DENIAL

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

Dying Sunflower is a photograph by Robert Ullmann

The huge       yellow-orange sunflower
     once showy    &    tall    &    haughty       
 
looked down       on common      
      ordinary      plant life.
 
Now     petals gone     devoid     of seed     
      spine collapsing     it does not
notice        its season     has  passed.

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations at state, diocesan and national levels. Her work has appeared in several Old Mountain Press anthologies, Poetic Portions anthology, Soul-lit Spiritual Poetry, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Panoply Literary Zine, Snapdragon Journal, Whirlwind Magazine, Kakalak, Red Clay Review and Gyroscope Review. Five poems were turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham.  Her chapbook Being Kin (CreationRising Press) was published in 2019.  She lives in Durham, NC.

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.