Greg Parish CC



LOCAL ILLUMINATION


What else do you need to know?

Outside our boxes of light, 
ghosts we no longer believe in 
refuse to flicker or flinch at the edges, 
prefer to turn us into fellow travellers. 
A stream of vacant streetcars 
trundles along the East End run— 
over-lit studios full of dead air. 
And Jay Kim, an all too visible witness 
who can’t see anything, crouches 
behind the front counter following 
gunshots across from his corner store. 

What else does he need to know?

Just beyond our cooking fires & torches, 
night-blind wolves wait 
patiently for chances to turn 
elders into ancestors. 
An old woman sheds her blanket, 
walks out in the strange May snow 
to interview the fireflies, 
her inner light an incidental miracle. 
But the fireflies have long since
forgotten to remind the wolves 
to keep their social distance.

What else do they need to know?

​

You Can Put It Down Now
​
You can put it down now. I know you’ve been carrying this around like a martyr trying to remember God’s face by finding the bottom of punishment and burrowing to heaven through suffering. You can put it down now.

The grass does not mind. Though it may bow its heads under the weight, it can still accept your burdens trapped in the tar pits of your chest, the ones you’ve been told are yours alone to swallow and choke on. You can put it down now.

The waters do not mind. Though they grow darker from the sediment they can still sweep away the heaviness that you’ve trapped like shackles to your own image. Never good enough. Strong enough. Whole enough. You can put it down now.

​The shadows do not mind. Though they are feared as limbs of the shrouded secret world they can still hide your face and the many wounds of words yet faded. It is not for weakness that they cover you, but for strength to fight another day. You can put it down now.

I do not mind. My friend, the day is long, and the world is ever-changing, you are not here to shoulder it alone as if pain is the most shameful thing to witness. I do not mind your hand in mine and do not mind that we are here together and not smiling.

Rest with me awhile, show me all the ways in which you’ve grown in twisted and I’ll show you a thousand people that are better for their crooked pieces. Gardens are not beautiful for their perfection, but for the fact that they are still grasping for the sunlight after each and every winter.

​

Field Theory


The clapper hasn’t stirred
Air tranquilized by fog
So we neither see nor hear

Crows don’t care
They make and know their way
But the other birds

Circumspect
Don’t trust such a morning
We vacillate

At one moment envying lava rock
The next towering, like a limelight scream
Over the blind silence




Mystery


The mystery goes on
Long after revelation
Like music 
After it stops playing

The more we anticipate
The better the mystery
The more we remember

​


Being Sure


From most of us, no one needs anything
Of course, there are always sun and wind and rain
And butterflies find their way to where they are needed
And people take care of themselves

How can we judge what is fair or just or right?
Our efforts are so often vanities
It seems best to remain quiet
And wait for absolute clarity
Deep in the heart

Leaves are falling from the maple trees
One at a time
Each an individual
Its colors unique

We are called upon
As often to be silent as to speak
As often to resist as to create
It is there, always there, the path
More new than old

Waiting for us to see it with the new eyes
We will find when close the old ones
It is beginning to be cool again
Under these clouds at summer’s end

Though when the sun emerges
The humidity can still be oppressive
It is nearly always enough to see
For then, when we are called upon, we know




When


My watch stopped at 5:15
I left it on my wrist for a few hours
Then undid the band

Now whenever I am inclined to consult it
I hang fire
Suspended between habit

And the awareness that
I don’t need to know
How or why or when

If I know what and where

​

Alan Cohen/Poet first/Then PCMD, teacher, manager/Living a full varied life. To optimize time and influence/Deferred publication, wrote/Average 3 poems a month/For 60 years/Beginning now to share some of my discoveries. Married to Anita 40 years/in Eugene, OR these past 10

                        Andrea Addante CC



​Why not      
                                                                                       
Because abuse might be inherited.
Because I grew up hearing “beat
you to a bloody pulp” and “give
you something to cry about” and I
didn’t want to pass on those dubious gifts.
 
Because I am sixty years old now.
Because when I was 38, my boyfriend said
he didn’t “feel responsible” but offered to pay
for half a pregnancy test.
And I had an abortion, scared of losing him,
and then I left him.
 
Because I remember when the hormones hit
and I bought the baby clothes from Goodwill
and a white dresser from Ikea to store them,
and every time I turned into one street
whose walls were lined with bricks,
I thought of showing her the vanishing point
and explaining perspective.
 
Because I walked all one August day in the sun
across the city, trying to decide,
and my psychiatrist had me watch
a TV bishop explaining why it was wrong,
but never mentioning the soul,
which could not be destroyed.
 
Because that heat has burned itself away,
and now I cannot even find the ashes.
 
Because she would have had one parent only,
one poor, uncertain parent. No village,
no network, just me, one fragile tightrope.
 
 Because I’ve spent my life in search of solitude
and quiet, just to hear my thoughts. And only now
am I finding it, at sixty.
 
Because I am still tending to the child
within me, still trying to heal her,
still looking for the books that opened unto worlds
and for the dolls that came alive.
 
Because I am still too selfish.
Because it’s taken sixty years
just to find a self.

