And Just Like That I Was a Child Again

by Angela Hoffman


I discovered one lone pink plastic egg still hiding,
nestled in the hollow of the mulberry 
where I was weeding among dark shadows;
sweetness stuck in the throat of the tree,
never found in the Easter hunt. 
I emptied the contents into my hand,
unwrapped and swallowed innocence
while something stirred inside. 


* * * * *

Angela Hoffman lives in Wisconsin. With her retirement from teaching and the pandemic coinciding, she took to writing poetry. Her poetry has been widely published. Angela’s collections include Hold the Contraries, forthcoming 2024, Olly Olly Oxen Free, 2023 (nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award), and Resurrection Lily, 2022 (Kelsay Books).  

Women On Fire

by Angela Hoffman


It happens over time;
one leaf turns golden, then another, 
until the whole tree is on fire, 

and yet another woman deemed too much, 
keeping herself small,
rubs up against another in her little way
until they are a blazing forest. 


* * * * *

Angela Hoffman lives in Wisconsin. With her retirement from teaching and the pandemic coinciding, she took to writing poetry. Her poetry has been widely published. Angela’s collections include Hold the Contraries, forthcoming 2024, Olly Olly Oxen Free, 2023 (nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award), and Resurrection Lily, 2022 (Kelsay Books).  

 

Air Over Hanoi

by Susan 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

Dear Daughters

by Barb Santucci


Once you curled next to me like kittens,
warm and drowsy.
I’d smooth your hair and murmur,
“sweet dreams forever.”
 
Now my kittens have grown into cats,
territorial and concerned with preening.
Once we held hands while walking
as we told our stories.
But today, with their sharp tongues
they draw lines for how close I can come.

Someday, you will be lionesses
sheltering your young.
They may pierce your heart,
then you will bleed tiny droplets
that will mingle with mine.
We will meet palm to palm, blood sisters.


* * * * *

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.

Spring Mountain

by Barbara Santucci


A woman walks up the mountain,
rock after rock, a weaving of bones.
Rushing streams carve its massive
skeleton into cliffs and hollows.
The waters wind through her muscles
soothing the hard places of winter.

A woman stumbles as she climbs.
The mountain pants in the trees,
gasping for breath
as the sun unburies its flesh from snow.
Light quivers white, then gold
on its gnarled spine.

A woman rests on the mountain’s brow
where a lake trembles in the wind.
The waters receive lilies and fish,
alive again in the earth’s thaw.
Her outstretched body melts
into the blue of its gentian meadow.


* * * * *

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.

 

This month another Moon Prize, the 133rd, goes to Angélica M. Yañez's stunning poem "Sexual Conquest."

Sexual Conquest

by Angélica M. Yañez


Let me tell you a story. . .
I will untangle the cob webs of history and memory—of beauty and betrayal.
A wild excavation
of forgotten goddesses and earth-toned women that took their rightful places
in cultures and clans on this Native land.

Resurrect the memory of—Coatlicue—mother of all gods
who birthed the stars and the moon.

Xochiquetzal—remember her name.
Her body used to move like rhythm
and flow like water in clear running creeks,
with beauty and ease.

Her feet the color of mud—deep, creamy, and soft
the perfect mixture of feminine mystic and fertility. 
After all this time, I can still hear her songs upon the wind.
She carried birds and butterflies on her back
to set right the balance of the cosmos.

Reminiscent of the way mothers were respected,
call upon the essence of Tonantzin—the embodiment of earth,
a loving, nourishing mother.

She appeared to her children to warn:
the fall of Native women simultaneously the fall of the Americas
unearthing the bitter root of trauma.

Malintzin and Pocahontas—
both girls violated and traded like playing cards at the hands of white colonizers.
European men’s demented fantasies and
pedophilic ways make their way across bodies of oceans
and onto the bodies of brown girls.

John Smith’s obsession with 10-year-old Pocahontas; perverting her every move.
Hernán Cortés held captive a teenage Malintzin; considered only a tongue,
an object, a vessel for his conquest.

Pale face men popularized missionary style on the backs of Native women.
Policies of rape, war, and domination become normalized crime
and the hatred of womanhood so ordinary. 
Sexual conquest as a strategy to debase the Native blood line         
to confuse our legacy—they call us “Indian,” “savage,” “mestizo,” “Latino,” “Hispanic,” and insult anything feminine, anything divine.
Your biggest lie.
We are the backbone of everything.

You pretend you gave us civilization
rather than syphilis, pollution, confusion
and blankets full of smallpox.

500 years and counting. . .
Digging deep into the dirt
we find buried bones and broken teeth,
until bodies become bruised and lifeless.
Remember the women in Juárez, Guatemala, missing from the rez,
and our stolen sisters from Canada.

Today you can buy and beat—brown women like nothing.
Disregard them like little pieces of trash
muffled, murdered, and missing.

Before Jesus came, the corn mothers used to say:
 “A people can never be defeated until the hearts of the women are on the ground”
Violence against Native women is not traditional,
Violence against Native women is not our way.


* * * *

This piece was written to be performed in community and college spaces to bring awareness to the missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) in the United States, Canada, México, and Latin America. Furthermore, it aims to inspire individuals to participate in the observance of May 5th as the National Day of Awareness and Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, while also encouraging them to get involved in activities during April for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This poem can be read and shared.

Angélica M. Yañez is a professor and poet. She holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego. For years she has been the advisor to a spoken word activism group on her college campus. She is a traditional Aztec Dancer that honors the legacies of her Native ancestors. Also, the founder of The Ancestral Teachings Institute, a place for cultural learning and Indigenous wisdom. Angélica can be reached through info@ancestralteach.com.

 

 

This month, the 132nd Moon Prize goes to Kari Gunter-Seymour's poem "Snapshot."

 

 

Snapshot        

by Kari Gunter-Seymour


No exaggeration, an entire field filled—
daffodils, golden heads bobbing. Took her years
to divide and transplant the bulbs, gently
scooping under each clump, every nub a new life,
fragrant, a mingling of earth’s brine
and spice, the way a newborn smells.
 
Bronzed and shapely, she’d planted
herself midway, one casually laced boot  
in front of the other, morning sun defining
her contours. When she lifted her arms,
cowbirds took to the sky like nymphs
of cool breezes and she their Terra Gaia. 

I framed the photo, pearls of sweat
frosting her upper lip, but not before
she wrote near the bottom
in careful cursive—
Below my feet my child sleeps.


* * * * *

"Snapshot" is part of Kari Gunter-Seymour's poetry collection Alone in the House of My Heart.

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poetry collections include Alone in the House of My Heart (2022), A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (2020), and Dirt Songs (2024). Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, World Literature Today, the New York Times and Poem-a-Day.

A Fall of Spring Rain

by Cathe Lieb


"I met the sweetest guy at the coffee house,"
she says, taking off the wet coat
and hanging it carefully on the shower head,
raindrops falling like small diamonds into the tub below.

He looks at her and knows before she does
that she would be leaving him.

"He works at the University. He was so amusing,"
she whispers, shaking her head so
her long hair whips around,
the warm air in the room lifting each golden strand.

He remembers when they'd met over coffee
and he knows he will miss her terribly.

"There's something about him - something . . . different."
She pauses, cocking her head to the side
looking at him with eyes that grow suddenly sad,
the possibility of tears filling them.

He sits down on the hard chair waiting for the words
that will say it is over.

"Jess," she speaks the name as if it is the first time she has said it.
"Jess," again, as if the word could fill the empty space between them
and knowing that no words can she turns and leaves the room,
leaving only the smell of damp leaves and spring rain.

And sitting on the chair Jess wonders how he could have known -
and how he could not have.


* * * * *

Cathe Lieb lives and picks up rocks in Oregon. She randomly pets dogs and runs a free library out of a retired phone booth. Her house backs up to a bit of forest with a seasonal creek. She dreams of ghosts and time travel.

Writing in a Woman's Voice is on equinox break this week. Posts will resume on March 24, 2024. Happy equinox to all! 

