Crossing Edmund Pettus
Stay Close
Arm In Arm
Speak Free
Walk On
—Peter Coco
Seasons
Summer sings a love song
Autumn plays the cello—
mellow.
Winter’s bassoon
intones a dirge—
to purge.
Spring pierces the gloom
with solo
piccolo.
—Lyla Yastion
The heavy thing lifts
Suddenly,
in the garden,
a knowing.
It is time
to name the butterflies.
—Natalli Amato
Impression
In forgotten drawers
and stored away
boxes
her summer dresses lie
dreaming
of warm yellow
winds
tall sweet grasses
and the impression
her body leaves
on their soft
cotton
frames
—Ryan Brennan
Mannahatta Redux
Forgive me, O benevolent city, city of every want, whim, desire sated, city of genuine,
garrulous, gregarious, and gorgeous women and men, for I have betrayed you.
When the screaming sirens sped down Fifth to the tents in the East Meadow,
When the cavernous, quarrelous subways ached for passengers, when once beloved, brilliant
Broadway, now empty stages of grief, had ceased song and dance and touching our hearts,
I rode Amtrak along the mighty river,
Past the indigenous Poughkeepsies, beyond the alpine, Teutonic Rhinebeckians to Hudson.
New York, yes, but not.
And now, no more pigeons and seagulls and sparrows flirting and frolicking on the massive steps of the spanking new Moynihan Station, rather great birds of prey—hawks, vultures, peregrine falcons circle the sky then swoop down upon some unwitting creature.
No more the bountiful bodega or the aromatic elixir of warm and salty behemoth pretzels.
Nary a restaurant open past nine-thirty to dine in with a lover after an intimate assignation.
Still, living here is voluptuous. I am a sultan with a washer and dryer, (I gloat not, for decades I was laundrally deprived) a deck overlooking a field, cheap cabs, blue barns, Greig Farm, mountains
twin planters of orange mums the size of Patience and Fortitude.
I contradict myself?
Very well, I contradict myself.
I contain MetroCards.
My city, mea culpa.
I have sold my sorry soul for a cider donut.
—Lou Craft
Collection
The chapel in St. Patrick’s Cathedral was
where my young-adult psyche sought solace.
Our Savior Lutheran church I attended as a child
was sorely misnamed. St. Pat’s was my savior.
One gray afternoon, teary and convinced my world
was about to implode, I lit a candle and said a prayer.
I placed the slim, red-tipped wooden match I used to light the
candle into what I assumed was the box of sand to douse it.
As I turned to leave, I noticed smoke billowing from the
dark rectangular slot in the box.
I had set the collection box on fire and was actively
burning the Catholic Church’s dough.
A young priest with wavy brown hair that brushed his collar
came to my aid, and he was pissed. Really pissed.
Through a fresh bout of tears, I apologized over and over
as he deftly and patiently poured water into the thin slot.
The fire out, my rescuer walked away without a word and
disappeared into the vastness of the chapel.
I got the hell out of there
—Lori White
We would always say of her—
And always we’d be putting it mildly—
“She burns her candle at both ends.”
Indeed, my irreplaceable friend and I
Spent many a bacchanal side by side
Burning our candles at both ends;
And had her candle had
Three ends, or a thousand,
She’d have burned those, too,
And convinced me to follow along.
It was testament to a life force
That was more a force of nature
That she burned as long as she did—
Seventy-eight blazing years,
Her candle slowly diminishing
As its wick danced on and on.
But that force could become a firestorm:
A sudden conflagration that threatened
To engulf everything in its path,
The roar of Its flames nearly deafening.
And then it was run for your life,
Flee the inferno’s relentless assault;
And sometimes it would take a while
For that fire to finally exhaust itself.
But always in time the fire became mere embers,
The prodding and provoking cooled to probing,
The chafing transformed into charm
The challenge into curiosity;
And the sounds I’d hear then would be
Not the raging flames of late
I uneasily remembered,
But the rustling of our minds scurrying
Through a warren of rabbit holes,
The old familiar gales of laughter,
The gentle heartbeat of our intimacy.
