wrapped in rough fabric in slanted light,
hollow, wire frame pressed tight,
beaded spine resting in the space between,
like a bowl-backed mandolin that no longer plays
the music gone still.
soon silent.
only this is no instrument.
he’s a child.
an empty-bellied, innocent child.
a dying child.
his mother there too, eyes closed...
in prayer?
in defeat?
in suspension of disbelief?
the unreal reality of us closing our eyes
to him,
his frail body,
his fledgling hair,
the delicate loops and whorls of his crown --
a fingerprint of our hands-on, hands-off approach to people
in this war
between
the right ways and wrong ways to occupy land
between
the right ways and wrong ways to worship god
between
the right ones and wrong ones to care about
to support
to feed
to lend aid
to weaponize
to fire bomb
to shoot in the street as they try not
to starve
this is a picture of a mother holding her child
not an instrument
of war
please may the war stop.
not the music of this little boy's heart.
I fish the inky depths,
trawling dark waters for the hard words
to tell the hard stories
tossed like trash by the devil and his damned
overboard, where they want them to sink.
Where he sends truth to die,
sends victims to lie
beneath oil-slickened, oil-sickened waters
where false rainbows plume, false promises bloom
at the greedy hands of powerful men.
So many left capsized to sink in the ruin of his reign.
But I’ll start with The Kids.
All the children of the lesser gods.
All The Kids not made in his image.
The Kids wrapped in girl bodies,
sealed transcripts and semen-stained trails
and tales so no one will see nor will hear.
The Kids wrapped in historical faiths, covered in
shrapnel and terra cotta skin and bones and pleas
our nation refuses to see nor to hear.
The Kids trapped in red tape and undocumented
tugs of war between parents who love them and
a government that relegates with reptilian hate.
The Kids tagged with special needs, basic needs,
clawed back with initiatives meant to
educate and feed the least of these.
The Kids of all needs, colors, creeds
returning to schools with clear backpacks, but no clear
game plans nor gun laws to thrive and stay alive.
Kids. So many Kids.
Discarded. Discounted. Dissociated. Detached.
From our eyes and ears and hearts and minds.
Without a thought.
Without a prayer.
Kids.
I sift through the last-recent pictures of him,
listen to his one remaining voice mail.
Hello, it’s your Dad. I’m doing just great.
No problems whatsoever.
I like hearing that. I suppose now, it’s true.
I’m sure he keeps counsel with his favorite
cold war space race physicists at some marble-
topped table in heaven, the holy trinity in attendance.
His parents and sister there too.
A month before we lost him, he was worried about losing her.
When the time comes, will you drive me to her funeral?
Absolutely I would have, but he didn’t make it.
And she couldn’t make it to his.
This Father’s Day week, I thrilled at the Strawberry Moon
with Mercury, Jupiter, Mars all in tow. Even Venus joined
the party. The night sky is the love language I learned from
my dad. I remember standing barefoot in crabgrass, scarcely
knee-high to a June Bug, constellations wheeling above us,
as he pointed out stars, taught me the planets, conditioned
me to swoon over lunar events.
The moon vanished the weekend we buried him,
slipped away into Earth’s shadow as I facetimed
his twin sisters, one wrapped in the bedsheets she’d
never again leave.
They watch me now as I write, he and my aunt --
a pair of cardinals (if legends hold true) appearing each dawn –
wings a brilliant Mars red, eyes mercurial dark.
I do my best to reassure him.
Hello, it’s your daughter. I’m doing just great.
No problems whatsoever.
Ah, the heady, slow tempo,the sonnet of June --
with summer stretched out in a languorous tune,
her notes sweetly pedaled and perfumed with sighs,
she vows lazy mornings and evenings sublime.
With a go-nowhere-fast song, she’s pool-water chill,
for screen-porch rain listening and napping your fill.
Crack open the book spines, the bottles of wine,
and relish her at-ease, adagio time.
Wake up to slow measures, dipped silver with dew,
as deer tap staccato while tiptoeing through.
At dusk, come the cymbals in lightning bug sets
of quivering selfies that make you forget
next month, bringing emails with pre-planning news,
and all the bleak back-to-school rhythm and blues.
are many manuscripts
just bursting at the seams,
many spellbound magic books
for healing broken things
aged, patinaed, patched and frayed,
still sitting on the shelf
some come loose, some pinned with twine
but all chock full of wealth.
with charms to gall an adder’s sting
to root out poison, rot
engendered by the canon always
leaning for its shot.
halfcocked, they aim their leather spines
at us, our Magic Place
that burns, bewitches, weakens them
they call us a disgrace.
they disregard our wisdom
and our sage and studied views,
claim we know not what we say,
discount us as confused.
in truth, they're sore afraid of us,
our planet and our stars,
our bodies, hearts, and most, our minds,
our endless reservoirs.
our mother's shelves hold manuscripts
some old and well-worn songs
to rattle out the many truths
and right the many wrongs.
so light the fire, put pots to boil,
then toil and twist and throw
a list of all the loathsome trolls
make thick their gruel of woe
remind them there’s a place for us,
we have the right and might
to bring them down to rubble dust
we've just begun to fight.
