A woman stands alone
covered head turned
to a crumbling wall
shoulders hunched
protecting a secret.
She takes something
from a drab cloth bag
maybe a cell phone
for a forbidden call
or a knife
weapon of honor
in defense or revenge
or, even more dangerous,
a book of poetry.
Chaotic Beauty
Two pianos,
haunting brilliance,
wonder on the vine.
In the vineyard,
in the glass,
tasting notes of worth.
Sing the song of chaos
mounting in despair.
Yet a sort of hope prevails,
leading me to the end note.
The binding, crushing madness.
Smashed grapes,
macerated winter fruit, dancing,
like Jack Frost on the pines.
The relentless notes
of cherry, ice and sadness,
a beauty to behold.
On the vine,
in the glass,
fading away.
Trailer Park Incident
Fading daylight
wicks from the sky,
night tar thick and sticky
between trailers where moonlight
ought to be.
A big man walks with a small dog,
footsteps crunching on the gravel road.
Shadows leap from Christmas lights
and some thing happens down in the dark
some big dog tears from his owner’s leash
or a woman feels a fist
or a man’s betrayed.
Some thing unexpected
Something brutal and bloody.
Shouts, accusations and curses ring out.
And a lone voice cries
“How could you?”
The dog whimpers
and the man entreats
“How could you do that?”
Panic and rush,
slapping doors
as the neighbors descend from their decks to the road.
Car doors slam, engines roar,
headlight angels fly across the porchscreens.
Deep into the night they intone through the darkness,
the pissh of a beer can,
glow of a cigarette,
murmur of voices,
all wondering
How?
How could you?
Daedalus Laments Icarus
Airborne he learned his wings worked their own magic.
Thermal currents, with the gentle rhythmic hunching
of his shoulders (the way I instructed him) did the work of flight,
having perfected the systems’ mechanics in tests myself,
although I warned him of the limitations of the adhesives.
First he circled the labyrinth, taunting our captors,
delighting at the sight of the tiny guards shaking their fists,
their arrows dangling in mid-air before falling back to earth,
that horrible man-bull thing rutting the lawn with its hooves,
the king stomping back and forth, cursing the sky.
Trying to be practical in all matters, I pointed the way
of a straight course toward the coast on the horizon,
but I saw Icarus feel the rush of flight, the flesh of his face
pressed taut by the wind, smiling from the kiss of sunlight
on the nape of his neck. First, he tried a few steep banks,
then loops, then, a high-velocity dive, pulling up in time
to buzz fishing boats, whitecaps lapping at his feet,
before climbing again, higher and higher, warnings forgotten
from a memory that held only the last instant of exhilaration,
higher than the gulls to where the island was hidden in its mist.
No one saw him fall but I; the fishermen didn’t notice.
But what I saw still haunts, the flailing arms and legs
splashing soundlessly into the sea, feathers floating
on the dark surface like petals scattered on a grave,
finally the crest of a plush wave, swallowing him.
They say that grief takes time, that first you make your peace
with the gods and then you make a separate peace with yourself.
Those who say so never saw their sons fall from the sky,
never gave their sons wings to fly to their deaths.
It is more of a cease-fire, not at all the same as peace.
True, the wings I invented were the means of our escape;
but eventually one grows weary of paradox and he wants to feel
what he feels, wants to face the face that still hovers in vapor
over the water and touch lost time again, wants to speak
what only can be spoken in silence long after it is too late.
The Pillar
About Fernando Botero’s sculpture, “Standing Woman.”
Woman about town, fashionably plump, she didn’t
work out at a gym nor play games at a power breakfast.
She was your matronly grandmother, a domestic specialist.
In her prime, God-fearing–faith, husband, children first.
Rotund, no-nonsense face, cropped hair, and
stocky legs firmly grounded in home life.
She didn’t have street smarts, but her kids couldn’t
fool her. She knew how to manage her life.
If she had baggage, no one realized it.
She always left the house with feathered hat
tipped to one side, gloves, and sensible shoes,
boundless hips rocking, generous arms swinging.
Wholesomely buxom, she bulged with pride
for family and community. Night out at
the VFW Post, she wore a ruffled dress,
accentuating her huggable build, and had a clutch purse.
She raised money for schools and orphans,
had four kids in six years, balanced a chubby baby
while vacuuming, cooked complete meals,
did piles of laundry, and ironed even the tiniest corners.
She didn’t dream of finding herself.
Sitting beside her hearth with
the knitting circle was her me-time.
When she died, her reputation was bronzed
in neighbors’ minds for living a solid life.
That recognition would have satisfied her.
Somewhere the Sea
San Donato di Ninea, Italy
A window dressed in mystery:
curtains allow only a glimpse
of rooftops, the drift of rain,
the promise of sea. Where they part,
a sliver of balcony cuts the hills.
For ten days, we live intimately
with strangers, lost cousins.
The old house smells of wax
and wood and family.
Standing at the sill, we listen
to found music, the blood singing
in the moment when the air is hungry.
Chimneys lean into each other.
Below us, a small white cat
crouches on a doorstep between
two flowerpots, her fur
wet with rain, her head
a little ball of fallen sky.
