Category: Sakura (Issue No. XVIII)

Breakfast

Grant Burkhardt

Grant Burkhardt

The gravity of tenderness

Karen E Fraser

delicate petals creak open
slower than snowflakes falling
in an airless, lavender sky.
wide-eyed stamens quiver, waiting
patiently to be pleasured by bees.
stems of ear-shaped leaves
silently unfurl a lush fullness
in blinding verdant greens.
the light of life remains fully switched on,
fizzing with moon-neon phosphorescence,
ever emergent, ever consuming, gifting and
receding in waves that spiral through
an inescapable fragrance-
a constant, unnameable
yet deeply known by the gentle heart.

Karen E Fraser

Neighborhood

Ed Brickell

The world where I live is in slow secret.
The old bird feeder, forever hanging,
Lies on the ground. Its branch is gone.
The fallen leaves from the nearby oak tree
Creep by inches to the back fence.
The sun sneaks near the horizon all day.

A new boy seems to have arrived by himself
In a house sold in haste a few doors down.
He never wears a shirt, runs instead of walks.
The other children have agreed to his rule,
Cheerfully doing the most dangerous things.
New screams fill the air.

A lot, leveled at the top of the hill,
The house erased. No memory
Of what it looked like, who lived there.
Dogs I have never seen before snarl and snap.
All these polite strangers – names of confusion,
Lives of utter mystery. 

I want to move somewhere,
Be the question mark –
The one whom no one has seen before,
Who changes how their days happen.
Suddenly inhabiting the scoured hill
Where something was they can’t remember.

Ed Brickell

Iris

Robert Rice

Coming back from the mailbox,
near the fence I noticed
its small, green swords pushed up
through the near-frozen dirt.
It stopped me. 

                              Sometimes
—not often—
a simple shift of light
will shake and crack
the thin screen of the world. Then each 

defended story, end-stopped,
will turn in the faded light of evening,
cross the gray sky in you,

leave no trace.

Robert Rice

Frederick the Night Blooming Cereus

Valerie Hunter

Ray is the one who bought Frederick,
planted him, named him,
used to invite all their friends
to an annual midnight party
in Frederick’s honor.
But Ray is gone now,
has abandoned Amy and Frederick both,
though probably he would’ve
taken Frederick if he could have.

For fifty-one weeks of the year,
Frederick is a bit of an eyesore,
a shaggy giant lurking uselessly
in the corner of the back yard.
Thankfully he doesn’t need much care;
Amy remembers to water him occasionally
if it hasn’t rained in awhile, and sometimes
she gives him a kind word, or says,
“Why so cereus?” because she knows
Frederick appreciates a good pun.

But when May comes
she watches him closely.
Each year she fears his magic will fail,
that he’ll remain an undignified lump,
but then those first ugly buds appear,
bulging tumors amidst the leaves.
They develop rapidly, sprouting
their spiny alien tentacles,
so familiar,
so strange,
and after a decade
of being intimately acquainted
with Frederick’s anatomy,
she knows exactly when to stay up
with her coffee and her thoughts,
pulling the most glorious of all-nighters.

She tells no one, extends no invitations—
Ray might have seen Frederick
as a spectacle to be shown-off,
a freak to be gawked at,
but she considers him
her private magic show,
the flowers blooming for her alone,
enormous and luminous,
with their weird medicinal fragrance
that heals her soul,
makes her believe that the world
is an inexplicably wondrous place,
full of small miracles.

She always goes in before dawn,
avoiding the back yard
for as long as she can afterwards
to hold onto the memory
of that magnificent, glowing Frederick.
Each year, as she shuts the door,
she spares a thought for Ray,
who left her this one perfect piece of beauty,
this midnight marvel
that she knows he must miss.

Valerie Hunter