BODY IMAGE Poem: Neutral Tones and Intermittent Fasting for Spring, by Cheveux A

She skirts the skin- settles onto your bones: a second epidermis
Fashion to be layered
And made opportune for you to digress
A drivel drama, a novel thought

The hollow in your chest barely concealed
But it is the hollow beneath your eyes that begs to suggest
Mind so young, brain plasticity learned to eat until you ungrew
Swelling into straight lines that nature never knew

A white shadow made of tailored cross
stitches rolling out tapered runs on linen squares
Forget the abyss, stare into her vanilla for that is where she tucks her truths, waiting for someone else to
seek them out to share

-Cheveux

BODY IMAGE Poem: SHE IS A BODY, by Annelise Freeze

Nothing else is more vital to a profitable
live
stock enterprise,
well- being, the world population.
We could survive without
meat
milk
most
of us would find
vegetables and grain a rather dull diet.
It’s important that we keep reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and
reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and reproducing and reproducing
and
you will find the legs slippery to handle and
in larger species attach a rope or better yet an obstetrical chain makes the job easier
put your hand in the vagina
try to ascertain what is wrong.

Read Poem: Galactic Celestial Shenanigans, by Alecia Lewis

Fly me to the moon,
The bad moon rising,
Under the sun where,
Across the universe,
The sky is a neighborhood.

Hello Earth, here comes the sun,
A rust colored sun dancing in the moonlight.
An out of this world space monkey with space junk,
Contemplates life on Mars while,
Drinking a champagne supernova,
And walking on the moon.

A shining star and space oddity,
From an ordinary world
Sing an operatic space age love song,
Of the killing moon counting stars
While walking on sunshine.

Instead of waiting for the sun,
Venus in her rocket of cosmic love
Deposits drops of Jupiter,
And the rings of Saturn
On the whole of the moon.

What a wonderful world
When a sleeping satellite
From an invisible sun
Awakens on a new moon on Monday.

Mother Night no longer afraid of sunlight
Vacations on an island in the sun
Observes the final countdown of
A total eclipse of the heart with
The Starman from the house of the rising sun.

The man from Planet Marzipan along with
A cloudbusting rocket man from Planet Earth gather,
Spirits in the material world under the milky way
To unite a black hole sun with
The moon over Bourbon Street preventing,
A blister in the sun and shame on the moon.

NATURE Poem: Golden Rhapsody, by Shawn Belanger

In the morning, as soon as you wake, go to the Sea,
Look far off the horizon, beyond where eyes could ever possibly see,
Wait in the moments of darkness, as the day lifts from down below,
Fire begins to light up the sky from a time so long, long ago.

With sounds of the crashing waves and the soft morning breeze,
The flames rise ablaze, casting their color across the tops of the trees,
Slowly joined by the whole World waking anew, all await the fiery show,
The World becomes still…every breath being held, with eyes wide aglow.

As time stands still, the flame shapes to a quivering ball,
The effort is clear, it’s inevitable and necessary for giving life to all,
Rising with passion and purpose, breaking free, little by little,
Its rise even gives, to the sad and bad of yesterday, complete and total acquittal.

The truth of the Sun against the sky, beyond the Sea of deep, turbulent blue,
Accepted by most, questioned by few, yet understood only by you,
Hiding in the flame…the glow, the inferno…it’s an explosion so fiery-gold,
The love it shares, gives power and strength, never dim or subtle, always so bold.

It’s love for you is clear and true, seen and felt, pure and warm,
The waves try to rise, but the power of the Sun parts them irregardless the storm,
The Sun gazes in your direction, with effort to elicit invitation to you,
It reaches and draws across the Sea, now quiet and flat, calm and true.

The love forms into a path for thee to follow…a road poured of molten gold,
Step toward the Sun, follow the trail, it’s a golden avenue to what never gets old,
Direct to you, just for you and only you, one of the true lucky few,
You can walk upon the Sea, upon the road of glowing gold, that is made only for you.

That’s the treacly Sun, as it is, filling its needs with compersion by all,
So walk the golden trail to the feel the rhapsody of the Sun without fail or fall,
That’s what love should be, and the Sun is the perfect example to follow,
It matters not what the Sea has to say, for the Sun’s love fills the Sea, whether deep or
shallow.

NATURE Poem: Your Home, by Hellen Albuquerque

When the waves of emotions
Dare to drown you
Step into the grass
For you’re are the ground

If the hours seem to run
Far from what you’ve dreamed
Close your eyes and feel
The promises in the wind

When the turbulent thoughts
Cloud your vision
Drink a tall glass of water
Allowing your body to be river

If the passion of your heart
Burns all in flames
Stare at the ashes
You’ll be born again

For nature is home
And your prime medicine

NATURE Poem: American Man, by Jessica Lis

If you were a man of god,
I’d be an angel.

But you are not, you’re the
tiger with its teeth beaten, but not the buffalo.
the time of the morning before the rooster crows
And the steel fence to keep the deer out in the winter
But not the pasture, nor martyr for March equinox
You are the deck of cards living in my mother’s purse for the past 5 years,
but not the ace of spades nor the black jack.
You are the musk salt air before a storm on the east coast
but not the cool pool of water, still below mountains.
You are the Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake, baker’s man
But not the pocketful o’ posies.

You are not a man of god, but I am an angel.
You are the tiger with its teeth beaten, I am a buffalo
the time of the morning before the rooster crows
And the steel fence to keep the deer out in the winter
I am a pasture, and a martyr for March equinox
You are the deck of cards living in my mother’s purse for the past 5 years,
I am the ace of spades and the black jack.
You are the musk salt air before a storm on the east coast
I am a cool pool of water, still below mountains.

You are the Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man
I am a pocketful o’ posies. The American Dream.

NATURE Poem: Humming Hymm, by Ace Anzaldua

Little fuzzy wuzzy buzzle bees,
quietly working away unseen.
Oh, how you sing amongst the trees.

Pollinating plumage of Persephone,
bring life to all through spring,
Little fuzzy wuzzy buzzle bee.

Sugar snaps and strawberries,
every color of the spectrum seen.
Oh, how you sing amongst the trees.

Greenlands of growing gooseberry,
bringing life to sprouting leaves,
Little fuzzy wuzzy buzzle bee.

Thirsty titbits of tangerines,
fruits of your labor nurturing.
Oh, how you sing amongst the trees.

Acknowledging audiences will agree,
we should apologies to thee
little fuzzy wuzzy buzzle bee.
Oh, how you sing amongst the trees.

NATURE Poem: Demon, by Charlotte Husnjak

Bright-eyed flash with bushy tail
Scampers o’er night-time veil
Surfs the stars, avoids bright lights
For she’s a mind to feast tonight
And neither gas nor metal’s might
Makes maggot-grub of rubbish sprites.

This pixie picks her trove with care
Is led by smells on rancid air
Bled through the black, escaped the knot
A stubborn smell, the stench of rot
But one man’s trash is other’s fare.

So Foxy doesn’t care one jot.
She rips the bag, and gorges all,
A workout for tomorrow’s caul.
Coffee grinds and and orange peel
When mixed, she finds, make quite the meal.

And licks the bits seen fit to fall
Enthralled she howls out: ‘What a steal!’
That morning had me howling too
Upon finding her residue
Forgetting when the bins were due
I’d left the rubbish out in view!

And orchestrated this duress
As foxes always make a mess
Of all that we folk might make clean
Where once my driveway was pristine
Now seems a sight that some might deem
Best paired up with a guillotine.

One final swipe, as her adieu
She deadheaded my flowers too!

NATURE Poem: Flashes of Love, by Mica Frank

I love you like a summer day
Warm and easy
The sun soaking through my back
I love you like an ice storm
Blinding bright and glittering
Temporary, and beautiful
I love you like a fall day
As I mourn the loss of warmth I look up
The leaves are a rainbow and the air is perfect
I love you like a summer storm
Cool water a balm on sunburnt skin
Dark clouds a balm on squinting eyes
I love you like a snow day
Free and childlike
Playful and holy
I love you like the first day of spring
New growth in every corner
I don’t love you yet
But I will

NATURE Poem: Slaughter Beach, by Merci Lyons-Cox

I.

People live longer near the water, he says,
inviting the collapse of the wave to break

open something clogged and congealed—
a jellyfish jealousy flushing into a great sinkhole.

He swallows his sun-fried pride and feels
the tide coaxing the fluidity of his manhood

as boundary bleeds into the long flash of
sunset flush, the blushing boil of being unnamed,

uncalled, unmade, moored, and,
more to the point, bound to lap at the body

by which he is held alo. It is nighttime on
Slaughter Beach.

Cloak of the eyes closed proves a portal to
bodily evaporation, a holy perpetuity,

an acceptance of, whatever, everything,
nothing, who cares, who can care when

you can feel nothing but the everything
of yourself, a fleck on the continental shelf,

at the mercy of this great mother and all
of her gruesome glories made sharpened

and spineless and shaped to survive
the womb of the ocean.

The ocean is our greatest ancestor, he thinks,
as he opens his eyes to the Slaughter Beach

sky and feels the sudden measure of his brevity
equidistant to the distance of the stars,

and suddenly he cares about everything,
every single thing that exists now and never,

before and beyond and outward and into,
as above so below the porous crust

of the earth’s sun-warmed epidermis,
determined to hold the whole inside

of his sun-kissed skin shell so he is
filled up and filled out and bursting.

II.

People live longer near the water, he says, and
I did not question, despite detecting the growing

groan of a grounded flock celebrating the prizes
of the tide, knowing that splayed in their jubilee

lay the bones of a stoned man who last night lied down
under a night sky lit like light through a punctured pelt,

and when the sun rose, his lying had become laying,
just as objects do not lie but lay.

The squawking gawks of the gulls grew aroused
as we rounded the slope of a dune and

drew nearer. A weather-shorn shore stretched,
speckled with the flickering of the feast

as each head in the sea of gulls ducked and
bobbed and shucked from their shells

the cursed crustraceans, beached, doomed to beak
or to bake. It is suppertime on Slaughter Beach