Communion of Stars
~Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Alone outside
as trees bind the wind,
night paints the bones
of the land.
How can I look up
to the starry choir
of the Milky Way
and not shake inside
with its unspeakable
weightless splendor?
I am lifted up in
communion with the
farthest side of time.
So much beauty
pressing into my eyes—
it feels like gazing up
through water
never even needing
to breathe air.
Your Loveliness
~Jennifer Pratt-Walter
I adore how you wear your loveliness
in the crinkles around your eyes
so that the beauty you see becomes
part of your face, you marvel, you light,
you oxygen.
That’s how I want to love –
with my heart as expressive
as your eyes, receptive as sky
uncrimping the edges of my vision.
~
Editor’s Choice Award
pelvis
~Jennifer Pratt-Walter
my pelvis is hot as steam
rising from a pot of outrageous tea
in anatomy class they called it our
“pelvic girdle,” can you imagine!?
i flair my wise hip bones with pride
they can sit a horse at the canter
with confidence
my pelvis was made as a limousine
for babies in their starry fetal sea,
rounding their heads
with devotion
blooming in a pregnant woman
like i twice was
beauty wrapped my body
in the deep red wonder of carrying life
safely, a dark island within
we were tethered together
a gardener tending her fields
until the harvest, the release
my pelvis performed her best
under duress, and i thank her profoundly
for her glorious strength.
what a fitting job she did
for the sake of someone becoming
whoever they must be
thank you,
my fresh swinging pelvis
thank you, legs like a deer, my peach-leaf feet
thank you, orchestra of my being
for bearing my years along. i stride home
with you, dear body, a pelvis like a holiday
and a church.
Editor’s Choice Award
My Walk
~Raymond Byrnes
Such a warm afternoon for November
beneath a rain-rinsed, blue windless sky.
Trees crowned last month in scarlet and
gold are now mostly bare. A few leaves
hang like brown bats furled in sleep.
No crickets chatter. No catbirds whine.
No swallowtails skim the glass-tabletop
pond. Sunlight radiates the stillness.
Except for crushed-leaf crackles now
and then, my steps are soundless as the
tree shadows that cross my path. My mind
for the moment is idle as the silent sky.
This is the spot where summer passed
me by in late September, her cornsilk
hair complementing her grass-green gown
and bouquet of goldenrod with purple asters.
Cattails
~Jenny Wrenn
Late November dawn and
the cattails surround
the pond thickly like
a warm scarf
each having transformed
from their polite tight
cigar forms into something else
unbuttoned
their innermost selves
exposed and liberated
now shaggy and unkempt
each exalting in their
own private epiphany
a multitude of tawny
creatures perched atop
their single stalks
they dance in
the frigid breeze
audacious in their delight
intoxicated by their release
We humans, I think, have an innate need for beauty, and art, and a sense of creation.
~Leslie Soule
I Had a Little Freak Out Yesterday
~Leslie Soule
I felt a sense of creeping anxiety working its way through my veins – the heaviness of it all was getting to be too much – world events, people acting in mean ways to me, endless bills and holiday social isolation. What could possibly ease my sense of inner pain?
I started getting my writing and other creation files in some semblance of order, on my computer and in print. That’s when I noticed one of my old collages from art class, a billion years ago. What was the draw, with that? I couldn’t seem to get the mojo, these days, to sit down and just create a piece of art. But I did have and old magazine sitting over in the corner. And some scissors. And come to think of it, I had some Modge Podge, too.
But there was the sense of motivation, still missing. I remember years ago, attending a weekly clay workshop at the community center in Sacramento, California. That workshop no longer exists, having long ago been turned into a computer lab. I had no problems creating art back then, as all of the artists in that workshop could see what everybody else was making, could sit around and listen to jazz and talk about art, and get inspiration.
Maybe I could make some kind of facsimile, although I now lived in a small city without a vibrant arts scene. Maybe I could even create something that would take me back to those times, by myself, sitting at my laptop in my living room. So I started taking a look at some of the art created by my fellow artists of one of the literary journals that accepted an image of one of my collages, years ago. And soon enough, I started gaining inspiration, going “Wow!” and “I wonder if I could make something like that…”
And for the first time in years, I sat down, and started just cutting out images from the magazine that I thought looked cool, and small phrases that jumped out at me – “Thank you” all in caps and “HELL” all in huge letters, and a bunch of really neat images of trains, some of them model trains that the photographer captured in just the right way to make them look full-size.
We humans, I think, have an innate need for beauty, and art, and a sense of creation. It’s no wonder that these things can bring us mental relief, whether it’s making a collage alone in your apartment, or tending a garden and harvesting zucchinis. So if you find yourself in a state of anxiety, as I was, wondering what you can do to quell the tidal waves in your heart, look around you and see what items are available that you can make art with, even just for ten minutes out of your day. You don’t need the perfect setup, or special tools, or even a clear plan. Creation doesn’t demand grandeur—it just asks for participation.
Maybe it’s rearranging objects on your desk until something feels harmonious, or scribbling lines in a notebook, or tearing pages from an old magazine to make shapes that please you. Maybe it’s humming a melody to yourself, or kneading dough, or fixing a button on a favorite shirt. These tiny acts of making remind your nervous system that the world isn’t only chaos, that you also have the ability to bring form, softness, and meaning into it.
Sometimes that’s enough, not to solve everything, but to give your mind a place to rest, to let your breath deepen, and to remember that even in moments of overwhelm, there is still room for quiet creation.
Urn
~Stephanie L. Harper
Scattered, blurred,
as if underwater
or in uncertain light,
glints of the after time
i hardly dare to know
is coming
pass in and out of my inner sight:
unresolved-sevenths;
vague birds;
purples vermilioned;
greens and blues not yet
yellowed by the bruise of missing you
because you’re still here, my love,
you’re here. You are here
with the clarity of tears.
Nocturne
~Stephanie Harper
beneath
a moonless fir
or rugged spruce
infused in
your buried roots
are past griefs
and joys enough
for six tinctured cups
to brim with stardust
All The Difference
~David C. Meyer
The grave begins its marking, the loose
face, the bloat beneath the ribs,
the ruin in the groin where a crab
clenched its claw. But still, leaning
on the doorframe, smiling, easy
after sixty years: You.
Scrawl
~David C. Meyer
If a line’s no
line, its turn
just a veering off, if words
mean maybe this and maybe
that, and maybe less
of one’s interior
than more, if form’s a game
that twists and rhyme
a stutter, and
if singing simply
floats a bit of fairy lace
on sweetened breath, why then
so what? The making
makes for joy.