Encore Series

 Luanne Castle 

 

Every Object a Story

by Luanne Castle

Personal heirlooms speak to me, reminding me of memories that, while never gone, have floated to the bottom of the deep ocean of memory. Family heirlooms have their stories—stories which originated with other family members or ancestors. Every object can generate a poem, story, or essay. If you are interested in writing about objects with meaning to you and have not already discovered it, you will want to read Dawn Raffel’s The Secret Life of Objects.

I had a poem in my first book, Doll God, called “YouTube Interview of the Life-Sized Toddler Doll,” about a personal heirloom, the life-sized walking doll that my grandmother bought me with her store discount at Marshall Field’s flagstaff store at State and Washington in Chicago. I have kept the doll to this day. When my kids were young they believed she was alive. 

For this project, I decided to write about my aunt’s pearls, which arrived for my wedding when I hadn’t seen or heard from my aunt since I was five years old. I started this poem almost forty years ago, but never finished it until now. I wrote three new poems--about the snack bowls we used when I was a kid, the glass pitcher my grandmother poured potato pancake batter from, and the antique doll and rocker that belonged to this same grandmother. I write frequently about my maternal grandparents, but the grandmother in this batch of poems is my paternal Chicago-based grandmother. Clarification note: “Grandma’s Kestner Doll in the Oak Rocking Chair” is the doll Grandma bought for herself, whereas the doll in the YouTube poem is the one she bought for me.

Grandma’s Kestner Doll in the Oak Rocking Chair

I remember back so far 
my daddy plunked down
the little caned oak rocker
and the old-fashioned doll
with yellow hair sitting in it
in the corner by our couch.
Don’t touch. It’s Grandma’s.

I remember beginning school
and Daddy moved the chair
with the doll into my room
after I picked up my books
and tucked them on the shelf.
Be careful. The chair and doll
are very old and fragile.

I remember coming home 
for Christmas from college.
The doll in the chair back in
my parents’ larger living room.
She’ll be yours one day, Lu.
“One day” was never, at least
that’s how I felt at the time.

I remember years later 
opening a large UPS package
and pulling out the bubble-
wrapped chair. A box held
the doll in her hand-sewn dress.
The note in dad’s handwriting
said, They are yours now.

The doll had other outfits, all 
sewn by my grandmother. Long-
distance, Dad explained: growing
up, Grandma didn’t have a doll.
She bought her with her first pay.
This would have been in 1907,
living in a boarding house.

The sturdy little chair came from
the farmhouse. My baby grandson
rocks himself as if to blast off.
I tuck the doll into her tissue paper, 
overwhelmed with responsibility. 
Who will care for her as I can
when they never met Grandma.
 
Trying to Connect with Grandma Fifty Years Later
My grandmother cooked my favorite,
potato pancakes, crispy, not too thick.
She poured the batter from a bowl
I thought necessary for the process.
The milky green glass swirled
into a lip where the concoction slid
onto the sparking oil-sheened griddle.

I suspect my parents sold the bowl
when Grandma moved into a “home.”
What I recall is seeing her sad little
belongings—crocheted potholders
and scratched pans--on long tables 
in our garage for Saturday’s sale.
But I don’t think the bowl was there.
Or did I just not realize its importance?

Grandma was born next to a vineyard
in Rhineland and learned a potato batter
more like flour pancakes than latkes.
I pressed the memory of that green bowl
far down in my mind, along with many
from those days—until one day I didn’t.
Could I find that piece of my childhood?
There was my bowl online: a vintage 
Anchor Hocking jadeite Fire King
batter bowl. It’s in my cupboard now,
but I wish I had the recipe to go with it.

 
I Haven’t Seen Aunt Marge Since I was Five and Now I’m Thirty

Her patent leather eyes 
reflect me with visual acuity,
as if she can read my thoughts.
The puffs of white hair,
are the same we brushed
back five years before from 
Grandma's deathbed forehead.

Even her hands are her mother's--
small and round with tapered,
shiny fingers, dressed
up with rows of rings.
They pull and fuss at each other
like malcontented siblings.
They separate from her,
pale birds chattering in the air.

Why now? Why is she here
after a quarter century of silence?
For so long she was a silence
in our house, my father’s silence.
Cousin Leah whispered how Grandma
met her at the train station, 
but I had to keep it secret,
like a raw egg rattling in my mind.
My father’s anger might’ve cracked 
him and all around him into fragments.

The only sign she had sent me
during the reign of secrecy
was the strand of bridal pearls,
pallor-white, her mother gave to her 
years ago, now shared for my wedding.
Memories repeat out of order,
but we are not stringing them.
Rather we let them light as bubbles
on our shoulders, watch them dissolve. 


 
Estate Bowls

My husband calls to me in the kitchen
When you come this way, bring me 
popcorn in one of those estate bowls.
Someone who overhears might imagine
a Royal Doulton sprouting rosy roses.
Or perhaps pewter from the sixties.