Lunar Haiku

by Paula R. Hilton


spring equinox moon
glows between live oaks and moss
gives me hope again.

light, stolen from sun
moon’s conscience is sparkling clean
most exquisite thief

once in a blue moon,
oceans are calm, hard times cease
my wish for us all


* * * * *

Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has appeared in The Sunlight Press, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Feminine Collective, Dear Damsels, The Tulane Review, and many others. Her novel, Little Miss Chaos, was selected as a Best Indie Teen Read by Kirkus, and her first poetry collection, At Any Given Second, received a Kirkus star. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans. Read more of her work at paularhilton.com

 

TANGO TANGO

[My friend’s code for Trailer Trash]

by Virginia McIntyre


My home. A 280 sq ft tin box, rocks in the wind
like a boat broadside of waves. The door duct taped

in storms. Inside too hot, too cold, a cardboard
chimera of insulation. Lopsided leaky windows.

Outside I walk in a wilderness of trees --
authors of thought. Monastic in silence.

Half a mile away, Raven slices the air
with wings of a poet, lofting sound into sight.

Inside, extension cords stalk heaters,
lamps, the coffee pot, while sandalwood incense

wrestles with two-dog scent. No neighbors,
no shades, no speeding cars. I walk on trails

incised by javelina, cougar, fox – hillside scribes
mapping contours, taming Creation.

My life is a silver vein lodged in metal.

 

Titles of Poems I Do Not Wish to Write    

by Jen Schneider


In Egypt, Debauchery is Both Noun and Verb. On the Trek to (and of) Mount Paektu. Battleship is More Than a Board Game. Reactionary Thought is a State of Matter. Reactions Boil at a Range of Temperatures. To Dance in __Azadi__ Square: As Much Noun as Verb. The West Bank Waltzes at Night. Democracy’s Multiple Forms of Speech. Democracy: Both Hint and Hesitation We Seek. Hesitation: As Much Adjective as Adverb. Atop the Empire State Building: Red and Green make Purple. On Wrong Questions. On Plights and Ordinary Rights. Not All Questions are Queries. To Question: As Much Proper Noun as Verb. Square Dancing at Dawn. Sleepwalking at Dusk. Language: As Much Possession as Obsession. Dancing in ___ Square. Storytellers Often Resemble Originators. Countdowns to Opening Day. Jackie Robinson, Nolan Ryan, and Ernie Banks Share More Than a Birthday. On Santos. A Collection of 100-Year (Climate) Events. Fabrications Fuel Funding. Politics is More ___ and Less ___. When Rules No Longer Matter. The African Continent: Perimeters Have Shapes. On Clipped Wheat (& Wings). Food Mazes. Inflation’s Ire. Less Talc More Talk. On Drought’s Many Tenses. The Mathematics of a Snow Drought. Queries Are as Much Curiosity as Fear. On Partisanship’s Many Adjectives. Climate Change has a Scent. On Dubious Dances: Tap, Spin-offs, and Texas Two-Steps. The Scorpian. On Units of Miscalculation. In the Small Pockets of Air Where Misinformation Tangoes with Deception. Marie Kondo: Ready. Set. No More. There’s Nothing Better than a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (and Other Inaccuracies). Beware the Balloon that Wanders. Weather is Not Always Small Talk. I Spy a __ Balloon. The Balloon that Popped. Influence is as Much Instinct as Inspiration. The Wedding Night. Goodnight, Moon. On Freds, Toads, and Friends, Won’t You Be My Neighbor. Ready. Set. Write.


* * * * *

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. 

 

On Laundry Lists and Lists of Firsts
/ Remembering Pat Schroeder’s Housework

by Jen Schneider


Born into a world made of and for men,
Pat Schroeder washed no one’s linens.

Instead, she primed lines and pinned
fabrics, policies freshly pressed,
across party lines.

She tucked corners and creased seams.
Tracked tears of different solutions.
Birthed a list of firsts, pre-shrunk,
threaded in, of, and for their time. 

Elected to Congress in 1972,
at the time Nixon had won in a landslide

She slid into rooms of unfamiliar fibers

– few new Democrats,
few women, few willing
to share their shoes
or the Tide

Schroeder refused to adopt
or adapt. Her mantra and manner
one of fresh scents and new lots.

Amongst Mrs.,
Schroeder was
a Congresswoman
determined and destined
to hang dry new flavors, in ruffled
layers, and forms of a political wash

She patted no backs
She tolerated no backtalk

Instead, she spun --
institutions and cycles
and set new dials

Multi-talented – of
brains AND a uterus –
Pat Schroeder washed
mouths, rerouted
(p)lots and aired
dirty linens. rinsed

her hands of
condescending
House talk

Twelve cycles in Congress
a Colorado Democrat
 
Enforcement of the Equal Credit
Opportunity Act – one of many

firsts.

