John J. Trause | Yellow

Yellow                                  Yellow Orange Red Green

San Antonio, as one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, was also experiencing a high rate of homelessness, crime, and depravity, belying the tranquility and ostentation of the tourist trade along the River Walk, a clear separation between the haves and have-nots in close proximity, the former ignoring the latter and the latter trying to gain the attention of the former. What might be lurking in the umber shadows under the bridges along the river or even below the surface of the ochre-stained water moving almost imperceptibly as if stagnant? Was that a whiff of urine wafting from that alley? Is that puddle residual river water or yellow piss staining the walkway? It was from this buzzing yellow miasma along the River Walk that my sister, my three-year-old nephew, and I strolled the short walk to St. Mary’s Church, a block or two away. As we approached the façade of the church, we thought we saw, there, sprawling on the steps, a seeming mass of tentacles and fetid sea flesh bellowing out at no one in particular, a red-haired Scylla of the sanctuary, ready to snatch us from our footing. On coming closer we saw that this bedraggled creature might be a seemingly destitute woman, fleshy, plump, and with brightly but poorly dyed red hair. She had been calling out and gesturing to us from a distance while combing her greasy, colored coif. Does she want money? Does she want help? Does she just want attention? What does she want? Getting closer, I realized that she, knowing that we were headed to the entrance of the church, was trying to get my attention and not that of my sister and nephew: “Mister, mister, your fly is open.”

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John J. Trause, Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of six books of poetry, including Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017) and Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014), and one of parody, Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway. His translations, poetry, prose, and artwork appear internationally in many journals and anthologies. Marymark Press has published Trause’s visual poetry and art as broadsides. He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, New Jersey, and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.

John J. Trause | Green

Green                                  Green Yellow Orange Red

It was in ordinary time on an ordinary Sunday in San Antonio, a city more green and lush and beautiful than Venice, without the threat of flood in over 85 years, when fresh from our hotel on the River Walk lined with overhanging trees and decorative verdant vines, that my sister, my three-year-old nephew, and I strolled the short walk to St. Mary’s Church, a block or two away. I marveled, all weekend, how the San Antonio River seemed so clear and clean, not murky and flood-prone as the lagoons of Venice are known to be, and how even the air on this bright, aqua-blue Sunday testified to a mix of urban bustle and natural voluptuousness in ecologically sound measure. Trees flourished green and glorious along the streets as well. La Serenissima should have been green with envy. As we approached the façade of the church, there lounging on the steps, a seemingly homeless woman, fleshy, plump, and with brightly, but poorly dyed red hair, Clairol Ketchup Splash or L’Oréal Salsa Picante, was calling out and gesturing to us from a distance while combing her greasy, colored coif.  Getting closer, I realized that she, knowing that we were heading to the entrance of the church, was trying to get my attention and not that of my sister or nephew: “Mister, mister, your fly is open.”

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John J. Trause, Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of six books of poetry, including Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017) and Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014),  and one of parody, Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway. His translations, poetry, prose, and artwork appear internationally in many journals and anthologies. Marymark Press has published Trause’s visual poetry and art as broadsides. He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, New Jersey, and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.

Iris N. Schwartz | Tyro

Tyro

It is green. It is cold. Its taut muscles push against lethargy and fear.  Its belly is teased by the chill of earth, damp then dry, sometimes smooth, often gritty, now both. 

With its eyes, its hazel-and-gold lizard eyes, it looks down, around; slowly lifts its head. It is naked. It is fresh like grass. It is cool as garter snake. 

Oh god, what bet did it lose? 

It is quiet; it is alert, this stealth reptile, superhero to all close to the ground. 

It tries to herd flies, dogs, roaches away from its nonbreathing owner, but it is only one lizard. It is green, it lacks experience (though it told the pet store proprietor it had lived with humans before).

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Iris N. Schwartz is the author of more than sixty works of fiction. Her  flashes have been published in dozens of publications, including Blink-Ink, Crack the Spine, Fictive Dream, Jellyfish Review, Literary Orphans, and Spelk Her second short-short story collection, Shame (Poets Wear Prada, 2019), contains the 2018 Best Microfiction-nominated story “Dogs” and was shortlisted by North of Oxford for recommended summertime reading in 2019. Brisket for One, her latest collection of short fiction, is coming out this fall, in 2020. Ms. Schwartz lives in Washington Heights, New York City, with actor David B. McConeghey.

Joe-Anne McLaughlin | Pollen (in Prada)

Pollen (in Prada)

See how the green grains
secret themselves into gray
sheaths when it rains —
as languorously as verdigris
seeds bronze. And we can breathe.
We can breathe,
at least, until they strip,
refreshed and lusting again
for hot-green sex, and we
sneeze. God bless spring!

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Joe-Anne McLaughlin has an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University. She has taught at Syracuse and Stockton College in New Jersey. Her books include The Banshee Diaries, published in 1998 by Exile Editions, Ltd., in Toronto, Canada; Black Irish Blues, published by Brooding Heron Press in 2000; and Jam, published by BOA Editions, Ltd., in 2001. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, and The Southern Poetry Review. She currently resides in Munnsville, New York, where she lived with her husband Hayden Carruth, who died in September 2008.

Anne Barbusse | La belle verte

La belle verte

à Coline Serreau

explications aventurées sur printemps dernier-né : du cinéma
esquissé, du réel exaltant/exalté,
pluie de mai sur arche de roses, pétales éclatés et permis sur
le jardin plus vert que nos consciences éparses – l’utopie de Coline Serreau
gifle le monde en toute indifférence – l’herbe
n’est que l’image dévoyée d’une tendresse possible et
les arbres ont des mots d’arbres, effeuillés et extravagants –
menthe contre sauge, vert tilleul versus vert amande au bout de ce qu’il reste
de terre, au jardin d’où de toute éternité nous
sommes chassés tels des malpropres – les coupes de chênes
arasent la colline tandis que l’olivier
offre la résistance antique de la Méditerranée reine et
franchit des silences et des siècles –
La belle verte n’est qu’une comédie facile, de celles
que le public boude, et redécouvre plus tard quand l’apocalypse
moderne réunit les mondes face aux puys volcaniques en habits d’autrefois, mais
le jardin n’est pas un fable, il se déploie
dans le réel menthe ou amande, il ouvre
l’espace d’un flux de feuilles et d’eaux, il arpente
l’inconscience des arbres et dans le film on a jeté les objets
du consumérisme à la rue, Paris est
un périphérique gris et on a jugé les industriels
pour génocide, on a déparlé les sixties et déconstruit
le mythe capitaliste des adultes effrayants, « chaos pré-renaissance »
sur « concert de silence » – alors l’avant-monde s’installe
les utopies sont l’avenir sursignifié de l’homme exigeant
et du cinéma surgissent les acrobates-danseurs verdoyants des collines, dans
un panoramique encerclant chancelant, travelling ondoyant
sur la planète verte et franche – ère pré/post-industrielle, cornes
d’abondance de grappes et pommes, effort du jardin-monde à naître, encore.

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Anne Barbusse est née en 1969 à Clermont-Ferrand (France). Après des études de lettres à Paris, elle s’installe dans un petit village du sud de la France, pour vivre plus en accord avec ses convictions écologiques. Elle enseigne le français langue étrangère aux adolescents migrants, et traduit de la poésie grecque moderne. Publications dans les revues Arpa, et récemment Sitaudis (extrait de A Petros, crise grecque) et Le capital des mots (Hôpital psychiatrique, extraits). Publications à venir dans Comme en poésie, Recours au poème, Terre à ciel, Nouveaux délits.

Moe Seager | Bird talk

Bird talk

4 a.m. paris
Jazz meditation ebbing the silent pool of nocturne.
Then to greet the dawn
As it leaks through the window
A gentle wash of light.
A walk along barely stirring streets
Green leaf dew drop
Bird talk
Tomorrow another day

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Moe Seager, poet, vocalist (jazz & blues), and recording artist with two jazz-poetry CDs, sings his poems in Paris, New York, and elsewhere. Seager is the founder and host of the Paris-based Angora Poets World Caffé, organizer of 100TPC (100 Thousand Poets for Change) festival in  Paris, and one of the coordinators for La Fédération des Poètes. Internationally published (USA, UK, France, and Egypt), his nine books of  poetry include the most recent: Moe Seager (International Peace and Art Center, 2020) and I Want to Make to Jazz to You (Onslaught Press, 2016), and two in translation: One World (Cairo Press, 2004) in Arabic and We Want Everything (Le Temps des Cerises, Paris, 1994) in French. The French Ministry of Culture released his debut collection Dream Bearers in 1990. Seager has won a Golden Quill Award (USA) for investigative journalism (1989) and received an International Human Rights award from University of Pittsburgh - Zepp Foundation (1990).

Evie Ivy | Delivering Green

Delivering Green

No monster chase,
green fills me with breath,
the color of okay to move.

They say in another planet
there might be black grass,
but here we walk on green,
the color of new.

Some will say they don’t look
good in green.
But there are different shades,
wrap yourself in summer.

Green, the color of everywhere,
and of a million smiles.
The verdant truths I love.

I get the most breath,
walking on green,
the color of now.

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Evie Ivy hosts The Green Pavilion Poetry Event, one of the New York’s longest running literary series, at the Green Pavilion Restaurant in Brooklyn. She is the author of four poetry collections, including her latest, The Platinum Moon, from Dark Light Publishing, which features her illustrations. You can read three of her poems in the current issue (#7) of Home Planet News Online. A dancer by profession, she continues to teach dance and often performs with students in her productions of Dance of the Word, a popular dance and poetry event.
. 

Yuyutsu Sharma | Rain

Rain

The rain comes

in silence

thought of her arrival

in a parrot-green glade

(her) thigh-thick cataract

tumbling down

her nimble rose-feet

coming

over mossy

green rocks

jingling

to smash

my tiny heart    

the drip    the drip

behind lush

green hill ranges

Can’t you hear it?

The shrub-ridden goats

rushing back home

the cows lowing after

and the crone,

the fragile-lunged

spirit of the hills,

following

lashing the cattle

with a green twig

in a wild hurry

but lagging behind

a cloud’s shadow

on stone-strewn hill path.

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Recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, and The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, among others, Yuyutsu Ram Dass Sharma is a distinguished poet and translator. He edits Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing and contributes literary columns to Nepal’s leading daily, The Himalayan Times. Nine poetry collections have been published including his most recent A Blizzard in My Bones: New York Poems and Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, both from Nirala Publications, New Delhi, India. Frequently invited to read, lecture, and lead creative writing workshops by various universities in North America and Europe, he travels half the year. At home in Nepal, he enjoys trekking in the Himalayas.

Dorothy Friedman August | The Absence of Green

The Absence of Green

In the Land of Green, leprechauns
are Scotch-taped to the weather.
All the poems are green.

Rabbis wear chartreuse yarmulkes.
Queens walk about in green slippers.
Wicked witches jostle for limes.

Florists deliver Brussels sprouts.
Alligators snag the spruce.
Theaters show The Green Slime.
Prostitutes strut by in bordellos wearing
green parrots on their shoulders.

Back on earth we continue to search
for olive-eyed lovers in the leafy bushes.
Instead of searching for romaine and dill
we tuck the green dragons into their bays
while drilling in our green berets.

Custody of green goes
                  to a man dribbling mescaline.

Eventually we no longer remember green.
And whine at the first bloom of spinach.


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Dorothy Friedman August is a widely published award-winning poet. Books include The Liberty Years and Family Album. Forthcoming are The L-Shaped Room and Drinking Alaska.  Other publication credits include the The Partisan Review, The California Quarterly, Many Mountains Moving, Recluse, Hanging Loose, Ikon, Like Light, and Sensitive Skin. Colette Inez has  commented on her skillful use of imagery and metaphor, and D. H. Melhem calls her “a necessary poet.” 

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko | Green

Green

were the days of my unripened youth —
the years I spent in envious pursuit   
of happiness
Green  Green
the color of spring
a call to life 
the joy that would sing
in my heart
when you    sprang to mind

Green
were the promises    I made
the fibs the stories    you forgave
the imagined forests   in which we got lost 
the flowerbeds    we rolled and tossed in
the branches    that set us apart

Green
were the fields   the valleys
of highs and lows —
blanket of comfort 
blanket of sorrow 
How deep was my grave 
once you were gone —
this young heart breaking
with each new dawn

Green
the scent   of memories that linger
that climb like vines 
that grow like fingers
Leaves that whisper to the wind —
the moon growing pale
the moon growing thin

Time . . . time . . . time . . . letting go


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A former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko is widely published. Her work appears, among other publications, in XXI Century World Literature (she represents France) and Maintenant: Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is Writer/Poet in Residence for SpokenWord Paris. Her collected poems On the Way to Invisible is forthcoming, Spring of 2021.

George Held | Spring Haiku

Spring Haiku

Two young deer traipse
across my yard, dipping mouths
to graze green shoots


Green grows the grass
in the Bois de Boulogne —
here comes the sun


Sere grass bending
in the morning wind —
sap stirs the maples


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George Held has published four children’s books with Filsinger & Company, Ltd. and over a dozen poetry titles with various small presses. His most recent book, Second Sight: Poems, was released by Poets Wear Prada in 2019. A collection of stories titled Lucky Boy is due out in 2020. Believing that smaller is better in poetry, he writes a lot of haiku. He wears his trousers rolled in Sag Harbor, NY.

Roxanne Hoffman | Choosing

Choosing

for Brant

a random stone sits upon the dresser:
green slate culled from walks along the river,
its striated shades as varied as the sea —
fern from forest, olive drab of army,

new buds sprouting sunshine among the trees —
this silent charm once sang me sweetest psalm
now locks down papers from a window’s breeze,
warmed by your touch it served as healing balm

quieting my ache when placed on bruising knee
encircled by slim fingers that once blessed me.
its mood has changed, its master shaman gone,
from vibrant voice to murky and withdrawn

and yet, I cherish its dirgeless wordless mourn
admire its resignation to a blind god’s scorn

Sliver of Stone, Inaugural Edition, 2010

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Roxanne Hoffman runs the small literary press Poets Wear Prada with Jack Cooper. Her words can be found in cyberspace (IndieFeed: Performance Poetry, Pedestal Magazine, New Verse News); set to music (David Morneau’s Love Songs); on the silver screen (2005 indie flick Love and the Vampire); in print (The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates, Soft Skull Press; It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure, Harper Perennial). Her elegiac poem “In Loving Memory,” illustrated by Edward Odwitt, was released as a chapbook in 2011. Their second collaboration, The Little Entomologist, appeared in 2018.

Karen Neuberg | Green

Green

After Jasper John’s Green Target

1955, Encaustic on newspaper and cloth over canvas, 60 x 60 inches, MoMA, New York; https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78401

Green hears me singing the blues and intervenes. She follows me into my dreams posing as curtain, as cycle, as movie star. She offers a bottle of herself, mint julep. Smitten, I am, and swamp haze. Until I come upon my fear of the snake in her. Of the lizard tail she can release and leave dangling in my grasp. Spiraling her concentric swirls around my wrist, I cogitate heartbeat and conception. In retrospect, she remains forever at my childhood side; protean, pliable, and perfectly plausible. When I break away to pursue my other love — blue — she reminds me I can simply add the yolk of sun to summon her return. Now if I can learn to omit fear from my life, I’ll be young again, full of bull’s-eye & whirligig.

Originally published in Tinderbox Literary Journal, appears in Karen’s poetry book PURSUIT (Kelsay Press, 2019).

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Karen Neuberg is a Brooklyn-based poet. Her latest book is Pursuit (Kelsay Press, 2019). She is also the author of the chapbooks the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre, 2017), Myself Taking Stage (Finishing Line, 2014), and Detailed Still (Poets Wear Prada, 2009). She is associate editor of the online poetry journal, First Literary Review-East. Her poems and collages can be found in numerous publications including 805, Canary, New Verse News, and Verse Daily.

Prince A. McNally | Pre-K

Pre-K

It was fall

in Brooklyn,

when the beautiful

weather of September

and I were strolling

beneath low-hanging trees,

walking hand-in-hand,

with the Autumn breeze. 

I closed my eyes

to breathe,

slowly inhaling

the intoxicating

laughter

of little children,

joyfully skipping

as they happily

headed off to  

their first day

of  Pre-K,

Taking baby steps

towards their futures

like little birdies,

so eager to fly away

with their precious

little dreams. 

Watching them leave

their mother's nest

for the very first time,

I couldn't help

but smile inside

as their precious

little wings

fluttered nervously

beneath

their clothing. 

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Prince A. McNally is a Brooklyn-born poet, writer, philosopher, activist, and spoken word artist. His work focuses primarily on the human condition and social injustice. A rising voice on the NYC poetry scene, Prince has been featured at Otto's Shrunken Head for Show Do Tell, KGB Red Room for the NeuroNautic Institute, The Parkside Lounge for Great Weather for Media, and Lady Stardust for Rick Eckerle, among other venues. His poems have appeared in TUCK Magazine, The Blue Mountain Review, Leaves of Ink, Creative Talents Unleashed (Featured Writer), and in the anthologies Fire and Ice: An Anthology of Collaborations, The World Poets Open Mic: 2016 Anthology, BEAT-itude: National Beat Poetry Festival 10 Year Anthology, and We Are BEAT: National Beat Poetry Foundation Anthology. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.

Zev Torres | Rebirth for Two

Rebirth for Two

Dressed myself in mismatched greens,

Sage trousers, emerald shirt, hunter jacket,

Not by design, not to make a statement,

But because the room was dark.

Didn’t want to disturb you

With the harsh light.

Could not have chosen more appropriate attire

For a starlit stroll along the banks of the rejuvenating sea

While considering the likelihood 

Of our own nascent renewal. 

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Zev Torres is a writer and spoken word performer whose work has appeared in numerous print and online publications including Breadcrumbs, The Athena Review, Great Weather for Media’s Suitcase of Chrysanthemums and I Let Go of the Stars in my Hand, Three Rooms Press’s Maintenant 6 and Maintenant 12, and the Brownstone Poets Anthologies (2010-2020). Since 2008, Zev has hosted Make Music New York's annual Spoken Word Extravaganza.

Bruce Whitacre | Vert. Verlaine. Vérité.

Vert. Verlaine. Vérité.

A toast to an era corked in a verdant bottle
The chemical the geniuses lacked
The elixir that rescued us from the century that believed
Science could eventually grind a lens
To see and fix us all
The solution that fueled those card-ripping anarchists
Hallucinators, fornicators, foul-mouthed shooters of lovers
Hairy rebels all, those sacred monsters of the so-called Belle Époque,
Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Manet, Verlaine,
Especially Verlaine, who made language dance, swoon, pant, rut
Under the clair de lune.

There he sits in his corner at the Café François, our Verlaine.
His woolly head swirls in the smoky mirror.
His failing liver is cushioned against the upholstered bench.
The glass, the water, the cube of sugar,
The bottle of the bitter muse herself
La mère absinthe
Dribbles over the sweet.
Savor the wormwood incitement.
Let him swoon and recline
As chemistry launches the journey that never ended,
Free of nuts and bolts, steam engines, hygiene,
Unplugged. Staked to tribal rites,
Probing the thighs of the verdigris goddess.

Vert. Verlaine. Vérité.

He scribbles the treasures retrieved, the future revealed:
Our green genie rubbed from a bottle in a Paris boîte, our “now”.
We still scavenge the jade dregs of those glasses
For the ghosts of the dreams snatched from the machine
That echo still in the downing.

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Bruce E. Whitacre's work has appeared in Cagibi, The HIV Here and Now Project of Indolent Books, and North of Oxford. 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 completed master workshops with Jericho Brown, Alex Dimitrov, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Mark Wunderlich. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and is an activist and advocate for the arts and social justice. He lives in Forest Hills, Queens.

Tantra Zawadi | Green Is My Favorite Color

Central Park

A blanket of green
Surrounded by black asphalt
Embracing the light

Everybody’s Money

From hand to purse
Dollar bills move in the night
Green no matter what

Queen

Her aura lengthens
Green stems bend and swerve to see
A Queen in their midst

Leaves

I don’t want to move
Lord knows I don’t want to stay
Collard greens and you

Grand Exit

He left at sunrise
Rocking his worn out green cap
His loyalty rides

The Path

Heavy and layered
The weight of your past presents
Miles of greens to cross

Sunday Best

My favorite coat
Homemade lime green swing knee length
From my mother’s hands

Stirring

So I made them soup
Filled with green split peas and beans
Stirred with mother’s love

Silent Green

Looking from the sky
Stretches of green stun my eyes
And nobody knows

Grandson’s Hands

He reached for a twig
Used it to cut grandma’s greens
Strong like her cooking

My Garden

My sweet green garden
Perfumes the air with color
They speak in real life

Reveal

Back when I was young
I made some green promises
Most I truly meant

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Tantra-zawadi, Brooklyn born, international performance poet, is the author of three books of poetry, alifepoeminprogress (Chuma Spirit Books), Gathered at Her Sky and Bubbles: One Conscious Breath (Poets Wear Prada). She is a passionate educator, recording artist, and instigator with The Senegal-America Project, and a 2020 Brooklyn Arts Fund grantee! To learn more, or to hear her latest house music releases, please visit https://www.traxsource.com/artist/29323/tantra-zawadi or http://tantrazawadi.com/.

Daniela Gioseffi | Green

Green

After Federico Garcia Lorca

Green, I love you, green.
Green branches, green sea.
How I desire you, green
grasses of spring waving in wind.
Green mountains aglow.
Green shade beneath green trees,
where I dream in green gardens,
wearing my green coat,
green dress, green gloves,
green eyes. Oh, how I love you,
green, how I desire you, green.

Beneath the green moon,
I dream in green,
green that photosynthesizes
in the poetry of food,
that makes life livable
on green, blue, and brown Earth.
Green, how I love you, green!
Wind fondles green leaves,
rustling to the music of breezes,
in green forests breathing
with the green lungs of all that lives.

Green forests raining oxygen
as I dream, a green fish,
swimming in green water,
green air
sunlit.

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Daniela Gioseffi is an American Book Award winner, the author of  seventeen books, and Editor-in-Chief for Eco-Poetry.org. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, Rain Taxi Review, Chelsea Review, MS., and various anthologies, e.g. Stories of the American Experience (Oxford U. Press).  The first of her six books of poetry, Eggs in the Lake (BOA Editions, 1979) was published with a New York State Council for the Arts grant. Her latest are Waging Beauty (Poets Wear Prada, 2017) and Blood Autumn (VIA Folios, 2007), a winner of the John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.

Rufo Quintavalle | The Forest

The Forest

Out in the forest
I opened my heart;
all I had ever done
was there
and I looked on it
and felt no shame:

the profit and loss,
my crooked belonging,
the time my people
came for rubber,
the time we dug
the earth
for salts.

There in the forest
I opened my heart,
it was silent
and I laid it
like a rat
in wet leaves.

Where is Abdennour,
servant of light?
Where is the Christ-like
Lucifer?

Here in the darkness
the earth
smells sweet;

I will stay
in this kingdom
of water
forever.

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Rufo Quintavalle was born in London, studied at Oxford and the University of Iowa, and lives in Paris. He is the author of nine books of poetry. His latest collection, Shelf, will be published later in 2020 by Sagging Meniscus Press, New Jersey. He used to run the reading series Poets Live, and for several years, taught creative writing at NYU Paris. He is co-creator and lead actor in an innovative film and poetry project called Coldhearts: A Poetical, shot in Paris last year, for release this summer 2020.

Austin Alexis | Accident?

Accident?

In a compact field, green as Ireland,
a small plane stuttered and crashed.
Like expected mail that never arrives,
two anticipated people perished
in crackling, unpredictable flames.
A dog, the only survivor,
yelped, barked, limped away,
its continued life a message
no rescue team could decode.

_______________________________________________

Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, Madgett Poetry Award, 2014) and two previously published chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada. Recent flash fiction, poetry, reviews, and plays have appeared in Home Planet News Online, Unstamatic, The Avocet, Point of View, and Long Island Sounds (an anthology). He has work forthcoming in Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing. He served recently as a panelist for the Bronx Council on the Arts. He lives in Manhattan.

Charles Pierre | Green Vistas

Green Vistas

I walk the hard and darkened streets
of Manhattan as winter thaws,
where steel and concrete choke the earth,
where nature can't unfold or flow.

Gaudy neon and bits of glass
sparkling in asphalt swell the night
with portents of spring that lead me
to a park on the river's edge.

My left hand flies from its pocket
to test the air. The air says, Write,
until trees are flaming with leaves,
until waves are emerald fire.

Title poem of Green Vistas (Halyard Press), first published in 1981 and reprinted in 2009.

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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.

Madeline Artenberg | The Blind Man and Poet

The Blind Man and Poet

He’d never seen a woman.
Sight is one color in her palette.
The way she says his name
sounds like seersucker,
terry cloth, old blues.

They question what is green,
verde, vert.
“It’s cucumber,” she says.
“Envy’s green,” he says.

He removes her fine silk blouse.
She closes her eyes.
When he slides fingers down
her silky arm, each inch
announces itself. He traces
the rest of her outline, hangs it
on his mind.

Their breathing’s bumpy now.
They empty, smell
like cucumbers, like
new beginnings.

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Madeline Artenberg’s poetry appears in many publications, including Absinthe Literary Review and Rattle.  In 2020, two of her poems were included in the world-wide anthology The Poet: War & Battle.

Geer Austin | Beige Black Green

Beige Black Green

Sometimes I think about the beach,

how the sand with its soothing

bland color and soft texture

flows up from blue and warm water.

Nighttime lets light into black.

I had a black dream.

Black film without any white.

The memory of childhood summers

is green — meadows and lawns

and those endless rows of privet

clipped flat like an empty tabletop.


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Geer Austin’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Poet Lore, Manhattanville Review, Big Bridge, Plenitude, BlazeVOX, Boog City, and others. His short story, “Stuart Livingston Hill,” is a recent episode of the podcast A Story Most Queer. He has served as a judge in the PEN America Prison Writing Awards and the Bisexual Book Awards. He is the author of Cloverleaf, a poetry chapbook (Poets Wear Prada). He lives in New York City.

Thomas Fucaloro | One More Left

One More Left

The garlic-stuffed olive

sighs hellfire

as the jar holds

the ocean

marinating.

The garlicky-green ocean

reminds me of old fish-

tanks I never took care of.   

To float

without

a care

to become

skeleton

in a body

of ocean.

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The winner of a performance grant from the Staten Island Council of the Arts and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Thomas Fucaloro has been on six national slam teams. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the New School and is a co-founding editor of Great Weather for Media and NYSAI press. He is an adjunct professor at Wagner College and BMCC, where he teaches world lit and advanced creative writing.

Mireya Perez | Cordillera Oriental

         Cordillera Oriental

              Verdigris  lianas  spruce
             
              moss  olive  emerald

              willow  laurel  teal  eucalyptus
             
              lime  pine  grass  clovers  palms

              helechos  peacock  mint
           
              parrot  lettuce  cabbage  capers
       
                     sage   cypress
             
                               not

              vermillion   ochre   terra-cotta   sienna

                        my  Andes

 
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Mireya Perez-Bustillo, born in Colombia, raised in the Big Apple, writes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in English and Spanish. Among her publications are La picara y la dama (editions Universal), Casos en la comunidad (Houghton Mifflin), and The Female Body (Greenwood Press). Associate Professor Emerita at The College of New Rochelle and Coordinator of the IRP Program at the New School, she has a Ph.D in Spanish Literature. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. BACK to EL DORADO (Floricanto Press, 2020) is her debut novel.                                                        

Jack Cooper | While We May

While We May

A fecundity of seed drifts

On the breeze and greenth wakens,

Thickening the tongue and in the eye —

Drunkenness to look on . . . 

All enrapt in a cool spell;

Shivering under a slight stole of rain.

Coin, flitted, of the elm, frittered —

Literally, fluttering butterily — away.

Glows grass (and grows) with her near-glad strength:

Proserpine’s lengthening sad,

Mad turn from afar: Did she not? Come back?

Neither of us lived nor should we ever have loved.



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John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper is the creator of These Are Aphorithms (http://aphorithms.blogspot.com), author of Ten (Poets Wear Prada, 2012), Ten … More (Poets Wear Prada, 2016), and translator of Wax Women, with French texts of the original poems by Jean-Pierre Lemesle (International Art Office: Paris, 1985). His work has appeared widely, in print and online, most recently in The Opiate, Rat’s Ass Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, and Paris Lit Up 7. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he is editor and co-publisher of Poets Wear Prada, a small press based in Hoboken, New Jersey. He lives in Paris.

Carrie Magness Radna | Green = Blue + Yellow

Green = Blue + Yellow

If eyes are the windows of the soul,
I saw a little of yours; you dared me to —

In a non-staring contest,
I noticed another universe:

The left eye contained a legend of shimmering electricity.
Its pupil housed a well where elder stars fell,
germinating new ones gathering at the rims
of the cosmic jade sea.

In the right eye,
the constellations wrapped around two planets,
joined at the hips: one blue, another yellow,

and they were constantly humming,
in perfect synchrony, under glass,
blending into a true green.




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Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at New York Public Library, a choral singer and a poet who loves traveling. Her poems have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Mediterranean Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetry Super Highway, Walt’s Corner, Polarity eMagazine, The Poetic Bond and First Literary Review-East. Her latest poetry collection, Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press), was published in December 2019. In the blue hour (Nirala Publications) is expected to be released early 2021. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.

Patricia Carragon | Shades of Green

(for Evie Ivy)

shades of green

            in the sunlight

                        my tree knows Lorca



Urban Haiku and More (Fierce Grace Press, 2010)



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spring speaks green

           the buds on trees

                       the blades of grass



Bear Creek Haiku Blogspot, Tuesday, March 31, 2020



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young trees

stretch green fingers

toward sun


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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, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press. Patricia hosts the  Brownstone Poets reading in Brooklyn and publishes an associated anthology annually. She is also an executive editor for Home Planet News Online.