BLOOD MOON BIRTHDAY WISH

by Marjorie Tesser

On the seventh of September, the earth 

will impose itself between moon and sun

and the eclipsed moon will blush red, 

color of love and rage. It’s the anniversary 

of my long-ago birth. Of late I’m less 

than sanguine about aging. Ghosted 

by family and friends—deaths, drugs, 

dementia, dogma—my circle has waned 

to a thinner crescent. I’m not immune, 

myself at summer’s end not yet red, 

but no longer vibrant green; wan, faded. 

Back in spring my sap loved to rise, roots 

to branch-tips aspiring. Now I lay low. 

Keep mum. Abide, 

 

though our home-space tumbles 

toward burn, wreck and ruin bought 

with others’ blood. Words like “liberty”

mean something different. it’s almost 

enough to shock one silent, numb one 

to the beauties we still, for now, 

number our blessings. Blood Moon 

is said to augur transformation, 

a flushing away to make room for change. 

In this red tide, may we stay afloat, unmute, 

sow songs of praise and rage, words vivid 

as rubies. May our hues distill, deepen—

cerise to crimson, vermilion to claret,

cabernet, rufous, russet—articulate

full spectrum against falling.

Marjorie Tesser’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Whale Road Review, Cutleaf, SWWIM, The New Verse News, and others. She is the author of poetry chapbooks The Important Thing Is, (Firewheel Chapbook Award Winner), and The Magic Feather (FLP). Her poem “April” won the 2019 John B. Santoianni Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has co-edited three anthologies and is editor-in-chief of MER-Mom Egg Review. 

ATMOSPHERIC RIVER

by Cathleen Calbert

Source: University of Wisconsin

or narrow corridor 

a filament of concentrated moisture

            (like a fire faerie’s little vag)

 

like Lilith, with so many titles:

tropical connection, tropical plume, moisture plume,

(which I believe was indeed a feminine protection 

            product from the 1970’s),

 

water vapor surge—I can feel that for sure,

cloud band (the most lightweight heavy metal)

            river in the sky and moody to boot apparently.

 

whatever. words are fun

until they’re not anymore

            (insurgents stormed the capitol

            and my heart froze over—how’s that

            for wording).

 

now the country is supposed to forget

what we heard, what we saw. 

we’re onto weather:

 

unusually huge plops of snow 

fall on poor Chicago

while back at home

the Pacific Coast Highway fell

down the mountainside

 

as if the dreams of a little MG,

a bottle of wine, rock and rolling 

through the turns in Big Sur

meant nothing. You should know:

 

when the atmospheric river makes landfall

it releases and transforms

into something we can

touch and call

another name

if we want to.

Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared in Ms., The Nation, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of four books of poems: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls. Her awards include the 92ndStreet Y Discovery Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Sheila Motton Book Prize, and the Mary Tucker Thorp Professorship at Rhode Island College.