Voice of Eve
ISSUE 14 - JUNE 15, 2019
Contents Anastasia K. Gates 4 Anum Sattar 12 CLS Ferguson 18 Colleen M. Farrelly 28 Emma Demopoulos 36 Erin Zerbe 42 Katacha Diaz 48 KJ Hannah Greenberg 52 Liz Pyman 62 Marie Auguste 68 Marietta Calvanico 72
Noreen Lace 80 Pamela Sumners 86 Sarah Mahina Calvello 94 Susandale 102
ART AND POETRY BY
ANASTASIA K. GATES
Mourning Cry
ANASTASIA K. GATES
To the men who’ve called woman high maintenance: how you dare, when woman maintained you into existence, died for you and because of you, cupped you in her uterus, her nipples, her neck and sip every drop of nectar from her petals as you rip her to early death. to all those slick men in suits who slander what it means to pour out from the inside until one is dry and severed, remember it is woman that maintained all men before you to life— in breath, in space, a place for your righteous tongues, your heavy shoes and bloody guns. before you strike the blunt end of your reign, smoked thick in his plastic voice —listen from under your killing feet the mourning cry of the mother who gave you this throat to hang yourself on.
Ophelia & Monet
ANASTASIA K. GATES
When you wander out and sit for hours on the very mirror where maidens named Ophelia destroyed life and where painters named Monet recreated it. to die: to live eternal in their tales of grave and womb, calling out below the lily
Honey Blood
ANASTASIA K. GATES
“w o m e n b l e e d t o w a k e. ” swooned the chant of her m o t h e r e v e r y m o o n— “for her blood wakes the planet.” men are fooled by the mirror of the moon, the dust of sleep—a flooded nightmare that drowns from the back of their necks. we are made of honey blood, of fire and sun, of magma and gold, who burn from ancient tombs of amber and light. we bleed to wake because life is ours.
Untitled
ANASTASIA K. GATES
She wants to sit upon a moon of her own, far beyond sight and knowing, and write her story. The whole glowing body of it. A raw conjuring of her inner truth, for no one to read but herself. She knows not where to begin, but here. She knows not when to begin, but now. She knows—it will be a time for getting lost within light, for finding her way through the thickets of dark. And slowly, pluck each ounce of life from the infinite sky of her skin, and weave it together into one. Until all the heat, the air, the seas, are born like gold beneath the earth. That begin to reach upward into the vastness like suns and grow, on its own. She knows, it will shake the planet in ceaseless thunder, and drink up what remains.
About Anastasia K. Gates
Anastasia K. Gates is an emerging poet, memoirist, and artist from Pennsy current student at Columbia University. Her work unearths the voice of glo quietude of the forest, the fire of the sun, and the infinite universe within. Follow her on Instagram: @anastasiakgates
ylvania. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu and Zambia and is a obal womanhood that wanders the natural landscape. She takes solace in the .
ANUM S
SATTAR
Chicken Broth
ANUM SATTAR
Awake on too much half sweetened and half unsweetened iced tea I pretend to be a wailing infant with no father to unfasten its wet diaper, because my polka dot, period blood stained Tory Burch bikini bottom carelessly lined with multiple thick always pads from Walmart irritates my inner thighs until the sensitive skin breaks out in blisters.
Must I get up before this menstrual mess leaks onto the thermal blanket, knot my sweat shirt just below my breasts and zip down my ripped jeans then rush off to pee into a porcelain bowl and leave a trail of urine when there is a recyclable McDonald’s cup to relieve myself?
, s
About Anum Sattar
Anum Sattar is a senior studying English at the College of Wooster in Ohio, (Margie,) Notre Dame Review, Porter Gulch Review, Willard & Maple, Meniscus Lullwater Review, North Dakota Quarterly, IDK Magazine, Door is a Jar, Ribbons working anthology, 50 Haikus, Stuck in the Library, Broadkill Review, Poetry Lif Mythic Circle, HOBART, SurVision Magazine, Literary Juice, Coal City Review, Cr Literary Journal, The Linnet’s Wings, Ragazine, Better than Starbucks!, The Flori Strange POEtry, Between These Shores Literary & Arts Annual, Conceit Magazine Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry, Wilderness House Literary Review, Poydras Review, Literary Journal, The Ibis Head Review, Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, Poets and third Vonna Hicks poetry awards at the college. She reads out her work in New York City, Cuyahoga Valley Art Center at Cuyahoga Falls, OH, Bridg Radio Free Brooklyn.
