Category: Poetry

The Pottery Firing at Mata Ortiz: Mexico

Janice S. Fuller

The wind raged across the potter’s yard.
I watched Olivia gather sawdust for the black pot’s bed.
It settled gently on the nest.
An onyx bridge joined two parts of her pot.

I watched Olivia gather sawdust for the black pot’s bed.
Anticipation burned in travelers at the site.
An onyx bridge joined two parts of her pot,
the twins were etched with matching birthmarks.

Anticipation burned in travelers at the site.
The wind was steady from the west.
The twins were etched with matching birthmarks.
Cottonwood piled high around the sacrificial mound.

The wind was steady from the west.
A pyre lit with diesel.
Cottonwood piled high around the sacrificial mound.
At first the fire resisted.

A pyre lit with diesel.
Flames lashed out like dragon’s breath.
At first the fire resisted.
The pot cured, came to life, a beauty born in heat.

Flames lashed out like dragon’s breath.
The fire died.
The pot cured, came to life, a beauty born in heat.
The wind raged across the potter’s yard.

Janice S. Fuller

coolness

Constance Schultz

heat she said I’m hot

& everyone needs to just cool
down in a lake

on volcanic rock cooled into a smooth

chair in all that soft sand they need to cool

their cores no shoes/get away/dunk
your hair/pause cool

look at all the cooled blues/
the hues the skies same

as on the other side
cooling & for good-

ness sake don’t look
at your cool cool cool phone & when

you come out everyone/will still be cool

as hot as it was look
out for sand

hornets & cactus hiding
in disreputable places

aware you are cool in just a swimsuit &
can burn aware of cool/it is likely

& cool you are/so cool &

still sweat drips/all the people cool every one
glows cooly but now you can just close
your eyes & feel cool water of the lake
see the sky watch out for cactus uncool & think

how nice the a/c feels as you walk through

Constance Schultz

Playing with fire

Martina Rimbaldo

Hello
It’s me again
Coming out to play
My favorite game
And i always win
Hello
It’s the evil side
You did not know
You have hidden deep inside
All along
Hello
I’m here to play with fire
Approaching the fireplace
Placed inside your soul
To reveal your secrets to the world
I want to make you look bad
So bad
Playing with fire
Gets you nowhere
It can’t kill the desire
To go higher
When you are falling prey
You can’t pray it all away
Hello

I’m crawling out again
Grabbing the last good grain that sprouts in you
Hello
I’m awakened to stay here
For good

Hello
I’m here to play with fire
Approaching the fireplace
Placed inside your soul
To reveal your secrets to the world
I want to make you look bad
So bad
Playing with fire
Gets you nowhere
It can’t kill the desire
To go higher
When you are falling prey
You can’t pray it all away

Martina Rimbaldo

A Break from Mowing

Lannie Stabile

august is always there, hot mouth on vitreous body
& when its swollen death draws closer,
what’s a boy to do with sweaty, augmenting limbs? He

rides his bike to the local convenience store
on ol’ Lee Road. It is there his quarters find 10
ounces of air conditioning contained in syrup. It is
there he savors every sweet sip from the

bottle, just as his father taught him to do as an
empty child. Drops coat his tortured tongue in vacation,
every cool drip transfers to his burning throat, as he
returns the “money back” lifeline to now cold lips.

Lannie Stabile

Inferno

Naya Jackson

I sold my soul to the devil to keep my heart alive.

His will pushed me forward, My hands bloody and clawing, bruised from fights I can no longer recall. They search for something to hold, to take, to devour the little that is left. My lungs filled with hatred. Heavy and constant the rage poured through me, I struggled to breathe, Yet I enjoyed every second of it. Eyes shine with unshed tears, Remembering empty promises of protection and forgetting the ruin That was caused at the same time

This is my drug of choice. Let the anger consume your entire being This is how I choose to forgive her for leaving me behind take on this sin that will kill me so that she can live another day, I kiss him as a favor for her, The taste giving me a fire, To burn everything that was destroyed, He howls inside me, The only thing about me untamed.

I sold my soul to the devil to keep my heart
alive.

Naya Jackson

In the Heat of the Moment

Antoni Ooto

Sometimes you just have to
toss in your Idealist hat,
light the ring, drop the robes,
and beat the shit out of Reason.

