Bob Heman | ORANGE (I) & (II)

ORANGE (I)

We are told that oranges are orange, by definition. No other is defined in this way. We cannot hold a blue or a purple or a red or a brown in our hands. We cannot open anything but an orange to find more of it hiding inside.

ORANGE (II)

The word unfolds itself across the page, allowing the meaning that is revealed to spill over the edges into your life. In this way the difference between “orange” (the color) and “orange” (the fruit) is able to be comprehended, and to become part of the room you will henceforth inhabit.

Bob Heman (Photo by Lori Rogers)

Bob Heman’s words have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Italian and Hungarian. His prose poem “Perfect” is included in A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry (MadHat Press, 2019). His essay, “Dreaming for Caresse,” is included in Seeing with Eyes Closed: The Prose Poems of Harry Crosby (Quale Press, 2019), which also features one of his collages on the cover.

Diane Stiglich | Elusive Orange

Elusive Orange

It is the orange
that is missing
in the traffic light
sequence
at every corner.

It is the orange
in the flame
that artists depict
but you never
really see.

It is the orange
glowing gourds
of Samhain
where spirits abide
and hold my hand.


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Diane Stiglich earned her BA from the University of Texas at Dallas and her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Her paintings have been exhibited in numerous shows throughout New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Her debut fiction Have You Seen CindySleigh? was published in 2016 by Poets Wear Prada.  She lives in Hoboken, where she owns the Luna Rosa Home store. Diane negotiates life between the art studio, martial arts classes, the store, the town, and home — and she likes to write about them all. She is currently working on a collection of micro fiction, poems, and other inkings, titled Fragments. 

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.


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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.

Amy Barone | Orange Is My New Black

Orange Is My New Black

I’m tossing black from my world —
black clothes, black cars, black moods.
Banishing dread and gloom.

Black was cool at sixteen and slimming at thirty.
Now I’m occupying orange-hued vibes,
loosening the shackles to dark tones.

I’m deporting colorless lingerie and sex.
When I sleep, instead of jumping into black puddles,
I’m going to emerge from tangerine dreams. Glowing.




Reprinted with author's permission from We Became Summer (NYQ Books)


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Amy Barone’s latest poetry collection, We Became Summer (New York Quarterly Books), was released in 2018. She has also published two chapbooks, Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing), and is an active member of  both PEN America and the Brevitas forum for short poetry.  Her poetry appears in Paterson Literary Review, Philadelphia Poets, Sensitive Skin, and Standpoint (UK), among other publications. Haling from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she now hangs her little orange dress in New York City.

Austin Alexis | Replay & Seeing Twilight

Replay

I slide down the memory of you
hoping the ride will never end.
Yet I sense one day
I’ll be too old to recall
your jokes, your jaw’s attractive shape,
my fascination with your insights.

At least for now, you live
in an orange haze of twilight
at the front of my mind
where I keep what I cherish,
though I know all of that is fading,
slowing, dissolving into night

Seeing Twilight

The air is polished pink,
then orange, then scarlet
at the shore
as dusk ages into evening.
“You’re missing the sunset”
a person says to a sleeping friend
who wakes, sits upright
on a lumpy beach sheet
to spot the orange ball
knelling into the sea,
yielding to Time and Nature,
since it is part of both.


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Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, Madgett Poetry Award, 2014) and two previously published chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada. Recent flash fiction, poetry, reviews, and plays have appeared in Home Planet News Online, Unstamatic, The Avocet, Point of View, and Long Island Sounds (an anthology). He has work forthcoming in Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing. He served recently as a panelist for the Bronx Council on the Arts. He lives in Manhattan.

Patricia Carragon | Early Autumn

“Brooklyn in Seasonal Transition”
Photo Credit: Patricia Carragon

Early Autumn

October at midpoint
Brooklyn in seasonal transition

summer trees wear highlights
of golden yellow    reddish orange     or russet brown
 
cool air tingles my fingers that snap photos
of ghouls & witches amid pumpkin patches

from a passing car
I hear Ella Fitzgerald sing Early Autumn

walk a few more blocks before rain’s return
& think of things best kept in the attic

like why my thoughts wear Code Orange

why you can’t touch me    hear me    or even see me

“Happy Halloween”
Photo Credit: Patricia Carragon

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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 just released by Alien Buddha Press. Patricia hosts the Brownstone Poets reading in Brooklyn and publishes an associated anthology annually. She is also an executive editor for Home Planet News Online.

