Amy Barone | Two Purple Poems

Purple

 

Like a desert flower,

they surprise, pop up

on islands of late winter mud.

 

Burst through bare patches of grass.

Symbols of royalty and pride.

Crocuses robed in purple with yellow tongues.

 

Hungry for a new season.

My company on a sunny March day

as the days stretch out.

 

All in wait for more color, light, life.

Easing our loads. The promise of green.

A time of hope.

 

 

______________________________

 

Hyacinth

 

A scent sends me back —

where spring was a destination.

 

Nature nurtured. Violet flowers

emerged in a secret spot,

trumpets of sweet perfume.

 

Today I placed a potted hyacinth

on the grave of loved ones

who tended gardens.

 

 

______________________________

Amy Barone’s most recent full-length poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. SPD recognized it as a Poetry Bestseller of the Month (July 2022) and an SPD Recommended Book. We Became Summer was released by New York Quarterly Books in 2018. Barone has also published two chapbooks, Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing). Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, New Verse News, The Ocotillo Review, Paterson Literary Review and several Brownstone Poets anthologies. She belongs to the Brevitas online poetry community. Originally from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she currently lives in New York City and Haverford, PA. Follow her on Twitter where her handle is @AmyBBarone.

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.

Akshaya Pawaskar | Indian Summer

Indian Summer

These days
we wait for the moon
to descend upon
us, to fill us up
with its white coolness.
As our heads spin,
as our kurtas drench
with sweat,
cling to our flesh
and muscles,
and even the bones
of civilization creak
under the weight
of a wish to bare
our papery
parched skins.
We move thirstily to
the solace of noise
from our ceiling fans.
The blades slicing
the Indian summer,
cutting the air
into a salve on
our salty bodies
dressed in austere
cotton whites.
As Tropic of Cancer
simmers to a boil
and the mosquitoes
whine into our ears,
sounding like languorous
sullen lovers,
we recline on
the earthen floors
of this peninsula.
As hysteria of
the orange sun
meets with
our torpor,
an old paramour
afraid of touch,
it welts us red
with love that
needs no touching.


______________________________

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.

George Held | October’s & Two Haiku

October’s

color is orange,
for autumn leaves
and pumpkins

and the Hunter’s Moon
and summer-fattened
deer and elusive fox

with no more ground
cover in which to hide
from hunters

in search of a
game animal’s
hide and soul . . .

______________________________

"This adult milkweed leaf beetle is already in costume for Halloween." 
[Photo credit: M. J. Raupp, Bug of the Week (blog), Oct. 13, 2014,
 http://bugoftheweek.com/]

Butterfly milkweed —
on its orange flowers crawl
black-and-orange beetles

         Butterfly milkweed —
         on its orange flowers crawl
         black-and-orange beetles

______________________________

Don’t imitate me —
never simulate half an orange
cut in two

          Don’t imitate me —
          never simulate half an orange
          cut in two

(After Bashō)

Bashō meets two farmers at autumn moon festival, 
print from Yoshitoshi's Hundred Aspects of the Moon,
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi - Ukiyo-e.org, 
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum,
https://ukiyo-e.org/image/metro/5233-060-092 

______________________________

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.

Bruce Whitacre | Christmas Oranges

CHRISTMAS ORANGES

The children were not to watch

as Father unloaded the snowcapped wagon.

Crates and bushels went straight to the cellar

and under an Indian blanket.

Father pocketed the key with a wink.

Jennie had to sit to keep breathing,

her hands trembling as she cracked the walnuts.

 

That evening, candles clipped to the fir were lit.

Their dots of light graced the gingham bows, the popcorn

strings, casting deep shadows in the parlor corners.

Atop the white tablecloth brought from Ohio,

turkey with stuffing, yams, and fruit pies crowded

the table, so everyone ate standing or in the parlor.

Mother fanned herself at the fire, exhausted, while

Nora, the hired girl, hovered, hiding homesick tears.

Family and neighbors joined in rolling up the rugs,

then with fiddles and dancing. Jennie missed the beat.

Stepping to the window, she gazed through the frosted panes.

Stars arched over the prairie. Horses stomped under their blankets.

 

Father called her into the kitchen.

“I want you to see these first, Jennie. Remember?”

His carpenter’s hands, deft and hard, pried a crate open.

Golden spheres burned into view, sweet and strange.

“Oranges!” she cried. Father laughed, “They made the last train.”

She remembered from last year to peel them first

The flesh exploded in her mouth —

Ocean. Green. Warm. Sunshine.

She closed her eyes and swallowed. Not here, in one taste.

 

She carried a bowlful into the parlor.

The music stopped. The dancers paused.

She beamed as everyone surrounded her, each reaching for

an orange, the only ones any of them would eat that year.

The night froze in her memory like crystals on the panes

melting into a tale from time to time, like now,

for me, then freezing again for the next blue hour.

 

 

_____________________________

Bruce E. Whitacre’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Cagibi, The HIV Here and Now Project of Indolent Books, North of Oxford, and World Literature Today, and was recently 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. An activist and advocate for the arts and social justice, Bruce lives in Forest Hills, Queens.

Geer Austin | Bird of Paradise & October

Bird of Paradise

With green spears
crested orange flowers
& bird beaks
I’m a showoff
a show stopper
an in-your-face
specimen of a plant.
Some say I’m pushy
like a rooster, a brilliant
tropical thing screaming
my name at sunrise
keeping you from sleep.


__________________________

October

My face is a jack-o’-lantern a couple of days
before Halloween. The oak trees in my yard
bear 24-karat acorns; squirrels break their teeth
on them. I smell a cloudless blue sky, but it’s raining.
I’m staring at my laptop. Alan Cumming is trying
to sell me stuff on Instagram, but I’m not buying.
I can taste the money those gold acorns will bring me.
Okay, I can’t really taste money & acorns
aren’t palatable. So I munch a Macoun I bought
at a farmstand the next town over. My neighbor’s kid
tells me to chillax, but if I follow her advice I’ll forget
to vote. Her mother tells me about pif paf pouf. I say to her
this insane bench of stoicism is not a comfortable perch.
I ogle the orange blossoms that attracted hummingbirds
last summer. All of them have flown to Ecuador
where they work a gig entertaining tourists. I remember
their wings whirring next to my face while I read
novels on the deck. I always flew after them
as they rushed toward their next flower. But Chucky’s
saying that’s not true. What does he know?
A honey-drenched butternut squash opens its interior
for me. Cinnamon sweetness splats my taste buds
& I think about dinner at an agriturismo in Sicilia
one year ago. An acorn lands on my head & black squirrels
scramble up tree trunks. Pretty soon it will be November.


_______________________________________________


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.

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.


_______________________________________________

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.