I want to read books that
live in the air, that turn colors
into permanent shrines as Cather and Carver
each commute our psychological entrapments
Into shapes of blue boats and white clothes
flapping in a midsummer breeze.
It is to say I want to hold
on to something so that words
are not what I have to use
when I talk to you
but beacons and lifejackets
in the rage of the line,
the ripple of the moment
when everything goes on through
and into each other.
Writing is our shrine to live by,
to learn from, to shine for.
In the spring reading Ripley's colored
Believe books, I thought of Wonderland
and hookahs, of the ways things go through
each other to the other side of things.
An eloquent vanishing.
Not just any bell book and candle,
But Kim Novak effervescent on Powell Street
Elizabeth Taylor shining gold
Near where the water was,
near where the mysteries lay uncovered.
Where the swami speaks of transformation
and solid things shiver
Bigger
…is a writer born in Berkeley who has been socially aware all her life. Years in Franco’s Spain only taught her more about group action and collaboration. Professor of American and teaching World literatures teach her how to live and love. Intensity is her middle name.
When I asked, how’re you doing,
“Good,” you smiled.
I could always make you laugh, right?
My artist-buddy who loved horses;
the face I never looked beyond.
Stay awhile, Jo
I haven’t learned to miss you yet.
Today,
I wish for a lift,
a little cheer,
such tiny wishes—selfish wishes.
In all those sweet or bitter days,
your hope was there.
Tonight, I’ll think about you.
Tomorrow, I’ll think about horses.
In Memory of Joanne Benedict, Artist
Between, and Fog
Tied to a fender of boulders,
I sit, here within a cloud,
not even hoping to rise.
In this cove
where threads of waves on milk glass sea
tempt gulls bobbing beyond the dune grass.
I cast my thoughts through thinning fog
beached with no place safe to rest
like that red dinghy—PUFF
This Wasn’t the Plan
here, the body continues
but the mind closes the door for good
to a room we can no longer enter
where everyone wears a similar mask
like vintage furniture with faces,
that follow old ruts worn in place
we visit now perhaps only for ourselves
C, still a teacher without students
scratches in a plan book without days
forming a presentation to be given yesterday
to an audience, sleeping, slouching, staring
C. wonders where she is
and we who visit,
drive away guilty and forgotten
Poet/professional storyteller/educator Judy DeCroce, and poet/abstract expressionist artist Antoni Ooto are based in Upstate New York.
Married and sharing a love of poetry, they spend their mornings studying established poets, as well as, work on revising, critiquing, editing and through reading aloud, balance the meter of their pieces.
Judy DeCroce and Antoni Ooto have been published globally in print, online, and anthologies.
I like the smells
and our body
juices mixing
anointing us
for springtime
Final Mercies
The Watcher at the gate
bares her breast
to suckle the corpse:
we do not kiss the dead
there is too much
intimacy
in death, and
the lines in our faces
betray us
originally published in ARC 26 by the IAWE
Here it is Spring Again
I’ve written too many poems
in your name
to tell of love dying
as the earth renews itself,
to wear as a badge
a dried crow’s claw
at my breast
…holds a BA in Philosophy from the USA and a Masters in English and Poetry fromBar-Ilan University. His poems have been seen in journals, e-zines and art exhibitions where they increasingly are integral to his paintings. In 2002 I instituted Poetry from Bar-Ilan a program for Bar-Ilan’s poets to read their works in public venues, and produced the annual program for 8 years. His integrated poetry and paintings, along with other artworks can be viewed at the website link below.
…is a well-known poet from Ferizaj, Kosovo writing in his mother-tongue, Albanian. He was born in 9 March 1968 in Pristina. He is the former manager and leader of “De Rada,” a literary association, from 2012 until 2018, and also the representative of Kosovo to the 100 TPC organization. In addition to poems, he also writes short stories, essays, literary reviews, traveltales, etc. Faruk Buzhala is an organizer and manager of many events in Ferizaj. His poems have been translated to English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Croatian and Chinese, and are published in anthologies in the USA, Italy, Mexico, Albania, China, etc.
The Jewish Festival, Purim, occurs March 16–17 this year, 2022 (17–18 in Jerusalem). This BeAttitude, from The BeZine, March 2017, is a part midrash and part Purim shpiel, with a bit of exegesis after the poem. If you don’t know what midrash is, see Deborah Wilfond’s Midrash following in this issue for a description and example of modern midrash. A Purim shpiel is a drama-carnival done for the holiday, usually humorous, often satirical, related to The Book of Esther.
Purim Fibonacci
Purim—
that carnivalesque
masquerade Persian New Year
of the Jewish Calendar rests
Carved wood mask Nacius Joseph (b. 1939) Haitian Sculptor
in the arms of Mardi Gras, an upside down play of masked and unmasked images dancing
at the party while Purim shpielstages a drama: unfolding
parody, satire, commentary—
the whole Megillah. And
who puts on an Esther mask
on the way to the
Beverly Hills Purim Ball, but Hadassah
herself, on her annual pilgrimage
to the festivities of inversions.
