Sarah Sarai | Big Little Lambs

My nephew and niece,

half-white all-Black,

don’t care about my divided self

my split-at-the-rootness,

Christian blah blah

Jewish blah blah.

White + white is two whites

spooning in a pudding of white.

With all respect to my folks.

Hey, I know Black is not

for sure saintly as most saints

are not for sure saintly.

But for their time on the rack.

Let’s rest this poem on an oven

rack as if it were lamb led

to dinner, a lamb dripping

with blood, connection, and shame.

This poem is heliocentric as

the ego basking in itself.

Nephew and niece, they grow,

as we’re said to in California,

sprouting leaf after shiny leaf

happy as neon or sundrops.

Erin thanked me for the fifty!

Come on. Sing Happy Birthday.

Amy Barone | Two Purple Poems

Purple

 

Like a desert flower,

they surprise, pop up

on islands of late winter mud.

 

Burst through bare patches of grass.

Symbols of royalty and pride.

Crocuses robed in purple with yellow tongues.

 

Hungry for a new season.

My company on a sunny March day

as the days stretch out.

 

All in wait for more color, light, life.

Easing our loads. The promise of green.

A time of hope.

 

 

______________________________

 

Hyacinth

 

A scent sends me back —

where spring was a destination.

 

Nature nurtured. Violet flowers

emerged in a secret spot,

trumpets of sweet perfume.

 

Today I placed a potted hyacinth

on the grave of loved ones

who tended gardens.

 

 

______________________________

Amy Barone’s most recent full-length poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. SPD recognized it as a Poetry Bestseller of the Month (July 2022) and an SPD Recommended Book. We Became Summer was released by New York Quarterly Books in 2018. Barone has also published two chapbooks, Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing). Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, New Verse News, The Ocotillo Review, Paterson Literary Review and several Brownstone Poets anthologies. She belongs to the Brevitas online poetry community. Originally from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she currently lives in New York City and Haverford, PA. Follow her on Twitter where her handle is @AmyBBarone.

Belle Koblentz | Astra Fantasy

Belle Koblentz: Astra Fantasy

Once, I was a painter, a colorist. Today, I am a photographer, a digital artist, who approaches the photo image from a painter's perspective and with a painter's vocabulary. Color is still foremost in my consideration of the elements of a piece. Nature is my muse. I transform my original photo, pushing saturation, hue, value and contrast, to abstract it from a photographic reality to a painterly space.

______________________________

Belle Koblentz is a New Jersey artist living in Colts Neck and a member of the Art Alliance of Monmouth County. She received her BA in Visual Arts and an MA in Aesthetics from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Charles Pierre | Early April Violet

Early April Violet

 

 

An ordinary shift in the chilly wind

brings this seed to sprout amid braided debris,

just above the high-water line on a beach,

where the Nissequogue River enters the Sound.

All one can see are five frail petals

on a slender stem, with no visible leaves

to cushion them in such a punishing place,

where the life of a being so small is gauged

in days, and the thin light of early April

is the only tenderness this flower will sense,

exposed on a raft of dead grasses and reeds,

bent by onshore gusts as the new moon ascends,

when a spring tide floats the violet to sea.

 

 

This poem originally appeared in the author's poetry collection, Father of Water (2008).

 

 

_________________________________

Charles Pierre was born in New York City in 1945 and raised in Centerport, New York. He studied at the University of Virginia and worked as a copywriter in Manhattan, where he has lived since 1973. Mr. Pierre is the author of five poetry collections: Green Vistas, Father of Water, Brief Intervals of Harmony, Coastal Moments, and Circle of Time.

Chris O’Carroll | Rose of Sharon

Rose of Sharon

 

Last week, you held one debut bloom aloft,

High harbinger of this outburst, this spree

Of petals tissue-flimsy, whisper-soft

Bowing you low with multiplicity.

Pale lavender around deep Concord grape,

These flowers pregnantly proliferate;

Their color scheme now bulks and droops your shape

As each brief blossom trumpets news of weight.

They furl at night and drop off soon enough,

Then you renew them day by spendthrift day,

Each with a core white spike of lacy fluff

Adding its lusty thrust to their display

Shouldering this mad splurge of fancy dress,

You curtsy to your own effusiveness.

 

__________________________________

Chris O’Carroll is the author of two books of poems, The Joke’s on Me and Abracadabratude. His work also appears in An Amaranthine Summer (published in memory of Kim Bridgford), Extreme Sonnets, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, New York City Haiku, The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, and multiple volumes of the Potcake Chapbooks series. He is a member of Actor’s Equity, and has performed widely as a stand-up comedian.

