Bees

Freed from the cold of winter
Yellow-jacketed bees -
laser-focused, wild and frantic -
nestle in the cup of petals,
shuffle and swim, roll in pollen,
drunk on the promise of more -
dizzy with thoughts of honey,
recklessly, riotously
searching another succulent flower
in their joyful duty, serving the queen.

•

Mary Capobianco © 2024

A Woman of Letters
 
Some day what I want to be is a woman of letters,
to retire to my study and be
solitary.
I can see it all:
that desk - neat, rectangular, coffee brown,
its drawers seductive and deep,
holding secrets from another age,
on it some paper, a pen and an ink well,
and a bookcase filled with every kind of book -
Austen definitely and Dickinson and Chugthtai...
 
No adolescent daughters abandoning dresses in contemptuous heaps.
No grubby sons, their dirty socks like bombs under my books,
No spouses, no mothers, nor mothers-in-law
with their urgent thoughts.
Sometimes all I want to be is a woman of letters.
Between chores, the very idea makes me weep.

•

K. Srilata © 2019

  If we are just dust
  hovering in the light
  lit up by a splutter
  of energy, enough
  to claw some crude
  shapes, form dreams
  of better shapes,
  making better dreams;
  making every art,
  achievement, agony:
  agonising over instances
  of what was, is, will be
  long after the dust has
  settled, sloughed. Then
  what precious dust
  we are, how carefully
  we must hold each other,
  never spilling a grain.

  ·

  Together

  Elderly couple waddling
  down the evening street.
  Holding each other close:
  his white stick tapping,
  her eyes half opened, flickering.
  No leader, just together.

DNA Destiny

I reach out in bed, press
fingers into your shoulder,
my thin glove of flesh
and bones becoming fused
with the felt of your existence,
feeling that skeletal future
but asking that the magic
of carbon atoms amassed
from the decay of some
other organic miracle,
a DNA destiny shaped
by flint, fire, endless
immigration through eons
of evolution to end up
as me in a bed with you
asleep, unaware; asking
the magic to stay forever,
defy the deafening darkness.

·

Trickster Time

We are a few moments of time
loaned by the Great Trickster
from the Big Bang bag
for us to use, abuse, amuse
Him or Her as best we can.

An almost invisible thread
in the tapestry of billions of years.
We unravel through countless
errors, regrets, greying hair,
fated to the same ending.

Delay just an illusion, a gift.
We are all children tiptoeing
downstairs on Christmas day
to find the Great Trickster
welcoming us back to nothing.

·

Matthew James Friday © 2019

entering the garden

water trickles down
the hollow of an old stone
a bird stoops to drink
·

turtle pond

a turtle hatchling
is all alone on her stone
but the sun is warm
two turtles sunbathe
on a stone in the dark pond
watching me watch them
an older turtle
circles in the pond water
looking for a stone
·

duck pond

the hen is asleep
but the drake is holding his
morning yoga pose
humble waterfall
pouring down into the pond
going deeper still
afternoon sunlight
a green leaf in deep water
reaches for the sky

origami in the garden

white origami
cast in metal and shining
birds and butterflies

a paper airplane!
then the white peace crane unfolds
to become a star

shining buffalo
with a small bird on his back
looking out at us

·

leaving the garden

the old mother-tree
and her branching canopy
stays in memory

·

Jane Beal © 2019

From Good Morning Sunshine

Good Morning Sunshine; thank you for filtering stringently through my dingily dilapidate window; embedding optimistic rays of hope in my life,

Good Morning Cuckoo; thank you for waking up my gloomy sleep with your poignantly austere sounds,

Good Morning Grass; thank you for rejuvenating my dreary soles; as I trespassed on your voluptuous carpet; with your magnificent sheath of dew drops tickling my skin to unprecedented limits,

Good Morning delectable pet; thank you for clambering up my bed; awakening me with a pleasant jolt; as you flapped your slippery tongue over my rubicund cheeks,

Good Morning Shirt; thank you for imparting me with compassionate warmth; as I swung you over my naked chest the instant I broke my reverie,

Good Morning Wife; thank you for providing me your mesmerizing shoulders to rest upon in times of the treacherous night,

Good Morning Ducks; thank you for quacking so boisterously; that I became oblivious to all the loneliness and wretched depression that heavily circumvented my life,

Good Morning Air; thank you for so celestially wafting into my nostrils; seductively caressing my mass of unruly hair; to transit me higher than the heavens,

Good Morning Lotus; thank you for spreading your ingratiatingly pink petals into full bloom; inundating my solitary life with astronomical happiness,

Good Morning Tea; thank you for profoundly reinvigorating my diminishing breath; fomenting me to walk briskly forward with untamed exhilaration,

•

Nikhil Parekh © 2019

There’s Nothing Black

You and I are out in the sunny, snow-covered park.
Our steps crackle like freshly-baked bread.
The silver sturgeon spawns everywhere:
the caviar of ice rings on the black glazed branches,
and we, in no hurry, walk on and on...
Our hands sleep in the pockets of our coats like field voles.
The fog of our breath is dense and sluggish;
it drags behind like a three-toed sloth.
It freezes in the prickly air,
and on the foggy glass of our steaming breath,
I draw two graceless hearts with my finger
and sign our moments like photos, on the back
(the date, the name, the smile).
And the soul flies out like a genie released from an amphora,
or from a flask.
But there’s nobody around,
and my soul is its own master,
its own Marcel Proust.
Our shadows play snowballs, snort like Labrador retrievers.
There’s still hope, and the street lamps come on childishly early,
with the shaggy magic of overgrown dandelions.
The snow – blue-green, marbled, granular –
comes to life, like everything touched by the quill of a creator does.
And I dip my quill, made from an arrow,
into the inkwell of my heart,
where there’s nothing black any longer.

·

Dmitry Blizniuk © 2019

You are a cat,

and all your nine lives are wasted on trifles,
on washing and cooking and tidying up,
on war painting your face and body,
on taking cat naps beside the cradle.
I have so little of you left to hold –
shall I pour you some moon milk?
I’m reading you like teenage adventures of Sherlock,
like crib notes written on a girl’s knees.
All that is left of you is La Peau de chagrin
that gets smaller and thinner with years,
but I never give up wishing, longing.
A small feather sticks out of the pillow
like a skiing track on a mountain slope;
the caramel moon shines through the window,
and I’m looking at you through the years
as if through a heavy snowfall:
you’re smiling, and your lips
look yogurt-stained
in the flurry of the falling snowflakes.

·

Dmitry Blizniuk © 2019

Previously Published: Sheila-Na-Gig Online,
Vol 2-2, Winter 2017

In Louisburgh, County Mayo, Thinking About Dublin

The smell of burning peat in this steady morning rain
suggests a memory out of reach, something from years ago
when I got the notion to drain my small savings account,
head for Ireland, once final exams were read, grades in,

textbooks collected, counted, accounted for, our bosses
satisfied that the City of Stamford had gotten its due.
I was twenty-six, marriage in shreds, divorce papers drawn up—
I was seeking a different self, a poetic self.

I stayed a week in Dublin, wandering the paths Joyce describes.
Each day I distracted myself from the hole in my life,
went to the Abbey, met an American actor, a minor
figure on the Broadway stage who took me to an after-hours place

frequented by the Dublin theatre crowd— I could’ve sworn
when we knocked and the actor whispered the password,
the man who peeked out and opened the door was Milo O’Shea—
The actor and I drank Jameson’s neat, sipped it slowly.

In Boyle, County Roscommon, town of my great grandmother,
I wandered the cemetery, searching for the Sheekey graves.
The headstones from the days of the Great Hunger hid in the high grass.
I rented a small red Ford, drove across Ireland,

slowing down, stopping often for the sheep, accepting waves
from old farmers as I shifted into first gear, on to the next village
stopping each night to find a room and perhaps supper—
Supper identical to breakfast, eggs and rashers,

Brown bread and white, tomato, tea, lashings of butter—
I ate too much and drank the Guinness, which fattened me up--
I outsized my waistbands. I was growing in my grief:
Instead of wasting away. I came home a stone heavier,
a bottle of Jameson’s in my duty-free bag.

•

Lynne S. Viti 2019