Jonathan Ottke

Response

The Warm Nights

alteration

Sun sets, the sexed flowers open.
Far off, teenagers screech
the songs of dead moths.
The warm nights have altered them.
They are hysterical with their sense
of freedom in the dark,
piercing it with their sharp voices.

equation

Somehow in the night
the owl got confused with the
half-filled glass.
In my mind, the hoots were an echo
of what was missing.
You continued to sleep
while a spiky dog barked
to silence the owl.

question at dusk

This is your heart.
This is a young deer I have befriended
who comes in the dusk to eat roses.
Do they see colour, I wonder?
Or is it the scent of something tender?

—Barbara Black

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Dante Jericho
“Windows and Wings (Gifts from the Emptiness)”
Response

Horoscope for the Empty
By Meg Max
Inspiration piece

You’ll feel a tug from the stars, a feeling that a plug is being pulled, an emptiness behind your belly button telling you that each little thing you have is not enough.

Your socks won’t feel right on your feet, and don’t even bother buying new ones. They’ll just feel weird, too. Your hair won’t sit right on your head. It’ll be flat one day, staticky the next, and no matter how hard you brush or comb or how much hairspray you use, you’ll still walk by your neighbors and wish your hair looked like theirs.

Your roses won’t bloom large enough, the middle of your daisies won’t be yellow enough, the leaves on the ground in front of your house won’t be red enough, crispy enough, and they won’t rake themselves, so don’t even bother wishing there was someone around to do it for you.

Back to that bellybutton.

You’ll feel an emptiness behind it. You may mistake it for hunger, but you can eat all the steaks and apples and chocolate you want but that’s not it. That isn’t what that blank space inside you wants.

The planets have spoken and you will feel empty, no matter what you eat.

Keep trying to fill yourself up.

Eventually the tides will change and the moons will shift and the planets will align and one day you’ll stop longing.

One day you’ll get what you want.

But don’t bother trying to figure out what that is.

Even the stars can’t guide you.

Even we don’t know.

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Dante Jericho
“Finding Our Orbits”
Inspiration piece

Luna and the Bears
By Meg Max
Response

The world was not what it once was.

When Jane and Rob were children, they’d been relatively safe. Their parents had worried about some things, about them being snatched by strangers and latched to a radiator in a basement, fed nothing but crackers and never seeing the light of day again. They fretted about them skipping school. Jane’s parents lectured her about getting pregnant, Rob’s about making sound financial decisions, and they met without having ever been kidnapped and starved, without unwanted pregnancies, with a nice nest egg in the bank, and walked, smug and happy down the aisle, certain that their future would be as beautiful as their past.

That was before.

Five years ago, on one unforgettable night, three things happened.

The moon rose red in the sky.

The animals ceased to creep meekly around the edges of cities, and rose, wild, to claim their homes back.

And Jane, beautiful, blond, simple Jane, gave birth to a baby girl who they named, quite fancifully, Luna.

Parents kept their children inside, away from the raccoons that fought garbage collectors on collection day, the foxes that snuck, like small red commas, inside of ice cream trucks and into the back doors of snack shacks, raiding refrigerators and grills, chattering to one another all the while.

Parents feared not just one another, but the wild things that crept closer, the click click click of nails on concrete down the street in the middle of the night. “Coyote?” They’d whisper, hopeful. Coyotes didn’t attack much. Coyotes were a bit like the dogs they used to have, before no one kept pets anymore.

No one talked about that, about the dogs and cats that went missing from back yards, about the screens popped out of window frames in the middle of the night, while owls swooped into bedrooms like bandits, knocking cages and terrariums to the ground with a bang that terrified everyone in the house. Back out the winged beast would go, holding whatever hamster or guinea pig, hedgehog or overfed lizard had been living inside.

No one had pets anymore. No one played outside. It wasn’t safe.

Except Luna.

From the age of two, Luna had devised ways to get outside.

Her parents would find her sharing her snacks with the birds, birds they used to leave feeders for, birds they now feared because they’d figured out how to fly together into the windows of high rises that used to kill them one by one. In a group, they’d bombard the glass again and again and again, shattering whole sides of buildings, fluttering into offices while grown men and women hid beneath their desks.

No one thought birds were cute any more, except for Luna.

She sat out on the back deck feeding them crackers, while her parents knocked on the window to get her attention, beckoning her back inside, neither of them willing to venture out to get her while there was a swarm of chickadees around.

Rob and Jane had to secure their house not simply from the outside, but from the inside as well. Other parents worried about electrical sockets and tiny fingers caught in cupboard doors. Rob and Jane worried about finding their daughter’s bed empty at night, about her showing up at the front door at the break of day filthy and exhausted, having spent the night with her “friends”, the raccoons and wolves, the filthy and feral animals that were taking over town.