Sarah Sarai | Low Life, Malibu

Low Life, Malibu

 

Buoyant and so damn blasé about it,

the ducks are all You looking at me?

I can float, sucker.

 

While those puffed-up fighter pilot

gulls straight up sneer, Haw! Haw!

fools, we’re slumming it.

 

Unhinged as their jaws, they swoop in

on darting fish close to the surface,

then circle our scraps for dessert.

 

You and me, slouched on wet sand, we

feel the day’s chill as a flesh-crawling

parasite. We consider following

 

the sun as she shimmies down,

searching new and newer horizons,

and each time, we invite her to join us,

 

up the highway, in a cracked red-

leather booth shaped like a crescent moon.

She might want to but never shows.

 

We’re not big on duty, but we get it.

We have us one responsible sun.

The I’m-all-that flighty couldn’t care less.

 

 

Previously published in Pine Hills Review, August 2, 2023.

 

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Sarah Sarai is the author of several poetry collections including That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books, 2019); Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books, 2016); and The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX Books, 2009). Her poems are widely anthologized, most notably in Gerald LaFemina’s Composing Poetry, a Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2016); Like a Fat Gold Watch: Poetic Responses to Sylvia Plath edited by Christine Hamm (Fat Gold Watch Press, Brooklyn, 2018) and Say It Loud: Poems About James Brown edited by Michael Oatman and Mary Weems (Whirlwind Press, 2011). A native New Yorker, born in Long Island, she grew up in Los Angeles, returning to attend Sarah Lawrence where she earned her MFA. She currently lives in the big city and works as an independent editor.

Bruce E. Whitacre | The Foldout Couch

 

Jesalah Love Art Neon Sign
After Keith Haring

The Foldout Couch

 

His force thumps the entire divan

against the renter-white wall,

adding to the small dents.

These are the good years.

Galaxies revolve like the club door, powered

by magnetism and mystery.

Tossing cushions is foreplay,

though sometimes here the fizz goes flat.

A bicep in the red lava light,

an ass in the veil of blue smoke, its globes

green glitter-strewn and sweating. Heaving

planets and stars call

to the white light between the eyes,

the fire in the throat

as you take all he’s got.

The collapse, the caress, the clip

of the spring through the mattress.

Another notch in the floor.

Counting down the security deposit.

 

Previously published in RFD, Issue 190, Summer 2022, pp 55-57, with other poems from Whitacre’s forthcoming Good Housekeeping.

 

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Bruce E. Whitacre’s recent publications include his debut poetry collection, The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks (Crown Rock Media, 2022); Sky Island Journal; Poetry X Hunger; Dear Booze; Diane Lockward’s third volume on craft, The Strategic Poet; and the 2022 anthology I Want to Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe. Work here was nominated for Sundress Publications’ 2020 Best of the Net Anthology and the 2024 Pushcart Prize. A featured poetry reader at the Forest Hills Public Library, he has read his work at Poets House, the Zen Mountain Monastery Buddhist Poetry Festival, Kew Willow Books, Lunar Walk, and other venues. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has completed master workshops with Jericho Brown, Alex Dimitrov, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Mark Wunderlich. Bruce is a native of Nebraska and lives in Forest Hills, Queens, with his husband.

Patricia Carragon | Wild Is the Wind

photo credit: Roxanne Hoffman 

Wild Is the Wind

(sung by Nina Simone)

 

do you hear the wind?

see that scarlet leaf

dance on concrete?

 

I am that wind

I am that leaf

I am that dance

 

in the distance

Ms. Simone sings about

spring & kisses

 

in a dervish trance

you cling to that leaf

embrace the wind

 

the wind is wild

and logic & fear surrender

to oneness

 

the wind is love

and love is the light

that has no end

 

 

Published in Jerry Jazz Musician, February 17, 2022

__________________________________

Patricia Carragon is the author of several books of poetry and fiction. Her most recent poetry collections are Meowku (Poets Wear Prada) and Innocence (Finishing Line Press). Her debut novel, Angel Fire, was recently released by Alien Buddha Press. Patricia hosts the Brownstone Poets reading series from Brooklyn on Zoom and publishes an associated anthology annually.

Don Hogle | Red Geraniums

photo credit: Don Hogle

Red Geraniums

 

Was it on the ferry to Mount Athos

that the spring sun felt hot on my face,

the wind still cold on the back of my neck?

A priest with a black hat and straggly beard

snoozed next to me. Gulls flew alongside,

catching pieces of bread thrown to them,

their bodies unnaturally close to us.

 

Or was it in Budva, beneath the sign that read

Sailor, where someone took my picture?

