Super-Sized Series

 Transformation Part 2

 

 

A Seagull Vaguely Remembers by Alarie Tennille 
  
I wake. For a second, 
I wonder
what I have to do today –
the last vestige of being human melting 
away too slowly. I remember a feeling – Monday, 
no longer understand what that is. I dive 
and leave dread behind. My time comes 
in tides of night or day, rest or fly.
 
I hang upon an updraft, look down 
at the people plodding the beach.
I wonder
how I was ever such a one.

first published at Silver Birch Press 


On Finally Learning, Late in Life, that Your Mother Was Jewish by Marilyn L. Taylor
Methuselah something.  Somethingsomething Ezekiel.
—Albert Goldbarth

So that explains it, you say to yourself.
And for one split second, you confront
the mirror like a Gestapo operative—
narrow-eyed, looking for the telltale hint,

a giveaway, a certain calibration
of something visible that could account
for this--a lucid, simple explication
of your life story and its denouement.

It seems the script that you were handed
long ago, with all its blue-eyed implications,
can now be seen as something less than candid—
a laundry list of whoppers and omissions.

It’s time for something else to float
back in from theology’s deep end: the strains,
perhaps, of A-don o-lam, drowning out
the peals of Jesus the Conqueror Reigns,

inundating the lily and the rose,
stifling the saints (whose dogged piety
never did come close, God knows,
to causing many ripples of anxiety)

and you’re waiting for the revelations
on their way this minute, probably—
the prelude to your divine conversion,
backlit with ritual and pageantry. 
                                    
But nothing happens.  Not a thing.  No song,
no shofar, no compelling Shabbat call
to prayer— no signal that your heart belongs
to David rather than your old familiar, Paul.

Where does a faithless virgin go from here,
after being compromised by two    
competing testimonies to thin air—
when both of them are absolutely true?

First published in Measure, Volume III, Issue 1 (2008)


Asking Permission from a Muse by Marianne Szlyk

A friend tells me we dream of what we want back:
spicy, hot chocolate in a blue delft cup;
return of lost friends, lost loves; a stroll through
places we miss: midnight sun, plane trees’ shade
beside rivers I once dreamed of walking past.
Tonight, in Queens, old factory buildings
loom against darkening sky. Grease stained clouds
hide the new moon, the old stars that sometimes shine,
planes taking off for where I’d rather be.
I walk with my mother and my ex-husband.
We try to find the way back to places
we can eat, drink coffee, ride the subway
back to where we live. My ex keeps talking;
my mom keeps talking. I look for bus stops,

look for phone booths. I wonder why I return
to a place and time that hated me. Mom
and my ex talk past each other. They find
nothing. We wander. I find nothing. I want
to wake up, find myself somewhere, not here,

with someone else, with (I imagine) you.


I Was Not Like Her by Lynn White

I was not like her,
the girl in the picture
looking out
scowling
defiant
rebellious.
No I was not like her
not me
not then.

I wore the gloves in summer 
that my mother bought me
the classic cut clothes 
that she had always 
wanted to wear
even allowed my hair to curl
as it wanted to
as she wanted it to.
No I was not like her,
the one in the picture
not then.

But when I broke free
made myself up
wore minis
or long skirts
controlled my curls
with an iron in hand
yes
I think
I became her
then.

First published in Visual Verse


if i had stayed by j.lewis
 
you posted another photo today
of snow and red-rock hills
 
it might have been from south of town
i couldn't really say
 
but i imagined the paths
through the icy white powder
 
as being yours, and maybe those
of another friend whose face
 
has grown old like mine
old, and hard, and wintery
 
you seem so content in a place
i couldn't wait to leave
 
happy to be there, pleased
with your choice to linger
 
it was home, it was mine
but it was never enough
 
i replay faulty memories
from half a century ago
 
all of them tinged with
various shades of loss
 
of love that sputtered and died
in the high desert winds
 
i contemplate this latest scene
and wonder, as i sometimes do
 
who i would be today
if i had stayed
 

AGING by Wilda Morris

Envious 
I watch them fly down the walk
on in-line skates.
Who will make an eight-wheeled shoe
for those of us
who fear breaking hips
but long for speed,
excitement,
the rush of wind
against our cheeks?


Marriage Moments by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca

Seated at opposite ends of the couch
Both peering into our sunset years
forty-six years between us, two children numerous cats
and one delightful grandchild
we seem surprised at the presence of each other.

Then we remember what brought us together
we saw the stars promised each other the moon
we knew it was love almost at first sight
confident we could brave our differences.

Now it’s the mundane things that keep us apart
yet together in all seasons in all circumstances
our once passionate love is a steady harmony
we acknowledge the belief
“Marriages are made in heaven.” 

And every so often we see new stars
While the moon looks on approvingly. 


Properties of Sound by Gary Grossman

October 17th 1982, the Mojave night 
winked twice, and my transistor radio, 
tuned to light rock, was suddenly interrupted 
by the shot-glass chants of Wolfman Jack, 
dropping the needle on the Kingsmen's 
Louie, Louie — a ghost show floating in space
since the late Sixties. Then it's the Ronette's 
Be My Baby, all coming from the specter 
of XERB, border-blaster station from 
Rosarito Beach, just over the Baja line. 
The zombie broadcast, what physics calls
a long-delayed echo, shows sounds last a lifetime, 
or three — which is how I learn 
to stop yelling at my kids.