, USA. Her poems have been published in the American Journal of Poetry s Journal by Australian Association of Writing Programs, Indianapolis Review, s, South Florida Poetry Journal, Typehouse Literary Magazine, The Charles Cater: a fe and Times, Triggerfish Critical Review, Packingtown Review, Blithe Spirit, The rack the Spine, Lowestoft Chronicle, Taj Mahal Review, FIVE 2 ONE: An Art and ida Review, Grey Sparrow Press, Oddball Magazine, Artifact Nouveau, Off the Coast, e, A New Ulster, The Cannon’s Mouth, The Journal of Contemporary , The Cadaverine, Verbalart: A Global Journal Devoted to Poets & Poetry, The Wayne s Bridge, Deltona Howl, and Tipton Poetry Journal. She won the first Grace Prize k at Brooklyn Poets, Spoonbill and Sugartown Bookstore, Forest Hills Library gewater College in Shenandoah Valley, VA and was recently interviewed at
CLS FER
RGUSON
I Evaluated My Student Today
CLS FERGUSON
My former student He was a freshmen, then sophomore Then he transferred Got a Bachelor’s Then Master’s Now he’s teaching Teaching at the same institution where I taught him I evaluated him I watched him engage his students I learned from him This black man Who grew up poor Who wasn’t supposed to make it This gay black man Who had talent and drive But no privilege I evaluated him I watched him succeed I wondered whether I taught him all those years ago As much as he taught me And I did my best not to tear up in front of his students
Look at Me
CLS FERGUSON
Look at me. I’m the product of your suffering. Look at me. I’m the reason you stopped trying. Point your eyes in my direction. You created this. You created this. You created this. Look at me. Turn away. You never meant to make me suffer. Turn away. You’ll try again later. Look for someone who may be more helpful. Stuff it down. Stuff it down. Stuff it down. Look at me. Turn away.
Lessons I Didn’t Learn from My Mother
CLS FERGUSON
1. When you have athletes foot, be sure to apply your antifungal cream cream. The instructions on the antifungal cream box will inform you that your socks before your underwear as to not allow your foot fungus to brus will touch your crotch, possibly infecting you with jock itch. If you do not you run the risk of becoming your own worst sex partner by giving yours an STD without even getting off.
2. When getting piercings in the cartilage portion of your ears, pierce o month or two in between or learn to sleep on your back prior to having bo you pierce both sides at once and sleep on your side or stomach, your ears fire for at least a month and they will be red and swollen. You might worr infection that will lead to a Van Gogh moment.
3. When you start having cravings for cigarettes a decade or so after yo black coffee intake as you drive around with the driver side window down of wind passing by. That rush of caffeine coupled with the rush of air on enough like smoking for a moment or two that your memories of smokin through perhaps one more smoke free day.
4. When you finish your PhD before the rest of your cohorts, brag to y friends. Your friends don’t really care about your academic achievements either, but they probably do care about you achieving your goals. Not eve that interested in hearing about how many publications you have.
5. When you feel lonely even in the presence of people, resist your urg behavior, like the Vodka and razor blade evenings you engrossed yourself Instead, write about it. Write a lot. Then edit a lot. Then throw most of on taking this advice.
6. When you find your mind grinding on all of the mistakes you made shouldn’t have, everything you should have but didn’t do, go ahead and le bit. Entertain the possibility that the grass would be greener, if only. Im
m before your hemorrhoid t you should always put on sh against the fabric that t follow these instructions, self something that feels like
one side at a time with a oth sides pierced at once. If s will feel like they are on ry that you have caused an
ou quit smoking, up your n, fingers fondling the rush n your fingers will feel ng will suffice to get you
your family and not your s. Your family may not en your employer will be all
ge to engage in unhealthy f in during grad school. it out. Then keep working
e, everything you did but et your mind wander. For a magine what you would say to
younger you to avoid all your mistakes and regrets. Save those mental note machines are invented. Then go re-watch The Butterfly Effect and Donnie D you have learned to guide your future actions rather than continually trying
es for whenever time Darko. Use those lessons g to rewrite your past.
