| Winter 2019 - Poet's Choice/Weather the Weather |
It has become Highland Park Poetry's annual tradition with our Winter Muses Gallery to invite poets (and artists) to submit work without regard to subject, theme or form. We hope that you enjoy our selections.
As a bonus, Highland Park Poetry is pleased to include "Weather the Weather," a display of poetry and art currently on view on Highland Park's City Hall that Catherine Schwalbe and I guest curated for The Art Center of Highland Park. Stop by 1707 St. Johns Avenue during business hours Monday through Friday between 8AM and 5PM, now through the end of February.
Many thanks to all of the poets and artists who shared their work with us.
Enjoy the experience!
Jennifer Dotson, Editor
P.S. Brief bios for all poets and artists selected in this Winter Muses Gallery are posted at the top of the Participating Poets Page.
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| Cynthia T. Hahn, Photographer |
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L'hiver cascadant
Par
Cynthia Hahn
Libertyville, Illinois
La neige tamisant
les nuages en gris: doux
battements d’ailes.
| Falling Winter
By
Cynthia Hahn
Libertyville, Illinois
Snow sifting
the clouds grey: softly
flapping wings.
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Catholic School
By
Kathleen A. Lawrence
Cortland, New York
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Scuffing penny loafers
on the nylon carpet,
building static to shock
boys carrying book bags.
Lukewarm milk cartons
waiting for lunchtime along
with sweating sandwiches
wrapped in shriveling Saran.
Workbook pages crumpled
under desk tops, folded
origami fortune tellers
spilling our secret crushes.
Flicking pretend boogers,
and rubbing noogies,
pulling hair just because
I “like” like you.
Bells releasing us,
elbows flailing, jaws flapping
as tin cartoon boxes open
for Frito crunching, HoHo trades.
Coat unzipped, running free,
macadam antics for playground royalty,
Chinese jump rope and Four Square
before inmates return to their cells.
Eyes fixed on the clock, counting
minutes until the next break,
doodling notebook curlicues and
fantasy marriages as Mrs. Brad Andrews.
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| Jenene Ravesloot, Photographer |
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Cuties
By
Jenene Ravesloot
Chicago, Illinois
| These oranges that are sometimes called cuties, or early clementines, or late mandarin depending on the season; these squat-shaped orange-yellow oranges that are small enough to sit in a child’s palm; these oranges that reveal another world inside their peeled wax-slick skin: seedless white-veined segments that remind you of the tight florets of a florist’s chrysanthemum. Go ahead! Pop one slice of fruit into your mouth, and then another. Savor its nectar-sweet flesh, its pungent juice that lingers on your tongue, on your fingers, its scent that hovers like a bright perfume.
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Thrift Shop
By
Joan McNerney
Ravena, New York
| I descend clutching a
teetering banister to the
bowels of this holy place.
A sign welcomes me to
St. Mary’s Basement Boutique
where scent of unloved
clothing assaults me.
I finger grubby blouses
and skirts hanging limp
week after week unwanted.
Where is it? Hidden beneath
mounds of faded tee shirts?
Where is that swag I will
brag on for months?
At last I uncover something
beyond belief….a mohair sweater
snow white with pastel flowers.
A good fit, my prayer answered.
Retired ladies glance up.
They are volunteers filling
another empty afternoon.
The cashier consults her price list.
“One dollar” she says as I reply with
quick “thanks” fleeing blissfully.
When I get home, my bonanza
is baptized in cool water and suds
now reborn, lustrous and all mine.
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| Gail Denham, Photographer |
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Calypso
By
Ann Lamas
Chicago, Illinois
| Caught on concrete
a mermaid, the tail her legacy
ripped aside by sailors,
deceived under a new moon,
then thrown away shore side, low tide.
Gulping sea air she died,
and was found by a lost artist
who painted her with his tears
to resemble his sweetheart.
He titled her "Calypso" not
knowing her lore or that
mermaids have no names
without song.
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Sisyphus
By
Lennart Lundh
Orland Hills, Illinois
| I'm tired of it, okay?
I know I messed up,
that gods and demi-gods
shouldn't be betrayed,
that I should keep my ego,
my drive to be the best,
in firm and constant control.
