THE LADDER

by Kavita Ratna

The ladder

against the wall

leaves 

misshapen 

shadows,

slanted in 

impossible angles.

 

The rungs

of the real and

the surreal

end

in the middle of

a blankness.

 

Rising begins

where 

the climb ends.

Kavita Ratna is a children's rights activist, poet, and a theatre enthusiast. Sea Glass is her collection of poems published by Red River. Her poems have appeared in The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess within, A little book of serendipity, The Wise Owl, Triveni Hakai India, Haiku in Action, the Scarlet Dragonfly, the Cold Moon Journal, Five Fleas Itchy poetry, Stardust Haiku, Leaf (Journal of The Daily Haiku), and Parcham.

THE LADDER

by Howie Good

There are days when I look up from some small task,
answering a text or fixing coffee or leashing the dog,
and see miles more of the skyline burning and crowds
chanting encouragement to the flames, and on those days,
I feel broken and hollow and lost, too old and slow to be
able to make any sort of difference, but then I remember
I don’t have to be one of the ones who climb a rescue ladder;

I can stand on the ground and help hold the ladder steady.


Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

SAGARMATHA, GODDESS OF THE SKY

by Pepper Trail




The greatest pile of stone, you are known
by that name that rings in the Western ear—
Everest (after a Sir George, bureaucrat, surveyor)—
not as Nepali Sagarmāthā or Tibetan Chomolungma
and so you must be climbed

In our hundreds we come
we pay, we wait, we breathe from bottles
we ascend ice ladders, we cling to the fixed lines
we shuffle upward through the trash
we never doubt you must be climbed

Gasping in the starving air
eyes fixed on the boots of those in front
or, lifting our heads, on the queue
snaking toward the top of the world
we climb—you must be climbed

Perhaps tomorrow an error will be found
another mountain the highest, and so you
mere goddess of the sky, will be again alone
left to cradle the frozen bodies of those
who believed in nothing but this—

You must be climbed


Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

BUILDING WALLS

by Megan Merchant

I have seen the most beautiful walls painted by children,
walls with crowds of hands shaped into doves and flowers
tall. I have seen the most beautiful walls sledged by exhausted
fathers who wear the stucco-dust home and lull their babies
into sleep with tales about how they gutted that great beast.
I have seen the most beautiful walls dressed for carnival, lined
with stars, and helmets in remembrance of our fallen. I have seen
the most beautiful walls drenched with ivy, an accord with nature,
water dripping into buckets down brick. I have heard the word
wall in a thousand clumsy ways, the buzz saw and hammer
being cleaned in the toolbox of his mouth, the easy-dirt of his words,
where we tunnel. I have seen the way men resurrect walls to keep
the light out, too afraid to meet the eyes of a woman directly. Because
he knows she has learned to see around the symbol, that it is not a greater
means of division, or a blockade, but a chance to climb, to see people
holding hands from a different perspective, high enough that their
bodies blur into one.

Megan Merchant is mostly forthcoming. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Gravel Ghosts (Glass Lyre Press, 2016 Book of the Year), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Prize, Glass Lyre Press, forthcoming 2017), four chapbooks, and a children’s book with Philomel Books.