Dreams and Nightmares

Golden Days

by Sharon Rothenfluch Cooper

Skittish geese
trail a path in the sky,
connect in farewell
to the flawless blue.

Rising currents
brush my skin,
carry scents of autumn
in cool whispers.

Colors riot,
leaves crunch underfoot
announcing the death
of summer,
trees abandoned
with leftover dregs.

I enjoy
one more moment
of succulent ripeness,
before winter
slips in the door
and fades
bounty to ashes.

I plumped up for winter--
the Christmas turkey
being me this year.
Layers and layers
of clothing hid my
inner padding.
With each bite,
each pound, I built
my wall brick by
brick by brick.
One day, complete,
I toppled, rolling
down like the
meatball when
somebody sneezed.
I rolled and
rolled, farther
and farther and
farther.
Being so plump,
I didn't feel
a thing.

Blue Screen of Death

by Margot Miller

The paper is blank, my hard drive is empty
It's the blue screen of death
Something terrible has happened
And I've not been told
My words go out, messages in bottles
Small, persistent acts of faith
Tossed on the sea, intercepted, plucked away by vultures
Deleted from memory, the pages withdrawn,
Stuffed into a seabird's nest

Chora¹ falls into the deep

Panic

I wake up in the emergency room, wearing a wetsuit,
am offered a choice between vanilla ice cream and hot salsa.
And I'm discharged, back to the sea.
I start swimming, slowly

¹In Plato, chora is used in a sense close to space, or place in space; the milieu in which Forms materialise. [...] it signifies, at its most literal level, notions of "space", "location", "site", "region", "locale", "country": but it also contains an irreducible, yet often overlooked connection with the functions of femininity, being associated with a series of sexually-coded terms -- "mother","nurse","receptacle", and "imprint-bearer".

Letting Go

by Christina Rosalie

I open my hand and the hundred small birds of my heart
flutter out, wings rumpled from the tight fist I've carried them in.
They fall to the ground before flying up, knowing something of soil and grief.
I can't shake this feeling now. Nights up, hearing the house move,
the small birds flit restlessly about the room, dreaming.
With dawn the birds fly up to the rafters where I cannot reach them

The Lovers

by Åsa Eriksson

Pale rectangle of pre-dawn window. Soft breathing
at the back of her neck.
There is no such thing as security.
A ticking clock; she registers all regularities, counting on them
to fall apart. And he just sleeps - unfazed
by all that can go wrong. She thinks he knows she loves him.
There is no such thing as knowledge.
In love, all you have is faith
and the generosity of your own heart.

Purse

by Benjamin Rothstein

--for Shirley Levenson

Her purse hangs heavy like the wattles of a cock.
It is stiff and smooth like a policeman's baton.
Its red leather skin bends beams of incandescent light
as her wrinkled knuckles clutch at its cross-stitched handles.

The elderly jabber and stuff pastries compulsively in their sweater
pockets. The air buzzes like a hive of honey bees as she unzips
her handbag and stuffs it full of macaroons and brownies
and strawberries. They are for her grandkids who love sweet
treats-and even if they won't eat them, there's always the dog.

Kosher smoked lox lies limp on her tongue. The buttery
cream cheese refreshes her palate's memory of the family deli
in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She entered the world there
in a tiny upstairs room where the hum of damp refrigerators
cloaked the contractions of her teenage mother, and Yiddish complaints
escaped her father's lips about the gentile doctor who was too busy to be there.

The gray hair on her lip quivers to a line from a big band tune:
a phrase swung by Basie in 1935 when she wasn't yet
too brittle or ashamed to do the "One O'Clock Jump."

But she was brittle in 1935.

The shelves were stocked with wines and bagels and jars of
pickled Herring; her soft teenaged back was already stiff
from too much bending. She was not a jitney bus, a punk, a rapscallion.
Her hands were too gentle and her dresses too austere.

What do you think your grandma is, a bank? she would
ask us fifty years later as she handed out bills with
the face of Andrew Jackson on the front, the unappreciative
smiles of politicians and greed strung across our faces.
We were as honest as defense attorneys.
We lit up the night sky with matches and cigarettes
and bottles of Jack Daniels. The police could not touch us.
Little Ben took it all in like the news, so that
at some later time he will tell the world about an uncommon
woman who held her head high like a Marine.

But we have to forget Shirley before she becomes real for us.
Yis Gadal V'Yis Gadash Sh'May Rabbah-