Our estate bowls are faded melamine
speckled like our old kitchen linoleum.
They feature little melamine handles
to ease snacking for small fingers.
When my parents moved to a senior
community, Mom tossed them away.

To her they signified a time of her life
long past, but as I plucked them out, 
memories flooded me: fresh popped
corn or ice cream gooped with syrup,
the chocolate chips and baking walnuts
I snuck to my room and under my bed.

I also remembered shaking out BeMo 
potato chips for my first serious boyfriend, 
dabbing in a dollop of French onion dip.
The same “boy” now calls out to me
to pour him some low-cal Skinny Pop, 
the bowl a reminder of our shared history.


 
YouTube Interview of the Life-Sized Toddler Doll

Do I entrance you?
Do you think I'm adorable?
Watch these lids pop like shades over
my round baby blues.
Feel the spring of my mohair curl.

I belong to her but I own
her children.  When she's downstairs
I pop my lids just for them.
The little one laughs
with terror; her brother
bothered, retreats down
to his mother

who refuses to believe
I who once was her darling
would harm her darlings.

She dressed me in flower-
edged socks, and when she bent me
over to spank me,  a bouquet of lace
ruffles sprang from my seat.
Her granny sewed us matching
dresses--my kneeless legs
stiff under the crisp pink sateen,
her legs marred by red scabs
at the knees, her pink cotton
diminished with washes.  I held her
beauty, a flawless twin.

Now I sit on the rocking chair
in the guest room
signaling those who can see me,
forcing them to look into
the stones that are my eyes.
Look into my eyes.
See how it was for me, my history.

Super Sized Series

 Winter Wonderland Part 2

 
 Three poems by Alarie Tennille

RESOLUTIONS

The trees fan
sharpened pencils
toward the paper-white sky.
I take one and write,
surprised by my childishly 
round a’s, at how my l’s
and t’s lean together
like they’re staggering home
new year’s eve.
 
Though the lines slant
upward, they look unsure.
Trying to erase, I only
smear the gray and wish
for a red crayon.
 
The wind sighs, but the sky
patiently lays out another
blank sheet, saying,
“Try again.”
 
First published in The Kansas City Star



Superstition 
 
 
Every new year’s day
I follow the Southern tradition:
cooking black-eyed peas for luck
and greens for prosperity—
sort of a soul food seder.
Mindful eating.
   
Courting Fate, I add candles
and champagne.


Winter Comes to Stay 

 
The leaves flashed 
yellow caution, red stop, 
but time’s taxi sped into town,
dropping winter at our door.   
We welcomed it with smiles,
twinkling lights and candles.  
Later we put away the cookies, 
the wreath, any sign of welcome.   
Winter stayed on. We hoped 
it bought a two-way ticket, 
but had our doubts.
 
 

Winter in the Pyrenees by Rose Mary Boehm

Slate grey and barren.
A few shredded snow blankets
barely covered the lower slopes.
Baqueira’s ski lifts, empty,
nodding at each other in passing.

That night, impossibly white cloud-loads
of powdery snow descended, soon
camouflaging the world we knew.

When it was over, a few last flakes
pirouetting slowly onto an absurdly
pristine shroud, our host said:
“Vamos, amigos!”

The cold moon,
hung in cloudless black,
made our shadows ominous.
They snaked over mounds
and into hollows ahead of us.

We came upon twenty-four huskies
lying on moonlit, sparkling white—
harnessed, ready, expectant and keen.

The sleighs cruised across the high plateau at speed;
the dogs, released like bullets from a gun,
streamed across the shadowed white
with exuberant abandon.

A spell had spun a web across our words.
The stars leaned down.
We heard their tiny voices peeling
in delight across the void.
Or were there bells?

Some light years later we returned.
We almost broke—like icicles—and
the Champagne froze
in the flutes.

Three poems by Sarah Russell
 Snow Overnight

I set out at first light
into a seamless landscape.

Earth is silent, save for
a rhythmic plod of boots,
clouded breath against my muffler;
fresh path on an old trail.

I think of my daughter, newly separated,
her search for landmarks in a world
suddenly opaque, and know
even love as fierce as mine
can't keep her warm.

Winter's Atelier
 Stark in January's light,
the elms become reluctant nudes --
poses held until they tremble,
rigid, aching, as the artist etches
frost webs on limbs.

january collage

the world is resting waiting
tuesday wednesday thursday
hollyhocks brown and broken

lilacs bent waiting waiting
squirrels snug in leaf bunches
fire warming soup warming extra quilts 

friday saturday sunday
shoveling splitting wood breathing steam
 in snow bright sunshine

early dusk late sunrise
monday tuesday wednesday 
resting waiting for the crocuses

flakes like dandelion fluff on the wind
landscape lustrous in moonlight

January by Judith Waller Carroll

All last week,
the road in front of our window 
was covered in ice.

Today, this sudden hard rain
followed by a quick torrent of hail. 

Now the sky is clear 
and the flood whirling 
in our neighbor’s driveway 
just moments ago 
is gone, the road barely damp.

How resilient the winter sun: 
chased behind a cloud 
by the dark sky, 
then coming back out, 
brighter than before.

This Winter by Lynn White

My red
all wool
balaclava
masks me 
so warmly
this winter

and hopefully
my colour choice
will distinguish me
from the local would be bank robbers,
if there are any about on this cold morning
when frost crystals congeal in the wool
and hang crystalline
in the space left
for eyes and mouth.

Even those who know me best
would fail to recognise me
especially
if everyone in town
was wearing a red balaclava.




June's Blizzard by Laurie Kuntz

 
June performs an early March sonata:
 
hail lashes the Iris’s purple tongue,
glistening under the  volley of  icy diamond stones.
 
Weather settles everything,
 
violet petals recover,
flowers are never angry.





 
 

Super-sized Series

 Winter Wonderland Part 1

 

Photo by Joe Cottonwood

Two poems by Robbi Nester

Urban Fantasy

I used to stand out in the cold admiring the stars, 
chiseled out of ice, above newly-fallen snow. 
In this world, a blend of new and old, we’d make 
our pilgrimage downtown on the elevated train 
to stand before the windows of the great 
department stores of blessed memory as at 
the entranceway to some great temple, full 
of winter scenes of animatronic animals, 
hedgehogs and foxes, deer, a silver and white 
forest that glittered like the stars, the sort 
all city kids like me longed to play in, not 
the scruff of pines our mothers warned us 
not to wander, haunt of criminals and rapists. 
These were kindly stars, where we believed 
no harm would come to us, thought this security 
might be something we could buy, if we 
saved up enough. We imagined we’d live 
in manor houses out on the Main Line, 
far from the grubby rowhomes of Stirling Street, 
aspired to put ourselves beyond the touch 
of cruelty and death, sheltered as new grass 
and seeds beneath the snow, locked securely 
by the moon’s silver key, hanging from a snowy branch. 

Snow Day
Now that I live in Southern California, it snows only in my memories, 
where, seated on the overheated radiator, I’d watch the flakes 
sift down like spilled flour. The front yard would become a tundra, 
sparse grass bent beneath hillocks of purest white, hedges etched 
in ice. No school. But soon, the rasping of the snow shovels 
would start, that chorus of aluminum amphibians, and I’d lead
an expedition out to the untouched driveway, clad in clumsy boots 
and jacket, swaddled in a scarf that scratched my chin, 
eager to step into the swells between the laundry poles. 
I’d pull the dog or someone’s little brother on a sled 
to turn in a summer’s worth of soda bottles for a refund. 

Two poems by Rachael Ikins

Late March Snow at a Higher Elevation

Power outage.
Snow fills my eyes.
Stuffed, windless peace.
Batting wrapped tree limbs.
Barn’s basketball hoop
filled white to its rim.
Dunk-shot! I imagine the cheers.

Snow speaks with subliminal 
feline tongue. Grimaced
face, incisors bare.
I hear nothing.

Sky. Two red-tailed hawks float.
He touches her wingtip with his.
Falls through snow, falling, they fall
in lust, in love—spring brings even
the solitary out of the woods.
I hear nothing.

Snow blankets our numb house.
Steals electricity. I learn this only
when lamp stutters under its shade,
I turn the switch. I hold
my breath. Snow sifts silently higher.
I hold my breath.

From Slideshow in the Woods

Winter Chorus


The ice-toads crept out today.
They live under the blue curls of snowdrift
Sing a creaking, groaning song.

Their skin glass-white
and lavender,
cold crystal new-sky eyes.

Twenty below out and the voice 
of the forest opens.

Those strange creatures 
clatter and clack

and breed between the ice-stars
that tiptoe over the pond
like some giant stilted bird.

First prize NLAPW poetry contest, 
From Slideshow in the Woods

Wandering In a Green Winter Wonderland by Joan Leotta

Note: January is the best time to buy collards where we used to live, Calabash, NC.

Row upon row of
collard green plants,
rise up from the ground
leaves bunched tightly,
tips kissed with frost.
Chill means they are
 “ready for picking,”
taking home
washing
simmering in a pot
with a leftover
holiday ham bone.
After I savor the greens,
sop up the pot liquor
with fresh cornbread,
I wander out in the
remaining rows,
planning meals made
from these “miles” of greens,
thinking “winter wonderland indeed.”
                       
Verse Virtual Dec 2023

Woman and Man in Snow by Joanne Durham

after a Fred Stein photograph, “Embrace, Paris” 

In the dark street, slick and silenced by snow, 
a woman and a man embrace.
Beneath a streetlamp that haloes them 
above their shadows. No sign 
of a car, not even a stray cat stealing 
a sliver of midnight
from a shivering moon. 
Maybe they are hugging hello, maybe 
goodbye,
with coats so thick, fingers gloved, 
it must be impossible 
to feel each other’s heartbeat. 
No, more than possible. Maybe 
they’re young in love and relish 
the rest of the world’s loneliness.
Have you held that moment, at least 
once in your life,
when you could not have been 
any warmer−
even in a blizzard so blinding
it all turned out to be a mirage? 

