Golden Spiral by Deb Plestid

With breakfast I read
The Essential Zen
carefully ordering the morning
marshaling good energies
admiring the brush painted circles
the kiwi fruit in yoghurt
the sunflower seeds in bread
the fuzzy bear slippers

but nothing is quite strong enough
to pull me back together
as the black cat
sits on the mule post staring
with yellow saucer eyes
satisfied, it seems, to see my aura
sagged and drooping
a voodoo mound of melted me
bound with threads of the boy’s night ramblings
pierced with his fear, his rage and the cough
that turned tight like a bark
precursor to jagged images that buzzed
in and out of my cold night’s dreaming

spiked and spinning
they shivered me worse than the cold

Small Wonders

The shuffle of her feet
as she creeps to my bed,
to snuggle me awake.
Kissing my cheeks,
and whispering,
“No, I’m the lucky one.”

Leaving

Listen this evening as the quiet East train rushes
past streets, and fields, coffee cups,
and lies.

Ten Mothers say, “I have arrived.”

While in the basket,
my accidental girl pushes her pink fingers,
dreaming.

New Over Old by Susan Wood

Upcycled Bunnykins necklace by Diane Redden

for Alex

The day you turned eighteen
snow froze to the ground,
a patchwork of chipped
ice and sienna grass.
Ditches gleamed and clouds
cracked to reveal shafts of wan
sun, pouring bitter lemon light.

Your words fell like snow, soft and cold.
They penetrated my skin.
“I won’t be home for my birthday next year,
will I, mom?”

I remember looking through
the bay window, seeing black
branches upon pearled sky
a raft of sparrow shadows and
the weeping mulberry
dripping icy tears

So much pride in you, but always
the burrowing sorrow, too.
I need to know:
what is the particular price
of a truth spent,

when extracted currency
is the viscera of letting go?

Feminism (detail) by Regina Coupar

Do you remember how we talked?

Words slowly formed
an understanding between us—

you wouldn’t come again but
you would stay for awhile,

I wouldn’t hold you
but I would hold your spirit

wandering large, looking
for a place to land.

And I would remember you
beyond
the passing of seasons.

I would remember the words too,
the ways and means, the signatures.

We made promises
about how to do this.

If you look at a mirror in the dark, you see the devil’s face.
-My best friend, Diane, at 13

Son Number Three
Sitting beside the washbasin resisting squirming
and I have to brush his teeth because (the dentist says)
children under the age of ten, or is it six I forget now, do not have the necessary manual dexterity and I have
l o s t
my patience is
maybe it’s in the milk carton
like the toothbrush I once found there, or
in the shampoo bottle with that stick of celery, or
stuck in the toilet’s throat with the tennis ball (the father had to take the whole thing apart, that time) yes, that must be where it is tonight, what little patience I was born
with, and I just, I just
want them all to go to sleep
I want to maybe
just eat a bowl of ice cream
alone
while reading the newspaper
alone

And as he spits peppermint paste
I look at the mirror and see
The devil’s face

Cheng I Sao (detail) by Jennifer Marlow. Photo by Robert George Young.