Go for Broke
Susa Silvermarie
Time is on
our hands.
Motionless
it hangs like a joke
next to the boat
we thought was moving.
Our lives stand still
for the big Exam.
Go for broke,
reel in
real meanings.
There’s a good reason
time is in
our hands.
******
On Becoming a Memory
Allison Quattrocchi
“What happens, happens and then you are gone.”
“Brief but spectacular.”
“Life comes with an expiration date.”
Such thoughts dance with the diminishing days
Revolving, evolving – like a movie life plays;
Chocolate and ice cream and myriad adventures
The landscape of living — its infinite sensations
Frequent the memory as age advances
Revealing how I have lived.
Retired now, feeling less relevant,
Less tolerant of toxic behavior;
Rejoicing in the peace alive in me,
Not needing anything I don’t savor;
Grateful and loving just to Be,
Able to take time to really See,
Until there will be just a memory of me!
******
Despite It All
Catherine A. MacKenzie
Amid the darkness
And despair and doom,
View the blazing sun
And azure sky…
Or the silvery moon
And nightly black
When the living rest
After a day of light.
Grasp your hands
And flex your fingers,
Be grateful for
Limbs that move:
Legs to carry
You through the day
And arms to fold
On your chest at night.
Feel blessed for breath
That wakes you
Every morning,
For the power to yawn
And stretch,
To frown
Or smile,
To greet a new day.
In this new normal
Of a not-so-gentle world
Of confusion and chaos
Be kind,
For we share one life.
Be thankful for tears,
For to love is to cry and
To die is to have lived.
Despite doom
And despair
Be grateful
To be alive,
To see the sun
And the moon,
For what is the alternative.
******
Pajarito
Tom Dailey
I never knew her name, but call her Little Bird—Pajarito.
If I had to guess,
For identification purposes, I’d say
An Anglo, Female,
Her ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
Unaccented to my gringo ear.
A few brown and crooked teeth
Did not disrupt a scent of softness
On her breath.
Not yet middle-aged—
Hard to tell in her emaciated state,
But still with something
Wistful inside.
Skin yellow over tan, tight, and drawn toward the bones—
Muscles bereft, no breasts and a body
That had never reached puberty,
Or got there and decided to turn back.
Bird-like, a mess of coarse
Dusty red hair.
It was difficult to look into her sunken eyes:
Defenseless, and probing.
As you can imagine she dressed shabbily,
But with a certain flair.
I first noticed her a few months ago;
She’d made a place for herself
At the top of some concrete steps
Behind the farmacia:
A nest for her landings.
One expected fluffs of down
To sprout from beneath her arms,
And, really!
Exposed like that?
Where the trucks unload?
She must have felt protected by
The fourteen steps.
I’d sometimes spy her under
A scramble of filthy blankets and
In and among
A torn box or two and other
Detritus.
I pitied her the few plastic bottles nearby
For their esthetically-challenged remains of
An artificially red liquid…
But that pity well is way too shallow.
Sort of a mystery though:
I’d been thinking American,
But that sign—
Cardboard sign—
To claim this
Her landing and Not—
The pharmacy’s property.
That sign
She wrote in Spanish.
After the fourteen steps became too much of a challenge,
The nest was somehow brought down to the sidewalk
Where she sat with its stuffing around her,
Legs extended, leaning against the outside wall
Of a restaurant
That would never open,
At the base of the steps,
A single tattoo on her taut belly
Bare and exposed
Almost down to the crotch—
A search for comfort I suppose.
I looked away.
Extending a tiny cup of a hand,
Her final ‘please’ was softly spoken.
I gave her twenty pesos
And what was meant to be a sympathetic smile.
But as I walked away, the insufficiency of both gestures
Moved me to further action on her behalf.
I came home to assemble—
With more determination than thought—
A care package of bottled water, apple, nutrition bar.
But even that still missed the mark:
She was beyond money, food and water.
The shape of her skull
Gave an unsettling meaning
To her condition.
The next morning,
Not more than a day ago at this writing,
She and all her nest were gone—
As if they’d never been—
And I wonder where she came from,
And where and how she went.
******
Spirit Evolution
Susa Silvermarie
Four wings,
I feel them on my back,
like butterfly wings,
fluttering up and down
in a figure eight.
Invisible as infinity.
I decide to believe in them.
And oh! Here comes
the buffeting Wind,
seven years fierce.
Wind I must thank you.
I do accept
your transformation, I do.
But now I beg
your gentleness.
Let me rest, rest,
a hundred years of rest.
I give no thought
to my old life,
no thought
to chrysalis or wind.
I trust the strength
of my wings,
the terrible power
of their vulnerability.
In the natural ease
of change, I move,
lightly,
to a new way of living.
The whole of humanity
flutters up
free of expectations,
to the newborn future.
******
The Poet Got Loose
Robert D. Lopez
Something happened to me
That I do not understand
The Poet got loose on my life
Suffered with me and stayed
Till there is not bird
But the one who can save my life
And it could be an Eagle
But they are so common
To writers and I need a Hawk
Who gets just part of the prey
The main heart of a thing
My own self in each action
A truth against spaceness
Some wall between death.
- Poetry Niche – February 2025 - January 30, 2025
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