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resurrection alley
the bums become
President
of a nuclear wasteland
preaching from cardboard daises
“this is how it's gonna be, people”
quarters for bottles of wine
cigarettes
and a congress filled with bins
of stalemated bills—
run away from what you owe
it is time for a change
get off my corner
i’m panhandling here
we cannot all sleep under
the same old coat
the patches don't match
with what seams real.
erin-cilberto
5/16/22
Jane Richards is a retired piano teacher with a passion for writing and nature. Her prose and poetry has appeared in online and print journals. She is a graduate of the creative writing masters program at Columbia College, Chicago.
She has been with us three nights—
under clear skies she emerges unblemished,
unrolls her luminous carpet across January snow,
her fingers tracing precise outlines—
tangled branches,
tree trunks in dark columns.
In these woods—
bones exposed,
mute,
our refuge from the bruises of loss—
we wait for the greening,
the hum of trees breathing.
The hour before dawn
the moon arrives at our window,
spreads strong hands across our bed.
Prodding us from old darkness
we awaken inside her canescent embrace,
trace the features on each other’s face.
Jane Richards
Published in after hours: a journal of Chicago writing and art, Winter, 2022
I spread their colors
across the counter—tulips
in hues of lemon, lilac,
plum and persimmon—
then scoop them up,
slake their thirst, let them
chatter to each other.
They tilt their heads, laugh
from their bellies, begin
to open themselves to life.
As they age, they widen
their scope, become more
generous, acquire a graceful
drape. Their edges begin
to darken, turn inward
until, one by one, each
petal loosens its hold,
gives in to gravity,
leaving—strewn
across my counter—
curled flakes of color,
still laughing.
— Melissa Huff
First published in Fall 2021 in Gyroscope Review
They are called
the parrots of Telegraph Hill
but really
they are everywhere
Tossed emeralds
glinting in the sun
off the Embarcadero
At happy hour
in Bierman Park
In Nob Hill
beacons
When they call
you must look up
Come come come come come
As petals from the plum trees fall
Rasma Haidri’s poems and essays appear in Action Spectacle, Under the Radar, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, and Fourth Genre, among other journals and anthologies in the US, UK, Norway, India, Hong Kong, and UAE. She is the author of a poetry collection, As If Anything Can Happen, and three textbooks. Recognitions for her writing include the Southern Women Writers creative non-fiction award, the Wisconsin Academy of Arts, Letters & Science poetry award, Western Michigan University’s Third Coast Conference prize for fiction, NewVerseNews’ Best of the Net nomination, Riddled with Arrow’s Ars Poetica prize, and EasyStreet magazine’s Great American Sentence award. Rasma reads for the Baltic Residency and PRISM and holds an M.Sc. in reading education from the University of Wisconsin and an MFA in poetry and memoir from the University of British Columbia. A first-generation South Asian and second-generation Norwegian-American, Rasma grew up in Detroit, Miami, Manhattan, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and later lived in Wisconsin, France, Hawaii, and Norway, where she now makes her home on a seacoast island. Visit her at www.rasma.org.
Over there the window
shows morning—gray sky
proves the earth has been turning.
Here nothing moves. A cat.
A child asleep. A pot of tea.
The closed cover of my writing journal.
I do the tai chi form Preparation… Beginning…
all the way to Single Whip.
It’s all I know.
Assume the Spirit of the Crane, the instructor said,
but the shadow I cast was broken. When is a crane - ?
When is unbalance flying?
I asked a man what he does for a living and
he said, I used to be a poet. Why used?
Because I am no longer writing.
I am a poet not writing. Days of not
writing turn into weeks, months,
until the taste of poet
is a wet pill on my tongue, writer
a remarkable piece of clothing I wouldn’t
even know where to buy.
My child hits her head and sick
soaks my non-writing hands that hold her to my body.
Her breath is small cranes flying.
When is a poet - ?
I slice onions, comb the cat, teach a child
to erase words without ripping.
My hands cup water to my baby’s head.
In the window - gray sky. Tomorrow
I will start again from nothing.
by Rasma Haidri
winner of Riddled With Arrows Ars Poetica Award 2018
Air vibrates around Mary Beth.
