and the blind hours before dawn to midnight's blaze
the heart recalls
the suddenness of trees
and flawless entrance of morning light
spring blooms and impermanent buds
flowers so fragile and generous
willing to fade
giving way to the fruits of summer
ripe and bursting to bloom
the juice flowing from within
abundant
and the rich life reaching down to the roots again
Disconnected
By P. J. Taylor
Her mother’s cut the phone line,
claims they can’t afford it. Doesn’t get
it won’t uncoil the quiet, dangling
between them like that useless cord.
Grabbing her warmest sweater
and a fistful of swiped purse change,
she sneaks out after her mother falls
asleep in a halo of blue on the pullout
sofa. At the filling station a few blocks
away, she squeals shut the folding door,
seals herself inside the glow of a phone
booth. Pressing quarters and digits
until she finds someone home, she sighs
and tells a friend her side of the story,
tells herself it’s okay to lie a little.
She shifts her hips to make a point,
switches ears to listen close, and finger-
combs her hair. So absorbed in her own
reflection, she fails to notice how
it’s starting to rain and how there’s no
other sound, unless you count
the cloud of bugs buzzing and softly
dive-bombing against the glass.
Pin Curl Instruction
By P.J. Taylor
I sit straight against the chill
of drips slipping down my spine,
rock against my mother’s shins
as she jerks the brush through knots.
A hand mirror and tin full
of bobby pins rest in my lap.
The glass is tilted so I see myself
reappear after each brush stroke.
I pull back the leg of a bobby pin,
let it smack against my fingers.
She makes a part with a comb,
draws it across and across plowing
rows. Next she grabs each damp section
between two fingers, winds it tight pulling
me over as my hair coils in on itself.
Holding the curl in place she snaps
her fingers for a pin. I hold one up,
notice the knobby end’s chewed off
wincing as it slices its way into place.
When she’s almost finished I hold up
the mirror to see myself. Behind me,
her eyes flicker with TV light
and I wonder how she can
do this without looking.
Ouija Board
BY P. J. TAYLOR
In a darkness soothed by flashlight,
our body heat draws out the tang
of chlorine from our damp swimsuits.
It mixes with the kitchen pantry's own
odor of going-bad spices, cleaning
supplies and half-eaten boxes of Life.
Sudden light spills in, silhouetting
Amy's spinster Aunt Mary. She turns
on the light and steps over us to grab
a can of green beans yelling for us
to hurry and get washed up for dinner,
leaving the door wide open.
Amy scoots, shuts the door, flips off
the light switch and afterimages burn
brighter than the beam glowing across
the game board. We take deep breaths
and solemn turns, eyes decoding the messages
as our fingers rest lightly on the pointer.
We start by asking "yes, no" questions
about boys and school. To make sure
neither of us is cheating, sometimes
we ask something private, like
now, I shiver as the letters spell out
I-a-m-w-a-t-c-h-i-n-g-o-v-e-r-y-o-u
--a message from my dead father.
I swear to Amy I didn't force it out.
P.J. says: I am a twelve-year resident of San Francisco, and my work has appeared or is forthcoming in Möbius, Santa Clara Review, Hogtown Creek Review, Poems Niederngasse, Kalliope, Rock Salt Plum, insolent rudder, Small Spiral Notebook, The Harrow, The Storyteller, Rearview Quarterly, Salt River Review and The DMQ Review, which awarded my poem “To Jen, Who Died This Winter” with their 2002 Muses Award and selected it for a Pushcart nomination.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards. Her second book, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, is creative nonfiction; it has won three. Her fiction, nonfiction and poems have appeared in national magazines, anthologies and review journals. She speaks on Utah's culture, tolerance and other subjects and has appeared on TV and hundreds of radio stations nationwide. She is an instructor for UCLA Extension's Writers' Program and her next book, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T is topping bookstore charts as an e-book and is also available in paperback. She was recently awarded Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by the California Legislature. She loves to travel and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, UK: Herzen University in St. Petersburg, RU; and Charles University in Prague. Her website is: http://carolynhowardjohnson.com/ .
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Author THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER:HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T is now available as an e-book and at a pre-publish discount at
http://ebookad.com/ . The paperback will be released this month at: www.barnesandnoble.com. Learn more at:
Brittle brown ends of late summer’s short-mown grass
prick and scratch her tan. She doesn’t remember
from her childhood that gnats
would swarm around her eyes, mosquitoes
swim in sweat behind her left ear, a cat
whisker tickle her lips.
She persists, focuses on sky, squints
into the glaring sun. Ignores passers-by
staring in wonder. Wiggles a little
in a search for comfort on the hard surface.
She rotates, arms flung, fingers grip the ground.
Stomach lurches as she races
through the winds of the universe.
Earth shifts.
Senses alive as they were at ten, she rides
the skin of the planet-ball. Eyes closed,
her body melts deep in the seared grass of August.
Boggin
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Upright in her window corner,
the woman eyes the storm roiling past.
Silver flash of knitting needles
mimics lightning ripping clouds.
Lamplight warm on arthritic fingers,
wisps of pale blue wool weave together—
knit two, purl two, knit two.
No bigger than the new father’s palm
the boggin takes shape, a watch cap
crowned with a pompom.
Created by one at the end of life
to warm the head, protect
a life just beginning.
Artist’s Trunk
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
I want to ride
in the back of Sylvia’s car,
curled under the lid
of her trunk,
make a nest in the textiles
jumbled there: the pink
blanket with white roses
wadded against
magenta terry,
the royal blue nylon
sleeping bag bunched
on sky-blue dropcloth.
I want to bury my face
in the ivory jacquard
down pillow,
wrap my shoulders
in a purple cobweb
of lacy wool shawl,
shove my feet
into the beaded
leather slippers.
I want to ride
home to Sylvia’s studio
snuggled in orange jacket,
crimson robe
and suck on a green
spearmint drop
as I float
among colors like flavors,
textures like songs,
paintings like poems.
Patricia Wellingham-Jones, a former psychology researcher and writer/editor, is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She has had work published in numerous anthologies, journals, and Internet magazines, including Möbius, Red River Review, Rattlesnake Review, Phoebe, A Room of Her Own, Long Story Short, and Niederngasse. Joining chapbooks which include Don’t Turn Away: Poems About Breast Cancer are her newest collections: California: Mountain & Stream Suite, Bags, SkyWords and Voices on the Land. Her website is:
Ruth Daigon was founder and editor of POETS ON: for twenty years until it ceased publication. Her poems have been widely published in E mags, print mags, anthologies and collections… Daigon's poetry awards include "The Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997 (University of Southern California Anthology, 1997) and the Greensboro Poetry Award (Greensboro Arts Council, 2000). The latest of seven books is "Payday At The Triangle" (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series) based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City,1911 was published in 2001 and one of her many readings was performed in The Lower East Side Tenement Museum in Manhattan, the area where the fire occurred. "Handfuls of Time" (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series), her last book, was published in 2002, Her poetry was published by the State department in their literary exchange with Thailand and their translation program has just issued the first book of Modern American poets in English and Thai in which she appears. Garrison Keillor featured her poetry on his morning poetry show.
