September Full Moon Special
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Laundry
abbigail |
i am a wrinkled shirt
and you are in dire need of clean attire. i sit crumpled in your hands, creased and waiting. but you bag me up like dirty laundry and throw me over your shoulders. rinse my flesh of this stick and sweat, slick my hair to my temples with your soft hands, freshly washed in lavender hand soap. set me straight, unravel my folds, iron out my stiff limbs, so that i might hold you with my warmth. for five minutes you’re pulling me close, arms wrapped tightly around my torso, unwilling to let go. as if a shirt can move on its own. i let my heat dissipate into your skin, and though i grow cold you let me stay close to you. i enjoy this moment, for it is just a moment until i become laundry again. |
August New Moon Special
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Thursday
Megan Lolley |
On Thursday, I was holding a cup of coffee.
Little tongues of heat swept through my palms, and steam curled past my lips. Not that I was cold, but that human hands need warmth, and after you left it started to rain. The drops settled into my coffee like tears. “Don’t you think the raindrops look like tears?” You’re foolish, thinking you know the rain. You sit and sip your hot coffee folding and unfolding your cold palms. Human hands need warmth. “That coffee burned my lips.” When you cried at night, I kissed your lips so they wouldn’t need to explain the tears, and I remedied your sobs with warmth. I told you we needed to talk over coffee. You said nothing, but covered my palms with yours. It had started to rain. On Tuesday, you sat outside in the rain, and I sat inside to watch you. I remember—your lips are blue. Why don’t I move? My palms are sweating, and there are tears dripping down my cheeks—numb. I pick up my cup of coffee and throw it against the wall. I am appalled by warmth. “Don’t you know that human hands need warmth?” Wednesday screamed a scream that curdled the rain. We didn’t drink coffee that morning. I wished you would open your lips, but you said nothing. Behind the bedroom door there were tears. The pills slumped into your palms. They didn’t cover your palms with their white sheet—I thought human hands needed warmth. I can’t cry—my tears After I left the rain, I found nine little pills forgotten by your lips, and now they laugh at me through this rain-colored cup of coffee. It’s Friday, and this cup of cold coffee is still between my palms. My lips never brought you warmth, but I hope you’ll tell me if raindrops are really tears. |
August Full Moon Special
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Washcloths
Natalie Schaffer |
She was on her knees in your bathroom
Matriarch and healer Stitcher and collector But here she was On her knees in your bathroom Kneeling to her father I imagine she was also kneeling to her Father She got upset when I told her I didn’t want to say grace at the dinner table anymore But I think She just doesn’t understand Communion has always tasted different in my mouth But in this moment I would almost relent And say grace- for her But what I really want is to say grace to her Because god is something, sure But right now she is on her knees in your bathroom She soothes your confusion She speaks all the skinned knees of your pride to sleep She says “it’s going to be ok” You and I are not so sure But before my eyes she makes it ok You couldn’t make it But she makes it ok There is no dignity in dying But Jesus Christ is there dignity in daughters They will wash away the worst Forgive the facile friction of family And the aches of old and unintentional alcoholism For your sake At least they knew you always sent up ramshackle prayers with their names on them Whenever you remembered what they were But I think it was that week You started to tell them you loved them For the first time this century They showed you the same with washcloths Or words Or wishbones Or daughters For years For years |
July New Moon Special
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The Greatest Race
Pauline Aksay |
My mama said that when it rains
it is the world crying in pain she’d watch the raindrops take their place as they’d fall down in a Great Race and catch the drops before they’d break returning them to where they came her work would take the pain away it’d make the world whole once again but mama said she was okay when dad got gas but never came tears were running down her face like rain but in a different place I couldn’t see her in such pain I vowed that on that very day I’d catch the drops ’fore they’d escape I’d embark on the Greatest Race the teardrops went down from her face past her pillow and bed duvet I tried to snatch them, but they laced ’round my fingers, under my brain travelling on the carpet laid squeezing through the hardwood aged I almost lost track of its place then refocused and quickened my pace down the stairs, dead living space past the kitchen dinner plates funneling into the cold base -ment, into the crooked foundat- ion, and