BLOW WINDS BLOW

by Joy Kreves

 

New Jersey had two Jersey Shore towns report wind gusts of 60 mph on Monday night. More windy weather is expected Tuesday. Canva for NJ.com, December 30, 2025

Kick this era out into the cold

tail between its legs, thrash  

it with your breath ‘till it whimpers

 

Blow   blow    blow

clear out all the hangers-on

clinging to the corners

 

Blast like the pig-hunting wolf

but with strong enough huffs

to tumble brick walls

 

Slide your exhale across cold hearts, 

melt them like the wicked witch,

Ice down, down, drown 

 

Blow, bluster, dust off 

old peace signs, bring back butterflies

reignite a summer of love 

 

Roll sushi, tie tamales, shape samosas,

ribbon takeout containers in rainbow twine

Delight in the fruits of people’s labors

 

Then let us awaken to a calm, 

a steady sun that seeps its warmth

into our naked limbs

Sun Geode Rock, sculpture by Joy Kreves

Joy Kreves is a visual artist and poet living in New Jersey. She detests wind and lives with a big, white fluffy dog who everyone assumes loves snow, but he does not. However, he doesn't mind wind, even in large gusts. Kreves wrote this poem on the recent cold, gusty day.

EASTERN UKRAINE POEM

by Indran Amirthanayagam

                               for Ilya

The town is not amused. Bombs have been dropping

every ten minutes and thousands of women and children

have already fled, but Ilya's cousin on the Zoom call

keeps insisting on calm. What gives? I wish I could

shift the debate to my own little conflict, lobbing

poems into cyberspace and expecting the fallout

to give some clues about diction and meter, the finishing

couplet. Once again, my poem shifts to a discourse

about me and my proclivities.What about those family

members on the trains? What about the fellow trying

to pacify his cousin via Zoom? What about the soldier

on the border wrapped in an overcoat carrying a rifle?

Is he really able to fight in the modern theater against

the satellite-beamed remote killing device?

Indran Amirthanayagam's newest book is Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks). Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

DUPLEX: INHERITANCE

by Danielle Lemay

Studies in roundworms by biologists at the University of Iowa suggest that a mother’s response to stress can influence her children and her grandchildren, through heritable epigenetic changes. Their research, reported in Molecular Cell, demonstrated that roundworm mothers subjected to heat stress passed—under certain conditions—the legacy of that stress exposure not only to their offspring but, if the period of stress to which the mother was exposed was long enough, even to their offspring’s children. —Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, October 14, 2021

Study Suggests Maternal Stress Inherited

like passing down green eyes or curly hair.

 

          It’s not like passing down green eyes or hair;

          the scientists conducted studies with worms.

 

Scientists studied heat stress in worms,

so what does it matter to human mothers?

 

          Does it matter to human mothers

          that they will now be blamed for stress?

 

We know the moms will now be blamed for stress;

Of course. News stories manipulate us.

 

          Of course, news stories manipulate us.

          We learn from the world, starting with mom.

 

Perhaps we should calm the world, starting with mom.

Studies suggest maternal stress is inherited.

Author’s Note: I came across this story about heritable stress at the end of the work day, while I was quite stressed, and it made me think how I’ve probably passed stress to my children and how my mom was stressed and her mother before her, a whole lineage of stressed mothers, probably for as long as there have been Homo sapiens, or even worms. With each generation sharing stress with the next, like lines from one couplet to another in a duplex, I obviously had to write a duplex.

Danielle Lemay is a scientist and poet. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 and has appeared or is forthcoming in California Quarterly, The Blue Mountain Review, ONE ART, Limp Wrist Magazine, Lavender Review, and elsewhere.

WHY BLUE

by Catherine Gonick

“Animated Water” by Dragonlord-Daegen at DeviantArt

of all the light sent by the sun, blue scatters the most in all directions

to be seen by everyone 

 

it fills our sky and waters, most of our planet when seen from space,

yet in the rest of nature blue is rare,  

hard to find in minerals and plants, or food, except in blueberries 

and cheese, and difficult to make, ask any chemist

 

O blue of lapis lazuli, sleep and twilight, moon and Monday, ribbon

and blood, of medieval cathedral windows, glaciers, and forget-me-nots

 

O blue warm and cool, in hues of indigo, ultramarine and aquamarine,

turquoise and teal

 

blue that lowers our pulse rate, warns of poisons, protects against

the evil eye when used in pendants, painted on doors and houses

 

there is a blue of stability and distance, of peace and sadness, 

eyes of people who survived ice

 

a blue of harmony, seen in the flag of the United Nations,

a blue of storms, in uniforms for soldiers and police

 

but for the most part blue is everywhere we’re not—and invites

us to join it

 

of all the light that reaches Earth, blue is the sun’s favorite 

Catherine Gonick's poetry has appeared in literary magazines including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Sukoon, and in anthologies including in plein air and Grabbed. She works in a company that mitigates the effects of climate change.

