Pressed onward onward, against the cosmic bulwark of Earth
By unseen forces, by the hands of god unrelenting
By the Mother, thumbing them in
Slim thorny sprinkles against firm potato dough.
Yet they nestle their way through, push aside the mass, dig their space
Their dugout, to uncurl, like wyrlings, dewy, bejeweled.
Fragile green dragons, flopped from cracked sodden shells
Lie latent in prophetic repose,
In claustrophobic cavern, crumbling in, with tiny feathered verdant heads
On pale and sickly stems of necks, they sleep, they sleep, the children.
,
Christine Pontecorvo has won several writing finalist cateories/awards in poetry, essay and short fiction. These awards include: Faulkner/Wisdom, Scholastic, Imagine, Rider University, Manningham, NJ Poetry Society, Young Playwrights of NJ and Susquehanna University. She loves horseback riding, running, her mixed breed dog, Trooper, and Nutella.
In Maryland are cicadas that revisit every seventeen years.
They wait underground until they join us
for their brief, astounding, singing and mating.
They wait in cicada limbo until, God knows how,
their millions know their time has come to appear.
Months before they arrive, we are informed and are amazed.
While they lay still down there, life is busy for us;
We celebrate, we mourn, we wage war. God knows how
so many of us survive our reckless loving, living, mating.
As they wait so still, I fancy they are unaware all those years
that their world is not the whole world and they are amazed
by all of us in this airy space when they finally appear.
Some complain of their singing but I am amazed.
I hear marine sounds when they come to us.
It's as if the ocean has come to the woods when they appear.
We will not hear this high-pitched ocean again for years.
I am grateful that, God knows how,
nature is so clear in its rules of living and mating.
I think the cicadas, if they knew, would be amazed
by the willy-nilly rules we've lived by these seventeen years.
But they ignore us as they fly and go about their mating.
Suffering is not something they know as it is for us.
Without our bright technology they appear
and precisely perform their tasks. God knows how
much I envy the simplicity in their mating.
Then, by rule, their offspring will spend seventeen years
in their underground cicada world. I am amazed
so many survive the above ground chaos as more of us
build and prosper and suffer and God knows how
with all our careless digging, they will live to again appear.
I hope we keep the woodsy air free till they appear
to grow wings, to bring the sound of the ocean to us,
to, with Nature's blessing, fly, sing and die after mating.
If we remember they need to come, I will be amazed
at our patience, our generosity if, God knows how
there are still lovely, waiting woods in seventeen years.
Yes, when they come to us in Mary's land for their mating,
then their dying, let us be amazed by these cicadas who every
seventeen years appear above ground, God knows how.
SILENCE
By Margot Miller
takes as its first victim the heart,
where injuries that never heal
are catalogued and stored
for timed release.
silence lies low
measures in haves
fears loss
loses anyway
SAY IT WITH FLOWERS
By Margot Miller
I love simple flowers
A long sheaf of lavender
A single bubble of hydrangea
A cluster of sunflowers in a pitcher
But you prefer to surprise me
With effervescent displays of roses, lilies,
snapdragons, ferns and bird of paradise
MILLION-FLOWER MEADOW
By J. W. Hocter
We men are born into
A million-flower meadow.
Some search incessantly,
From finest fig to reddest rose,
Knowing surely there is one
More perfect than the last;
While others inspect thoroughly,
From brilliant petals to buried roots,
And find a flower one can love
Above all imperfection.
I am a senior English major at the Ohio State University. I have been writing poems since I can remember, and was first published in a children's anthology at age 9. I love to write and read traditional poetry. Contact me.
A MARTYR’S CREST
By Idalmis Toro
My fingers got lost in your hair
While your head lay on my chest
The cadence of my heartbeat
Lulled you to sleep
I never held anyone before
like this
doesn’t exist
I’m a ghost
playing dress up with these sheets
with words only I can see
Tomorrow I dreamed this
We’ve never even met
My eyes never consumed you
Our fingers never entangled
I never tasted your lips
or felt the warmth of your breath
on my skin
This bruise on my arm
the one on my neck
the one I have made of my heart
all counterfeit
A martyr’s crest
I was born in Washington Heights, NY but I now live in New Jersey. I attended Rutgers University and majored in Sociology and
Criminology. I minored in American Studies because the building was right next to my dorm. I am a social worker both by nature and profession. I hope to make everyone else's life better. I have a great eye for character, as long as it doesn't relate to me! I'm about to be an aunt for the first time and I am so excited. I am currently working on a novel, which will be a series of short stories about my family. I think of it as modern day fables with a Puerto Rican/Cuban twist. Contact me.
When the leaves on the trees suddenly spring forth into bloom
And the scent of magnolia blossoms enters the front room
When the glorious white of dogwood brightens the sky
Charlie comes by.
He’s here, he’s there, chases females across the street
He’s up, he’s down tree trunks, quick with nimble feet
Now he’s on our front porch begging for a snack
Charlie loves to hijack.
He’s a tight rope walker, scampers across fences
Digs up ground looking for buried nuts he senses
Were stowed away last year in the flower bed --
Charlie has nothing to dread.
He knows the old man in the Cape Cod blue palace
Will throw him peanut butter crackers pleasing to his palate,
He may even try to prance into the home’s entrance
Charlie takes chances.
He’s been known to beg upright for treats
For a squirrel so smart, he’s ever so neat
He steals bird seed from the feeder out back
Charlie’s mind is one-track.
He comes back to beg every year at this time
Perhaps a new descendant after his prime
A son or daughter or one of his kin
Charlie’s new cycle begins.
HAIKU
by Linda Barnett-Johnson
A rush at eighteen
To be first to get a tan
Wrinkled at forty
EPHEMERA
by Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Dewdrop on a maple leaf
Fragrance of star jasmine
Blush of cheek in a daughter
younger than her prom date
Papers in a briefcase
carried by a man in a power suit
Papers in a file
backbone of a Pulitzer novel
Papers in a mix that mice would love
holding a poet’s thoughts
Lift of a spoon carrying berries
to your lips turning blue
Roar of the neighbor’s lawn mower
turning our corner to park
Kisses at bedtime in our separate rooms
turning our aging lives into dust
Swift moments
All we have
Rich passing moments
Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is published internationally in anthologies, journals, and Internet magazines. Winner of the Palabra Productions Chapbook Contest 2006, End-Cycle, poems about caregiving, is her latest book. Her website is www.wellinghamjones.com.
TENERE DROUGHT
By Margot Miller
Scent of dry sand, hot, dusty skin
Sahara eats away at the earth
And the Ténéré swallows up the unwise
Who wander into the land of fear
Sahara eats away at the earth
Moving steadily southward
Into the Sahel and beyond
Driving Tuareg and Fulani alike
Moving steadily southward
Famine comes on the wind
Driving Tuareg and Fulani alike
Refugees on the streets of Niamey and Maradi
Famine comes on the wind
As the earth heats up
Refugees on the streets of Niamey and Maradi Offer their last possessions in trade for food
As the earth heats up
People who already have nothing
Offer their last possessions in trade for food If only to last another day
People who already have nothing
Abandon their animals in piles of bones
If only to last another day
As formidable aridity forces them on
To abandon their animals in piles of bones Scent of dry sand, hot, dusty skin As formidable aridity forces them on And the Ténéré swallows up the unwise
May
by Russell Bittner
If May weren’t so smashing,
I think I’d be cashing
my shoes in for life at the Cape –
whose fêtes I’d go crashing
while probably bashing
my head in on fermented grape.
If May were less thrilling,
no doubt Jeffrey Skilling
would leave us all dumbly agape;
but Lay’s no less chilling
and is likely shilling
for guys who think love’s just like rape.
If May weren’t compelling,
I might think of selling
Lay’s version on videotape;
but nothing’s propelling
my urge to try telling
his sheep de Panurge to escape.
If May weren’t compounding,
their need to keep sounding
like dullards evading a scrape,
I might just try founding
a trust that seeks grounding
in other than ‘U. S. of Ape.’
Published at ALongStoryShort.net (September, 2006 and May, 2007).
Swift moments