About CLS Ferguson
CLS Ferguson, PhD is a pushcart nominated writer with accolades in film, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes. She is author of two f and two chapbooks: The Way We Were and Tumbleweed: Against All Odds. Sh http://clsferguson.wix.com/clsferguson
academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, full-length collections: God Bless Paul and Soup Stories: A Reconstructed Memoir he is raising her daughter and dog in Alhambra, CA.
COLLEEN M
M. FARRELLY
Last Embers
COLLEEN M. FARRELLY
As I watch CNN’s coverage of the fire, I pull out my senior year art project, Gaston the Gargoyle, crafted in the gothic tradition of those guardian downspouts keeping watch over Le Marais—the Seine, Charlie Hebdo, Le Caruso and my favorite Minestrone, Dad’s apartment, and Josephine Vannier’s artisan chocolate sculptures that rival the Musee Rodin sculptures… Parisians shown on CNN line the Seine, their tears adding to the river surrounding Notre Dame de Paris. I glance back at my den’s bookshelves and think of the history lost when Alexandria’s library burned. the last ember flickering out— lost histories
Smile, the Beloved Village
COLLEEN M. FARRELLY
dawn breaking in the east, full moon setting to the west— mixing roots with wings Four men perched on a half-built stone wall catch my eye as I wind down the twisting dirt path leading past paved roads to Langa’s multifamily cinderblocks and Dr. Patel’s roadside surgery. Rather, Omarion’s “Ice Box” blaring from the boombox beside them catches my ear. “Molo, Mama. Unjani?” “Ndiphilile. Wena unjani?” “Nam ndiphilile. You like to buy some necklaces? Beads?” I smile. A blanket sprawled out below them bursts with all the flavors of Eziko’s chicken curry in the braai—deep reds and blues beaded over local gourds, greens mixed with yellows and blacks woven into blankets, and all the colors of the Guga S’thebe Arts District interlocking the bracelets. A necklace like the one I lost back in Orlando catches my eye. Today’s rounds will have to wait. weaver birds chirping as they build a new nest— bicultural
Legacy
COLLEEN M. FARRELLY
I’ve always struggled to articulate my beliefs with words, with flowery prose placed into some cogent creed. It’s complicated enough to fill a whole library, yet simple enough to sum up in one moment, one act etched into my memory. Gym shorts and a t-shirt. Scuffed soles squeaking on the court as the sun sleepily rises. We hesitate at the door. We are the reason he’s been suspended from the team; he’d only shown up to make sure no one died that night. If I were him, I’d be at the point of doing death’s job myself. I couldn’t duck fast enough to evade his glance, but, instead of a hurled basketball or street hockey slap shot, an extended hand— the sword and olive branch meet
Holiday Mail
COLLEEN M. FARRELLY
As a child, I would run to the mailbox, regardless of blizzard conditions, to retrieve the letters that were rarely addressed to me. Today, it’s crammed with coupons for venues I don’t frequent, a mortgage slip to be mailed by the 22nd, a clinic bill, more ads and coupons for products I don’t need… Behind the DMV’s tag renewal reminder, a high school reunion invitation for the week after Thanksgiving. shared headphones on the back of the team bus— unbroken wishbone
About Colleen M. Farrelly
Colleen M. Farrelly is a freelance writer living in Miami, FL, whose recent p cattails, #Femku, and Failed Haiku, among others. She’s currently writing a
publications include Frogpond, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, machine learning textbook focused on topology and geometry.
EMMA DEM
MOPOULOS
The Woman I Am
EMMA DEMOPOULOS
I am innocent I am pure I am good I change the empty sheets My fingers curling into fists, balling up in blankets for one Time opens in giant chasms; I feel it taking me in waves I scream, “Please, just take all of me.” Sad eyes for empty hands It wells up inside me, forcing its way to the surface Bursting its way through my ribs, ripping through my arms, my legs An ache that I’ll never be able to touch There’s no one, nothing He says nothing, I say nothing; He’ll never be real I am alone I am undone I am guarded I switch the song, shoving a different CD into the player I drown my feelings in the sound, in an empty car I clutch my chest, beating against my heart with my fists waiting for it to start again I whisper to myself, “Feel something…something other than this.” Sad expressions for empty arms I button another button on my shirt as I convince myself that what he said isn’t true I tumble over the edge I am hurt I am unlovable I am weak She takes me into her arms, squeezing my shaking shoulders tight
She holds my hand and refuses to let go She makes me repeat her words I am worthy I am good I am enough
About Emma Demopoulos
Emma Demopoulos is a writer, creator, and general enthusiast of all things graduated from Miami University with a degree in Creative Writing.
