Reflection of a Wildfire When Nothing is Burning

by Amanda Hawk


Water burns in the layers of fall leaves.
It sizzles and ripples
as sunlight gathers in each crease.

The ochre of the canopy saturates my skin
and I pull the crisp air into my lungs.
It rushes through my chest,

a wildfire plucking at my nerves,
until I am awake.
Childhood memories tingle my fingertips.

Camping trip tents and backyard bonfires
singe the edges of my view,
burning with images of Orange Crush cans,

pigtails in neon barrettes,
and headless plastic army men.
I catch reflections of a little girl

skimming over the water.
A skipping stone with dirty knees
and missing baby teeth.

My eyes keep her bobbing in and out of the topaz waves,
crashing out images of her riding bikes
and kicking up puffs of dust.

I want to chase after her
and swallow up her laughter
until it simmers in my stomach.

Watch her ride toward the sun
with arms stretching into wings,
preparing to launch herself upward

into the cloudless sky.
My feet smolder and my palms throb 
with each drawn out breath.

Yearning rests at the corner of my eyes,
and nestles in building tears,
and I want to be that little girl again

with wildfire yell and roaring hunger
ready to eat up her future.


* * * * *

Amanda Hawk is Best of the Net-nominated and Pushcart Prize-nominated Poet.  She lives in Seattle between the roaring planes and the city’s neon lights.  Amanda has been featured in multiple journals including Volney Road Review, Rogue Agent and the winnow magazine.  She released her first chapbook in 2023 called Rain Stained City.  Recently, she placed second in the Seattle Crypticon Horror Short Story contest.

Medusa Tries Selling on Etsy 

by Alison Hurwitz


There’s the libel lawsuit, online therapy, wifi. Her damp grotto
keeps on leaking, plus the price of snake food has skyrocketed.  
Medusa’s pregnant, single, broke and desperate. It’s time 
she got creative. So Saturday, she decides to merchandize. 

Arachne doesn’t call her back, so she learns to weave 
through YouTube, shapes discarded skins like raffia for hats, 
desiccated edges hissing into pattern, shedding molt like chaff. 
Each braided brim designed to throw a different kind of shade.

Early Sunday morning, she piles accumulated stiffs, stacks 
them into pyramids, logs of every jerk who smirked too long, 
then smashes them to rubble. A new angle on Pet Rocks. 
Get yours acid-etched, his name on it for only 5 bucks more.

Monday morning and she’s accessorized, moved on to kitsch: 
snake eye pendants, collectible fangs, a picnic set with serpent 
tines, forks sharp enough to pierce your meat straight through, 
her face on key chains reading Hello, Gorgonous.

On Tuesday, she adds a beauty line: lipstick shades in 
Take Him for Granite, in Venom. Her makeup line: 
If Looks Could Kill. She watches online storefront videos, 
reads through guides: How to Scale Your Business. Sighs.

Wednesday, she debuts her signature perfume: 
Minerva Blames the Maiden. The scent’s complex: 
fire and mineral notes, blood and spunk, burnt incense, ash. 
On the label fallen columns, twisted limbs, a toxic goddess watching.

Thursday, getting frenzied, she pivots into gimmicks, 
attempts to meme herself. Sad refrigerator magnets, quipping: 
“You think you have problems? Try being pregnant 
with a winged horse and a giant.” They don’t catch on.

By Friday, disgusted and discouraged, she gets a little OCD,
can’t stop making Medusa bobble-heads: each snake on springs 
that sing eponymous songs: Kailey Morgue, Whitney Avalon. 
Dirty Heads. Her serpents writhe with laughter.

She tries renaming her Etsy storefront Agency 
(no one wants to buy the same old Rage,) but 
by Saturday she’s given up, exhausted, adrift in badly 
spelled catch-phrases, too many cheap knock-offs from China. 

Medusa goes to bed and watches as the ceiling seeps. 
Her serpents wreathe the walls in mythic shadows.
I am so damn tired, she says below her breath. 
Her snakes respond in sibilance, in whisper. 
They shift her into sleep.


* * * * *

Alison Hurwitz is a former cellist and dancer who now finds music and movement in language. A two-time 2023 Best of the Net Nominee, she is the founder/host of the monthly online reading, Well-Versed Words. Widely published, Alison’s work is forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, South Dakota Review, Hole in the Head Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. When not writing, Alison officiates weddings and memorial services, takes singing lessons, walks in the woods with her family, and dances in her kitchen. Find her at alisonhurwitz.com

This month another Moon Prize, the 144th, goes to Amy Soricelli’s poem “The Sad Girl from a Private School Wins a Ribbon”

 

The Sad Girl from a Private School Wins a Ribbon

by Amy Soricelli


The poem of the year has four sides. 
It opens like a map
The judges were asked to watch it like
a silent movie and make notes in the margin. 
They were given red pens and tissues,
but most brought their own.

The first judge stopped at war with its 
field of ghosts and broken children.
Spirits hung around each line carrying
bullets in lunch boxes; some of the 
words were backward but no points 
were taken-off. One judge writes, 
the poet wrote from a pen full of dust.  
No one disagreed.

The flat side of the poem took small 
eyes and a wide mouth and shaped them
into flame-throwing monsters.
The poet used all the glass words in her
dictionary to describe her skinny fingers
and crooked smile.
Several judges recused, but most folded 
themselves into her broken spirit.
When she finished painting a mural
out of her shapeless head, she rhymed four
words together and sewed them shut.

Love in seven languages skated thin
ice into the third stanza. 
Unrequited and frayed at the edges,
the poet spilled her mind across
six lines of a broken soul.
The judges understood her need for
belonging and wrote chin-up comments
in the space at the bottom.
One drew a heart but then crossed it out.

The final stanza flew off the page with 
salad wings.  There were pastry sentences 
in powdered sugar and a tall glass of water 
with nothing added in.
One judge grabbed a snack bar while reading
when the strong flavor of coconut filled his
head with Haiku.
He looked around for guidance.
When the poem ended in a sizzling steak,
the judges grabbed some Macallan and 
called it a night.

* * * * *


Amy Soricelli has been published in numerous publications and anthologies including Remington Review, The Westchester Review, Deadbeats, Long Island Quarterly, Literati Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Pure Slush, Cider Press Review, Glimpse Poetry Magazine, and many others. That Plane is not a Star, 4/2024, Dancing Girl Press; Carmen has No Umbrella but Went for Cigarettes Anyway, Dancing Girl Press 9/2021; Sail Me Away, Dancing Girl Press, 10/2019. Nominations: Pushcart Prize, 2021, Best of the Net 2020, 2013. Nominated by Billy Collins for Aspen Words Emerging Writer's Fellowship/2019, Grace C. Croff Poetry Award, Herbert H Lehman College, 1975

 

On today's full moon, the 143rd Moon Prize goes to Alexis Rhone Fancher's poem "Cruel Choices."


Cruel Choices

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


When my husband’s two grown daughters are in town, the three of them go to the movies, or play pool. Share dinner every night. Stay out late. I haven’t seen my stepdaughters since my son’s funeral in 2007. When people ask, I say nice things about the girls, as if we had a relationship. When people ask if I have children I change the subject. Or I lie, and say no. Or sometimes I put them on the spot and tell them yes, but he died. They look aghast and want to know what happened. Then I have to tell them about the cancer.

Sometimes, when the older daughter, his favorite, is in town, and she and my husband are out together night after night, I wonder what it would be like if that was me, and my boy, if life was fair, and, rather than my husband having two children and I, none, we each had one living child. His choice which one to keep. 