First published in Dodging the Rain

Two poems by Lorraine Caputo

SNOW DREAMS

Last night
I dreamt on the edge
of sleep

Last night
I watched my dreams:
Snow fell in small balls
& snow accumulated thick

Many nights
I drift deep in my dreams
Their images elude me come
reluctant morning

& outside the sky still grey
although the day
is aging

Again I awoke
in the void of night
& a strange whiteness
outside the window
caught my eye
Then I knew
what had
awakened me:

Thick clusters of flakes
layering felting the world
Again this night
the silence of snow
awakens me

I step
into the crisp air
& watch
the hoarfrost fluff
beneath a misty moon


The [Canadian] Parliamentary Poet Laureate Poem of the Month 

TO BUILD A SNOWMAN

Two children from China
never seen snow before,
playing
throwing snowballs
making a snowman
I throw my clothes on,
grab a carrot and a hat for their snowman
(I couldn’t find a scarf)
and run outside to be a child again,
show them how to make a snowangel,
watch them build a man
of too-dry snow,
stick the carrot in its face,
run to the backyard to find stick arms,
climbing through knee-deep drifts,
try to think of where stone eyes could be 
under a foot of snow.
The older boy finds small twigs
and uses them for eyes,
carefully bending them
and setting them in the snow-face.
A Chinese snowman
for Chinese boys.

The Poet Magazine 


Uncle teaches how to drive on ice by Joe Cottonwood

Like falling in love, Uncle says, 
and laughs. Steer into the skid, 
not away. Feather touch on the wheel.
Bridge freezes first but—Sammy frowns—
one time approaching the Snake River span
hidden ice not playing nice
sent his old pickup skating
so he steered into the slide, pumped the brakes
and stopped plumb at the canyon’s edge.

Not far behind him 
an AmeriGas delivery truck.

Even in a blizzard you can foresee events,
headlights through a veil of swirling flakes 
so he bails from the old Ford face-first 
into a snowbank just before a 16 ton tank 
of liquified petroleum gas 
like a giant hockey puck 
plows through the pickup
down toward the Snake. 

The cab submerges. Bubbles.

Soft the silence, 
snow falling in sheets

and a woman appears 
clawing up the embankment
spitting curses
ejected halfway down
fractured arm but she can climb.

She’s a blue-black ponytail, 
a white parka, red blood dripping,
she’s an eagle with broken wing.

Says she’s gonna sue somebody’s ass 
sure as her name is Sacajawea Jones and then 
go home to Louisiana where it’s warm 
and purchase land down there. 

Aunt Sac. Why her crooked arm. 
Already on the black ice
Uncle Sammy’s in love.

from my forthcoming book “buck naked is the opposite of hate"

Three poems by Gary Grossman

American Sycamore

It is a ghostly obelisk,
breathless among the paused
leafless gray soldiers of the forest.
Post and water oaks, shagbark
and mockernut hickories, red and
chalkbark maples, and silverbells.
So many trees hold up the cobalt
southern sky.
White on white echoes through
the Georgia woods in January
and the visual music pulls my eyes
back to the solitary sycamore, trunk
shedding a few last puzzle pieces
of elderly taupe bark.
Forty-nine years ago I met the
companion who now walks beside
me on the trail—today we are
the wrinkled, white-barked, trees
of the town.

Trouvaille Review 

A Cardinal in January 
      
Like an ember,
feathered crimson 
with a blush 
from the sun's dark eyes,
               
he perches 
on a snow clad limb, 
contesting snowflecks, 

like a hearth-warm ember,
gently unfolding 
the bleached hands 
of winter,

he brings life 
to crystalline January,
like the red breath of embers,
or the shadowed flare 
of his murmuring flight.

Blood and Fire Review

Dancing in January 

This morning I was startled,
by the listless ice crystals,
splayed in sparkling embrace,                
on the windshield of my truck.

They had tangoed through the dawn.

1995, The Acorn 11

Final Frost

At seventy, it’s all odds, even planting veggies. 
Sage of the Georgia almanac says Last frost, 

fifteenth of April—plant prior, and clay-red hands spin 
the roulette wheel—odds slightly less than fifty-fifty

(green zero and double zero). Will sprouts have 
a funeral in crystalline shrouds, or early births of 

tomatoes, peppers, and beans. Seeds are a hold-em 
promise from Gaia—because life is both poker 

and blackjack—draw two and hit me again—they’re 
just plants though.

And my own final frost?


Chewers by Masticodores, 

Super-sized Series

New Beginnings 2

 


New Year’s Day, La Honda by Joe Cottonwood

Sun
so low but
welcome, so welcome

Planter box
bulbs within, stirring
days after solstice

Yellow toy truck
among fallen leaves
Child in college

Cracked window glass
last summer’s
tennis ball

Barbecue grate
black sizzle
icy to touch

Chimney smoke
she’s my neighbor
so warm

Redwood bark
furry sinews
to the heavens

Sunbeam shafts
through branches
blessings

A spider swings 
by silver thread
pondering: up or down?

On the deer path
wild turkeys trot, heads high
with dignity

Chimney bricks jumbled, 
mossed where they’ve lain
since the earthquake,
home to lizards

Toyon shrub
bright red berries
feasting waxwings

Wooden loveseat
rotten, unsafe for sitting
exhausted by love?

Ceramic urn 
her ashes scattered
now vintage rainwater
wiggling nymphs

Coyote 
ears perk 
flash gone

Utility pole
fate of straight trees
lifting wires
pulse, nerves

Garbage can 
upside down
so I lift and— 
turtle eggs glisten!
so set it back, shelter 
until spring

……

From my book Foggy Dog


Three poems by Jim Lewis

a world beyond
          for Abha Das Sarma
 
in the beginning
(of which i have no memory)
my world consisted of
a warm bath at 98 degrees
the soft swoosh-swoosh
of my mother's heartbeat
and a room so small
i could hardly turn over
 
then the painful transition
(again, I have no memory)
but i've been told it hurt
hurt like hell for both of us
and then the light and dark
the day and night slow struggle
learning simple survival skills
walking, talking, laughing
 
and every phase of life since then
has been a repetition and a rebirth
outgrowing where and who i was,
until the confinement was too much
the only relief a passage through pain
into a new adventure
 
i've been watching my father decline
confined by pandemic, confined by age
the womb of this life squeezing him
tighter and tighter, preparing him
for that final rebirth as he moves
from this chaotic world
into a world beyond
 
 
apocalypse
 
this is the morning of the apocalypse
it started with a strident alarm that
i had set on purpose before bed last night
an alarm that was easily silenced
 
breakfast included eggs from a chicken
whose last squawk will come before noon
when the mega-farm she calls home is
obliterated by a blast. nuclear or
conventional is inconsequential
 
added to scrambled eggs, sliced bits of
a hot dog from oscar, whose last name was
immortalized in a commercial jingle
that will not be heard after today
 
plus half of an english muffin made by
oroweat, (because phonetically, someone
who can't pronounce a "wh" properly
gave the company its moniker)
enhanced with blackberry jam, generic
 
and for good measure, i pour myself
a can of dr. pepper blackberry diet soda
over three ice cubes, letting the foam
settle before that first refreshing sip
i wonder if i should have a second cup
seeing that tomorrow will not come
 
there is so much that needs to be done
flowers to water, weeds to whack, letters
or emails to be composed and sent
to family and friends too long ignored
and where to enjoy a final meal if my
favorite restaurant hasn't gone up in smoke
 
i should remember to kiss my wife, twice
and say "i love you" a few more times
hoping that the emotion will carry past
today's endings into new beginnings
angels wings and so on, blinking in the
bright light of the first day of eternity
after today's apocalypse has passed
 
 
ice and stone
 
a heart opened
is a heart broken
the only defense
to go north
become ice and stone
bury the emptiness
in a glacial grave
keep company
with a wooly mammoth
 
until the end of this ice age
when the sunlight
of a new beginning
pierces the clouds
melts defenses
erodes reluctance
to powder
washed away
in a flood of love
as the cycle begins again

Three poems by Martha Ellen

The Trouble with Red Ribbons

I.
Sometimes I can feel the slippage
of time, different worlds plied, 
past over present. 

Before, the day I went to buy 
some red ribbon, 
bombs exploded on Commercial Street
just outside Fabricland. 

“Hello. Enjoying the sunshine?” 
the clerk asked while ringing up the sale.
Unaware. 
The Beast was knocking in Bruges. 
“Offen die Tür!”  
“Yes, a little too hot for me.”

Then, in sotto voce,
“They took my four uncles into 
the woods. Never seen again.”  
“My Tante went missing, too.” 

Amid distant gunshots, 
we had heard them calling.
“Denk aan ons.” Remember us.
Rivulets of blood like red ribbons.

But not this day. All’s quiet. 
She hands me a receipt. 
We smile like strangers. 
I leave and head for home. 
There is only a light breeze 
on a warm and sunny day.

II.
Now I’m losing a myopic view 
of long gone events. 
Allowing them to fade 
into the fog of history. 
Regaining perspective 
and proportion. 
Birth announcement. 
Flattened booties. 
Bronzed baby shoe.
First drawing of the kitty. 
Photo of her holding Maxie 
when he was just a puppy. 
Macaroni necklace. 
Recital invitation. 
“1st Place” red ribbon.
The poem about a dinosaur. 
Doily Valentine. 
“To Mom. Love, Rosie.”
Brand new Karlsson resin, dark.
Tante’s rosary.
Discharge summary.
Dale’s letter. “Come to Alaska with me.” 

