CASSANDRA SPEAKING AFTER OCTOBER 7, 2023

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

I huddle in a thicket  I have been through this for centuries 

Seeing   not stopping it  hearing screams  pleas  screeches  shots 

 

I still want to whisper to yell to stave off disasters 

but my words are ghost breath traveling down centuries 

 

I know about the arched spine in pain 

the bones whittled down thinned by loss 

 

I know the closed eyes that can’t stop seeing 

blue eyes brown eyes hazel ones drained of hope 

 

I know there are no sentences for horror for killing 

Just broken words like ankle bone breast bone thigh bone 

 

No dreaming flesh   no dreaming bodies 

No dreaming breath   always prophecies that come to pass 

 

No one listens to my warnings   just darkened earth  

withered grasses   stones of remembrance  

 

And the  blue thread of an empty story 

in an endless labyrinth of grief 

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at SUNY New Paltz where she taught creative writing, memoir, creative nonfiction courses as well as American Literature, Women’s Literature, the Literature of Witnessing, and Holocaust Literature. Her poetry has been published in over one hundred journals including The Cream City Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review,  Phoebe, The Chiron Review, Memoir(and), The Westchester Review, Wind, and The Vassar Review. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize Series. She had two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She had this memory, 2000). Her chapbook The Earth Was Still was published by Finishing Line Press and another, Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time,  by Word Temple Press. Her volume of poetry Foraging for Light was published by Finishing Line Press.  And her chapbook about Bess Houdini, the wife of Harry Houdini, entitled Over the Moon Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini, recently was published by Palooka Press.   

AFTER THE FLAMES, FLOOD

by Dick Altman

I’ve learned that no matter what

your faith—we on the high desert

plains – aloud or to ourselves—

pray for rain—and lots of it

Two-months of unquenchable

wildfires left us parched

for water—anything to restart

the charred landscape

 

Fill our depleted reservoirs—

revive our withered crops—

awaken our weakened pinion

and aspen—I pray—and while

at it—I add—our yellow cow-pen

daisies—red-orange mallow—

purple Russian sage—to round

out the bouquet we call—

with now-and-then fondness—

our “desert bloom”

 

A deluge ensues—not our usual—

if one can use that word—monsoon—

what we half-jokingly call our rainy

season—but rain of epic power—

rain that washes away people—

houses—cars—roads—and not

least—in the grand scheme—ash

 

I scoop up a handful—light—

innocent—a mere handful

in an ocean of ash layered over

a charred seabed—until hurricane-

like floods set it in motion—

sweeping it into ponds—river—

community water systems—

killing stream life—sickening

people – disrupting life already

disrupted by epochal fires

What next—I can only ask—

half expecting to hear a cloud-

enshrouded voice intone—

without a trace of a smile—

“Locusts”

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where,at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.

ON THE DEATH OF ANOTHER AGED MOVIE STAR

by Earl J. Wilcox

 

So sorry to relegate your obit

to a short poem which might,

but does not, describe your many

roles with other aged stars long gone

along with their contemporaries—

and yours. 

 

So sorry we don’t even know a single

movie you made, nor do we recognize

most of the stars with which you danced

or lay in bed with or any song you sang

with a catchy tune back in the day. 

 

The news of the day, alas, is too crowded

with stories about starving kids, murdered

brides, corrupt lawyers, not to mention

floods and droughts and hurricanes

and wild fires and earthquakes...

for us to know how much we’ll miss you.

 

 

Earl Wilcox notes with sadness the passing of Jane Powell, Ed Asner, and way too many others to list here, though he will miss them.