Writers of Kern

Susan Of Morden
by Dianne Buxton
 
I was a year old, I wasn't a witness,
But the family legend goes
That one day the bull got out of the barn
There was some consternation about this.
 
Susan, then four, picked up a stick
And chased him back into his stall.
When my mother told me this, many years later,
I didn't really think about it much.
 
Did I believe it then? I don't remember.
But I believe it now. The bull must have thought
She was a two-legged grasshopper
Or a wingless horse fly.  But she had the stick.
 
I never heard Uncle Bill contradict my mother on this.
 
The Poplar leaves rustled, deafening, in the prairie wind
Skittering, back-rubbing by the millions
Flashing silver green sequins erupted with crows
The matte blue sky waiting
For the four o'clock shower.

Dianne M. Buxton’s poetry can be seen in Caveat Lector, The Griffin, and Sanskrit. A graduate of the National Ballet School of Canada and an alumnus of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in NYC, she retired from the dance world and now writes.

Stripes
by Phyllis Wachob
 
Forest of bars and shafts
Trunks and branches
Hide and seek
Animals in between
Striped skunks of black and white
Leopard marked feral cats
Flying feathers flicker
In sun ray’s brilliance
Moon glow’s softness
The camouflage of nature
Lays long swords of light

Phyllis Wachob is a writer of mysteries. She has been a fan of mysteries since her childhood and an English teacher for over 30 years. While chronicling her travels in a series of mysteries set in exotic places and interesting times, she still teaches English in Bakersfield.

Flowing
by Natalia Corres
 
There are days when the words
flow through me
looking for a place to
flow out,
to fill the atmosphere
with sounds that make
pictures of sweeping fog and distant seas.
Floating feelings that search for
the arroyos of the heart, to careen and carve
a place in the rocky land of the soul.

Natalia Corres is a writer, artist and tech whisperer who reads voraciously and enjoys life with a husband, and their pets. You can read her poetry and general musings at “Wind in her mane” and on her website “Words to Live By“.

Udo- 
by LaVerne Lovelady
 
Sweet honeysuckle and hummingbirds
and whippoorwills in distant groves;
bumblebees and garden peas,
and cotton growing in jagged rows;
coal-oil lamps and water wells,
the smell of cornbread in the air;
gentle red cows and mean old sows,
and a magnificent sorrel mare;
the peanut crop and sugar cane,
sounds of workers in the field,
the weighing rack for the cotton sack,
the one my mother wields;
lightening bugs and crawdad tails,
and neon lights from a near-by town;
sticky red clay on a rainy day,
a soothing mist over silent ground;
bold adventures and daring games
of riding young saplings to the ground.
 
Unbridled Days and my brother’s praise
are lost to millennial sound.
 

LaVerne Lovelady is a 30-year veteran teacher of English and Interpretive Fiction. Her poems, essays, memoirs, and political commentary have been published in various publications through the years, including the WOK Anthology 2017 and CWC Literary Review.  Her first novel The Quay Question was recently published.    LaVerne is a native Oklahoman, a direct descendant of the Alabama Creek Path Cherokees. She lives in Bakersfield with three adorable cats: Soo-Lin, Siam, and Miss Kitty.

Justice Sleeps
By A. L. Stone
 
Hold open the door and peer into the darkness
See the truth hanging in the air
Bodies dangling, jaws repeat
“There is no love for you here and no change is on its way.”
Oh, the horrors we subject each other to
The things we tolerate and yet remain silent.
 
And where is Justice?
Asleep beneath the porch
While a blaze of hatred rages on
Casting fiery bars through the floorboards.
She is imprisoned and yet dreams sweetly.
She is abandoned and yet feels right at home.
 
Justice does not live and breathe on her own,
but through our breath and our words.
She is animate only by the marching of our feet and the raising of our hands.
She thinks only as our hearts demand
An avatar for what resides within the consciousness of the living,
Justice is as we say,
or not.
 
In the absence of belief in the worth of ourselves,
reflected on the faces of the lynched and starving,
The forgotten and cast out,
Justice rests
while we remain asleep.
Won’t you wake her?

Amanda Stone’s writing spans from children’s picture books to adult fiction to poetry. In 2019, she received the Writers of Kern Peggy Connelly Scholarship for her young adult fiction. When not working on her own projects, she provides online support for people struggling to reconnect with their creativity at www.weareawakenedcreators.com.