Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Reciprocity
Inspiration Piece

Photo Opp
Annmarie Lockhart
Response

Alright, babe. Selfie time!
Smile for the camera! Say mozzarella!
Check it, this light totally brings out my eyes.
I’m definitely posting this.
I’m gonna get so many likes.
Whoa, what do you mean you hate it?
Drab? What are you even saying?
You’re beautiful, baby!
Husky? What are you, kidding me?
First of all, you know I like you
with a little meat on your bones.
Second, remember that last shot,
the one we took at the feast?
You looked like hell in that one, honey.
Pasty, sickly, no life, no glow.
And I told you that. Come on.
If you didn’t look good,
you know I’d say it. Right?
You look great, baby.
You’re my sexy girl.
All my boys are mad jealous
cuz they don’t got nothing
as fine as you.
Come on, let me post it.
And then I’ll take you
out for a nice steak,
rare, just the way you like it.
Damn, girl! This light
really does bring out my eyes.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Transition
Response

Toasted Wishes
Annmarie Lockhart
Inspiration Piece

Ten years ago
I sat at a table with a dozen
friends, half a lifetime and
a thousand miles away.

We toasted four decades of life
and imagined what the next
one would bring.

“What if” is a dangerous
game. It teases you onto
thin ice, lures you to
the edge of the cliff.

One of us got what she wished
for. Some of us lost mothers,
children, lovers, faith, hope.

Ten years from now
I may sit at a table with
friends toasting six
decades of life.

What will we celebrate and
mourn? How many of us will
have gotten what we wished for?

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Rock Climbing
Response

ABCs
By Annmarie Lockhart
Inspiration Piece

You gave me a sheet of green lined paper
with my name ranged across the top and a
lopsided heart halfway down. You signed it
in kindergarten letters carved in the certainty
of milk and cookies:
Your Valentine
as if somehow I might not know what was
already written in the stars.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Beginning/End
Inspiration Piece

Star-Crossed
By Annmarie Lockhart
Response

Summer finally remembered to check the calendar.
She’s a few weeks late and I can relate.
Who can resist the pull of the off-season: lazy
days washed down with spritzers and beer,
reset rhythms that might leave one unable
to tell sunset from sunrise, midday wake-
ups to the sound of open car windows
and trains of nowhere? Who can resist
the weight of nothing to do? Who can blame
the wayward season for wanting to close her eyes
and relive the dream, dancing up a snowstorm
on a frosted night, in a white dress and red boots,
warm in the ephemeral embrace of Winter.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Afternoon Delight
Inspiration Piece

Things They Didn’t See
By Annmarie Lockhart
Response

She didn’t see:

• the time it took to flatten and stack the boxes
  that carried onions, broccoli, bean sprouts before
  they were sautéed with the duck featured
  so prominently on the sign
• the hands of the woman who strung the lights
  whose job it was to suggest festivity in the shape
  of a strip-needled tree and the glare of foil
  four long years and an earthquake ago
• the city man who gave the place an “A,” meaning
  the grease and dust were of the safest variety, no vermin
  DNA accrued in the kitchen, the food was kept hot enough
  to dissuade bacterial proliferation

He didn’t see:

• the raised paw and pearl white face of the good luck cat
  in the window, warding off times dark and lean, hailing
  sunlight and neon, starlight and stardom, winking
  at the inside joke of fortune
• the way her frozen yogurt slid from blueberry bright
  to purple stain in the time it took to walk and talk
  from Hell’s Kitchen to her apartment filled with
  songbirds just south of the Lincoln Tunnel
• the residual hope shining behind her glasses, glints
  of the dream she had the night before while he watched the Yankees
  and she danced with a stranger, waking to tell him she wondered
  why she never dreamed anymore

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Power in the Clouds
Response

Ladder
By Annmarie Lockhart
Inspiration piece

Maybe if we climb high enough
above the clouds like Dorothy,
beyond the noise of Babel,
the tastes of the polyglot pantry,
the closeness of sweat and steam,
we will remember the stretch of mind,
the reach of fingers, the pull of heart,
the bind of common need.

Maybe up is the way out, one rung
at a time, leading us out of this gutted garden
and into that consecrated constellation
waiting to be reclaimed.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Pop Art
Inspiration Piece

Post No Bills
Annmarie Lockhart
Response

Words don’t tell the story
any better than pictures,
icons and fantasies.

Black paint on yellow brick
evokes a tintype telegraph
but fuchsia
swirled around Sophia
suggests a time
between wars.

A monster skull with one eye
and a full set of teeth
obliterates
an indoor playground,
but the snake-bitten eagle
still wears his crown

and this, I’m afraid,
doesn’t bode well
for owls or pussycats
who sit behind locked
metal doors
waiting to feel
exceptional.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
East River Run
Response

Winter Station, Heading North
Annmarie Lockhart
Inspiration Piece

Tonight, drunk on rum
that will not freeze and water
that will not burn

a friend told me
that iced rivers were once
the road to freedom

and this is joyous news
in a joyless time of waiting on Sunday
for Monday’s broken promise.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Through His Eyes
Inspiration Piece

Escape
Annmarie Lockhart
Response

Driving my daughter home for spring break,
stuck in stop-and-go traffic on Pennsylvania 95,
we see a small dog, chow or a type of terrier maybe,
wearing the face of joy and running north in the left
lane, normally reserved for passing.

Drivers try to corral him against the median, but
this dog doesn’t know from a rock and a hard place.
Men abandon their cars, turning the road into a rodeo,
dashing and grabbing at a little dog running like the wind,
his frosted fur choppy as a stormy day on the Delaware.

A veer to the right, a swerve to the left, and a final hard right
take our canine hero the wrong way down an entrance ramp
top speed, past the 18-wheeler stopped amid the chaos.
We lose sight of him and my daughter, different now
than she was in September, calls 911.

Checking to see if the story made the news, we discover
he’s not the first runaway to hit that open highway.
Two others made the break on that very same
road, 2 and 5 years previous. Some roads
were made for the run of a lifetime.

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Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Carrying Light
Response

No Secrets
Annmarie Lockhart
Inspiration Piece

The trees were supposed to carry
you my secrets:
scrawled love notes on swirling leaves.

But no wind blows six years strong
and I forgot the words
to our unnamed song.

You drew a dream in the low-tide sand
and showed it to me
while I was looking at the stars.

She saw what the surf
left behind under scattered jellyfish
and said Stars belong in the sea.

But I know stars must be plucked
from the waves
and hung in the sky

to spell out the story of tomorrow
scavenged from scraps
of yesterday.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.