Eclectica Magazine


Haiku by Arlene Gay Levine

Whiff of warmth tonight
Bare branch cradles crescent moon
Rock-a-bye, winter


Leonard will beat you up by Joe Cottonwood

just to pass the time. Big beefy arms, 
red hair, from the Baptist Home 
where they store orphans who tell stories 
about yanking your balls off
in the old stone building that looks so cold
even on the hottest day.

In the schoolyard Leonard smashes a brick 
on my head displacing a bloody divot. 
Kindly principal Ms Cook asks why.
Leonard shrugs. No reason. 
She expels him but she tells me: Forgive.
I say: Why?

Scalp like a roadmap of scar tissue, 
the occasional headache forty years later 
and then I see a homeless man 
with thick eyeglasses, a black cowboy hat 
over curly red hair 
trundling a shopping cart of crap, 
leaning on the push-bar like it’s a walker. 
Leonard?

Yep. Leonard. A mouth with few teeth, 
a crumpled voice says he just got out of rehab. 
With a grin he says: Lemme see the divot 
that sent me on my road to ruin.
I say: So it’s all my fault?
Not grinning, he says: Gimme ten dollars.
Ms Cook would say: Give.
I still wonder: Why? 


During Viral Outbreak by Rachael Ikins

Mother River 
washes clothes,
rearranges cabinets.
Mighty Mother Maple extrudes sap 
from dark security rooted,
to fly flags in spring’s 
blue winds.

Awash in seeds, buds, viruses, bacteria, fungi, body parts of others’ nocturnal meals, life flows.

I fall to my knees at Mother Maple’s trunk, 
on the bank of Mother River. 
I say, “ I am afraid. I 
don’t want to die.” 
Bark scrapes my cheek. 

She chuckles, 
“Death is transformation.  All growing things outstrip their spans to burst
toward the pull 
of hereafter”


A respectable mother by Rose Mary Boehm

I
A lesser Amsterdam canal. Nina is leaving home.
The type of nose for which celebrities—
and those who would like to be—pay thousands,
big hair, mini coat, medium heels, small case. 

Lace covers a third-floor window, a bony hand
moves the curtain, a tired face with black-rimmed glasses
follows Nina on the cobbled street along the canal.
Nina doesn’t look back.

II
A leafy London suburb. Her cigarette’s smoke curls
upward, disappears between two Japanese cherry trees.
She remembers having once prayed, “Jesus, just look
the other way. Get lost. I enjoy sinning.”

Shame and regrets. Nina stayed away from Amsterdam.
There was a letter. After her mother’s funeral Nina
and her aunt Hetty go back to that lesser Amsterdam 
canal, to the lace curtains covering third-floor windows.

They sit quietly, open the old photo album. Mum, Hetty
and Aunt Tina lifting frilly skirts and silk-stockinged legs,
all in black & white, heads thrown back, dancing
(a little out of focus) in what once was Amsterdam’s
 most famous music hall. Aunt Hetty whispers,
'We promised ourselves to become respectable.'


from my poetry collection DO OCEAN’ HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS, (Kelsay, 2022)


Poets Are Allowed to Be Hopeful by Judith Waller Carroll

Title from a quote by Nikki Giovani

Transform a frigid March into spring
with a burst of tulips and sweet-smelling lilacs.
Even a graveyard can be cheerier
with big pots of lilies, long fingers of sun
reaching through shadows..
On a withered branch of the oak
place a red-breasted robin, singing.


I Morph from a Strong Sycamore to a Weeping Willow by Sharon Waller Knutson

After my soulmate’s sudden death, 
I can’t eat and all I do is sleep.
I am the bony coyote with the dull coat.
I go from silky skin to alligator arms and turkey neck.
The one man who saw me as an ageless beauty is gone.
So I chop off my waist long hair to chin length
and hide in the house in my pajamas and socks.
Don’t conceal my age spots or brighten naked lips.
Then my nineteen-year-old grandson convinces
me to go out to dinner at the local café. 
And his girlfriend applies makeup and lipstick
and helps me slip into the long burgundy dress I bought
as a birthday gift for my mother-in-law before
she died at the age of ninety-eight. I feel invisible
until the beautiful blonde bartender says:
“Well, look at you out and about, Miss Sharon. 
Can I get you a Marguerita?”


Changes to the House Across the Street by Mary Ellen Talley

Bernice’s niece sold
the two organs Bernice used
to practice hymns for services
at her Ballard church.
Once she played Rock of Ages
for a plumber who came to the house
to repair a leaky faucet.
The family posted a For Sale sign
when Bernice and sister Ruth
couldn’t manage any longer.
Now their one-story house 
is in the middle of transformation 
into top and bottom apartments,
with a new sidewalk poured
leading to a smaller taller house
where the garage once stood. 
When Bernice visits, she’ll utter Uffda, 
but smile to see orange roses 
still beside her porch.