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.

 

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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.

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.

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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. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.

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

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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.


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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.

Isabelle Lorion | Yellow Mood

 Thammapa Supamas’s Yellow Cat

Yellow Mood

A yellow cat is miaowing
He’s calling for the love of the stars
His yellow eyes are glimmering
Among the shadows of the night
He’s jumping in a meadow of daffodils
His growl turns into a song
You might hear him during hot summer nights
And never forget
Yellow is the color of the sun
When I rise in the morning
Yellow is the color of my mind
When I wonder
How do I fight
For my rights
He passes at the end of the streets
With a hat of melancholy
On his head
And a coat of solitude
He holds tight
Against his pale chest.
She gratifies him with a yellow smile
When he leaves her behind
The cat opens his maw
And yawns
He puts his paw on her cheek
And gently caresses it
To console her
For the loss of her lover
She holds him tight
In the silk of the night
And rocks his dreams
Singing softly an old lullaby
For yesterday and tomorrow
The young man dozes in the tenderness of her love
She borrows a yellow fish
At the market of miracles
And lets it swim
In the hollow of their secret garden
A young fellow is sleeping
In a rocking chair made of purple willow
His mouth is open
And his dreams are chaotic
His flesh is trembling
With the variation of his thought
And the weeping willow wobbles
Over his scared shaking face
When he opens his eyes
He draws a sad smile
On the yellow sand
Of the remote beach
And the light of the sun
Plays through the yellow foliage of the fall
After they’ve gone
Only yellow memories
Mark the places
Where they once loved each other
Mellow yellow memories
Melt in the shallows of lost hopes
He follows her again
And howls his sorrow
Through the window of the past
For yesterday and for tomorrow
He sews her a dress
With the golden thread of his love
She wears it
And she dances
In the shadows of the night
A yellow cat is miaowing
In the heart of the night
They borrow the marrow of happiness
For yesterday and for tomorrow
To follow the direction of their dreams
To grow
Toward the slow show of the cows
On desolation row


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I was born in the mid-1950s in the suburbs of Paris.
I ran away. I traveled. And I wrote and played music.
I love walking.
I’ve been working with children.
I go to poetry scenes.
I love horses. And all animals.
I am an anarchist.

Linda Lerner | Painting with Sun

Photo by Paul Frangipane, Brooklyn Paper

Painting with Sun

On watching people paint: Black Lives Matter. Joralemon Street, Downtown Brooklyn. Late June, 2020.

struck by the sight of people holding
long poles, rollers at the end,
dipped into what surely must have dripped
down from the sun into buckets,
wipe sweating foreheads, stare at
color too bright for just paint,
can’t see the words it overshadows,
people, so old they can barely manage
the poles, young kids struggling with
something bigger than themselves,
every color of the spectrum visible
to a crowd transfixed by this joyous scene
before the words, they won’t forget.


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Linda Lerner is the author of 17 poetry collections, including her most recent, When Death is a Red Balloon (Lummox Press, 2019, Takes Guts and Years Sometimes, and Yes, the Ducks Were Real (NYQ Books, 2011, 2015). Her poems currently appear or are forthcoming in Maintenant, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Home Planet News, Cape Rock, Piker Press, Chiron Review, Free State Review, and Rat’s Ass Review.

Photo by Paul Frangipane, Brooklyn Paper

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


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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).

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.


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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. 

Chiara Maxia | Early Afternoon

Early afternoon

Daisy scent in the air
dry grass stinging my legs
an old white dress.

April

Eyes closed,
flattened by the downpours of sun.
Laid down in the backyard
I disaggregate.

I melt in the sun

I melt.

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Chiara Maxia is a multilingual actress and writer. Born on the Italian island of Sardinia, she has lived in different countries including England, Russia, Scotland, and France. She started training as an actor in Italy, continuing her studies in London and later in Paris, where she graduated in Film Acting in 2019. She currently splits her life between France and Italy. In 2018 she published her first poetry collection, Flirt. ICON — poems and visuals — was released in April 2020.