It is a law of the physical world—although not of mathematics— that if you multiply zero enough, 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0 x 0, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on persistent, the little engine (of the universe) that could, you arrive at an actual number, an infinitesimal fraction, from nothing something, that eventually multiplies to become: THE UNIVERSE!
Before space and time this happened in less than an instant (since there was no time).
That is why we all exist why I am here to write this poem—
or perhaps not a poem at all, just a bit of floatsam— that explains nothing or everything?
Ethan Goffman is the author of the poetry collections I Garden Weeds (Cyberwit, 2021)—2nd place winner in the Taj Mahal Review Poetry Prize—and Words for Things Left Unsaid (Kelsay Books, 2020) as well as Dreamscapes (UnCollected Press, 2021), a collection of flash fiction. Ethan is co-founder of It Takes a Community, which brings poetry to Montgomery College students and nearby residents, and is founder and producer of the Poetry & Planet podcast on EarthTalk.org. Ethan also writes nonfiction on transportation alternatives for Greater Greater Washington and other publications.
Image by Rochus Hess, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons.
Hobbs Square, 1955, Worcester, MA After a photograph of Cecile Aaronson by a Telegram and Gazette photographer
The woman stands at the open window on the day the heat was to break. Instead, the air hangs heavy, wet stockings hung in a shared bathroom.
That day a breeze was to flow between buildings as crowded as teeth, even into her store, floor to ceiling shelves crammed with bolts of cotton and wool.
Instead, water hurries down this narrow street where no one lives, where no one shops. The woman looks out into the rain. She doesn’t expect to be rescued.
The evening paper’s photographer passes by. She supposes she’d distract him as old as she is, or weigh him down as thin as she is. He won’t stop.
She will have to wait at the window. Not even a run in her thigh-high stockings, she will pick her way home amid the debris when the waters depart. No bus, no cab will stop.
She cannot picture Hobbs Square vanishing, effaced by black, stinking waters. These buildings, her shop, her bulwark, the bolts of plaids and seersucker,
all must remain.
Home/Not Home
In this dream of Kansas, I scuttled like a fat bug beneath the wide sky, its thin blue unimpeded by trees or clouds. No mountains kept fierce winds away.
There was nowhere to walk. I’d forgotten all I’d once read, all I thought I’d know forever. The scorching wind blew all traces of my old self away.
Some writers I’d read long ago could have seen each shade of grass. One writer had found fossils, rocks, arrowheads, shards of pottery, perhaps poetry,
exposed beside highways I sped on, listening to music that meant nothing, to talk that meant less as I returned to my home that was not home.
Marianne Szlyk lives in the DC suburbs with her husband, the wry poet and prose writer Ethan Goffman and their retired cat. Her poems have appeared in the Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Verse-Virtual, the Sligo Poetry Journal, Bourgeon, Muddy River Poetry Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Mad Swirl, and Spectrum as well as a few anthologies. Her books On the Other Side of the Window and Poetry en Plein Air are available from Amazon and Bookshop.
Image: http://www.cgpgrey.com, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. Author photo by Alan Gann.
you provided for me make-believe-come-real fairy tales tangible and new< you added texture to my paintings grains of heaven engulfed in color and hue
linear needs met wavy dreams and formed you
curious about your beginnings after my acceptance of now I believed, let go and inhaled the sweetness of your song (knew then that one’s breath tastes like the Caribbean fruit that intoxicates and kneads my independence into your silly putty)
ooh and so warm and new I’d dreamed of one day meeting then having you
only to wake and find never true never mine never more for real
or as real as my heart made you I feel
determining farce from evident is beneath my ill-acceptable abilities today and it is in these that, sadly, my uncertainties now lay
when . . . I just want to hear it again
and be who I’ve dreamed of me.
ThoughTrain
An empty kiss won’t suffice though considered and daunted upon rendering a finality of pointlessness and void.
Absolution of touches missed radiate louder than a steel chisel against a tin drum cracking me down the center and shaking truth to defeat.
Depressing titles show minimalist interest in heartfelt understanding, in other folk shoe-wearing, in simply, silently listening.
Not asking to be fixed is seemingly overlooked and friends break out the tools and lumber anyway instead of just letting.
It’s only the beginning of the intermission. Get some Goobers Powder your noses. Life will resume. . . shortly. . .
