Coloring

The Ashmont train is always late
those days I am
blotted out by the crowd.
Exchanging r's for l's clutching
ipods, cell phones, showing freshly stained
yellow fingernails.
The grey-green walls absorb me:
transparent.

I rode the 23 here naked
an outline on the slippery seat.
The travelers looked
and looked away
through colored windows
at neighbors clothed
as always
in ebony finery.

And then:
her lips painted, so real
moist crimson
she charted her flamenco conversation
round hips.
Purple heels on cement stairs, bright
A brown shrug erased me again.
Someone, (quickly before the red train comes)
find me a skin colored crayon.


- Rebecca Horner

Two by Two

Pacing beside the fields of this somewhere else;

to walk with weights tied about my hips

as a horse or some other animal of burden.

Why was I not an oxen-

birthed to be fat and happy,

dumbly discouraged from an education;

calmed by an electric wire,

buzzed into simulation.

Why was I not a bird-

fitted with air-filled bones,

heavy with feathers, puffed

with sensation;

the called out ones.

Or a candle-

stiffly holding shape under heat,

centered with a cord;

giving way slowly like a cat in water

gripping the raft, gripping the raft-

with every hope bent upon the

unkempt claws dug in.

Why must I be an

Orangutan,

a frumpish pear-shape with dwarfish arms

to drape stupidly over an uneven body,

inept for any use in propulsion?

stagnant in brains,

collared voice on a chain,

a sweet nexus altered.

Yet I find myself in the land of the living.

amongst models of seasons

amid an overwhelmed shelf,

between will-call;

an ink-stain of improperly removed

security devices blotting out

so much of my memory.

But an orangutan. The Orangutan.

The awkward body shuffle of a crowd

pre-destined to see a Holy Light-

looking forward; always forward;

always forward.

Always Forward.

isn’t it something:

never upward. 

Rebekah Jordan

Passion vs. Practicality

Passion…

Rolls smoothly off the tongue

With the whoosh of a three-hundred horsepower engine

With the unrestrained exhilaration of the battle cry

With the luscious sweetness of the lovers’ kiss

With the invincible tide of the orator’s words

With the slice of the wind turbine through crystal-clear air

Leaping,

Swirling,

Lifting one’s mind

To loftier clouds and unreached realities.

Practicality…

Clatters and contorts the tongue

With the squiggling of the graph of a stock’s value

With the clink of a coin in the beggar’s cup

With the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as it twists to collapse

With the grit of pioneers building lives in the wilderness

With that three-hundred horsepower emitting ample pollution.

Shattering,

Pressing,

Keeping one’s heart

Stuck to the narrow, burdensome track forward.

Passion and Practicality…

Where do they meet?

In the doctor’s decision of who should receive aid

In the basketball team’s strategy to win

In the confining words, “We can’t afford that”

In the need for financial donors and the need for those serving

In spreading the Gospel while meeting what’s physically lacking

In studying what one loves while considering life in general

Drilling,

Smoothing,

Aiming oneself,

To meld purpose and love in a way of life.

   Ben Skinner

 

Our Intercessor

Time is hidden in their wrinkles.
Vivid scarves, shoulder icons,
red and gold - worn thin.
They are the Bogomater herself
vigilant mourners
suspended at the edge of an end,
year after year - insistent.
Holy water trickles from their eyes
baptizing the children
lead innocently into this sacred place.

- Rebecca Horner

The Wife

Resolutely she dropped

her clod of earth onto the coffin lid. A life

ended, not finished. Cut short before the work

could be completed. Now, she the Wife

must carry on, despite the stifling heat of day.

 

Gone is the sense of awe

at the sight of wealth and gold

like a fools paradise she watches as it fades away.

 

Down he sinks like a stone cast into the sea

soon invisible to the eye in the gently waving reeds.

Into that realm she will not follow; here among the known  

pleasures and petty pastimes of earth she must abide.

  Hannah Baker