Jennifer Fendya
Inspiration piece

Aurora
By Ray Sharp
Response

You trudge through the coldest hour
in that nightly red-brick canyon
where fears and worries are warehoused
behind arrays of blank-faced windows

until the sudden yellow dawn flares
hot sulfur and you blink back a tear
in the subitaneous blinding of the new day.
You are small and yellow, a mustard seed –

bitter, strong, and yes, simulacrum
of the sun.  You might grow into a tall tree
that shades all the herbs of the garden,
or light a fire that burns long into night.

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Jennifer Fendya
Response

The Old Gods
By Ray Sharp
Inspiration piece

The old gods speak
through the crow in the tree,
the tongue of the flame,
the wind that stirs the ashes,

but I do not understand
the song the vireo sings
in the mountain ash
above the raspberry patch.

In the evening stillness
the swallows make easy work
of souls on the wing.

In darkness, I see a face
with empty eyes
and teeth like little suns.

Oh to feel pain bloom
out of me like red roses,
like the blood of saints.

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Elizabeth Burke
Inspiration piece

A Lamp Unto the World
By Ray Sharp
Response

Each of us, in their own way,
is called to heal the world,
to gather up the light
scattered in dark corners

like bees who gather nectar
from flowers made of sunlight
and bring it back to their hives
where they turn it into golden honey.

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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.

Elizabeth Burke
Response

The Old Gods
By Ray Sharp
Inspiration piece

Love’s Journey Takes Me Thru a Dark Forest, Painting by Rusty Lynn
Response

Barn Dance, Poem by Ray Sharp
Inspiration Piece

You told me
Rilke described love
as a winding path
through a deep dark wood
to the base of the fortress wall
of the beloved
but how could he be so certain
at 24?

I told you
marriage is 30 years
besieged in a castle
fixing plumbing.

You told me
a funny story about a car
and I didn’t get around to telling you
the one about a duck.

The first thing I noticed about you
was your autonomic stance with feet angled
on dancer legs folded like origami birds.

I couldn’t find the Socrates carrot
(the poison hemlock was not of the tree
but of a flowering herb of the carrot family)
but Johnny’s does sell a Socrates cuke!

With arms raised
and fingers touching
like the Gothic arch of the barn roof
you said they would smell you
and it was like dug earth
like mown hay turned in the sun
like summer.

Does it even matter whether we come to Plato
through Kundera or though Hedwig?
Either way there is loneliness
the search for the other half
for love to make us whole.

Here’s your partner everyone swing
now promenade right off the floor
that’s all there is there ain’t no more

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High Tech Head, Painting by Rusty Lynn
Inspiration Piece

Xavi at the Mall, Flash Fiction by Ray Sharp
Response

Xavi 248.655.ESP was seeing two Annas, Anna 176.323.RUS and Anna 088.499.FRA. He tried to keep them straight in his cybermind by calling Anna FRA “Anne,” with one syllable. Xavi loved the small mole on their left cheeks, the fine blonde hair on the small of their backs, the way they cooed when he stimmed their necks.

Anna was older and more confident than Anne. She wore long auburn hair piled atop her head, fixed with bits of wire and twigs and beads like the nest of a bird that might have lived on some faraway island and collected shiny trinkets before the Ubertides. Anne’s hair was short-cropped, plain Anna-brown, and she always wore clothes in public, even in the hottest eight months of summer, a quaint affectation from The Beforetime.

Anna and Anne suspected that Xavi costimmed other people, but he hadn’t gotten around to telling them that he was interpathing two Annas, and it was getting more awkward by the day. Xavis have a serious blushing gene, and right now Xavi 248.655.ESP was burning crimson from forehead to ears, and flushing down his throat and thorax to his fauxnavel. He rose to duck behind a huge gen-enj pineapple bush in the main plaza of CA.BC.24.d where he had been eating his protein bar, but it was too late. Annas were gliding toward him from opposite directions, each waving her left hand, each riding her hoverboard goofy like Annas always do.

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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.

Ray Sharp
“Curtsy”
Mixed media
Response

I’ve Been Clearing Clutter
By Jennifer Fendya
Inspiration piece

I’ve been clearing clutter from my house.

How did it get in?  Did I carry these objects

up the long sidewalk and in through the front door

that’s actually on the side of the house, the same side

the back door’s on?  Believe me, I sensed the bad

feng shui from the beginning, the entryway an obvious

afterthought, or was it designed purposefully

to make every coming and going a reminder

of the need to step aside, step aside, use both hands,

(find the dance), step aside, swing, turn and bow,

turn again, climb.  It’s tricky enough without

carrying anything but when laden with burdens

it makes one give pause in a moment of despair:

How can I go on? Are there no extra hands here

somewhere?? A hidden elevator??? So, I look

in amazement at the clutter of objects, the things

I must move back down and out the long sidewalk

but before it the jamming up at the bottom of the steps,

face to the glass, the necessary curtsy just to get out,

the awkward bend, turn, push, swing, step down,

step aside, step aside…

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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.

Jennifer Fendya
Response

Poets Without Windows
By Ray Sharp
Inspiration piece

I don’t think poets
do well without windows,

She said from her desk,
watching the world go by.

Here I am, on the street,
a pedestrian peering in

Though the old storefront
with just this pane of glass

Between us. Glass is not
a liquid, not exactly,

It’s an amorphous solid,
rigid in structure but arranged

With haphazard molecules
that let most of those persistent

Photons past without making
a scene, turn but a few away,

And trap within fewer still.
The light that passes through

Is how we see each other
almost as we truly are.

The light that is reflected
is how we see ourselves

Through the eyes of the other.
And the light the glass absorbs

Is the restless energy that warms
the space between us.

I watch until you look up
from your work, a quick glance

Toward the street that either
noticed or saw right through me

And sent me on my way
wondering about poets

Who do not do well
without windows.

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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.

Jennifer Fendya
Inspiration piece

left out
By Ray Sharp
Response

little monster
left me here again
slumped in my wheelchair
when she stepped into the gawping mouth
of the big yellow noisy
here on the sidewalk
where big monsters queue up
for other big noisies

i see all
through my lidless acrylic eyes
so even when i’m dreaming
i watch them mill and scuttle

this one even
with dry cracked heels
who smells sour with resignation
& flicks her burning stick
before she climbs the noisy step-tongue

& leaves me
with my 6-legged friends
who march in crookedy lines
up the tenement wall
humming their 6-beat marching songs
a kind of double-waltz

we dolls hear every song
& even as we hate our monsters
when they neglect us
we long to be held
in their clammy paws
danced around the room
& tucked under covers

even my little monster

when will the big yellow noisy return
& spit her out

until then
i would not mind
if the wet-nosed 4-legger
sniffed me again

or even if the haughty 4-legger
arched his back
& rubbed against my wheelchair
& pretended not to notice me

because I would feel the rumpetty-bump
beating of his 4-chambered 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.