Poetry 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 ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Dust by Vincent Casaregola Dust Time to clean again, to cleanse the kitchen and its cabinets as many decades ago my mother had done, year by year, as I watched, too short, too young to help, too likely to break the fragility of clay or glass. My turn, now, to pay witness to what accumulates along the edges of each cabinet door, across each horizontal space, coated with the oils of daily meals steamed upwards towards heaven’s ceiling. Dust falls, moment ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Ducks by Erin Jamieson Ducks We fed red-billed ducks crusts from stale Wonder bread by the docks, sunrise dripping like runny egg yolk across a slowly brightening canvas that might become anything: a day yet to be lived, the same sky we flew kites in before we forgot the wonder of spring in bloom or how satisfying peanut butter & jelly sandwiches are shared with your sibling This lake that we return to now that you have a family and I’ve given up on having one This lake where we ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Nightfall by Tabor Flickinger Nightfall Black stitches pierce her throat Anchor the IV threaded Down to her heart A bold hole cut with urgent Strokes clasps the white tube Of tenuous breath Her wife pulls the covers up To her neck where a sterile art Worked the flesh Over starched sheets and parched Brittle limbs she spreads the new Creation they sewed Each patch a fragment of their lives Transformed to saffron stars Tabor Flickinger reads “Nightfall”: Tabor Flickinger is a poet and primary ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Cables and Caribiners by Lorraine Jeffery Cables and Carabiners Holiday card displays, in leotard colors of magenta and glittered gold, convey messages— tender, amused, caustic. Twin holidays— Mother’s Day ascends ladder rungs to Father’s Day. For years, I bounced babies in front of these racks, pondering, considering, selecting mine and making sure the much-loved son didn’t miss the trapeze swing. Choosing the exact card to match my mother’s smile or his father’s grin. Trying to anticipate misty-eyes or belly laughs. Now, my chalked hands grip a bar and I ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 The Human Body is 60% Water by Judith Waller Carroll The Human Body is 60% Water Perhaps that explains why my legs want to swim rather than carry me forward, why my hips have forgotten the rhythm of walking. Once my brain savored the sky, each cadence of birdsong. Now it’s only aware of motion and muscle, each watery bone, as I gingerly make my way down this straight line of sidewalk as if it were a steep, wooded trail, determined ...
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