IF I CAN MAKE IT THERE

by Carol Coven Grannick

 
Ran down stairs 
leaving loneliness
of a first day, no friends here
throat clogged
crushing unwept tears
away from smoky stench
of a lying dorm roommate 
who checked off I don't smoke
who laughed at my anger
called me a hick from Chicago
Ran down stairs to find a secret
waiting on Broadway and 116^th:
an aching for a mother and father 
sisters and brother
I couldn’t wait to leave behind
how to tell them
the city I’d longed for
vomited its welcome
exhaust fumes too close
sun without trees dirty hot
noise of too many voices
too many car horns
sirens pushing into traffic?
Eyes run across garbage-grey blocks
I chewed sugar-depleted                                                
Bazooka bubble gum
rolling and reshaping 
at tongue’s tip
blowing one huge pink bubble
in defiance 
but stink and belch of sewer gas
covered it, triumphant.
I am still, the bubble a sculpture
in the filthy air.
I cannot live here 
then I place fingers
to the mouth of the perfect
pink sphere 
pull it out with care
and drop it
into the overflowing
trash on the curb.


* * * * *

Carol Coven Grannick is a poet, children's author, and former clinical social worker whose debut novel in verse, Reeni's Turn, won Finalist in the Katherine Paterson Manuscript Competition and Honorable Mention in the 2018 Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award. Her poetry for adults and children appears in a broad variety of print and online magazines, and she has received two Illinois Arts Council grants and a Ragdale Foundation Residency for her work. She experiences her poetry as "bendable to its purpose," reflecting wonder and joy, anger and activism as it marks the days and meanings of a life.

 

Orchid Cactus

by Tamara Madison


I rise to a sky of milky stillness,
yet the plants are moving quietly

in their roots in a gentle unfurling
of leaf, a lengthening of stem.

For everything all around and in us
moves this way. Teeth emerge

from gums, nails like tiny glaciers
crawl across the nail bed, and life

pushes us along its moody current
toward an endpoint which is just

another new unfurling in a tale
of atoms moving within molecules.

Observe the squirrel who stands
and twitches her tail beneath the arm

of the cactus that just now
is preparing its wands to open

the silken flames of its flowers
to the milk-white sky.


* * * * *

"Orchid Cactus" first appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig Online and is part of Tamara Madison's new book, Morpheus Dips His Oar.

Tamara Madison is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Wild Domestic and Moraine (Pearl Editions), and two chapbooks, The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press). A swimmer and a dog lover, she is a native of the California desert, but she has lived and traveled in many places. She is recently retired from teaching English and French in a high school in Los Angeles. Her new collection of poems, Morpheus Dips His Oar, is just out from Sheila-Na-Gig Press. Read more about her at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

 

Voyager

by Tamara Madison


I.

You were like the last leaf, gone
from green to autumn red, that clung
to the vine into December, just

because it did, through sun and rain
and wind until finally a strong gust
sheared you off and you were gone.

II.

When you left this world,
you abandoned your body like a dress
tossed aside after a night of dancing.

I imagine you — a spark launched
skyward, a comet fording the dark
ocean of the universe.

You don’t have to call to me, Voyager.
I will join you in my time. They say
deep peace will guide you on your journey
into the sea of everything.

III.

You used to wonder about the soul —
where it goes, what it is. You asked
a holy man once, imagining a world
without the body’s needs. I think
that’s where we’re headed, his reply.
You laughed about that for years.

You liked to think the departed stay close,
watching, guiding. So when you were leaving,
I could only be happy for you:
You’re going to find out all about it, Mama!

IV.

But you are gone now; I wait
to feel you near, to hear your spirit voice.

You left behind the earthly you —
your scent lingers among the clothes
I took from your closet, your old concerns
breathe among your typewritten pages
and canvases where a younger you
laid your visions down in paint.

All that’s left of you now
is everything that’s missing.


* * * * *

"Voyager" was first published in the Journal of Radical Wonder and is part of Tamara Madison's new book, Morpheus Dips His Oar.

Tamara Madison is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Wild Domestic and Moraine (Pearl Editions), and two chapbooks, The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press). A swimmer and a dog lover, she is a native of the California desert, but she has lived and traveled in many places. She is recently retired from teaching English and French in a high school in Los Angeles. Her new collection of poems, Morpheus Dips His Oar, is just out from Sheila-Na-Gig Press. Read more about her at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Still Surviving

by Heissell Ramirez


The empty darkness filling the night sky
The dry stream flowing in the distance
The bare nest adorning the tree branch

The soft snow crisping under her feet
The tender breeze burning in her lungs
The gentle tear irritating her skin

The dead dreams living inside the house
The sad memories dancing in the shadows
The lonely woman holding on to hope


* * * * *

Heissell Ramirez is originally from a small town in Nicaragua and moved to the United States at the age of 6. She is a TV and Film media professional of over 15 years turned writer/poet. Recently her movie review of “I Am Smokey” (a satirical review of a movie that has never actually been made) was accepted by The Gorko Gazette for an upcoming online issue.

 

A woman

by Heissell Ramirez


Today I saw a woman, she was quietly sitting on her porch
Today I saw a wife, she was waiting for her husband
Today I saw a mother, she had pictures of her children in every room
Today I saw a grandmother, she had toys neatly stacked in a box
Today I saw a caretaker, she had a pen and paper in her hand
Today I saw an elderly woman, her steps were slow but firm
Today I saw a woman, her nails were perfectly polished
Today I saw a woman…
Today I saw the many sides of you


* * * * *

Heissell Ramirez is originally from a small town in Nicaragua and moved to the United States at the age of 6. She is a TV and Film media professional of over 15 years turned writer/poet. Recently her movie review of “I Am Smokey” (a satirical review of a movie that has never actually been made) was accepted by The Gorko Gazette for an upcoming online issue.

untitled 

by Cynthia Anderson

rising above
human cruelty
the stars keep
their distance

* * * * *

This poem was first published in Moonbathing #23.
 
Cynthia Anderson has published a dozen poetry books, most recently Arrival (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023) and Full Circle (Cholla Needles Press, 2022). Her poems appear frequently in journals and anthologies, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has lived in California for over 40 years. www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com

 Writing in a Woman's Voice is on solstice break until June 25, 2023. Happy solstice to everyone. 

 

vigil

by Jill Crainshaw


as life is dawning

stardust swirls–timelessness spills into time
spirit winds breathe–soil awakens

“it is good”

the sea piles up in a heap
miriam-people drum and dance
freedom footprints at water’s liberating edge

stardust swirls–lights upon the earth
spirit winds breathe–ashes rise up

feet seeking peace
wander back and forth 
cypress and cedar keep vigil

stardust swirls–seasons forest floors
spirit winds breathe–particles matter

“oh, dry bones, listen”

stardust swirls–glitters on weary feet
spirit winds breathe–broken hearts dance

as the first day is dawning
between a rock and a hard place
earth trembles and stones scurry away

stardust returns–touches earth’s aching skin
spirit winds breathe–hope lives

“it is good”


* * * * *

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She enjoys exploring how words give voice to unexpected ideas, insights and visions.

The Body of One’s Day and Night

by Hua Ai


The ice is awake!
Many little hands devote themselves my vision and are revived,
snaking alongside the brilliance in the upcoming swallows of March,
the yawns of the green, the wild blossoms of the lighter night.

My body mirrors how the earth restores – as its fingers grow into myself.
There is no more promise of color when the sun satiates
the hunger of the polar bears, lord of all prey.
In their fur, the duration of sunlight is reflected
and numerous days of the sky that grows no darker.

Immersing, the light grows into a view of assurance and promise:
the intercourse of the hill and the spring among rocks,
the frogs are on their great hunts upon the deep water,
a silent cry of the slaughtered butterflies,
the deer’s twisted neck between leopard’s teeth,
or a beggar trotting after a dirtied coin on the street of Mayfair,
and then…
  No more greens, no more blossoms, no more swallows with their vivid tails.
The summer night is finally  here…

Until the cleanness vanishes. Here, the cargo ignites its beacons and horns:
Have you forgotten the consoling passion and love?
Or the loss of their light under the sunlight?
My body was once as dedicated as the Milky Way that ties Jupiter and Venus!
The beacons are two gazes from afar, two mothers away, ascended by the paint oil
of the sanguine uniform of The Nutcracker and the spark of The Door to Hell in Turkmenistan.(1)
And how sorrowful is it, to forget the saturation of the two beacons during the polar night…
For their beckoning shine is as thin as a woman’s sigh
when the tears of a newborn are against her womb.
Whilst fear of all the squirming black veils and the solitude underneath,
those wantoning, watery eyes, first pump blood within a juvenile Frankenstein.
We could not ask for anything better than the gilded daffodils
between the cracks of bricks.
Soon, the daylight will undress them all…

Now the earth is unwinding again,
not a second more or a day less, carrying my water away.
In a violet casket, an array of faces are buried by sickles of the first fall breeze
and shield my whining mouth, anticipating the youthful lips breathing
beneath the yellowed wetland   for a fresh world.

