Fall 2024

Sunday Afternoon

by

by Sara Petitt

The store was dim and dusty
Cloaking the men in back
Quietly talking.

The child was bored and restless.
Looking up at the
Elevated train.

Resentment filled her heart and mind.
Why share her Father
This Sunday afternoon

In this haberdashery store
Filled with drab bras and socks.
Then the thought came to her.

She emptied all the sock bins out.
Slipped size labels off
Put them back by color.

The scolding she got was worth it.
That was the last time
Her Father took her there.

Sara Petitt has a BFA from Bennington College where she majored in Fine Arts and minored in Literature. Although she has always worked professionally in art as a teacher and designer her second passion is writing. 

Looking East

by

by Mireya Perez Bustillo

                                                                        Inch, Ireland

 

 

                                                            Eye   extended

                                                            pale   green   edges   of   sea   and   hill

                                                            where a giant’s fingers formed

                                                                        grassy mounds

                                                            whoosh of water

                                                            a   bee   slices   air

                                                            moos,   baas,   a dog’s tail wags

                                                            breeze   rustles   rushes,   fuschia,

                                                                        my hair

                                                            a white truck rounds the bend

                                                            to Playa Blanca   palms, palenqueras

                                                               fried fish

                                                            the bay of Cartagena to the left

                                                            where English pirates lurked

                                                            never   reaching

                                                            casa,   familia

 

Mireya Perez-Bustillo writes poetry and fiction in Spanish and English. Her poetry appears in MOM’s EGG; Caribbean Review; Americas Review; Dinner with the Muse, IRP/LP2 Voices, among others. Her novel, Back to El Dorado (Floricanto Press, 2020), a Latina coming-of-age story, is available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon sites.

 

 

 

 

Market Day

by

by Mireya Perez Bustillo

…………For María Moreno Pérez and
…………Antonio Pérez Rincón

He arced his tongue to reach the fly
the only part he could move burrowed
in the camouflage of sand in the bed of the arroyo
soiling his tended grey softness embedding nettles.
In the hacienda Holanda by the river Tunjuelo
doña María ordered the baskets to be packed for market.
Pedro, the mayordomo, was sent to saddle the donkey.
In the bed by the creek he rolled in the scrub and played dead.
On the bridge by the river, don Antonio, impatiently
paced on his stallion, Cerezo.
Doña María in her riding skirt
held back her nervous mare, la Geisha
even the children were sent to search.
Running after the overseer, Pedrito, Carlitos,
Martita, Conchita, Pilarica and baby Tina
trampled lettuces and cabbages and played
“rabbit” biting off carrot heads. .
In the confusion baby Tina climbed
In the laundry basket falling asleep among
the camphored sheets and was not missed
‘til doña María said they’d have to take
the wagon and where was that bendito
animal and it was always the same story
every Thursday day of market.
Hearing the thump of the wheels
the donkey stretched shaking twigs
calling to him the great mastiff, Orlando,
who was in charge of misleading the search.

Mireya Perez-Bustillo writes poetry and fiction in Spanish and English. Her poetry appears in MOM’s EGG; Caribbean Review; Americas Review; Dinner with the Muse, IRP/LP2 Voices, among others. Her novel, Back to El Dorado (Floricanto Press, 2020), a Latina coming-of-age story, is available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon sites.

The Coney Island Aquarium

by

by Mireya Perez Bustillo

                        To: Paloma

It stood there guarding
…..that corner so close
…..to its boardwalk home
But the darkness kept me away
Maybe I peeked in once
But the dark waters
…..Pushed me out
I heard beauties swam there
But the waters made the darkness
…..fill me
But today when la familia said
they were going there
and the little one feeling
…..my fear
Said she’d hold my hand
I knew I would enter the waters

Mireya Perez-Bustillo writes poetry and fiction in Spanish and English. Her poetry appears in MOM’s EGG; Caribbean Review; Americas Review; Dinner with the Muse, IRP/LP2 Voices, among others. Her novel, Back to El Dorado (Floricanto Press, 2020), a Latina coming-of-age story, is available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon sites.

 

What Is

by

by Mary Padilla

How odd that
everything is
mostly nothing,
if you look closely.