Carrie Magness Radna | Studded Orange

Studded Orange

Why did ya pick dis man?
people used to ask me;
they thought I was still in play,

that his love & kindness
wasn’t enough —

but his skin,
on a good day,
smelled like an orange
studded with cloves

before the muddled wine
& cinnamon Red Hots
were added
to our winter-friendly
romantic recipe.


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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, Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press), was published in December 2019. In the blue hour (Nirala Publications) is expected to be released early 2021. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.

Megha Sood | The Season of Fall

The Season of Fall

Warmth of a hug
Closeness under a blanket
Fingers warming to a cup of coffee
Calmness of listening to him
Endlessly

Falling leaves of the orange-tinged fall
Brings back all the warmth
Intertwining of fingers
Till the palms start sweating

Sharing earbuds 
Swaying to the same rhythm
Heart singing the same beat
The twinkle in your eyes

Fleeting smile on your face
Spoken words;
And unspoken vows

Tis the season
Each falling leaf is a bookmark
In the book of memories
This is the season,
The season of fall.



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Megha Sood lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. She is Assistant Poetry Editor for the UK-based feminist zine MookyChick and is one of the editors of The Kali Project, an anthology of art and poetry by women of Indian heritage, to be published by CrossTree Press. Megha’s recent publication credits include several print anthologies, among them 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.

Linda Kleinbub | Back Road Driving

Back Road Driving

Back road driving
in the evergreens
can lead to quiet streams

keep holding telescopes
star searching
orange in the sunset still visible

lay beside me longer
tangled limbs
branches in the backyard


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Linda Kleinbub hosts the monthly Fahrenheit Open Mic (on Zoom since July 2020). She is a co-founder of Pen Pal Poets and an editor of the forthcoming The Rimes of the Ancient Mariner Silver Tongued Devil Anthology. Her debut poetry collection will be published by Fly By Night Press. Articles and poems appear in The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Observer, Yahoo! Life, The Best American Poetry, and Grabbing the Apple: An Anthology of New York Woman Poets, among other publications. She received her MFA from The New School.

Moe Seager | I, October

I, October

Fire, color, syrup sweet, dripping vines
Grand, my consummate embrace of passion
Ablaze, my glorious variations
Radiant, defiant my stand in the throes of encroaching shadows
Triumphant, for a spellbinding moment
Misty haze aromatic, my perfumes scent the harvest
Take me, intoxicate, dine at my table, drink me to your fill
Excite with me, spread your limbs free
My winds, swirl, whirl, rustle you open
Beautiful, naked, flight of the leaves
Night owl hoots, field mouse dances
A distant train passing in the night
It’s lazy cadence beckons you dream
As it shuffles by gently, a faint lullaby
Passed, the plentitude of mother spring’s seeds ripened,
Passed, the bounty of father summer’s fallen fruits
Take me, la grande dame, yours, encore et encore
November soon to strip me to the raw
December to bury me in his white shroud cover of snow
I, October, last grand consummate embrace of passion
Bittersweet, before the silence


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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 J. Trause | Orange

Orange                                 Color? Orange Red Green Yellow

It was an ordinary Sunday in San Antonio, a city more bright and beautiful than Venice, without threat of flood in over 85 years, when fresh from our hotel, on the River Walk lined with overhanging trees and decoratively verdant vines, some resplendent with bright orange flowers, when my sister, three-year-old nephew, and I strolled the short walk to St. Mary’s Church, a block or two away. We had learned the day before how the Germans had settled in San Antonio, contributing to the local Tex-Mex cuisine their preference for wheat over maize tortillas, wheat considered by them the proper food for humans, corn only fit for animals. I marveled all weekend at how the San Antonio River seemed so clear and clean, not murky or flood-prone as the lagoons of Venice are known to be, and now even the air itself on this brightly orange-yellow Sunday testified to the mix of urban bustle and bucolic profusion in efficient balance. Beautiful shade trees, blocking the auburn sun, flourished along the streets, recalling those of Amsterdam and Berlin. As we approached the façade of the church, there lounging on the steps, a seemingly homeless woman, fleshy, plump, and with brightly but poorly dyed orange-red hair, was calling out and gesturing to us in the distance while combing her greasy coif. Getting closer, I realized that she, knowing that we were headed toward the entrance of the church, was trying to get my attention and not that of my sister or nephew: “Mister, mister, your fly is open.”

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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.