Threw everything with the 
funeral notice, the memoir 
transcript, even the red ribbon, 
into a box in the basement.

A Marvelous Gate

I could gather up every single
time I was in extreme danger.

Held at gun point and my surrender. 
Assaults escaped. Failed murder plot. 

Threats of rape and fast talk 
to get away. Menacing endured. 

Bargaining. Coaxing. Begging.
Lying. Running as fast as I could. 

I’d toss them into the air and let them 
land like scraps on my sewing room 

floor or like pieces of junk discarded 
along some back road. I could pick 

them up as they lay, bind them 
together for some prize-winning 

quilt wrapped around to comfort. 
Or cast them into a marvelous gate 

opening onto green pastures, 
still waters and rare fig trees.


Pop-Pop’s Death

Did he slip through the slimmest 
of apertures? A shallow breath 
taken in haste before sinking deep 
beneath a surface where all continues 
on and appears as though nothing were amiss. 

Words are strung together without missing 
inflection when there should be poor 
enunciation and the softening of final 
consonants easing through this cosmic fissure. 

But sirens keep their steady scream rushing 
toward some emergent scene. His slippers 
left next to his easy chair. Steaks in 
the freezer. Pill bottles near a glass.

A snowy weekend is predicted.
 

Super Sized Series

 New Beginnings  Part One

 





Moving On by Lynn White

They said that you never go back
once you leave home.
I was sure I would
and I promised
my mother
as we packed the big black trunk.

I was homesick and in tears those
first few days in college.
‘Hay fever’, I said.
In September!
I promised
I’d come home at the weekend

And I did, I did as just I’d promised.
But I didn’t want to go.
Didn’t want to leave
all my new friends
and all the new
possibilities,
though it was nice to meet old ones again.

I had lots to tell them about my new home,
my new friends and my new place.
And about all the excitement.
I planned for old friends
to visit my new home
and they did
eventually.
And then the new went to visit the old.

But ‘they’ were right to say that
you never go back home
once you leave.
I never did.
Not really.
I never 
went back 
to stay.

A New Season by Judy Lorenzen

You invited me to help you set your irrigation wells,
early evening under stars,
end of August, the cornstalks tall,
plums along the roadside, purpling,
and the trees longing to turn their autumn coppers.
We were 18 and 19 years old.
I walked with you as you set each tube.
Overwhelmed, I stopped to be still in the moment,
because the moon had come out and beamed down on us—
you looked angelic in the moonlight’s covering.
The well pumped out the evening’s song,
as the moon shimmered off of the irrigation water.
The water rushed rhythmically through the ditch,
down each row through the tubes.
You asked me if we were in heaven, and I laughed.
I still remember the harmonies of that night,
the crickets, katydids, and cicadas, rushing well water,
the sound of the pumps,
rustling corn leaves in that field off Highway 30.
I felt the callouses on your hand when you grabbed mine
and told me I should marry you—
promising we’d always be rich in green fields and grasses
and in the music of the cicadas and rains,
and every night under the big sky,
we could gaze at the Milky Way together.
You told me if I married you,
I’d be marrying this countryside, too.
You finished setting your pumps,
and we got in your truck to go to the next field.
I turned the radio on, and Karen Carpenter was singing
“We’ve Only Just Begun.”
You told me I’d love the harvest season.
I asked about the winters on the farm.
You said the snows would come,
but I’d never be cold.
I said yes.


The Best We Can Do by Arlene Levine

A rose bush wilting in July heat
does not blame the earth, lets its roots
search deep for the waters of life.
After its surge of golden glory
the bare oak does not accuse
the winter’s frigid air, invites
the wind to sing hymns through
its naked boughs.
 
The best we can do is to allow,
learn to love the changing
landscape of our lives.
Episodes of dark and doubt
are unexpected guests, asking only
to be welcomed for a while,
these gods in disguise
who guide us home.

Two poems by Sharon Waller Knutson
 
After I find your lifeless body on the floor 

For days the sky grows dark 
and pours buckets of rain
on the thirsty ground, 

I curl under the covers 
in a fetal position
awash in a sea of sleep

Frozen in fear of the future
 and gripped
in the jaws of grief.

Today the sun shines brightly
 and I watch a rabbit roll
 in a blanket of green grass.

In Limbo

When my husband’s soul
floats out of his body
and leaves me on earth,

I beg him to come back
and get me and take me
with him to the Hereafter,

I am ready to shed my body
and material possessions
to be with him as we hold hands

And reunite with long lost
relatives but he does not listen
and I am still in this crazy world.

You still have a purpose,
our son says, but all I feel
is sadness and sorrow. 