Lately when people ask, I want to lie and say yes, my son is a basketball coach; he married a beautiful Iranian model with kind eyes, and they live in London with their twin girls who visit every summer; the same twins his girlfriend aborted with my blessing when my son was eighteen, deemed too young for fatherhood, and everyone said there would be all the time in the world.


* * * * *

©Alexis Rhone Fancher, 2016, "Cruel Choices" was first published in Askew and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Tinderbox, Cleaver, Diode, The American Journal of Poetry, Spillway, Nashville Review, Poetry East, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. She’s authored ten poetry collections, most recently, Triggered, 2023 (MacQueen’s Publishing); Brazen, 2023 (NYQ Books); and Duets, (2022) an illustrated, ekphrastic chapbook collaboration with poet Cynthia Atkins, published by Harbor Editions. Alexis’s photographs are featured worldwide including the covers of The Pedestal Magazine, Witness, Heyday, Pithead Chapel, and The Mas Tequila Review. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, you can find her at: www.alexisrhonefancher.com 

 

I walk in the shadows

by Patricia Roe


I walk in the shadows of others.
Perhaps born at the wrong time or in the wrong place.
Second child always following in the footsteps of the first.
Never to take the lead.

Trained well by a mother who was just that.
My worth always judged by my appearance.
Never encouraged to do more, be more.
I became what I was born to be, a shadow.

Married too young to a mistake.
Wrapping my identity into his.
Losing the relationship and my own self.
Only to repeat the mistake again.

Parenthood giving me the excuse to hide behind my children.
Pushing them to excel.
To reach for heights I only dreamed of.
I walk behind them and am proud yet still I am in their shadow.

Finding work always as the assistant.
Only able to manage my own loads yet always tasked with that of others.
Watching them move on.
Finding reward in helping them succeed.

I support, I follow.
I am the reason they shine so bright.
I am the shadow they never see.
I am woman, I walk in the shadows.


* * * * *

Patricia Roe retired a few years back from a career of helping others during which she engendered a collection of tales that she hopes to share with the world. After spending decades honing her writing skills in the business world with company newsletters and project reports, Pat is now excited to have an opportunity to explore her creative side. Currently working on multiple projects from poetry to blogging to her first novel, she feels that her life experiences give her the perfect background to tell many different stories in an assortment of genres. Hopefully, you will agree!

The Once Invisible Garden

by Laura Foley

 
How did I come to be
this particular version of me,
and not some other, this morning
of purple delphiniums
blooming like royalty,
destined to meet these three dogs
asleep at my feet, and not others—
this soft summer morning,
sitting on her screened porch
become ours, our wind chime
singing of wind and time,
yellow-white digitalis
feeding bees and filling me—
and more abundance to come:
basil, tomatoes, zucchini.
What luck or fate, instinct,
or grace brought me here—
in shade, beneath hidden stars,
a soft, summer morning,
seeing with my whole being,
love made visible.


* * * * *

Laura Foley is a bi/queer poet, author of nine poetry collections.  She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, The Poetry Box Editor's Choice Chapbook Award, the Bisexual Book Award, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize and others. Her work has been widely published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Life in Poetry, and included in numerous anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence.

Not a Metaphor

by Laura Foley

 
Not the phone’s jarring interruption
in this moment of wonder—
 
not Dad’s late night news
of our sudden loss of my teenage sister, Alix,
 
not this huge, black-winged bat circling us
as I clutch our newborn daughter, I birthed alone.
 
Not a simile, this child with traces of blood
on her arms—nor these stained sheets
 
I rose from moments ago in hope
of sharing joy so pure I couldn’t feel my feet.
 
Not this bat flapping so close
to the seat of my rational sense, this shadow
 
of death that makes me duck, as I hold
my baby, still nameless, to my chest.


* * * * *

Laura Foley is a bi/queer poet, author of nine poetry collections.  She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, The Poetry Box Editor's Choice Chapbook Award, the Bisexual Book Award, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize and others. Her work has been widely published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Life in Poetry, and included in numerous anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence.