Author: Melissa Ramos

Hologram

Gaby Bedetti

Children drop off the tree
and roll away
friends spin out of my orbit
or die

Yet I am not Ronsard’s Helen,
a crone bent low in sorrow,
nor Yeats’ paltry thing,
tattered coat upon a stick
–though I apply lipstick
to make myself more visible

I flicker, an illusion
of intersecting light beams,
a sum of particles
that levitate out of bed
and travel through the air
giving the impression
of a tenured professor

A light-filled overlord
I turn off the news,
gather for coffee at Wendy’s,
join the virtual choir
cast about for synthesis

all while fading away
by natural dark
decay

Gaby Bedetti

The Crows of Portland

C.M. Lanning

The crows of Portland awaken prior to anyone else.
Before light touches buildings and the first cup of coffee is poured,
they observe the last patrons stumbling home from their bars.
The morning air is full of wisdom they share with one another,
though it sounds like mindless cawing to all who hear it.
Perched above leafless trees lining the city’s streets,
not a single secret escapes their gaze.
The territory ceded by moon, unclaimed by sun is their own.
During day they’ll still be here. At night they won’t sleep a wink.
For that is their talent which none can explain.
The black winged watchers know not a mystery
and see clearly the obscure.
Not a whisper is spoken they fail to hear.
Their knowledge transcends history, not a drop they’ll dispense.
Always cognizant, never unaware, they monitor the city.
The crows are without limit and cannot be stopped, Portland’s eternal witness.

[C.M. Lanning]

Apocalypse Now

Neha Maqsood

carving up marble floors
segmenting stone cathedrals; gods
seeking out civilisation
earmarking apocalypses, you’re
alone now; metallic crust stiffen fingernails
pupils radiating a golden
tincture; foreheads plucked
fused emerald pendants.
woefully, there are no trees
where I live yet
I am rooted. Adam & Eve
atop a throne,
biding time, glazing over chaos.

Neha Maqsood

Scarecrow

Diandra Holmes

Nestled between pine tree
branches, a ribcage picked clean.

So weathered, it’s wooden.
Beetles bore into its pores.

Some enterprising blue jay
has made its home beneath the sternum.

Snippets of grass,
cornstalk, and twine woven together.

And four beaks gape open,

the writhing, hungry heart.

Diandra Holmes

I’m Sorry, I’m New at This

Clare Chai

I have a few apples in my soul
That I forgot to eat the other day
Let’s make apple tarts with them
But maybe let’s eat them next time, when you’re not dead
Oh it’s not a temporary thing? Sorry
You led me down the only stone-paved street in the city
Trying to show me some history
When it was wet and I was pulling my luggage
Sorry don’t care much for your old haunts and ghoulish chatter
We’ve been walking thirteen minutes and I still can’t see the sign
Where does it say Ghost Town?
Oh it’s something you feel instead
You’re not being sarcastic are you
Then maybe shopping malls at dawn or bars in the early morn would be ideal
Yes I miss those places
How did you know?
By the way, that feast was great, the other day
When’s the next one, it’s Halloween isn’t it
What, they pretend to be us and then they eat all the treats for themselves?
Selfish brats.

[Clare Chai]

After Ireland’s 1916 Rising, in England

Lavinia Kumar

The grey stone prison was all was known
of Dartmoor’s wild barren bogs,
the mists where DeValera spent time
deciphering political fog.

He’d come in over Hairy Hands Bridge—
hoped for help from faeries,
but saw a man sink down with his horse,
and decided to be leery.

Indeed, faeries did come over with him
to that dank moor in south Devon,
where it was so hard to understand
just one word out of seven.

Faeries won’t leave Irish men alone,
even gone to foreign lands.
They guide, decode, trick and support—
deal out a suitable hand.

Those faeries let the prisoner know
his fortune would keep on,
that escape would not be needed now,
to sit back, stop the moaning—

a sound he’d hear come from coffins
carried on the moor at night.
The black horses spawned at a dark pool
where hounds howled at a light.

[Lavinia Kumar]

Night Insect Roll Call

Cynthia Gallaher

sweat bees chase, buzz
me across a bluff
on the Cumberland Plateau
back to the sandstone
reprieve of Rivendell.

I may not be in middle earth,
more at the south paw end of it,
where I see four silent fruit bats
weave like shuttlecocks
on wefted reconnaissance

for mosquitoes on the warp,
those little vampires!
which otherwise
may have knit
swollen anklets for me.

I am too familiar with
such uneven exchanges:
blood letting for liquid itch,
and none too soon, from my
second-floor retreat,

night deepens,
as does the rustle and wave
of a mass rally of integrated insects,
which rattle and whisk the outdoors
like curtains of falling sand,

hold billboard-size stainless panels
they wobble all at once in the dark,
stamp tiny feet in a relentless march
along wooded aisles of aluminum foil,
usher a village of rain sticks shaken, not stirred,

and rend percussion with hundreds of dried gourds
and their thousands of desiccated seeds.
window screens protect me from
their overwhelming thirst
from stalking my flesh after midnight.

but as I fall asleep, am at one with
their multi-voiced symphony
and invite their asymmetrical rhythms
to inspire a dream.

[Cynthia Gallaher]

Gaga

Anca Vlasopolos

in gentle Surrey Exeter
lands where I have a tongue

still

among birds plying melodies
I have not learned
flowers leaves for me
nameless
stretching to this sun

I am left
half-voiced
can call
like infants or other foreigners
without whole roundness
name sweetie on the tongue
only
from wonder
and delight

[Anca Vlasopolos]