Nu, who do you think inspired
the Rabbis to write in the Gemara
that Jews should get so wasted
that they cannot distinguish
…
between "Blessed" Haman and
"Cursed" Mordechai, if not Vashti?
Vashti, who released herself
from the lustful gaze
of her husband's court,
now wears the death mask of that
same Ahashuerus who banished
his Queen to her freedom.
The Tel Aviv Opera Purim Ball
rejoices in the refractions
of self and story—politics
of the beauty contest
Wood mask Artist unknown
for the virgin, check or mate.
Revelers cheer an Uncle arrogantly
dressed in mourner's cloth
who entered her in competition,
then stripped her of her mask
to save their people,
while letting his people massacre
others—another masquerade.
…
And in Tel Aviv and Beverly Hills,
the masked dancers
drink up the casts
and no longer recall
the difference
between good and good,
mask and masque—
so many layers
of truths, peeled
one after another,
as the frenzied forgetting
tears off masks over masks,
layered like ancient rubble
under old cities and their tels,
like history and politics,
like geology and religion,
until what lies beneath
and beneath again
barely glimmers
in the eyes
…
of the masquerade.
And Hadassah laughs,
dancing freely with Vashti,
two lovers at last
hidden and unhidden
at Tel Aviv and Beverly Hills
Balls—globes of pleasure
circling the world
in three complete lines
forming seventy-two
masks, each one
a part of the whole.
The poet dons the mask of commentator, but the poem always wears at least one mask in the presence of the poet, so beware. And, if the poem reveals (a) different mask(s) to you, dear reader, please explore. The poet does not trust that any poem reveals all of its masks at any one time, especially to the poet.
The Jewish holiday of Purim celebrates the tale told in The Book of Esther, a story that, remarkably, does not once mention G-d. Set in Persia, which rules over the Jews at the time, The Scroll of Esther (or Megillah) layers many levels of deceit and masquerade, and the tale turns on itself in many ways.
Book of Esther
The King of Persia, Ahashuerus, banishes his Queen, Vashti, when she refuses to dance in front of his guests. Mordechai urges his niece to enter the beauty contest held to replace the queen, but to hide that she is Jewish (and probably not eligible to be queen of Persia). So she uses her non-Jewish name, Esther, instead of her Jewish name, Hadassah, wins, and becomes Queen Esther.
Meanwhile, Haman, the viceroy to the King, hates Jews and especially Mordechai, who refused to bow before Haman, and who is in the story honored for revealing (through now Queen Esther) a plot against the king. Haman has to lead him through the streets on a horse, Mordechai dressed as a king, Haman’s own idea of how to be honored—which he is asked to tell the king at a party, perhaps a masque (Haman thinks it’s for himself that the King wants to know how to honor a person).
Haman, whose orders are like the King’s own (another mask), plots the hanging of Mordechai and the genocide of the Jews. While the rest of the city celebrates an occasion of state (the defeat of Jerusalem), Mordechai dresses in mourning because of Haman’s plot against his people. However, this is an act of treason during the celebration. He thus shames Esther into unmasking herself to Ahashuerus, who reverses Haman’s murderous order when he learns his wife is a Jew.
Purim mask
Jews celebrate Purim as a day of deliverance from death (and genocide). However, the rescinding of the order came too late to the walled cities, which had to fight to defend themselves (under dispensation of the king). So, the celebration of Purim as a holiday is one day later for the cities that were walled cities at the time of the story (including Jerusalem and Tiberias—this is called Shoshan Purim).The scroll ends with the recounting of Haman’s hanging and the killing of his kin, the death tolls from the battles at the walled cities, an unmasking, perhaps, of another form of genocide—in the name of defense.
The Poem
The date of the holiday itself loosely coincides with Carnival (Mardi Gras) and the Persian New Year. Jews celebrate with Purimshpiel (Yiddish for Purim stories, usually in the form of plays—traditionally, parodies and satires on current events using the story of Esther) and by donning costumes and masks, holding parties (balls), and getting drunk. Yes, the Gemara says that Jews should get drunk enough that they no longer know the difference between Haman and Mordechai, respectively, the male villain and hero of the story of Esther. Perhaps it is to make up for Eden and the whole Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil thing. This poem could be read as a sort of Purimshpiel variation.
The donning of masks allows us to hide who we are, but masks also reveal who we are, or an aspect of who we are that is usually hidden. Carnivalesque masquerade allows us to try on aspects of ourselves or display those energies that we normally repress or hide (perhaps in a closet somewhere, with the costume). Drunkenness allows forgetting, but also disinhibition and release. Perhaps we learn of the capacity of good and evil within ourselves, as well as about those other parts of ourselves that would otherwise be “masked” by everyday existence.
