LOSING MY MOTHERS

by Nancy Fitz-Hugh Meneely

Detail of a Boomf greeting card.

I'm mother to a mother and the mother
she is married to. I love their way with Lilly, 
child whose mysteries will not be plumbed. 
The picture of her father shows him 
blond and serious at 8 
and that is all we know of him except that 
Lilly's smarter than her mothers can account for
and given to a fear of dark and a ready shame
they do not suffer in themselves.
But they are gorgeous in their mothering.
Asked “How Are You Unique?”, the daughter writes
I HAVE TWO MOMS. All caps.
 
I love these mothers, too, so much I miss them
when we’ve been apart a week. I am ridiculous.
They live five miles away.
 
And now I contemplate a brute and sudden loss.
I picture Jackboots hauling, shackling them
in such a way they cannot touch.
I see their neighbor, welcoming with cookies last July,
now watching from an upstairs room,
bitter with contrition, fearful for herself.
 
I’m powerless against the monstrous threats.
My terror, even loneliness, begins ahead of time.
Perhaps I am ridiculous, but if I lose my mothers
and their child, I'lI will myself
to swallow memory
or die of it.
 

Nancy Fitz-Hugh Meneely's first book Letter from Italy 1944 was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books published by Connecticut writers in 2013. It provided the libretto for an oratorio of the same name which was performed by Connecticut chorales and symphony orchestras. Her second book Simple Absence (Antrim House) was nominated for The National Book Award. 

AUTUMN LEAVES

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

Image source: It's okay, to be a flaming homosexual

Like the rainbow, seasons to speak
Like the sun, seasons to tell
Like the moon, tides and seasons to speak
Like the bear, seasons to tell

Like the heart, seasons to dream
Like dreams, colors to wish.


Lind Grant-Oyeye is an Irish-Nigerian poet and has work published in several countries. Her work discusses issues related to culture, social justice and equality.

PRISM DAY

by David James Olsen

written about and on 6-26-2015

I do declare this Prism Day,
for, finally, Americans as one
look up and round together,
seeing through a single prism
equally, resulting rainbows
viewed with reverence unified
by simple love, needing
nothing other than a national
acknowledgement to set the
global table, turning tides to
placid calm where all can
swim in matrimonial sanctity.


David James Olsen is a 32-year-old published poet/actor/singer/researcher living and thriving in New York City. Recently, he has volunteered with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and PFLAG NYC, as well as filling the role of House Manager for The York Theatre Company. He aims to start his own specialized NY theatre company soon, wanting to learn from the best while laying the groundwork. Previously, his poetry has been published in The South Townsville micro poetry journal, Instigatorzine, and here in The New Verse News. Continuing to compose daily, he hopes to have much more of his work out there very soon.

SUNFLOWERS

by Ed Madden

for Dónal, Dublin, May 2015

At dinner in Dublin only days before
the vote, a friend told a story about
being on the 13 crosstown bus,

carrying a bunch of sunflowers for Gary.
He was wearing his Tá Comhionannas pin.
A drunk began to harass him, snatched

at the flowers, pulled off the head of one.
He said the Dublin grannies on the bus
got the driver to throw the fellow off

at the next stop. One picked up
the broken flower, returned it to him, saying
something about his girlfriend.  When he replied

that the flowers were for his boyfriend, he said,
the whole bus seemed to be filled
with grannies talking about the referendum—

all the rest of the way all the Irish
grannies telling me they’re voting yes.
Oh, to be on that bus.


Ed Madden is an associate professor of English and director of the Women's and Gender Studies program at the University of South Carolina.  He is the author of 4 books of poetry -- Signals, Prodigal: Variations, Nest, and Ark (to be published spring 2016).

ALABAMA ATTEMPTS TO STAND STILL

by Jay Sizemore

Alabama is also on the front lines of what some see as the modern-day successor to the civil rights movement. Although a federal court threw out the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Alabama’s Supreme Court has tried to block the issuance of marriage certificates. Mr. Obama made several references to gay rights but did not directly address the fight over marriage in Alabama. --Peter Baker and Richard Fausset, The New York Times, March 7, 2015; photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times

in a hurricane of rose petals,
in a landslide, where every granule of dirt
is a body clamoring for air:
roll tide, roll.

There’s something holy about crimson,
the color of blood,
the color of a wound left open
like a gash between the ribs
where wind can be heard
whistling
through a punctured lung,
gasps of breath lost
out the knothole of a hollowed oak,
felled when the roots began to die.

Remember the F-5 that tore through Birmingham,
digging a trench a mile wide,
scrubbing houses clean of their foundations.
Remember the hopelessness of the sundogs,
shimmering in the wake
of Death’s coattails
like pearl buttons on a burial suit.
Remember the sounds of rubble
lifted from the cellar door,
the way the world smelled
like a dirty palm pressed over a mouth.

Whose hand reached down
through that rectangle of light,
that swirl of dust and dripping rain,
to pull you free of the cobwebs,
into cacophony and conflicted weather vanes?
If that hand had held
the penis of his lover
just hours before the storm,
would you have refused to be saved?
If Jesus Christ put on fishnet stockings
after the sermon on the mount,
and let Peter call him bitch,
would his words cease to inspire you?

Alabama attempts to stand still
with both feet on a fault line,
shaking its fists like gavels
to pound illumination
out of the stars,
insisting that every kiss
be given with the eyes closed,
no tongue. Leave the lamp on,
so you can see yourself
drowning in the gulf. .

Roll tide, roll.


Jay Sizemore brought the high-five out of retirement. He still sings Ryan Adams songs in the shower. Sometimes, he massages his wife's feet. His work has appeared online and in print with magazines such as Rattle, Prick of the Spindle, Revolution John, Menacing Hedge, and Still: The Journal. He's never won an award. Currently, he lives in Nashville, TN, home of the death of modern music. His chapbook Father Figures is available on Amazon.

STEREOTYPE

by Joan Mazza

The unlikely faces of same-sex marriage. --PostPartisan, The Washington Post
Larry Duncan and Randy Shepherd (Meryl Schenker Photography)

Seated— two white haired, white guys
with long white beards down their chests,
their right hands raised to take an oath
or pledge. Each wears a flannel button-down

under a dark blue quilted jacket. Their USMC
camouflage baseball caps look new.
They could be lumberjacks or loggers buying
hunting or fishing licenses, might be taken

for brothers. A wooden cane leans against
one’s chest. Harley- Davidson logo peeks
from the other’s unbuttoned winter layers.

Good ‘ole boys who love their guns and brew.
In another era, each might have lived alone
in a remote cabin, called hermit, loner, scary.
Do they chop their own wood and have a still?

But this is the state of Washington at the end
of 2012. A black man has been re-elected
president, and these two men, ten years
together, finally get to marry.


Joan Mazza has worked as a psychotherapist, writing coach, certified sex therapist, and medical microbiologist, has appeared on radio and TV as a dream specialist. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Kestrel, Stone’s Throw, Rattle, Writer's Digest, Playgirl, and Writer's Journal. She now writes poetry and does fabric art in rural central Virginia.