The Alchemy of Longing

by Suzanne Allen


All is never said, but when no whole words remain in the mortar, no pestle because it has flown, barely any shreds of common threads, Charity knows it’s time to begin again. Recommencer. Huffing the ashes of a borrowed dream, she marvels at how she can burn a thing down. No wonder she prefers crushes, secret or otherwise, to the impact of too-fast love. Unrequited attractions cut more smoothly than the bait and switch. Hook, line, and sinker, she thinks, sighing into a beaker, thank goddess we’ve cleared the Capricorn Moons. She used to crave vials of guts, wells of will and wherewithal, but it's not like that anymore. Gathering symbols wherever she can, writing recipes for everything, Charity has no choice but to trust her heart to remember what her mind can’t seem to. Earth, air, water, fire—she conjures them, stirs the pot.


* * * * *

Suzanne Allen is a writing teacher and artist born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from California State University in Long Beach, where she still lives. In 2021, she published a full-length collection of mostly pandemic poems, We Wash Our Hands, and her collection of Paris poems, Awkward, was released in February, 2024. Others appear widely online and in print. The “Charity” sequence is part of a larger series of self-caricatures from her forthcoming collection, Attempts at Exhausting a Crush, to be released late spring, 2025.

 

Photo by Michael Schulte 

Early Morning Adoration

by Marjorie Maddox


Pale sky too shy to praise itself,
trees are the first to name glory
tangled in their tresses. What can the breeze
proclaim but Yes! when boughs that could bow down
to dying, instead raise bare twigs
in winter adoration?

"January Dawn" by Karen Elias

* * * * *

"Early Morning Adoration" was previously published in Orchards Poetry Review, 2023.

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

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

 

Au Comptoir Turenne Toute Seule

by Suzanne Allen


Charity doesn’t message the man she tortures in her ways, drinks a glass of wine instead, big, and probably another. She’ll order a salad later, maybe even a dessert. This first of June is fairly young and bright and cold like March, and her horoscope says, It’s time to allow any unconventional visions to emerge and shine, and, This year will be different...

Children chase each other around the columns of Église Saint-Denys-du-Saint-Sacrement, and there goes another 96 bus to miss, so she can stay right here, freezing but not frozen, at last.

Charity didn’t come here to fall in love, never has, but she always does. It’s impossible for her not to. Always another bright smile to fall for, one more glass of Côtes du Rhône to fall into, one more step to fall off of, another chance to be seen, one more half-truth to be shown, like promises in stained glass and always the possibility of another moelleux with ice cream, specks of vanilla, too many points of flavor to ever regret.


* * * * *

Suzanne Allen is a writing teacher and artist born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from California State University in Long Beach, where she still lives. In 2021, she published a full-length collection of mostly pandemic poems, We Wash Our Hands, and her collection of Paris poems, Awkward, was released in February, 2024. Others appear widely online and in print. The “Charity” sequence is part of a larger series of self-caricatures from her forthcoming collection, Attempts at Exhausting a Crush, to be released late spring, 2025.

She Was Certain 

                                   by Elaine Reardon
 
 
She was doing the right thing.
Her mother-in-law gave the kids 
processed foods, M&Ms,
 
and sugared peanut butter, for chrissakes.
She wanted to put them into frilly dresses,
didn't like them messy,
 
the way toddlers naturally were.
To say nothing of the way she 
ignored the 'no sugar' mandate.
 
So it seemed right, if she
couldn't be trusted beyond
the length of a peanut butter jar
 
that she not be allowed alone with them.
It was obvious she couldn't be trusted. How 
had she brought up her own kids?
 
She was certain of it. She would
do it better, would remake all that
was wrong with her own childhood.
 
Her kids would eat healthy, have
a mom who was always there, a dad
who lifted them with hugs, who stayed.
 
So now why were her kids with her
mother-in-law, when she lay alone
on the couch, recovering after
 
the hospital stay, one whole week
of confusion and pain. It left her so
weak she couldn't lift the baby.
 
Her husband worked long hours
to pay the bills, to get them ahead.
The new social worker said 
 
she couldn't care for her own babies.
She couldn't put breakfast on the table,
heave them out of bed for school.
 
How had things changed so completely?
Now she couldn't see her kids
except for visits twice a week.

Her husband came home and gave
her supper, then went to his mother’s
to read a story and put the kids to bed.

How had her life become the couch,
the kitchen, and endless cups of cold coffee?
                                                                       

* * * * *

Elaine Reardon is a writer, herbalist, and artist and educator. Her first chapbook, The Heart is a Nursery For Hope, won first honors from Flutter Press in 2016, and her second chapbook, Look Behind You, was also published in late 2019 by Flutter Press. Most recently Elaine's work was published in The Common, Galway Review, Pensive Journal, and similar journals. A new chapbook, Stories Told in a Lost Tongue was published by Finishing Line Press in September 2024. www.elainereardon.wordpress.com. 

Widow

by Emalisa Rose


Through latter years, she’d only drive
down the block, mostly the side roads
never past 5, since her eyesight declined
and only for milk and the Marlboros, the
treats for the kitties that came to befriend her,
then back to the room where she'd sit still for hours
crocheting and watching those housewives shows
the occasional morning news or Yankee game and
rarely a mop or a broom would touch down on the floors.

"Who's coming here anyhow," Jane laughed, now
estranged from her sister, whom she'd never let see
how she'd aged without grace, stooped over, arthritic
gray tattered hair, rarely a comb woven through it.

Jane puts up the tree, most of the plasticized branches
all bent, an ensemble of half broken ornaments that
she wouldn’t throw out. She puts on the yule log
that pipes in the songs she would dance to, in the arms
of the man, who she once had called “husband”
for 45 years.


* * * * *

When not writing, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and birding. She walks with a group on Sundays through the neighborhood trails spotting some amazing winged ones. She lives near a beach town, which provides much of the inspiration for her work. Some of her poems have appeared in Writing in a Woman's Voice, Spillwords, MadSwirl and other wonderful places.

The Woman In The Sculpture Garden Has My Breasts

by Shaun Pankoski


It is autumn. 
Still, it's warm for November
and no one is here, 
save for a few students, 
wandering and sketching, 
an old man on a bench. I try 
to identify the bronzes by style,
placed here and there 
in a casual precision
that comes so naturally in Japan.
When I come upon her-
the outstretched arms, 
the torso twist, the pointed toe-
she speaks to me. It does me no good
to read the unreadable plaque.
I take the pose. The carrion crows, 
smart and dangerous, caw sharply. 
Oh, Karasu, do you mock me 
for what I have lost, 
or cheer for me, in a land
where no one dares to look
anywhere but down?


* * * * *

Author's note: 'Karasu' is the Japanese word for 'crow.' 

Shaun R. Pankoski (she/her) is a poet most recently from Volcano, Hawaii. A retired county worker and two time breast cancer survivor, she has lived on both coasts as well as the Midwest as an artist’s model, modern dancer, massage therapist and honorably discharged Air Force veteran. Her poems have appeared in several literary journals and blogs including Verse Virtual, ONE ART, Poetry Breakfast and Sheila-na-Gig.