National Poetry Month

Wild Words
by Anke Hodenpijl                               
 
 
be warned now
this street will fill again
with kids riding bikes
muslims walking their constitutional
weight watchers jogging
homeless collecting cans
teenagers with ear buds in, oblivious to it all
dogs on leads, wondering what happened
the smell of family barbecues
basketballs bouncing
motorcycles roaring
pickle ball and preschoolers at the park
 
boomers around the propane campfire
lounge lizards on the driveway
sipping on an ice-cold beer
“Well, we dodged another catastrophe.”
 
be warned
we will one day leave this street
on our way to a place
not nearly as important
 
be warned
you will hear wild words
I love you
Let me help you
Thank you
 
be warned
be ready
it will happen
 
 

Anke Hodenpijl is a bedside singer, poet, gardener and safe spot for animals. She is inspired by nature, family, history, friendships and unfinished stories. Mostly, she is a grateful person.

Fields of Poppies
by Christopher Nielsen
 
 
Gold doors shimmering winds
touching back and forth.
 
Poppies bend in the breeze
flowing caress feeling spirits.
 
Grateful seasonal flowers
end and begin again.
 
Organic cameras lightly
capture replays heartfelt.
 
Fields growing of seeds
blowing, fall growing.

Christopher Nielsen resides in Bakersfield, California. He is a photographer, writer, web designer and consultant. Traveling the many back roads of California has provided a wealth of inspiration and he feels most at home out in nature. Poetry has become his primary form of written expression. Christopher has been the featured poet at Kern Poetry’s Open Mic at Dagny’s. His photography has appeared in Barren Magazine and West Texas Literary Review. Christopher’s poems have appeared in CSUB’s Sound 2019, CSUB’s Writing Fields 2020, Rabid Oak and in Mojave Heart Review.
 

Author website:
 chrisnielsenphotography.com

Touching
by Judy Kukuruza
 
Had to go to the store for milk.
Mask on, mentally psyching up.
Straight to the milk – grab it.
To the checkout, staying six feet back, waiting.
 
Cashier, tired eyes—“Is this all?”
“Yes.” Smiling beneath the mask, I add,
“Thank you for coming to work today.
Be safe.”
 
Her tired eyes overflow.
A tear wets her mask—“Thank you” I hear.
I look away, my own mask now wet.
Don’t want to embarrass her or myself.
 
Then I turn back—
Why not?  Let her see my tears,
As she showed hers.
Let our compassion show.
 
We have touched.
Heart to heart.
Maybe not physically,
But we have touched each other.

Judy Kukuruza ~ Retired college instructor from CSUB and Bakersfield College.  She published her memoir One Body/Many Souls in 2018, and later Poems to Ponder, Little Stories to Play with in Your Mind, and Letters.  She publishes her blog, “Our Spiritual Journey” through Word Press, participates in the WOK blog challenge and is published in both the WOK Anthology 2018 Reaching for the Sky and the CSUB poetry antholology, Writing Sound. 

WE FIND HONEY OTHERS MISS
By Catherine Abbey Hodges
 
reads the H&R Block sign.
It’s April of course and I’m charmed
by this as I am by the scrawl of early lilacs
 
in the alley. Even when I realize
I’ve mistaken an M for an H, it’s a slip
neither Freud nor I mind, a mistake I’m
 
happy to have made.
Decades, really, of error and blunder
are how I’ve found honey
 
in the least likely places,
where bees had no business, and how,
eating it raw by the spoonful
 
or sucking it straight from the comb,
I’ve gone places I had no business going.
My dear
 
mistakes are how I found my life.

Catherine Abbey Hodges’ most recent book is In a Rind of Light (Stephen F. Austin State University Press 2020). She is the author of two previous full-length collections: Instead of Sadness, selected by Dan Gerber as winner of the 2015 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize, and Raft of Days (2017). www.catherineabbeyhodges.com

Full Circle
by Shawn Anto

they buried a boy
they never really knew
sprinkled salt around
the resting place
to prevent desecration
in their grief.

did I ever come full circle
like they wanted?

would you say
the redemption
of my life is complete?
 
if the dead want something:
have a face cut it in half
one for happiness
one for guilt
disregard any expectations
and wait for answers after
you pour the gasoline all over.
 
I never asked you
to set yourself ablaze
to keep me and my brother close.
 
the body settles in
somewhere you can hear a lullaby
a mother sings as she calls out to angels
dirty wings still territorial
caked with soil, uprooted.
 
even in death you sing
to enrapture and console me.
 
will they even listen?
do the dead want to hear—
 
maybe they will this time
as they begin their song too.

I walk closer to the fog
for I was closer to the devil.

Shawn Anto is from Delano, California. He was originally from Kerala, India. His writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Reed Magazine, The Decadent Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere.