by Crystal Valerie Rea

It’s not easy being a star.
The one
everyone wants to be shiny,
to light the way,
sit-up on high,
up here, alone.
The judgment, if you falter,
slant a little crooked…
A little more to the left –
ahem, cough, cough.
The one
set aside
for being the smiley one.
No room for your story ever to be sad.
The need to be pristine.
Judged when a crack
or the slightest imperfection
may arise.
“No,
you don’t say anything.
What could you possibly have to say?
Your job is to be our light.”
It’s not easy being a selected star.
Sometimes when the bulb runs dim,
you get recast as trash.

by Christina Joy

LIKE HER 1.

Noise—bright.
Loud—soft.
Delightful—you are,
Hard, edgy.
Known to be out there.
Known to be foolish in the way you unapologetically blast who you are.
You have my attention
Unintentionally I give it to you.
You demand it.
Never asking gently.
You are strong and draped in beauty.
If you were a face,
it would beam bright like Moses on the mountain after talking to God.
You are rich, textured, luscious.
You are tulips, children, and sunshine.
You are McDonald’s and cheese.
Lemons and pineapples.
You are school buses and tractors.
Lions and cobras.
You are fierce, yet gentle.
You carry communities and dress individuals.
You are here for the young and the old.
You are golden, mustard, neon and pale.
You are
Buzzing,
Purring,
Dreaming,
Swirling,
Leaping,
You highlight and you tame
Yellow is your name.

LIKE HER 2.

Delicate.
She is simply delicate,
the way she rises and falls from a ground that either denounces or fosters her growth.
Beautiful,
She’s so beautiful,
the way she seeks after sunshine like her life depends on it.
Rarely solo,
She enjoys company.
Laughing at rain,
and dancing at noonday.
Her loveliness makes other things lovely
When she’s outside, she doesn’t strut by.
She waits for you to come to her.
She is of the pursued.
She is found even when you weren’t looking for her.
She draws you in but she’s not seductive about it; she’s radiant and captivating.
She is the substance of romance and friendship.
I want to be like her.
Personally, I prefer to see her outside where she belongs.
My mom prefers her indoors,
Sculpted into a fragrant masterpiece sitting on our table.
Sometimes her presence even makes the food taste better
She brightens the home and captures the eyes of many,
Not just for her beauty, but her very essence–her uniqueness.
In a vase, she doesn’t compete for attention.
She loves to champion every flower.
Each one of her friends are very different,
But just as
breathtaking
as she is.
Hence, onlookers usually complement the “flowers,”
not just the “one”.
Together, they are perfect.
I want to be like her
Side by side with others,
basking in the rain and sun,
persistent to try and grow in every kind of terrain,
and adding color to places that otherwise were slightly more dull.
I think if she were an instrument, she would be a piano.
Chords and melodies flowing from the pedals of her being.
She exists to serve.
She lives for every smile she sees as people walk past her. It warms her like the sun.
She provides a landing strip for every buzzing bee that seeks her pollen.
She loves to be a bearer of life,
and takes pride in how she was once just a seed.
She’s a mentor to those still growing,
A friend for those who already have.
She doesn’t fear when she wrinkles and her petals start to leave her.
She’s lived her life to the fullest.
She knows that others will pick up right where she left off,
Uniquely and delicately.
I really … want to be like her.

by Celena Gonzalez

Where do we go?
When do we go?
We know why
Because why not

They say sleep is
The cousin of death
What if it just is?

As infants we wake constantly,
Crying
So too
The Nursing Homes rattle
Awake
With no
Memory

by Carol Foresta

To Workers
Black, Brown, Asian, white
whose sinewy arms
drive harvesters
tractors, trucks
trains, transporting
grains, cheese, milk,
soy, coffee, fruit
feeding families

To Farmers
whose calloused hands
nurture plants
bending boughs
buffeted by winds
tending tornado
flooded fields
fattening cows
slaughtering
squealing pigs
crushing chickens’
feathers flying
barely breathing
turning our needs
for more always more
into reasons for
exploiting our
bottomless hunger

To Migrants
suffering unmasked
still undeterred
picking, plucking, sorting
grapes untainted
under smoky skies
dyed orange an
apocalyptic vision of
hell framing formerly
defined rows of vines
promising paradise
to thirsty tasters

To Builders
creating constructing
houses into homes
bridges into
tribal connectors
stitching various
ethnicities
into crazy quilts
molding cement
tunnels into pathways
linking states,
paving roads,
stringing wires
mixing concrete
packing sand
fighting fires

To Women
worn thin with
rounded shoulders
humbled by effort
faces lined
muscles aching
stressing, straining
barely sustaining
shoulders carrying
history’s weight
stirring story soup
sharing, savoring
immortalizing telling
rescuing revealing deep
scars barely healing
insatiable hunger

To Teachers,
seeking students
questioning minds asking
do Black Lives really Matter?
while knees on necks
bullets in backs facts reveal
unforgotten unforgiven sins
seeds planted in slavery ground
watered by tears of innocence
growing resistance into resilience
creating unstoppable tidal
waves in limitless oceans
tasting revolution
sparks fueling protests
demanding, witnessing, feeding
aspirations, hopes, fears knowing
without justice there will be no peace!

by Granny of Six

Seventy-Five years ago, when my Dad was fighting the Nazis in Germany, a song was released that was played over and over on the radio. Radio was the only media besides newspapers and movies, we had at that time. The song was “You Are Always in My Heart” and every time it played on our radio, my Mom would cry, uncontrollably. Eventually, my mother calmed down, wrote her own words to the song, and those are the only words I can remember from “You are Always in My Heart”, which are the first four lines.

Soldier Boy I love you so, and I want the world to know,
Though you’re in the army now, I’ll make a vow I’ll wait for you.
Just before I go to sleep, there’s rendezvous I keep
And the dreams I’m dreaming now until you’re home, are all of you.

We keep a radio station on, all day, that features romantic songs from times past. They play many old war-time songs, including “You Are Always in My Heart”, and each time I hear it, still I choke up remembering those days.

Think about the many songs written during the wars. “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”, which goes, “Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me, ‘til I come marching home”, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “I’ll Never Smile Again” and, of course, “You Are Always in My Heart”. I admit, there are also many songs from the Civil War, WWI and the Vietnamese conflict, but the ones from WWII are the ones that have stuck in my mind and in my heart.

I believe that during any time of stress and, especially wartime, the most beautiful and poignant songs are written, and that is also when everything else seems secondary, to those affected.

In the Distance

She was 7 years old and WWII was in full swing. To Rachel, the war meant all seven of her uncles and her daddy were far away, window shades were black and pulled down each night in their tiny apartment, “Air Raid Drills” (where she and her 2nd grade classmates had to crouch under their desks), were weekly occurrences, food was rationed and there was no rubber for bicycle wheels or cars. Things were strained at home, with her mother often losing her temper, or in tears, for no reason apparent to Rachel. Sometimes, one or more of her aunts would come by and they all cried together.

Grandpa was a tailor, and every week, the family would get together in the store to read the letters from their men in the Armed Forces to each other, and to Grandma and Grandpa, who worked side by side. Grandma took care of the customers, as she spoke English better than Grandpa, and he did the measuring and tailoring. Rachel’s father wrote, in one of his letters, that the “Jerrys” (Germans) were throwing “eggs” (bombs) at the American soldiers. Grandpa got very excited and angry, and in his thick, Yiddish accent, said: “Ve haf eggs rationed and zumbody named Jerry is trowing eggs at our soldiers?” That was the only time during WWII that Rachel remembers the entire family having a good laugh.