Memos on Officers’ Clubs, times
Two. Four. Six. Double loads. More.

She continued to work.
The House. The Clock.

Memos made for change.
Schroeder made her mark.

She had her hands in

piles of metals
(and medals).

No quarters needed.

All loose threads plucked.

Pegged traitors.
Softened neighbors.

She initiated, insisted,
relentlessly resisted

and continued to wash

/ her name of housewife

references,

instead – a list of firsts

             Service on the House Armed Services Committee
             despite a shared seat, half-chair load allotment
             Congressional reprimand of a House Speaker
             Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on Anita Hill’s
             accusations against Clarence Thomas

             Founding member of the first congressional women’s caucus
             One of 14 women in the House at the time of her initial election
             First woman elected to represent Colorado
             Secured the right to credit for many (in 1974!)
             Earned her pilot’s license at 15

             A feminist icon
             A relentless leader
             A remarkable legislator
             A paid leave champion

             An indelible legacy
             A remarkable lady

Pat Schroeder
cleaned House

decades of labor
no sorting needed
spins for progress
buttons pressed
in and out of order
checked collars (and egos)
neither fluke nor flake
no socks unturned
no fading with cycles
of tenure and talent
of sharp wit and wry humor
public service on high-heat settings
exemplary outcomes

Fresh in all the right dimensions.
No laundromat needed (or heeded)
Forever pressed in memory and recollections

Pat Schroeder, D - Colo.

Reflection: Pat Schroeder served 24 years in the House. After leaving Congress, she wrote “24 Years of House Work ... and the Place Is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics”. She died this week*, at the age of 82. As I reflect on her remarkable life and legacy, I can’t help but linger on the many forms of housework she so expertly changed for the better – mess, dirty laundry, and all.


* * * * *

*Pat Schroeder did March 13, 2023.

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. 

Snapshots

by Christine Bevilacqua


I speak to Anastasia , who lives in Vinnytsia Ukraine, once a week as part of a Ukrainian program through Zoom to help her improve her conversational English.
Most of the hour is spent in small talk about her job, everyday matters, her 14-year-old son and the war.
We read/discuss short stories. Her favorite author is Pushkin.
We’re interrupted by an alert she gets on her phone of an air raid warning.
Five minutes later she is talking from the basement shelter of her job.
She calls her son and he continues to nonchalantly walk from school.
We talk of how we spent Christmas and exchange pictures of our Christmas trees.
She mentions her dad is coming over the next day to tape the big mirror in her bedroom.
We exchange recipes.
Her Mom worries her grandson eats too much pasta and offers to cook for her.
She tells me how the sound of drones she heard the night before is like a jackhammer.
I explain how many of us in the US want Congress to support Ukraine.
She tells me how many former classmates and friends she has lost to the war.
Sometimes I don’t know what to say.


* * * * *

Christine Bevilacqua, retired school counselor, lives in Staten Island in a blue house with her cats Jaxxy and Misty and her long-time boyfriend. She is part of an online writing class with fellow educators. One of her poems was recently accepted for publication in the Raven Review.
 
 

&,!

by Hallie Pritchett


A young woman devoted to
an illusion. Two people entirely prone,
reverent underneath the weight of
something that never really existed — Except for
the small moments. You were only mine
in the dark, in the secret that it seems like everybody knew 
anyway. I see the pictures
and I see faces, quizzical and knowing anyway. 
Sideways eyes. Hats turned back
and firelight, the way there always is 
in this kind of thing anyway. 
Have you ever seen a man’s eyes gone gray?
Have you ever heard a real prayer uttered in pure white light
while a sacrificial lamb dies underground? Not really.
It was just the side of a hill. But the ground is above us
and all the lights are out. Everyone is asleep
and part of me just kept sleeping. Part of me drifted off
and stayed asleep in the plaid, in the during. 
In the during. Enduring. And dying
as you’ve known yourself, dying at the hand
of …. Of not raising a single eyebrow?
Why couldn’t the baby teeth, the white wool
you’ve always written about, learn to bite? Why 
do all my questions start that way? 
Who is to answer them? A letter
with no return address, a feature turned off, a bottle full of fire
thrown over a ducked head?  
Four dots to symbolize the way I saw you
as God intended you. Can anyone say the same? 
If you vanished forever, would the only people to miss you
be the tricked? Or is the trick itself the sacrifice?