Wearing my aviator Ray-Bans, arms folded

across my chest, I looked comically resolute.

 

No, it must have been in Kotor

with its trumpet blasts of red geraniums. Yes,

I sat in the warm sun, the air cool on my neck;

the flowers spilling from the window boxes

were so bright, I said, Yes, run me through

with your unrepentant red, for I have no desire

to ever leave here.

 

 

Published in Artemis, Volume XXX, 2023

_______________________________

A lifelong student of languages and an avid traveler (to some 40 odd countries), Don Hogle blogs at Postcards from a Traveler. Hogle is also the author of two poetry collections, a chapbook titled Madagascar, published by Sevens Kitchens Press in 2020, and a full-length book, Huddled in the Night Sky, forthcoming from Poets Wear Prada, fall of 2024. His poetry has appeared in Apalachee Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry, Full Bleed, and The Inquisitive Eater, among other places. He was a finalist for both The Missouri Review’s 2021 Jeffrey Smith Editors’ Prize and Green Linden Press’ 2021 Wishing Jewel Prize, and a semi-finalist for Naugutuck River Review’s 2021 Narrative Poetry Prize. He lives happily in Manhattan without pets, children, or spouses of any gender or species.

Rhonda Zangwill | Fever

Fever

I was fourteen when my best friend Kyra’s mother died. At the funeral there were flyers on the seats with a black and white photo. Underneath it said:

In Loving Memory 

Jayne Marciella 

1925-1970

That picture, it was all wrong. It made her look like a housewife, and I never once saw her do a dish. She was in a shiny dark reddish casket with gold handles. The top half was open, and I was thinking how glad Kyra would be that her mother didn’t look like that stupid photo. She looked beautiful. Exactly like she did when she napped in the afternoon. That nap was necessary, so Kyra’s mother would be fresh before she primped for cocktail hour at 5:30.

Me and Kyra got to sit on the two matching chairs that flanked her vanity table while she primped. Kyra’s mother always wore a full slip that was, she said, a little snug. She never let us turn on the overheads. She had two lamps that cast a patchwork of light and shadow. “This,” Kyra’s mother said, was the preferred environment for grown-up women. In the half dark, her skin looked translucent. Blue-gray veins covered her forearms like an intricate weaving, all pointing toward her pulse points. She always talked about pulse points, where they were, how they worked. She favored those on her neck above the collarbone. That was where the essence of scent was best released and appreciated. Kyra and I agreed that her mother did have a very nice collarbone.

Kyra’s mother always carefully prepared her “ensemble du soir.” That’s French, she told us, for the evening’s outfit. I already knew that from my French class. “Many parts go into a successful ensemble,” she said. I learned that these parts didn’t have to match, they just had to blend well, like the different flavors in her imported cigarettes. So, it was perfectly acceptable to wear the pink silk sleeveless shell with the rose colored skirt and top it with a blood-red bolero jacket with a delicate magenta scarf at the throat. “It’s all in the same family” she would say, “just like me and Kyra. Look how different we are, but we mix together so well. Besides, it’s deadly to sing a single note all the time. I am a symphony of reds.” And I had to admit that she was, especially if you counted her lips (sienna) and nails, painted in super high gloss pomegranate.

The best part of primping was when Kyra’s mother chose her shoes. They were arranged by color, season, material, purpose, heel height and age. When she was her red symphony, she could select the wine-colored satin sling-backs, open-toed leather mid-heeled pumps (although they were fraying at the back), high-heeled maroon sandals with the skinny ankle strap, flat cherry skimmers or five-inch spike heels in mirror-shiny fire engine red. She wobbled in these even before cocktail hour started, but so did me and Kyra whenever we tried them on.

* * *

I couldn’t tell if Kyra’s mother had shoes on because that part of the casket was closed. I really hoped she was wearing the specially-dyed-to-match shoes she always wore with the dress she was in, the one that has the 23 mother-of-pearl buttons up the back. Shoes, she said, were the piece de resistance for any ensemble.

* * *

Our job, Kyra’s and mine, was to prep for cocktail hour – strainers, straws, crushed ice, the little lemon twists and olives we put in a shallow bowl. We lined up all the glassware. Tumblers, flutes, snifters, and of course, martini glasses that we took out last since they had to be chilled properly, or you would ruin the whole thing. Sometimes we cut up little cubes of cheese and stuck red and blue plastic imitation sword toothpicks right in the center of each one and put them in a semicircle on the wooden board, surrounding the Ritz Crackers that we arranged in short stacks.

I always thought there would be other people at cocktail hour but there never were. Kyra and I had cokes with a lime garnish, or sometimes orange juice with a splash of grenadine. Kyra’s mother drank scotch-on-the-rocks. She always sat on the high-backed stool near the counter. It had long skinny wrought iron legs that ended in little circle feet and a shiny wicker seat and back. Kyra’s mother would line herself up with the stool and, depending on the size of her heels, either just lift her hip slightly and edge onto the seat, or do a little hop on to it, using the back of the chair as leverage. She always sat erect, head high and shoulders back like the Spanish flamenco dancers we saw in a filmstrip at school called “World of Dance.” She crossed her legs at the ankle “Never at the knee, girls,” she said, “unless you want early varicose veins.”

Me and Kyra usually finished our Cokes way before Kyra’s mother finished her cocktail. To tell the truth, I think we slurped them up fast because our refill (“it’s called your second round,” she said) was our cue to start the music. Earlier we had put a stack of records on the hi-fi, and at her nod we slid the lever over, watched the first one drop down onto the turntable and the needle jerk its way over. Kyra then handed her mother one of the long-necked beer bottles (unopened) from the ice bucket, and she would start to lip-synch along with “Paper Moon” or “A Fine Romance.”

* * *

I was getting antsy in my hardback chair when I saw Kyra edging away from that bunch of fluttery ladies all dabbing their eyes with embroidered handkerchiefs. She made her way toward the buffet table and waved me over. We met in front of the punch bowl. Kyra lined up two heavy cut-glass mugs and ladled them full of pink fizzy liquid, all the while singing, but real soft. I could just make out the words as they floated under the steady din in that room.

Never know how much I love youNever know how much I careWhen you put your arms around meI get a fever that's so hard to bear

 “Fever.”  That was Kyra’s mother’s favorite song. Cocktail hour always ended with “Fever,”  all of us singing along with Peggy Lee at full volume.

Kyra and I belted out the refrain:

You give me fever

Then we clinked our glasses and drained them dry.

 

“Fever,” the song made popular by Peggy Lee in the fifties, was written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell (aka John Davenport) and originally recorded by Little Willie John for his debut album of the same name and first released as a single in 1956. In 1958, Peggy Lee covered the song, changing up the lyrics and the arrangement. Her rendition became a top-ten hit in the United States and her signature song and was subsequently nominated for the first annual Grammy in 1959 for both record and song of the year, competing with Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Ella Fitzgerald, and the winner Domenico Modugno.

The song lyrics are still under copyright  by Fort Knox Music Inc., Trio Music Company, Fort Knox Music Co., Trio Music Company Inc., Trio Music Co., Inc.; the limited excerpts reprinted here are considered fair use by the author and the publisher.

_______________________________

Rhonda Zangwill has long flirted with the literary life, writing, editing, teaching and rabble-rousing for New York Writers Coalition, Read650, PEN Prison Program and The Moth. She now runs writing workshops for the Educational Alliance and Sirovich Senior Center. Her published work is in print journals such as Calyx, Natural Bridge and Hoi Polloi. She reads around town, including at the National Arts Club, the NYC Poetry Festival, NYPL, and thanks to Fahrenheit Open Mic, in some of the East Village’s most charming community gardens.

Austin Alexis | Sunday Evenings

Sunday Evenings

 

Dishes whimpered to be washed.

After that task, she swept the bathroom floor,

then swept the kitchen floor

and swept the needy kitchen floor again.

Most evenings, long boring chores

shoved toward her, even stalked her.

But one night per week

salvation graciously glided down:

the Sunday night opera on the radio,

allowing her to be a duchess for three hours

or an Ethiopian princess,

or a playboy, or a magical flute.

Her hands gracenoted themselves

out of the kitchen sink.

 

She let her husband toss and snore

under a sea of Sunday newspaper.

She let her feral kids play tent in their beds.

Her makeshift living room drapes

evolved into velvet stage curtains.

The perfume of an elegant audience

arose from her dusty carpets.

Everyone keeps a life jacket,

half buried, yet accessible,

and she had hers.

_______________________________

Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, 2014), the winner of 20th annual Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, and two chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada, Lovers and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & Other Poems. His work appears in Barrow Street, The Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Otoliths (Australia), and in several anthologies. He earned Honorable Mention in the 91st Annual Writer’s Digest Competition (Script: Stage Play or TV/Movie, 2022) and Flash Fiction of the Month (May 2020) from Great Weather for MEDIA. Previously, he’s received a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholarship, a Millay Colony for the Arts Residency, and an Allen Ginsberg Award Honorable Mention. Some of his work has been translated into French, Portuguese and Japanese. He lives in Manhattan.
[Photo Credit: Linda Lerner]