I messed up, more than once
and every time big time.
C'mon, though, huh?
My buddy Heracles,
brother by different parents,
un-reluctant killer of men,
women and monsters,
his own children, crying out loud.
He impregnated fifty sisters,
in one night no less.
He's a hero, a moral star
for everyone to follow.
Gets to go to Rome,
change his name,
star in countless movies.
Me, I got no groupies' screams,
just this bloody giant rock
following me home from work
every single day
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| Gail Denham, Photographer |
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Contemplaciones al viento
Olivia Maciel Edelman
Highland Park, Illinois
Al viento soleado, los besos, las canas, y las contemplaciones.
Hoy día hay gente aún más pobre,
los jóvenes alumnnos restriegan las tetas sobre los pupitres
para alcanzar algo…
Y hacer ojo al galgo
y gritar
¿¡es mi imaginación más pobre que una gota?!
Campiña, Luis de Luises,
campero,
¿dónde habitan hoy Luis XVI y María Antonieta?
¿será verdad que no habrá cultivos para los 9 billones?
Al rocío de los pétalos
los envuelve la leve precipitación de los sueños
un mundo encogido en arena.
Al viento soleado, los besos, las canas, y las contemplaciones,
las contemplaciones….
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Contemplations to the Wind
By
Olivia Maciel Edelman
Highland Park, Illinois
To the sunny wind, kisses, grey hair, contemplations.
As of today there are yet poorer people,
Young students scour their tits on desks
Reaching for something…
And make eye to the greyhound
And shout
Is my imagination poorer than a drop?
Countryside, Louis of Louise’s,
Camper,
Where do Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette reside today?
Would it be true that there won’t be crops for the 9 billion?
The dew of petals
Is enveloped by the rainfall of dreams
A world shrunken in sand.
To the sunny wind, kisses, grey hair, contemplations,
Contemplations…
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| Candace Kubinec, Photographer |
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From Iowa
By
Carol L. Gloor
Savanna, Illinois
| I can smell California burning again, from Iowa,
smell all the smart phones, lap tops, stick drives
sizzling into puddles,
all the great-grandmother pictures
charring into ashes,
all the burnt rubble of missing bones,
all the exhausted sweat of a father
digging for comfort:
it's only things--we have each other.
My friend lifts her gas mask to call me,
I had to go out for food, bad, really bad.
The signal crackles my ear,
sets fire to my hair.
My tongue swells too big
for my mouth, clots with ashes.
Right now sparks drift across the Rockies,
seeds settle into frozen fields,
embers waiting for the right wind,
waiting in Iowa,
waiting for you.
Nothing is too cold to burn.
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A Shared Harvest
By
Candace Kubinec
Greenburg, Pennsylvania
| The aged apple tree is barren
As days become shorter, colder
The sweet aroma of cider from
The remaining windfall fruit floats
On a chilly breeze that ruffles
Through the brittle leaves still
Clinging to gnarled branches
I have gleaned all I can, leaving behind
A harvest feast for deer who visit nightly
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| Candace Kubinec, Photographer |
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Debut
for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
an etheree
By
Gail Denhamn
Sunriver, Oregon
First published in Pegasus, 2015
| If
only
I could step
into that screen,
adjust my blue gown,
sweep onto the dance floor,
murmur “my pleasure” as his
arm wraps my waist and we glide slow,
without mis-steps, capture center stage,
our moves so smooth; oh, the picture we’d make.
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Flyers
- abecedarian
By
Vince Gotera
Cedar Falls, Iowa
| Across meadows
Bumblebees flutter,
Cumbersome
Dancers,
Ever searching for the best
Flowers, colorful faces above
Green seas of grass.
Hummingbirds dash and hover
In wide loping arabesques,
Jumping red yellow orange,
Kissing the wide-open
Lips of blossoms.
Macaws, blue and gold Amazon
Natives, dart sweep soar from
One tangled branch to another.
Pterodactyls like
Quetzalcoatlus northropi
Ruled their kingdoms from vast
Skies, gliding diving snatching
Tiny furred mammals
Unaware of wheeling death.
Violet and silver dragonflies,
Wings translucent
X’s,
Yaw and
Zip now through azure air.
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| Gail Denham, Photographer |
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The Rose
By
Scarlet-May Eziashi
London, UK
| She opens her eyes,
One look, she’s enthralled,
Trapped.
Forever staring at that first image
Ignoring why it’s there
Or when it will die,
And she cradled it, like they were meant for each other,
She leaves it there,
Day by day waking up to a memory,
Not realising its ruby red colour turning cold
And its once soft nature becoming unrecognisable.
Until one day she wakes up
And stares the rose straight in the eye,
Its leaves have fallen
and the ones left are frangible and brittle.
She throws the rose away,
Ready to wake to another.
And surely, she does,
Again and again until she gets old,
Too old to see the rose,
And even after she dies,
there are roses that honour her.
That will die and new ones will come to replace them.
None of them prevailing, always changing.
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Obsolete Colors
By
Mark Hudson
Evanston, Illinois
| Maya blue was made from plants and clay,
it no longer exists, but the art won’t decay.
Tyrian Purple was made from squirming snails,
but they’re weren’t enough left for details.
Lapis Lazali was the best ultra-marine,
only in ancient paintings is it still seen.
Dragons blood was made from Asian trees,
but got a reputation through mythology.
Mummy brown came way from Egypt,
color recycling from the crypts.
White lead was used to make light by Vermeer,
but poison came out of this applied polymer.
These colors were rare, but now they are gone,
leaving many masterpieces painted and drawn!
The artists themselves are six feet under,
but upon their artworks we marvel and wonder!
So what will be the next colors of elegance?
Paintings done by artificial intelligence?
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| Joe Glaser, Photographer |
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Still Life
By
Gary Davis
San Diego, California
| The portrait of my later years would be
a still life done in oils, a small bouquet
of tulips, baby’s breath, and peonies,
a stock arrangement painted straightaway.
It might seem somber and a little spare.
The handling of the subject would reflect
restraint with subtle creativity,
the brushwork layered for a sense of depth
and dabs of muted pigment for some flair,
but not too bright, at best a yeomanly
generic painting on a linen square,
a still life, still a composition good
enough to hang upon a wall somewhere,
within a simple frame of cypress wood.
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Black or White
By
Joe Glaser
Chicago, Illinois
| A dissonant drama plays again and again,
as binary thinking paints over
complex coloration.
Intellect says reject simplistic solutions,
but black-or-white is fodder for the emotions.
Good or evil,
smart or stupid,
high or low,
...
you know what I mean?
It feels so right to skip the in-between.
The charismatic leader plays on
the power of black-or-white thinking
to rouse people to goose-stepping heights.
Watch it.
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| J. Ray Paradiso, Photographer |
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Contemplating Photographs
By
Merle Tovian
Highland Park, Illinois
| As
I dream
of slipping
in and out of
pools of memory,
some steaming, others chilled,
colored brightly or grey-scaled,
I cry and struggle to awake.
Frightened of staying asleep longer,
staring at the ripples of memories.
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The Show
By
Marjorie Rissman
Highland Park, Illinois
| like anything else in life
the first performance
makes the heart beat faster
nerves, excitement, fear
combine to propel you
to the microphone while
blinding lights black out
your nearest and dearest
given ringside seats at my
debut but it is the words
spoken not the speaker
that steals the show and
as I sense that the audience
is captivated by my story
I relax into the mellow mood
of memory once again
shared and come alive
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| Joe Glaser, Photographer |
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Réflexions
By
Mary Ann Eiler
Oak Park, Illinois
un puits profond
au bout du jardin du cœur
une soif de l’Inconnu
vorace
séduits
par un ancien espoir
nous bûmes
l'eau invisible de l'Autre
ce qui semblait
cessa d'être
au crépuscule
de l'amour flétri
je noyai en vous
englouti en vous-même
vous plongeâtes dans
le gouffre
il y a des puits partout*
*La Religieuse par Denis Diderot.
| Reflections
By
Mary Ann Eiler
Oak Park, Illinois
a deep well
at the far end
of the garden
of the heart
a voracious thirst
for the Unknown
seduced by
an old hope
we drank the
invisible water
of the Other
what seemed
ceased to be
in the dusk
of withered love
I drowned in you
you plunged into the
abyss engulfed in
yourself
everywhere there are wells*
*Everywhere there are wells is the English translation of the French il y a des puits partout in the novel The Religious (The Nun) by Denis Diderot.