It’s time to clear the air.

Then ring the bell,
mop the blood and sweat off the mat,
send them back to corners and cut-men.

Those two were never going to get along.

Honesty, is lacing up.
She’s ready to come out swinging.

Antoni Ooto

Magenta is a Landscape

Cymelle Leah Edwards

Some hollow way across a reservoir,
sinking into alleys unobserved,
too small and skinny to fit into,
the lost sparks of a firework swirl and
a homeless man tries to bum a light
from the sky.
I close my eyes after looking
for too long and my thoughts
double over and curl like a ribbon,
loosely trailing memories tainted by
a shallow hue.
The trees are filled with smoke
and lather, a swarm of novas dancing
among the leaves, their tips a show
of twinkling stars to eyes
watching from the milky way,
and the land is steeping as a kettle
of neglected cactus blossom, queer
and brewed to its astringent fill,
my view is sustained by a single flicker
of magenta as it traces the shape of
a fiery scene and tries to make sense
of its light.

Cymelle Leah Edwards

Scorched

MJ Moore

On a scorched Miami night,
a girl’s hot bare feet creep up pale cool walls,
tracing the old smudged path.
A pearl of sweat blossoms and spills on the bed.
Sweet, pungent cigar smoke snakes under the door.
An opera tenor blares from the warped hi-fi,
a heart-breaking miserere—
“Lord, have mercy on my soul.”

One a.m.

Outside, moths batter themselves
against the fizzing porch light,
circling their moon.

On nights like this
the mind stumbles through the garden maze,
seeking the torched center, longing
for the way out.

MJ Moore

Milk, Bread and a Few Essential Groceries

Rob McKinnon

The town was once a thriving centre
when the paddocks were lush
the crops had been bountiful.
At harvest time there was a boom,
with money to spend
the shops were full of locals and visitors.

At first, hopes were that the drought
would only last a short time
as they had done in the past.
Politicians from where the rain still fell
and the grass was green
had told them so,
it had been a long time now since
they had visited the town.
What was once an occasional event
had dragged on and on
until it had become clear
that it there had been a permanent change.

The streets of the town had once
been teeming with children,
but only a few older locals remained.
No one bothered with “for sale” signs anymore,
no buyers wanted houses in the heat and dust.
A row of empty shops filled the main street,
places that were once meeting hubs
for chats and catch ups by the locals
had become just voids.

Wendy’s shop was last one left open.
In the old days the shelves were fully stocked,
with only a few regular customers
she only stocked milk, bread and a few essential groceries.
She did not know how much longer she could continue,
with no jobs and no money in town
she barely covered the bills,
but she was determined to struggle on
because this was her home
and she had nowhere else to go.

Rob McKinnon

Criminalis Carolina

Juliette van der Molen

why won’t you remember those
on Gallow’s Hill¹, how they
hung and swung,
twitched and turned
unless they were lucky—
gifted with a hangman
adept at wrapping nooses
to snap necks
of those accused.

your blood lust demands
that they were tried by
fire, those witches,
my mother,
writhing in toxic
fumes, charred putrefaction
for the appeasement
of the holy.

O Constitutio Criminalis Carolina²
enter in the inquisition,
tamed into confession licked fire.

you won’t imagine tears
of a child,
me—
harbinger of death
from my birth cry,
stealer of souls,
life’s litany lost
inside the mouth
of my serpent familiar
coiled red-hot,
forked tongue a-flame.

O Constitutio Criminalis Carolina
inscribe history’s memory,
branding the woman i blamed.

1) This was the place where condemned witches from the Salem Witch Trials were taken to die by hanging, in accordance with English Law. (Source: Evan Andrews: Were witches burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials, The History Channel)

2) This was the first recognized body of German law which was enacted into law in 1532 during the Diet of Regensburg. This law defined certain crimes as severe and included the crime of witchcraft. It authorized the use of torture to gain confessions and was one of the earliest laws utlized during the inquisition. Punishment for being found guilty of this law was death by burning. (Source: Carnell, Elisabeth: Crimen Excepta: Torture, Jesuits and Witches in Early Seventeenth Century Germany)

Juliette van der Molen