by Sarah Marie

In the distance, when the sun meets the horizon on a painting that someone took in a drink and draw class, she (she was a she) learned about simple distinctions which are part of modernity.

Gloria was alone that evening wanting to separate herself from the rows of brownstones in her new found freeing life. At 26 or 36 she was alone before that in her kitchen doing bare essentials questioning when she should get dressed.

Listening to a song about an old lover who ditched her while owning an orange scarf and the woman counting her espresso clouds while her plane took off.

Her teddy bear stood at the end of a long white island with too many cabinets. It appeared candid and intellectual a guy with many experiences.

Her calves ached from not being cared for in a bit and she decided to push herself to make some meaning.

A guy with a four leaf clover in his hand was next to her as well as a woman from Parsons. She wasn’t parsimonious. He wasn’t getting lucky. She bought more glasses of wine. They did their contrived sunset.

They breathed in the rules and mannerisms of the game.

by Roberta Curley

Double rainbows frame an inky sky
portending luck or
______crashing finality

an iPhone blares – it’s Lenox Hill
______Mom has lost to Covid
my firmament churns

I fixate on celestial arcs of
______purple pink and gold
awaiting a dark fate to unfold

yet craning my neck skyward
______I envision a piñata…filled with
Mom’s culinary eccentricities

I still taste her vodka-laced
______chicken soup and
bourbon spiked applesauce

her tequila tainted tacos
______though tantalizing, prove
ticklish on an empty stomach

her homemade treats,
lavished on me – her only child
______I knew nothing else

but Mom coaxed me to
act as first mate in her
“curious cuisine” conquests

my visions soon intensify
______as flashbacks of us
kaleidoscopically entwine

we’re flipping through
______piles of past pics –
starting with her wedding album

photos black and white
rousing as Handel’s organ keys
______or – Mom’s favorite scotch

______Mom’s legacy is truly
drenched with love …

Soft Kill

If it’s not alligators in Florida
______it’s Covid
If it’s not your 98-year-old father
______it’s Covid
If it’s not Loehmann’s gone out of business
______it’s Covid
If it’s not toilet paper being rationed
______it’s Covid
If it’s not Philip Seymour Hoffman overdosing
______it’s Covid
If it’s not Michael Jackson being overdosed
______it’s Covid
If it’s not Whitney Houston’s dulcet tones silenced
______it’s Covid
If it’s not Trump’s denial of the pandemic
______it’s Covid
If it’s not outlawing an eleven person gathering
______it’s Covid
If it’s not watching 330 million masks defiantly fly off
______it’s Covid
If it’s not possible to cut enough flowers for pandemic graves
______it will be Covid

by Omayma Khayat

I never understood this game –
the one that you play daily
as if called to by some higher power

face completely stale
like week old bread
left in an opened bag
no movement
no lines or wrinkles or smile
Botox some would say
I know better

your demeanor so stoic
playing life like it was a pair of cards
some days Queen of Hearts – love abound
some days nothing but spades
cutting the deck with scissors
rusted and dull and handles joined together
by invisible tape
like my life with you
dull and rusty and invisible
mismatching like a sock without its counterpart
in this relationship where my pair of eyes
need a pair of glasses to see your reality
but somehow the hand dealt gave me blinders instead
and no amount of righteousness left
uncovered
could prevent the broken heart
from beating right through the left breast
making a pair
unmatchable
unattainable

left right out in the open

Staring Up At Cracked Ceiling Paint At 3am

broken and out of breath
the beauty of our craziness
wraps itself up
as if a straight jacket were a winter coat
only taken out when temperatures drop

but crazy isn’t seasonal, its forever
when unmedicated and disregarded
when lying alone and staring up at cracked ceiling paint at 3am
when the world feels like its sword is at your neck – blade ready
and when you block your ears from hearing voices outside of your head

broken and out of breath
the beauty of our craziness
wrapped itself up
but your beauty was flawed
and in that flaw I found beauty
and you found nothingness

My Night Phloxes

The world is but a stage and you my lead actor
You who dances on clouds of cotton
Mouthing words of devotion
While catching fireflies in cupped palms
Blistered from the toils of the mundane

You are my night phloxes
My Casablanca lilies, my moon flowers
My angel trumpets
That find strength and bloom in the darkness
Of my heart
Your scent wafts through the airs that surround
Even my shadows

And you are my ship, on waters that rage
Vibrating like the elephant feets
During a stampede
Crashing into me, transmitting energy
I had been drained off

And you,
you are my wings, flying through the sky
Like moths attracted to light
Like the sun
Like the moon
When it shines
Like the stars that glitter and gleam
Like the lighthouse giving you refuge

by Noel T. Jones

O, sheet of paper strapped before me,
Pressing my lips against my lips,
My breath against my breath,
Protecting others from what may be inside me.
Deliver steam upon my lenses,
And hide my smile from those who see me.
Will you prevent my prayers from reaching,
Those who are facing the hour of their deaths alone?
Wash not the blood from the hands of the culpable,
As we seek light where there is darkness
Amen

O, disparity of wealth above us,
Through you, due to you, some suffer more than others,
It is not for us to question why the powers that be are the powers that be
Allow us to allow them to take freely
The PPE
Needed by nurses and doctors who serve thee.
Bestow a plague upon houses that do not smear the blood of greed above their doors
Forgive us our lack of second homes, and easily granted loans, and red lines some could not cross, while seeking a manger of their own
In service to your wrath,
Amen

O, pots and pans clamoring,
Warning those within earshot of the lepers infected with hope and praise,
A contagious recognition of those who serve.
Lo, forget not the transgressions against those on the streets
Who hear the percussive cookware from up high,
Those whose bellies bloat, beatific in their starvation in this desert of a city
Dripping milky puss from untended wounds, craving a salve of honey to sweeten their fates, receiving undeserved furies.
We must offer a seat at, not just some crumbs from a new table,
Built from the splinters of the wall we will send tumbling down.
And we as compassionate carpenters will assemble
In our glory, forever and ever
Amen

by MonaLisa Ortiz-Rosa 

When I was a kid I thought my Spanish Harlem cousins were rich because they lived in the projects. Their high rise building had an intercom, elevators and flat walls with doors on all the rooms with doorknobs. Our sixth floor floor tenement on the Lower East Side was a broken tiled walk up where white bulbous nosed Bowery men slept curled with their bottle behind the stairs. Where the wrought iron banisters curled way up to the top where junkies shot up by moonlit skylight.

Our apartment had peeling walls, and big fat claw foot bathtub smack dab center of the kitchen. You could see straight through each room to the back. But we did have a fire escape. I’d imagine my poor cousins just helpless looking out windows waiting to be rescued if a fire actually happened. Everyone knew fire ladders only went so high. Where we could open our windows, tumble over each other down the outside iron stairs to safety.

There were indoor-outdoor rodents in our neighborhood. The same rats we’d see scuttling through garbage bags and up trash cans outside had cousins living inside. After school we’d scurry up five flights making sure never to step on a crack, lest you break your mothers back and they would zigzag up too.
When I was a kid my father challenged a rat who stood up on two feet and bared it’s teeth. This was inside our apartment! In his sleeveless T-shirt, perfectly pressed trousers and family-familiar belt, my handsome father tried to chase it, trap it, drown it. I’m telling you it was a hullabaloo. There they stood in the perfect square kitchen, a face off. The rat had a family too, I’m sure but it was our name on the lease. We paid the rent and here was this no-count subtenant holding his own black square like a vicious chess piece on our checkered linoleum.

It was as if the room had lungs and a stop watch. It was on! We were all holding our breath and rooting to win

We Didn’t Tell the Children

We didn’t tell the children it was okay to play tag in the funeral parlor, running round the mourning room, heavily draped… giggling. They knew to play.

We didn’t tell the children that the dog was defective, wasn’t good enough to keep, we were afraid they’d identify with it and wonder whether they too could someday wind up in some strangers home. We just got another one. “This one’s good right“ Jay said, agreeing.

We didn’t tell the children the hospitals policy sucked and that’s why they couldn’t visit their mother. We were too busy keeping vigil, getting schedules straight defying doctors. They thought it was because they were bad.
We didn’t tell the children the real reason grandpa was so mean or why they had to respect him anyway. They just looked at us like we were crazy and talk smack when we weren’t around but followed orders.
We didn’t tell the children when they hid laughing under the chenille blanket in full view that we could see them, huddled, hands round ankles, knees to chin, backs curved, boney shoulders bouncing, forehead to forehead. That would have spoiled their superpowers.

We didn’t tell them that we had lost our superpowers and couldn’t protect them from broken hearts.
But we did tell them they were wonderfully and powerfully made. We told them about Puerto Rico and Albizu Campos and Ramon Emeterio Betances y El Grito de Lares. We told them in Spanish that Spanish es una maravilla and not to lie because they’d be hurting God who trusted them.

We didn’t tell them the cousins were moving in after Titi died because they had a heartless bastard of a father. But they watched us bristle whenever his name came up like a turd in the East River.

