LIGHT

by Chris Reed

Flakes of snow glow orange like fireflies

over a winter field of bare and capped heads,

candles held high in the snow swept vigil.

Light gathers itself to the campus lamp,

lone glow behind a policeman’s head, 

his face like ours in shadow.

 

We connect light to morning and sight,

to warmth and touch, to seasons

of planting and harvest,

and in our winters, to what still returns

after the night, the storm, and the losses.

 

But light doesn’t care for our veneration.

Indifferent, it turns the glow back on us.

Red radiates off the side of a face at a window.

reflects the ambulance light in the night,

red hands holding back the drapes.

 

Flashes of gunfire on Bondi Beach

found celebrants honoring a festival

of light, light as healing and possibility,

as the connection and love that endures,

telling the story of an ancient flame.

 

I look up from my screen of news and photos

as light sends the shadow of a bird outside

my window, flying across my pale nubby rug. 

Sunlight paints the many leaves of the jade tree

and stretches along the floor to my feet.

 

Light remembers that in the beginning

it took on the job of radiance and promise,

and we took on the job of repairing

the vessels that we are, 

so that we might hold the light. 

 

In recent news photos, light is reserved,

embarrassed for us, 

embarrassed to have been the gold on snow,

the red glare on the cheek at the window,

the sun setting over a bloody beach,

— and asks — Can’t you do better than this?

Chris Reed has been writing poetry for five years. As a writer and a retired Unitarian minister she values the work of social justice and witnessing that is done through poetry. But admits she has sometimes had a difficult time reading news stories during this last year. And this is not a comment on her eyesight. Her first chapbook Two Years and Two Months was published last month by Finishing Line Press.

BURNING CAR

by Kip Knott

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we 
silence people or squash dissent. But…”
          —President Biden addressing protests
              over the war in Gaza

Whether it rises 
from melting tires 
or devotional candles
or one child’s body 
or a million children’s bodies, 

smoke burns 
everyone’s eyes to tears
before it gathers 
as the clouds 
one faction uses

to construct 
their idea of Heaven
and another faction uses
to construct 
their idea of Hell.

Kip Knott is a writer, poet, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Ohio. His most recent book of poetry, The Misanthrope in Moonlight, is available from Bottlecap Press.

TACKY TINSEL STUFF

by Julie Standig

Vintage Judaica solid brass Weinberg dove bird Hanukkah menorah candlestick.

hooked to curtains

mylar dreidels, menorahs

glitzy glitter star of David 

dangles from the fireplace

 

the breakfast bar 

covered in hanukkiah,

driedels and drip trays

crafted by my children

thirty years ago

 

they’re asking for a truce

just two more days, two more

three hostages have died

one is a ten-month-old

 

dreidels fill plates

in our living room

dining room and den

I can’t spin them

 

the nine-month-old hostage

has yet to be released

is that the same baby that died?

how do you spin that?

 

newlyweds return to the rubble

of their Gaza home

a box of wedding candy 

the sole survivor of their stuff

 

One of my menorahs

takes the shape of a dove

I don’t know 

I don’t know

 

I cannot recall

the candle blessing

but those images of Israel

of Gaza burn bright

Julie Standig, a lifetime New Yorker, now lives in Bucks County PA. She has been published in anthologies, online journals, and is the author of a chapbook, and full collection, The Forsaken Little Black Book. A long-time participate at the 92Y, she loves the writing community she has found in Bucks County. 

SEVENTH NIGHT

by Judith Terzi

A fleeing suspect was arrested
with blood spilling over his clothing
smelling of bleach. Candle wax
dripping down my silver-plated
menorah. Multi-colored wax
clinging to its round base, clogging
its candle holders that we clean
each festival night. My family
closed blinds when we lit the candles
just after the war in Philly. This
same menorah with a star of David
in the middle guarded by the claws
of a lion on either side. The suspect
could have stabbed my grandfather
and my great-grandfather––Hasids
like the five he stabbed on the seventh
night of Chanukah. My grandfather
could have given me a check for $5,
written Chanukah gelt in the lower
left-hand corner with a hand unused
to writing English letters. My parents
could have given me another pair
of pajamas on the seventh night,
or a jigsaw puzzle, or a Toni doll,
or a dress my mother would have
sewn on her Singer. We closed
blinds when we lit the menorah.
The suspect wielded a large knife.
The children stopped singing, and
the dreidel stopped spinning, and
the rabbi prayed for his congregants
and for his son who were stabbed.
And for the victims of the twelve
other acts of violence against
Hasids in the past three weeks.
And the people are terrified.
And the country stays divided.

Judith Terzi is the author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay Books) as well as of five chapbooks including If You Spot Your Brother Floating By and Casbah (Kattywompus). Her poetry appears widely in literary journals and anthologies, has been nominated for Best of the Net and Web and a Pushcart, and read on Radio 3 of the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and taught high school French for many years as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.

COLORING

by Laura Lee Washburn

This drawing is part of an exhibition in Tucson, AZ of original watercolors and other artworks by kids whose families have fled to the U.S. seeking asylum. Casa Alitas operates a refugee shelter in a former Benedictine Monastery and offers art-making classes to traumatized kids released from detention.

“It’s not what you look at that matters,

  it’s what you see.”

—Henry David Thoreau

In the blue pool with jogging women
every morning this month I’ve seen
in distant tree yellow busted balloon.

I have ridden the packed dirt
on a brown three-speed bike
almost into long black snake.

I have been to the marsh
where green leaves reflect
from brown tannin waters.
I will go there again.

I have felt unease, eaten
too much sugar, sagged
at the loneliness of bad friendships.