* * * * *

Hallie Pritchett has no credentials. She lives in a shoebox apartment next to a Southern college campus. Eventually, she hopes to experience a Bible-level miracle. She does not clean that apartment enough, but she can do a backflip off of a diving board if it’s high enough off the ground, and in her mind that ought to count for something.

Disappearing

by Hallie Pritchett


I walked into the house where we lived – 
Head low, heart hopeful that I’d find something I’d forgotten.
I must have left something else here, you know,
besides all of those things I can’t get back.
I walked in and the snow blew through the door
and I realized again, it’s winter here. It is always winter here
and I saw you everywhere I looked. Even when I wasn’t looking for you,
you were just out of my peripheral on the staircase to my left. 
I had not been back there since we died. Since you killed me
and I got justice by becoming a murderer, too. 
The first time I wrote about something that was not you
was also about you. You know that. You know you get
to live forever, and I get to live forever
stuck in one moment.
Make it a fourth car smashed into the snowbank.
Make it quick. 
If it’s what you came for, crash the car. If you’ll die wondering
what an airbag feels like, crash the car. Let it bruise you.
Let me be the snow. Let me be in the snow without wondering
where you are disappearing.


* * * * *

Hallie Pritchett has no credentials. She lives in a shoebox apartment next to a Southern college campus. Eventually, she hopes to experience a Bible-level miracle. She does not clean that apartment enough, but she can do a backflip off of a diving board if it’s high enough off the ground, and in her mind that ought to count for something.

 Rewilding

by Julie Wise


We were wild once
 
before gender claimed us
society tamed us

lowering our gaze
our voices
softening edges, words
choices
swallowing light
burying dreams

And now we rise
thunderclouds eclipsing your sun

And you wonder
why

It was always
a matter
of time

* * * * *

Julie Wise is a writer from Canada. Her writing has appeared in MOST magazine, CafeLit, Potato Soup Journal and in two anthologies. She explores beginnings, endings and the magic in between. She is working on her second novel.

 

Sexual Conquest

by Angélica M. Yañez


Let me tell you a story. . .
I will untangle the cob webs of history and memory—of beauty and betrayal.
A wild excavation
of forgotten goddesses and earth-toned women that took their rightful places
in cultures and clans on this Native land.

Resurrect the memory of—Coatlicue—mother of all gods
who birthed the stars and the moon.

Xochiquetzal—remember her name.
Her body used to move like rhythm
and flow like water in clear running creeks,
with beauty and ease.

Her feet the color of mud—deep, creamy, and soft
the perfect mixture of feminine mystic and fertility. 
After all this time, I can still hear her songs upon the wind.
She carried birds and butterflies on her back
to set right the balance of the cosmos.

Reminiscent of the way mothers were respected,
call upon the essence of Tonantzin—the embodiment of earth,
a loving, nourishing mother.

She appeared to her children to warn:
the fall of Native women simultaneously the fall of the Americas
unearthing the bitter root of trauma.

Malintzin and Pocahontas—
both girls violated and traded like playing cards at the hands of white colonizers.
European men’s demented fantasies and
pedophilic ways make their way across bodies of oceans
and onto the bodies of brown girls.

John Smith’s obsession with 10-year-old Pocahontas; perverting her every move.
Hernán Cortés held captive a teenage Malintzin; considered only a tongue,
an object, a vessel for his conquest.

Pale face men popularized missionary style on the backs of Native women.
Policies of rape, war, and domination become normalized crime
and the hatred of womanhood so ordinary. 
Sexual conquest as a strategy to debase the Native blood line         
to confuse our legacy—they call us “Indian,” “savage,” “mestizo,” “Latino,” “Hispanic,” and insult anything feminine, anything divine.
Your biggest lie.
We are the backbone of everything.

You pretend you gave us civilization
rather than syphilis, pollution, confusion
and blankets full of smallpox.

