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Image courtesy of Pixabay
Ariel On Sylvia Plat by Gordana Karakashevska
The lady comes out of her glass bell
to stretch his legs,
To put the potatoes to boil
for those two hungry mouths
to talk to the bees
to greet death
which is always here,
sitting in her place next to the door.
The typewriter is silent
The clean lines of the dresses fall
Here she is, trying to recognize her father
- Life is dying, don't you see?
Do you not hear the voice of Ariel who has become an echo,
an echo that fills time?
The lady enters her glass bell
To turn on the gas
To close the door tightly
To sing of death
To say goodbye to winter
To welcome eternity
To put your head in the oven.
* Ariel is a masculine name meaning "lion of God" in Biblical Hebrew.
Gordana Karakashevska was born on January 31, 1973 in Pehchevo, Macedonia. She attends primary school in Pehchevo and high school in Skopje in EPU Boris Kiddrich. Since then she has lived, worked and created in Skopje with the exception of a few years of her life when she lived and worked in Turin, Italy and they will leave a deep mark on her as a creative person and artist. She deals with art and in hers free time with photography. She has been writing since she was thirteen years old, when she actively participated in regional competitions in art and literary works. For her, writing is a way of life and art is a universal language.
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When The World Is on Fire by Honey Novick
When the world is on fire
do you close your eyes? Ignore it?
Do you?
Fuelled by racial discrimination
this conflagration
is a spirit abomination
this IS my nation
home of my education
playground of my indoctrination
to a world of justification
looking for integration
knowing that communication
is the way forward
I say I want a revolution, a human revolution
it’s gonna have to start with me
the only solution for this revolution
Has to start with me
We’re all in the same war
but not all in the same trenches
these flames are deep, embedded
we need more than hammers and wrenches
reformation, inner reformation
takes transformation
no longer subjugation
seeing ourselves as real
coexistence
human transformation
my own revolution
lighting my way and seeing you
Honey Novick is a singer/songwriter/voice teacher/poet who lives in Toronto.
She has 9 chapbooks, 8 CDs and has been published in numerous anthologies.
She teaches Voice Yoga at the Secret Handshake, is an artist resource for the Friendly Spike Theatre Band and sings with bill Bissett and George Elliott Clarke
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Of Toil And Harvest by LaVern Spencer McCarthy
We pray for a passing cloud,
but the sun beats down in yellow spite.
I plant seedlings, row after row.
My brown-eyed helper follows, grumbling,
douses each tiny promise
with water from a silver pail.
He hates the work, grouses that
he should have gone
to computer school instead.
There are no hellish days
in a truck garden there.
He needs a siesta
beneath the cottonwood tree,
a sweating jug of cold lemonade nearby.
Rewards seem lost in the whirl
of blowing dust and heat.
Dreams spiral into nowhere
until those autumn days
when we harvest our treasures—
bushels of gold from brown earth,
carrots to be sold at Farmer’s Market.
LaVern Spencer McCarthy is a published poet, with many state and national awards to her credit. She is a life member of the Poetry Society of Texas and is a member of several other state poetry societies. She has published five books of poetry and three books of short stories.
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Crafted by Morgan Traquair
White paper scored in curves reveals a bow
a stern an open hold to carry your cargo
images and omens stones and sacred
words
remembrances of your life
A bamboo mast secures a large square sail
adorned with wild flowers precious herbs
fruits
for the voyage ahead
How you loved sailboats skiffs vintage clippers!
A sailor at heart hands firm on the wheel
you steer into squalls dash through white-laced
waves
eyes steady on the horizon
Your Viking funeral ship set aflame over-rides
the seventh wave carrying your ashes over the
ocean
towards a distance beyond sight
Morgan's poetry explores intimate coastlines of relationships, both stormy and calm, inflow and ebb. She writes about joy, shame, heartbreak, and release. Morgan celebrates diversity, serendipity, and the wonders of life and nature. Her work has appeared in spring magazine, Our Lives, an anthology and Impermanence, a chapbook, and other publications.
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SIBILA by Gordana Karakashevska
January
It is not difficult to predict the time to come
It will be even colder at night
Like my sister frozen tears.
I still sleep like a bent dog,
The first thing I do is
I open my half-alive eye and look dull
in the angels,
in white spirits
in every dead soul that shines without shadow.
I take the sticky worms away from me and blossom like a cherry,
now I look like someone who can not be forgotten, I am eternal.
I failed to write a love letter
I did not find time, I admit
And I'm lazy, I admit
I failed to write a farewell letter
So I have said goodbye to you so many times,
Silence, by habit
That is not it, neither living nor dying
I did not know how to understand all that.
I slept
at the ends of my gray hairs
Here I am, straightening up now
Like a marble figure millions of years old
Cracked,
with smooth feet, I take the first step,
I step.
* Sybil - a prophetess in Greek mythology
Tagged in Poetry