Everyone says so. Even when she’s gone
from the room for perhaps half an hour,
somehow a breeze lists hairs on the arms.
Some say she oughta’ slow down a little
lest the fish swish out of their bowl, while
she whirls the ceiling fan out of orbit.
In my hometown they sell legal pot,
It doesn’t make a difference or not.
I’m not supplying the money for a purchase,
I spend a lot of my free time in churches.
The other day I was in a grocery store,
buying bread was the reason for,
An on-duty cop walked in and glared,
didn’t really make me too scared.
Did he think I was going to steal a loaf?
I planned to pay, I ignored the oaf.
Nowadays, who can a copper bust?
Politicians are the ones we can’t trust.
As I walked today, I saw police cars,
I wondered who would be put behind bars.
My paranoia got the best of me,
“They’ll put me in jail, will I be free?”
The police car sirens started blinking,
and my imagination had me thinking.
I went around the corner; a man had me pause,
and I wondered if I had broken any laws.
“Pardon me, sir, would you stop for a bit?
We’re filming a movie, it will be a hit!”
I followed his directions, and took a stop,
then realized the reason for the cops.
I looked in the alley, they were filming Fargo,
so that was the reason they couldn’t let a car go.
I caught a glimpse of a movie being made,
so there was no reason to be afraid!
Why does authority always make me cower?
Do I fear those people who have the most power?
Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,
so for one day, I’ve escaped my own prison.
A little tear rolls down a cheek
and settles in a ridge made from a wrinkle
Silence exists
sinister and ominous – invisible and naked
falling on deaf ears
it is rendered less valid and unworthy
trickling out between clenched teeth
and lips hinged taut
its power is in the speaking
bemused footprints
ground the carbon
fossilizing the spot
where it once trod
staring out ahead beyond the sea
attentive
resolute
seduced by a paradox unresolvable
inclusive
memory records a lost story
gnarled like the twisted
roots of the baobab tree
lush and green
visible
immoveable
voice nods in recognition
a gesture of affection
extracting hatred and fear
whispering at the edge
I pledge allegiance
Some Transience Is Eternal
Each poem I create is transient bloom,
Impatience planted for the summer show,
to live and die. These dollops with their doom
Appear and disappear as off they go
Like lives and stars and other life-long tents—
This Universe of God’s evolving time—
The mystery eternity presents
Because a poem is often merely rhyme
And breath and ink and thought—no more than that,
Unless in stone its etched, but even then,
That too will fade and melt and where it’s at
In years ahead is far from human ken.
Yet one—Perhaps—may prove a fertile seed
For fruitful tree when humans find its need.
Patrice Boyer Claeys graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Manchester, U.K., and completed a Certificate in Poetry from the University of Chicago. Her first collection, Lovely Daughter of the Shattering, was published in 2019, followed by The Machinery of Grace (2020), Honey from the Sun (with Gail Goepfert, 2020) and This Hard Business of Living (also with Goepfert, 2021). Her work appears in The Night Heron Barks, Adirondack Review, SWWIM, *82 Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Zone 3, Inflectionist Review, Literary Mama and Aeolian Harp 5, among others. She was nominated for both Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. Patrice lives in Chicago with her husband and has two grown daughters. Find her at www.patriceboyerclaeys.com.
Faux fur—
homely as a house.
It’s that odd
the paradox
of inside and outside.
Your belly grew round with dew
created a glossary of seeds
like rings of colored glass.
Green Sunshine,
the god who loves you
confidently wielded the crayon.
If the meek deserve
a form of comfort,
you would know.
Cento Sources: Suzanne Buffam, Marianne Moore, Cedar Sigo, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pattiann Rogers, Pablo Neruda, Catherine Bowman, Leonore Hildebrandt, Don Kubicki, Carl Dennis, Louise Gluck, Evan Kennedy, Denise Levertov, Marvin Bell
From Honey from the Sun, Patrice Boyer Claeys and Gail Goepfert, Blurb.com, 2020.
First published in The Night Heron Barks, Fall 2020.