They tried to hide it from the neighbors, Luna’s strange propensity towards befriending their attackers, but there was no way to do it. Some people thought she was mad. Others appreciated having someone around who would come rid their home of the mice that invaded regularly, Luna sitting on the kitchen floor and speaking in her high, piping voice to them, “Come, mousies, time to go back outside.”

As she got older and it became clear that this was no passing fancy, people stopped talking to Rob and Jane. In the grocery store, Jane would see other women gathered around the melons, flashing looks at her at her and smiling with their mouths, but not their eyes. At work, Rob was never given a raise, never promoted. He heard his boss, once, saying something about how the whole family must be weird for the daughter to be like that. Rob was ashamed that instead of sticking up for his daughter, he’d simply wanted to tell them, “I’m nothing like her. I’m as scared of these animals as you are. I’m a little scared of her, too.”

Rob and Jane had to make a hard decision. When Luna turned nine, they decided to leave town. She was simply attracting too much attention, and not the right kind. A reporter had been sniffing around, wanting to talk to the “girl who spoke animal.” No one in the neighborhood would let their kids play with Luna.

She had no fear, approaching wild things without hesitation, placing a hand on a haunch or a muzzle, stroking feather and fur with a tenderness everyone chose to ignore.

And worst of all, everyone said, was the fact that That Girl’s house was never plagued by the problems that befell the rest of them. Jane, Rob and Luna never found their windows broken by marauding birds. Luna hung compact discs in their windows, their reflections flashing warning at her feathered friends. Their garbage was left untouched by raccoons. Luna left anything edible out in big metal bowls each night for the raccoons to pick through as they pleased. She left out milk for baby wolves and foxes. She refused to let her father mow the lawn so the butterflies and bees danced through the grass and wildflowers all summer. Luna never ever let her parents fill in the holes where the groundhogs made their homes.

Sick and injured animals would present themselves to her, creeping from under bushes and porches, limping and whining while she fell to her knees in front of them and her parents dashed up onto the nearest high rock or back into the house, watching from behind a curtain as Luna went into the garage to grab her box of bandages and splints. As their daughter tried to fix the world, they watched from behind glass.

They sold most of their stuff, and packed the rest into their car. They made their way slowly through the city. The traffic was terrible, as that was the day the bears had decided to amble through town. They blocked intersections, reared up on their hind legs and roared, pawed through garbage cans and wandered into any building that had doors that opened automatically.

Luna loved it.

The bears still stayed away, mostly. Fearsome beasts like them fared especially badly when they tried to take back what belonged to them. The smaller animals, people were scared of, but kind of left alone. But bears and wolves, and, Luna had heard, the elephants and lions and jaguars in other parts of the world, had to wait until there were enough of them to create a real impact. If only one or two dared approach a city or village, they’d be killed on sight.

She was happy to see that there seemed to be many, many bears. So many, in fact, that the military had been called to clear them out.

Traffic slowed, and eventually stopped. Around them, buildings soared. Luna watched as streams of people in black suits, carrying huge guns, streamed past the car.

There were helicopters buzzing overhead.

They were going to kill her bears.

In one quick movement, Luna opened her car door and dashed into the street. She looked around wildly, and spotted a high tower near her. Running as fast as she could, she ran and ran, and then climbed and climbed, pressing against the tide of people coming down the stairway, trying to evacuate the city as per officials request.

She reached the top of the stairs and then threw herself against the door she found there. She was on top of the building.

She was on top of the world.

Down below, her parents had climbed out of their car. Luna didn’t try to find them, instead, she was fixated on the bears she could see in the distance, on the tiny soldiers, little black ants, moving towards them.

Luna waved her arms “Over here!” she called. “Over here!” As she saw the bears catch her scent she opened her mouth and roared.

Below, Jane and Rob watched their daughter stand on top of a building, calling the wild animals to her.

People had begun to point.

Bears started pressing forward, moving towards where Luna dangled off the edge of the building, easing them forward with her cries.

She knew that there was no point in trying to talk to the humans who were going after them, but she hoped she just might be able to talk some sense into the bears.

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Wendy Schneider
Response

Holiday Memories
By Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration piece

Cold pricks the nose and ears
Cloudy skies and unwelcoming winds swirl
As we rush, thinking of others
Old friends present and absent
Time to give the small present
The material bird flying from the heart
Overflowing with warm wishes.
Another year is blinking its eyelashes
Flashing its headlights
To alert us to love and say those things
Hidden in the heart so close to vest
Where pocket watches tick away
The end of another year.
And holidays provide time to refresh
To review and give thanks
And let sparkling trees, green wreaths, menorah and dreidel, ringing melodies
Comfort us; travel us to past and present,
Love us into warmth
Ready for the next, the to come, the not yet here
Of new challenges and quiet smiles.

