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.

 

__________________________________

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.

 

_____________________________

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.

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]

Talena Lachelle Queen | Vin Rouge

Vin Rouge

 

 

Je parle vin

Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot

as long as it is red

Zinfandel, Syrah, Shiraz

with meals or alone

wine is the secret dream of the grape

none want to wither on the vine or jelly.

The grape wants to be loved

Malbec, and Pinot Noir,

Desire to be held on the palate for a while

They like the swish of the tongue

and flutter of the eyes

Just before swallowing.

le vin c'est la vie

 

 

__________________________________

In addition to being Poet Laureate of Paterson, New Jersey, since 2018, Talena Lachelle Queen is founder and executive director of the Paterson Poetry Festival, now in its fifth year. She is also founder and president of Word Seed, Inc. a team of literary artists who organize community outreach programs. Her publications include a forthcoming poetry collection How Do I Tell Them? (Poets Wear Prada), Soup Can Magazine, POETS UNiTE! The LiTFUSE @10 Anthology (Cave Moon Press), and When Women Speak (ed. Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal). A sought after artist, Queen has performed at many places including the NJ Governor’s Mansion, Hoboken Historical Museum, and with NYC Men Teach Hip Hop Cypher.

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!

 

 

__________________________________

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.

Sarah Sarai | A Thousand Deaths

A Thousand Deaths

 

Jack’s in Wisconsin with a girlfriend

whose father is down one cow,

which I become in its death,

the wandering-off cow Jack finds

“out in the woods with its legs sticking /

straight up to the stars.”

Its unborn calf is by its side.

Eight dead cow-legs point out

two escaped cow-souls.

And so I become animal mother

sorrow, my eyes aching and red,

searching night skies.

My legs pointing to the endless.

I am galled by the up and

down of love, a boulder

hard-shouldered every day.

 

Quote from “Thinning the Herd,” I Have No Clue by Jack Wiler (Longshot Press, 1996)

 

_____________________________

Photo by Amy Holman

Sarah Sarai has published two to three poetry collections, depending on how you reckon, and a bunch of short stories. A native New Yorker, she lives in the big city, where she is an independent editor of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Susan Justiniano | Raspberry Kisses

 

 

 

Your kisses taste of raspberry

Tiny chills along lips swollen and red

slide down my throat

melt each nerve as they pass into me

 

the sexy — the want — I feel

hidden beneath lashes against flushed cheeks

pulse skips as your lips travel along my neck

 

our fingers slide

search to touch places

that make the sun jealous

 

threads of our clothes — prison bars! —

struggle to find escape

from liberated sensations

too inebriated to have names

 

sleeve pushed from shoulder

buttons undone by a nimble touch

raspberry kisses color of fire

brand bare flesh

 

hints of the enduring myth of heaven

paradise in your arms

give me rapture with each kiss

absorbed into layers

 

silhouettes dance under cotton covers

spread out on heated current

friction of flesh against flesh

 

our mouths explore one another

discovering delicacies uncommon to mortal man

 

there — that taste —

raspberry

tart

sweet

juicy

 

Elixir easily coaxed

Cherished fruit

To bear fruit

O wondrous raspberry kisses!

 

 

_____________________________

Susan Justiniano aka RescuePoetix is the first Puerto Rican and the first woman to serve as Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. She is a self-taught, bilingual poet with a deep love for knowledge, music, coffee, food, dogs, and the color red (not always in that order). Words are embedded in her life. Her passion for them started at age nine with a dictionary, notebook, and the latest paperback she could get her hands on. Like a bad penny, you can find her everywhere: https://linktr.ee/rescuepoetix.

Robert Mueller | Winebibbers Go Home

Winebibbers Go Home

 

 

A crimsoned valuation

picks the motors of pentaculated

runners on a field of display

a hoax or an alarm.

 

It used to be the columbine

attracted hummingbirds and star-clipped

in a summer’s hottest tranche.

