February - Poem 21

Photographs / Kristine Anderson

on my phone
hundreds of them, years of them
emitting startling colors, bodiless
living in a Cloud

in a round tin
where my mother always stored them
dozens upon dozens of them
glossy black-and-white
or faded Kodacolor
children growing up
mugging at the camera

in my grandparents’ shoeboxes
tens of them, cabinet cards
on thick brown cardstock
matte finish
posed forms, smile-less faces

in a tan envelope
Sears, Roebuck and Co. return address
handwritten to my great-grandmother
Mrs. Andy Anderson / Stratford, Iowa
exactly four small tintypes
faces I’ve never seen before

If Winter Were A Hockey Game / Barbara Audet

Demanding winter get a move on, give up its reign to spring?
Never grows old for this captain of a score or more weather-cursed campaigns.
Snow intimidated, lately I got on the steered clear side of Providence.
After fall, I did my blizzard time in Northern Maine,
taking yardsticks to front lawn precipitation, watched my dog grow a melt-capable mustache
as he burrowed tunnels to and from the disappearing back door.

Spare the canine moved me to where ice is less than a stellar bet,
though one can still pull an ace of spades out of winter’s deck.
Winter smirks, eyeing me with one goal: capitulation.
Season demons seek me out for retaliation.
Payback for the go west, tails-tucked, weather-fueled retreat.

February sets off what I know is a devilishly-timed interruption,
an icing call during spring’s on the doorstep power play.
Once more, I’m lulled into that momentary cold comfort,
colored by the holding delusion of rainbow-flamed fires,
that flatter my senses, freeing room
for last minute upper atmosphere disturbances.
I should be finished unwrapping shirt-box cardboard skies,
Embarrassed to send bare arms out as spies
for beams made vagrant by a disobedient sun?
Is if fair spring can hide under wraps, in plain sight?

Go ahead winter, give it your best shot.
Take advantage of some ancient
cloud-wielder’s Olympian sense of humor. My warriors
are saffron-stuffed crocuses poised to strike,
Not so timid tulips with steely spines.
Narcissus with attitude.
You’ve once again crossed the line.

untitled / Bee Cordera

Poetry off the page. 
The heart of the community, 
art, the universal language. 
We've been speaking to each other 
through colors, vibrant wavelengths 
of a familiar beat. We speak 
the same language here 
and understand the 
world of the artist.

NOEL / Ashby Logan Hill

Secretly I wish for you again. The rain keeps our hearts forever.
The rain. The rain. Pitter patting on the rooftops. A song again.
Forever. Forever.  I want to dance in the rain with you forever.
Everytime the door opens, you smile, something new. You. Your smile.
“I want to bathe you in garlic,” she said. “I want to bathe you in silk.”
“I want to take the rose upon the table and make you bend like light.”
“I want to take the tall trees and bend and quake like the aspen.”
The morning time comes and you are half awake and still I dance with you.
Cold atop covers still warming us underneath, and the bull frogs croaking.
“I want to be alive again,” she said. “Take me to the off-road mud,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “The trails you can’t see without noticing, and a light dimly
glimmers.” “I want to hold you in my arms forever,” I said. “The deepest part
of all of us,” she said.  In our hearts, the river can’t even begin to express our love.
“I love you like the dew at break of dawn.” “I love you like the morning tide fading.”

Comedy Influence / Amy Marques

Chocolate was a comedy

influence, a happy

power

both private and public.

A luxury—always.

Source Material: A Tale of Two Cities

Mise en place  / Samuel Spencer

I have a place for my laptop, a place
for my book, for my journal, a place
for my mouse tucked away in a small pocket
all inside my bag ready to go
to the coffee shop – a place for the morning.
I have a place for my boots, standing at the
ready by the door, a place for socks, though estranged,
in a drawer. I have a place for loose change
and other jangling things.
I have a place for intangibles, too.
Like my secrets – strangely enough, they too belong
in my sock drawer. I have a place for lost
friends, but I don’t go there anymore.
I have a place for the image of my child self.
I store it in the memory of our backyard – the
trampoline and the sun pouring over the thick, sharp grass.
I have a place for my pain, all the way back
in a cupboard inside my heart. I have a place for
Love in the cupboard over. I keep my imagination
in the glove compartment of my soul – a 2007
Subaru Outback. I keep my worries in the swell of
wrinkles crashing about my forehead.
There’s a closet inside my mind where I shove
all the things I can’t remember. Every so often
something falls loose. Never in time.