Tag: Poetry of Loss

Rebecca Schumejda: “Lotus Flower”

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Lotus Flower
- For Jason Martinez

Most people would laugh at the notion
that I loved you long before we met.

They wouldn’t understand how your
deceased partner sent me to you

or how on our first date, you talked to
my late husband in the Starbuck’s bathroom

and promised him you would take care of me–
most people would have run, not walked, run.

But I knew, the explanation was in how
we were both able to rise up from muddy water

and bloom despite our struggles. Most people
would not be able to trace her angelic face

memoralized on your arm or her name
tattooed above your heart while making love.

They wouldn’t be able to admire the half-finished
painting of her, sitting on an easel in your living room.

Most people would not appreciate the constellations
you discovered on my thigh, how I watched you

point out the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, and saw
what you saw, and saw you. Most people

wouldn’t understand how after you pushed into me
for the first time I went to my house, and put

a picture of my late husband back up, not because
I wanted him back, because I do, I always will,

but because you turned that door knob, a lotus flower,
pushed in through and past the murky waters,

held me tightly as I let out a deep sigh of relief
after this long journey to you, and welcomed me home.

About the Author: Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several full-length collections including Falling Forward (sunnyoutside press), Cadillac Men (NYQ Books), Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press), Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books) Something Like Forgiveness, a single epic poem accompanied by collage art by Hosho McCreesh (Stubborn Mule Press) and her new collection Sentenced (NYQ Books). She is the co-editor at Trailer Park Quarterly. She received her MA in Poetics from San Francisco State University and her BA from SUNY New Paltz. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family. You can find her online at: rebecca-schumejda.com

Image Credit: Image originally from Flore des serres et des jardins de l’Europe. A Gand: chez Louis van Houtte, eÌditeur,1845-1880. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Cheryl A. Rice: “Crow Will Never Carry A Star Across the Sky”

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Crow Will Never Carry A Star Across the Sky
                            -for MJ

“It’s not my job to carry a
self-sufficient body from dawn to dawn.
I’ve got enough on my mind,
what with gathering foodstuffs to tide me over,
making a nest sturdy enough to withstand
kith and kin, raw eggs, new babies.
Stars live lives beyond all that,
provide the only possible light 
in that seamless backdrop.

It’s not a matter of choice, no choice about it at all.
Check with Blue Jay, busy bullying inbred Sparrows,
or Cardinal, flitting like a match head from bush to bush,
playing the family man so well you can almost see a
station wagon full of chicks behind him.
Goldfinch, Red-Headed Stranger,
elusive Bluebird of Happiness—
maybe one of them has time
to cart a star around there like some aged queen.

I’ve got my own agenda,
make my own rounds without help
from a creature subject to laws of gravity.
Leave me be. I’ve got a Douglass fir to investigate.
Something is shining on that uppermost branch that calls to me,
seems to be spelling my name in semaphoric signs.”

About the Author: Twice a Best of the Net nominee, Cheryl A. Rice’s books include Dressing for the Unbearable (Flying Monkey Press), Until the Words Came (Post Traumatic Press), and Love’s Compass (Kung Fu Treachery Press). Her monthly column, The Flying Monkey, can be found at https://hvwg.org/, while her occasional blog, Flying Monkey Productions, is at http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com. Rice can be reached at dorothyy62@yahoo.com.

Image Credit: Kazimierz Stabrowski “Crows- Council of Seniors” (1923) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee

Leslie M. Rupracht: “Winter Solstice 2023”

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Winter Solstice 2023

           In Memory of Mike James

on this shortest day of the year 
my grief is long

just four days since you transitioned 
from this world to realm of sweet angels 
& revered poets passed 

now more than ever

i picture you as marlena in pink

no longer needing to maintain

the burly john wayne façade

to appease employer & bigots alike 

you were my brother-sister-confidante

you’d say there’s your TMI for the day 
i’d insist there’s no such thing

& treasure your confidence

it was a privilege being your ally

a pleasure your chosen family 

there’s a seat for you now at the table 
of your cherished ghosts—
marlene dietrich

robert lowell

james dickey

ezra pound

hemingway

warhol

haring

rocky
brando

& wayne
as great as they were

your legacy is secure 

most magnificent

is the hopeful certainty you’re with 
your dearest grandmother again— 
first ally 
first cheerleader

first force for good 
the first to really see you for you

About the Author: Leslie M. Rupracht has poems in Asheville Poetry Review, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Aeolian Harp, Chiron Review, K’in, The Ekphrastic Review, Gargoyle, Anti-Heroin Chic, Kakalak, a chapbook, Splintered Memories (Main Street Rag), and elsewhere. She completed her first full-length poetry manuscript in 2023 and hopes to find it a good home. An editor, poet, writer, visual artist, and rescued pit bull mama, Leslie is co-founder and host of the monthly reading series, Waterbean Poetry Night at the Mic, in Huntersville, North Carolina.

Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Solstice Rose” (2024)

Rebecca Schumejda: “Goodnight, Saint Peregrine”

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Goodnight, Saint Peregrine 

Braindead, all the doctors agreed,
throughout the day each asked me if I was ready. 
Brahms lullaby played a half-dozen times 
while I waited for a sign.  
Both keeping you alive and letting you go
seemed somehow selfish. 
On another floor, in another unit, 
new mothers cradled lifetimes of possibilities. 

After I agreed to extubation and 
all of the machines were wheeled away, 
I could have run my fingers 
along your cracked lips or leaned in 
to feel your breath against my cheek 
but instead I anxiously hovered over you, 
my Saint Peregrine pendant, swinging above 
that frail body of impossibility. 

When our oldest called to see when 
I was coming home, I asked 
both of our daughters to say goodnight. 
I put the phone on speaker and held it close. 
Our six-year-old shouted, Daddy, sleep 
for a long time, see you tomorrow! 
as I twirled your last breath and my 
waning faith around a silver chain.

About the Author: Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several full-length collections including Falling Forward (sunnyoutside press), Cadillac Men (NYQ Books), Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press), Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books) Something Like Forgiveness, a single epic poem accompanied by collage art by Hosho McCreesh (Stubborn Mule Press) and her new collection Sentenced (NYQ Books). She is the co-editor at Trailer Park Quarterly. She received her MA in Poetics from San Francisco State University and her BA from SUNY New Paltz. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family. You can find her online at: rebecca-schumejda.com

Image Credit: Giacomo Zampa “San Pellegrino” Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia

Agnes Vojta: “Waking up in India to the News that Mike is Dead”

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Waking up in India to the News that Mike is Dead

                       “I will bathe in memory and in loss.”
                      - Mike James

In the tropical night, I wake, fiddle with my phone, see the news.
You knew it was coming. My last submission. I did not expect it so soon.

I sit under a Banyan tree and study its aerial roots. I cannot remember
what you wrote about trees.

On my laptop, I re-read our chats. I want to download and save them.
As if that could keep you here.

At a deserted playground, monkeys scamper up and down the slide.
They know nothing of poetry.

I copied lines from your poems, carried them as a talisman,
taped them above my desk.

I wonder what you would have packed if you could have taken a suitcase.
I hear the list in your voice.

It sounds as if you are reading one of your prose poems.

About the Author: Agnes Vojta grew up in Germany and now lives in Rolla, Missouri where she teaches physics at Missouri S&T and hikes the Ozarks. She is the author of Porous Land, The Eden of Perhaps, and A Coracle for Dreams, all published by Spartan Press. Together with eight other poets she collaborated on the book Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (Cornerpost Press, 2022.) Her poems have appeared in a variety of magazines; you can read some of them on her website agnesvojta.com.

Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Fort Myers, a small city on Florida’s southwest coast along the Gulf of Mexico calls itself the Palm City but its most iconic leafy specimens are the immense banyan trees downtown” Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress

Howie Good: “In Memory Of”

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In Memory of

Pope slams America, the headline said. It wasn’t necessary for me to read the story to know that frightful changes were afoot. First, a pod of orcas had rammed a fishing vessel in revenge for past depredations, and then the last of the Western deities crashed to Earth. For weeks afterwards, people would leave flowers and cards and stuffed animals at the spot. Even a police spy was forced to look away in embarrassment at the outpouring of emotion. My own sense of propriety probably derives from the self-sacrificing patriotism of the World War II movies I grew up watching on TV. Although long ago I forgot the titles and plots of the movies, I’ve always remembered one scene. A young soldier, sprawled on his back at the edge of a bomb crater, his face half sheared off, cries in a little boy’s voice, Mama! Mama! And all around, the war goes on.

