ROWS AND FLOWS

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

 

 

Joni you are glowing in your natural make-up

I love you as much as I love Joan Mitchell—

Works bursting out of this world   Your verse

Flaring   Warning me to prepare to bleed

And I have

And what you sing about stardust

Is oracular and thankfully on track

But as far as the garden goes I think you know

There’s no going back   (O for the roses Joni!)

I’d like to think you’ll be alright with that—

The mix constellating   In keeping   Playing out

Unceasingly on the stage

Of the night sky   Never expiring   Catalyzing   Fanning

Consciousness (and hopefully passion)   Quality we call star

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds has published her work in The New Verse News, Salamander, The Ekphrastic Review, Ibbetson Street, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Lyrical Somerville, among other journals. Her collection of ekphrastic poems for 2020 Art Ramble can be viewed at theumbrellaarts.org. In 2023 she was poetry judge for Art on the Trails in Southborough, Ma.after placing first for poetry in 2022.

UNDER FOSTER GRANTS

by Tom Bauer

Joni Mitchell Performs Surprise Show at Newport Folk Festival: The 78-year-old artist performed a full set, her first in about two decades, at the renowned festival in Rhode Island on Sunday. —The New York Times, July 25, 2022

Joni at the Newport Folk Fest sings "Both

Sides Now." Anyone else remember that one?

Is that the first time you saw her face? The

album with her face on it? Was that the song

you first heard by her? Your first impression?

How a voice splits and changes over years,

through all kinds of stages, shaped by time

and keeping time. It can be a long long way

to go to recognize a lilt that’s aged in

a paint box of mellow feelings and thoughtful

remonstrances, lilts, dances. So like a book

that opens, one each side, beginning to end,

making her way, flitting along, hearing

her turn the words one chapter at a time.

Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.

BOTH SIDES

by Judith Terzi





Lies and lies are everywhere,
and racist slogans fill the air
and hatred oozing everywhere.
We didn't know this way.

And now these folks they block the sun,
they ruin love for everyone.
So many things he could have done.
His base got in the way.

He looks at hate from both sides now.
The KKK's okay somehow.
His father marched, you will recall.
He really doesn't care about us at all.

His id rides on a Ferris wheel,
spins dizzy, hurtful tweets he feels
as all delusional goes real.
We didn't know this way.

So every day another show.
We cringe wherever he doth go.
And what will happen, we don't know
until the lies give way.

He looks at hate from both sides now
and white supremacists somehow
are good, he said, you will recall.
And Sheriff Joe isn't really bad at all.

Our tears and fears, not feeling proud
to say our country right out loud
is led by hacks and circus crowds.
We didn't vote this way.

Our senators are acting strange.
They shake their heads, but what will change?
Transgender troops may lose what's gained
in fighting every day.

He looks at hate from both sides now.
His nemesis is love somehow.
Dark clouds will reign, you will recall,
when Fascists really aren't that bad at all.

Judith Terzi's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as BorderSenses, Caesura, Columbia Journal, Good Works Review (FutureCycle Press), Raintown Review, Unsplendid, You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By are her most recent chapbooks from Kattywompus Press.