s odd or quirky. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her family and two cats. She
ERIN ZERBE
About Erin Zerbe
Erin Zerbe is an interdisciplinary artist working in illustration, digital art, and mixed media. Her work specializes in human emotions and relationships between the body and spirituality, tackling issues of the gender, grief, and the metaphysical. Zerbe has exhibited her work widely, along artists such as Yoko Ono, Shirin Neshat, and Sebastiao Salgado. Her exhibition record includes a variety of notable venues such as the Dublin Biennial; Cutting Edge exhibition in Florence, Italy; Gallery 175 in Seoul, South Korea; Biennale de Palermo; School 33 Art Center; and the (e)merge Art Fair DC. Zerbe received her BFA in Kinetic Imaging from VCU in 2006 and her MFA in Photographic and Electronic Media from MICA in 2011. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Marietta College, in Marietta, OH.
KATACH
HA DIAZ
Mindful Knitting
KATACHA DIAZ
Like many people, I have been consumed by politics, unrest, and distress throughout the world. I see daily reports on the telly, Internet and in print media. To survive life in these difficult times, I have learned to pad my core with music, gardening, river walks, and meditation. I find solace and strength in knitting words in prose and poetry, but also in knitting wool scarves for mariners working on international and inland waterway vessels. I find that now more than ever art and beauty helps to keep me on an even keel and stay healthy.
About Katacha Diaz
Katacha Díaz is a Peruvian American writer. Wanderlust and love of travel have taken her all over the world to gather material for her stories. Her prose and poetry have been published internationally in literary journals, print and online magazines, and anthologies. Her most recent credits are: Harvests of New Millennium, The Galway Review, Poppy Road Review, Taj Mahal Review, Westview, Barely South Review, Ethos Literary Journal, Poetry Pacific, Anak Sastra, The Pangolin Review, Visual Verse. She lives and writes in a quaint little historic town at the mouth of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest, USA.
ART BY KJ HANN
NAH GREENBERG
About KJ Hannah Greenberg
KJ Hannah Greenberg captures the world in words and images. Her latest p recent poetry collection is Mothers Ought to Utter Only Niceties (Unbound CON (Bards & Sages Publishing, 2018).
photography portfolio is 20/20: KJ Hannah Greenberg Eye on Israel. Her most NTENT, 2017). Her most recent fiction collection is the omnibus, Concatenation
LIZ PY
YMAN
Early Spring
LIZ PYMAN
There’s still some snow, up high on these hills Remnants of the Winter that’s not quite gone And the air is full of birdsong As I walk with you Sometimes holding your hand Sometimes walking in front, or behind Singing a tune, a little piece of melody in my head As the light comes and goes, and changes in the valley Seeing for miles, across the border The quilted fields marking out the land And following familiar roads as they curl from place to place I’ve been looking out of the window Hoping for a little Spring colour Wearing a pretty scarf Or a dash of red lips, maybe I can usher it in Three lingering drops of amber perfume on my skin Sunlight seeps around dark edges And we talk about adventures still to come And those places we hold dear Lovely faces in repose By electric firelight Sequins and eyes glisten, as fingers pick the strings A quiet smile teases my lips And I settle in for stories of a distant country Daughters drowsy on their mother’s knee And I listen and listen Spirited away And think of you being here As the midnight snow swirls around a streetlamp in this little town
Saltwater
LIZ PYMAN
Before she left, she wrote him a poem about his eyes: deep blue pools to swim in. Put the page in his hand in the Summer-dappled apple garden And said goodbye one last time. From an intoxicated dancefloor To pebbles against the window-pane His shirt on her bed Snowy kisses of adieu Sleepless red sky and little lights. She would remember, years later, How it had felt to soak in that candleglow, Enveloped in a rose-petal bath, Water lapping against the sides, And then to lay there, sobbing, Her briny tears flowing back out to sea. She basked, skin kissed by the sun Drank wine, sang songs to the olive-grove moon Slipped into ripples in azure lagoons Stood on the ocean floor And loved herself.