About the Author: Howie Good’s newest poetry collection, Frowny Face, a mix of his prose poems and collages, is now available from Redhawk Publications He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Image Credit: Herman Henstenburgh “Vanitas Still Life” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.

M. J. Arcangelini: “Invisible Ink”

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INVISIBLE INK
In memory of Mike James

The letter from his friend came inscribed
With invisible ink. He pondered it, puzzled,
Then remembered hearing once how
To make such things viewable.
He held it over a candle’s open flame.
Just before it ignited, the words
Appeared, but the paper immolated
In his hand before he could read it.

How much more is there to be said?
His friend is dead now, gone. Ashes stirring
with the slightest breeze, drifting upward
like grey snow run backwards and projected
onto the future. Fertile memories to be
reawakened in the shadows of dusk,
harvested from the white fields holding
words he left behind unsaid, unwritten.

About the Author: M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in many magazines, online journals, over a dozen anthologies, & 6 collections, the most recent of which is “Pawning My Sins” from Luchador Press, 2022.

Image Credit: Paul Cézanne “The Artist’s Son Writing” (1887) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.

Cheryl A. Rice: “Fishing Both Sides of the River”

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Fishing Both Sides of the River
                       -for Mike James


Between heaven and Earth is orange,
binder I’ve been missing all my life.
Only fish you catch can see in color,
but the ones that can tend to stay
on the right side of the bank.
Reds around me, peevish, gregarious,
shy away from the unmitigated optimism
that is yellow. I see orange now
as the missing link, mediator who can
bring these disparate sides of my palette
back to sanity, plum a distant cousin,
aquamarine the troublesome hue
that started all the fuss.

About the Author: Twice a Best of the Net nominee, Cheryl A. Rice’s books include Dressing for the Unbearable (Flying Monkey Press), Until the Words Came (Post Traumatic Press), and Love’s Compass (Kung Fu Treachery Press). Her monthly column, The Flying Monkey, can be found at https://hvwg.org/, while her occasional blog, Flying Monkey Productions, is at http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com. Rice can be reached at dorothyy62@yahoo.com.

Image Credit: Public domain image originally from Our country’s fishes and how to know them London: Simpkin, Hamilton, Kent & Co.,[1902]. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Howie Good: “In Memoriam”

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In Memoriam


Sunday, you’ll have been dead a week. I sit at the kitchen table, laptop open in front of me, doing what I think you’d be doing in my place, writing something. You were a poet, a real one, a soldier with a flower in his helmet. I’m hunting and pecking when I suddenly hear the tinkling of Tibetan prayer bells. Five seconds – 10 max – pass before I realize it’s the new ringtone on my phone. A prim female voice announces, “Unknown caller.” I always just assumed Death would have the surly demeanor of the lunch ladies in a school cafeteria.

About the Author: Howie Good’s newest poetry collection, Frowny Face, a mix of his prose poems and collages, is now available from Redhawk Publications He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Calla Lily” (2022)

Susan Cossette: “Waiting for Cremation”

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Waiting for Cremation


There is no perfection in death.

This is not the final picture of me,
the Greek chorus that was my family,
gazing down, hissing—

adulteress, lousy mother, heretic.

False poses, opaque makeup,
stiff hands coaxed loose by the mortician,
pink rosary beads strung in mute prayer
through pale wax fingers.

Florid lilies and heaps of hydrangeas
stand watch, alongside cheerful tulips.

I am visited, prayed over.
My head propped on a satin pillow,
the double chins more prominent,
the red lips stitched shut.

This is what everyone wanted.
I am finally mute.

Son, I tell you this while I still breathe--

Place the rough grey gravel shards of me
into a hummingbird-adorned urn,
into the damp warm earth, alongside my mother.

About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crow & Cross Keys, The Eunoia Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).

Image Credit: John Rubens Smith “Two ornamental urns” Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress