Poetry By Madlynn Haber

Floating

Water’s surface cradles my body
floating
sinking only an inch or two
below the surface
held, safely, rocking.
Cool waters sparkle in sunlight,
eyes open to the blue above
squint in the face of the sun
slipping from behind
a burst of clouds.

Floating
like clouds seem to,
like paper boats in a man-made pond,
like crafted rafts made from green branches
lashed together
and set to sail across a lake,
holding upright candles
and young girl’s wishes.

Floating
like my mind does
in between the notes
of the flute and drum
while lying flat,
head to feet
even and straight.

Floating
like seeds in the wind
like balloons in the afternoon
like prayers raising themselves
to the sky.

Poetry By Shaun Tenzenmen

Under The Cover

Beyond the paragraphs and stanzas
Where stories start being told
Round campfires, on verandahs
Ideas – like origami – unfold

Within each sentence, there emerges
Lines flowing skywards from the soul
Where sunshine and saccharine diverges
To tally what the parts withhold

Under the phrase, where the weight lightens
Adjectives get detached from their nouns
Order is loosened; or disorder tightens
Dissected from their objects’ surrounds

Inside each word that’s to be announced
Where every breath becomes considered
Accents distort how it’s all pronounced
Not always intended as delivered

Beneath every syllable assessed
Meaning flickers in recognition
Beyond one thing that’s being expressed
The mastery of imprecision

Below the phoneme, perhaps that’s where to start
Where the true heart of the story lies
Put back together after being pulled apart
Ambivalence is where the author dies

Poetry By LB Sedlacek

The Green Neon Lights of Granite Falls

Sitting in a bar
Open Mic night
Blackberry hard cider
Taco and burritos
Truck out back
Guitar tunes flowing
Open Mic night
Sponsored by a
Guitar maker making
Guitars by hand
Sitting on cushions
Against the wall
Brick and plaster
Decorative fireplace that
Burns no fire
Looking out the
Window green neon
Flashes phone numbers
And the words
Fresh Freon call
Blinking blink blinking
Real green neon
Words offering the
Freshest fresh Freon
The main ingredient
In fireworks is
Magnesium it makes
The whitest light
Burns the brightest
Somehow we all
Need magnesium in
Our fresh Freon
Bodies it’s a
Vitamin we seem
To be deficient
In getting enough
Of it would
Or will cause
Us to light
Up the sky!

Poetry By Jonathan Hayes

san francisco, california

still in her safeway uniform
but now with a cigarette & drink

she fries tortilla chips in the skillet
holds up a bloody red steak to the kitchen air

with our tarnished metal forks
we smash avocados in a ceramic bowl

salt
lemon, more salt

by the time the guacamole is made
chips are laid on a green guatemalan cloth

to dry
& cool

she tells us
“como extraño a mi tierra”

Poetry By Andi Brooks

In Words of Truth

No word of lie
had ever passed
between my son and I,
so when he asked
If I would die,
I gave a true reply.
He did not cry
with childlike fear,
nor even ask me why;
but held me near
and with a sigh
he whispered,
‘Do not die.’

Poetry By Karrie Wortner

The curtain rose. Behind it is…

the hush before a storm,
that thick‑throated stillness the pines know
when the sky is holding its breath.
Behind it is the barn light flickering,
a pulse too slow to trust,
and the field stretching out like a ribcage
picked clean by winter.
It’s my grandmother’s voice caught in the rafters,
soft as milkweed,
saying don’t look too long at the dark
or it’ll start looking back.
Behind it is the truth we keep folded
like a quilt no one wants to wash—
the grief, the grit, the stubborn hope
that clings like burrs to our jeans.
The curtain rose, and there it was:
the world raw‑boned and waiting,
asking who we’ll become
when we finally step into the light.

