YEAR IN REVIEW

by Barbara Simmons

“In the weightlessness of space.” Oil on canvas painting by Anastasia Balabina (Ukraine).

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. —Joan Didion

 

What were the stories that seemed mental U-turns,

that needed returning to, never ending?  At year’s

end, 2021’s review heralded tales most told,

the big look back compactly written,

the headlines sculpting what had happened

into what we should remember.

I’ve skimmed the stories alphabetically, but find the letter C

for COVID is my alpha, tireless virus with infinite variations. I 

flip quickly to the Fed, to China, climate, revivals

on Broadway, deaths we expected someday, but maybe

not this year, like Didion’s, Sondheim’s, Tutu’s.

The story I return to most takes me on SpaceX travels,

finding weightlessness a way to reconstruct my sight,

no longer lineated up and down,

but now a new fluidity, a chance to stream myself beyond

the time and space of just one journey,

just one life, to understand how we are multitudes,

how we are singular, how we are both chorus, soloist, conductor

in a musical rendition of this year reviewed

and what we need most is to listen to stories we’ve composed,

and play

and play

and play

until we fully hear.

 

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, graduated from Wellesley, and now lives in San Jose. As a secondary school English teacher, she loved her students who inspired her to think about the many ways we communicate. Retired, she savors exploring words as ways to remember, envision, celebrate, mourn, always trying to understand human-ity. Publications have included Hartskill Review, Boston Accent, The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, 300 Days of Sun, Writing it Real, Capsule Stories: Isolation Edition, and OASIS. Her book of poetry Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilibriums will be published in Spring 2022.

SIMILE ARIA

by Sam Barbee

                                 

Nothing at stake this Christmas morning. 

The grate glares cold ash. I sip coffee

and recall family visits and apparitions

demanding reprise. Holiday lights

warm cedar branches with efforts to stay jolly. 

 

Outside, snowflakes soothe, fresh confection

masterpiece balanced beyond our threshold. 

Chill peals across the snow. Narrow drifts

shiver from the boughs. Yard gnomes grin.

Birdbath idles, basin propped against the pedestal.

 

Our tiny saints sing rounds of Jingle Bells

and toss snowballs. My son slings boyhood

My daughter casts off little sister caution—

Sublime wintering, no need for Merry New Year. 

Icicles hang from soffits, false prisms for icy shadows. 

 

I sort glossy holiday cards. 2021 slumps by the day.

Silence graphs this past year, this dreadful year,

when smallness thrived. My holiday paunch

swollen by a year I etched as edible—

my holiday efforts to burnish shiny days

 

and belittle others until we shutter failings.

I petition for the New Year's messiah with strategies

to charm next year's calendar, already highlighted

with celebrations and pursuits. The moon wanes,

shudders with a gut punch.  Shall I toss the diary?

 

Put the fresh word-a-day calendar in a drawer?

Will I placate the next world with old tricks?

Or tease tonight's marrow. I dream of easy

installments: a bit strapped for cash, my angels

flap their wings and cheer my unraveling day.

 

I stir the hearth ashes. And imagine a single

perfect morning when carols dance in the chimney

and risk sleeps in. Admire art gifted to one another,

hung on stark walls like flawless bliss trying to take hold.

Merriness found in a new masterpiece revealing old joy. 

Sam Barbee has a new collection, Uncommon Book of Prayer (2021, Main Street Rag).  His poems recently appeared in Poetry South, Literary Yard.  His collection That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53) was nominated for Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best 2016 poetry collections; a two-time Pushcart nominee. 

THE FIFTH OF JULY

by Michael L. Ruffin

The Fifth of July, 1776.

Mr. Jefferson, contemplating.

Thinking about what they have started.

Pondering the struggle that lies ahead.

Wondering how long it will take to secure

the independence they have declared.

The Fifth of July, 2021.

I, contemplating.

Thinking about how far we've come.

Pondering the struggle that still lies ahead.

Wondering how long it will take to secure

real liberty and true freedom for all of us--

for every last one of us.

And it occurs to me:

it is always the Fifth of July

in the United States of America--

and it always will be.

Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at The New Verse News, Rat's Ass Review, 3 Moon Magazine, and U-Rights Magazine.

MIDNIGHT'S MORNING: AN ODE TO EPIPHANY 2021

by Jill Crainshaw

Epiphany Painting by catherine forsayeth

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Wherever the star takes us.”

“What star?”

“The fierce one—”

“I never liked the graveyard shift.

How will we stay awake?

When will we sleep? I need sleep.”

“Sure, why not? I think the star

is whimsical, by the way.”

They turn their eyes skyward. At night.

Eager. 

Reluctant.

Nonchalant.

“Wisdom wizards follow foolish flight of fancy—”

a cosmic planetary alignment

    a sixth spirit-sense

    a thousand lifetimes of longings

“Stop looking back.”

“I left—things—lost—things—back there.”

“What’s lost waits up ahead.”

“What’s lost nips at our heels.”

They emerge from a forlorn forest.

First light nudges Mama Wren from nighttime 

nesting in a smooth-barked dogwood.

The whimsy-fierce star hesitates—

They do too. 

Midnight morning trees breathe

an infant lullaby,

music brighter than light.

“Come with me.”

Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

AULD LANG SYNE, AMERICA

by George Salamon

"'Auld Lang Syne' is a staple of every New Year’s Eve, but few people are aware of this song’s original poignant purpose. Singing it began as a way to recall friends who had died in the previous year. In America in the middle of the nineteenth century, though, it became a way to reclaim the unity and purpose of a nation increasingly riven by divisions." —Roger Lee Hall, "An Early American 'Auld Lang Syne,'" We’re History, December 31, 2016

We hadn't been together

for so many years and

had so much to talk about

as we sat out in the cold

at a table frozen and bare

as we talked and talked until

my voice got hoarse, still

hoarse from the fairy tales

we had told each other when

we both were younger.

George Salamon came to America in 1948 when he was thirteen. It seems like it was very different from America this New Year's Eve, but how was it and how was it not?  For a 2021 better than 2020.

IN THE NEXT ONE

by Gil Hoy




Things will be different.

No more children in cages
No more parents reunited

With their children
without success.

Some say the Presidency
defines the man,
others the man
defines the Presidency.

No more neo-Nazi
death cars
No more dictatorial
fears to worry

About.

A dictator dies
A thousand deaths,
A true man grows
A thousand lives

No more living things
cut down to their roots.

No more
hardened hate-filled

Walls.

A con-man can only con
even himself for so long.

In the next one

Sleeping babies will
sleep more soundly.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, I am not a silent poet, The Potomac, Clark Street Review and the penmen review.