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If You Wrap Yourself in Paper
By
Michael H. Brownstein
St. Louis, Missouri
| If you wrap yourself in paper
& blue lines sift into your pores
If you wrap yourself in paper
& borderlines ease onto your scars
If you wrap yourself in paper
& white white cannot color your skin
If you wrap yourself in paper
& the natural fold folds into your tissue
If you wrap yourself in paper
wrap yourself in paper rules apply,
weather lets itself be known
& the tape that has been chosen
is only as strong
as a paper cut.
Attempted suicide can be a competitive sport.
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| Carol L. Gloor, Photographer |
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Homecoming
By
Kathleen Gregg
Lexington, Kentucky
| She tracks down her brother;
finds him in the den, perched
on the couch,
arms resting on his knees,
hands folded, head bowed.
He could be praying,
if he even believes
in redemption
after he’s lost everything,
after a year
of court-ordered rehab.
She still struggles
to forgive
the vile version of her brother
who demanded money,
screamed she was a bitch
for saying no. Who later
refused her calls, any visits.
Now, she is his halfway house:
her last act of devotion,
his second chance.
In this houseful of family,
noisy with celebration,
he has sought out
the one empty room
where nothing
can be asked of him.
He looks up at her;
his eyes are a foxhole
she won’t jump into.
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Spiral of Love
By
Charlotte Digregorio
Winnetka, Illinois
This poem is about the sculpture by Julie Rotblatt-Amrany at the corner of St. Johns and Laurel Avenues in Highland Park. It is reprinted from the 2018-2019 edition of East on Central.
| Mother, cheek to cheek with
her son, embraces him,
an act of unconditional love
reflecting God’s.
On her lap, the boy smiles
blissfully, eyes lift to sky,
his arms wrap around
her neck and back.
Mother’s contemplative mood
gentles and heals us,
eyes cast downward,
humble as the Virgin Mary’s.
Her legs in lotus position,
soft bare feet evoke the path on
the hard soil of our broken world.
In the swirl of modern life,
the free-spirited woman with
flowing hair, radiates peace
and caring on Mother Earth.
Together with her son’s embrace,
a spiral of love.
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| Sculpture by Julie Rotblatt-Amrany |
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Midwestern Winter
By
John J. Gordon
La Grange, Illinois
| Breaths crystallize
Elongating icicles glisten
Houses creak
Automobiles balk
Traffic crawls
Desperate animals forage
Novel aches develop
Eye glasses fog
Exposed flesh tingles burns
Fashion pretense disappears
Wind chills terrorize
Sunlight struggles
Trapped in winter’s polar vortex
Victims of Mother Nature’s hex
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Winter Tales
By
Lakshmy M. Nair
Vernon Hills, Illinois
| Days are chained
inside Siberian cells
long nights prowl over
powdered mountain tops
maple trees rub frozen
fingers on daylight tease
in subways desolates
crawl for a pinch of
warmth cuddle man’s
best friend among discards
and opioid dreams
cruel luminous January
strides in long bridal veil
sink teeth on naked flesh
hidden in walrus blanket
February come out of bleak
predicts the birth of tulips
yearning to kiss colorful lips of
daffodils and magnolias
to fall in love all over again
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| Lakshmy Nair, Photographer |
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Winter Trees at Night
By
Dan Fitzgerald
Pontiac, Illinois
| Ragged, pencil drawn,
fractures against a moon lit sky.
Frozen black lightning
unmoving against wandering stars.
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| Gail Denham, Photographer |
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Illusion of Heaven
By
Amelia Cotter
Chicago, Illinois
| Red star, heart-shaped
Hangs from my ceiling and catches the light
Color of blood, essence of passion
A treasure to me and a symbol of love
Is dull to the touch, no trace of warmth
Tears at the surface and infects within
If was eaten, would make me ill
But shimmers and evokes hunger still
Facets sparkle, magic was there
Disappointment hangs now and blackens the night
Faux star, sky my ceiling
Glow bright once more and restore the firmament.
