JULY 8

by Lynda Gene Rymond

Last night under my window

I heard a coyote clack its teeth.

Today’s skies grow dark, darker.

Clouds purr at first

but then it’s full-throated growls

breaking to thunderclaps

to shake the house

 

while in the city of angels

men on horseback stalk

like corrupted knights

to intimidate children.

Tactical vehicles prowl.

A small black woman,

Madam Mayor, confronts,

her fury rising like heatwaves.

 

Be furious. Be thunder.

Shake their houses.

Steal their horses, count coup,

paint their dishonor.

Find a mightier pen to wield.

Tell tales that crack walls.

Sing, sing all the way to morning.

Lynda Gene Rymond lives and works on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa. She is a winner of the Pennwriters Short Story Prize and a multi-year finalist for Bucks County Poet Laureate. Her latest publication, Spellbook, has just been published by Moonstone Arts.

PANDORA OPENS THE BOX

by Lynda Gene Rymond

In air too warm for any November,
rainy season trumped by drought,
Blue Mountain births a wildfire
moving through tree roots
like soldiers in the dark.
 
The news is bad at 11,
worse at 3, a landslide
by first light —hope bound
and handed over to the bull-roar
of Minotaur triumph.
 
Tomorrow or the next day
we’ll start plucking strands
of resistance. Today is just for
watching the steel-gray clouds
and praying for rain.

Lynda Gene Rymond lives and works on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa, where she raises fruits and vegetables, goats, chickens, honeybees, poems, and short stories. Find her and her workshops at www.goblinfarm.net

I’M CARRYING A TORCH (ON VALENTINE’S DAY)

by Lynda Gene Rymond

I’m carrying a torch—
not on a candy heart,
not on a Hallmark card,
not on a clusterfuck of balloons.
 
It’s a real torch, spitting sparks,
heading straight for fourth grade
or whenever this monstrosity
took hold on my little life.
 
Shoeboxes lavishly decorated
with construction paper hearts
in the compulsory pinks and reds,
lavenders and purples.
 
Our names in paint or glitter
above a gingerly cut slit,
mailboxes for all the valentines
posted in time for the party.
 
Room mothers brought cupcakes,
soda punch, boxes of crunchy hearts—
I’m yours, too sweet, oooh la la!
(these flame out nicely in candy colors.)
 
Now the tally. Who got the most? 
Who got the least, again? Who needs to go
to the restroom to flush the crumbs
of a nine-year-old’s self-esteem?
 
Be your own crush! I’ll shout as
I swagger in with my torch ablaze
(Have you ever watched crepe paper burn?)
Forget this shitshow! (New vocabulary word, 
 
shitshow!) No more Valentines! 
No more walking around
with your beating hopeful heart
clenched in your fist.
 
I’m carrying a torch for you, kid,
until you can carry it for yourself.

Lynda Gene Rymond is an author and poet residing in Applebachsville, Pa, where she tends goats, chickens, honeybees and a massive food garden.

A COLOR THEORY

by Lynda Gene Rymond

Nearly unnameable colors press upon my heart. The silver-brown of Diego’s eyes, his rectangle

goat pupils glow with benevolent courage, the green-violet thumbs of asparagus erupting from

sandy soil, chaste lavender-pink of my cold fingers wielding the root knife. Lapis-tanzanite of

swallow wings and peach-buff of their underbellies. Sanguine-scarlet heads of the British soldier

lichen devour the log ends of our cedar gates, the viridian-onyx feathers of Pirate Jenny and

Halfpint as they scratch spent hay and devour the umber-gray scattering pill bugs. A threat-black

military transport flies low over my husband as he strides in his bee suit to a wind-thrown hive.

War is not here but its cogs and hammers now tense and click in every zone. My neighbor’s

poultry, gold-glinting as pocket-watches, are loosed like a dare to red-tailed hawks and sooty-

legged foxed, yet they live this day. If I could grip this small colorless invisible peace, could break

and pass it like honey-dripped bread to those who might not taste such again. Even now the

bees find red maple flowers and fly the pollen home in scarlet-orange bundles. Bundles. So many 

carrying bundles.

Lynda Gene Rymond has been runner-up for Bucks County Poet Laureate in 2019 and 2021 and a finalist in 2020. She has poetry appearing in the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Heron Tree Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, and the anthology Carry Us to the Next Well (Kelsay Books, 2021.) Her short story “Turn, Turn” won the 2020 Pennwriters short story competition. She authored the children’s books The Village of Basketeers and Oscar and the Mooncats (Houghton Mifflin). She lives on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa.