Moon’s Healing Glow

by Joan Leotta
 
 
In what was a quiet
moonlit night,
wind pulls clouds around.
Lightning flexes its muscle
setting out to light the night
replacing moon.
Then, in a show of
untethered power
lightning slashes
down, ripping open a line
in the skin of my backyard pine
to mark it as forever “his.”
As quickly as it came,
storm passed.
Winds quiet,
I peer out onto a scene of
branches ripped from trees
patio furniture overturned,
birds who would be sleeping
chirp and search for fallen nests.
Gentle moonlight returns
when wind sends clouds away.
That silver glow attempts to
make beautiful the scars
of our ruptured pine.
Perhaps that light will
heal my scars
as well.


* * * * *

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales featuring food, family, and strong women. Internationally published, she’s a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart nominee, a Best of the Net 2022 nominee, and a 2022 runner-up in the Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, and fiction are in Ekphrastic Review, When Women Write, The Lake, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, anti-heroin chic, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, The Wild, Ovunquesiamo, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Yellow Mama, among others. Her chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon from Finishing Line Press and Feathers on Stone from Main Street Rag. 

REGRET OF A GOLDEN KIND

by Carol Coven Grannick

 
I watched the moon this morning
unrare, the watching
but not the moon
low in the sky eye-reachable
through nearby branches
silver and stretching for full
 
but a moment away 
for a coffee cup
and it cold-burned gold
and then no more moments
away could be tolerated
 
I called for my husband
a mistake of one kind
though I wanted to share:
by the time I returned
the moon had slipped low
 
gold gone
an irrepressible emptiness
took hold—
a longing for moonshine
and gold.


* * * * *

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.

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.