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MM Panas
“Blue Vista”
Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 12″x12″
Response

The Gift
By JoAnn Moore
Inspiration piece

Cypress bow their crowns
to the Pacific as fog ensconced hills
make wholly inept attempts to reach the sky. Still
the view is magnificent
in its failure.
Here, on Highway 1, just north of Big Sur’s
visual Mecca, I pause on jutting palisades and understand
why California is for dreamers.

If the sky was any bluer,
I could drown in it;
if the horizon stretched further—
I’d find eternity.
How —from far enough away—
it is certain the coast was meant as a gift
for the ocean to enjoy—
an offering for endings—
and how I, at this vista,
am grateful for the sacrifice.

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MM Panas
“Pink Snow”
Inspiration piece

For Possibilities
By JoAnn Moore
Response

It is December.
The world is snow tipped
with darkness—
especially the northern half—
after all, it is
winter. Songs and tidings
attempt to mollify the deepening dark
with twinkling lights,
holiday sales, flower memorials,
protest marches—the dichotomy
of hope and passion,
though one’s perspective controls the view.

It is remarkable how in winter
or church or politics
or hate, the chorus remains
the same:
…………Change.     (but not me)
…………Restrain.     (with protection)
…………Believe.     (in your God)
…………We need a miracle.
…………Miracles happen.

I want to write a poem
for light and existence,
kindness, acceptance.
Clarity in the fog.
For possibilities,
for peace and pink snow.
If only in a poem.

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Jonathan Ottke
Inspiration piece

As Camponotus* Is to Love
By Barbara Black
Response

“The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.”
E. O. Wilson

A hidden entry, blind
nocturnal tappings, and
trails of odour message.

Amber moons of dreamless
nights, silent, we burrow
tunnels to the heart’s red

antechambers, where moist
nests reward our labour.
Take us to love’s end and

after, we won’t look back
needful of the way out,
tender inside this space.

* the carpenter ant

Author’s note: The structure of the poem, 3-line stanzas (tercets) with each line having six beats, echoes the structure of the ant’s body: 3 body segments, with six legs. The first letter of each line spells out letters of the word “ant” vertically.

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Jonathan Ottke
“Paper Wasp”
Inspiration piece

Sullen Season
after Polistes dominula
By Barbara Black
Response

Mist limns a still pond. Snails
idle. Liminal. Pallid sun seeps into us.
Silent minutes pass, as outside, moist moss listens
to its planet. Old dull mind-moon, on it spins, slant.

Author’s note: The structure of the poem echoes the structure of the paper wasp nest: a single six-sided cell surrounded by six other hexagons, or one six-beat line followed by 3 lines of 6 + 6 beats each. Also, the poem uses only letters from the Latin name of the paper wasp—Polistes dominula—and uses only each word once.

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Jonathan Ottke
“Red Roots”
Inspiration piece

Supper
After Charles Simic
By Barbara Black
Response

The old woman on the floor with a cleaver, its blades stained lurid pink.

The cat on the counter licking the roast beef.

The postman leaving a parcel by the door.

On the cutting board tangled roots that look like appendages.

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Amy Souza
“Found”
Inspiration piece

On the Wings of a Wish
By Jules Rolfe
Response

When you a wish on the glowing candles of your birthday cake,
on a dandelion puff, on a shooting star,
or on that first star you see tonight,
the wish takes wings to fly about and come true
Why are they secrets? Why won’t they come true if we share?

These whispered dreams echoed in silence
are telling a child to stop asking for help to tie his shoes
then kicking him for taking too long to get it right
or ripping the laces from his hands and gloating about how easily and fast
your nimble adult fingers have completed the task so impossible for a boy.
He becomes the adult who hides away, too afraid to do something new
or to fail with witnesses to his shame or to cry out in frustration.
So he kicks a child for not being fast and nimble enough to tie shoes

What would happen if we whisper our dreams out loud and wrote them down?
What if we raised our chins to the sky and shouted our wishes
to all the ears and the stars who would listen while
we puffed out cheeks and blew those candles and dandelion puffs?

What kind of wings would our shouted-out-loud wishes have?
They would multiply from single mosquito wings buzzing in our ears
to the swooping grace of double dragonfly wings high in the afternoon pine
and dipping low across the pond’s joyful reflection of the sky.
A new fairy would be born for every ear that hears a wish.

New wings of a wish would become the long-flighted albatross,
then the grace of a vulture gliding on the wind,
and the patience of blue heron’s hunt.
Some wishes would walk across the arctic as the arms of a penguin
frozen by the dawn that never comes and warmed by the sun that never sets.

Can you see it? Can you see? How the wings of our breath,
how the dance of the flame, how a scatter of dandelions,
how the light on a star all become our truth.

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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.