Susan Bee

(Inspiration Piece)

No More Masks

by Marla Deschenes

(Response Piece)

Dusty ghosts of Halloweens past
Haunt this space, this time
Surrounded by the words of others
Another mask
To hide behind.
Unveil yourself to the world
Shake off the dirt or this moment will bury you.
Burst forth as part of the now
The change
And fill those books
With the words of the stories only you can tell.
Satisfy your soul with nature’s candy
Tall trees majestic, arms reaching infinitely to the sky
Birds singing you awake in the dawn
Leaves swirling around your feet
As the nights fill with the laughter of children.
This Halloween will be different
As this time
You are no longer masked
Always
Open
Always
Revealed.

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or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited.

Jane Hulstrunk
Inspiration piece

Dandelion
By Marla Deschenes
Response

Impending wish
Whispered softly to tentative seeds
And fluff
And in a breath
To coast on lazy summer’s breeze
Carrying softest words through gentle air
A nature prayer.
Landing nestled within Mother Nature’s breast
So many yearnings laying dormant
In the dirt
Until the sun returns to warm the lost confessions.
Look out across the expanse of green
And see them burst forth once again.
Every yellow bloom
Reaching for the light
A reminder of the wantings
Of a summer past.

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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.

Tora Estep

(Inspiration Piece)

Colors

By Marla Deschenes

(Response Piece)

Turn the color wheel to the color that suits this mood

This painted wheel that dictates how I paint this canvas

Called life.

The reds of my passion

The blues of my sorrow

The twisted colors that bleed into one another, my life, so

Broken

So twisted

So saved only by the mesh of purple

That mix where the passion and the sorrow meets

Where I wear my heart on my sleeve

Where the person who ultimately gets hurt is me

But I take it

Time and time again

Spinning on that color wheel

Coming to rest on the places where my heart will bleed

And then stop

And then start again

And watch the colors blur

As they always do

When I take another chance on opening my heart.

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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.

Fiona Avocado
Inspiration piece

Morning Rituals
By Marla Deschenes
Response

The simple ways of living are the beauty in this suburban jungle
The mornings where I cross that floor full of determination
To make this day better with more coffee, and more adoration from my dog
His morning walk complete before I move to zipper on my coat.

My footsteps imprint upon the stairs in sock-like patterns
The morning is when I meditate beneath lingering stars
The dog’s breath fogging up the fall air, the air breathing the cold brisk of fall
My thoughts on what’s ahead and what will forever be behind.

Padding back home gratefully for coffee and the beloved kibble
I leave my companion behind for his morning of sleeping on the furniture
And make my way back out into the crisp, the air swooshing with a laugh through my hair
The too early jack-o-lanterns mock me from the neighbor’s yard as I hurry to my day.

My happiness is not hard won through business purpose
The mornings where I lay beside the dog for just that moment of a little longer
And make my excuses to the alarm clock, and cross the floor with bravery of warm socks
Encasing my feet, my hard-won victory of purpose for another money making day.

The wind blows back my still open jacket as I descend the concrete stairs
To the automobile that is still kind enough to transport me after all these years.
I take one glance back at the house, and turn the key in the ignition
My happiness is my survival and my heart on my sleeve love.

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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.

Sandy Coleman
Inspiration Piece

Sundance/Moondance

Response

by Marla Deschenes

There were days when we danced for the sun

There were days we danced for the moon

When our differences were what made us the same

Bound together by the heartbeat of the earth

The secrets of all women kept within our breasts

We danced to praise the goddesses for our blessed lives and knowledge.

Our bodies remember our arms in the air

The movement of our sisters when we were all women strong

When we used what the earth gave us to heal the sick

And to bring forth life from our wombs

When others revered us and clamored for our touch

We danced to praise the goddesses for our eternal gifts of life.

It wasn’t the sun that burned our sisters alive

It wasn’t the moon that betrayed them.

It was the fear of other gods and the oneness with the earth

The cowering of the weaker men, the ones wielding power in a book

With a god no one understood or wanted in their homes

The dancing became too soon obscured by the forests and lit only by moonlight.

The ash from their missing bodies rose in spirals

The air twisting the bones of dust into arms lifting up

The smoke filling in for flesh and bones in the gentle wind

The screams long reverberated from disintegrating trees

And the ghosts of the women lifted once more to dance for the sun

The moon the place of happenstance

For witches and for ghosts.

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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.

Lene Gary

Inspiration

River’s Edge

by Marla Deschenes

Response

Chase me down to the river
Through the changing trees
Where we hid the saddest fishing boat
The oars standing at attention camouflaged as the mighty pines
Our giggling bringing back memories of a lighter younger time.