500 years and counting. . .
Digging deep into the dirt
we find buried bones and broken teeth,
until bodies become bruised and lifeless.
Remember the women in Juárez, Guatemala, missing from the rez,
and our stolen sisters from Canada.

Today you can buy and beat—brown women like nothing.
Disregard them like little pieces of trash
muffled, murdered, and missing.

Before Jesus came, the corn mothers used to say:
 “A people can never be defeated until the hearts of the women are on the ground”
Violence against Native women is not traditional,
Violence against Native women is not our way.


* * * *

This piece was written to be performed in community and college spaces to bring awareness to the missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) in the United States, Canada, México, and Latin America. Furthermore, it aims to inspire individuals to participate in the observance of May 5th as the National Day of Awareness and Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, while also encouraging them to get involved in activities during April for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This poem can be read and shared.

Angélica M. Yañez is a professor and poet. She holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego. For years she has been the advisor to a spoken word activism group on her college campus. She is a traditional Aztec Dancer that honors the legacies of her Native ancestors. Also, the founder of The Ancestral Teachings Institute, a place for cultural learning and Indigenous wisdom. Angélica can be reached through info@ancestralteach.com.

The Ceremony of Birth 

by Angélica M. Yañez


I squat, give you  
warmth
goddess glow
blood to earth
bare bone, birth my soul
womb waters flow
split my hips in two
break to create the seas
you see
nepantla and ollin
our spirit dreams
we be
breathe and beginning  
I rest, and you
my daughter
grant me serenity 


* * * * *

Angélica M. Yañez is a professor and poet. She holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego. For years she has been the advisor to a spoken word activism group on her college campus. She is a traditional Aztec Dancer that honors the legacies of her Native ancestors. Also, the founder of The Ancestral Teachings Institute, a place for cultural learning and Indigenous wisdom. Angélica can be reached through info@ancestralteach.com.

Beloved, Lost

by Kelley White


the house I loved
in the town I loved
white clapboard
dark shutters

one great maple flaming in front
of a barn red door

never locked
open to all
green grass still

and bushel baskets of golden mums

a hammock strung
between two shagbark hickories

bicycles tossed beside the little picket
fence at the kitchen garden

we lived there
a woman and three children

grandparents nearby

dark shutters
white clapboard
in the town I loved
the house I loved


* * * * *

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) Recipient of 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Her newest collection, No Hope Street, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

 

The soul should always stand ajar 

by Nancy K. Jentsch

 
A hammock is like the arm 
of God, rocking, coddling, connecting— 
rocking away tears and trembles, 
coddling after a fall, connecting  
tree to me to tree so I float 
amid the basics of wood and air. 
Lying in a hammock, dappled 
with sun-scattered shadows, 
all other creature comforts— 
morning news, cappuccino, 
felt slippers—lie sidelined 
and focus heads upward, with legs 
taking their rest so the mind 
can venture—into oceans waist-deep  
at shoreline or into head-turning 
meadows not of poppies, but of roses— 
coral pink and Sleeping Beauty red— 
that blossom despite snow’s  
calendar-challenged coverlet. 
 
O, to cross fantasy’s threshold    
in the crook of God’s arm, sip 
an aperitif of Emily’s lithesome 
lines, and dream. 


* * * * *
 
"The soul should always stand ajar" was inspired by “Hamac blanc” by Yash Godebski, 2013, and Emily Dickinson’s “The soul should always stand ajar” 1055. 

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.

Rain’s Painted Dreams 

by Nancy K. Jentsch

 
When rain polishes streets and walls 
to a shiny gray, pick a color you see 
from a window and spoil yourself— 
imagine its takeover. If it’s yellow 
you’ll sense a warmth that could light 
lamps and invite to an outdoor cup 
of tea or taunt sunflowers into  
igniting. Blue would find you tapping 
your toes in suede shoes, wishing  
for a crisp autumn sky where bluebirds 
kiss on the wing while seeking bliss 
in a nestbox. Choosing red would be 
like biting into fruitcake’s candied  
cherries, feeling the age-smooth facets 
of an heirloom ruby and spying 
plump honeysuckle berries before 
winter-hungry flocks land. And green’s 
coup would be like dining on lime 
Life Savers as you lay your head 
on grass’s willing pillow, canopied 
by wisteria’s dreamy vines. 


