HEAT WAVE

by Richard Schiffman

Heat Wave painting by Ralph White

If sweat were gold, I’ve lost millions. 

If hell were cold, I’d be in heaven.

If heat were meat, I’d feed the world.

If hot were smart, this day’s a bloody genius.

Robin redbreasts with lolling tongues 

are begging for the spare change of rain. 

Today even the fire ants are panting like puppies. 

The dog days of summer, they whimper, they drool.

Pigeons in heat spontaneously combusting,

bridges diving like ducks into rivers, 

green leaves boiling and bubbling from trees, 

trees hawking their shade to the highest bidder.

Still, there is something in me that loves a flame. 

That burns baby burns complacency’s ghetto.

Whose body is grease for its very own pyre.

Whose soul is on fire like a summer in Georgia.

Some seasons are mild, some seasons are fiery

If June kissed the moon, the moon would go loony.

If July were a stud, every mare would come screaming.

When mid-August simmers, the whole world is soup. 

Today only mad dogs and Englishmen are strolling.

And possibly some poets and wandering monks.

Fervid souls, assorted fools. We know who we are.

We know what we’re up to.

Richard Schiffman, based in New York City, is an environmental reporter, poet, and author of two biographies. His poems have appeared on the BBC and on NPR as well as in the Alaska Quarterly, the New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and other publications. His first poetry collection What the Dust Doesn't Know was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.

THE WIND SPEAKS

by Laurie Kuntz

“I have lost my name and I have lost my reputation.” 

-Ruby Freeman

The wind speaks your name

and carries it into crevices

where only the wind can go

 

far from your calling,

and you find yourself 

begging for the return

of all who called you Lady.

 

Witness your life breaking,

see loss and corruption corralled

in a gust of swirling air.

Struggle to end each day

not with the same stare tasking sadness,

but with a vision of some new thing.

 

Comes a June awakening,

a solstice wind makes chimes spin,

spreads a crimson sheet of plum blossoms over grey streets

and changes your moods, cools an anger,

makes you hear the song of stones sweeping red earth away.

 

You can see a clearing

in the horizon, get a different view

as the wind slaps you in an embrace,

and carries back your name.

Laurie Kuntz is a widely published and award winning poet. She has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net prize. She has published two poetry collections, The Moon Over My Mother’s House (Finishing Line Press) and Somewhere in the Telling (Mellen Press), two chapbooks, Simple Gestures (Texas Review) and Women at the Onsen (Blue Light Press). Her 5th poetry collection Talking Me off the Roof is forthcoming from Kelsay Press in late 2022. Many of her poems are a direct result of working with refugees in refugee camps soon after the Vietnam War years.  Recently retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind. 

GAY PRIDE

by Scott Wiggerman

Images source: Cycle for the Cause

May we bike a wide expanse of untidy sands,
of outliers and isles of desert brush.

May we ride and ride, our eyes primed
to an iota of wild, a mite of wine

among the tumbleweeds and idle browns:
a bind of thriving cacti. Divine!

May we smile and find a vital prize,
a sign in the uncivilized silence,

a blooming lighthouse, a riot of pink fire,
our desired life, our private tribe.

May we ride inspired while our kind expires.
May we rise above the spineless of these times.

Scott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, and Bearing the Mask.  Recent poems have appeared in A Quiet Courage, Calamus Journal, Red Earth Review, Rat’s Ass Review, shuf, and Chelsea Station. He is an editor for Dos Gatos Press of Albuquerque, New Mexico.