Summer in January by Joan Leotta
(Inspired by a poem by Lorette Luca—Winter in June)

 A world upside down.(for me)
below the equator, kigo shifts—
summer’s heat fills January days.
 
If my father had moved us
to Melbourne Australia
I could have had
a merry go round pull
into the drive on my birthday,
like my June-birthday
cousin enjoyed.

Instead, my friends slogged
through snow to drink
hot chocolate before
games and cake.
In Melbourne, no one
would have left early
for fear of icy roads.
But if my birthday came
in summer, after the party,
I would not have
been able to go out
to our backyard and
feel the crunch of my
skate blades digging
into the ice in the rink
my father built.


In Melbourne,
the setting January sun
would not turn my
skate shavings
into sprays of tiny
diamonds as I practiced
turns and twirls.
 
Thinking on these things,
I no longer envy those
with summer birthdays,
whenever, wherever
summer comes.
I'm content to be a winter baby.


Two poems by Laurie Kuntz

To Be Born On a Full Moon Eclipse
 Sept 2025

A harvest moon, a blood moon,
a full moon eclipse.
It is the eclipse that  will stand out
on the marked day of your arrival
a pocket of shadows coming between
what is neither a planet or a star
but when it passes it uncovers the light
that is always there for the sharing.

Haiku 
In the sea 
of broken lives
floats a threadbare promise.

Haiku by Lauren McBride

January bills
still using
Christmas stamps


Three poems by Joanne Durham

Anticipation  

Sages warn, Live in the present,
longing, hunger can do you in,
my Mom in her last days
paced room to room 
with walker and oxygen,
there’s nothing to look forward to.

Clutched in the grip
of a global pandemic, 
the sonogram of that child-to-be
releases a smile so deep 
I think it’s from my own womb 
not my daughter’s,
breaks my fast on joy,
spreads its feast across my face.

She carries tomorrow 
in her belly - yes, I’ll take 
rapture-in-the-making.

First published in To Drink from a Wider Bowl, Evening Street Press 

Everything

was built in– 
clothes bureau, Murphy bed,
in that studio apartment   
on Treat Street, the first place
I lived alone. 

You could run your fingers 
over the gentle curve 
of the hallway shelf
and ride its wave. Everything 
else in my life stood still,

even the plant in its glazed pot
took the weekly drink I gave it
silently. I waited 
for the tide to rise, sweep in 
something of my own.
First published in One Art, ©Joanne Durham

Next Time

Kneeling to scrub the floor, the tangy smell 
of vinegar suffuses me, my rag loosens 

tiny nibs of dirt ground into wood. They rise 
like bubbles eager for release. There’s pleasure 

in seeing the grains regain their lightness. 
Such a long time it took me to learn 

no elf or genie would tend to it. 
Even the garden I somehow expected 

to keep its shape, the rhododendron to purple
year after year without pruning or feeding. The ivy, 

leaves poking along the side of the house, 
seemed just a casual visitor until one day 

I saw how it was tangled all through the azaleas, 
smothering their roots. I still think 

that there’s another chance 
for everything. I’d have more kids next time, 

wouldn’t be afraid to scramble down the mountain 
to the hidden hollow of the Pacific coast.

It would be some different version of myself 
who accompanies the old me only as far 

as the ticket counter, bids me a good journey 
as I clutch my sagging suitcase, 

grab the railing with the other hand 
and hoist myself onto the outbound train. 

First published in Hole in the Head Review, 

Super-sized Series

 Happy New Year

  

San Miguel  de Allende

New Year’s Day, El Centro
San Miguel de Allende, GTO Mexico
by Wilda Morris

Four young men, college age,
eat pizza and drink
cola. They laugh loudly
at each other’s jokes,
ignore the greyed
barefoot woman 
who shuffles to their table,
wrinkled hand out
as do the couples 
with eyes only for each other,
and everyone else she approaches.
I wonder how it feels 
to be so desperate,
so invisible.
I wonder if anyone wished her
Prospero año nuevo.






Four poems by Sharon Waller Knutson

Happy New Year

you say with a happy face.
But the prune face scowling at me
from the mirror says:
Who would be happy
about getting another year older?

I could swear just last year
I was that fresh faced school girl
in the picture on the mantel.
The girl so tall the boys rested
their heads on my shoulder
as we danced. So tall my head
touched the mark on the wall.

Now I reach the mark with my hands.
Did I take my calcium with breakfast?
I can’t remember. But I do recall the name
of the boy I asked to dance in sixth grade
and was surprised when Doug said yes
and put his head on my shoulder
then forgot my name as he grew
beyond my reach. Now he is gone,
a heart attack right before our 50th
High School Reunion.

I wish I could have been
that fresh faced school girl forever
until she waltzes in the room
and says in her school girl voice:
Happy New Year Grandma.
I smile and the prune smiles back.
Happy New Year, I say.