About Liz Pyman
Liz Pyman is a mother, baker, singer, writer, songwriter, friend, maker, an border. Born in the Yorkshire Dales in 1974, she has lived in Bath, Sheffield after many years, and is curious to see where this journey will take her.
nd avid tea-drinker, based in the South Shropshire Hills close to the Welsh d, Bangkok, and Shrewsbury. She has recently started writing poetry again,
MARIE A
AUGUSTE
Contempt
MARIE AUGUSTE
The contempt in your eyes could not be matched By the love I held for you But breaking hearts never did have a match Nor has there been a barter great enough To bargain with Grief When the demons of Loss set their eyes on my spirit And you condemned me to die I was split into a million pieces Like sand on a beach And it is there that the oceans parted So that my fire may burn And that I may rise from the ashes of Death itself
About Marie Auguste
Marie Auguste is a licensed social worker. She primarily works with youth. She has been writing poetry since early adolescence and finds that it is the best way for her to express herself. She recently wanted to share her work, especially at the suggestion of her friends
MARIETTA C
CALVANICO
He does not check but boldens in his pace.*
MARIETTA CALVANICO
Sunday night in a deserted parking lot, with only the Macy’s sign to watc your deliberate hands, left on the wheel, right on the stick, you shift smo with sensate perfection. I am in awe at least if not in love. We are skiers navigating a slalom run through alternating light poles we fly and feel th adrenaline. I do not know what to expect when I cede my shotgun seat a wheel, so I borrow your confidence in me, left foot right hand, sensate focus. I do not check but bolden in my pace.
*NOTE: This line is from William Everson’s poem The Song the Body Dream
ch us. You, oothly s he fuel of pure and move behind the
med in the Spirit’s Mad Behest.
Covered for C MARIETTA CALVANICO
Your things are a mystery to me yet I love them without understanding Strange objects reflect decades to day They shimmer your history before me and my eyes search them for your hidden stories Layers of you shield me A barrier against the demons I am safe here: All your St. Michaels smile at me whispering words of protection
In the Fallout
MARIETTA CALVANICO
In silence in the eye of your storm I am surrounded by your damage I still have the tiny baggie you dropped on my floor the first breadcrumb on a trail I couldn’t bring myself to follow You didn’t want privacy for that phone call you performed with precisely chosen words: only just a few times a week Your repast of lies served up perfectly for me Did you know that I would be the one to wash the crusty dishes piled high in your sink? Fishing out the tiny spoons from the murky fetid water There is nothing here for you anymore the pieces of your life the debris of your addiction stand in a dark line of trash bags out by the curb.
About Marietta Calvanico
Marietta Calvanico lives in Staten Island, NY. After spending a bit more th husband and has been able to devote more time to writing, art, and music. on-line publications including The Bare Root Review, OccuPoetry, Dying Dahl Bond Street Review, and others.
han two decades in advertising/marketing, she now works with her architect . Her poetry, short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in print and in lia, River Poets, The Driftwood Review, damselfly press, Straight Forward Poetry,
NOREEN
N LACE
Hunger
NOREEN LACE
Caramel eyes tremble, cream lips unguarded. I wanted this baby for you. A soft bundle of rocks and chains in my arms He fades into golden mist. I turn away from the women in waiting. My shadow sister is emerald anxiety. She hungers for caramel handcuffs. A longing bigger than earth consumes her, one arm gone, another arm, half a shoulder, an ear. I want a train ticket to a hot summer day, far away. Blue lands. Red oceans. Eyes like the solar system. Slick moonlit skin washing into cities under the world. Wings.
Dreams of Mr. Rabbit
NOREEN LACE
Painting the roses, I still think of you, try to make out what was real, what was true. I used to have a handle on falling apart one piece at a time, once a time. I am shards of a tea cup now, porcelain bits on a red marble floor, swept to the side. Something used to matter, Memory tricks. You forgot me. And, now, like Alice in Wonderland without time or reference, chasing an imaginary theme. Alice. Someone should have woken her, told her. told me. Goodbye, Mr. Rabbit, You were never real, Once or again.
My Dreams Took a Walk
NOREEN LACE
On distant white sand beaches, Along lonesome stretches of incomplete yet still earthy scenes, On the green fields of Elysian where Gods walk among blessed mortals and greater beings, On a wispy wounded trail of chosen hearts and special moments shared only by lovers, pausing for a moment there, alone and unnoticed, And then went onto greater things.