soon, beyond the crawlspace scavenging under the estate six feet down, I undertake the chase, but the drops still don’t wait and after leeches, then the lakes, years of sediment displaced nestling in tunneled cityscapes past wonky tectonic plates swimming in the mantle, grace- fully, the teardrops still don’t brake but I know that I have an ace I’m so close now, I can almost taste It, and at last I reach the core My head and limbs are all so sore The cornered drops can run no more I’ve got the tears I’ve been chasing for-- but when I resurface in haste my humid heart, it starts to break ’Cause everything around has changed Nothing has remained the same... My mama’s gone and I have aged I don’t know when she passed away The Greatest Race that I had played was over, and I won first place I looked at the heavens in space and let her teardrops evaporate returning them to where they came it’d make her feel whole once again. |
July Full Moon Special
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Blue Bird
Tasin Tahaa |
You and I claim to play for the same team, but you're in black and I'm in -
Blue bird from Bukowski’s rib cage has replaced the cage for stained glass window pane - Comes and goes and daydreaming helps, dreaming of the dream - Girl is a term that reduces my existence into something you have to close your eyes to - See how I have plastered the concrete walls with temporary murals of - You are going to miss me for longer than you - New and very much attached - Strings leave callouses and my vocal cords weren't built for music but to articulate - Sadness is in knowing that one of these days your father is going to stop believing in - Forgiveness flies out of the window when despite knowing that people are fundamentally stupid, for some reason I always hope they'll do better and then are let down by the inevitable cruelty of an unopened palm on a sheet of rusted - Nails dug dip in your neck as I strip your skin off like an orange peel perforated at both - End of the world isn't as glorious; at the end, the world really - Ends in something accusatory, guilt-filled words and a kid settling down for two birth - Days when you're having a hard time choosing between babe and - Brave is in knowing that sometimes the only way to dodge the bullet is to be the one who shoots the gun - Shots that reduce the blue-whale’s stomach of a land and architecture to - Debris in her lungs, in her mouth, that little girl dead in her bedroom in S - Pain has a way of finding anything and everything; the dream girl the old wallpapers the needle the hand cream your father the flesh behind the peel the divorcées the civil war soldier the bluebird caged in Bukowski's rib and - You and I are playing for the same team, we're black, we're blue, we're black and blue and blue and black and nobody said that the sky could have only one shade. |
June New Moon Special
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Failure
Kelly Kooper |
"I am no good
My word is worthless If you knew what was best You would run and never look back" Signs? Clues? Warnings? Ignore. She's a teenager I did it too She's just acting out "I know no one cares Why would anyone care When I'm insignificant And worthless" Signs? Clues? Warnings? Ignore. She's okay She's dramatic There's nothing to worry about But in the end I Failed Her |
June Full Moon Special
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ONE MORE FOR GOOD LUCK
Bryan William Myers |
the rabbit chased the sun for spite
spellcheck became a speed bump for fast writers who can’t let go of the past if you’re growing a beard in the twilight of your own circumspection, leave your fingers twaddling along the keys luck is a set of dice dangling from a taxi driver’s rearview mirror on a gray and cloudy day the coffee gets sucked down into oblivion (which is your stomach) as it groans at your second-person personal noun bullshit here’s a brutal fact: California blondes never shut the hell up about a Bandaid they pulled off two weeks ago and that guy in the corner saying nothing knows more than everybody in town he stays quiet I envy him just like the frog in the night searching for flies there’s only so much you can stomach before you begin to feel ill and on that note always cover your ears in a foreign town when an American drops by. |
May New Moon Special
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The Math of Love 1+1=1
Ziaul Moid Khan |
“I want to touch you,” I said, looking straight into Reshma’s bizarre bright eyes. In the last two weeks, this was the seventeenth time I’d asked my newly found love this question in the hope of a positive response. The last sixteen attempts of my maneuver had proved futile producing no concrete result. I was on fire, every atom of me crying desperately for her
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“You cannot,” she said, and giggled like an innocent baby. Her blood red lips exposed her extra white teeth. Whiter than what they show in the toothpaste ads during those short commercial horrible breaks on television.
She was one of those rare looking girls fit for modelling, cat walk, the showbiz world. Slander, but with heavy bosom. Her tits shook heavily up and down as she walked giving a clear hint that she did not wear a bra, wittingly to draw more than usual attention.
“Why?” I said, perplexed.
“That I can’t and won’t tell you.” She laughed again, giving me her usual response in mirth.
“Why not? Please…please Reshma, tell me!” I said pissed and pinched by her rude reply, “why do you always evade my questions, love?”
“Some other day, when the right winds will blow and bring around an opportune time,” Reshma said, staring at the full moon that was trying to evade the dark clouds which were advancing towards her.
I fell silent. Looked up where she was staring—at the glittering sky. It was a perfect night with a circled moon and all galaxies of stars, adding to the beauty of the vast expense of the cosmos. We sat at our usual place—a hummock where the Krishna River flowed fifty meters below our feet. More often than not we came here after our first meeting-by-chance. Here it was peaceful, and both of us loved this place—away from the hustle and bustle of the city-life.
Last night at this same place she’d asked me if I really loved her.
“Of course, I do,” I had said.
Then she’d said nothing. It seemed odd to me, but I did not nudge her lest she should be offended. A little short tempered was she. Truly I didn’t want to lose her. I could not afford it.
“Are you OK, Nawaz?” she chirped. And I was back from my flashback.
“Yes. Why are you asking?”
“I guess you’re hurt,” she said. Her lips seemed to be the untouched petals of some new blossoming rosebud. I want to kiss these coral lips, I wanted to say but did not. Sometimes it’s safe not to say something your heart’s crying to speak aloud.
“It’s not like that,” I said, looking sideways, “I think I have no right upon you.”
“May I ask you one thing?”
“Yes.”
“Which kind of right you want by the way? You mean physical!”
“All the rights,” I said with possession in my tone, “physical and platonic, both.”
“Of course, you’ll have, Nawaz,” she said with an I-know-your-intention-smile, “but give me some time. I can feel your feelings. But as for now—all the rights are reserved.”
“Take your time,” I said with sarcasm in my tone.
“Thanks,” she said, casually this time, with no apparent emotions in her words.
She was one of those rare looking girls fit for modelling, cat walk, the showbiz world. Slander, but with heavy bosom. Her tits shook heavily up and down as she walked giving a clear hint that she did not wear a bra, wittingly to draw more than usual attention.
“Why?” I said, perplexed.
“That I can’t and won’t tell you.” She laughed again, giving me her usual response in mirth.
“Why not? Please…please Reshma, tell me!” I said pissed and pinched by her rude reply, “why do you always evade my questions, love?”
“Some other day, when the right winds will blow and bring around an opportune time,” Reshma said, staring at the full moon that was trying to evade the dark clouds which were advancing towards her.
I fell silent. Looked up where she was staring—at the glittering sky. It was a perfect night with a circled moon and all galaxies of stars, adding to the beauty of the vast expense of the cosmos. We sat at our usual place—a hummock where the Krishna River flowed fifty meters below our feet. More often than not we came here after our first meeting-by-chance. Here it was peaceful, and both of us loved this place—away from the hustle and bustle of the city-life.
Last night at this same place she’d asked me if I really loved her.
“Of course, I do,” I had said.
Then she’d said nothing. It seemed odd to me, but I did not nudge her lest she should be offended. A little short tempered was she. Truly I didn’t want to lose her. I could not afford it.
“Are you OK, Nawaz?” she chirped. And I was back from my flashback.
“Yes. Why are you asking?”
“I guess you’re hurt,” she said. Her lips seemed to be the untouched petals of some new blossoming rosebud. I want to kiss these coral lips, I wanted to say but did not. Sometimes it’s safe not to say something your heart’s crying to speak aloud.
“It’s not like that,” I said, looking sideways, “I think I have no right upon you.”
“May I ask you one thing?”
“Yes.”
“Which kind of right you want by the way? You mean physical!”
“All the rights,” I said with possession in my tone, “physical and platonic, both.”
“Of course, you’ll have, Nawaz,” she said with an I-know-your-intention-smile, “but give me some time. I can feel your feelings. But as for now—all the rights are reserved.”
“Take your time,” I said with sarcasm in my tone.
“Thanks,” she said, casually this time, with no apparent emotions in her words.
May Full Moon Special
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message in a bottle
Mackenzie Macrol |
the other day, i found a message in a bottle on the beach. water had seeped in from the cracks and holes in the cork meant to seal it, and the ink had been almost completely washed away. i consider the hundreds of thousands of miles of open ocean and foolishly think that i’ve never felt that kind of desperation—where your final call for help could very well drown with you. then, i remember the hands that held me back. surrounding me, deceiving me, their touches sustained pressure, like a dive in the open ocean. as a reward for my complacency, i was promised mercy below the surface. i was promised that the choppy waves above this still, open ocean were too dangerous for a breath of fresh air. i was promised that without the anchor they created, i would lose my direction. i was promised that i would more likely drown trying to swim against the current. so, I sank—saltwater filled my lungs and made a hundred thousand cuts, killing me from the inside out. when i eventually realized that i’d been made to drown, my first cries for help were hardly waterproof.
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April's 2nd New Moon Special
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Tantric
William E. Heston |
In the kitchen,
Bodhidharma and I sit, A bucket of gas station fried chicken Split between us. “The world is at its end,” I tell him. “What do we do When we’ve lost our moral center? When without breath, the walls begin to hyperventilate In rhythm with our chests?” He eats, Crumbs tumbling down the front of his robe, Tea leaf eyelids hung In perpetual rest. He smiles at me. “What do we do When time unravels?” I ask. “When String Theory unwinds; When the stairs go Nowhere?” Still, he sits, Cross-legged on the linoleum, Slopping up the greasy skin Of a drumstick. "Bodhidharma, I'm tired, and, frankly, disgusted. The stench of grief hangs on the breath Of dead dreams That used to call to us. How am I supposed to answer them? How do YOU suppose I answer?" He rubs his single bare foot, Picks at the sandal on the other, And I wait with a festering sense of impatience. The evening sun disappears from my back window, Receding into the urban overgrowth Of the yard. “We’re at war!” I exclaim, “Why are we without territory this time? Why are we fighting Simply to maintain the line? How senseless can the ends get If there’s always a means to defend them? I need answers. I don’t trust you’re here. Who else Do I have left?” He drops the bone in the bucket. He grabs his staff to stand, The missing sandal hung atop. He turns to me And asks "Why?" |
April Full Moon Special
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Nature's Embrace
Hasib Iftekhar |
(An ode to all the ones battling hopelessness)
The hustling in the trees, & carrying of the breeze, They do speak to me. And a whisper so droll, a bow to the bole, Wheezes out in silence: ‘Keep on keeping on, and don’t let go’. Rile across the skin, with an agony to the bone - I twitch and look up between all the moans, In a weary body and dragging head, I attempt to look farther, As my frame sinks further - Ninety-nine days of frozen still, in my lone infirmary bed. Isolation, ventilation, so dreadful is the prohibition! Smacked down I am by nauseating preconditions. In desolation, meandering thoughts are what I mime - to a reflection on the dusk window: my audience. Leave room out there in the pane for Melancholy, To stain the glass a gloomy purple. Mornings though, shines through hope, To a rancid soul that struggles to cope. Leaves swoosh in with songbirds chirping, Hops me back alive & retorting. And the sky, o my! Such cerulean frame. Dots of cotton – a broom there? Or button? From here to Serengeti, via the eternity, So grand & so big, puts a Renoir to shame. And I sense the vitals soar & goosebumps appear, Cracks turning fade and demons steer clear. On there a plateau, I lay flat and serene, As evened-out as I could ever be. The kindness amongst all things I feel, Stoking a bliss within me. |
April's 1st New Moon Special
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Sponge-Grass
Mehreen Ahmed |
I stood on a patch of grass in the wetlands. I called it the sponge-grass. If one were to step on it, the sponge-grass patch, typically, sprung up and down under one’s feet movement, not submerge completely. This porous patch of the drenched grass, as resilient as it was held up some promise of stability, but not a whole lot.
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Standing on it, I also watched birds through handheld binoculars at a distance. Today, I watched something spectacular—the rare ospreys. I almost thought they had disappeared from this part of the globe—the wetlands. Almost, they never flew in here at all. But here they were, today, alive and well.
The ospreys helped my mood to turn around. I was in a downward trajectory of my writing career. My blues had reached its outer limits with all the rejections I’d received in one day. Doubts gnawed at me like termites. That perhaps I was deluding myself as a writer. Perhaps, I should leave writing with the more sophisticated minds, and be an astute reader in its stead—less stress and more enjoyment—win-win. This self-flagellation of despair was a trigger towards being a defeatist—a quitter, which I was not.
At a difficult moment like this, I had met him. A random guy whom I dared to choose online from my friend’s list. That I was so bored, I wanted to do something—anything. It had all started with a song. I had recorded a song and sent it through to him via messenger. The response was almost immediate. He sent me back one of his voice-recorded song clips, but deaf to the tune. By far, I least sang in tune. I thought this exchange was funny listening to his off-tune songs which he sang so much in earnest to impress me, taking the trouble of recording and sending them through.
The ospreys helped my mood to turn around. I was in a downward trajectory of my writing career. My blues had reached its outer limits with all the rejections I’d received in one day. Doubts gnawed at me like termites. That perhaps I was deluding myself as a writer. Perhaps, I should leave writing with the more sophisticated minds, and be an astute reader in its stead—less stress and more enjoyment—win-win. This self-flagellation of despair was a trigger towards being a defeatist—a quitter, which I was not.
At a difficult moment like this, I had met him. A random guy whom I dared to choose online from my friend’s list. That I was so bored, I wanted to do something—anything. It had all started with a song. I had recorded a song and sent it through to him via messenger. The response was almost immediate. He sent me back one of his voice-recorded song clips, but deaf to the tune. By far, I least sang in tune. I thought this exchange was funny listening to his off-tune songs which he sang so much in earnest to impress me, taking the trouble of recording and sending them through.
March Full Moon Special
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Saturday Afternoon
Emily Moon |
Long ago summer
I looked out the window toward the shimmery turquoise water of Kailua Bay. Jefferson Airplane played in the background. A dreamy sunny Saturday, mynah birds on the path beneath spindly kiawe trees. pink and red hibiscus blooms down the lane. Swimmers in the water, waves rolling in. The graceful double yellow lines of the two-lane road curve around the bend toward Lanikai, trace the way around a rocky outcrop. I thought of a girl I knew. Incense in the air, mellow acid rock chords stretched out to match the mood. Saturday Afternoon... it’s a time for caring and a time for sharing Love Yes – I thought – yes |
March New Moon Special Feature
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a thank you to my college baseball coach
Ty Brack |
Plans made.
Note ready. One of the last steps. I entered your office. Sat down. Ready with the lie. I can’t play anymore. Doctor says my knee injuries need time to heal. Don’t want to redshirt. Need to focus on school. Graduate on time. You spun around in your chair. Eyes reading. Body language inviting. Don’t cry. I sputtered the first lying words. Stopped. Mouth quivering. Eyes darting. Don’t cry. You leaned closer. You knew. You spoke. Don’t cry. I didn’t hear them, but I felt your words understood. I cried. Hard. Sucking for air hard. You said it was okay. To cry. To a man. It’d never been okay before. We hugged. I left. Confused. Alive. New plans made. Note disproven? One of the first steps. |