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.

Charles Pierre | The Red Fox

The Red Fox

 

 

At dusk, in the leafless woods,

where the path drops off

to the harbor’s frozen mouth,

silence seizes me.

 

My eyes, scanning the patches

of muted brown and lavender,

catch the only flash of color

amid the diminished acres.

 

A small streak of fire

hunches and watches me,

then skitters off a bit

to hunch and watch again,

 

and I, stiff with cold,

as still as the dormant

life surrounding me,

in winter’s thinnest light,

 

surrender to the heat

of this odd living hearth —

my throat thawed

against the frigid air.

 

 

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.

John J. Trause | Red

Red                                  Color? Red Orange Green Yellow

San Antonio, as one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, was also experiencing a high rate of homelessness, crime, and degradation, belying the tranquility and ostentation of the tourist trade along the River Walk, a clear separation between the haves and have-nots in close proximity, the former ignoring the latter and the latter trying to gain the attention of the former. Late-stage capitalism was still wreaking havoc in American cities, and San Antonio was not immune. Outside the hotel along the River Walk where my sister, my three-year-old nephew, and I were staying, the bright red sun beat down oppressively, even early one Sunday morning as we strolled the short walk to St. Mary’s Church, a block or two away. As we approached the façade of the church, we saw, there, lounging on the steps, a homeless woman, one of scores of victims of rampant capitalism and social neglect. This poor woman, plump from poor diet, and with brightly but poorly dyed red hair (ketchup as hair dye, and not just a vegetable, as in the Reagan years) was calling out and gesturing to us from a distance while combing her greasy, colored coif. Getting closer, I realized that she, knowing that we were headed to the entrance of the oblivious church, was trying to get my attention and not that of my sister and nephew: “Mister, mister, your fly is open.”

__________________________________

John J. Trause, Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of six books of poetry, including Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017) and Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014), and one of parody, Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway. His translations, poetry, prose, and artwork appear internationally in many journals and anthologies. Marymark Press has published Trause’s visual poetry and art as broadsides. He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, New Jersey, and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.

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.

David Huberman | Nighttime Rainbow

Nighttime Rainbow

The night hung thick over the waterfront like dark gray octopus ink. Flying above, even Nosferatu could not penetrate the gloom with his x-ray optics, swooping downwards through the heavens, piercing the oceanic air.

His high-pitched hearing, unique to his kind, detected prey below. Descending almost to the murky saltwater surface, he lashed out lightning quick, and the quarry was caught. The Beast did not struggle. Sometimes the shock alone did them in.

The first bite was always the best. Sinking his teeth into his game, he was shocked to taste so much salt in the blood. What was this being? Was it true what they said? Had Homo sapiens gotten so much heavier due to their bad eating habits?

Never had the night been as shadowy as it was this evening. Witnessing the longest lunar eclipse in a millennium, his curiosity had piqued beyond belief. Flaming like a red-orange meteorite, he landed on a nearby dirty white lighthouse, still grasping his kill. The lights revolved to reveal a large amount of violet blood!

Before he could react, a powerful force had punched him almost through the roof. As the pale alabaster vampire's pallid-yellow eyes took one last look at the living entity that he had caught, his victim had come back to life. Somehow it appeared familiar, somewhere between a humanoid and a giant green lizard. And the Creature from the Black Lagoon plunged them both back under the deep blue sea.

______________________________

David Huberman has had work published in Evergreen Review, A Gathering of Tribes, Long Shot, Lungful, Icon, Make Room for Dada, Best of Panic, the anthology The Jewish History of the Lower East Side, The Unbearables, Prometheus, Rant, Pink Pages, and Public Illumination, among many others. He has performed in three plays at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and also appears as a lead actor in the movie Trail of Blood, 1995, archived in the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) database. Follow this link: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/517247/Trail-of-Blood/. He reads his work all over New York City and now to a worldwide audience on Zoom.

A recently published short story “Vampires of Pattaya Beach,” a fictional, horror, avant-garde account, can be seen in the selective story anthology 2016–2018 issue of Sensitive Skin.

GA Gardner | Captive

CAPTIVE
 Mixed media collage painting on paper
Artist: GA Gardner
Created: 2019 
Courtesy: www.Gartsy.com

______________________________

GA Gardner is the founding artist of Gartsy.com. His mixed media collage paintings have been exhibited at various museums and galleries in the USA, Asia and the Caribbean, including the James E. Lewis Museum of Art; Paterson Museum, New Jersey; Nanjing College of Art, China; Corridor Gallery, New York; Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts, St Croix, USVI, Bergen Museum, New Jersey. He has been the subject of numerous articles and catalog essays. He has been awarded artist residencies in the Caribbean and Asia. He is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington DC, USA.

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.

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.