MISSING

by Laura Rodley

Native and Himalayan Views souvenir shop along the Mohawk Trail in Charlemont removed the 20-foot-tall Native American statue in front of the Route 2 store. Photo Credit: Native and Himalayan Views Facebook via Daily Voice.

First I passed the feathers
of the headdress
over the lip of Greenfield Mountain,
a headdress on a flatbed,
then the rest of the body
of the twenty-foot
Native American statue
that stood in Charlemont
in front of the gift shop
since before I was born,
the shop changing hands
many times, 
and now it’s being trucked
to Vinita Oklahoma, so distinctive
it’s recognizable from the tip
of headdress lying flat,
his face carved with deep grooves,
resembling oak bark, no smile.
I miss it already,
though I haven’t seen
it in years.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

DAKOTA

by Jay Sizemore

Image source: Daily Mail, September 3, 2016

How beautiful must the world be
to make me stop and notice
I am a narcissist?
I’m so far away from the plains,
the rolling weeds and sagebrush,
dirt-dry plateaus cracked like ancient faces.
I’m so far away from open fields
stretched equidistant to every inch
of the empty and aubergine horizon;
the sky seems endless as a child’s imagination,
white puffy clouds like floating castles
turning purple and gray along the dust bowl rim,
with rain shaft ropes tethering those
mountainous zeppelins to the Earth.

How beautiful must the world be
to make me care about the future
my children will live to see?
Some hold onto hope like eagle feathers
in their hands, have seen the stars
through a portal of smoke
cloaked in a buffalo’s hide.
They have stood for centuries
at the edge of a graveyard,
watching the white man dig more holes.

How beautiful must the world be
to make me want to live here
inside its nebular womb?
With every breath, the timeline of existence
shrinks backward one step.
In my heart, I could wear a headdress,
I could smell the burnt leaves
wafting like spirits around my skull,
like voices turned to ashes
swirling and sticking to my tongue.
I could sing songs around the fire
in a language I never learned.

How beautiful must the world be
that I shut off these engines of dinosaur teeth,
that I throw my hardhat to the ground
and climb down from my mechanical cage,
that I brush the crushed grit from my jeans
and embrace the joyful tears
streaming down my face
with so many arms around me,
welcoming me home like a long lost son,
turning to stand in line
against something as intangible as time?

How beautiful must the world be
that I admit I’ve always been wrong
about everything I’ve ever believed?
This world must be beautiful,
with its birds, its light-flickered murmurations,
its ponds with surfaces kissed
by hungry fish mouths catching flies.
It’s a beauty that never asks to be observed,
and that is just what makes it
so irreplaceable.

Jay Sizemore was born blue, raised by wolves, and learned to write by translating howls. He doesn't regret his wisdom teeth. He thanks you for your concern. His work can be found here or there, mostly there.

HALLOWEEN PARTY

by Laura Rodley

Cut from reams of white satin sprang Lawrence

of Arabia, my son Joseph fenc-

ing with a sword made of rough-sawn maple,

a yellow band round headpiece, a staple

from the house to hold it all in one place,

curtain cording his belt, the saving grace,

his sandals of brown leather geared for sand

even as hot as desert, Lawrence’s land.

“Awrence,” he yodeled through the house, so tall

I had to stand on a stool, fashion all

on top his head, long flowing headdress, sheik’s

gear changing a gentle boy, now not meek,

then out the door with friends with worthy cars,

too old for trick-or-treating, too young for bars.

Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.