TURKEYS

by Matt Witt

Photo by Matt Witt

I’ve been observing wild turkeys for a long time.

 

At mating season, the males try to attract a willing female.

I’ve never seen one try to rape a hen.

 

They have their conflicts 

but I’ve never seen a murder among them. 

 

Some are dark and some are white

but they are all part of the flock.

 

When a storm comes they seek shelter under a big tree

And if another turkey shows up there is always room for one more.

 

I’ve never seen one hoard acorns or seeds or grubs 

while other turkeys have none.

 

I’ve been observing wild turkeys for a long time.

I wonder if they have been observing us?

 

 

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer in Oregon. His work may be seen at MattWittPhotography.com. His latest book is Monumental Beauty: Wonders Worth Protecting in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

TODAY THE SKY BLED RED

by Kyle Hina

Today the morning sky bled
red with memories that I can
only imagine from a far, all
caught up in the air beneath
the hazy sun. Wisps of a thing 
infinitesimally small in size but
of infinite magnitude, summoned to
one last sail across heaven’s sea.

Somewhere in there, I’m sure,
is the country blue farmhouse 
that grandpa built, with the tan
guitar in the corner that turned 
him into Johnny and grandma 
into June when he played it. 

There are the skinny emerald
pines that dotted the trail of
a friend’s first date.  And the 
silver and rust car that caught
her sobs when she found 
that love isn’t always evergreen.  

There is the ivory wedding gown, 
all bejeweled and moth-balled, 
that hung in the closet, still 
awaiting its turn to renew a
couple's love. And the matching 
aqua tie that the husband was 
too scared to wear, for fear it 
might find that brown tea stain 
to match all of the others.

A teal blanket that went home
with the baby and the yellow
cleats he wore when he kicked
his last goal. Violet flowers, 
magenta scrapbooks. A faded 
purple skateboard and greyscale
photo of the family reunion, 1989.

On and on, memories too 

numerous to count rise in a 
prism’s worth of colors, but 
carry too much despair to 
form a rainbow. Instead they 
coalesce into a crimson blanket 
that covers the city like a car 
too old to ever be used again. 

In another world, white men 
in black suits point fingers and
shout names, maneuvering for
attention like children at a funeral.  
But my eyes are on the horizon,
where tonight the sky bleeds red.  

Kyle Hina is a husband, father, software engineer, and musician living in Zanesville, Ohio with his wife, two sons and dog. He has one published short fiction work on 101words.org .

THE IN-BETWEEN

by Kathy Conway

For a month, we’ve noticed 

tender green sprouts—

too early not to freeze or

be trampled, often poking

out of dried-brown leaves 

of last fall. Do you hear

their crinkle in

the breeze? 

On our walks, we’ve created 

a game—are they crocus, 

jonquils, tips of hosta? We’ve 

savored forsythia and lilac buds, 

the red tint of oaks, the pale 

green of maples. 

I have always loved early 

Spring’s pops of color, signs

of growth and new life to come;

births and passings of loved 

ones, of this year’s departed 

and a yet-to-be-born

grand-nephew.

This spring, we also have the brown 

water of floods and mudslides, 

the yellow and red flames of fire, 

leaving grey-black ash and debris

in war zones—Ukraine, Gaza, 

Haiti. And the orange man—I’ll 

not use his name—threatening 

a bloodbath.

Kathy Conway lives and writes in New England and is increasingly frustrated with the state of the world.

COLORING BOOK WITH SECRET SUPERHEROES

by Bonnie Proudfoot

This is a coloring book without lines.

This is a coloring book where Jane

wears any clothing she feels like

wearing and so does Dick, and both

of them won’t carry a gun. In this book

guns aren’t invented. Still, this book

is full of action figures, girl ones and boy ones

Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel

and Doctor Strange and Harley Quinn, ones

who move in light, and ones who delight

in mayhem. All the superheroes use their powers

to keep sharp things out of babies’ reach,

even though they shine. There’s a secret superhero

you can find her if you look, and it is you, 

this is a book that claps for you, who can

almost roll over, who has never worn

a shoe, who can eat her bare feet,

who marched at six months of age,

well, sort of marched, for women’s choice.

This is a coloring book that says it’s ok,

use all the colors, be who you are, it hopes

you see the light that shines through your light

gray eyes, a book that looks like a mirror of love,

that smells like your breath that is a mirror

of milk, that marvels at the impressionist

masterpiece that is your diaper after eating

peas and beets, and that is only something

a nana would say, yes yes, this book

has another secret superhero, NanaMan,

who has the power to stop a gun from firing

at a supermarket or a school or a church

or synagogue, Nanaman is the conscience

of the world, or some kind of weird spirit,

don’t ask me how she/he works. The book knows

that babies are born into light, they come

here with all the colors that they need, and

when the pages of the book are clasped shut

it prays that the world does not start

taking those colors away too soon. 

Bonnie Proudfoot has had fiction and poetry published in the Gettysburg Review, Kestrel, Sheila-Na-Gig, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, SoFloPoJo, and other journals. Her first novel Goshen Road was published by Swallow Press in January of 2020, and was  long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway award for debut fiction. Her debut book of poems Household Gods (Sheila-Na-Gig Press) will be published in the summer of 2022.

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.

GOOD FENCES MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS

by Gil Hoy



Last night I dreamed, 

workers painting my house

Brought all of their children

to work in the morning

With brushes and buckets 

of water, to wash and to clean

To scrub and to scour
the faces,

Like paintings on canvas,

That had appeared overnight
on the walls of my house.

Black faces, white faces,
yellow, red and brown

Faces of every hue and tone,
every size and shape,

And the children all the while
washing and scrubbing

But never hurting the faces.

And me, all the while watching
the children hard at work.

And then, in my dream,
the parents and their children

Began to tear down the Wall
surrounding my house.

By the end of the day,
they had torn down every boulder

And every stone, torn down
the ground-swell beneath,

Until nothing remained of my wall
but green grass and brown earth.

And me, all the while watching
the families hard at work

With a growing sense
of contentment

Coming from deep inside.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, The Penmen Review, I am not a silent poet, TheNewVerse.News and Clark Street Review.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE COLORS GONE?

by Susan P. Blevins

Image source: 7 Themes.com

Now we’re in the centrifuge
spinning faster and faster
away from one another,
when we separate we disintegrate,
when we fall off the wall
who will put us together again?

Carefully, a knife pares
away the colors from our midst,
cutting to the bone of who we are to
make us a monochromatic society.
Does no one understand that poly is
more interesting than mono?
That the Roundup approach to crowd control
will ultimately kill us all?

That We The People do not want
to become a tighty-whitey dogma
driven herd of sheeple?
Without the dark we would not
know the light.  Without black
there would be no white.

Nature thrives when diversity flourishes,
so does society, like ingredients in
delicious healthy smorgasbord.
But no, with shortened vision and
primitive instinct, in fear
they scalpel us apart
bleeding us of life until all that’s left,
a hollowed husk of memories.

Susan P. Blevins was born in England, lived in Italy for 26 years, and is now living in the USA. She became a proud and happy US citizen 20 years ago. Now she is agonizing over the disintegration of US society, and the way fear is being used to manipulate people. She made a conscious decision many years ago never to live her life from a place of fear.