TODAY THE SKY BLED RED

by Kyle Hina

Today the morning sky bled
red with memories that I can
only imagine from a far, all
caught up in the air beneath
the hazy sun. Wisps of a thing 
infinitesimally small in size but
of infinite magnitude, summoned to
one last sail across heaven’s sea.

Somewhere in there, I’m sure,
is the country blue farmhouse 
that grandpa built, with the tan
guitar in the corner that turned 
him into Johnny and grandma 
into June when he played it. 

There are the skinny emerald
pines that dotted the trail of
a friend’s first date.  And the 
silver and rust car that caught
her sobs when she found 
that love isn’t always evergreen.  

There is the ivory wedding gown, 
all bejeweled and moth-balled, 
that hung in the closet, still 
awaiting its turn to renew a
couple's love. And the matching 
aqua tie that the husband was 
too scared to wear, for fear it 
might find that brown tea stain 
to match all of the others.

A teal blanket that went home
with the baby and the yellow
cleats he wore when he kicked
his last goal. Violet flowers, 
magenta scrapbooks. A faded 
purple skateboard and greyscale
photo of the family reunion, 1989.

On and on, memories too 

numerous to count rise in a 
prism’s worth of colors, but 
carry too much despair to 
form a rainbow. Instead they 
coalesce into a crimson blanket 
that covers the city like a car 
too old to ever be used again. 

In another world, white men 
in black suits point fingers and
shout names, maneuvering for
attention like children at a funeral.  
But my eyes are on the horizon,
where tonight the sky bleeds red.  

Kyle Hina is a husband, father, software engineer, and musician living in Zanesville, Ohio with his wife, two sons and dog. He has one published short fiction work on 101words.org .

PANDORA OPENS THE BOX

by Lynda Gene Rymond

In air too warm for any November,
rainy season trumped by drought,
Blue Mountain births a wildfire
moving through tree roots
like soldiers in the dark.
 
The news is bad at 11,
worse at 3, a landslide
by first light —hope bound
and handed over to the bull-roar
of Minotaur triumph.
 
Tomorrow or the next day
we’ll start plucking strands
of resistance. Today is just for
watching the steel-gray clouds
and praying for rain.

Lynda Gene Rymond lives and works on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa, where she raises fruits and vegetables, goats, chickens, honeybees, poems, and short stories. Find her and her workshops at www.goblinfarm.net

ECLIPSE, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2023

by Matt Witt

The sun will appear as a blazing ring of fire in the sky over the Americas on Saturday, Oct.14, as an annular eclipse sweeps over the continent. Photo: Digital composite view of annular solar eclipse on May 20, 2012. Seven separate exposures were made twenty minutes apart and combined into one image. (Image credit: Paul Souders via Getty Images) — Space.com

We hardly notice it at first,
just a normal morning
with people walking their dogs
and checking for messages
 
But then the light gets dimmer,
just a little at a time,
until it feels like night
and we are stumbling around
 
But this is not the end
because if we stay alert
the light comes back
and we can see again
 
 
Matt Witt is a writer and photographer in Talent, Oregon. His work may be seen at MattWittPhotography.com.

MIDNIGHT'S MORNING: AN ODE TO EPIPHANY 2021

by Jill Crainshaw

Epiphany Painting by catherine forsayeth

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Wherever the star takes us.”

“What star?”

“The fierce one—”

“I never liked the graveyard shift.

How will we stay awake?

When will we sleep? I need sleep.”

“Sure, why not? I think the star

is whimsical, by the way.”

They turn their eyes skyward. At night.

Eager. 

Reluctant.

Nonchalant.

“Wisdom wizards follow foolish flight of fancy—”

a cosmic planetary alignment

    a sixth spirit-sense

    a thousand lifetimes of longings

“Stop looking back.”

“I left—things—lost—things—back there.”

“What’s lost waits up ahead.”

“What’s lost nips at our heels.”

They emerge from a forlorn forest.

First light nudges Mama Wren from nighttime 

nesting in a smooth-barked dogwood.

The whimsy-fierce star hesitates—

They do too. 

Midnight morning trees breathe

an infant lullaby,

music brighter than light.

“Come with me.”

Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

EARLY IN THE MORNING, DECEMBER 2020

by George Salamon

Credit: Brian Stauffer illustration for Foreign Policy.

"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost." —opening words of Lord of the Rings, cited by David French, "Yes, America Could Split Apart," The Dispatch, September 20, 2020.

Woke up in the dark of morning,

looking out the window I saw

street lights competing with the

light of the stars, but across the

way in the office building where

men used to come and go, not

even the lights for cleaning

women were burning, and I

recalled "man is in love, and

loves what vanishes," closed

the window and wondered if

that was still so.

George Salamon, after teaching German in five colleges, reporting business news, editing a military magazine, and writing in corporate public affairs, is "retired" and contributes to The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice, One Sentence Poems, and The New Verse News from St. Louis, MO.

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.

EARLY MONDAY MORNING

by Peg Quinn



Every screen screams another mass shooting.
I lug a bucket of water saved from
warming my shower to a begonia,
its blossoms neither red, or magenta but
a bright blending of the two together.

Soft clouds dance a brisk parade cross the sky.


Peg Quinn is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, mural and theatrical set painter and award-winning quilter.