Stage of Gloom
The birds have vanished into the sky.
I stand at the moonless window, only random fireflies
kindling the somberness. No trace of a pale moon
hiding behind a gossamer cloud, no red-tailed star
—Bleached Bones by Elizabeth Howard
The dog days of summer have steamed on by,
winds of autumn are blowing strong,
storm clouds clustering in the west,
the birds have vanished into the sky.
Eclipse
From the other room, my daughter’s laughter
has the cadence of a hymn, the syntax
of some spell. It makes sense. I’m sure
she still dreams of the un-world, which is
still so near for her. In the cereal
aisle, when she holds my hand, I can feel
a hundred futures thrumming through
the ley lines in her palm. She’ll look up
at me then, with a box of Cheerios
under one arm, while the irises of her eyes
(twin moons over standing stones)
eclipse mine.
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Image Credit: Abstract painting of solar eclipse (Ben Will) with Cheerios background (pxhere.com)
Purloined Princes
After “Hurt Hawks” by Robinson Jeffers
1.
The speckled stone was white, oblong, a split through the top, hollowed,
Abandoned in my garden weeds, dead stalks,
The ship turned statue, cold, lifeless. He emerged warm, shivering,
A bloody gash: his side caught, squirming
Through stone to free air. I found him, spent, black puddled in shadows, eyes live,
A slitted green-yellow like fall larch,
Proud, pleading, universal S.O.S., though he didn’t speak.
He never spoke in words. I heard it all.
Black velvet sides heaved—I slung him, light burden, home to stitch in life,
Panting under my touch: he was the last,
Escaped from a ruined earth. Four feet, four thumbs, forty built-in tools,
His whisker-thin, white warning grid floating useless,
No signals to tremble it to life. We spoke in looks, touch,
The treble of his voice a song, a mystery.
He’d rest, then fly; but he’d nowhere to fly. Nights, he snuggled between my breasts,
Warmth rumbling waist to neck like the husband I’d longed for,
A sigh shared, loneliness loosing its chokehold as we breathed the same air.
What Goldilocks Learned
Beautiful and dyed blond
I moved out to explore the forest
a lumberjack beckoned
Once inside his cottage I didn’t notice
all was dished out
and everything in its place
That first man was a boor
he sawed and hammered and nailed
Did I have to spread my legs
try to mend the cleaving
when he said I hadn’t pleased him in bed?
Continue reading What Goldilocks Learned by Colleen Anderson
Ode to Deborah (Mother of Israel)
After Judges 4
Continue reading Ode to Deborah (Mother of Israel) by Julie L. Moore
I know what it’s like to be caged
So I perform your rites of acceptable outrage
Though your anger, so loud
Accomplishes so little
Still, I send my sternly worded letters
Call and voice my grave concerns
I share fact-checked articles
And funny but pointed memes
I go to one of the facilities
And get pepper-sprayed
Peacefully protesting outside
It’s not enough, of course
How could it be, when they are holding
Children in cages?
Continue reading Caged by Marsheila Rockwell
When Fall decembers sky
and steals the warmth
from the wind, what’s left
is the cool inspiration of snow
falling on leaves of grass
as words crystallizing
on the white expanse
of the page.
Image Credit: Christmas snow background (PSD Graphics)
Before dinosaurs stirred, marine plants and animal bodies fell, decomposed on sea bottoms. Under pressure and intense heat two miles down, organic sludge turned to crude that crewmen drill today from offshore oil platforms.
Laboratory scientists create synthetic threads from polymers. Tailors design smart suits, hanging slacks; a finger-touch snaps fabric snug. New outfits reform waists, shoulders, thighs; sculpt bodies to look powerful, create modern colorful personas.
Synthetic -man buys melons in plastic mesh; packages sweet corn in Saran; protects and cools kids at soccer in vibrant uniforms; outfits firemen for burning buildings; produces cutting-edge medical tools; makes travel lighter, fuel-efficient; sends rockets to Mars.
Advertisers spin recycling myths, dump waste into oceans, ignore ancient forces astir among brand-colored logos in the Mariana Trench nearly seven miles down: Bald Barbie heads, skateboard wheels, broken combs, medicine bottles, plastic straws.
Break it down! Break it down! But natural rhythms cannot digest it. Silvery minnows, stinky salmon eggs–mimicry entices birds and fishes, their bellies swollen with hunger. Nanoparticles cut with hazardous chemicals infiltrate humans through faucets, food, and air.
Vivid marketplace-signage shouts: “Come! Look, buy, consume!” Investors watch daily stock prices, ignore future consequences of a money-driven market. Synthetic’s children begrudge ancestors’ myopic viewpoints firing up the marketplace.
Dust storms stain southern sunsets, trigger off a new generation of rocket boosters aimed at planetary habitats. Spacemen, wedded to the red Martian surface, hope their desperate quests will prove to be élan, vital, and spark a friendly environmental niche.
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Image credit: Blue and Red Abstract (Steve Johnson on Unsplash) with superimposed plastic/fish composite (Ocean Plastics Lab)
After I Samuel 25
Years later, after David made love to her
and Chileab was born, after she was safe,
did Abigail still wake to the dog-
like face of Nabal, that Calebite mate
who reminded her time and again
of her place, for she was woman,
small compared to his great stock,
his barbaric body with rough hands,
his 3000 sheep and 1000 goats
amid limestone and laurel trees
dotting the lush hillside? Did her dreams
rehearse his churlish speech
inviting slaughter, claiming the chosen
one was nothing but a runaway
slave his bread and meat were not worth
sustaining? And in that subconscious state
where she desperately gathered yet again
loaves of bread and raisin cakes,
five dressed sheep and jugs of wine,
fig cakes and seahs of grain, to appease
the future king, did she sweat
like the husband himself, cry out for mercy?
She was never Nabal’s beloved.
He never cared what beat beneath her breast
or ran, keen and quick, through her mind.
Does such a wife, so well acquainted with pain,
grow brave? And whence did her wisdom
come that day she fell on her face before David,
saying Yahweh would make a house for him
that endures? Her prophecy a stone
she pulled from an unlikely pouch,
then slung with the power to slay all un-
anointed men in the way of the throne,
striking, and settling, first into the heart
of her narcissistic spouse.
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Editor’s Comment:
Chileab, also known as Daniel, was the second son of David, King of Israel. He was David’s son with his third wife Abigail, widow of Nabal the Carmelite. Unlike the other of David’s three elder sons, Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, Chileab is only named in the list of David’s sons and no further mention is made of him [Annotated from Wikipedia].
Image Credit: Statue of King David by Nicolas Cordier in the Borghese Chapel of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.
In a cave under the Cydonia Massif,
(so known for a face
that isn’t there),
an unseen aquifer fills pools
with liquid.
Not water,
at least not exactly—
saturated with chemical salts
and sheltered by the rock
this caustic brew
neither freezes
nor sublimes.