We are accustomed
to the big picture,
the broad brush stroke,
the macro level.

But when you see
below the surface,
it’s mostly nothing,
just empty space.

Music is all about
spaces between notes.
Art is all about
spaces around things.

Everything is seen
by contrast with nothing,
which is mostly all
that there actually is.

It’s the via negativa
that defines a thing
solely in terms of
just what it is not.

The occasional somethings
deform overall nothing,
affecting other somethings,
but only at a distance.

Paradoxically, we find that
to transcend somethingness,
we must first be willing
to embrace the nothingness.

Only then can we know
what it is to be something
other than something
to be reckoned with.

There is no reckoning
with evanescence,
and yet we can be
aware of its presence.

It is something
that exists
on the cusp
of non-existence.

Similarly, meaning is
what you encounter
when you are not trying
to discover what it is.

Mary Padilla: I write to see what will come out.

Transmission

by

by Mary Padilla

For meaning to travel
it has to start somewhere
and then go to someplace
set up to receive it.

These need to be tuned in
to the same wavelength,
and there must be a medium
that they have in common –

a sharing of context
to transmit a concept
that makes at least some sense
to both of the parties.

Of couse this is all true
of sound and of light,
but it applies just as well
to ideas and to feelings.

They too need a sender,
and also a receiver,
but communication
is still not guaranteed.

While these two elements
are both important,
they do not suffice
to create the connection.

There needs to be overlap
between expectations
so that the message
can be understood.

Otherwise
it’s just
a clash
of codes.

Mary Padilla: I write to see what will come out.

Reality

by

by Mary Padilla

We think we know what’s up, what’s out
what’s reflected, refracted,
what is, what’s not.
The surface bounces back the light
the same way it came in.

From here, seen there,
the medium’s a mirror.
From another angle though,
things would look quite bent,
broken, and greatly changed.

The shadow, when it’s long.
speaks to the sun,
and not the tree –
what its angle is just then
in relation to the Earth.

It functioned as our first sun dial,
telling us what time it was –
short or long, right or left,
morning, noon, or afternoon –
but never what was time itself.

What we see is what we get,
but it depends on how we look.
We need to keep this fact in mind
when, seeing just the shadows,
we have to decipher what is real.

Mary Padilla: I write to see what will come out.

 

1984

by

by Carmen Mason

 

I. AMERICA: On TV

On David Susskind is a fat man in
a Kermit the Frog mask.
He is a hitman named Joey.
He is selling his new book.
He pivots back and forth
on the leather chair,
itchy, swirling his girth
while svelte David remains stiff
and asks slow, delicate questions.

Joey’s hands are big;
they karate the air as he
laments the death of
abortion and the organization.
He boasts of broads who beg to love him
once they learn his trade.
Junior High haughty
he’s 10 Qs wealthy
and recently acquitted.

“When you get old you get smart,
you don’t get stupid. I killed until
I didn’t anymore. I sleep
like a baby.”

Embarrassed, David
cuts to a commercial.

 

II: AMERICA: Katz’s on a Cold Sunday Morning

Sour, over-taxed waiters – their faces lined
with their own private histories – give out
tickets at the door to be punched and paid for later.
Ahead, long glass counters reflect salami, franks
stuffed derma, steaming sour kraut while
Miller’s High Life waits to join
soapy glasses that’ll kill the beer head.

More regulars come in walking slow to
balance their tea on rickety trays as
The New York Times slides from their armpits
and powder-faced women in long furs
and wide -wale slacks glide and slide
under chrome tables, pulling
glistening pelts close to their legs
as they sit.

Old weary signs along the walls still chantimg
“Send a salami to your boy in the Army”
and “Waiter Service Only” as more enter
while the waiter’s exclaiming “If they don’t have it ready
I’ll make it myself ! ” while the men slowly sitting,
their knockwurst thighs open in great V’s,
their socks moaning having been stuffed
into tight penny loafers.

Sunday revelers all
with mouths moving
ringed pinkies lifting
cloth napkins unfolding
while the black boy
and his three sisters
wait to be served.