So, the poem has Hadassah, the Jewish girl, wearing the mask of her alter ego from the story, Queen Esther. Yet perhaps this is an aspect of her all along? Perhaps we all have hidden “royal” qualities? Esther replaced Vashti, who was banished by King Ahashuerus for refusing to dance (naked) before him and the court. And Queen Vashti, in the poem, wears the mask of the king. He banished her from the court, but to where? Did she stand up for her own self-respect by refusing to succumb to what, centuries later, a feminist film critic would identify as scopophilia, or the male gaze? Was her banishment a freedom? How does gender play through this story, that seems to focus on men, but relies on a woman at its center, perhaps two women, if we look more closely at Vashti?
The poem suggests in its own center that masks unveil as we peel them, but also there is the hint that they reveal at each layer (like the layers of rubble beneath old cities that mound into tels, which hint at the history of the eras of the city; and like the layers of both geology and religion, which are ancient with something hot and molten at the core, like our own psychological being). This move to the psychological enters the mystical, with the masked women, who appear to be King Ahashuerus and Queen Esther now that they wear their masks, dancing together (yet at separate balls, one in Beverly Hills, its own masquerade and center of Hollywood glitz and glamor, and the other in Tel Aviv, the “new city” of EretzIsrael). This is like the Malkhut and Shekhina, or Shabbat (King, or male aspect of G-d) and Bride ( Queen, or feminine aspect of G-d).
Arithmetic or is it geometry?
And then comes the poem’s mysterious end, which references Exodus 14:19-21 the three lines of Torah that, with 72 Hebrew letters each, Kabbalists believe can be permuted into the 72 Names of G-d. The poem suggests that these Names are both masked and masks (that hide or reveal?)—their hiddenness echoes the hiddenness of G-d in the text of Esther, and the ineffability of divinity in all of its guises.
Purim mask
The stanzas follow a sequence of line numbers each, counting the first line of three dots (which wears the mask of the title). The pattern goes (before the title, think of 0): 0 lines (an extra line break marked with … before the sections that follow after the first one), 1 line, 1 line, 2 lines, 3 lines, 5 lines, 8 lines. This pattern repeats three times (for a total of 60 lines), then goes 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, for a total of 72 lines, like that number of Hidden Names.
The sequence of numbers used (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8) is the first part of an infinite series, known as the Fibonacci sequence, that has many interesting relationships in math and nature, including the pattern of sunflower seeds in their flower, unfurling fern heads, and, significant to Jewish mystical allusions, the branching of trees.
The Hebrew word for life, chai, has the numerical value of 18. Twice chai, or double life, is 36. Double that, and…72. That the number of lines in the poem equals 72 probably doesn’t mean much more than that our lives are not singular, but layered with intersections of meanings.
Purim and the Masks We Wear by Ari Kahn— a commentary that, while coming from a very different perspective, has some interesting background from traditional Midrash.
Author’s Note: One of the oldest anthologies of world literature, the Hebrew Bible reflects the human search for meaning in an uncertain world. Themes such as the struggle to understand our mortality, our social responsibilities towards each other, and how we cope with trauma, infuse these mythic narratives.
Many readers are familiar with the character of Aaron, the brother of Moses. Few are acquainted with the story of his wife, Elisheva, who is only mentioned once in the Hebrew Bible. The story below is a modern example of a literary genre known as midrash, an imaginative elaboration of the original scriptural text. This midrash deals with an episode in the life of Aaron’s family when he assumes a new position of leadership on behalf of the people as the High Priest. The story takes place in the desert, after the people have fled from Egypt, received the Torah, and constructed the portable sanctuary. It is written from Elisheva’s point of view.
Tzav (Command)
Stepping inside the courtyard of the holy place, the curtain flap open in the wind affording a brief glimpse of bronze and golden objects twinkling inside the tent, little lights flickering in the gloom. The brush scrapes the ground as I sweep up the accumulated ashes into a heap and stoke the dying embers, their carnelian glow once more flaring into life.
This coming back, this returning to the refuge of my skin, my hair, my lungs, my heart, my limbs, and my joints. Sensations arise in the space within the sanctuary’s bounds, my breath comes and goes, my body settles in as a part of the sanctuary’s covers, beams, poles and sockets—all part of this sacred, intricate design. During our spinning and sewing and forging and hammering, I had got up to tiptoe around, gazing in wonder at the fine linens of the tapestries and special garments, the smooth contours of the tent structure with its furniture inside and the radiant golds, blues, purples, reds of these creations which seemed to be springing from some other place.
My husband has been chosen to stand at the entrance where life meets death. After all our upheavals: the plagues and portents, the running in terror with just the clothes on our backs, across the sea, desert, mountain, the crossing, surviving, climbing. I suddenly aged, deep lines dug ditches around my mouth and eyes, my hair thin wisps of silver down my back. Heat blazing, heartbeat sprinting, joints creaking and then a blanket of fatigue overtook my bones. I ran out of patience. All these years I have channeled my energy into looking after our children, providing nourishment. And I helped with the birthing of hundreds of babies, looking after the other women of the camp, and reaching for them in turn for support.
Despite everything, Egypt beckons to me in my dreams. The ravaging furnace burning down on us, the shuffling dust of the alleyways and the wooden table where we ate and sang together in secret. They still travel with me. I hear the echoing voices of my parents, the jovial chuckle of my father at some tiny delight, a child showing a magic trick.
In this new desert land of our becoming, our grandchildren are starting to forget the language of our oppressors. Soon the camp and our own ancient language will be all they remember.
Yet in the freedom of the camp, I have become heavy with sadness. Two of our four grown sons have grown distant. Recently Nadav and Avihu began to remove themselves from the camp, offering sacrifices many times a day. They spend hours discussing minutiae of legal precepts with each other. They no longer sit with me, and they don’t want lovers or families of their own. They would rather be shut away discussing the vessels of the sanctuary. I feel a creeping dread as something stirs within my entrails. I wake often in the early hours.
Where is Aaron, my husband?
There was a terrible incident. He fashioned a golden calf when Moses was gone too long on the mountain. Afterwards our people carried out a mass slaughter. The loss of life, the blood, the agony was unbearable.
We rarely speak of it but when we do, Aaron looks away.
“Why did you do it?”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“The people’s distress and fear.”
“Why were they distressed and afraid?”
“The terrifying silence, the emptiness, the feeling of abandonment. Moses was gone so long, and they needed reminding of the essence of things, the candle within. They needed comforting.”
“So, you tried to comfort them?”
“Yes. I thought the golden calf would lift their spirits, create some holiness. I hoped it would remind the men to be like your nephew, Betzalel, our great architect, who channels divine inspiration into his art. The men would also remember they are made in the image of the divine and would return to the work of our holy community, dedicating themselves to the Great Mystery. So, I tried to fill them up with confidence and good feelings, the food and song of celebration. But it turned out wrong. The filling up was a mistake. I tried to do the work of creation for them. This gift, something separate and apart, was a solid object of cold, dead metal which had no room for holiness inside it. Now thousands of people are dead and it’s all my fault.”
Outrage. We couldn’t hear anything in the cacophony of crying. Deafness descended and panic set in once again, reminding us of Egypt.
Aaron told me he will always love me but now the air where once there was a singing robin is void of our voices. We have created a masterpiece of muteness, Aaron and I, a duet of noise and silence.
Aaron has to atone and then perhaps we can start anew. He and all our sons have to repent, to stay in the confines of the sanctuary for seven days in quiet solitude. Seven days of returning. Returning to the space within. They are encouraged to dwell inside and tend to the sanctuary with intention renewed, planting seeds for our future.
And after they left for the sanctuary, the rest of the camp has been full of busy activity, people rushing about getting things ready for the consecration of the priests. A jumble of jars of flour and oil and the bellowing of bulls, shrieks of lambs, jostling in pens outside the precinct.
Aaron left and I was alone. Silence entered our tent. I regretted not going to stay with one of our daughters-in-law and the grandchildren. I watched the migrating birds flying away, the pepper specks disappearing until the vault was empty.
They’ve been gone seven days already. Last night the sun chose its room and prepared to retreat into bed for the night. Dusk settled and I was open to all of evening, sleep overcoming my eyes, indigo.
Then suddenly in fright, it came to the fore. Tranquility no longer, no more. The darkness descending, the plummeting chain. I awoke there on the floor mat of my tent, heart pounding.
I had dreamed of grabbing and grasping, many people around me desperate, needing to be filled, imbibing until drunk and vomiting. And the earth, enraged, had swallowed us up and spat us out. And all the while the messengers, the angels danced at the gates of the garden, hot and sweating, with their swiveling swords.
We had fled, down valleys and across streams, where beasts live beyond park and pale, amongst the craggy rocks, lurking treacherously behind desert brush. There in a cave were souls curled up on the ground, slumbering, awaiting their turn like scorched seeds waiting for the rains to come.
And as the dream continued, only half alive, my veins constricting and my breath rattling in half a lung, I heard something. A small voice in the night crying for my attention, a new mother in labour. So I fled faraway to the other side, beyond where the horizon meets the edges of the earth to the outskirts of where women’s memory resides.
While my sisters and daughters talked of rupture and absence, our bodies were joined to our mothers’ bodies and those of our grandmothers. And the stories we told, our tears somehow became forgotten in the pain of childbirth. They rise up sometimes in other dreams, struggling to be heard and seen above the comings and goings, the babies’ cries and the pots and pans. They drop back down underneath the embroidered covers, burrowing.
Now so suddenly and brutally awake, shaking off the sticky cobwebs of dreams, I get up and go outside to a wide-open night sky and a bony moon. The walk is lonely, past thorny bushes black at this time of night, then the sandy earth beneath bare feet. Coming down an undulating slope, there is the glow from the sanctuary.
Someone is looking out, returning my gaze, a movement and a glimmer. Between the flaps of the awnings a presence lingers, peering from her bedroom out into the night. Her eyes open wider, and I see the two onyx stones. And a wind blows through the courtyard of the sanctuary, the curtains momentarily sway, and I see a swell within her, she is with child. New life within her shifts its tiny limbs. There is another ripple of wind, and the linen fabric of the enclosure settles once more under the restful dreaming moon.
The sky is going grey. Aaron and our sons bide their time in the sanctuary precinct, reminding me of my monthly time in the women’s tent. Outside the camp for seven days, bleeding out the beasts of sacrifice, they too are humbled. Seven days finished, echoing the seven of fullness, like the promise of a pregnant belly.
So as not to wake anyone, I tiptoe around the courtyard, peeking behind the drapes. There they are, all tucked up in their blankets, my husband, my grown boys. Calm, harmonious rhythms of breathing in, breathing out. Such love for that smooth, bald head, those lines around his crinkled eyes, all those whispering sighs. Here is the abundance of roots deepening down and branches reaching up, sap rising from my tending and protecting.
Turning and looking around, here again is the wondrous architecture of the sanctuary and I wonder about the placement of furniture in this impermanent home.
So too I wonder about the hidden secret place, and I start to wander, to look for it. Ever so quietly, smelling the sweet frankincense and myrrh, I run my hands over the smooth gold of the candelabra.
Then I see it. The inner curtain. I peek round it and see gazing winged angels, their eyes beholding each other with tenderness and passion.
Suddenly I am transported back to Egypt. I am in my mother’s clay brick house, but she is not there. I touch her robes hanging up to dry, and, parting them, I find something behind that I have never seen before. A golden door is set in the wall. I open it and an underground tunnel leads me all the way along its twists and turns to a cave with a warm, round, bubbling brook at its centre.
I blink, and once again find myself in the sanctuary, touching the inner curtain. The first threads of sunlight appear on the rosy strips of tapestry and light up the acacia and bronze. I hurry out, quietly, quietly, back to the courtyard and look up at the full array of colors filling the firmament.
I need to get home to the camp, to prepare celebratory cakes and return later for the festive occasion. Soon we will be a family of priests, chosen to serve in the sanctuary and there will be rejoicing and feasting.
Slipping towards the camp now, long nightdress damp and dirtied underfoot, needing a wash. Plans formulate, the mind steadies for lists and busy-ness once more. The daughters-in-law will arrive soon with the children. Cleaning, clearing, chopping, baking, feeding, holding, caring.
Before I reach the top of the hill, he calls my name: “Elisheva!”
My name, yes, my name! Elisheva. It means my God’s oath, or my God is seven.
I look back towards the sanctuary.
Aaron is by the entrance, smiling: “Seven days are complete, my love, my bride. I’m about to take my oath of service and we will be reunited again.”
Here he is at the entrance to the sanctuary, waiting for the Divine Indwelling to call to us, to meet us.
And a still, small Voice can now be heard, barely audible above the desert wind.
“How will I see you?”
“We’ve been searching foreign lands our whole lives for signs and wonders.”
And the Voice asks: “How will I hear you?”
“We couldn’t hear each other. We couldn’t hear above the cries of our people enslaved next to the mighty river. We had been deaf, under water.”
And the Voice asks: “How will I touch you?”
“Our skin was like the scales of a fish, floating dead in the Nile.”
And then the Voice tells us: “I’m waiting for you to be more intimate with Me. Return and listen, feel my pulse, sing prayers in my holy space, pour out your heart, wait for me.”
As the blue brightens and the air is turning, lifting me into the morning, I see the bull. Once a calf, now transformed and grown, destined for sanctification on the altar, a transformation into smoke and suet. They will pour out its blood. What a sacrifice, this perfect life to be taken, this valuable possession, so that we may live.
And I turn away from the pungent smell of burning animal brought on the wind. Aaron’s shame disappearing in smoke. The bull diminishing, my heart heavy for the breaking of life but now remembering our wedding; how I had looked at the smashed glass and became conscious of our flaws, the messes we make. Each created thing has its place and time.
Now the bull’s life-force is being released, the germinating seed is cracking open, roots traveling inwards and burying down, down, down and sprouts stretching upwards. My grandchildren come and they cling to me and together we see Aaron re-emerging.
The preparations are finished, the washing, the anointing and here he is, here he is, here is Aaron coming out in his glorious vestments. The excited whispers of the crowd grow as we look on.
A butterfly emerges from its chrysalis.
And I am a part of it, too, I am there, a part of two, the other ear, thumb and toe anointed in oil.
