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.

THE MAN OF THE HOLE

by Joanne DeSimone Reynolds

The Man of the Hole was the last of an indigenous group living in the Tanaru indigenous area in the state of Rondônia, Brazil, which borders Bolivia. The majority of his tribe are believed to have been killed as early as the 1970s by ranchers wanting to expand their land. In 1995, six of the remaining members of his tribe were killed in an attack by illegal miners, making him the sole survivor. Brazil's Indigenous Affairs Agency (Funai) only became aware of his survival in 1996, and had been monitoring the area ever since for his own safety. It was during a routine patrol that Funai agent Altair José Algayer found the man's body covered in macaw feathers in a hammock outside one of his straw huts. Indigenous expert Marcelo dos Santos told local media that he thought the man had placed the feathers on himself, knowing that he was about to die. —BBC News, August 30, 2022

O! Sole man –

60ish   50ish

Thatched huts

Holed – 3ish by

10ish foot deep –

4 (or 2?) footed traps

Spiked   Did you

Hide?   Hold up?

Did you know?   O!

Macawed Carnival

Romancer –  

Web-womber –

Eons lost   You –

One with the Whole

Joanne DeSimone Reynolds has published poems in The New Verse News, Salamander, The Ekphrastic Review, Sanctuary Magazine, Ibbetson Street, Wilderness House Literary Review, Lyrical Somerville, and other journals. She has also written reviews for Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene. During the first spring of the pandemic she wrote a collection of ekphrastic poems for 2020 Art Ramble in Concord, Massachusetts.

HARBINGER

by Joanne DeSimone Reynolds

We breathe to wake and,

Lying-in-wait, imagine... 

 

The ground

Buckling off the east coast of

 

The nation,

Enacting the rough ride we just faced, still

 

Face, out of the gate. Look

To January—cold, and colder still ahead here,

 

Yet offering a look

Forward—face it, like an ancient god

 

—The sudden down-home decency

Of purple-tipped crocuses, the wrinkled

 

Unfurling we long to call

Hope in the airborne scent of witch-hazel.

 

 

Joanne DeSimone Reynolds is the author of a chapbook, Comes A Blossom, published by Main Street Rag in 2014. Her latest work is a set of 14 poems exhibited as part of The Art Ramble 2020, an outdoor public art installation in Concord, Massachusetts, sponsored by The Umbrella Arts Center in collaboration with the Concord Natural Resources Division.

CONTINUOUS MIGRATION

by Joanne DeSimone Reynolds 

“[At McAllen TX detention center on July 12, 2019] VP saw 384 men sleeping inside fences, on concrete w/no pillows or mats. They said they hadn’t showered in weeks, wanted toothbrushes, food. Stench was overwhelming. CBP said they were fed regularly, could brush daily & recently got access to shower (many hadn’t for 10-20 days.) Facility we saw earlier in the day with children was new & relatively clean and empty. There were cots & medical supplies & snacks. Children watched TV and told Pence through translator they were being taken care of. But at least two said they’d walked for months to get here.” —Josh Dawsey @jdawsey1 White House @WashingtonPost

The species depends on the freedom of movement
It's in the DNA
Wings of the fathers and fathers and of the mothers and mothers too
All come for one milk
Metabolizing a weed's poison to foil enemies
Five generations to complete the journey
Butterflies like bees tell the harvest

The species depends on the freedom of movement
It's in the DNA
Baja or ports of call or the Bering Strait
All come for one milk
Who knows the many generations to complete the journey
Fear a poison to a nation's people
Children like blossoms tell the harvest


Joanne DeSimone Reynolds is the author of a chapbook, Comes A Blossom published by Main Street Rag in 2014.