I’ve helped light one hundred and forty candles
after dark, listened to testimony, heard
the names of six dead migrant children:

Darlyn, Jakelin, Felipe, Juanito, Wilmer, Carlos.
I’ve read the judicial arguments on soap
and sleep, toothpaste, blankets.

When the green leaves blow,
I watch through bamboo blinds,
live action but dim impressions of bright.

I have driven in blind white
sun on the turnpike’s upward curve
and made it south enough to see again.

I have driven twenty in storm
shocking white water rains
when the pea-sized summer hail
begins to tap.
I have not turned
around at the lake in the road.
 —I have judged and been judged—

Stupid people    this local woman
hosted a vigil because of “images” she saw.
How does she know [How does she know?]
the images are really detention centers?
    people who serve the DARK!
    scum invading      disease and violence
our president taking down the evil
Stop believing or search for the truth
everything is really a lie!

Laura Lee Washburn has taught how to tell creditable sources from biased sources, has never been held in a cell, and donates her time to a Southeast Kansas organization that helps women in poverty resolve crises.

PARADISE IS BURNING AND NUMBERS ARE RISING

by Jean Varda




9 drops of rain
one for each of
the people who
died in the flames

Do not burn candles
for the dead
they represent fire
and fire killed them

4 of them burned up
in their cars as the exodus
left single file not fast
enough to escape the flames
on all sides of them, even
licking across the road
under the tires

Buildings collapsing
trees like matchsticks
so unreal
watching from car windows

Hearing explosions,
transformers
propane tanks
bombs going off
like a war

One turned back to
rescue her cat
that was hiding in terror
she checked under the
beds in the closets
while flames enclosed her
roared in the windows
and smoke blinded

Another was delayed searching
for a folder that contained
her advance directive, the
property deed and her children’s
birth certificates
the roof of her house collapsed
in one heaving sigh

A mother turned her car
down a side street to pick
up her child from daycare
the building already gone
the children and teachers
ahead of her on the road out
she didn’t make it

The one who forgot to let
the horses out
so they could flee the fire
as horses will
He couldn’t get back
into his place, fallen trees
on fire blocked the road
he got out and ran into
the open mouth of hell

An elder decided to sit it out
she was old and this house
was built by her grandfather
She was born in it as was her
mother her grandmother
and her five children
this house had a soul
she couldn’t leave it
So she made tea and sat
by the wood stove
rocking till she and the
house disappeared in
roaring flames
that left only a flat
black scar on the earth

This is why I can’t light
the 9 white candles
and watch their tiny
steady yellow flames
But rather place a small
pearl lined shell
beside each unlit candle
and in each a drop of water
for the lives that
burnt up in flames

Jean Varda’s poetry has appeared in The Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Motel, Manzanita Poetry & Prose of the Mother Lode & Sierra, Avocet  A Journal of Nature Poems, California Quarterly, Third Wednesday and The Red River Review. Her poem “Naming Her,” published in River Poets Journal 2012, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has taught poetry writing workshops, hosted a poetry radio show and sponsored poetry events at cafes. She also is a collage artist, her way to escape words. She presently lives in Chico, California where she works as a nurse and writes her memoirs.

CANDLELIGHT VIGIL

by Tricia Knoll

The call came out to come with candles.
To stand up. Be counted. A vigil, a word
I learned came from awoke, Latin.
Bring your candles. Hold your fingers
around the flame if the wind blows.
We cannot let hate extinguish us.
Calling us to this city corner at this
time for what happened in that city
some moments ago. What runs
through my head, but those white men
carried torches! Torches designed
to discourage bugs. Though my tears
threaten to douse my candle,
I will keep my light shining,
to call forth our angels of good will.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who saw her city and the nation in bereavement when men trying to stop racial bigotry on a train were killed and hurt. And now Charlotteville. 

HANUKKAH DEMONSTRATION AGAINST HATE

by Judith Lechner

More than 75 people from the new Hudson Valley chapter of the group Jewish Voice for Peace gathered at Wall and North streets in Uptown Kingston late Wednesday afternoon to demonstrate their solidarity with Muslims and other minority groups. —Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman, December 21, 2016

Candles challenge city lampposts, neon signs, passing headlights.

            A miraculous oil lit the lamps in the Temple.

Crowd’s voices gather strength, shout “Love, not hate, makes America great.”

            Hanukkah candle flames remind us of ancient battle against oppressors.

December night chills hands holding placards of painted candles that tell their story.

            Holy Temple in Jerusalem 170 B.C.

            Greek-Syrian despot Antioch  forbids Jewish worship.

            Sends soldiers to massacre resistors in Land of Israel.

            Invaders erect altar to Zeus defiling the Temple.

            Long struggle led by Judah Maccabee wins back the holy site.

            Only enough oil to purify the Temple for one day.

            A miracle—oil burns for eight days.

Hanukkah is the memory of the rededication of the Temple.

            Purification celebrated by lighting eight candles one a day.

We dedicate ourselves to fighting hate in the temple within.

            Shine light on the persecution of Muslims and Blacks. 

We form a human menorah to display our unity in diversity.

            Lights spell out our message of brotherhood and justice.

Each candle helps illuminate inner darkness, clear hatred from clouded eyes.

             The message of Hanukkah --“a miracle can happen here.”

Judith Lechner—poet, short story and essay writer—has also written 24 nonfiction books for school libraries. Her poetry book The Moon Sings Back appeared in 2011. She is a member of the Goat Hill Poets, a performance group and has won the Green Heron Poetry Prize and Tattoo Haiku contest.

BITTER HARVEST

by Richard Schnap

I have seen
The candles of grief
Flickering in
The night

And I have heard
The mournful cries
Echoing in
The wind

And I have known
How it feels to learn
Life doesn’t come
For free

It carries a price
That the faceless one
Will someday collect
From you


Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.