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By Sophia Riley
It was the coldest it had been in a long time
from the frozen thawed chicken coop just south of Tennessee
to the stone-hard lake in Virginia.
Certainly, there were stones there on top of it.
Little boys, destruction appealing, strained their muscles to
the very last fiber in their chilled blood and threw things.
Then again as if they wanted more, another rock would fly.
And all that to hear the blobbsquabering jabber of stones
on ice.
Never in my memory did I find so cold a time as then.
Christmas day with the usual bustle; a smoky house
was more subtle than usual with cousins to come
and babies to be born on the day of the Christ Child.
And then out to the chickens I went.
Careful to cover the ears
with an heirloomed hat perhaps.
Out into that white laced Christmas
whistling with merriment an old tune like a British sailor
returning home from the snow frothed sea.
Out to the chickens and back.
And coming home, nose red, hands clapped for a ginger-snapped mouth
and George Bailey on his own frostbitten screen.
By Samuel Ward
They tell you to put your headphones on
They tell you you have bad taste
You shrink back in surrender
Your stomach still in a twist
Voice slowly drowning in your melodies
You stop doing work
You stop thinking straight
Your mind in a scatter
It gets harder to escape
As you drift off into your headphone space
In a different world
Not like your own
You do not like it here
In the lands of the headphone
It is a world of your own that isn’t your own
You stare into this place
Unable to move
You regret your compromise
With a man of no groove
As he thinks only of his selfish needs
You spread farther and farther from your soul
Unable to love
Unable to hate
On your one way trip
In your pool of procrastination
You think of your thoughts
At a rhythmic pace
You like how it sounds
In your far of place
So you write a poem of your sorrowful fate
By Ella Green
Some days feel
As bitter and sour as a drop of pure lemon juice on the tongue,
While others feel as sweet and delectable as honey.
Flowers grow,
Flowers die,
Birds sing and fly,
And
Creatures cry out
In hurt.
Life moves in a cycle
Of aliveness and light, of death and darkness.
Don’t let falsity lead you astray.
What is truly real, anyway?
Are you real?
Is what you wake up to,
And what you go to sleep to,
Real?
What is sprouting up,
What is emerging from the earth,
With the real golden light of life?
What human beings
Are burning
With a brilliant, never-dying
Flame of beauty, goodness, and passion,
Forever shining?
Life in all its rawness,
In all its hurt and healing,
Is real.
By McKaine Layne
I stepped outside,
The atmosphere hit me like a ton of bricks.
A constant reminder of the world changing around me.
Leaving me behind in a state with no escape.
So dark and quiet
I can’t escape and everyone walks right by, enjoying every minute.
I seem to have a mask on and no one notices.
Am I invisible to them or do they see me and not care?
I walk right by with tears streaming down.
No one stops me
No one checks on me
I am masked with something that I can’t seem to remove.
Hidden from the eyes of those around me.
Just hidden.
By McKaine Layne
The things that are around are a poison to me.
They make me sick to the point of being bedridden.
I look around and am disgusted by the things I see.
The pollution and the world's problems are bigger than mine,
But if you work together then things will be just fine.
That is the problem today,
Not being able to work with one another.
I won’t be poisoned by the air in the atmosphere or the people around me.
I won’t be disgusted by the things I witness.
I will walk right past and try to get rid of the poison.
If we just ban together and make the world better.
More Liveable. Less Poisoned.
By Keegan Imami
From antebellum cones
to the hopeful promise of tomorrow,
The Now,
Unfolding in concentric rings
staining the sky,
and old, like my eyes,
desolate and social,
and all fading.
Inverted perennial icicles
outliving my soul
and hair;
gothic and twisted
and
bright and columnar.
The Overstory,
dulcet drumming of jazz
slip through
the canopy and into
the birds who remember
it like the silhouette
of a lover
against the dwindling bonfire of early evening.
I can hear something —
the ants and moss hear it as well —
something germinates beneath
these flags of the past, present, and future
like a soon to bloom flower
whose hidden spiraling light
has only ever been
heeded by the
whistling foliage:
tough arteries like systems
of giant glowing earthworms
push through the surface
into the soles of my feet,
merging with my blood vessels
and capillaries,
becoming one,
in green cells
and metallurgic torrents.
Could the answer to
the darkness between the stars
lie here, unkempt and wild,
in the rainforests and green underfoot?
The homes of the living.
The homes of the dead.
The homes of the reborn.
I inhaled the unfledged corridors
like a river of perfume,
constantly stepping into fresh storms
while hiding half my being like a fish,
asking myself where in these
foamy tremors
could one discover the affinity.
