Poetry Issue #15: Harmony October 15, 2024 Three Poems by Paul Hostovsky Practice You can’t even let go of the blue casserole dish— how in the world are you going to let go of the world? I ask myself, standing in my kitchen in the late afternoon sunlight which is turning everything to gold. Everything, that is, except the blue casserole dish, which isn’t here because my stepdaughter borrowed it without asking me. And it pisses me off because I love that casserole dish. Because it belonged to my mother. Let ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #15: Harmony October 15, 2024 Three Poems by Ron Riekki We walk around the pond this patient, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he feels he doesn’t have schizophrenia, and I tell him right now we’ll just walk around the pond, that it’s that simple, no worries about diagnoses or mis- diagnoses or missed goals or hopes or dreams, or mistakes, just this soft fog, these cute ducks, this slight mist, a bounding squirrel to our right that jumps onto a tree trunk and sneaks ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #15: Harmony October 15, 2024 A Symphony by Alex Andy Phuong A Symphony A theory of musicality In a life that is theatrical Playing a role of a lifetime Focusing on being at peace As a way to release Shame and regret And then marvel at the Wonderment of finding Harmony within reality Through the acceptance Of all that is real While allowing oneself Time to heal Stephen Granzyk reads “A Symphony” on behalf of Alex Andy Phuong: Alex Andy Phuong earned his Bachelor of Arts in English ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #15: Harmony October 7, 2024 Two Poems by Kitzia Esteva-Martinez Pero nosotros podemos con las manos platicar We can talk through our hands I always have seven thoughts running in my head at once. Maybe it’s my head, maybe it’s my wholeness that speaks to itself I am often lonely in this endeavor, speaking to the void inside my brain as if a void was an oasis And am often over-accompanied; by the many voices, universes and lives within The voices of my characters ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #15: Harmony October 15, 2024 Two Poems by Suzanna C. de Baca Aspen Grove White beams of light, slender trunks like arms, reaching, rising in an invocation to the sky, a congregation of lovelies, slim and graceful, your pale papery bark so delicate, your sharp, dusty scent enveloping me, round leaves, lemonish green, rustling like pages of a hymnal in the breeze. White beams of light, each of you unique and separate, a family, a flock connected by blood, roots seen and unseen, you are one. You ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #15: Harmony October 15, 2024 Never Underestimate the Power of Recessive Genes by Shannon Frost Greenstein Never Underestimate the Power of Recessive Genes In the Punnett Square of life, we are all nothing more than our basic nucleotides and our filthy, sexual, Darwinian urges. Marionettes at the mercy of Nature and Nurture, no one escapes their own genetic blueprint; no one gets to choose. No matter the persuasive power of ethos or desire or willpower or fate, the dominant gene will always, always be ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #15: Harmony October 15, 2024 Silence by John Schaff Silence Pure, clean, and holy. There is wind rustling in the leaves and birds in the air singing. Although there are sounds there is silence. It is like the river. Never for a moment does it cease to flow, and yet for all times it is still. It is with itself in perfect harmony. Silence and stillness are not the absence of sounds or of movements. They are the products of acceptance of nature as God ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15th, 2024 Letter from the Poetry Editor: The Power of Acceptance by Steve Granzyk he poems in this issue include several of the common human conditions that test our emotional resilience, our ability to achieve the peace that acceptance brings. These poets write smartly and sensitively in acknowledging that our suffering can lie beyond the powers of medical science, a result of the debt due our innate mortality. They also show ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Three Poems by Lucia Owen The Grief Resource Kit just tells me where to find more grief, lists the ways my heart can break but not much about how to fix it, except that healing is no protection against memory’s wrecking ball. It tells me grief may settle in my stomach but the ache feels deeper – the hope, the feel, the weight of you somewhere near, maybe in the shadows when I turn ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Three Poems by Mary Alice Dixon As I go blind I see flashing lights then fog obscures the dogwoods standing by my buried iris bulbs but as I go blind I hear the earth whisper me her ways I hear the ground shift I hear the dogwoods blossom in fog my ears become irises my synesthesia flowers Mary Alice Dixon reads “As I go blind I see”: each macular hole is an hourglass in my eye my eyes once wild feral stars now see light disappear into two black holes macular pits drawing light bending rays in the middle until all ...
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