Negotiating for Drops of Water

July 2022 | poetry

I walk over train ties

searching for drops of water,

like the rains I’ve loved, negotiating

tumbleweeds where the train runs

regardless of how many rocks lie on the ties.

Farms, silos, industry with steam rising

from the table of land, I watch passively

as workers drain a swamp, plant rice,

and fill it again.

Scale of the wounds

call it forgiveness

call it dread

this pilgrimage.

Call it jasmine.

Call it an address.

Open space, even dry trees

at the mountain’s base–

they too suffer their own mirror.

Call it eyelashes, moist

with their own nick names.

Plumes of smoke make their own

weather in the shape of

a cross or is it a figure

with head and arms

or a rocket

raising itself above the cloud shelf.

Laurel Benjamin

Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work forthcoming or published in Lily Poetry Review, Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, One Art, Ekphrastic Review, Wordpeace, The Thieving Magpie, Black Fox, Hare’s Paw, California Quarterly, Mac Queens Quinterly, among others. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College. She is a reader for Common Ground Review. Find her blog at https://thebadgerpress.blogspot.com.  Find her at Twitter at @lbencleo. Find her on Instragram at cleobenjami.

Mikvah (pantoum)

July 2022 | poetry

submerged and unseen

            in an archaic well –

                        women thought dirty

                                    by men of G-d

in an archaic well,

            with bodies purified

                        by men of G-d,

                                    ensnaring the fecund

with bodies purified,

            my sisters were bait

                        ensnaring the fecund

                                    in their water ringed curls

my sisters were bait,

            fertile and sullen –

                        in their water ringed curls

                                    hid the birth of the world

fertile and sullen,

            women thought dirty

                        hid the birth of the world –

                                    submerged and unseen

Lisa Delan

Lisa Delan is classical soprano specializing in American Art Song; performing, recording, and commissioning musical settings of an expansive range of poetry. She has recorded extensively for the Pentatone label and can be heard on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and other streaming platforms. Her own poetry appears in American Writers Review (San Fedele Press 2022), Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, Drunk Monkeys, Lone Mountain Literary Society, Mill Valley Literary Review, Poets Choice, The Pointed Circle, Tangled Locks, Viewless Wings, and Wingless Dreamer.

In Memory of Angela, Enslaved, Who Arrived Before the Mayflower

April 2022 | poetry

                        After Theories of Time and Space by Natasha Trethewey

The home we knew is only memory. It repeats

without variation. We are forever young—

forever children playing in the yard: giggling, kicking stones,

chasing guineafowl, taking too long to answer mother’s call.

Mother is so much older now or in her grave, though

in the home inside you, she is always young and lovely—

dark skin glistening in the midday sun as she simmers

peanut stew and the spice-heavy aroma is carried

on the wind even across the ocean. If you take a deep breath,

Angela, you can taste the meal she prepared the last day you saw her.

Ellen June Wright

Ellen June Wright was born in England of West Indian parents and immigrated to the United States as a child. She taught high-school language arts in New Jersey for three decades before retiring. She has consulted on guides for three PBS poetry series. She was a finalist in the Gulf Stream 2020 summer poetry contest. Her work was selected as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week in June 2021, and she received five 2021 Pushcart Prize nominations.

Don’t Be Afraid

April 2022 | poetry

Leave behind

            fugitive clothing, rags  that stink of evasion,

            irreconcilable anguish,

            unacknowledged fissures,

            time sliced by nostalgia into frames.

Be close to the edge to know your wound your love,

your end to abide, but not in complaisance.

Do not forget to leave your handprint on a wall.

These are the conditions of possibility.

Lynn Staley

Lynn Staley is a Professor of English at Colgate University, where she teaches and writes about medieval and early modern literature and culture. However, she is also a poet and has been for many years. Her poems are representative of her awareness of place (a remnant of a Kentucky upbringing), of the intersections of the ordinary and extraordinary, and of her interest in the submerged narrative. Several years ago a poetry manuscript was short-listed for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize given by Kent State University Press. She has published in the Seneca Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Psaltery and Lyre.

Where we feast

April 2022 | poetry

I have rubber-band hands and

Where I come from everything is

Fingerfood. we break the shape

of rice on our plates and smoke

escapes from the side of our palms.

and strip down fishbones naked

when in rain, we churn aubergine

In winters we wed coco-

nuts to jaggery. Later

we stir heartburn – strikes as stiff

as cheese fried with tume-

ric. but to chilli we are

subjective. pork is eaten

but outside the home at road

side stalls with sizzling woks to

warm your pockets deep and leave

you smiling in a damp all-

ey, in our evening-old city

Sristi Sengupta

Sristi is currently studying toward her Bachelor’s qualification in English Literature and creative writing. She’s had a knack in writing fiction and poetry for years now, her debut novel, The Little Mountain (published with Olympia Publishers, UK) vouches on her interest in Tibetology and secrets of the oriental culture. Sristi works as a Marketing Author to earn a living and aspires to build a career in screenwriting as well. Her style in poetry is very personal and often has references to authors who helped her love for writing survive. Her poems are generally about the pace of life, her childhood, her experiences and emotions and her beloved home city, Kolkata.

Writing

April 2022 | poetry

Rub the callus

where the pencil rests

instead of the bare base

of your ring finger. 

When you aren’t feeling

so much like yourself, 

what is your relationship

to enough? The sea

that gives you sand, the foam

that gives you the spray

of algae floating toward river,

salt into a far off fresh?

            Will you let the conches rest

with their oracles gestating

or beg they scream

bloody murder? Evenings 

the pencil marks two 

dimensionality like a dog 

who sits and laps

at the edge of a mirage

called thirst. 

At night the foam builds

without shine. If you don’t 

bed a scientist, will you 

never hear that 

the existence of the surface is 

more important than what 

the surface contains

or your silence? 

If dreams weren’t fluid,

            they would answer 

to day. Instead 

they drown it.

Amy A. Whitcomb

Poetry and prose by Amy A. Whitcomb have recently appeared in Witness, Poet Lore, The Baltimore Review, Terrain.org, and other journals. She holds a Master of Science degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree, both from the University of Idaho. Her writing has been honored with a Pushcart Prize nomination and residencies with the Jentel Foundation, Playa, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You can meet Amy at www.amyawhitcomb.com/artist.