They used to work here
Panning for gold
Casting out their lines for fish
But these shores know only garbage now
Abandoned automatons of epic proportions
Now nothing more than squirrel homes and bird sanctuaries

Come with me down to the river
Stepping lightly on the shore
And sit so gently in the fishing boat
Hold the oars above the water line as I push the bow gently across the sand
And jump with childish glee into the empty seat.

The jobs went first to Florida
Then Mexico and India
And places never heard of around here.
The river holds the secrets and the salty tears
The bodies of the workers who chose to walk into the deep
Until they were one with the waters  sliding past.

Stay with me down at the river
Drifting across the moving water
Lilting as the sun catches the blond in your hair
Once last journey downstream
Before winter’s cold hides the secrets the river keeps
In the ice frozen to the bottom of our boat nestled beneath bare trees.

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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.

Sukia

Inspiration

Goddess Power

by Marla Deschenes

Response

From the part of me that sees from that eye placed so firmly by the goddess
The eye of truth that shines as bright as the sun from its spot upon my forehead
The parts of me kept hidden from an unforgiving world
The label they place upon me whispered face to ear, lips moving softly
Witch

Embraced by the darkest spirit animal of the raven
Their magic keeps me safe from those who would do all they could to hurt me
The power of a woman pulses through my heartbeat to soft wings
Quivering with the protection offered against the world, my safest place
Witch

I can hold the earth at my breasts and the oceans so close to my throat
The power emanating from my womb the rites of passage for all women
The dark goddess haunts my hours both waking and asleep
But the raven and the others know what I am, huddling close to taste the magick
Witch

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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.

Jack Hernandez

Untitled

By Marla Deschenes

How do words become feelings?
These sounds of self-expression falling from my lips.
How does this cacophony of phrasing make any sense
Against
The burning of my flesh against your naked frame?
How do these letters and symbols
Nothing more than the trained moving of my pen
Convey the meaning
of my heart’s tumultuous leap
Whenever you arrive again safely
At my side once again?

Impossible questions
Intangible answers

Closing doors have greeted me so many times
Painful in the realization
Of a path you cannot ever take.
A turning around
A reshuffled way
How do these doors hold back feelings?
How do these doors refuse to open
Leaving my repaired heart outside
To suffer in the reeling cold?
Nothing left for me to do but
Move forward
As every path taken
Leads to a door
And perhaps the next one
Will
Stay
Open.

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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.

Ruthie’s Town

by Marla Deschenes

Response

RUTHIE’S TOWN – a story excerpt

by Lisa L. Leibow

Inspiration

It’s an industrial city, centrally located – an hour from everywhere. On Main Street, a railroad
bridge spanned a steep incline heading north.  At least once a week,
a semi misjudged the clearance and jammed underneath it. Traffic
would back up beyond the Searstown Mall as far as St. Leo’s, while
everyone waited for the driver to let enough air out of his tires to
escape the clutches of the trestle. Once loose, the trucker would
re-inflate all eighteen wheels and carry on.

The trucker could have been headed to Pete’s Coffee Shop, where thick-necked guys with rolled-up sleeves,
sat at the counter. They worked at Foster Grant making sunglasses,
Alpha Rho making plastic boxes of all colors and sizes, and Union
Products making pink flamingos. They sat at the counter and
complained about the Bruins in winter and the Red Sox in summer. The
trucker also could have been headed to Whalom Park, home of the Flyer
Comet, where teenaged townies had a whale of a time. They would cling
to their dates and scream, while rattling down the wooden roller
coaster, or sit on the hoods of their parents’ station wagons at
the edge of the lake, passing around joints.

On Sundays, most of the population filled St. Leo’s Cathedral to the rafters. They were Catholics of
Irish, Roman, and French Canadian descent drawn together by the
parish. The rest of the Sunday morning worshipers could be found at
the United Methodist Church over on Hall Street. But Ruthie Kahn
worshipped on Saturdays, with about twenty others over at
Congregation Agudas Achim.

A block or two away from the synagogue was Doyle Field, where religion didn’t matter. All that mattered
was rooting for the high school football team on Thanksgiving
morning. Citizens filled the stands, everyone waving banners and
cheering on the Blue Devils against the Red Raiders. In those days,
few commuted any distance to make a living. Teachers, doctors,
pharmacists, and lawyers were all part of the community where they
worked. They joined students, parents, and factory workers, whistling
and whooping for the blue and white.

