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.

I CAN'T VOTE

by Marsha Owens

“Sorted” by Pia Guerra at The Nib, August 17, 2020.

Blue mailboxes thrown onto truck beds
helter-skelter like toy soldiers tossed
onto a playroom floor, except I see
pictures—this is not make-believe—
but a real-time story much like the one
Anne told in her diary except by this point
in Germany trucks and trains carried people,
her father, other fathers, mothers, gone
to god knows where, and still Anne
believed her father would come back
someday, just stroll through the door
like coming home from work. . .but
we all know that’s not how her story ended.
So where is the mailbox graveyard?
Is someone burying
these mailboxes
next to Democracy
and the 2020 election—
they were such a fine
couple in new jersey just
a few days ago—but now
they lie close to my friend
who died from COVID-19,
just across from
Sweet Liberty
and Blind Justice
in a spot near
an eerie gravesite
that echoes
a lament into each
dark night,
i can’t breathe.


For her bio, Marsha Owens samples Nikki Giovanni: "I've been considered a writer who writes from rage and it confuses me. What else do writers write from?"