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Languages
By
Edilson Afonso Ferreira
Formiga, Brazil
First published in Creative Talents Unleashed, Featured Writer, June 17, 2017.
| I don’t like soft-spoken people,
with unhurried speeches and
calculated talks and gestures,
conveying thoughts and doctrines
with professional and doctoral air, users
of attentive audiences and easy applauses.
I get bored and cannot hear them.
I’m aware that time is running out;
our life short, finite and imponderable,
and so inaccurate our common insight
that pompous speech becomes suspicious.
My words are little heard, in fact,
I was born a poet and I talk on paper,
where they are written, to be read by people
with all the time and right to refuse them.
My family and friends look like me;
our eyes speak more than words.
But with the lovers I have had,
I spoke not only with looks.
I created a crazy language,
a more loving one;
not from mouth to ear,
but from mouth to mouth.
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| RM Yager, Photographer |
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Milquetoast
By
RM Yager
Deerfield, Illinois
| like a seedling
crushed by a giant raindrop
like a child pushed down
on the sidewalk
you took away my toys
locked me out of my own life
but I let you
you mopped the floor with my ideas
but I let you
you estranged me from my family
locked me in your room
but I let you
today I threw away the milk
burnt the toast
and drank my first cup of
black coffee
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Only Child's Orchard Seasons
By
Gerard Sarnat
| For the three years since born,
one grandkid has been raised
to know nature much more than
I have learned in seventy-three.
Without looking, Ben can tell
which kind of bird is chirping;
he states names of surrounding
plants like they are his siblings.
Strolling around Village Homes,
we designate intervals as orange,
cherry, plum, peach, grape, apple,
pomegranate before orange again.
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| Charlotte Digregorio |
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Often
By
Radomir Vojtech Luza
North Hollywood, California
From author's collection, Sidewalks and Street Corners, published by Christian Faith Publishing in 2018
| Often I wave
At love
Its unbowed head
And waving fists
Its forgiven blades
And unforgiven buttons
The ones it passes by
And the ones
It never finds
I know only
That it is as
Raw as talent
And as jubilant
As rain when
It smiles
Often I think of love
And how blessed I am
To have had it
And lost it
Only to have found it again
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silver-lit
By
Gregg Dotoli
Nutley, New Jersey
| mercury moon drips pearly beads
As spirits plant celestial seeds
singing songs of Saturn rings
sterling leaves and ancient kings
white doves in perpetual flocks
nest eternal in stellar clocks
nightingales whisper
suns hide in caves
space spawns blue microwaves
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| Weather the Weather: Poets & Artists Respond |
| “Whether the weather be cold or whether the weather be hot, we’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.” This tongue twister cleverly captures that no matter where on the planet we live, we are all subject to the weather. From drought to flooding, hurricanes to blizzards - all of us are experiencing increasingly severe or extreme weather patterns, global climate change, and traumatic events. We are bombarded with weather alerts, images, suffering and beauty, along with waves of information on our phones, computers and television. Weather phenomenon may also be a metaphor for the storms of culture, politics, personal relationships and the individual psyche.
Guest curators are Visual Artist, Catherine Schwalbe and Poet, Jennifer Dotson. Schwalbe, is a practicing artist, curator, and educator. Dotson, is a published poet and founder of Highland Park Poetry (2018 Mayor's Award for the Arts). Both women have collaborated together, exhibited, and created thought provoking exhibitions for over two decades!
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| Ice Island, Photograph by Elizabeth Peterson |
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Snow Business
By
Betsy Dogin Katz
Highland Park, Illinois
| NOVEMBER
Sometimes snow
Can be the only white
In a gritty world.
When there is chaos,
Violence, and darkness
Invading mind and heart
Gaze on what is calm and pure;
Let thoughts follow footprints
To a better place.
DECEMBER
White whispers of snow
Drifting across the highway
Ghostly curtains of delicate chiffon
Escaping the anonymity
Of frozen fields.