And I am a part of my sons, too. They emerged from my womb.
My heart listens for the footsteps, the life of the fire dances within and without, awaiting; the back of my neck, the insides of my wrists, my thighs, my palms, my nose, my lips anticipate your taste.
We sing together inside our sanctuary.
Inside you will see and hear and touch, in here, we’ll find part and parcel of Us, you and me, and me and you and this vanishing view.
The scarlets, blues, purples of this garden, these embroidered robes, the golden sunlight engraved on the head-dress, the gemstones, the flowers glittering and glorious and dazzling. The bells and the pomegranates and the vegetation quiver and breathe their aliveness.
You emerge and, my love, I emerge, and the butterfly, my love and I can feel it in our bodies and we can fly.
And the garden sanctuary beckons, its warm earth, delicate rains, vast expanse of air, sun, almond blossoms, and the nothingness and the everything within.
…grew up in London and earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Edinburgh University in Scotland. After completing legal training at the University of Law, she worked in family law in London for a few years. During this time, Deborah went to Jerusalem on a ten-day trip where she met and fell in love with her husband, who happens to be a Rabbi. They got married and Deborah moved to Jerusalem. There she worked as a yoga and mindfulness teacher while mothering their three rambunctious children. Since 2020, Deborah has been living in New York. She is currently teaching mindfulness and pursuing graduate Jewish Studies with Spertus Institute.
O How
I love the wind …
it makes the windmill turn
but never burns the petrified
it could still grind the corn to make our bread
then turn again, renewing us, enabling change.
and why
I love the wind …
it brings the clouds to rain
drawn fresh from oceans great and small
to wash us clean, refresh the air we breathe
renew the spirit and lubricate the wheel of life.
and when
I love the wind …
it blows the clouds away
reveals the blue, the great beyond
and opens curtains to the solar light
from sun that feeds the green of photosynthesis.
The Earth has a memory
Dawn fog lays low
where rivers once flowed
now forced underground
by the city growing
over centuries
The Earth has her secrets
Long-disappeared species
emerge from scarred forests
scarred landscapes
Fernandina giant tortoise, Wallace’s
giant bee, Formosa clouded leopard …
This Earth lives
Bands of rose ripple
across the deep blue water
As I lift my arms above
the golden sun reflects off
the droplets
The gentle waves bathe my Spirit
soothing her
carrying away all the fatigue
all the sorrows
I sink into the sea’s warmth
floating on its salty breadth
watching the now-orange sun
sink deeper behind the hills
Its colors spread wide
across the broken clouds
like an opal
I turn over & over in this iridescent water
just to feel my muscles move
to feel their pull with each stroke
just to know that
I’m still, I am still
alive
Earthly Lamentations…& Healing
Who will…
Why?!?
Who will answer?
WHEN??
Why?
Why?
Amid lies and denials
the earth is dying
A million deaths per minute
of all our relations
When will Homo sapiens species-centralism end?
When will the pain end?
~ ~ ~
I hear shouts in the night
echoing down deserted streets
echoing through the valley,
down its slopes
Sirens wail and beep
announcing— as if— the end
of this world… the urgency
Sometimes I believe
(I wish)
it would be best
if the end just come
to wipe out this
human plague
~
I hear the wind ripping
at tin rooves
as if to lay bare
the lives of humankind
to lay bare their
denials and deceits
When will it all stop?
Why can’t humans just
STOP
what they are mindlessly
doing… become mindful
of this planet… of all other
being here— live
and not dominate
Life will go on…
Perhaps not what
we have known…
But it shall go on…
Mother shall heal—
she needs to be cleansed
of the human plague…
~ ~ ~
Then the long, slow, peaceful process of healing shall begin…
~ ~ ~
Then the long, slow, peaceful process of healing shall begin…
…is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 300 journals on six continents; and 20 collections of poetry – including On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019), Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022) and Fire and Rain (Red Mare #18, 2019), a collection of eco-feminist poetry. She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.
In the sun we were riding
In the sun where the green
grass was yellow bending
in such consummate purity California
you were a paradise
spinning open freedom. Inviting us in.
We lived in wood, touching trees
Wind-chimes and abacus.
We ate food we made our own.
Inside flutes and recorders
Oboes and harpsichords in a cool plush of sound.
We ate chicory and wild violets like paintings
It all grew slower, then, on that road.
Where we got a second wind
fables of the new earth and its people.
Making all this new energy together
And outside this silent plenty
A sheet of rich yellow
A violin and a soprano
Singing of freedom
…is a writer born in Berkeley who has been socially aware all her life. Years in Franco’s Spain only taught her more about group action and collaboration. Professor of American and teaching World literatures teach her how to live and love. Intensity is her middle name .
Unshadow the night
with the gold of the stars
restore silence
with words of light
don’t experience time as loss
or as passing by
but of every moment
the ephemeral glow.