I had fallen into the abyss
but you always grew
to take me out;
and that is where it must be:
foamy and immense,
barely freed from the nettles
on the ground charged with secrets
and the earthly color of seeds.
I do not feel alone with you by my side.
Anthologies of clear water
around the stones
join the sweet fruit,
earthy vegetable,
and resonant nut
collected in the
matrimony by
angels of sugar
and raindrops.
I have loved you
since the beginning of my old rings,
restless and clinging to whatever I can,
but now knowing
you’ll never leave me
like they did.
Near your feet
The reigning gallows,
where life is born
and executed
in twirling smokes,
feeding the ground
once more.
You clasp the murdered men,
the slaughtered pigs
and cows
and horses,
the lonely elk
and doe,
the restless bear,
the falling birds
cloaked in specks
of mist —
you provide cover
for them
all.
But you’re bullet-riddled,
wounded,
undermined,
broken and beaten
and covered in your own blood —
and still despite the
explosions
and thunderclaps
and uncontrollable fires,
between the frost
and the stones,
reassuring the sky and the enemy’s palpitating heart.
I wish they could hear your cries.
I wish they knew you like I do.
I wish they knew
the xylem cells
carrying the sweet sap
to the arms of the sky
and the phloem to
the trembling callouses
of my bare feet.
I wish they knew
how you developed
bark and leaves
and flowers
and fruit;
breathing in carbon dioxide
and water; condensing molecules
and rebuilding them into
Sugar
like the moon,
releasing oxygen back
into the infinite stratosphere
my fingers
can only touch
with help of your
ancient arms.
I wish they knew
as leaves crash
and trees topple,
decaying into the honey-like soil,
the sugar molecules
break down,
returning the desirable carbon
to the ground;
and how extracting coal, oil,
and gas for fuel,
we dig our hands
into the market of greed:
the primordial and pristine
carbon reserves
stored away for Mother Nature’s
own use —
and by burning it
we tip the equilibrium
allowing greenhouse gasses
to trap tightly in the
pockets of the clouds, unseen
and unrealized,
raising the temperature
of the
Earth
so the arborescence
we don’t end up killing
can’t absorb enough
carbon dioxide
to suffice.
I wish they knew you slept like they do,
undergoing diurnal cycles
that could measure
when the Sun closed her eyes
and the Moon opened her’s,
glazed and weary,
but ruling in a place
where all we need is
to heed to such illimitable beauty
and kiss our judgments goodbye.
I bite your delicate fingernails,
alternate, compound, opposites —
fed by the thunderclouds and the
puddles and following shine;
they’ll outlive us,
as they have everyone
before us;
for all returns to the land
and sea
once the end rears
its misunderstood head.
Your body became a home
for the owls, chickadees, juncos, and bees —
Your arms became pews
for the bears, cougars, badgers, and lizards —
Your trunk became highways
for ants and beetles, snails,
slugs, and fungi —
Your roots became hands to hold
in some unfolding catastrophe,
linking realms of
free waters,
fettered towns,
and the liberation of sugar,
flour, bread, and books.
Your crown became beacons
for fossils and planets,
the possible and
absence of impossible.
“Long Life Maker.
I’m here.
Down here.
Thank you for the baskets and the boxes.
Thank you for the capes and hats and skirts.
Thank you for the cradles.The beds. The diapers.
Canoes. Paddles, harpoons, and nets.
Poles, logs, posts.
The rot-proof shakes and shingles.
The kindling that will always light.
Thank you for the tools. The chests. The decking.
The clothes closets. The paneling.
I forgot… Thank you.
For all these gifts that you have given.
We’re sorry.
We didn’t know hard it is
for you to grow back.”
By Mac Kropff
Atop a shelf she lay
She dare not make a sound
For if she makes a peep
Her life comes crashing down
A tiny ballet dancer
A perfectionist in her art
She dances without flaw
Lives, yet without a heart
If only I could be so flawless
If I could never fail
Life would be scores easier
For I would burn a trail
An clumsy dancer I would be
One that would never do right
Never will I be Perfect
So I shall put up a fight
For I am not fit for a shelf
Nor will I conform
By Ella Green
The most stunning string of pearls
Form the stars in the sky,
But the string has been pulled and stretched
By the Hands of God,
And so each pearl, each star, has been scattered,
Being held in the dark, deep bowl of the sky.
This magnificent bowl is filled to the brim with starry soup,
It overflows with the sparkling liquid of galaxies,
And all the planets pour out of it.
The bowl is tipped slightly
And out drops Earth,
And the moon slips out too.
Staring up into the dark bowl
Of the night,
I smile,
Relishing in the starry string of pearls
Adorning the neck of twilight.