JANUARY
Native Floridians call them Snowflakes;
They glide down from the North
Carrying golf clubs, fishing rods, and mahjong cards;
Land on the warm soil
And rapidly melt into shimmering pools.
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| Hallie Redman, Photographer |
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| Painting by Christine Forni The deep alizarin sky and ultramarine blue water mixed with the sap green in the night after the storm. |
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| Aftermath
By Patrice Claeys Boyer
Two rusty posts stand like guardians
of Atlantis, stockades to lock in past sins.
Floor tracks mark the entrance once graced
by mermaids etched on glass, now smashed
knife-sharp. Sea blue carpet scuffed
to smudged grey, sags under ash and sand
hurled by the hurricane into dumb patterns.
Rows of battered chairs face the pool.
A stove with ammonite-shaped coils slumps under
a tattered tarp, its clock stopped at 1:05.
Wooden lockers, once for highball fixings,
now hold curling layers of laminate.
Across the roofless expanse, the kitchen slants
toward collapse, cabinet veneers flayed
in bands like dried kelp. Below the counter
fibrous wood ripples like so much fringe.
And overhead on electric lines brittle
as giant spider legs, dozens of mockingbirds
descend, call out above the broken world
like pterodactyls laughing at nature’s power
to backhand man, a clacking sound that rises
in empty echoes to drown the dry wind.
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| Haiga by Emma Alexandra Kowalenko |
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Wilderness
By
Merle Tovian
Highland Park, Illinois
| Crossing the wilderness of life,
Sometimes forgetting the experience is in the crossing,
Choosing memories to build positive images for strength, resilience, endurance.
Learning through mistakes, struggling through pain,
Jubilant in dance and song, cherishing close encounters.
Vigor to weather a long journey.
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| Polar Vortex by Catherine Schwalbe |
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Zen Pen 110
By R. Craig Sautter
Chicago, Illinois
| spring is just
a wind shift away.
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| N. Masani Landfair, collage |
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| "Winter Walk with an Ancestor," collage by N. Masani Landfair |
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After Bad Winters
By Emily Calvo
| Leaves spring from trees like
students who press snooze buttons
one too many times.
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| "Around Winters Bend," Watercolor by Emily Calvo |
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Summer Commute
(Friday Evening Stuck on the Bus)
By
Joe Weintraub
Chicago, Illinois
| Please,I would just
as soon get home
before the rains
rumbling out west
come pouring down,
before the pint
of premium
praline ice cream
I bought downtown
be
gins
to
m
e
l
t
.
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| "Both Sides," Photograph by Lynn West |
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Fast Company
By
Martin Marcus
| She is the honored guest who disappears at dinner.
We cannot say if her jewels were real.
A flash of her thigh was too quick to be sure we saw it.
We do not remember her brief perfume.
We are still heady with her conversation,
but what exactly did she say?
She is mostly shards of old promises,
yet, man and woman, we crave her company.
Even as Winter lolls unshaven in our rooms,
with shamefaces we admit: Spring is a liar,
frosting our tenderest hopes on her cold, green tongue.
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| Kristina Govorovka, Photographer |
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Heat Wave
By
Marjorie Rissman
Highland Park, Illinois
| wisps of white summer dreams
float past my window not a leaf
stirs to cool each early morning;
snippets of sunshine break loose
from clouds destined to rumble
heat exhaustion flashes its
electrical warnings of quakes
to come and maybe even a sad
downpour of human emotion.
grass is coated with
ever-present puffs
asphalt is frosted grey
but where does the cotton
of my youth hang out today?
waves of humidity southwest
winds turn the Midwest into
another dustbowl of another century,
another heat wave to be
endured and pondered.
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| "Emergence," Photograph by Marilyn Crocker |
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Box of Rain
By
M. Kolodziej
Originally published in Lyrics of Our Lives, 2003
| What shoes might I wear
To carry the weight?
A body, my body -
A box.
Sentiments I’ve stored
And sketches of Spain,
A body, my body -
A box.
For if I had known
The sun by her name,
I’d carry her body -
A box.
Shelter from benumbed
And inevitable rain,
Which body, my body -
A box.