Now
I believe that your true strength rears its head in the midst of pain and distress
Not because you’ve said it’s so or how you show its true in your walk or in the words you use but
When you can’t breathe
That look that flashes across your face or when your eyes give voice to the blood-curdling sobs from your soul I believe it’s at the cusp of such that your calm is the only thing that makes sense in the moment, and
When it feels like your skin is being ripped from your flesh or your spirit is being tormented it’s that space that you unwittingly settle into with acute senses analyzing and calculating every move and sound made in your now and formulating the appropriate response With ease and confused certainty.
When the sound of your voicelessness walks you through all the truths alongside the dramatically timed base of your heart keeping pace to the greatness of how you deal
It’s surreal. That clarity that encompasses you with grave urgency because right now is the only time
and without external coaching or coaxing all of the information you need is palpable and strikingly clear (to you)
It’s imperative to be this present presently to live the predetermined law that You matter
And no matter what is before you, regardless of the clutches within which you weep You are not defeated.
Stephani E. D. McDow, poet and writer, is published in Raven Chronicles Press’ Take a Stand: Art Against Hate Anthology,Still Point Arts Quarterly, Genre: Urban Arts No. 7, “Femme Literati: Mixtape Anthology,” and armarolla. Formerly a contributing author at Woman Around Town and freelance writer/editor, Stephani’s work has been praised by award-winning editor, writer and journalist, Susan L. Taylor; and award-winning author and editor, Charlene Giannetti. Stephani is a nonprofit professional, member of RAINN’s speakers bureau and a social justice advocate. A native D.C. Washingtonian, she currently resides in Maryland and is working on completing her first novel. Learn more by visiting http://stephanimcdow.com.
ote from the Editor: “Cosquilla” and “ThoughTrain” appear in an anthology by AfroLatinx writers, Diaspora Cafe D.C., a collective investigation of survival by writers within a system that deprioritizes their existence, published by Day Eight. Purchase it and other Day Eight books at http://dayeight.org.
A knife and small plate left in the sink overnight, next to some Ivory dish soap only chosen because it was on sale for another two days, which I grab to lather the bright blue Brillo pad with, and before I know it
I’ve mastered time travel and I am standing in my grandmother’s kitchen, smelling 1992 like the dogwood outside my window. She smiles at me, and I reach for the dirty dishes in her hand.
My Son Falling Asleep on my Chest
We haven’t spoken now in many moments. His twenty-five pounds press against my chest the way a boat floats on the water,
rising and falling while the wind decides to take the rest of the morning off,
our breathing coming together like two streams, one much narrower than the other, the rhythm
of his tiny body gradually calming the restlessness below
until both streams flow in the same direction,
unable to tell dream from day.
Brandon C. Spalletta lives a several second drive from his hometown of Herndon, Virginia with his wonderful wife and young son, and their equally wonderful Great Pyrenees. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Maryland Literary Review, WWPH Writes, Bourgeon, and others. He also had a poem in the anthology 2014 Storm Cycle: Best of Kind of a Hurricane Press.
it begins
with an opera mask formed in binary code
i slip it on and am a
p h a n t o m
a master of a world i am
divine
and as my creations reach out to me i reach
back and the mask shifts
i am tantalus
my rapture within reach
a runaway train with no option but to wreck
itself; i scrape the edges of the number one
i rest in the pockets of zeros
and i am not alone
it begins
at night which
bleeds into day which
soaks the world in the imaginary
i am alice however
i. am. not. asleep.
i have clawed my way to tuesday
back out of the rabbit hole for a
breath of fresh air
but instead it tastes like unpleasant conversations and
air travel so i let myself
tumble back down
it begins
as staring out windows in kindergarten and
finishing books in a day
countless notebooks that will never run out of pages
i have dug myself trenches with only my pen and
will continue to defend those
linear, binary little worlds until my last
breath
because when life is war,
at least i’ll have my words
Siskind (she/her they/them) is a member of the class of 2022 at Annapolis High School in Annapolis, Maryland. She is in the Performing Visual Arts magnet program at her school for creative writing and is the president and founder of the Literature club. She loves languages and one day hopes to be fluent in at least one language from popular language families in order to translate her own work. Siskind enjoys binge watching TV shows and editing images in her free time.
Image: Font Awesome Free 5.2.0 by @fontawesome – https://fontawesome.com, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
