SECOND SHOT

by Tracey Gratch

Crocuses through morning frost feign hope

that even in this time of gloom, as Cambridge

bars are shuttered tight and on Mass Ave.

foot traffic’s light, and yet, and yet it’s barely

spring, despite the losses reigning in—

The moment for a second shot; resilience

grit, on second thought.

Tracey Gratch lives south of Boston with her husband and their four children. Her poems have appeared in publications including Post Road, Mezzo Cammin, The Literary Bohemian, Annals of Internal Medicine, Boston Literary Magazine, TheNewVerse.News, and The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. Her poem "Strong Woman" is included in On Being A Doctor, Volume 4, from the American College of Physicians.

NO TWO ALIKE

by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky

          for B.A.

 

In the night snow fell

upon the bittersweet

and lined the land from stone

to sleeping limb with hope.

 

The waking sky reveals

it’s hardly deep enough

to cover the frozen leaves

of grass, but having fallen

 

far and wide, traces

each intention—tire tracks

down a road, fox footprints

fading into the woods

 

dividing neighborhoods.

Despite these separate paths

the snowfall wakes me up

again to the bracing truth

 

that we are joined to one

another and this place,

fragile icy pieces

formed in community—

 

We robe ourselves in frost

yet thrive in unity.

Felicia Sanzari Chernesky is a longtime editor and picture book author who tracks life’s footprints with poetry as her lens. Her microfiction has been nominated for a 2021 Pushcart and Best of Microfiction. She lives with her family in Flemington, New Jersey

APERTURE

by Erin Murphy

Embed from Getty Images

November 2020  

 

The cloud bank is a mountain— 

no, a continent—in the gun metal                               

 

sky and beneath it a cavalry  

of trees, mostly oak, limbs rhyming  

 

in Vs. Look closer to see the anarchy  

of leaves—some refusing                                

 

to surrender even after three nights  

of frost. What will it take? 

 

Remember the film in which  

the boys were cloned from evil DNA. 

 

Remember half your neighbors 

voted for—and from—hate. 

 

Who has won? Who has lost? 

Zoom in to the tip of a twig  

 

where a caterpillar—backlit  

by sunlight—stakes its claim,  

 

chrysalis of history spooled tight  

as a movie plot. Inside: maybe  

 

a monarch. Maybe a tiger 

moth. 

Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, Field, Southern Humanities Review, Glass, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

WAITING FOR THE ELECTION TO BE OVER WITH

by Penelope Scambly Schott

“Frost on the grass,” photograph by Vladimir Axenov.

The man is asleep,

his arm flung back

toward the headboard of their bed.

He snores lightly.

The dog curls warm and small

at the foot of the quilt.

The dog’s ribs move up

and down under fur.

The woman is awake.

She slips out

from under the quilt

and walks to the window.

She pushes back

the white curtain.

Orion is rising over the shed,

his sword tickling

the top branches

of the neighbor’s cottonwood.

The man is still sleeping.

The woman stands at the window.

She knows Mars has moved west

past where she can see it

from this side of the house.

Winter is approaching.

The man’s hair gleams white

in starlight.

The dog’s fur gleams white.

Frost glazes the lawn.

The woman is ready

to step through the glass

in her long white nightgown.

She would lie on her back

in the white frost,

lie there a long time

under stars,

the flesh of her shoulders,

her buttocks,

the heels of her bare feet

feeling the spin of her planet.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

QUARANTINE AUBADE

by Juditha Dowd

"Lifeline" by Pascal Campion

The trucker is hauling food. We often hear him down on
the river road around this hour, hitting his Jake brakes,
slowing his rig on the curves. The sound bounces up and out,
finds us here on College Hill—wide-awake at four o’clock,
trying to return to sleep. He pauses at the highway ramp,
crosses the river, picks up speed. Soon he’ll unload at a market,
where workers rush to stock the shelves, where items spurned
for years are in demand: dry beans, yeast and prunes.
And here in the dark I’m my grandmother’s little girl again,
helping to squeeze red dye into bags of oleomargarine, waiting
to eat the biscuits she’ll take from her small white oven
while she listens to the radio, hopes there may be a letter today
from my uncle in the Army. Always the waiting. For the
the morning paper, twice-daily mail. Always we want news.
Bless our neighbor leaving now for what must be essential work.
Beams from his headlights circle the room. Birds are beginning
to stir, recalling those childhood mornings when I rose ahead of
my family, roused by their chorus, lifted into the dawn on wings.
After breakfast I’ll weed radishes we planted on a day that seems
like years go. Despite a killing frost, they’ve sprouted leaves.
Light is on the way. See how the air is whitening? That there’s
food … and those who must be fed. No certainties but these today.

Juditha Dowd’s latest book is Audubon’s Sparrow, a verse biography in the voice of Lucy Bakewell Audubon, out this month from Rose Metal Press. She has contributed work to many journals and anthologies, including Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Spillway, Ekphrasis, Rock & Sling, and Florida Review.

FEBRUARY

by Penelope Scambly Schott

Image source: Save the Children

The early robin plumps on a fence post
well ahead of the meadow larks –
I count one vote for spring.

My lonely neighbor left her lights on all night
and rose in frost to sweep her patio
clean of sunflower husks.

In a camp just beyond the Syrian border
most of the 75,000 shivering refugees
are under the age of four.

I remember completely being three years old –
how near my hands were to my elbows
and my fingers to my mouth.

Today, on this fragrant slice of warm toast
veined with cinnamon sugar,
the spread butter melts.

We all have our mouths wide open
and some of us sing.


Penelope Scambly Schott’s forthcoming book Lillie Was a Goddess, Lillie Was a Whore is a series of poems about prostitution.