day on the job
last to leave, locking the heavy
metal door with a key,
such a responsibility—
she had to practically kneel
on the sidewalk,
to reach where the lock was placed,
a potted red geranium bought
during lunchtime
nestled in the crook of her other arm,
briefcase on the pavement.
A rough position
for a girl wearing a new wide skirt
brushing the dirty sidewalk
yet that one day sticks out
as triumphant.
When she thinks back on happiness.


* * * * *

"Happiness" was first published in The Galway Review (May 29, 2023).

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

 

This month, an additional Moon Prize, the 125th, goes to Jess Whetsel's incisive poem "Lines in the Sand"


Lines in the Sand

by Jess Whetsel


I come home from the nude beach
and tell my husband about the man
old enough to be my father
who bet I’d make a good wife
with a body like that
who laid back in the sand
dick tucked between his thighs
and watched me put my clothes back on
piece by piece
made my stomach turn and my chest tighten
until I was safe in my car
until the click of the lock
until I finally exhaled

By the time I get home
I can tell my husband about the man
old enough to be my father
like sharing what I had for breakfast
I watch him brace for tears
that never seem to come
no matter how many men
old enough to be my father
there are

(And that’s just the ones
who are old enough to be my father)

A lifetime of being catcalled
touched without my consent
undressed by a leering gaze
becomes a grocery list of assaults
I can recite without blinking

I am worried
by how numb I have become
that I do not call myself a victim
because I know so many people 
who lost so much more 
than their comfort

How long will I draw
these lines in the sand?


* * * * *

Jess Whetsel is a poet, writer, editor, and public speaker based in Toledo, Ohio on Erie, Kickapoo, Seneca, and Odawa land. Her poetry has appeared in the literary journals Tulip Tree Review and Discretionary Love. You can learn more about Whetsel and her work on her website, www.jesswhetsel.com, or by following her Instagram, @jesswhetselwrites.