Heather Peters Candela
We three wore comfortable shoes
and smiles on our cheeks
while chasing windswept leaves,
chocolate croissants,
and all the sights we could see:
the coyly smiling diva beneath her pyramid,
the Grande Dame in her scaffolding,
the famed tower on the Seine,
the tree lined boulevards,
marble-mouthed accents,
cigarette smoke and accordion chords,
the hushed blend of crepe trousers,
bicycle spokes, and Shakespeare and Company crowds.
The harsh scrape of blisters
and bistro chairs
clustered like the grapes
pressed and poured into glass balloons
poised near berried lips
as perfumed hands snapped selfies
beneath silk flowered awnings,
ribbon-braided balconies,
and stone so creamy you ached for a spoon.
All elegant and expected
and somehow, so not –
like the massive teddy bear
tucked in the crotch of a tree
and the painted elf carousel
at the street corner in Montmarte,
and all the memories that spilled
like sepia-toned love notes
from my daughters
when I spotted a stuffed bear
in the corner of my son’s closet
this Valentine’s week.
It’s February, and a finch couple
flits from branch to branch
between waxy camellia leaves,
plucking at blossoms, at twigs.
It’s early yet to feather a nest,
so maybe they’re searching for
aphids, simply sustaining
themselves in this long winter.
I, too, need sustaining
in this long, bleak winter
and turn to poetry to search
for truth, diversion, comfort,
calm, as entire branches of
our great nation are stripped
of softness. Too riddled,
we’re told, with corruption.
And while pruning keeps things
healthy, this is far from healthy —
all decency peeled and hacked
to feed and feather already
substantial nests.
And I am at a loss which way to lean
with my poems in this storm. To settle
in and steel myself against the cold
currents left after caring and kindness,
inclusion and liberty and justice for all
are gone. To write of soft feathered things
staying the course, perching in the soul,
and singing loudly for all to hear?
Or to steel myself with implements of war?
To load my poems with brimstone and
fire, flashes of anger, to sound the alarm,
to blast the eye and ear of friends,
neighbors, countrymen.
And whichever way I go… will anyone
listen? Will anyone care? As they
don’t seem to care anymore anyway.
The house, cozy at dawn, and me in my bathrobe and soft Santa socks, Christmas lights glowing, playlist carols going… sipping my coffee and sorting my thoughts,
How lucky am I, I think — no, I know. How blessed to be snuggled beneath a warm velvet throw in the crook of a sectional with my laptop and nowhere to go while watching the sky shift to silver at dawn.
How simple, how sumptuous — an extravagance, bar none –that not everyone has. To have a sanguine soul in a world that exsanguinates souls. My gratitude is great. My cup overflows.
My sons are nestled all snug in their beds and my girls grown and glowing in orbits they threaded and hung on their own, weaving constellations that tell their tales, cast shimmering trails of goodness and grace.
While the boys, on the cusp of their own greatness, silver their way toward their own dawns, stars blooming bright on their baby cheeks and burgeoning lives, and the sky’s (no the universe) is their limit too, destinies unspooling just like their sisters’,, but entirely their own.
I celebrate all their stories, all their tangled strands of light unwound from my body, ever unwinding and widening, bright and brighter still, stringing their gifts like drops of Jupiter, like sun-wrangled, star-spangled miracle-bringers of goodwill and good trouble in this dark world.
There is no greater joy, no greater comfort for a mother’s heart than to see the babies she brought into this world out there in it, slaying and making spirits bright — hers most especially.
They come in threes, they say. Bad things come in threes. And sure
enough, bad tidings rode in on their serrated fonts in swirling
impatient portals: an unholy trinity of cyst, malignancy and mass.
One slung sideways, like a fanny pack across a kidney sack, a second,
mortared to wind pipe, spewing ash into places unknown, a third sucking
marrow from mammary glands like a motherfucker. Unsanctified settlers,
all. Mother of all that is Holy, who let in the false prophet, the devil, the
beast to cast rings around x-rays and pockets full of poison, ashen shadows
on MRI scans? All that rot and stink and bile planted like rancid Easter eggs,
tangled spiders’ nests, like hissing snakes in sacred sanctuaries… Such blatant
blasphemy. Such sick sacrilege. But then, while bad things come in threes, so
too, do good. And we believe in the Good — that Triumvirate of Truth: Faith
and Hope and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. Love lends strength and
courage to fight. When we harness for God the energies of love, then love will
help conquer all. Together, we’ll banish the bad for Good. Even the dirty, rotten C word.
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