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| Melanie Brown, Artist |
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El Presidente visita a Puerto Rico
By
Kerry Leaf
Highland Park, Illinois
| She catches the paper towel roll
As her mamacita rolls her eyes.
¿Dónde está la ayuda?
¿Por qué nos falta el socorro?
Trivial video moment
Captures the powerless, no power
To see
Or
Flee.
La tormenta torments
As papá questions todo.
La isla isolated,
Ignored by those who could.
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| Peggy Shearn, Photographer |
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| Peggy Shearn, Photographer |
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I am the Lightning
By
Jill Charles
Chicago, Illinois
| I am the lightning,
Slicing clouds like a samurai sword.
I am white hot lovely.
Wait for the raindrops.
Slicing clouds like a samurai sword,
One kiss could kill you,
Sparkling like vodka
A taste empty as death.
I am white hot lovely.
No key can lock me up.
An angel without mercy
Scorching your grass green heart.
Wait for the raindrops
A softer, sweeter she
Her kiss like clover after the storm,
I am the lightning.
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| "Remember Me When I Am Gone." by Meredith London |
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Silent Summer Prayers
By
Joseph Kuhn Carey
Glencoe, Illinois
| Hot sun
bakes
bodies
slinking by
on the
sidewalk
like
steaming
curved
croissants
or
long
crunchy
French
baguettes
just pulled
from the oven
in a quaint
corner bakery
on a
cobblestoned
Parisian street
where clouds
and
soothing rain
are just
lost
silent
summer
prayers.
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| Hallie Redman, Photographer |
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| "Steadfast," Photograph by Marilyn Crocker |
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| "We neglected to watch the waters rise during the night but, I remember the colors of the cadmium yellow sun and the cobalt blue sky," Oil Painting on Linen by Christine Forni |
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Paradise, Identifiable Bones and Bed Springs
By
Heather Corbally Bryant
| A forensic expert sent to Paradise to search for remains
Explains it’s like looking for your keys, like scanning an
Area for items that catch your eye—looking near to what
Remains, what has not been destroyed in this charred
Town—bed springs, for example, often endure, so that
Is a place to search for identifiable bones—right there,
Near where someone might have been taken sleeping—
The effort will give closure to families who are seeking
Members who have been lost to them, at least there will
Be remains, identifiers, bones that have been incinerated,
Bodies that have begat or borne children, bodies that
Stayed too long, too long until they could not escape
The firestorm that swept through town, burning up all
The cars on their way to fleeing this ashen catastrophe.
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| Tobi Abrams, Artist |
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| "Alien Winter," Photography by Elizabeth Peterson |
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| Larissa Rolley, Photographer |
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Winter Wind, an etheree
By
Jennifer Dotson
Highland Park, Illinois
* The etheree, a syllabic poem containing ten lines and a total of fifty-five syllables, is named in honor of Etheree Taylor Armstrong, an Arkansas poet who died in 1994.
This poem was originally published in East On Central, 2013/2014
| Cold
west wind
blows goosebumps
on my pale skin
chills my blood to slush
turns my cheeks to burnt film.
Thin dry chapped skin protects not
against Winter’s elemental force
that licks an iceberg in the Arctic
and whispers its truth to my inner core.
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| Kristina Govorovka, Photographer |
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Storm is Coming
By
Jennifer Dotson
Highland Park, Illinois
A variation of this poem was originally published in East On Central, 2011/2012
| Thirsty leaves turn over
craving the sky’s wet kiss
Trees hum and thrum
whisper in urgent rustlings
and sudden swaying
Warm summer air
drives a Harley
across the prairie
Birds chatter in code
Do you hear it?
Can you taste it?
Distant deep rumbles
of heavenly indigestion
Time slows with waiting
We hold our breath
wonder if it will pass
over us as we exhale
Temperature plunges
From dryer vent exhaust
to goosebump chill
light grows green edges
Wind becomes aggressive
with nervous agitation
Random drops fall fat
in heavy surprise
before the synchopated
strumming cascade of
torrents and streams
And it’s here
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| "Rain in Gold," by Mary Seyfarth |
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2009 Fall
Muses' Gallery Archive
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