_____
(1) The Door to Hell in Turkmenistan is a burning natural gas field collapsed into a cavern near Darvaza, Turkmenistan, a country in Central Asia.


* * * * *

Hua Ai hold a bachelor degree in English Literature from King’s College London. She is a published feminist fiction writer in Mandarin. Her English poetry has appeared once on The87 Press, Oxfam London and many times on KCL Literary Magazine. Her poems constantly engage with the spiritual animals in her mind palace, rediscovery of cultural feminism, sisterhood and nature. She is working as an educator and a translator in London. 

 

 

Seagulls from the Other Woods

by Hua Ai


In the woods,
my leaves have tapped on many people’s heads
during their yellowed seasons.
The fallen woods and the wind towards the west,
two glasses of a historic yesterday, cut through Sava River,
and they asking about how hungry I must have been to be aboard.

And the waves curled back again in their shivering feathers.
The seagull's wings continued, beckoned the tide that swirled my abode.
I was plundered in depravity and taken towards another tree.
And after that day, the northern wind was among petals of peaceful summer night
    that were never mine
             or yours! 

I swallowed my improvised question, again—
There was a piece of paper written about the abode of someone else,
and the beggar crumbled up.
Her hands had already been burnt by fuse of childhood. 

We now heard the whistle in the wind.
The steamboat and the slashes of fish’s
ribs were against the deceits
and split the mist wide awake.
I was shrouded in a peak of special calm,
which is the water that carries us all and races forward.

Now, I was sure. 
The earth would cross the line between the yellow string
and make us drink down
a full bowl of soup during twilight,
drenching a requiem of one's fall.

Dozens of baby seagulls carefully awoke under an aged shell,
watching their mothers waddling away alone.
Their forlorn daughters were at the face of those ruthless steamboats
in torrents, running over their body when the winter still frosted,
and told me:
“In March, swallows will cut me into the shapes of their new homes.
In September, love birds will harvest skulls of mine and knit me in some new reeds.
When we all are alone under the same belt of river,
our bones will finally turn into blue,
gradually connecting the soils of countless cities
beneath a stringless bank.”


* * * * *

Hua Ai hold a bachelor degree in English Literature from King’s College London. She is a published feminist fiction writer in Mandarin. Her English poetry has appeared once on The87 Press, Oxfam London and many times on KCL Literary Magazine. Her poems constantly engaging with the spiritual animals in her mind palace, rediscovery of cultural feminism, sisterhood and the nature. She is working as an educator and a translator in London. 

Endless

by Shaun R. Pankoski


It hasn't stopped raining for three weeks now.
The sky keeps folding the same gray sheet,
over and over.
My catchment is brimming with water,
spilling its secrets on the ground.
But the gutters overhear the juiciest bits and gossip
all night, keeping me awake.

Rain makes everything grow, it's true.
Take the moss, for example, sprawling on the lawn
like a surly adolescent, daring me to comment.
It's Paradise for the pigs. They come
dusk and dawn, uprooting worms
that travel to the surface to escape one death,
only to navigate toward another.

The climbing roses are sooty,
the neighbors keep having the same argument
and everyone else is hiding - the birds in the trees,
the geckos under the fern fronds,
the guppies at the deep end of the pond.
My whole house smells
like the cat's wet fur.

The sun is begging for an invitation
that will not come. I drift
from room to room, like smoke,
like an idea that can't quite find its form.
At night, I just give up,
lie in my bed with all these ghosts,
my heart swimming in grief.


* * * * *

Shaun R. Pankoski is a retired County worker living in Volcano on the Island of Hawai'i with her cat, Kiko, and a bunch of coqui frogs. She held a Top Secret clearance in the Air Force, was an artist's model for over twenty years and was a founding member of a Modern Dance company in San Francisco. She is a two time breast cancer survivor and makes a mean corn chowder.