Rewriting Tanabata

By Jackie Chou

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There is no question
if she was godlike
if she was an artist
weaving tapestries
from pink ribbons of sunrise
to navy curtains of night
until her eyelids droop
without earning a dime

As for her cowherd husband
not even the fiercest passion
can survive eternity

Her love for him has long faltered
the way her aged feet feels
every time she steps
onto that magpie bridge
connecting them
across the Milky Way

She has learned to dread
the seventh day of the seventh month
hoping for Tanabata
to be canceled due to rain

It is just another night
to put on a show for folks to see
with pretend hugs and kisses
before she returns
to her side of the sky

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Jackie Chou (she/her) is a writer from Southern California who has two collections of poetry, The Sorceress and Finding My Heart in Love and Loss, published by cyberwit. Her poem "Formosa" was a finalist in the Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize. She also has poems published in Synchronized Chaos, The Ekphrastic Review, Panoply Zine, Alien Buddha Zine, and Spillwords.

Quite A Puzzle

By Lynn White

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“It was an alternative to Rorschach”, he said
just choose the dots to connect
in whatever way suits you,
and draw whatever comes to mind.
She wondered if this had been the challenge
set to God, or the gods,
when the night sky had been designed.
Random stars joined into a pattern
ready to be re-imagined
And named.

She looked at the page and wondered
if she was godlike,
if she was an artist,
or if she was a mere mortal
about to construct a puzzle
for someone else to interpret
just as she had pondered the night sky.

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Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

So what if my neck is shaped like a mountainside

By Maureen Moroney

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The black and white photos came with the claim: “We are just nature”
That is true, but the photos showed
in juxtaposition
a thorny stem next to a human back and the peaks of its spine,
a human wrist with raised vessels next to a jagged lightning bolt,
a human neck with head tilted back to show cartilage and sinew next to a craggy mountain slope.

Art and science are not separate, and the parallels to be drawn
are good fodder for observation and metaphor.

But a spine is not a stem and vertebrae are not thorns.
The cause of lightning is worlds different than how veins are formed in bodies.
The shape of your neck is not a result of the Earth’s crust crashing into itself.
The way physics acts on grains of sand is not the way the human psyche works.
A mother does not pass her body image issues through inherited cellular materials.

“These things look the same” says nothing, gives no insight
about the world and how it works.
It is lovely to find inspiration,
but folly to imply relationships where there are none,
to choose the dots to connect in whatever way suits you,
to draw conclusions about our behavior based on theirs.
That false connecting line
pretends to offer meaning, but is empty.

But there is still poetry
in a sunrise.
Gently falling snow
or endless crashing waves
do something to a soul.
These things are true.
These things have meaning.
I won’t say they carry the conscience of the universe.
I will carry them with care.
Sometimes the only way to describe a feeling
is to invoke tectonic upheaval.

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Maureen is an analytical chemist in central Iowa whose work can be found in Backchannels Journal and the Bond Street Review. No links, just support your local mutual aid organization and give a big, long (consensual) hug to someone.