The invisible sea, with its
warm waves, stones and shells,
its white-rimmed restlessness,
its life of grasping and letting go,
asks nothing less of us
than surrender.
Morning in the Wetlands
Looking for my lost self
I walk the Wetlands path.
A redwing’s quiet conk-la
and its shrill reeee! announce
I’m trespassing. When I step
too close to his mate’s nest,
she chitters her tink, tink, tink.
He flies in, a kamikaze aiming
for my head. Okay, Okay,
I say, quickening my step
away from his marsh mate,
I’m willing to watch
from a distance. A mallard
mother, camouflaged
among cattails, broods
her eggs, guarded
by her green-headed
hero. At my approach
he shifts, stands,
takes a few uneasy steps.
I have not come here
to bring fear, only to
get in touch with some
part of me hidden within,
something released only
in the presence of the wild,
the unpredictable,
the unspoiled. I turn
to leave, still not at rest.
A great blue heron
lands on the water
like a blessing.
~ Wilda Morris
Published in the anthology, Natural Voices: Celebrating Nature with Opened Eyes (Natural Land Institute, 2018).
a severe calm
like daffodils and un-bloomed syllables
sponges grow in an ocean
of sea life
like a Thesaurus sees so many species
of swimming words looking for a coral
to rest upon
a poet to deep dive into the wreckage
of sunken flowers
and rusted hulks of words
a heartbeat once lived
on a sandbar of confidence
but writing moves
when the buoys aren't anchored strongly enough
and we feel submerged in criticism
of those daffodils and un-bloomed syllables
that are either land-locked
or too water-logged to make sense.
erin-cilberto
Family Farm
Like her own face, she thinks, all
that barn needs is a good paint job.
Weather-worn. She knows how
that feels. We've both done our share
in ninety years, she tells it out loud.
How many winters did she trudge
out to milk those dumb beasts
to quiet their lowing, hear the hiss
of steam rising in ice-coated buckets,
see gratitude in their wet eyes?
The paint she called ocean blue –
now faded to weary sky – how proud
she'd been to tell her friends, Turn right
off of 34 where you see the barn roof
shimmering like a lake in the cornfield.
It's been twenty years since Elmer
drove his tractor back 'round the curve
toward the shed, forty since any horses
clopped there, near eighty since she
and her sisters rode the buggy to church
singing She's only a bird in a gilded cage.
She looks out one last time to the barn,
drinks it in deep before her daughter
wheels her away to suffocate in some
small room twenty-five miles away.
Idea Germ
An idea germ fell off my pen. I shook
the writing instrument hard; a few more
thought microbes dropped, landed on blankness.
Somehow I liked the way this poem took off
on its own – built a form I’d never seen. Could
this be magic or a mysterious disease?
Strange, after that, for a time, no matter
how much I exposed myself to more contagion,
read new poets, searched newspapers
for unusual words, fed on unwashed dictionaries,
few thoughts infected my page.
Art can be like that – illusive, flighty,
independent with a mind of its own. A bit showy
at times, wanting recognition, but refusing
to be put in a box and labeled.
Sometimes, loping along, I almost see something,
then it wisps into a fog that won’t stay put on paper.
It leaves an artful trail across a window. Quick
I grab my pen, but it steams away.
Never mind. I can wait. I’ll keep placing words,
one after the other, on my page until an image takes shape.
Then I’ll know art and I are on speaking terms again.
Hyde Park Picnic
In the Hudson valley, in 1939,
President Roosevelt was planning to dine.
He was having a picnic, for the king,
hot dogs were something they chose to bring.
King George and his wife Elizabeth,
simply loved the hot dogs to death.
The queen ate her hot dog with fork and knife,
The king ate it by hand, unlike his wife.
At the time, there was anti-British sentiment,
so this historic picnic was no accident.
Europe was on the verge of war again,
so Roosevelt created a picnic to attend.
The king tried hot dogs, and asked for more,
courtesy of Franklin and Eleanor,
Three months later England declared war,
and the U.S joined them on the shore.
The Americans and British did not bond before,
but they became allies on a military tour.
Who would’ve been able to predict,
that Roosevelt would create a famous picnic.
Mark Hudson
Grown
I am a packet
Of wildflower seeds
Someone gifted you
On Earth Day
Before there was an Earth Day
Ransomed to the purpling soil
Who knows what to expect
Milkweed makes sense
If you want someone to care
For you in your old age
Sunflowers are loyal but
Take up a lot of room
Is that why
Though you loved it
You chopped down the four o’clock?
I would prefer to
Be the empty can ecstatic
On the garage roof across the alley
Stuffing itself with
Prairie wind whilst I
Fingerpaint tolerable memories
Of Queen Anne’s lace and
The rattle of mini-blinds
In that cheap apartment
Like someone’s stealing a bicycle
These rooms are way too full
Of sticky paraphernalia
Busted tires please
Don’t let me be left on the side of the road
Face-planted in the primroses.
The Drawer I hadn’t Cleaned in 30 Years
His keys to my old place before we moved in together.
A JFK 50 cent piece.
Temporary tattoos. I thought we’d used them all.