Wilda Morris, Workshop Chair, Poets and Patrons of Chicago, and past President of the Illinois State Poetry Society, has published hundreds of poems in anthologies, webzines, and print publications. She has won awards for formal and free verse and haiku. Her most recent collection is Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick. Her poetry blog at wildamorris.blogspot.com features a monthly poetry contest.
All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries
while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother.
This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb
of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our
grandmother’s womb, and she in turn formed in the womb
of her grandmother.
~ Layne Redmond, When the Drummers were Women
There is something metaphoric about stacked
Russian dolls, how the little egg-shaped girl
sits inside the mother, the mother inside
the babushka, perfect fits, but separable,
each doll herself. It’s like that, I think,
me cellular but unformed in Mother’s body
while she was a fetus in her mother’s womb,
a great start for my life, the beginning
of the many ways I was nurtured by Mother
and Grandmother, the ways their strength
and openness to the world gave me the pluck
to be myself while still held in the wings of their faith,
my pulse beating to the rhythms they taught,
the songs they sang still echoing.
~ Wilda Morris
Previously published in Nostos, IV (2020), p. 119.
Giuseppina – my Italian immigrant Grama, who adopted me, held two jobs, had a third-grade education,
lived through the Depression – you step into my body. I’ll feel a little tug.
I’ll be cracking eggs into a bowl, you are there with me baking bread, I feel your hands over mine,
punching the bread dough back down in the bowl.
I can see you on my way to church, putting on your hat and coat, pulling gloves over calloused hands,
putting on your one good pair of shoes. Your rosary beads clink on the church pew while you pray.
I blink, feel your fingers over mine while I hang laundry, I hear you singing Ave Maria on wash day,
just like when I was a child.
At night I watch the news, hear your voice say how the world has changed,
while you mend socks and embroider.
Later, while riding in my car, you’re next to me peeling the skin off a fresh apple, it falls into your lap gracefully in one piece. Complaining about my job, having to work while going to school, I feel a jab to my ribs.
You were not there to see me handed my college diploma, but I felt you next to me on the stage.
As a middle-aged woman distraught, going through a bitter divorce, I felt you nudge me out the door, your hand holding mine, walking me into the sunshine, determination on our faces, the wind blowing through our hair.
Let’s go live a little. The body of grief lies still as death
itself. Empty hangers rock uselessly. A grainy, grey
photograph taken an eternity ago is all that remains. The
beat goes on. I loosen the ribbon to undo what separates me
from you. And the morning moon fades so fast, that blank
baby look, year after year, gathering ghosts. The earth has
wounds to heal beneath an undecided sky. I can see the
limits of vision from the inside. Light of brown October!
White wax drips from the ritual candle. The empty radiator
clanking reminds me of something broken; spray-painted.
Take me away somewhere. Scotland. Oh. We walk toward
the river’s edge. It’s hard. It is the season when rain falls
sideways.
Jenene Ravesloot
A cento derived from the words of Mary Blinn found in
when word and image run away
First published in After Hours in 2019
Charles Kouri is playwright, lyricist and producer of two full-length musicals, REBEL and 24WORDS, which feature stories and original songs inspired by the Equal Rights Movement. The shows have been produced in Chicago and Washington D.C. and most recently performed at Steppenwolf, as part of the theater’s Lookout Series. He recently began writing poetry and is publishing 304-Days-With-3-Days-Missing, a series of 301 poems written during the pandemic. Charles is also a freelance journalist, marketing communications writer and author. He lives in Chicago.
this whole day was raining
this whole day was cold
this whole day was drifting
this whole day said no
this whole day said stay away
but i could not shake its hold
i was waiting for tomorrow
looking out for more
but this long day just let-me-be and everyone i know
so someone wrote a story
someone wrote a song
there were people making time for people
they don’t even know
this day sure had a wisdom
made the most of rain and cold
the day became a wonder
now i’m sorry to see her go
Caroline Johnson has two poetry chapbooks, Where the Street Ends and My Mother’s Artwork, and has more than 100 poems in print. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she won 1st place in the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row 2012 Poetry Contest. Her full-length collection, The Caregiver (May 2018, Holy Cow! Press) was inspired by years of family caregiving. Visit her at www.caroline-johnson.com.
Poets & Patrons © 2017
For information contact Caroline Johnson