Poetry By Sherry Shahan

SELF PORTRAIT

I sit at the kitchen table with magazines snagged at a garage sale. The glue from last year’s art class is too thick. My scissors are dull, like me. Today’s assignment is to create a self-portrait of my childhood self. I rip out pages, cutting and shaping her young face from a honeycomb. Rusty bottle caps for eyes, she stares at me as if gazing through binoculars. As a kid, seeing what others couldn’t see would’ve come in handy. Her nose is a photo of a boiled sausage. I use a pen to draw a scar on the bony bridge. Her stilled lips are good at keeping secrets. Layer upon layer, paper scraps become epidermis, dermis, hypodermis—forlorn barriers against pathogens. Nothing can protect her from grief or trauma. I create ears with extra wide canals, an adaptation of an early warning system. Her body is an oversized heart pieced together from an ad for prickly pears. Spines make good armor. I had planned to use mighty oaks for her arms and legs; instead, I attach seagull feathers. She reminds me of art tacked up in a kindergarten classroom—but with the freedom to soar. We like that about ourselves.

Poetry By Michael Woodard

Imago

Barefooted, the children wander the periphery of camp
hunting broken bits of obsidian
while we sit in the manmade shade,

discussing wills and trusts and estates
and what happens to the kids
if we are suddenly gone.

We let them roam in the flowering creosote,
feeling somehow protected in this cocoon
of immense sky and fried rock

sealed off from civilization
and all the things they must inherit,
our assets of course, but our wars too.

They are in awe of the black and yellow
caterpillars, which we’ll later learn
are striped morning sphinxes.

Unafraid of the menacing caudal horns on the rump,
They scoop dozens of them into sand buckets
a game that lasts just long enough

for the parents to finish a drink uninterrupted,
with just a moment to remember when wealth
was just a plastic yellow bucket of larva.

Later, just before dusk, we’ll climb the massive dune
kids, caterpillars, adults
all shoeless, inching up the steep sand

The kids seeking anything novel,
the best spot for a sand angel perhaps
or some granted independence over the dune ridge.

The caterpillars searching for the white-pink blossoms
of the evening primrose soon opening,
remembering the perfection of their aerobatic wings.

The parents want a holiday card family photo,
some impossible promise that any of this is safeguarded
as the light slips away beyond the range.

Poetry By Johanna Rodda

Sermon

I. Ascension

Ecce Homo,
Sed nolite me videre:
Do not look upon me.
Blow winds, and carry me up.
Into eternal air I shall fly in ascension.

II. Prayer

A prayer went out from my lips, untranslatable.
Yet let me tell you in every language.
My thought shall be in your tongue.
Now. Is my tale begun.
Do not say I speak without understanding
or think without words
my thought eternal.
Your heart too has taught you
what you heard once in a dream.
Sleep and I shall speak to you.
Sleep and what you say
I shall appear in
as grass out of the earth
I am born
of woman not of this world
wherein is no rest.
So sleep.

III. Dream

I have thought him out of earth.
He has come to me in tears,
tearing his hair,
as swiftly as my mind flies past him.
He is away.
The songs my heart has sung
were written many years ago
by other hands and tongues.
They will never take him from me.
Come again,
and go once more.
Somewhere in the middle I will build you out of thought.

IV. Grass

In the herb you were hidden
whose blood I drank
when the earth had gone dry.
Why do you not rise like Athena
from the head of the Father,
teaching me in spirit
what already you have fed me, Flesh?
I shall only find you once again
in every year
when days again grow long
as my mind has told me it will create
once the circle has been run.
You leap over the earth, and again to earth
into the future you will fall
when I both create and destroy you,
as you are, in body.

V. Light

It has come again.
The world, now ready, receives us.
We are again in places we knew before
whose stones again we have filled
with words we sowed in the bed
of earth under the cloud.
You have blown the stagnant water
with your breath.
Now go and come to me.
We will sit on the seat beneath the tree.

Poetry By Jennifer Weigel

Harsh Words

I’d like a pumice for my tongue.
To take back all those things
that I shouldn’t have said.
I’d wash them well.
Loofah the dead bits.
Work out the callused spots.
And grind them down
until they are as smooth
as a silk chemise.