IN LINE OF THE DECLARATION

by David Stone

Pelosi stands
eclipsing Washington’s bust.
Pelosi stands
across from the men’s folded hands.
Her arm in point to T***p is thrust.
Her calm above his scowl is just.
Pelosi stands.

David Stone teaches English in Loma Linda, CA.  His poetry has appeared in Identity Theory, Shuf, and Inlandia: A Literary Journey as well as in Orangelandia: The Literature of Inland Citrus.  He contributes literary columns for the Southern California News Group.

YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN

by Frank De Canio

This video by Taylor Swift won the Video for Good and Video of the Year awards at Monday’s MTV Video Music Awards. In her acceptance speech, Swift commended VMA voters for supporting the video’s message of LGBTQ equality and once again brought attention to her petition for the Equality Act, noting that it now has over 500,000 signatures “which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House,” she said, checking her imaginary watch to indicate she’s still waiting.

Just as a quarry’s brash response
brings to the fore, one laid to waste,
a stance conveying nonchalance
implies its source has been outfaced.
They’re adversaries Taylor Swift
can handle with good-naturedly
aplomb. She doesn’t let them rift
her measured sensibility.
Nor does she blithely shake them off
with just a sisterly rebuke.
For less Patrón than Molotov
cocktail she just as well would duke
it out when trolls step on her gown,
were she not bent on calming down.


Frank De Canio was born & bred in New Jersey, works in New York. He love theater and music of all kinds, from Bach to Amy Winehouse. He hosts a Cafe Philo discussing philosophical issues in lower Manhattan.

ADULT COLORING BOOKS

by Joan Colby

“Indiana University Press will release the first five titles in a series of adult coloring books, titled Color Your Campus this summer. The five campuses featured are Indiana University, Harvard University, Louisiana State University, Stanford University, and the University of Notre Dame. In a surprising move for a university press, Indiana University Press joins the adult coloring trend to the early delight of college students, parents, fans, and alumni alike. Hobbyists will take pleasure in transforming artists’ black and white masterpieces into colorful flagship campuses while indulging in the comfort of a childhood stress reliever.” —Indiana University Press blog, March 4, 2016. Image source: Global News.

This is what we’ve come to in our dread.
Thumbs fed up with texting.
Vibration in the pocket
Like an IED. Someone’s head
Cut off on TV with a sword.
Red hands of history. So many dead
Of casual bullets. We are consumed
With terror, Sharia law in the hymnals,
Shoe bombs under the bed
And the demand for specialized knowledge,
Who to vote for,
What to buy next.
The world is dishonest. The wiring
In the house not up to code.
Floods on the coast and the caldera
Of Yellowstone that might explode.
We pick up the crayons
Carefully staying within the lines.
Making sure the colors are right.
Blue skies. Green grass.
The sun a peculiar yellow . . .


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

AT A CONCERT BEFORE THANKSGIVING

by David Chorlton

Security forces stood guard on Rue des Bouchers, a street famous for its restaurants, on Monday in Brussels. Credit Stephanie Lecocq/European Pressphoto Agency via NY Times, Nov. 23, 2015

What happens far away
is audible in the pause
between movements:
                  the silence
of a transit system stilled, the rustling
curtains when somebody looks out
at troops in the street, asking
       does anyone appear suspicious?
              does anyone not?
The world stretched taut as a wire
ready to snap,
            ready to snap,
with cities shut down
and the news ticker telling us
to stay calm,
           stay calm,
the bomb is in our minds,
and it is,
      where nobody knows
               how to defuse it.


David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications on- and off-line, and reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His most recent book, A Field Guide to Fire, is his contribution to the 2015 Fires of Change exhibition in Flagstaff, Arizona.