Fallen Leaf Lake
By Julian Schild
The pool of mirror and bank of pebble
children tossing rocks, landing with a plunk.
Insects lazily circling buzzing their soft song
Bears scratching trees, their cubs chasing butterflies.
Crows are squawking awaiting their next meal.
Outside these woods,
just over the hill,
where there once was life and light,
is now a ring of death and fire
raking clawed hands
across everything in its path.
leaving only crumbling trees,
balancing weight on a burning board,
trying to barely survive.
Last summer,
for as many last summers
as I can remember
this paradise has nearly died.
Charred limbs of nature
reaching towards the sky.
Faint whispering hiss of wind over water
small waves splashing over rosy red rocks
someone somewhere snoring a melody
to their dreams. Birds dancing through the blue sky,
angels in the breeze, living in heaven.
Last year wildfires nearly reached this place
of fragility, beauty, idyllic peace.
This place almost cracked
into fragmented pieces of itself
scorched land in the wake of death.
Not quite taken by the hand of fire.
Not yet taken its last breath.
Macabre (A Delicacy?)
By Jack Owens
I wonder, what might be in a turducken?
What is clearly a horror disguised as a dish,
the sorry story of all things stuffen’.
Of many things that have been up-f*cken’
by hands of morals clearly dissolute-ish.
I wonder, what might be in a turducken?
Fleshy carcasses of remains been-plucken’,
With a slimy glaze not unlike mucus,
the sorry story of all things stuffen’.
Meat uncooked remained to be toughen’
grimy grunges stained with a color grapefruit-ish,
I wonder, what might be in a turducken?
To all things as horrid, I fear this glutton,
on the table lined with glasses champagne flute-ish.
The sorry story of all things stuffen’.
Keep the answer with these horrors still hidden,
skin becomes sin, dry, like something dried fruit-ish,
I wonder, what might be in a turducken?
The sorry story of all things stuffen’.
She
By Jorja Reed
I yearn to be that young little girl.
She loved life like flowers love spring.
She lived in tall trees and talked to squirrels.
As beautiful as the wing of a bird.
She loved the taste of sweet treats and cakes.
That was when sugar didn’t feel heavy
in her stomach like a hefty weight
She couldn’t be less worried about her belly.
I yearn to be a free spirit like her.
Living in a time when the worst worry
was stained clothes, and leaving for lunch later
than the other tables that hurried.
I daydream of her and her rosy cheeks.
She had to let go, but inside me she sleeps.
“BEWARE = OPINIONS – STONER!”
By Jonas Honeyman-Colvin
Is lettered on the looping grille
of a standalone bus stop.
Twenty-three steadily penned characters
that my eyes seek out,
dropping everyday,
to sweep the blue seats mesh
for the glinting white shout
of the familiar text,
as I sit on the stoop
of 11th Avenue.
A symbol of one’s liberation?
A cry for help?
A declaration?
A thought that Melts,
coagulating?
Slowly dripping from a stoners helm.
His tears sprinkle warmer
than summer air,
fronting the concrete in sloughs,
bawling and pooling.
His cloudy blue eyes cry for me,
we agree that it’s not fair
that twenty-three steadily penned characters,
leave me knowing less than I did
when I first stepped onto the stoop
of 11th Avenue.
Shivering in the sleet.
Ode to my Mother
by Orion Mehr
I wonder, do you see yourself in me?
I only view you through a covered window,
carefully picked curtains,
patched together with needle and thread.
Fragments scraped together into quilt,
a hidden tangle of patience.
I’ve known you all my life,
yet I hardly do.
High heels buried under blankets.
They belong to a different time, you say,
before the bells rung,
before the sleepless nights,
before they were married to dust.
When did you choose to settle down?
(For)
What kind of person were you?
(are)
I’m waiting for the curtains to be pulled back,
I know otherwise, yet I cling to hope.
Yet, I see myself in you.
Shooting Star/Dug too Far
By Skye Groves
The Wednesday I stood on a shooting star
I sent for a shovel and dug right through,
tried to reach the center but dug too far.
Icarus flew too close to the sun, quite far
into the void of the sky, much akin to
the Wednesday I stood on a shooting star.
In the garden a tiny door is ajar.
Inside, worms in apples are forming a coup,
tried to reach the center…Dug too far.
It is something that most find bizarre
but I don’t tell lies. The story is true.
(of the Wednesday I stood on a shooting star)
At Earth’s core is fire. It’s just how things are.
Under the ground I found nothing new.
Tried to reach the center. But dug too far
mapping the cosmos to write my memoir.
There was a planet inside of my shoe
the Wednesday I stood on a shooting star.
Tried to reach the center, but dug too far.
Moon Song
Wren Alger
Mouthless, the moon sings, her music made from what surrounds us.
Her whale-song pitches and yaws through valleys and lonely brooks
stirring lonely foxes, awakened by messages sent from another world.
For there’s no denying we correspond with her, the tide ebbing in reply.
Ill-tempered winds whip across wild waves that crash to shore, crescendoing
a jazz chorus crackling under the moon’s pale glow
Nighttime is primordial, free and musical, untouched and alien
presided over by a slowly blinking milky-eye harshly gazing from the sky.
Even without sunlight things grow, countless symphonies blooming
under her watch, water rushing through shaded glades,
a violin strung from trees and played by the heavy hand of wind,
the rhythmic drum beat as bison beat trampled prairie grass on and on.
This is an orchestra largely unseen, our world tailored to starkly oppose it;
the night and its mysteries are avoided and feared, sturdy walls lock us away.
And I wonder: if the moon sings to a sleeping world,
does it make a sound?
Window Like a Crescent Moon
By Nini Annuse
Slipping on galoshes-
a girl steps into the rain filled street
the waxing crescent of the mystic moon
admires the reflection as
light pools at her ankles, the frosty grasp
of her nighttime palace.
Bathing in the puddle is a little rock,
its alice blue shell like untouched snow.
Soft breaths, the first of a lifetime,
the moon has gone away
and all is dark tonight.
She must find her way home in the dim light.
Primrose pink bedspread
for the tiny earthly cherub.
Restless afternoon and day,
a week since birth,
wisdom of its past incarnation
still pressing into bone.
Where the Purple Grass Grows
By Nini Annuse
Murmuring through trees,
falling leaves guide me, put me at ease.
Their echoes whisper of fables from long, long ago
angel bones
beneath angel stones,
where the sun could not share her glow.
Yet willingly I step into the garden of death
where rigor mortis ceases to an everlasting rest.
The swan song is muted in this graceful decay,
naturally I must end up here someday.
I plant my flowers at the gravestone estate,
for these spirits were not false-hearted, they just could not wait.
Reflections On and Around the Kitchen Counter
By Rose Veneklase
Yellow sheets and strawberries
a million things saved for far too long
gather now in the kitchen
like a sad guitar song.
plucking at the strings
swirling them around
the rhythms of ten years ago
alive again
through sound.
Fifty-five years later
will you still remember me?
A song of wildflowers and roses
with a gentle melody.
Surrounded by the photos
full of slight serenity,
are black and white and gray,
add a guitars familiar melody
played here, across the kitchen
on the same strings, sing along
to a song of wildflowers and roses
with a gentle melody.
It was here right in the kitchen
where I listened with intent
to a song sung of these flowers
that neither came nor went.
Later in the future,
but before I got too old
I heard that song again
it became a thing to hold.
Those cups she painted colors
of the rainbow, red and blue
green, purple and orange
and black and yellow too.
Resting on my window sill
above the kitchen sink,
made by an aunt, a friend, a mother
all painted well with care
with birds all blue and brilliant,
who fly with glittering surprise
like tiny little seashells
or the stardust in our eyes.
Photos by Shambhava Srikanth and Tinsley Collins
cool!