…is an internationally known poet, translator, publisher and promoter of modern international poetry. He writes short stories and literary reviews, but mainly poetry, so far 14 poetry books, published in 19 countries. As founder of the Belgian publishing house POINT Editions he published more than eighty collections of mainly modern, international poetry, he organised and co-organised several international poetry festivals in Spain. He is vice president of the Academy Mihai Eminescu, in Romania, and organizer of the Mihai Eminescu Internaional Poetry Festival. He also set up the internationally greatly appreciated project Poetry without Borders, publishing every week a poem from all over the world in 33 languages.
I keep cats away from the catbirds, and commercial chemicals away
from my columbine. I cherish my native sedge grass,
my cardinals and cardinal flowers, my maidenhair ferns.
I leave all the leaf litter under the boxelder maple,
because, really, are the leaves mine to move?
Whose planet is this anyway?
I let the acorns fall all around under the oak,
and I reap the reward of squirrel antics.
When I trim a bush grown too near my house,
I consign the clipped branches to expand
my backyard stick pile, where somebody—a possum, I suspect—
fashioned a fine den at the bottom.
I don’t peer in with a flashlight. And I don’t harass my caterpillars—
because if I kill them, I’ll be killing
baby chickadees. Squishy, gooey caterpillars are —
chickadee baby food! On summer evenings, I celebrate
shiny beetles and pollen-pushing bumblebees,
and once I spied a brilliant orange newt.
We city humans “oooh” and “aaah” over colors and acrobatics
at galleries and concerts and half-time shows,
and the décor at cute eateries, but Nature
is the best painter, the most crazy-creative entertainer,
if you let it all alone, and discover how to listen,
and look. The wilder I let my little yard remain,
just letting plants and insects and birds and mammals
who belong here
have space to do their thing here,
live their lives here, right here in my yard, here—
the wilder I find my joy, musing on this multiplex, this Noah’s ark
of crawling, flying, ambling, yowling, nibbling,
thriving creatures in my humble,
natural little yard, my little piece of Eden,
my own, homegrown, national park.
Too many poems
There are too many poems about nature,
they say,
but it’s human nature to say that.
What does Nature say?
Nature converses in kaleidoscopes
of fall leaves pirouetting;
in tranquil ponds whose cattails stretch
to paint the sky;
in embroidered lacey snowflakes;
in epic poems of warbling wrens.
Her secret message everywhere
is that there are too many poems
about humans.
And too many critics.
Nature votes for more crickets.
…is an anthropologist of immigration, race relations, and agriculture. She has published three books, plus poems at BourgeonOnline.com, the blog of Prospectus magazine, PonderSavant.com, the CAW Anthology, Pif Magazine, Central Texas Writers and Beyond 2021, The Dope Fiend Daily, Open Door Magazine, and Valiant Scribe. Poems are forthcoming in Psychological Perspectives, the Canary Literary Magazine, and Words for the Earth of the Red Penguin Press.
What if
butterflies die,
no babies cry,
birds don’t fly.
What if
rains don’t fall,
cats don’t call,
no sound at all.
What if
trees don’t grow,
it doesn’t snow,
cars don’t go.
What if
GOD is not there
to hear our prayer
and doesn’t care.
What if
GOD retires
and the World expires?
“Watercolors from Zimbabwe” Copyright Georgi Tarziev
Amplexus*
What was it that led them
thus – round mounds of green
like tiny hills, beasts with
two backs. I envision them,
smooth bodies slick with wet,
the male clinging to her
smaller frame. Above,
the moon unfurling rivulets of light
their shadows cast along the way,
twines and twangs, huddled in
a soldier’s march.
I stop and wonder,
a witness above the pond.
They’re gone now, only clouds
of pearls beneath the surface:
life, translucent eggs. We are barren,
no part of us to be left behind -
we hold on to each other anyway,
time against flesh, its universal.
But here, those spawns will emerge
despite remorse or love.
Cyclical. Persistent. We fade away.
*Amplexus is the mating embrace of frogs and toads
Children’s Community Garden, Arnona, Jerusalem (Pastel on brown paper grocery bag) @2022 Ester Karen Aida
Evidence of Survival
Grass sways gently
in the currents, lithe
and golden. In autumn
you slipped away:
indentions left on flesh,
phantom pains, in place of hugs,
maybe we expected this to happen.
The anger, your restlessness
turning up. It’s uncertain
how we’ll grow, difficult to imagine
the people we’ll become. Now that
we’ve been uprooted, what will be
the best environment? Above the surface,
tender shoots capture precipitation,
suggesting sustainability, evidence
that we have the ability,
to absorb more than we imagined.
“Image” Copyright Miroslava Panayotova
Big Game
Predators
in the city
laid tame by
the country.
Early evening shadows
reveal our stripes
created
by bent blinds.
Every corner of
our corporeal landscape
explored,
left hungry by
childlessness.
Instead, we continually
birth our faith,
in love.
Mating season returns—
we’re fully aware
roaming two-by-two
we’ve become
endangered
winter approaches
and we’ll become
extinct.
Too beguiled to budge
and find another,
our bodies create
a different beast—
we brave our future
side-by-side
and wallow in our lonely
pride.
I live stretched too full within my skin
Scarred by stretch marks from access to abundant plenty,
A walking sausage, over full and under moved. ;
I live stuffed in a house full of memories and clutter.
But it’s the paper! I’m drowning in paper!
Every day a new dead tree tattooed with cries of Buy Me Now Or You’ll Be Sorry!
Can I clip enough consumerism out to make a difference?
Can I paste enough of hope back in to learn to be free?
Can I sustain myself while I aim to sustain so much more of our world?
Through a crumbling archway, down
broken steps, I find my secret garden,
reclaimed by nature and transformed into
an urban jungle.
I don’t risk the path which leads to the house,
empty windows, a collapsed swing, green
with ivy, a doll’s head, empty eye sockets,
poking out of the rubble.
I sit instead, safe, I think, on the fifth step
from the bottom to look at my rambling green
beauty, disrupted by patches of lilac and red.
Near the wall, scattered brambles, berries
for the birds.
I see decaying logs, luxury living space for woodlice
and beetles which burrow deep to escape the restless
wren foraging with its long, fine bill. Hear its
high-pitched warble vibrate with power.
Tiny bird, big voice.
Is that a hiss that trails along braided, green
vines that creep along the ground, tangle
and interlace around stems which strain towards
the sun? Each wants to be the victor. Shelter,
food, moisture. Beasts, big, small and minute,
twist and twine, push and shove,
try to survive.
One day, the machines came, busy, loud and thrashing
to make room for (luxury) living space for some, who
board cars and trains to a different urban jungle
and need a place to rest their heads, as much as I,
as much as the creatures and plants
upon which I love to gaze.
And now, I miss my secret garden.
Bethany stands in the town square.
She knows she should not,
she is lonely,
but she feeds the pigeons crumbs
of stale bread.
A mass of soft grey, hints of mauve drop down,
a crescendo of cooing, panic flapping of wings.
Each bird wants to get a bigger share of the pie
into their beak.
There are too many of them, you say.
They eat everything, damage walls
with their droppings.
Produce young in the thousands.
But then, there are too many of us.
We eat everything, damage everything,
rivers, soils, forests.
Produce young in the millions.
Bethany, knows all this and yet,
she is lonely,
she would like grandchildren.
…originally a scientist in the water industry, Wales, now lives in Germany and is a deputy local councillor. Her writing considers the natural world but also darker themes of domestic violence and bullying. Doryn has poetry in eg. Fahmidan Journal, The Dirigible Balloon, CERASUS Magazine and Sledgehammer Literary Journal. She is a reviewer at Consilience science poetry journal.
My name is Tamam Tracy Moncur. I write for the sheer pleasure of writing, and have been doing so from the time I was a teenager. I’ve been a Civil Rights activist, taught elementary school for twenty-five years as well as worked with my husband Grachan Moncur III arranging musical compositions and performing poetry. Currently I am director of the House of Love Soup Kitchen/Pantry in Newark NJ.
I fell in love with the image of the black dog on a visit to Martha’s Vineyard last summer. Their black dog is living life off the leash…my black dog is running free through our democracy in search of sustainability. This is my poetry music video creation…certainly hope it is in the right format. It is on YouTube as well but YouTube has ads for other videos at the end of the presentation.
We sit mesmerized
As the fire builds, sparks
Ever hotter, we lean closer
Slide white marshmallow
Skewering ourselves
Turning tan to gold
Then black crisp
Goo pressed on graham
Cracked earth so brittle
Chocolate squares melt
Softening to flesh as we
Consume ourselves licking
Our lips as heat licks us
Devouring, rhapsodic
As a blood-red sunset
Where There Is Smoke
It probably began somewhere
Else with a flash and crack.
A spark struck, then smolder.
Smell it in the air, nostrils flare,
The throat tightens, lungs burn.
The scent of pine, fir, larch,
And juniper gin up the hearth,
But there is only scorched earth,
The forest fast becomes torch.
Smoke pudding settles heavy in
Bowls, hollows, ravines, and rims
Mimicking morning mists, veils
That will not lift until snow falls.
We cannot breathe easy, we hunker
Down, anxious, shut up in the house,
Worry about the kiln to come,
Ash glaze and twilight glow, urgent
Evacuation orders. Go! Get out! Now!
No time to inventory valuables or sins.
…splits his time between Montana and Arizona. His poems have appeared in various venues, including, most recently, Muddy River Poetry Review, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, Wilderness House Review, and Ibbetson Street. He was formerly Dean of Libraries at Montana State University.
The BeZine 