New Year's Eve 2-for-1 Special

photoart: ralph murre

First

by Peggy Trojan

New Year's Eve

nine days before I was twelve

Tommy, visiting next door

came to visit me, baby sitting.

At midnight

he sat on the arm of the chair

and leaned to kiss me.

That's all.

No embrace,

no meaningless words.

Nearly seventy years later

I remember our surprise,

the silence,

how warm his lips were

and how soft.

~ first published in Boston Literary Magazine

photoart: ralph murre

REVELRY

by Bobbie Krinsky

Heading out under a moon

as luminous as last year’s Solstice,

my old dog and I ramble

side--by--side 

into the raw country wind:

Two old bitches taking  a stroll

beneath the stars,

minutes before New Years  Eve,   2003.

While I plunge through snow hushed  fields

flooded with silver, 

my girl prances like a pup

and paws through shadows

of winter’s trees splayed across  midnight’s

ice blue light.

 ~ first published in The Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar

Slowed-down Christmas

photo: ralph murre

Slowed-down Christmas

by Patricia Wellingham - Jones   

This year

   due to ‘circumstances

beyond our control’

   Christmas is simpler than ever

Decorations four

   a tiny tree with lights and Santas

my sister’s ancient ribbon wreath

   nesting Santas lined up on the mantel

and the big red bow from the door

   decks your new walker

Presents few

   things we can eat or drink

use up in six weeks

   and never dust

Friends seldom

   but cherished

especially when

   they don’t stay too long

Old friends and the big dinner

   packaged or boxed or potluck

but the wine flows

   candles flicker

love swoops around the room

   like doves with wings of angel hair

and light

~ previously published in Lunarosity (2006)

This Family Called Apple

detail: apple family II: georgia o'keeffe

This Family Called Apple

by M.J. Iuppa

                            after Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting Apple Family–2

Plumped up and pinched,

rosy-cheeks of a kind,

ample curves, breasts

and buttocks nestled

side by side, silent

picture of health,

not knowing

what could be growing

wrong on the inside. When

lost in thought in the orchard

I plucked  their glossy bodies–

let them fall into my canvas

apron– ignoring your warnings–

invisible bruises show up after

the snap of leaf and stem. Now

which will go first?  Taut

skin resists, shines

against the bite

that changed paradise–

sudden waters, flesh, seeds,

unlocked stars– the secrets

of many in this chaste household.

~ first published in Language of Color: Writers Respond to the Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe (Big Pencil Press)

Lunch in the Hudson Bay Cafeteria

artwork: ralph murre

Lunch in the Hudson Bay Cafeteria

by Don Schaeffer

Built at a time when air was cheap

it has more space than it needs.

Solemn echoes surround the flags and

matrons dressed in white

employed to cook and mother.

A large symbolic paddle wheel

clatters comically on its ancient motor

beside a pale antique diorama of the river.

We bring trays

of veal and trifle.

The ceiling is a formalized caprice

like a stage set in animated fantasy,

with ceremonious lamps somehow made friendly

laughing to themselves as they sprout

from roots in the broken clouds.

~ first published in Lily Literary Review (2006)

ALL THE DAYS ARE

digital photoart: ralph murre

ALL THE DAYS ARE

by Ronald Baatz

All the days are cold and short

like rows and rows of possum teeth.

The house is empty, even the

mountain air refuses to come in,

afraid of the stillness.

I can sit at the kitchen table for hours.

Its white paint may be chipping

but the large vein running through

the middle of my forehead is firm.

I feel it at my fingertips as I

work on a crossword puzzle

having no squares.

It’s good to know

a pack of hunting dogs

was once baffled by

the stream out back.

                        ~ first published in Wormwood Review 1973

Tzama*

digitally derived from artwork by W.H. Bartlett

Tzama

by Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld

Beneath the Holy Land,

where even water wars are fought,

the troubled springs run deep.

And water, which has properties

to wear on stone, has split the rock.

                                    Lord . . .

                                                my shepherd.  

           

About suffering, Stefan Grass said,

“Suffering is like salt, bitter in a glass.

Become a lake instead—then sip the water. 

You’ll see how sweet it tastes,

with hardly any hint of bitterness.”

(The Jaffa oranges are sweet

and bigger than grenades. 

We’ve moved our fences farther in.

Our neighbors claim the land we left,

then ours.)

                                     Beside the still waters. . .

Sbarro Pizza,

where a young man opens up his coat,

says to the girl behind the counter,

Know what this is?

so like the exhibitionist

who bares his misused, misplaced

instrument of love

explosively.

                                    He maketh me to lie down . . .

                                    In green pastures

tents of Palestinians

are buffeted by angry winds,

their throats are parched.

The houses of the Palestinians collapse. 

                                     In the house of the Lord,

another scene:  From one side

comes a swarthy man and from the other,

one more swarthy man—

sons of the same father.

They face off, raise their instruments,

and aim.  Which will give ground?

Which strike the other first?

Raging thirst propels them.

Nearby the only lake

that’s fresh and clear

is Lake Tiberius,

called the Sea of Galilee.

It, too, is troubled water.

Further south, the sea is dead 

and full of salt.  How many 

Abrahamic sons must fall?

(Bombs bloom. 

The wolves that used to roam

the Russian Steppes

are here.)

                       Through the valley of the shadow,

a great tree arches over the River Jordan.

It is the tree of the Jewish people.

It is the tree of the Palestinian people.

Its leaves shudder in the wind,

on every leaf a name.

~ first published in MidEastWeb

* Tzama is Hebrew for "thirst"

Another Time, Maybe

artwork: ralph murre

Another Time, Maybe

by Ralph Murre

Wasn’t there a time when it all seemed o.k.?

Mantel clocks faithfully wound, maternity wards

thriving, Montgomery Wards thriving,

a Ford in the garage? An occasional world war

or mob lynching, the atomic removal

of a couple of cities far away,

a case of Schlitz in the cellar?

Wasn’t there this background music,

a bearded man conducting a thousand strings

and Dinah Shore and a summer of cicadas

in a Hollywood Bowl of Cherries?

Wasn’t it just swell? And didn’t you get

that orange box of Wheaties with Eddie Matthews

when your dad got the job at the gas station

after striking for a couple of years at Kohler?

Didn’t you shine your little shoes and put on

your little suit and snap your bow-tie

on the white collar and look up

the skirt of the angel costume on the stepladder?

And how hard was it to swipe a pack of Luckies?

Wasn’t there a time when feeling-up the Schmidt

girl in her pointy little bra was pretty good?

And wasn’t it great to go to art school

and draw nude models and swipe packs

of Gauloises at the Knickerbocker? And

wasn’t it great when your brother

let you come along to a park and build

a fort with his buddies and then

that old guy drove up and was real nice

and wanted to see your . . .

touch your . . . Oh, that’s right,

you can’t remember that, can you?

And wasn’t it fun the time you and Billy

put sand in the fuel tank of that bulldozer

and busted the windows out of that cabin?

And wasn’t it cool when you didn’t get drafted

and got to mess around with chicks

who burnt their pointy little bras?

And wasn’t it nice when Ike, in his gray suit,

and Mamie, in her navy blue dress

with the little white dots looked up from golf

and told us everything would be o.k.?

Wasn’t that nice?

And weren’t her gloves just so white?

~ first published in the Peninsula Pulse

Lune Morte

photoart: ralph murre

Lune Morte

by Virginie Colline

The dead moon stares at us

In the garden of nettles

Behind the wall

A derelict church

Hides its secret dust

~ first appeared in Oberon's Law

Mona Lisa

artwork: william marr

Mona Lisa

by William Marr

There must be some d-e--e---p

secret

Staring at her smile

a man tilts his head left and right

Beside him a painted woman

wears a wide grin

~ previously published in Between Heaven and Earth

   (PublishAmerica)

Bait

artwork: ralph murre

Bait

by Karen Stromberg

We catch poems

the way fishermen catch fish:

by sitting alone for hours

in the little boat of ourselves,

nothing much going on,

just a finger

on the filament

that leads

to the anguished worm

~ first published in The Ever Dancing Muse (1999)

Berlin Sky

artwork: ralph murre

Berlin Sky

by Thomas J. Erickson

When daybreak surprised us that morning

in your hotel room, the Berlin sky was

the color of a healing bruise.

In my pocket were the chips of mortar I had

scratched out of the remnants of the Gestapo

headquarters.  The mortar was turning

to sand by the hour--free at last

to disintegrate for all time.

I asked you to think of all the people

who had looked into that sky awaiting

the knock of the Gestapo or the Stasi,

the concussions of the Allied bombs,

or the signal to escape from East to West.

We were too drunk and happy, though,

to confront the city and its past--safely

distanced, as we were, from divorce 

or the second thoughts of the newly married.

It was easy to look at the sky and write

our histories on the window pane

before passing into our Lethean sleep.

~ first published Mad Poets Review

GHOSTS OF HAWORTH

photo - patricia williams

GHOSTS OF HAWORTH

by Patricia Williams

 

Vivid autumn courses, bringing unwelcome news

of unknown but compelling forces

shrouded in time and season,

a world where myth and reason collide,

the magnetic pull of frost and fog,

bleak landscapes where gothic heroes speak.

A timeworn house and desolate downs, set amid

the rushing and moaning of the wind, 

hear tortured souls howling from parchment pages.

November bites, draws in the chill of winter,

overnight frost and snow settle and fall,

thoughts and feelings call and clash along the way.

Those most encumbered ones of Haworth,

all slumbered before their thirty-eighth summer,

unconventional, unwell, grave and quiet,

living in a limbo close to hell, clinging to one other,

happiness not brought about by change

on the bleak moors of Yorkshire.

Walk in the wilderness, the featureless and solitary

that haunts with hints of the extraordinary.

Pictures frozen in time, every twist having a turn,

each hillock of heather with scent sublime,

like elusive thoughts during sleep.

Those coldest pine for Haworth’s beloved heath.

~ first published in Middlebrow Magazine

Mnemonic

artwork: ralph murre

Mnemonic

by Wilda W. Morris

            Beginning with a line and a half from Li-Young Lee*

I was cold once. So my father took off his blue sweater.

He wrapped me in it.

I slid my short arms into the long sleeves.

Father leaned down and buttoned each button.

I was five years old

and the sweater had five buttons.

“Carry me,” I begged. “I’m tired.” Father picked me up.

As my arms flew around his neck, the sleeves flapped like blue wings.

Now I was warm

but Father was cold.

He carried me seven blocks and was worn out

when he climbed the steps to our door.

This is how I remember it.

But when I was five I was never wrapped

in a warm sweater with buttons down the front.

And I had no father.

~ first published in After Hours

WITH THE WINDOW OPEN

photoart: sharon auberle

WITH THE WINDOW OPEN

by Ronald Baatz

With the window open

you can hear piano music

softly coming from the house

like bread thrown to birds.

The night is calm, except for

some bright thunder that

accompanies the falling leaves.

Part of the mountain ash tree

is dead, though the music she plays

may turn it into firewood.

I could hide in the dark

of the barn, to rip the

skin from my thumbs.

The place is no longer used,

but then neither is the north star.

The situation surprises me,

as does a dream.

My blood has turned to ashes,

caught in a woman’s long hair

like confetti or dried

and broken leaves.

~ first published in Shenandoah (1974)

Return Trip

artwork: ralph murre

Return Trip

by Peggy Trojan

                                                                                                          

Coming back always went fast.

We fell asleep on the rear seat

in happy tangle, and were home

before we wished it.

My father carried us 

to our beds, my younger

brothers limp and soft,

easily moved.

I was too old

for such attention,

and feigning sleep

I’m sure he knew.

He picked me up,

all dangling legs and arms,

my face in his shoulder

of tobacco and wool,

trudged up the stairs.

By hall light,

he put me down gently,

took off my shoes,

covered me up, clothes and all.

Then, tip toed out,

leaving the door ajar.

~ first published in Wisconsin People and Ideas  

DAD'S LUNCH BOX

artwork: ralph murre

DAD’S LUNCH BOX

by Donna Hilbert

Dad climbs down

the telephone pole,

stretches out under a pepper tree,

opens his lunch box:

black metal,

substantial like a vault,

or a government building

in a Balkan country.

Under its dome

wire arms hold

a Thermos of coffee.

On the bottom floor,

Vienna sausages on a bed

of mayonnaise, white bread.

For dessert, butterscotch

cream-center cookies.

Dad unwraps a sandwich, eats.

He pours coffee into the cup

his Thermos lid makes,

dips a cookie, watches it bloat,

then holds his lips to the rim,

slips the sweet bits

into his mouth.

I like to think

he savors pleasure

before he stands the box on one end,

touches a forefinger to his tongue,

his damp fingertip

gleaning crumbs

to feed the sparrows who wait

in slender leaves.

Then, one foot

over the other,

he climbs the pole again.

~ first published in PEARL

Dredging

artwork: ralph murre

Dredging

by Richard Purinton

A laden scow slides in sloppy chop,

Pushed by a red tug.
Its black, smoking stack
Mirrors the propeller’s spin.

Muck and rock, hard pan bottom,
Crane swing, one scoop at a time.
Scow to truck, scow to truck, truck to dump site,

Muck trucked to landfill.

Rolling, snorting through intersections,

Horns blatting, diesels braking,
Dopplers released from the far sides of hills.

Then, engines rumble idly as the

Slippery spoils slide and stones scrape

From steel box to the waiting pit below.

A dirty earth jello.

Now night. Scow light.
The same red tug pushes
An empty scow away,
Engine loafing, not huffing.

Second shift will dig, dredge, tow,

Truck and dump.

Dig, dredge, tow, truck and dump.

 ~ previously published in Poem, Prose & Image (Island Bayou Press)