* * * * *

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.

LESSONS IN LOVE’S GRAMMAR

by Leonore Hildebrandt


My mother believed in virginal weddings
and kept love’s rules and deviations under wraps. 
The nudists were of little help. At sand pits, lakes, and beaches,
men with large bellies sat on camping chairs
and women donning straw-hats and sunglasses
kept an eye on children squirming in shallow water.
 
At school, we read of wars and conquests––Latin,
it was thought, would ground us. Word-columns––
tenses, verbs––amo, amas. Love’s grammar spells out
who owns whom, who’s active, who passive.
(In ancient Rome, a man’s desire to penetrate a boy
was fine if the teen was slave, former slave, or prostitute.)

I was a girl who knew of gender. Nouns and pronouns
are inflected along with the words that go with them––
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik rolls off the tongue.
My mother was not inclined to cuddle her young children––
later I would dread our hellos and farewells,
the awkward embraces.

Love’s grammar is slippery. (When to use “they”?)
As conquests drag on and wars flare up
while amo/amas bends to new rules of correctness,
I think of nudities on wind-swept beaches
before we learned how the light ravishes
our beautiful, love-caressed, non-binary skin. 


* * * * *

"Lessons in Love's Grammar" was originally published in Hamilton Stone Review, Fall 2023.

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of the poetry collections The Work at Hand, The Next Unknown, and Where You Happen to Be. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, Rhino, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Germany, Leonore divides her time between Harrington, Maine, and Silver City, New Mexico.

At Aquedoctan, 2018

by Kelley White

                             Claimed by the English in 1652, Weirs Beach,
                             on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire,
                             served as a summer gathering place for native peoples
                             as long ago as 8000 B.C.E.


Two or three Algerians are tossing a ball back and forth
with a couple of dancers from Brazil. A Cambodian mother tucks
her little girl into a small beach tent loaned by a Dominican family
whose Boston terrier chases a French Bulldog from Ecuador;
a trio of French Canadien children fly kites that grow smaller
and smaller in the heights of clouds while a German family
shares out another ball of string. Haitian music plays down by
the ‘Indian’ Statue where a small group of Jamaican soccer enthusiasts
chant ‘Kenya Lesotho Malawi Nepal.’ I pause for a moment
to ask an older Omani woman for the time. She points to her
empty wrist and introduces me to a Pakistani family with cell
phones and ‘the Queen’s’ English. The news from Qatar floats from
a boom box on a picnic table behind a Romanian family sharing
ice cream with a Swiss family and a Tunisian toddler. The radio
shifts to Ukrainian dance music and a Vietnamese man
picks up a napkin to wave over his head. I thought of Yemen.
I thought of Zambia. I think of my quarter Chinese, quarter
Afro-Caribbean granddaughter and her parents, aunts and uncles,
who would be welcome on this beach, who might speak a dozen
of the languages among them, sing a hundred of the songs, but then
I realized that I could think of no country, no country at all for me,
for my initial W, no country for that other half of that child, her two
grandmothers, blessed and cursed with an identity spelled w-h-i-t-e.


* * * * *

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) Recipient of 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Her newest collection, NO. HOPE STREET, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

 

Snapshot        

by Kari Gunter-Seymour


No exaggeration, an entire field filled—
daffodils, golden heads bobbing. Took her years
to divide and transplant the bulbs, gently
scooping under each clump, every nub a new life,
fragrant, a mingling of earth’s brine
and spice, the way a newborn smells.
 
Bronzed and shapely, she’d planted
herself midway, one casually laced boot  
in front of the other, morning sun defining
her contours. When she lifted her arms,
cowbirds took to the sky like nymphs
of cool breezes and she their Terra Gaia. 

I framed the photo, pearls of sweat
frosting her upper lip, but not before
she wrote near the bottom
in careful cursive—
Below my feet my child sleeps.


* * * * *

"Snapshot" is part of Kari Gunter-Seymour's poetry collection Alone in the House of My Heart.

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and a 2021 Academy of American Poets laureate Fellow. Her poetry collections include Alone in the House of My Heart (2022), A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (2020), and Dirt Songs (2024). Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, World Literature Today, the New York Times and Poem-a-Day.