Now wintry spotter’s net

must catch a feathered red

 

to charge against the wickets

of a ghostly bricolage

a breach to ease the canted branch.

If weakly cardinal in cold

well stretches light’s delights

temptation ardently to spar

with gloom’s adherents snipes.

 

Where seeking bred of seeing’s heart-

flash if a stranger to an anger

braised the coals the scarlet

sparks not in the day played in the dark.

 

A tang to spin the spangled manger

underlay the helicopter hats amid

the gladiolas and poinsettia.

They drew the straws but kept

away the cats. A sanguine sprat

 

could stir the faintest blush

so let us taste the lips’ best rush

of comfort in the common claret

all ablaze and brandishing the fadeaway.

 

 

_____________________________

Robert Mueller is the author of Hereafter Knowing in Sonnets and Their Similars, an adventurous undertaking in literary history and critical interpretation under the signs of philosophy and theology. Other recent writings to his credit include a poem in And Then, poetry of an unusual stripe in Home Planet News Online and, in Spinozablue, a group of poems focused on the topic of our precious wetlands as well as an essay titled “Petrarcan Naissance.” Robert has earned multiple academic degrees, a PhD in comparative literature from Brown University, an MA in classics from the City University of New York, and a BA from Yale University. Among his major publications are essays and reviews found in Jacket2, American Letters & Commentary and ELH.

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

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.

Thaddeus Rutkowski | Red Sky at Morning

RED SKY AT MORNING

I consider myself lucky

that I don’t have to take warning

on the mornings when, at sunrise,

the high clouds turn pink,

then deepen to red,

covering half the sky.

 

I’m not a sailor,

worried about the weather,

expecting the red clouds to turn

to dark gray clouds that let loose

a flood of rainwater,

tossing my ship at sea.

 

I am just a person looking out my window,

well, not constantly looking,

because that would be boring —

just looking at the sky —

but now and then checking

as the reddening registers in my mind.

______________________________

Photo Credit: Jackie Sheeler

Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of seven books, most recently Tricks of Light, a poetry collection from Fair Weather for Media. He teaches at Medgar Evers College and received a fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Nancy Kirolos | Fairku/600nm

Fairku/600nm

Difficult to rhyme
Mix of yellow and red shades
Grapefruit soda yum

Carrot tangerine
Bitter British marmalade
Sweet ginger ice tea

Half circle at dawn
Indian mango lassi
Autumn pumpkin pie

Bright shade on dark skin
Orange color or sweet fruit
And Buddhism too

______________________________

Nancy Kirolos is an artist and an award-winning scientist living in the Netherlands. Her preferred media to create art are words, music, watercolors, and photography. She likes to write stories and poems in English and Dutch. Nancy’s goal is to stimulate people emotionally and intellectually through her written work which has been published in several publications in Europe and the US. In 2020, Nancy was longlisted for the Dutch El Hizjra literature prize

Howard Pflanzer | Orange Sky

ORANGE SKY

 

In the west the sky glows orange

Light scattered by the pollution

Right before the sun goes down beyond the shore

Is this a harbinger of a happier time ahead

Or just a precursor of another black night

 

Let’s wait for tomorrow

And see how the day progresses

Will the sky at dusk glow a brighter orange

Streaked with crimson

Or will the disappearing light plunge us directly into the darkness

______________________________

Howard Pflanzer is a poet, playwright, and fiction writer. Dead Birds or Avian Blues was published by Fly By Night Press in 2011. Recent publications include FIVE Poetry, And Then, Downtown Brooklyn, Home Planet News, Pratik, Poems:LES Festival of the Arts Dedicated to the Lower East Side (TNC 2016, 2017), Of Burgers and Barrooms (Main Street Rag 2017), and WORD:An Anthology by A Gathering of the Tribes (2017). His hybrid performance piece, Walt Whitman Opera, adapted from Whitman’s poetry with music by Constance Cooper, was presented at the undergroundzero festival in New York in July 2014.