JoAnn Gilles

Rhapsody in Blue  ( acrylic on canvas )

Inspiration

The Color of Loss is Blue

By Uma Gowrishankar

Response

This is the way your nerves web, mesmerising and enamelled with sweat,
when I call you to touch me here. Your silence is the color of my bruised lip, it also the color of solar wind, a blue rash that the work of creation left on Time.

The dream, like veins of mica on stone, snapped when slats of morning light showed from bamboo blinds. That was when blue from the walls of my room went to meet you somewhere midway. It made me feel I was levitating and I forgot all about my dream.

You gave me a sea glass where wind from worlds under the water blew mists of grey when I pressed the bottle near my face.  It spoke the same language that the earth speaks when I crouch down and hold my ear against singing grass. 

I feel like a boat hurled on bluegreen bay, grey water rising to a foamy surface and filling the horizon with colors, that I call upon you to separate as strands and hang on the peg of your remembrance.

It was only when blue spilled from the book I realised I wasn’t alive anymore. The pages torn away, print blurred with a sharp tool are what stay in mind, not the pages well thumbed and crowded with events.

I exist in ribs of words, in curves of letters, in the space between where ink blots the paper blue, in the space bar as I key this poem. I am nowhere else, and that makes me more dead than alive. 

Death is gold, dull and without glow. You get ready to turn away even as I prepare to shed me to become you. Leaving is not a simple matter. I try this, allow silence wrap around the thought and sink memories in the deep blue. 

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Uma Gowrishankar

Dream  ( acrylic and mixed media on paper )

Response

Just a Bad Night 

By Hildie Block 

Inspiration

 “But you said you didn’t want to,” she looked alarmed.  “You said this is what you wanted.”

“That’s not what I said,” he was spitting mad.  So angry his body could not contain him.  So angry he wanted to hit something.  So angry he could bend steel.  So angry he wasn’t sure what he might do.

“It’s what you meant.  You said you wanted to be normal.  This is how it happened.” She was calm and to the point.

“Who said you are allowed to read my mind???” Now he was screeching.  But the sound echoed in his head and almost didn’t sound.  “You can’t read my mind. You are wrong.”  The “G” in wrong echoed like a bell toned.

“Am I?  Well, now that you asked, I do have a signed contract.”

“With whom?”

“You.”

He paced slowly around the floor.  “I don’t remember this.  I don’t remember this.  I don’t remember this.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, no it’s not.  Show me the paper.” He puts out one hand.

“Okay.”  She hands him a thick stack of stapled papers that have materialized in her hands.  They bear the creases of being folded in three. “Happy?”

“No.  Not happy.”  He looks down, flips the pages, feels like he is looking through them.  “What language is this in?  I can’t read it.”

“Here.  You need your glasses.  Put them on.  It will be clear.”  She hands him a pair of thick black rimmed frames.

“WHAT?   Those aren’t my glasses!”

“Clark, maybe you better sit down.”

 There’s a pause.

“I think.  .  . I think . . . I think . . . I’m lying down.”  He starts to fade.

“Yes.” 

“What?”  He looks like she disturbed him with her answer.  Suddenly surprised to see her there at all.

“Yes, you are.”  She cocks her head.  “You are lying down.”

“I don’t understand.  Lois?”  His voice is panicky.  It starts to come back to him.  “I can’t read?”

“You don’t get it do you?”  Her face softens.  She looks almost sad, sympathetic, concerned.

“No.  No, I don’t.  I don’t get any of this.”  He turns.  He tosses.  His head burrows into a pillow.  The scent of musk and sweat meet his nostrils.

“I just wanted to fly.”

“I’m not sure you did.  You signed the papers.” Lois starts to pale to nothingness in the morning light.

A crushing noise sounds. 

“What’s that????”  he startles awake.  Jumps out of his skin.  His red blanket falls to the floor.

And just like that, another day begins.

His wife wonders why he seems so sad this morning. Just staring down at the Sports Section, and eating his cereal automatically.  Robotically.  Rhythmically pushing his glasses up on his nose.  Eat, eat, read, read, push, drink.  Repeat.

“Just quiet,” she figures, and wonders if he is coming down with the cold the kids have.  His students find his puns without their usual zest for life.   He grades tests slowly and methodically, but almost like he’s not reading them, not there.  His car starts when he puts in the key. There is no line at the bank.  His drive home takes 15 minutes and no one cuts him off.  The cops aren’t even manning the speed trap this day.

He unlocks the door, comes in and no one rushes to ask about his day.  He’s still quiet, so she asks when he comes into the kitchen.

“Bob, you okay?”

“Yeah.  Just a bad night’s sleep.  You know.”

And he looks up at her and sees Lois’ same sad eyes staring out of his wife’s face.  And he closes his eyes behind his glasses, and wishes, once again. That he could fly.

But he could try again tonight.
________

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 orartist is strictly prohibited.