Then, two years later, Rachel and her mother went to the dock on the Hudson River, and suddenly, there were soldiers everywhere! In the distance, she saw her father rushing towards them, and she knew everything in the entire world would be OK now.

by Granny of Six

Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten my glasses, but looking in the mirror, I see them on my head.
But I must have forgotten SOME thing, like the wallet on my bed!
I am wearing the most important items to keep me from viral infection
Mask and gloves I’ll wash on my return, so there is no germ detection.
But what have I forgotten, I know it was important?! This is such a drag!
I even have my keys, as well as my shopping bag.
I go down in the elevator and out to the sunny skies
And it is then it comes back to me, what I realize.
I forgot my handbag, which contains tissues, phone and sunglasses.
I wouldn’t have gotten far without my bus passes.
So up I go once again to my apartment
But what will I forget this time …?
I don’t know … but I’ve run out of rhyme!

by Barbara Macklowe

Why did it take
a pandemic
for me to see?
I thought I could see.
I was constantly
looking through
the viewfinder,
to see the world,
to see people,
to see nature,
to see you.

I never turned
the camera
on myself.
What’s a selfie?
I didn’t really want
to see myself.

Oh I look at myself
to see my positive
and negative qualities
and how I can improve.
I know how to self
examine.
I’ve been working on
me for a lifetime.

But to see myself,
the me unseen
the me unheard,
the me of my early
childhood.
The me of my life
as mother and wife,
as grandmother and
friend, as entrepreneur.

It took a pandemic for
me to raise my voice
in song,
for you to hear me,
for you to see me.
It took a pandemic
for me to truly
see myself.

Now I am heard.
Now I am seen.
Now I am discovering
the me that was there
all along and hid from
sound and view.

When I’m lost
you find me.
When I’m beaten,
you shore me up.
When I’m happy
you join in to share it,
when I show my love
you revel in my
vulnerability.
When my words sound
different and strange
you assure me that they
are strong and worthy
and that they are
beautiful.

I was so unsure of myself
when my eye first sought
pictures. Were they good?
Were they stimulating?
Were they different enough
to be considered gallery
worthy? Did people really
want to look at them? Of
course they were,
and they did,
and they do.
They are a reflection
of me that only the
photographer in me
can express.

Never do they have the
impact of words.
The pictures are
abstract and don’t tell
the entire story. Writing
exposes my soul in ways
unknown to me before.
My writing, like my
picture-making, is
really for me to see.
My eyes open wide
and I sing with my pen.

WHO WAKES UP THE SUN WHEN IT FALLS ASLEEP ON ITS BURNING BED

Who wakes up the sun when
it falls asleep on its burning bed?
The dark sky nudges the sun,
“Make yourself seen.
Don’t you know it’s time for
day?”
“The moon is on the wane
and really needs to rest
in order to move on to a
place other than here.”

The stars poke the sun
with their pointy edges.
“Move along move along”
they continue, “Our night
must follow day elsewhere
and it is moving west.
To keep up the pace
we stars must join the night.
Please observe your
duty and wake up.”

“You know,
Your Gorgeousness,
you big bright hot thing,
the world needs you.
The plants and animals
need you and the
people do too.”
“To feel your warmth,
to see your light,
to grow
and perform
as they can only do
with your
mighty presence.”

“Don’t be a laggard”
says the moon,
“I must move
the oceans
and the year along.
It’s your turn to cast
light and to bring
on the day.”

“The entire world looks
forward to the day.
When a new day dawns
hope returns to all
from knowing
that more will be
revealed. And
that they have lived
to see another day,
to bask in its glory
and be encouraged
by its power.”

“The birds have awakened
and are squawking at your
reticence.” “We need your
light and guidance” they
say, “We require your
light to see berries on bushes
and movement in
the ocean and sky. Our
nourishment resides there
and is necessary
for us to live.”

“You bring life, you big
bold orange ball. Wake up!
Wake up! Get out of bed
and serve. It’s your duty
and you must rise.
The weatherman
said so on channel 5.”

GOODBYE SHE SAID

Goodbye she said.
Goodbye he answered.
‘Til we meet again, she said.
Yes, ‘til we meet again, he agreed.

And so he took a plane to NY.
And she stayed behind in FL
knowing that he would return
within a few weeks time.
Their new love a much
treasured gift, for each had
loved and lost a partner
in the past. This love, a
delicate flower bloomed
unexpectedly in a chance
meeting through a friend.
It was fresh and new, full
of deep feelings
engendering the past
and promising
for the future.

Meanwhile a pandemic of
epic proportions was
emanating from
China and Europe
and entering our
shores through
the many gateways
to the United States.
It became a plague upon
New York.

He stayed well
and away from all
the others he had come
to see on this trip,
friends, family
and business associates.
All manner of meetings
were now cancelled.
His life became a
narrow one lost
in a hotel room downtown.
He mourned their
missed hours together
and was determined to stay
only a short time and leave
as soon as it was safe.
When would safety ever come
he mused?

This computer as life is not
life at all. Just a copycat.
Machinery becoming life like.
When did it come to this? It’s like
a premonition, a foreboding, a
suspicion that the end might be
arriving before it was ushered in.

She stayed home. She thought
of him and their tender beginnings.
Where will it take them?
Would there be a future for them?
She got a call from a sick friend
who needed medicine and food.
So she brought her tender loving
self and the medicine and food
and wiped the perspiring brow.

The next day she spoke to him
on the phone and began coughing.
Her breath was coming in gasps.
He begged her to dial
911 and get to the hospital.
She begged him to return.
She called 911 but there was no
bed available in the hospital.
They told her to stay home and
if it got worse to go to the
Emergency Room.

The ambulances passed by
in screams every few minutes.
She tried to treat herself at home.
He called to tell her how much
he loved her.
She didn’t hear the ring.
She did not return his call.
She died thinking of their love
and of her lightly said goodbye.

by Arlene Metrick

Slant of sun on my face, its rays waxing now,
it’s set in the sky speaks of change, of dark
that sneaks in earlier, hours between dawn and dusk
squeezed, of bird and their songs migrating south,
clouds colored faintly of steel, goldenrod waving
its bright yellow farewell to summer.

This body finds rising harder, the dark settling
in all my crevices, and early evening chill soaks
deeper in my knees.

Summer’s departure rides atop my sister’s passing,
too young, too soon, her voiceless voice whispers
in my ear, her laugh in my cells, her sons’ calls
remind me, as if I could ever forget.

And my heart continues to beat, breath born each
moment, as fall begins its descent into winter, holds
its mystery tight under hardened soil knowing
it will be reborn into spring.

Will I still be here?

Need

Wrap around needs, who says life is fair
or that I deserve to have the garden
of my life the way I want it?

No matter the path, blue grass, splayed
trees, a body that doesn’t decline, a lack
of loss everywhere, my sister returned
from the dead so we can talk, maybe have
Thanksgiving dinner on Zoom, share
grandbaby photos across the coasts, find
the perfect partner, ride off into the sunset.

Impossible needs winking, stuck singing
a plaintive song of lack, stuck with its on-off
switch ON, its mouth spread, hands open, palms
turned up, eyeballs reaching out of their orbits
storm the treasury of stored desires, rampant running,
endless hungry ghosts on the loose.

Screaming open wound of endless longing begins
at the bottoms of my feet, rough surface scraping
the bareness of them, winds its way up the body,
not satisfied ‘til sparks shoot from the tips of my hair,
sage smoke rising like perfume cleansing the air of
ancestor blood that stains, seeps into all it touches,
that kind of stain that can’t ever be washed out.

What if I said I want to know my forbears, the ones I lost
in the Holocaust obliterating even their memories? Maybe
I can see their shoes neatly arranged in the museum next to
the soaps made from the melted fat of their burning bodies.
Can I scream loud enough, long enough to bring them back?