An old man now,
I live along the sober and sobering
Stub of my own diminishing candle,
Its once-wild waxing coming to a close,
As it wanes toward its tapered end.
But as long as my candle yet burns,
So will hers,
Feeding oxygen
To the flickering flame of mine.
And I will be thankful.
Thankful for there having been
Such a light, such heat, in my life;
Thankful for having been
Both scorched and warmed by it;
Thankful for having had the chance
To be exasperated in endless ways
And enchanted in infinite ways
By the divine dance
Of her incandescent candle;
Thankful for the knowledge
That though this force itself
Has—somehow!—been snuffed,
There will always be a candle
Illuminating my narrowing path,
Burning close to my heart,
No doubt at both ends,
Whose name is Annette.
—Tom Cherwin
Sylvia Lerner
Arriving early at the Met to avoid the crowds
I stand in front of a golden crown
with bold designs of a mythical bird—
created twelve hundred years before Christ.
Plugged into my audio-guide, I’m in my own world.
A booming voice intrudes. A docent
leading a group of seniors pushes me aside.
What the fuck! I think and hold my ground.
Since I can no longer hear my audio-guide,
I remove the earphones to listen.
“This is a private tour!” an officious woman
wielding a menacing cane informs me,
as if my listening is inappropriate.
“Well, I’m a private person,” I tell her,
trying to tone down my Brooklyn-tough.
She looks familiar, can’t place her . . . then it comes to me—
Sylvia Lerner, the Homework Nazi.
“Sylvia Lerner,” I say—just thinking Homework Nazi.
“Who are you?”
I tell her my name, replace my earphones and move
to another part of the exhibit. She follows me
to let me know I can listen to the docent.
She was my son’s fifth grade teacher—
my second child, the homework refusenik—
now an adult.
On the first day of class when you find out
your child’s teacher, parents fly to the office
to change the assignment.
I was not a “curling” parent,
sweeping the ice to reduce friction—
but when I learned he had Sylvia Lerner,
I led the charge.
“She’s the perfect teacher for him,” I was told.
“No one refuses to do her homework!”
“But the long poems he’ll have to memorize!”
“Yes, he’ll know that he can do it.”
I remember him struggling to learn
“Sea Fever” by John Masefield:
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
And I learned that “blown spume” is the white spray
on the crest of a wave caused by the wind.
Blown spume I think every time I see it
and think of Sylvia Lerner, my son’s best teacher.
—Joanne Gates Fiore
What I Thought Was the Cliff
baby—
the ocean is over the dune
the beach is stone, not sand
i was hanging from the cliffside like it was your neck
fingertips sticky with sea salt
clutching the slope beneath your head
wanting to sink my lips into yours
until we came together,
a second time
i love you how i love myself
which is to say, i hate you
but not really
we’re always making these big messes,
and to survive within myself now
is to die in your direction
which is to say
yes—
everything has indeed multiplied
that means there are twice as many words to speak
waves to break,
delicate words,
and ways to die
this is all to say that yes,
of course,
what i thought was the cliff was not the cliff
what i thought was your neck
was not your neck
baby—
I’m so, so alive
—Ava Fishe
flint
together in my dreams
we set the world on fire.
alone in this moment—
barely a spark.
—Megan Konikowski
Recipe for a Perfect Spring Day
Briskly whisk a muddy meadow walk
with one bird sighting
and one glimpse of new clover.
Add a half bushel of certified organic sun beams.
Set aside.
Slowly mix memories of bulbs planted in the fall
with dreams of pastel blooms.
Season with joy.
Serve immediately.
—Barbara Sheffer
Calm With Age
I know you are not who you used to be,
But I do not yet know who you are now.
The geese crowd the yard leading down to the lake
and you make a joke that is not exactly funny,
but I laugh because you’re my father
and I want to believe that, these days, you’re good.
I’m not sure. I keep my distance
and stay away so I can’t see the bad parts of you.
They must be there, though.
It’s hard to accept that you have changed
because I resent that it came so late.
I want a time machine that brings me to 1997
so I can take you by the shoulders
and shake you, violently,
tell you, “it’s okay.
You won’t always be this way.
But be different now, please. Be different now.”
—M. J. Greener
This article appears in March 2024.