We told them never to steal, always ask for what you want even if you don’t get it so you can be proud of yourself for doing the right thing. We told them never to laugh at their cousin Eddie for playing with dolls. We said not all boys like tractors and trucks.

We told them girls are very special and should be protected and cherished. So sorry they didn’t have a sister we told them.

by MonaLisa Ortiz-Rosa 

Imposters everywhere. Vanity all vanity, posing as props, as art.
“useless” my father would call me, not
Like my sisters who could clean and mop, or
My brother who could fix a car- even if it was just
A model, a toy -still, all of this contributed somehow to life’s
Invitation to put up your dukes, Engage.
I sat back and read…If I wasn’t reading I was mulling,
In reverie, In the act of noticing
So useless made sense. It was evidence
My father recognized art, not for outcome
But for it’s goodwill, it’s goodness
For the love of the thing -what art aroused
How it compelled virtue and beauty to assert itself
In the midst of struggle and deadlines and poverty
We all mattered, took form, added worth
In our individual ways in a family of imposters and clowns
We all pretended, assumed places in his preposterous mansion
And in mother’s deep depression.

by Michele Shapiro

After breakfast, I go to the window as I often do. There’s usually one robin or another who builds her nest on the corner of the rooftop just above our apartment. Today, for some reason, the nest is empty. I know it’s silly, but I feel the urge to open up the window, pushing the stubborn frame until my arms tremble under its weight.

Norman is in his study watching television. That’s pretty much where you can find him Monday to Friday from after breakfast until bedtime. Oh, he had big plans for retirement—trips to Italy to sip Limoncello by the Parthenon, walks around the lake, feted by swans, concerts and dances and outdoor picnics in the park. But here we are, he with a pipe perched on his bottom lip—the same that’s already cost us thousands in dental bills—and me with a pair of wings that reach from one side of the bedroom to the other when fully outstretched, a yellow beak, and three crooked talons where my toes were only yesterday. No more pedicures needed, I guess. Norman will like that. He thinks I spend far too much money on frivolous pleasures.

Should I do it? I see the empty nest, made of twigs and branches from the trees in front of our prewar building. I know it’s silly. I know there isn’t room. And while I don’t know what kind of bird I’ll end up when my transformation is complete, I don’t think it’s a robin. Well, here goes. I duck down so as not to bump my head and perch myself on the window ledge. Amazing! I couldn’t even hold the tree pose in my yoga class! If my instructor could only see me now. I spread my wings until I feel the tips press lightly against the window frame and then I count to myself “3-2-1” and, before I know it, I’m on the roof. The nest collapses beneath my weight. “I’ll have to build my own,” I think. “Bigger, stronger, better. Isn’t that the American way?” I laugh silently, thinking of Norman who insists on buying only American-made products. Perhaps if I become an eagle, he’ll respect me more. Wouldn’t that be something?

“Gertie!” I hear Norman calling me from the armchair in his study. I want to respond, but I’m afraid. If she sees me on the roof, he surely won’t understand. But he hasn’t noticed the wings, the beak, or even the talons. So maybe he won’t notice I’m responding from outside the apartment.

“Give me a minute, Norman, I’m busy,” I say.

“Doing what?” he asks, sounding surprised. As if I have nothing to do once I’ve put our breakfast dishes in the washer and swept the crumbs from the table. I have plenty to do, thank you. I have a nest to build! There won’t be any eaglet eggs for me to sit on, I’m afraid. That ship has sailed. But once a mother, always a mother. Or almost a mother. The hole in my stomach widens as I think about the daughter I lost so long ago that I’ve forgotten the year and how she danced for months in my swollen belly. I think she would enjoy me enveloping her with my thick, grey feathers. Maybe I could hold her by the beak and we could fly together—without a passport or a seat that barely reclines because Norman’s too cheap to spring for business class, even on our 40th wedding anniversary trip to Southeast Asia. Twenty-one hours we spent, seated upright, using each other as a pillow. Arriving with inflamed joints and creaky necks. We spent the first two days in a dark hotel room, sleeping away the plans we’d made to explore the golden temples and cherry blossoms.

I take the too-small nest under my wing and carry it to the side of the building and watch as it catapults downward, in gravity’s spell. Perhaps it will land on the head of a small boy who’ll think he’s Davy Crockett. Or maybe it will crown the head of a businessman. And he’s in such a rush, he won’t even notice that the woven twigs are shielding his bald spot. A miracle, a true miracle. Now, I need to start building my nest. And I must get started before lunchtime when Norman will expect his tuna on rye with light Miracle Whip and one slice of tomato.

We’re all such creatures of habit, aren’t we? I was, too, until today. But now I feel lighter, more focused. I have a purpose—to build a home big enough for one, me. Unless I can convince Norman to move up here with me. But I doubt that will ever happen.

by Michele Klausner

In the olden days we called them dungarees. They cost about five bucks and we wouldn’t be caught dead in them. Girls were required to wear skirts all through my school years even up to and including the first orientation week of college way back in 1965. Dungarees were heavy, in those days, and hard, not very comfortable; think Levi Strauss, Lee or Wranglers. But then, right around the same time, dungarees suddenly became “jeans,” and I remember wearing them all the time.

As a bohemian beatnik art major, (and later wanna-be hippie,) throughout my college years and beyond, jeans were my uniform. They had cuffs back in the day or they didn’t, (and now they do again, or they don’t.) We sat on our bunk beds and frayed the bottoms, or we didn’t, and then, as high fashion always has to evolve they became bell bottoms or flares “Bells” we, oh so trendy, fashion-forward (not) kids called them. My,(later to become, father-in-law hated them. I have no idea why; he didn’t care for our music much either, and when they looked worn we got rid of them and bought new ones. By then then they were straight-legged, hip huggers, some even embellished and embroidered. Then along came Calvin Klein, Jordache and Gloria Vanderbilt.

I’ve been wearing jeans ever since. Still love them today, although I’m not sure they are the best fashion find for a 70-something year old grandmother, even one with occasionally blue hair. The cuffs are back. “Boyfriend jeans” they’re now called; hip-huggers or egads, Mom Jeans. Skinny jeans are in, jeggings if you want them even tighter than that. I have them all. And in every shade of denim: acid wash, rinse-wash, mid-wash, light wash, bleached, stone-wash, dark-wash, basic black, summer natural , winter white and ombre. Oh, and regarding the fray, you can buy them pre-frayed, torn, snagged, even already worn at the knee. But today you pay extra for those fashionable defects. A pair of 7 for all Mankind jeans, complete with “distress” will set you back $225. Gucci buckled hi-rise (whatever that means) skinny jeans only $3,200. I don’t own them; I haven’t even seen them. They popped up in a google search. I don’t plan on buying them but hey, two-day delivery and shipping is free. Wait, what’s this? An ad for yoga pants …

by Michele Gilliam

Black oak gathers en masse
Its overcast powerful

I have surrendered to silence
Leaves became moors,
Float like feathers
Until their final demise.

Together we idle
With the surrounding life
And the coarseness of the ground
Prickles. Hints of blood
Secrete my skin

Pain.
I still have life.

Exhaust(ed)

breath consumes
then emits
air that tints in its release
the smoke evaporating like
cloud smoke in the air
hollow like the insides of
rusted pipes
I smell the angst of the City
We both exhale.

Daddy, Thank You, Always

at first
too fragile
your prayers sustained
my lay still
enveloped in hands
that followed
the tremor
of the tambourines
ringing the glory of
my arrival

then my survival,
now precarious

my heart pierced
pulsating with
too rapid staccato

the miracle now met
with pity
orchestrated by
the wary of chances
and statistics
and spit up
as constant as your worry
unsatiated, I lay

languished
I continued to wilt
you instead confronted
the imminent
exposed promise
eyes illuminated, wandering
as the rest of me idled

your hands now stiffened
too coarse from
tobacco-picking
and men’s work
now prepared to cradle an existence
too delicate
shielding the prognosis
life as a challenge
one that
persists

by Michael Cunningham

“Honey, I wet myself.”

Her son hears the words
and goes to the bedroom.

There are medicine bottles
on brown the night stand.

Red cylinder plastic, some standing
others lying open mouthed.

The smell is what hits him first
a wall of sour stink. But he grabs

his mother’s waist

helps her out of her pants
changes her.

He was her baby, now she is his.

He is no superman. No hero.
Won’t make the evening news.

He is an ordinary angel.

Middle aged, a bad back, bald,
a beer gut, with bills to pay.

He is ordinary. The guy on the subway
you see but never talk to.

He is you and me.

All ordinary angels.

Sandra: Jamaica Station

Sandra lay on the subway floor. The needle mark still visible. Her pants slightly down, exposing her panties, which were covered in muck.

She looked at the ceiling. Eyes wide. I wish I knew, she thought.
Sandra gazed down at her arm. Her veins like broken down roads on her brown skin.

“I graduated from Yale.” she said to no one. It came out like a whisper in the empty subway station.

“Please may this be the one.” She said, “Let this be the one that kills me.”

Tears began to stream down her face. Tiny waterfalls over her broken lips.