Blog – Page 23 – Bourgeon

aftermath by Ellie Cameron

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August 25, 2022

darkness fell, and we knew what we were in for;
wind howled and we sheltered from the storm,
and crawling from beneath the fallen branches,
the shadows that poured down from above, we
counted ourselves lucky.

we saw the aftermath as we drove, the restless
capitalist machine resting for no man, woman,
child or otherwise, resting for no inclement
weather, no disaster of nature or man great enough,
but we count ourselves lucky,

and now as the sun regains its foothold in the
sky, we realize how right we are; we all are
safe, all are whole, all together and extol
not the human resilience, but the mercy of the storm;
we count ourselves lucky.

Ellie Cameron (they/she/he) (Twitter: @ellie_cameron1) is an emerging nonbinary, genderfluid writer and writing teacher. They hold a BA in Writing Arts with a concentration in Creative Writing from Rowan University. Their published work can be found at elliecameronwriting.wordpress.com.

Image: Ochir Kikeev, CC by 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Storm_in_Voradero.jpg, via Wikimedia Commons.

Two Poems by Ann Christine Tabaka

Gregory Luce

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August 20, 2022

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Lost Summers of my Youth

The sweetness of summer, falling from trees /
ripe / soft / luscious dreams of forever.
We were the ones who begged at street corners,
never bowing our heads. Church baskets on
back porches / filled with tomorrow’s hope.
Steaming blacktop and tar / strong
odors of everyday life. Mama worked 2 jobs /
we lived by latchkey. Freedom / a timeless
concept, it wafted above the gray steam. Ice
Cream Truck songs calling to youthful joy / with
never a dime for a cone. Bookmobiles carrying
wonderous worlds of fantasy / we lived for Saturday
afternoons. Looking back – to be poor was to be rich.
We needed so little / we wanted so much.
Hand-me-down lives that reached for the stars.
Summer will never be the same.

Anna

The ocean bore her seven times, upon its rolling spine.
Storms could not unfold her / a sister to the angry waves.
She lived ninety-seven years among the clouds, not
knowing how to rain. Decades carried buckets, waiting
for a tear. She was too stubborn to cry. I remember
furrowed brow / deep valleys east to west. Determined,
she would not cleave. Three children lost, two survived.
Yet, one would take his life. She was stone & iron. She
could not be broken / refused to rust. There was a time
when she was soft, before I held her hand. Her stories
nourished my need. She gave what she could not receive.
I watched her brow soften as she knelt to say goodbye.
A lifetime of tears flooded out to wash away the pain.

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry. She is the winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year, her bio is featured in the Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020 and 2021, published by Sweetycat Press. She is the author of 15 poetry books, and 1 short story book. She lives in Delaware, USA. She loves gardening and cooking. Chris lives with her husband and four cats. Her most recent credits are: Eclipse Lit, Carolina Muse, Sparks of Calliope; The Closed Eye Open, North Dakota Quarterly, Tangled Locks Journal, Wild Roof Journal, The American Writers Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Silver Blade, Pomona Valley Review, West Texas Literary Review, The Hungry Chimera, Sheila-Na-Gig, Fourth & Sycamore.

*(a complete list of publications is available upon request)

Image: Svln4821, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Shadow is the Corpse of the Sun by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

Poetry

Sarah Katz

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August 18, 2022

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Shadow is the Corpse of the Sun

After an installation by Ralph Lemon

The corpse of the sun
     is a shadow,
squalid and hitting bottom
     to be made tactile
to the soles of a pair of girls,
     beset by imperfections
of skeleton and nervous systems,
     playing on their father’s smooth
patio, circa the years before the problems
     began. The sun does not die
in quantifiable intervals, but in eras,
     plasmic cycles of heat and release
set off by decisions as firm as fluid
     that fills the architecture of spheres
and square roots; or as random as tilted
      hips, pigeon toes, hormones colluding
with the absence of strict instructions
      for the pulses and inhibitions;
it’s never pretty, but to some it’s occasionally
      monumental. We could make a study
of these conditions, much like a grandmother’s
      collection of costume jewelry, outsized
simulations of mineral wealth, wrangled into
      awkward metals, much like an adolescent
mindset re-enlisting a central event long after
      it’s defined by modern medicine.
If you remain within the shade too long you
      might learn the role gravity shares with
electromagnetics; that there is no ladder
      to scale up to the celestial bodies
so you could untwist the rungs, wrench
      out the crossbars you find offensive;
emancipate curves and ellipses into
       the clarities of linear distances
because that happens only in books your mother
       read to you with a promise that if you go
to sleep and stay that way through the night,
       you will arise refreshed and curious
about what the day has to deliver
      even if it is a scaffold howling through
the solar storm, the usual kiss
      of emptiness.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of three full-length collections of poetry; four chapbooks; a memoir; and two novels. Her fourth full-length collection will be My Aunt’s Abortion, from BlazeVOX [Books], in 2023. More poetry and fiction are forthcoming from Pirene’s Fountain, Thimble Literary Magazine, and The Adroit Journal. She also reviews books for American Book Review and reads poetry for COUNTERCLOCK literary magazine.

Image: Ozma, CC by 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Two Poems by Casey Catherine Moore

Gregory Luce

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August 15, 2022

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Calliope Teaches Me How to Write

It’s dusk, and these hallowed grounds
are motionless and silent
Orange radiates from the horizon,
and the oak trees loom like shadows
of old professors
In the distance, a blue jay chirps at the wrong time
She doesn’t know that now, she should be still
Self-care is necessary like the rain for oaks, so
I keep rooting my toes in the soil
and raising my eyes up to the sky
Calliope says, “Pick your hands up
and put them on paper.
Get out from under these shadows.
Plant your seeds now in the dark.
Remember the calm when new
growth sprouts up.”

Manic-Depressive Cycles

C racked
I mpulsive
R abid
C areless
E scalating
A psyche that is
split, that shifts and spins
Tears and laughter, sometimes
simultaneous—depths, peaks
—sometimes voices
Always questioning feelings
Always trying to suppress
what will bubble up to the surface after
ages of suppression
My obsession
envelopes around you, curls
up your nostrils and down into your lungs
It’s wet but not heavy, you never feel full
It’s a Fire that starves everyone of Air
My obsession
is coated with burgundy sugar
It feels good going down
as you are wrapped in cellophane and
suffocate,
from inside and out.
Flourishing:
When the parts are moving in sync,
when there is balance,
when synapses are firing,
but not on Fire,
When the wave recedes back
at shore break, when I feel my feet
sinking, but supported, moving,
but without movement.
C alm
I ntuitive
R ising
C aptivating
E arnest.

Casey Catherine Moore is a bipolar, bisexual writer, high school teacher, and activist. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina with a focus on Classics, Latin poetry, women’s and gender studies, and queer theory. Her writing centers gender and sexuality, particularly queerness and gender divergence, dis/ability and mental health, pop culture, LGBTQ+ rights, educational equity, and other social justice issues.

Image: Giuseppe Fagnani, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Joan, Bob and Ginsberg by Anant Dhavale

Gregory Luce

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August 12, 2022

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Joan, Bob, and Ginsberg

If you had known Joan and Bob

you would have said they were such crazies –

her hauntingly beautiful voice

his wildly cataclysmic fantasies of words

floating o’er rows of dancing girls

though often devoid of coherence

high on the euphoria of their drunken age

and there, in these frenzies of stupor and pain and trance

Ginsberg read his poems

of protest

and the madness of his times

who knew we would walk again

after these many years

into the same turmoils

but where are the voices of protest

as strong as

Ginsberg’s

as poetic

the seventies weren’t that long ago folks

if you find the grand Inquisitor

relevant still

I may have written a few poems

here and there

but it doesn’t matter much

for these are different times, though the agonies remain

we like memes

and cat videos and take selfies

find our gullible nirvanas in seeking nods

and discuss our lives in YouTube comments

and though I like Joan and Bob

I would much rather sit and read

Ginsberg’s poems

of madness

and protest

but that’s beside the fact

that the times have changed

though the agonies remain

Anant has been writing poetry since his late twenties. He attempts to explore the intricacies of the human mind and the cultural milieus that it breathes in through a conversational style of poetry. His poems seem to emanate from an urgent and pressing need to ‘word’ the abstract. He occasionally tends to omit punctuation from his poems, in part to preserve the urgency and flow of words. He blogs frequently at www.newagepoems.blogspot.com and publishes his poems on social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Anant lives with his wife and son in Herndon, Virginia, and can be reached at anantdhavale@gmail.com.

Image by Rowland Scherman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons