Carrie Magness Radna | Red (A Ghazal)

Red (A Ghazal)

 

 

A smear of lipstick glazes your favorite coffee cup —  Passion Red.

 I’ve not been a coffee drinker, until recently, 

when I  started wearing makeup again, after your last yahrzeit — and red.

Passion was one of your favorite colors, but you hated the stain it left on your face.

Things keep changing since you’ve gone. I don’t sleep anymore. I gobble up red

meat, every meal. I wear leather, velvet & lace — chains by the bed.

I speak out. I shout. Your girl has grown up. I remember you with fresh red

roses every Wednesday — Daddy would surprise you, after work.

When will I feel okay again? Will I find the answers to life, traveling? I miss the red

clay of Oklahoma, where you once told me you would never leave. Momma, what a liar you are!

 

 

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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, In the blue hour (Nirala Publications), was released in February 2021. Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press) was published in December 2019. Her fifth volume of poetry, Shooting myself in the dark (Cajun Mutt Press), will be published in early 2023. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.

Roxanne Hoffman | For Sean

For Sean

I wait for my love to return to me
under the cool shade of the sycamores
bouncing our three-year old upon my knee
I wait for my love to return to me

We tie a yellow ribbon ’round each tree
He plays soldier while I tend to my chores
Veiled in Stars and Stripes you return to me
under the cool shade of the sycamores.


Capt. Sean E. Lyerly, 31, of Pflugerville, Texas, was assigned to the Texas Army National Guard’s 36th Combat Aviation Brigade, 36th Infantry Division. He was piloting the Black Hawk when it went down, on January 24th, 2007, killing a dozen service members. Lyerly entered the Guard as a private in 1996 and was deployed to Iraq in August after being called to active duty. He is survived by his parents, his wife and their 3-year-old son. In a Guard statement, Lyerly’s wife said, “He exceeded even my dreams. He was loving, compassionate and full of integrity — a beautiful man inside and out.”

— Stars and Stripes, January 26, 2007 

Originally published in The Brownstone Poets, 2008.


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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” was released as a chapbook, with illustrations by Edward Odwitt, in 2011. Their second collaboration, The Little Entomologist, appeared in 2018. 

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.