 

III. AMERICA: Michael Jackson

Ignited by more than Pepsi
and lithe, fluorescent Diana
you cut out the thickness
of your nose and lips
mainline hormones
making baby-smooth again your face
choir-high your voice
and bejeweled in ebony
you kiss your blackness
your manness, your Michaelness goodbye

Donning glove and shield
you enter the arena
of eunuchs
to dance and prance
and split the air
with the purest denials
to Billie Jean, harem queen
and to all you would have you be something you are
never were
might have been.

Carmen Mason:  “I have been writing poems and stories all my life, won a few prizes here and there, but most of my pieces have just demanded to spill out In the middle of the night or while walking or driving ! I have often pulled over just just to scribble something I will get back to once I am home again! And if VOICES welcomes me I am very pleased!” 

The Sun and Shadows of Democracy

by

by Jonathan Gellman

In the mid-morning, mid-autumn sun, four oaks,
having cast their leaves, now pitch bold shadows
that march uphill toward a lone white shed.

As our national tree, oaks speak in varied hues
and with diverse accents shaped by region.
White and red oaks lead the list, but
fifty-plus species feature black oaks, and
southern oaks (the Arkansas, southern red,
Texan live, Texas red, and southern live oaks).
And varied swamp oaks suggest murky unions:
swamp white, swamp laurel, and swamp chestnut oaks.

An hour’s portion later, two towering oaks
displace the primary shadows
cast earlier by neighboring trees,
repainting the canvas with two broad bars.
Following the sun, those bars rotate rearward
from a sideline axis, leaving tracks
that narrow and then converge off-field.
Meanwhile, the foreground is consumed slowly
by the dark profile of the viewer’s house.

These sunlit oaks issue tracking polls for prophets
that change daily but follow a seasonal course.
The sun projects trees into recurring shadows
that remark the land with transient impressions.

While dark shadows hint at the sinister,
they cannot be or move without bright sunshine.
Shadows seeking their source see mighty oaks,
but are blind to the sunlight behind them.

From high nests far below the heavens
starlings strain to freeze the sun in one place
and stop the ebb of early shadow tracks.

But growth depends on light and shadow moving
in a steady cycle of successive imprints, as
unsheltered ground would be scorched by the sun, while
unbroken shadows favor moss and mushrooms.

On an autumnal field a swirling dance resumes between
the light of democracy and its shadowy partners:
shadow dwellers praise and resent the power
that democracy lends and takes back daily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apart from past work on memos and contracts in his legal career, Jonathan Gellman’s writing has focused on American literature, history, and politics. His poem in Voices sees in the movement of forest shadows across a backyard on a day in November the recurring back-and-forth drama of American politics. In part, the poem indirectly pushes back against the Washington Post’s front-page slogan that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

plantings

by

by Mark Fischweicher

I walk to the market
two blocks away
for some salad, a spring mix
from Salinas,
in southern California
chock full of Oak Leaf Chard,
Baby Butter Kale,
Green Leaf Mizuna, Red Leaf Arugula
and Rosa Radicchio

crabapple blossoms
litter the road where I walk
making the
pavement pink

the sidewalk’s pushed up
by the roots of the tree
spreading beneath them
with splotches of weeds
coming up in the cracks
and in no time at all
the pink paved road
returns
to its constant,
its black, brown and gray

I say, perhaps
the Street Sweeper
swept by spinning its brooms
sweeping away the blossoms
with all the other urban rubbish
and debris,

blossoms not withstanding
we move on
under the rootless
scaffolding, our city’s official tree
the fruitless
sidewalk sheds
we walk under, more than
three hundred miles of them
stretched above us
one which still stands
after it was first apparently planted
twenty-eight years ago

while the “actual” blossoms
herald their buds and
no late frost has of yet
decimated the chance
of apples or even peaches
and berries upstate,
in the summer,
already in bud
as is our Tulip tree
the one we bought 35 years ago
just six inches high, having grown to around
60 feet tall by now,
the same as New York’s oldest,
the Alley Pond Giant, a sapling when
the Dutch arrived, thought to be
as much as 450 years old,
likely the oldest living thing in New York,
it sits in a sunken grove
within earshot of
the Cross Island Parkway and the L.I.E,
the top of the tree
visible to cars and trucks
travelling west

a green planet here,
where I rest

 

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets.