Saturday, July 25, 2020

Diane Stiglich | Yellow

Yellow


I remember a time
when five chrome
yellow sweaters
sat in the closet.

I would never wear them.
I would only buy them.

There were days
I would
open the door and
let the yellow
saturate my eyes,

to lift me
from where I was,
to where I could be.

These days call for
more stringent methods.

I fill the basin
with the coldest water
the pipes will offer,
sink my face in,
open my eyes,
and wait.


______________________________



Diane Stiglich earned her BA from the University of Texas at Dallas and her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Her paintings have been exhibited in numerous shows throughout New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Her debut fiction Have You Seen CindySleigh? was published in 2016 by Poets Wear Prada.  She lives in Hoboken, where she owns the Luna Rosa Home store. Diane negotiates life between the art studio, martial arts classes, the store, the town, and home — and she likes to write about them all. She is currently working on a collection of micro fiction, poems, and other inkings, titled Fragments

Bruce Whitacre | The Ecru Shirt

The Ecru Shirt

 

I never knew anyone else who claimed it,

But Dad insisted it was his favorite color.

When our young family moved into our $25,000

Custom-bilt split-level, the kitchen was yellow-warm.

 

Our motorboat had a goldenrod dual hull.

He could not mount his skis himself,

But he spent entire weekends towing

His sons tandem in his sparkling wake.

 

Having a favorite color is convenient to others,

An easy default for ties, appliances, even for cars,

But it captured as well his warmth and his wit,

His mellowing with age into a crusty outlier.

 

Flipping through his closet the day after,

We chose the parti-colored sport coat;

It matched the well-worn ecru shirt.

And so he went loudly to the grave.

 

 

 

_____________________________



Bruce E. Whitacre
’s work has appeared in Cagibi, The HIV Here and Now Project of Indolent Books, North of Oxford, and World Literature Today. 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.

Friday, July 24, 2020

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko | Childhood

Childhood


Your first drawing is of the sun

You color it round   yellow   bright

like the bouncing ball your father gives you

when you are just three   What delight

you take in both losing and reclaiming it together

as you run far through the leaves with the sky and the wind

Now he thinks you will remember

what it feels like . . . to hold a world in your hands


Your mother’s world is of a different light   She will hold you

in the spell of  her song which will assume different shapes   At first

you will want to carry it with you wherever you go   One day  it will

take you to deep places that move you as she fades quietly

like the melody or the more subtle color you use to paint a dream

 

Your dream is your portal to the world

Drawn through the rainbow of your imagination

it is being colored continually by your perceptions

You will spend most of your childhood in its sphere

Here   you polish the moon and shine the stars

and trace your name on fragile glass   You wonder

where the blue begins and worry about where it ends

 

Most of the time you spend waiting 

waiting for your father to one day return

waiting for your mother to come tuck you in

waiting for loneliness to leave you alone

The terror of the dark   The terror of your song

catching in your throat like a kite in the branches of trees

 

Later   of course   there is the terror of stumbling through

entire sentences

of being lost among strangers so tall

you cannot see their faces   and

of the hand that once firmly held yours . . . slipping away


Much later   of course   there is the terror

of losing most of your crayons


______________________________

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.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

David Dephy | Silent Afternoon

Silent Afternoon

 

 

They say nothing after sex.

 

Silence was yellow in that second.

 

“Silence is gold,” he thought.

 

“Indeed,” she said.

 

“You are reading my thoughts,” he closed his eyes.

 

It was the most mysterious second in their life,

 

when they felt the breath of each other, as their own.

 

“Love always wins,” he said after a century of silence,

 

and she replied: “If not, it won’t be love.”

 

 

 

Georgian American writer David Dephy is the recipient of a 2019 Spillwords Press Poetry Award and a finalist for the 2019 Adelaide Literary Awards in the category of Best Poem. He’s been called “A Literature Luminary” by Bowery Poetry, New York, and “The Incomparable Poet” by STAT®REC. A prolific writer of essays, fiction, and poetry, the author of over thirty books, including ten novels, his work appears widely and has been published in translation and internationally. Eastern Star, a full-length collection of poems, in English, is due out this fall from Adelaide Books. Dephy was born Tbilisi, Georgia, and lives in New York.

Monday, July 20, 2020

Tantra Zawadi | Thirteen Yellow Haiku

Yellow Haiku


1.
Honeys, you look good
Brown and full in the middle
Sunflower faces

2.
Yellow taffeta
Dancing ’round and ’round
Twirling in its breadth

3.
Golden light through slat
Welcomes a new day!  I pray
For peace in this one . . .

4.
Buzzing ’round my bed
Because he thinks I’m honey — 
I’m just a stinger

5.
A promise of love
Naturally magical
Canary haiku

6.
When you look at me
The sun sings a vibrant tune
So hot, yet so cool

7.
Fresh corn on the cob
You, me, and hot barbecue
Lying on the grass

8.
Lemony sunrise
Streaming through my window pane
First hint of morning

9.
Gold on my finger
Spinning together with you
I do and I am

10.
Buttery patter
A song for my beating heart
I love you right there

11.
Turmeric and spice
Swirling in my deepest pot
I need this season

12.
Grits, cooked down gently
Salted, buttered, and well loved
Mom in the morning

13.
Graduation day
We were beautiful chaos
Giggling in straw hats

______________________________



   
Tantra-zawadi
, Brooklyn-born performance poet and international recording artist, is a 2020 Brooklyn Arts Fund grantee!
She is the author of three books of poetry, alifepoeminprogress (Chuma Spirit Books), Gathered at Her Sky, and Bubbles: One Conscious Breath (Poets Wear Prada). A passionate educator and instigator, she has collaborated with The Senegal-America Project, Betti Makoni’s Girl Child Network Worldwide, and Black Art in America. 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/.

Amy Barone | Yellow

Yellow


The day after fashion designer Gianni Versace

was found murdered in Miami,

 

I rushed to the thrift shop on Milan’s Via Cavour

to retrieve the bright yellow cashmere jacket

 

I had consigned. I wanted to keep a memento

of Versace’s talent, of my fleeting fling with fashion.

 

Today when I wear that jacket on the streets

of Manhattan, people wave and yell out.

 

It makes them smile.

 



Reprinted with author's permission from We Became Summer (NYQ Books)


______________________________


Amy Barone’s latest poetry collection, We Became Summer (New York Quarterly Books), was released in 2018. She has also published two chapbooks, Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing), and is an active member of  both PEN America and the Brevitas forum for short poetry.  Her poetry appears in Paterson Literary Review, Philadelphia Poets, Sensitive Skin, and Standpoint (UK), among other publications. Haling from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she now hangs her yellow Versace jacket in New York City.

Moe Seager | Orchid

Orchid


Sun
Day
Morning
Dew
Point
Drips
Dream
A
Wake
Egg
World
Weightless
White
Yellow
Yoke

Chestnut
Arbe
Black
Bird
Glide
Wind
Gentle
Violet
Orchid
Perfume
Petal
Breath
Flows
Hidden
River
Ocean
Deep

Ear
Nothing
Eye
Mystery
Golden
Grace
Mind
At
Peace
Heart
Happy
Over
All


__________________________________


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).

Thursday, July 2, 2020

John Swain | On the River Loing


On the River Loing


The sky loops over a rose bower,
your arms fall through rivers,
a clear rush of sun
on the tall ferns, between the plane trees,
you swim with me
in the bright poppy water.

Light lets the flowers trail your streamline,
the river moves
through the ancient bridge,
the sky of celandine springs,
the sky of yellow cherries ripe,
light taste in the white grape skins.

You turn with the river lit with sun,
your aura of leaves, aura of lamps
lights the trees on the sandbank gently blazing.


__________________________________


John Swain lives in Kentucky and in France.  His most recent chapbook, On the Roof Terrace, was published as a bilingual edition with French translations by Gaëlle Richard and Daphné Brottet.