Fangs, adult size.
The silver case he gave me for my now obsolete purse calculator.
False eyelashes, (which my ophthalmologist now forbids).
Earplugs we used when we went to hear the kid’s garage band play.
Hypnosis tapes for losing weight.
A perfume bottle with the scent he chose for me.
An LED headlight for power outages.
Money, in the clip I gave him.
His glasses.
Kleenex.
Virginia Braxton
Soap Opera
Because the god of plumbing
had an argument with the god
of laundry appliances,
I met the morning with a mop
instead of hazelnut espresso.
Because of caffeine deficiency
and a wet floor, I shuffled
out the kitchen door, old clothesline
atop a basket of soggy clothes braced
on my right hip, weighty as the world,
oceans spilling down my leg
filling my shoe.
But isn’t it something to have shoes,
and the clean water is a bonus,
an entitlement taken for granted
in my kitchen where I sip coffee
and watch my boys’ bodiless
baseball uniforms run in the wind
stealing every base to home plate.
Bio of Paul Kachoris
I have self published my book of poetry:
“Unmasked: Poetry of Self Expression”
Please see my website: www.paulkachoris.com
Anguished Souls, Eternal
A Zig-Zag “agonia” highway.
Memorabilia strewn along the way.
Menorahs, skull caps, faded photos and the like,
paving this Royal Roadway To Remembrance.
And at the end—a cold pit, built in reverse,
soaring up into the black sky.
There—hundreds of thousands of scarlet,
agonized faces,
weeping blood tears.
Countless multitudes draping its inner walls;
their images, indelibly being seared into our souls.
Lamenting, once and for all,
our memorial dirge:
How helpless each one was,
when the “Grim Reaper of Hate”
threshed down entire wheat fields.
Paul J. Kachoris
November 17, 2018
A memorial poem dedicated to The Jewish Museum, Berlin, Germany
Bio of Joseph (Joe) Glaser
Most of Joe’s career was technical management, but near retirement an interest in Liberal Arts blossomed and he began writing poetry in 2008. His poems have been published in Front Porch Review, Muses’ Gallery of Highland Park Poetry, Journal of Modern Poetry, East on Central, Distilled Lives, and other journals and anthologies. Candid travel photos too.
No Wall, Not This Time
We did not climb over a Wall,
not this time.
Mama had left her Warsaw Ghetto Wall,
buried deeply in the scars of her survivor’s guilt.
Papa had exiled Stalin’s Siberian Trenches,
drowned frozen in a distant subconscious.
Not this time, not in 1961,
this time, in 1961, papa, mama, and me,
we crossed an ocean.
Statue of Liberty greeted us with poetry.
Poetry, language we did not understand,
Mama, papa, and me.
Waves rocking our freighter ship deck whispered;
Mother of Exiles, New Colossus, says something about
“breathing free.”
Displaced Person, DP, Green Card, Greenhorn,
In fifth grade, I sang pho net i cal ly, to fit in, fit in.
E ven tu al ly, syllables arranged themselves into words.
Words into sentences, and understanding into
Spelling bees…
Eventually, this language no longer eluded me,
not, totally. And,
I sang,
“The land of the free and the home of the brave.”
At school, at home.
Our attic apartment resonated with the land of the free,
the home of the brave.
Sang to my brave mama, my brave papa.
Sang from deep in my heart.
Papa and mama nodded their heads, hummed along.
Hands on their hearts, hummed to a flag of yet another land,
this land, this final land,
free, brave.
Papa’s gravedigger’s hands, fingernails witness to cemetery soils,
right hand on his heart.
Mama’s cleaning woman’s aching back momentarily straightened,
right hand on her heart.
Tired, poor, huddled masses, breathing free.
Emma Alexandra
Bio of David Nekimken
Grandfather of Jarell, Maia and Imani. I enjoy living in a housing cooperative in Hyde Park with 19 young people. I have been a poet most of my life with poems published in the Journal of Ordinary Thought and the Journal of Modern Poetry. I have published a book of poetry Anything and Everything Goes, available on Amazon.
Tornado Warning
On our way to Door County, I started out our
trip with a prayer to God for a safe trip. The first
foreshadowing seemed to be a building that said,
“Abandoned haunted house.”
My sister did not let my niece and nephew
know there was a tornado warning, because they
get really scared when it rains. Suddenly, rain
began to pour down so fiercely, that I thought
we were going to need an ark.
My niece threw a fit, “I’m scared! I want
to go home!” and she wouldn’t stop screaming.
I saw people who were riding motorcycles who
had to pull over to the side of the road, and I
saw a man on the other side of the road walking
all alone.
We eventually had to pull under a bridge
till the rain stopped. Eventually the sun came out,
and we drove again. I think the kids were even
able to take a nap.
As an adult, I can have fears, because I
am aware of the evils that really do exist. But
I trust God to protect me from whatever comes.
There were two instances on the trip
where I became very proud of my nephew.
When he wanted to walk bare-footed into wavy water
and stand on a rock, I let him. When he went
kayaking by himself, I knew he was getting braver.
My niece has her yellow belt in karate.
I’m actually the chicken!
Mark Hudson