During the dark days of winter, evergreen garlands wrapped the street lamps glowing along Main
Street. Anyone driving toward the high school could see skiers riding
up t-bars and slaloming down the lighted slopes of Pheasant Run.
Winding through the residential neighborhoods off of Merriam Avenue
and West Street brought views of trees wrapped in blinking lights.
Flashing Santa Clauses and animated elves decorated yard after yard.
A car might pass a hundred houses blazing in red, green, and white
before reaching a split level lighted only by a post lamp at the edge
of its neatly shoveled walkway. Sometimes the bare homes would run
three or four in a row, but then it would be one-hundred-fifty before
another unadorned house came along. This was the easiest time of year
to pick out Ruthie Kahn’s and the few other Jewish homes in town.

October Trees
Marla Deschenes

Inspiration

MELTING OCTOBER SNOW –  a story excerpt

by Lisa L. Leibow

Response

Bettina waited for the elevator, picking at the edges of an old wallet-sized photo in the pocket of her brown leather coat and hoping she’d finally tracked down the one person who might know what really happened to her mother. Her father’s, “She’s singing with the angels, now,” may have satisfied the girl in pigtails, who had skipped to the kindergarten bus stop, bounded onto his belly every time he had read Hop on Pop at bedtime, and simply had asked, “Why I don’t have a Mommy like the other kids at school?” She didn’t understand why her father couldn’t trust her with the truth. After all, she wasn’t a child anymore. That morning last month, when blotches of red on her underwear surprised her, proved she was a woman.
She might have screamed when she saw the blood if it hadn’t been for Connie from Girls On The Run, bragging about the Coach purse her mother bought her to tote tampons, and for Ms. Johnson’s health lessons the year before, in fifth grade. There was something final about Bettina’s period. It killed the childish notion that when she grew up, she’d have to slather shaving cream all over her face and shave her chin like her dad.
She pressed the call button for the elevator for the third time and looked at the indicator above the door. The light for the eighth floor didn’t waver. “Slow elevator,” she muttered under her breath and pulled the picture from her pocket. On the back, curly letters in faded blue ink read, Troy, Love will keep us together. Yours forever, Tammy. A smiling freckled face with voluminous auburn hair feathered to the margins smiled at Bettina from the old yearbook picture. She’d never met this woman. Yet, she had more in common with her than she did with her dad.
The only reason she had the snapshot in the first place, was because she’d been working on a timeline of events related to civil rights for social studies class and had run out of glue. She had rummaged through every drawer in the house for tape, a glue stick, anything to attach the last photo of Rosa Parks to the assignment, finally winding up in the top drawer of Dad’s bedside table. She raked her hand through the layer of pocket change, pencils, and old receipts to find blue eyes like hers staring up at her. Bettina examined the square jaw and upturned nose – an older version of Bettina with big hair. Stuffed into the same junk drawer, a ceramic frame with a heart-shaped mat held a photo of this same woman in a white gown fit for Cinderella, walking down a white carpet toward a thinner version of Bettina’s Dad in a tuxedo. Bettina held her breath and squinted, trying to remember if she’d ever seen her father without eyebrows pinched together and shoulders cinched up to his ears. This guy with the effortless smile and smooth forehead meant that her father either had a long-lost happy twin, or had a life before Bettina that gave him joy.
In the photo, an older man to the bride’s left clasped her fingertips. He leaned toward her. Thick gray hair and full cheeks framed a bulbous nose. She’d never met her grandfather or any relatives on Mom’s side of the family. This was the moment Bettina came up with the idea to look for them. She couldn’t bare her father’s glossy distant look and clenched teeth each time she questioned the slightest detail about her mother, like whether Mom had planted the tulip bulbs that popped up around the mailbox every spring. Once she asked a few simple questions about where they went on their first date? Did they have a song?  He’d headed straight for the cabinet over the refrigerator, pulled out the black-labeled bottle, and kicked a shot of Jack Daniels. No telling what he’d do if Bettina asked him to delve into real memories of their life together, or worse yet, how she died?
The elevator signal-bell rang, the door opened, and she stepped in. When she reached the sixth floor of the nursing home, she followed the signs to Room 918, took a deep breath, and knocked.

A gravelly voice, said, “Come in.”

The door squeaked as she pushed it open. “Hello?”

A bed dominated the room. It was one of those adjustable beds she always wanted to fold in half at the mattress store next to Dippin’ Donuts. In a chair next to it, sat an old man who looked more like a crumpled brown pair of pants and sweater with wrinkly face glued to the collar. His white hair had streaks of gray, like muddy tire tracks through an unplowed winter road. He opened his paper-thin eyelids and looked in Bettina’s direction, widening his eyes, dropping his jaw, and reaching for the aluminum cane leaned on the windowsill beside him.

“It can’t be… Tammy?”
Until now, every bit of colorful past had been hidden like a forest after a blizzard in October. Vibrant burgundy, mustard gold, and warm cinnamon brown of autumn joy, wind-whipped and buried in heavy, wet snow of grief. She’d found her grandfather. This would change everything.
(To be continued…)