APOCALYPSE

by Katherine West

detail of the poster for the film Apocalypse Now

I stand with my back to winter 
as if I could hold off blizzards 
with force of will alone 

I am the last dam without a crack 
Water trickles over my shoulders 
Flood whispers in my ears 

I am rain following fire 
tracking its crackle and whoosh 
lowering like a raptor after prey 

I am the final embrace before death 
grabs you by the ankles 
leaving only your soul in my arms 

I am the last mother
carrying a million children on my back 
swimming for safety against the tide 

I am the last dancer, the last poet
the last artist using my own blood 
to paint the last sunset 

I am the last person on Earth 
I have broken all mirrors, all my brothers 
are only songs

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and  Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, Southwest Word Fiesta, and The Silver City Anthology. The New Verse News nominated her poem “And Then the Sky” for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

TAKE AWAY THE ACCOUTREMENTS, GET TO THE ESSENCE

by Barbara Simmons

Photo source: Flash Art

for Anna Halprin, dancer/choreographer

born July 13, 1920, died, May 24, 2021

In this picture you’re barefoot on your deck,

a wooden acre wrapped around your home,

your natural dance studio, where cloud and sky and sun and blue

help bodies became dancers, where singular experiences

beyond the body find their way inside,

becoming gesture, movement, giving answers

to why we move this way, not that, into, around,

under the others on the deck, the patterns of their limbs,

and feet, and hands, letting story enter body, exit dance.

You teach by showing that you move for love, to share

what lives inside your heart, so others find what lives in theirs.

You write that when you eat a carrot

you eat the sun, that we are but the human dance

of life, recycling everything we see and touch and feel 

into the you and you and you we brush past 

on this deck, beyond this deck, into the trees, into

the ecstasy of branches reaching.  I watch you move

others to move themselves to be more, feel more, 

uncover ways we can connect, to treat

the very ground we stand upon as holy, the feet that

touch it then and now and hence as sacred, the hands 

that reach above our heads potential wings that soar,

that share, that speak the only message that will matter,

that we all have mattered here.

Barbara Simmons grew up in Boston, resides in California—finding the coasts inform her writing. She graduated from Wellesley College, received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University. A retired educator, she continues to explore the communion of words as food for memories. Publications have included Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent, OASIS, Common Ground, Soul-Lit, Hamline Literary Review, Writing it Real, NewVerse News, and CAPSULE STORIES.

WITHOUT

by Shirley J. Brewer

—Dancer Loses Foot in Boston Marathon Bombings

      from a newspaper headline

Smoke and glass,

hell sounds, her foot gone—

the amputation of a dream.

 

Just one day since

her toes painted

a promising pink.

 

She had asked for glitter;

severed sparkles

now rouged with blood.

 

They rush her off

without the limb that bore her

through every waltz, rumba, tango.

 

No time for farewells,

only a tourniquet

speaks for the ordinary

 

strapless-sandal-moments, a burst

of music—her footsteps light

on the safe and steady ballroom floor.

 

Shirley J. Brewer ( Baltimore , MD ) is a poet, educator, and workshop facilitator. Publication credits: The Cortland Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Pearl, Comstock Review, Loch Raven Review, Passager, and other journals. Her poetry books include A Little Breast Music, 2008, Passager Books and After Words, 2013, Apprentice House/Loyola University. M.A. Creative Writing/Publishing Arts, University of Baltimore.