Isn’t is enough that my grandparents escaped the pogroms
at the beginning of the last century, met, married, bore
children who also bore children? Isn’t the fact of my own blood
coursing through the vessels of my child and now in my tiny
grandchild enough? Shouldn’t it be?

Jazz in the Time of Covid

Music of the mower as it rumbles across the grass,
its grinding and groaning, the simplicity of a man
and his machine, cutting, clipping, cavorting
as they make their way across the lawns, trails, bending
the body low over the electric cat when the branches
kneel down, giant rubber ears to protect his real ones,
tilting into holes in the land, riding his horse in service
to us who wish to walk on the short shades of green,
recline on a smooth blanket of blades of the same height.
Each stalk asserts itself, proclaims its independence
from the tribe.

Unlike a jazz band, simplicity of a man and his horn,
who must listen to each other, even on a zoom screen,
riffing while giving everything they have, instruments
like voices rising high, higher over the mountain tops
they’ve launched for themselves, sway in their bodies
and in their music, direct from their hearts to ours,
needing to imagine us listening, absorbing, reveling
as they thrust themselves into their screens, trusting
their offerings are blasting over airwaves, and through
our speakers or headphones, by some magic I don’t understand,
from wherever they are in their separate spaces, anywhere
on our small blue planet to our homes or streets, our cabins
or forests where the signal makes its way to our ears.

And what about the grass, each green sweetness
now shorn, a community of separate stalks, perhaps
thrilled with their careful cut, silently preening,
each proud of their new style?

“Look at me,” says one. “No, you look at ME,” says another,
waving in the fall wind, glad to be together with their friends
waiting for the lady of the house to inhale their new mown
smell, walk barefoot, scrunch her toes, delight in the coolness
of them and of the earth in which they stand. They have been
singing to her and now she can finally open and hear their song.

by Allison Reser

To take a risk is to be in pain.
But it is risky to not take a risk.
Stagnation leads to supremacy.
Ignorance to injustice.
The tension is tightening, who is getting hurt?
When you reach a parity of pressures,
will failure be worse than fear?

by Allison Reser

The memory of freedom was like a whisper as she ordered an oat milk latte. Nova’s Coffee & Cocktails used to be where she flew away from the hissing water pipes in her apartment for a sweet change of scenery. But today Nova’s is ghostly. Tables spaced 6 feet apart, just two customers present who lower their masks only to sneak in sips of their morning beverages. Compared to how Nova’s used to make her feel, today it made her wrinkle her nose as if smelling burning plastic.

When the first sip of latte didn’t instantly cure her sour mood, she rolled her eyes and reached into her bag to find her keys. But there was a distinct lack of jingling… Apparently she wouldn’t be returning back to those hissing pipes right away.

Now the memories of New York as it used to be seemed to be shouting in her head. In the before-times, getting locked out was like an invitation to explore something unexpected in this vast city of possibility. But now she was trapped outside of the box she’s usually trapped in.

Fortunately, the caffeine started to kick in, and it brought some optimism with it. Maybe this was still an invitation. She took another swig of coffee and began striding away from her apartment, feigning intention. She noticed all the sad things she usually notices when she walks this sidewalk – the closed shops, the bus stop ads from six months ago, and the line outside of CityMD. But today, for whatever reason, be in her slower pace or her invitation-accepting attitude, she looked up. And a bald eagle soared overhead.

A bald eagle. In Manhattan. She knows they like to catch fish from the Hudson River in the fall and winter, but she had forgotten what time of year it was. This is why it all matters, this is why she works so hard, because humans aren’t the only inhabitants on this planet.

She shivered and felt her eyes get cold. It was getting to be wintery after all. As she zipped up her coat, she heard that jingle… her keys had been in her pocket the whole time.

She no longer felt trapped. Just like the eagle, she still could choose where to fly.