About Noreen Lace
Noreen Lace has published fiction, memoir, and poetry in The Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, The Maine Review, and The Oleander Review, among others. “Memorial Day Death Watch,” a memoir of her father’s passing, placed as a finalist in Writer Advice while her poem, “All at Once,” was a finalist in Medusa’s Laugh. Eddy, a fictional account of Edgar Allan Poe’s overdose in 1848, was released January 2018. www.NoreenLace.com
PAMELA S
SUMNERS
The Magician’s Daughter
PAMELA SUMNERS
“Never ask a magician to do a trick twice,” she says, the magician’s daughter. Her hands, I think of when I think of her. Her hands circumscribe miracles. They weave, in and out, such tenuous dreams as form my life; they fabricate. She is the magician’s daughter: mending holes in the air by stringing ten crystal prisms in windows. She can mend the tears that the carefulness of gypsy moths knitting the air cannot. Her body is a long and brightening star whose glimmerings and feintings are a thousand words in diffident signs. Her trick is this: to make longing chill my waiting breath, make me a hundred times stand quiet before Herod and dream of times dreams were younger (if dreams be all that bind), and in the silk scarves of waking sleep, makes me eat with curled tongue a consummate hunger. Her trick is growing like a flower into the soft sweet loam of my soul, into the soft sweet earth of me, in some agony of afterbirth. From both of her bold eyes sprout my breasts, quick shoots from the early dreaminess of love, but still, still as death and resurrection.
Her trick is this: hands flying into tremulous birds Beggaring me at my banquet of words when feeling the curious sympathy of naked flesh in whose fabric pathos and longing mesh. It’s for this thing she does not guess, this hat-trick of happiness, splurge of bliss edged with premonitions of doom, my lips must know, must wholly kiss her, my flame in her fixed shadow must quiver, my frail dreams in those mysterious hands must spark and shiver, make my slightest syllable remember tricks she’s memorized. The blood’s memory long outlives the brain’s. Her blood will recall someday, settling in heavy sleep, conjuring bodies shaped like stars cartwheeling off, remembering laying in the magic box waiting to be sawed through to emerge only perfect, flying like a mad rose into the gritted teeth of death: Resurrected, complete, intact. Death will kiss her like a dazzling storm, its lightning flashing free-form. A flourish of the wrist releasing secrets or broken bouquets exuding fragrance, garish petals, a splash of light in that place where blossoms are crushed by blight.
Marriage
PAMELA SUMNERS
Grief is the crease that disciplines and divides lover from lover’s side, a hot earthly iron forging a petty truce struck on the anvil of our clasped, brazen hands. I understand you in the bridal march from contention to contentment, shedding resentments as if all Gethsemanes were new Edens, measured pennypounds of all bitter cups not passing you, watched you touched by Vulcan’s fire clutching your white King James Revised Edition matched to your patent leather Easter shoes, staring ahead in the buttock-bruising pews and wondered, lip-sync-ing John Wesley’s blues
if the world ever still felt new to you, as undiscovered as 1492, if you still see your own eyes Hank Williams’ blue, loving me still just like you used to do.
If you breathe the ether of lover’s breath, that bridge is the highest trestle over death. *”My hair’s still curly and my eyes are still blue/So why don’t you love me like you used to do?”-Hank Williams
Turning
PAMELA SUMNERS
The plaintiff in error stands at the bar. This voice is that of trust eroding at light-speed, one million hands banging gavels of final decision. These small choices of nothing much to say, resound into dull, null days unbreathing themselves, untethering, catch us breathless, deathlike. If I must not be me then surely you can’t be you, just this star-crossed patterned tree bending to weep, asleep in my back yard. I saw it, bowed. We (,), like leaves (,) or judgment falling, swirl separate, apart. Distant as those stars I once saw you keeping, distaff as oars steering you wrongwise, each stroke of your slaveship yoke. Rivers whirl like leaves between us. These currents foreign seas, churning— and I’d run these long ceaseless lines, I’d ride this reckless, feckless tide, would make this wave a soft break. I’d live for you in shade, would drown the simple sun, would be done of it and free myself—at least myself! If I could. But I sleep, and dream of waves crashing, and leaves, and decrees burning up September’s fire, since from that fall no tremulous wave, no trembling leaf, no sound of surf or silence is returning.
About Pamela Sumners
Pamela Sumners is a constitutional and civil rights lawyer with a special in familiarity with the hairlines of Judge Roy Moore, Bill Pryor, Jay Sekulow, a Alabama. In 2018-19, her work has been published or recognized by 30 jou Mountain Press’ 64 Best Poets of 2018 and received a Pushcart Prize nomina and three rescue dogs who think eyeglasses are a food group.
nterest in the religion clauses, an experience that gave her an unwholesome and Alabama governors who insist that the Bill of Rights does not apply to urnals or publishing houses. She was selected for inclusion in Halcyone/Black ation. A native Alabamian, she now lives in St. Louis with her wife, their son,
SARAH MAHIN
NA CALVELLO
Interchangeable
SARAH MAHINA CALVELLO
I thought you’d be older, but then again, maturity is just experience wrapped in wrinkles trying not to camouflage good qualities trying to take a beat, take a breath treading water at this tremulous and turbulent pool but I don’t know how to swim there is some element of risk living your dreams but I won’t be
afraid of change, I want to hear every interchangeable melody pulling myself from the shadows to let thing’s shine you can’t demand change you have to inspire it
Truth
SARAH MAHINA CALVELLO
truth has a weird way of making you run into it and facing it head on I hate the term straight, I just assume everything else is bent when life gives you sour, have the patience to wait for the sweet relief I think it’s coming amid the dreaming disarray this jelly donut falls like rain on
the white tablecloth like fire tears sins dissolve too slowly
About Sarah Mahina Calvello
Sarah Mahina Calvello goes to City College of San Francisco. She likes coffe
ee and dogs.
SUSAN
NDALE
What Has It Been
SUSANDALE
And what has it been, after all but infinite voids and wheels rolling down hills and over the ghosts of midday Long, golden ghosts - they yawn at three thirty And gather up gowns and hollow eyes Blindly they float through the cornfields You’ve heard them, haven’t you? Long, golden rustlings along a pathway to dreams And yet___ all of the light of the world Flickers with a single candle on the mantle Shipwrecked nights washing on shore wounding the sands And rocks, stone words Hollow driftwood - silver fish scales and broken glass Even pearly seashells cut feet Floating seaweed hair ripped from the heads of mermaids Heads bumped with currents against cement piers Piers connecting Neptune’s toes to the sands that screamed And still___ all of grief lingers in the call of a lone dove on a twilight wire All of ecstasy lingers in the burning glance Held between pairs of lovers’ eyes And skies of rain … sad rain … sad, dark rain and metal stars
Daybreak with daggers at its sides Lonely webs in window panes Spinning spider eyes and death Under skeletal tree, tombs of unknown tomorrows And yet ___all the music of the universe Rolls ashore in a song of the seas Unrolled maps marked with the veins of history and the blood of battles Unrelenting mirrors that shout shrunken mortality The familiar bends we round, but are lost Cracked windows with torn curtains Broken chimneys … and strangers on our porch swings And yet, yet___ there is hope: glorious hope All of hope is heralded in the throat song Of a tiny wren in spring
Yesterday’s Doorway
SUSANDALE
How deep our shadows In doorways where once we stood Thin, distant figures Etched in soft strokes What always we knew But didn’t know we knew Being caught in a downpour of melodies The truth of them shining In a sun gone to sea Thinking for a thousand miles Of earth to time Of songs on slow journeys And life quick as a eulogy Over our buried secrets
This Lost Poem
SUSANDALE
The poem this lost poem won’t come together Green shiny-iridescent it has wings and flutters heartbeats to a syrupy god
It yearns to shout of summer’s gorgeous bounty the splendid opulence the heavy breathing of earth
The poem: this lost poem wants to weep of life’s brevity Gorge on the feast of time Speak to a full-faced moon that watches me with sad mercy But won’t explain why she is so-long silent And I am running running from her long quiet to find the space, the time the marrow of my being to finish this lost poem
Thank You
Thank you for reading. We hope you enjoyed this collection of poetry from these talented poets. You can find more issues of Voice of Eve on our website www.voiceofeve.net or on Issuu. We would also love to hear from you, the reader, at our email address contact@voiceofeve.net. Thank you again, and blessings to you from our staff. Richard Holleman Editor, Voice of Eve Staff Sarah Rodriguez, Editor
