LET’S REDEFINE POWER

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

This cherry blossom
Fluttering down three days from now
Holds more power than a billy club
 
This daffodil trumpeting spring
Heralds the quickening glory
 
You can crush you can kill
But you can’t do this
Unfurl sweetly to the sun

 
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is wandering among the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC. She is the author of several nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Wild Walking. Many of her poems have been featured in The New Verse News and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

ALT OR REALITY? INAUGURATION 2025

by Judy Trupin

I enter uninvited

faceless

masked or maskless unseen

I hide under a chair facing backward

a metal prong pokes my back

dagger to my heart no less

2016 flies high in the sky

banners everywhere

too late now for pussy hats

dragon suits or chimera wings

you and you and you

triumphant

trumpet 

aglow with glaze of your private galaxy

while we the countless uncounted

crouch

the nation visible

here where you do not look

or if you do 

crush under your boots 

as you rise we fall

the dawn no longer ours

not rock not river not tree

we the

hopeless, 

dreamless

 unseen.

Judy Trupin writes, thinks, and votes in Pittsburgh PA.

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.