​

Cheryl Caesar lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. She has been swimming with wild dolphins, and it is one of the high points of her life. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.
​
​Facebook page: Cheryl Caesar Author
Website: http://caesarc.msu.domains/​ Twitter: @CherylCaesar

                     judy dean CC



on the envelope

     my mother used two pens:
                       stepping away 
     to look up my last address,
                                  she lost the blue
          but found a black,
then wrote the box number 
       – beneath village, province and code
              
her release from 
      the written world is slow –
           after seventy years
the odd misspelling,
               one day a grammar error
      later a missing word
            then key details gone
– which brother? –
           now my address jumbled
                 as if to amuse the mailman

     I see disorder grow
          to someday switch the two addresses
and her own letter send to her –
      but seeing my address as the return
            she’ll tear it open
                                               and read
            of flowers blooming,
      of neighborly airs,
                of what was served 
                                      dish by dish,
           of what was said
                          versus meant,
          who visited,
     how the dog jumped,
              what birds are back  
                                                       – finally from her son
                 the letter she always wanted

​

                      Christian Collins CC



Quiet Wisdom

My grandma had a hardscrabble youth--

sifting through ash piles for nickels and dimes,

wedging a palm-sized corn cake among twelve mouths--

and so rarely offered us advice
for fear of spoiling our own misadventures,

except to say time and time
again through the tight lips of
quiet wisdom,

“Chicken tends to be most pink at the bone.”


​
Tina Privitera-Reynolds is a freelance writer. She can take heavy criticism, so have at her. The overarching goal is always to improve. Her poetry has been featured or is upcoming on Ariel Chart, 50-Word Stories, One Sentence Poems, Shot Glass Journal, and SpillWords Press. 

​The World Is Everything That Is the Fall
 
 
O my friends, there is no friend.
 
There is only a brother, who does not believe his heart is pure.
 
There is only democracy, for what that is worth.
 
There is always a fraternal window. There is always a sororal footprint on this edge. There is usually a clearing.
 
There is only one brother. He listens to a violin play in his room.
 
There is, within his listening, a fierce destruction. He listens long.
 
He pauses. (There is a turn, into love.) He waits, for a time.
 
He, too, is a life that wills to live.
 
He is life that wills to live among living. They all, there, among each other, are living.
 
Were any of them (once) called?
 
Did any of them (ever) try?
 
Did any (ever) eat a green apple of winter?
 
Are any in an ever spring?
 
Are any and all springs false with sheened illusion, like a gauzy napkin drawn over the lap of a dilettante?
 
Who created them out of flux?
 
Who would give them a pronouncement of love?
 
Is love always (toujours) pronounced on or upon us?

(They eat, alone.)
 
(They enter night, each alone.)
 
Who will create their lives?
 
In whose or what’s shadow?

​

Laura Carter lives in Atlanta, GA. She has published several chapbooks since 2007, including three with Dancing Girl Press. She teaches college English, too.

                          Laurie Avocado CC



​who set me free

    The other day I was run over
    by a driving instructor
                                   had my face and fingers stepped on
    by the ambulance drivers
                                   was robbed as I lay there
    by the police officer on the scene
(and a passing charity worker
—Help the Homeless--
            just a helpless
              opportunist
                                     can you believe?)

                               I was left stupefied by my teachers
                                 and educated by delinquents
                                         lied to by the experts
                                            on the news
                                         told the truth
   by some random guy
                    with nothing left to lose.

                               I was let
          fall through the net
                                         convicted of a crime I didn’t even
                                         fucking do
—needless to say
                       unreported in the news.

                                 I was told “Shut your fucking mouth!”
   in the confessional booth
                                              locked up
   by the ones I trusted the most--
        the bastards
        they threw away the key.

                                It was the prison warden
   in the end
                          who set me free.


​

                        Lei Han CC



bricks

fireflies are out tonight
              brief flashes of luminescence 
decorating bushes with christmas lights

refusing all thoughts of cold and snow
               i hug warm memories of childhood
close to my chest then am saddened
 
as i recall the innocent slaughter 
               of these jewels in jars
whose hole-punched lids did nothing
               to keep them alive

in hindsight unmixed blessings are rare
               but i hold my memories –
all of them – with no discrimination
               i am built on the lessons of mistakes

​



Fluctuations
                 
Some days I feel bulkier than others, 
though it's unlikely my weight changes awfully much
these carbon copy days.

I put no effort into the fueling of my body,
eating like a wild animal in the midst of famine.
Picking at this, gobbling that.
A diet that would horrify the doctor I haven't seen in a decade. 

Some days my jeans feel snug.
Others they slide down, waistband hanging on hipbones.
Are these changes attributable to caloric intake, 
salt, or some other occult mystery?

I have no way of knowing.
Don't waste much thought wondering.

In the sentience of quiet evenings
the moon knows more about us
than we know about ourselves.    

Perhaps, on nights when I sit illuminated in its aureole 
and the jeans are a tight cloth coffin round my legs, 
that cold rock notices the added ounces and eats them.
Silently, effortlessly, unnoticed.

And, next morning when I wake, the embrace of day
is the waistband hugging my hips. 
A reminder that, once, I was loved.

​

                            saird CC



Eyes                                          

When you look into my eyes, 
what do you see?

The debris from all the tragedy?

That’s only part of me

Like a detainee, I’m trapped inside, 
denied feelings of happiness
only a slight will to survive 
I’m only here
because
I plea,
for sanity
for my mind to not 
take over me,
with negativity
to give me the dignity
to fight another day. 
Strength, not captivity 
Ability, not anxiety
I want to write words 
that need to be heard
without them getting blurred. 
Let me transfer the good 
for all that are misunderstood.
I want to RISE, 
that’s what I want you to see
when you look into my eyes.

​


STORMS                                            

I can find peace in the winds now,

I love the roar ,

The ever-changing churns.

It takes, it makes, it purifying.

Its loveless, on purpose

Unlike people.

Storms take away the absence of 

My blistering cries. 

​

​Tina is a Personal Chef and a long-time writer and lover of poetry. She writes from personal knowledge of trauma, grief, mental health, and healing. She is hoping to inspire and create a unified experience of hope and understanding. Tina has been published by The Voice’s Project, AntiherionChick, Poetica Review, Call and Response Journal, Ghost Heart Journal, Poetic Pill Blog, Athena Review, and others.