Bruce Whitacre | What Is Fire to Me, or, Sailor’s Delight

What Is Fire to Me, or, Sailor’s Delight

 

 

Wood smoke lingers aboard the LA plane

that just flew down a burning West Coast;

New Mexico’s blue skies are veiled in talcum —

these warming sunsets — candescent red.

 

Facing west, we eat at a High Plains café;

the dock probes a receding reservoir’s extended shore;

cottonwood seeds blizzard pink in twilight —

these warming sunsets — simmering red.

 

Bryant Park is sticky with a strange haze;

our tongues salted with the cremated West:

lodgepole pine, mule deer, and mountain lion —

these warming sunsets — radiant red.

 

Coast to coast, the signs rain down from heaven,

launched by scarlet, canyon-scorching flames,

cataclysm of pyrocumulus sky fall —

these warning sunsets — alarming red.

 

 

_____________________________

Bruce E. Whitacre’s recent publications include Hey, I’m Alive; Nine Cloud; Pensive; 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. 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.

Lynne Shapiro | I’ve Read the Room

I’ve Read the Room

 

 

The photo of me in a velvet dress I wore ice skating with my mother at Rockefeller Center when I was small.

 

The little coat in Shindler’s List.

 

The neighbor’s hair (more towards the orange) of which I was jealous.

 

Stella’s 30-year-old, slider turtle “ears.”

 

My favorite pair of readers.

 

One of two loomed Lithuanian bookmarks that grace my writing desk.

 

The two-toned spine of Yi-Fu Tuan’s Passing Strange and Wonderful.

 

The 26 (times two) luminous leaded squares of the Dutch stained-glass doors that lead to our garden.

 

The timid male cardinal (due to his stand-out hue?) and his less timid, subtly colored spouse.

 

Brilliantly backlit, at times, the dot of color that informs us the male downy woodpecker is at the suet.

 

Rooftop peppers that punctuate the winter palette, strewn throughout the garden by squirrels.

 

Kitchen jars filled with smoked and sweet paprika.

 

The ristra I strung from shishitos that changed color at summer’s end.

 

The speckled comb of my mother’s folk art rooster that’s come to our house to stay.

 

 

_____________________________

 

Lynne Shapiro has been a writer-in-residence in England, Morocco, and Spain. An arts educator for many years, she worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art and was once an assistant to Susan Sontag. Lynne’s first chapbook, To Set Right, was published by WordTech Editions (October, 2021). Her book, Gala, is forthcoming from Solitude Hill Press (March, 2022). She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey with her husband and elderly turtle. For more information and upcoming events, please visit her website; www.lynneshapiropoet.com

Carrie Magness Radna | The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line

 

 

You searched for oceans

while we lived in the desert.

The strawberries, now,

freeze-dried in my mouth.

 

The southern tip of the sun

glows beet red.

I saw that abnormality,

on a red-eye flight, alone.

 

Should I leave an apology

after the tone?

Red lipstick stains on coffee cups;

What else did I do wrong?

 

Did we go too far?

All I have left

are a few good pics,

of us, on my phone —

 

All I want is to fall

apart in your arms,

but you rode away

in your red Jaguar.

 

& I never saw

the thin red line,

that breakup line,

until it was too late.

__________________________________

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, In the blue hour (Nirala Publications), was released in February 2021. Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press) was published in December 2019. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.

E. Penniman James | Seeing Red

 

Photo Credit: Matthew Hupert

E Penniman James lives and writes poetry in Brooklyn, New York. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Pluto 1 (Propoetsy, 2022), Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (great weather for Media, 2019), and Lyrics of Mature Hearts (Gordon Bois Publications, 2020), as well as several online publications.

Akshaya Pawaskar | Red Blush

John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), The Awakening of Adonis, Oil on canvas c1900, Private art collection

Red Blush

 

 

The redness spreads over the sky like a blush

calming the frantic nerves of morning into

the warm eventide.

Is it the sailor in my soul, delighting over

this change in light?

Is it love tinting my glasses, warping my vision?

Is it the throbbing pain, attesting I am alive?

Is it the globe with vermilion on its forehead?

Is it the bleeding firmament?

Or is it fear or courage, victory or war?

How we interpret this play of colours,

this many-hued life.

How we weave stories of Adonis and Aphrodite

around roses.

How, then, the art on my wall never is red —

vibrant and arresting.

Perhaps, it was never a colour

meant for the shy,

though in their blush,

a hint of it they cannot deny.

 

 

______________________________

Akshaya Pawaskar is a doctor practicing in India, and poetry is her passion. Her poems have been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Shards, The Blue Nib, North of Oxford, Indian Rumination, Rock and Sling, among many others. She won the Craven Arts Council ekphrastic poetry competition in 2020, placed third in the Poetry Matters Project contest that same year, and placed second in The Blue Nib chapbook contest in 2018. Her debut poetry chapbook, The Falling In and the Falling Out, was published by Alien Buddha in January of 2021. Follow her on Instagram; her IG handle is @akshaya_pawaskar.

Zev Torres | Revelations Beyond Red

Revelations Beyond Red

 

 

“Red isn’t my color,” Nina said, over coffee, early one morning,

Not long after we first met, even though

Every color was her color.

She was — she is — one of those fortunate people who can

Wrap herself in colors and patterns that would clash on anyone else,

In fabrics and textures no one else would dream of combining,

Someone on whom everything comes together in chromatic harmony,

Who brings out the best features in every article of clothing,

Rather than the other way around.

But she won’t wear red —

Or hats, except on the coldest of days.

 

Years after we bought our own apartment

And decided that the time was right to refurbish the kitchen,

Nina, to my amazement, said,

“Let’s do everything in red. Red cabinets, red appliances.

I’ve always dreamed of a red kitchen.”

That sounded fine to me, but …

“You once said red isn’t your color.”

“To wear,” she said, recalling instantly our conversation

Fifteen years earlier.

“But red things, I love. Like

My red Miata, right?”

Of course. Her Miata.

Her soul-red Miata.

The Miata she coveted,

For which, if we ever splurged,

She would learn to drive.

 

Moments before we were to make our first red purchase —

A burgundy stove —

Nina grabbed hold of my wrist, our credit card in my hand.

“What happens,” she said, “if we get tired of our red kitchen?”

And the only red that ended up in our refurbished kitchen of

Stainless steel appliances and beige cabinets were

Porcelain tiles glazed vermilion and emblazoned with white swirls,

Randomly interspersed with blues and yellows, similarly adorned,

To disrupt the otherwise glossy white sea

Comprising the backsplash.

 

Several weeks ago, while leafing through a photo album

From the pre-smart phone era,

We came across a picture of Nina,

Stunning in a crimson dress — the color of joy and mystery,

A garnet pendant on a gold chain around her neck,

Her upper arms partially exposed,

Standing next to me,

At an event, we don’t recall.

After studying the picture, which suggests an elegant affair,

An occasion worth remembering,

Nina frowned,

Touched the image as if to spur her powers of recollection,

And, with a dismissive tilt of her head,

Turned towards the kitchen.

“Red’s not my color,” she said,

As if reaching that conclusion for the first time.

 

Then she poured herself a cup of coffee

From an auburn coffee maker that we happened upon

Only a few weeks earlier,

On a cold and snowy Sunday morning that left on her ears

A trace of frostbite rouge,

During our desperate quest to replace

The generic black, no-frills, eight-cup drip coffee maker

That had died that day, suddenly, after six years,

Filling us with a sense of urgency to act immediately,

To prevent the day, followed by the week, month, and year,

From proceeding without us,

Leaving us destined to forever lag behind the present moment.

 

But, more importantly, to ensure that we are sufficiently caffeinated

For our longstanding weekend ritual,

During which, over breakfast and Café Bustelo,

We share our impassioned assessments of the week gone by,

Issue “if it were up to me” proclamations,

And reveal to each other aspects of ourselves

Not discernible on the visible spectrum.

 
__________________________________

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.

Megha Sood | Crimson Robe

Crimson Robe

 

 

Love is like the crimson robe

flowing in the middle of the desert

unfettered

bathed by the silken moonlight

 

even the shifty-eyed moon is scarred but not love

it floats upon those treacherous dunes

teaches them a lesson or two

about beauty and its frailty

 

those shifting dunes in tandem with the winds

caught up in the illusion of permanence

as they keep up their dance

love pirouettes like a swirling dervish

to the notes of the aubade

sung by the parched lips of her scar-faced lover

watching for the last glance from his love

 

a fleeting touch of the crimson robe

floating and gliding endlessly

in the middle of the night

doused in the love of the silken moon

 

__________________________________

Megha Sood, award-winning poet, editor, and blogger, lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. She is Assistant Poetry Editor for the UK-based feminist zine MookyChick and co-editor of The Kali Project (Indie Blue Publishing, 2021), an anthology of art and poetry by women of Indian heritage. Megha’s publication credits include Adelaide Literary Award Poetry Anthology 2019 (Adelaine Books, 2020), Fallow Ground (Inwood Press, 2020), and She Speaks (Sierra Club Books, 2020), as well as Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic, a digital initiative of Stanford University. She has recently published two collections of her own work: My Body is Not an Apology, her debut poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press (2021), and My Body Lives Like a Threat, a full-length collection from FlowerSong Press (2022). She blogs at Megha’s World on WordPress and tweets as @meghasood16.

Ron Kolm | I Am You as You Are Me

I Am You as You Are Me

 

 

When you said

You wanted to follow me

Everywhere I went

For an entire day

Videotaping

Every movement I made

It should have set off

An alarm somewhere

But I said, “Cool.”

 

Then you wanted

To film me

In my apartment

Doing routine chores

Dressed in your dad’s

Bright red pajamas.

They seemed clean

Enough, so I said,

“Let’s do it.”

 

So it should have come

As no surprise

When you phoned

And threatened my life

For a complicated

Imaginary wrong.

I guess you wanted

To rearrange the original —

Edit me in the flesh.

 

 

______________________________

Ron Kolm is a contributing editor of Sensitive Skin magazine and the author of several books including Swimming in the Shallow End (2020), A Change in the Weather (2017), and Night Shift (2016). His writings also appear in And Then, Feuerstuhl, Local Knowledge, The Opiate, and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder’s Mouth Press). A collection of his papers (some 35 cartons of correspondence, notebooks, objects, chapbooks, signed first editions and runs of literary magazines) was purchased by New York University and is now part of the Fales Library’s permanent archives.