 

White Out

From Christmas Eve
to New Year’s Eve
the blizzard rages
like an angry animal
flinging the snow against
the garage and house
piling it up knee high
keeping us captive inside,
until the white powder
and pale sky become one.

On New Year’s Day

we split our last log
and burn it in the stove
and eat our last slice
of bread as the temperatures
drop and the snow ceases.
The sky turns blue and sunny
as a figure in a dark snow suit 
and cap appears in the yard.

Stiff as the icicles hanging
on the house, the woman stands
on a black ATV and zips
up and down our driveway
pushing the snow against
the trailer and the trees
plowing a path for us
to drive to the store
for gas and groceries.

I think back to the 1950s 
as machines carved a road
and built snow walls
so we could walk two miles
to school, our faces chafing,
our fingers and toes frozen
in cheap boots and mittens
in the frigid Montana air.

Portrait in Black and White

In his white wool sweater
and black slacks, mittens
and boots, Mr. Magpie
marches to the roof
of the garage and flaps
his wings like a conductor
in an orchestra. The warm
wind whistles like a clarinet
as it tosses Mr. Magpie
face first against the facia.
Singing soprano, he summersaults
to the roof of the house
where he toots the trombone
as the chinook creates
an ice sculpture
in the shade of the pine.

.
Absolution by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer
 
Like a kindly priest come to absolve us of our sins,
January arrives with arms spread wide,
chill winds blasting clean the blighted slates
of our dozen months just passed.
The new year’s a benevolent savior with
blind eye turned to failures and foibles,
deaf ear to grumbles and whines,
full cup firmly grasped in a hand
extended and offering hope.
As frosted breaths drift and dissipate
into a winter night,
so go our trials and transgressions
as we face, innocuous virgins once more,
whatever fate and our own stupidity
hold in store.
 
Three poems by Rachael Ikins


Solstice When Nobody Turned Off the Christmas Tree 

The night my Mother began her work of final dying. Sound of Music on CBS.
Teeth rattling sound-blitz for a woman who loved silence. Upstairs, bedroom door shut I couldn’t escape doe-a-deer-a-female-deer  

Never again, my eyes slide past its TV guide title, nervous as deer exposed in a winter thicket. Uneasiness follows me into sleep.

Purple and yellow, my mom, a pair of mating barn owls in a spruce tree, sky so clear it ached, teeth-cracking cold. A minute after midnight or two, when the long slow climb for light scrabbled horizon, those birds grabbed her. My eyes stung, knife to throat, I squinted.

Blue-black dark crunching with glitter. Her body spread in a recliner in the living room. I can’t explain it, but there it was, poured like batter. I touched her shoulder, her hair, kissed her face, gently slid her rings, wedding and one for her children. Each palm cupped an egg of warmth.

Heart alive in my throat, battering a path to my mouth.

Car coughed after such Solstice temperatures, Dogs and I climbed out after a three-day country weekend. Nobody turned off her Christmas lights. Katie meowed, carrier banged my thigh. Strange bird called from the hedge, bent me over, pain a spew in the stillness, those liquid notes.

Such pictures jostle against my eyes’ backs, force my lids open. It doesn’t matter I haven’t looked at the calendar or counted the 12 days of Christmas wrong- the puppy still has three toys waiting in her canine advent tree from Chewy.

Seven years have marched into the sun. I string deaths on a popcorn garland, 

Flag’s remnants shredded in winter winds. If a brother’s Christmas table has no room for a sister two days after their mother died, that’s divorce. 

Those years I gasped,
pain worse than death I thought, 
and kept walking.



New Years Day Looking over the Valley 

The clouds pause in their endless rush 
and tearing their hair to rest on my mountain
this late year’s morning.

They ease the belly down.
Sigh like a pregnant woman 
in her last months.

The fabrics from her dress drift and 
fold in layers around each branch 
and pine needle.

Everywhere, look!

It is a crowd of heavy women
dressed in white.
My back aches for them.


Previously published in my chapbook “Slideshow in the Woods” (Foothills Publishing) 
First prize winner NLAPW writing contest CNY branch


New Year’s Eve on Faith 

Snow shot through with spears of sunlight
Cloudy gusts that sparkle and dismay. We complain.

Just inside a thin grass barrier that protects 
their pores from freezing, plants ignore us. Aware, 
as we are not, 

each day lasts longer. Perhaps only by no more than seconds
but enough for one phaleonopsis to extend a green spike, 
a finger to touch a snowflake.

Fat geranium buds swell where yesterday 
there were none. 

Someone told me last fall to uproot them, to shake the dirt, 
hang them upside down from a rafter or to throw them in the trash. 
Next year you can buy new. 

It is almost 
      next year. 

Clouds shred like torn tissue. We see the same sun with 
which plants have been conversing all these gray December days,

all the overcast afternoons when we doubted, when we complained
of lack of colors, plants ignored us, yes,  in silent conversations 
with light prepared 
to reveal it.

Previously published in “I Scrub My Eyes” Benevolent Bird Press