Author: fpoussin

Black Coffee Poet
Jesse Lee

Something about the color black makes me want to write poetry. A black sweater, baggy, warm, and slightly sophisticated. Black coffee, steam rising from the white mug until the early morning silence smells like comfort. Like home. A dark, rainy night, tucked under a blanket and reading an old, weathered novel in the golden pool of lamplight. A journal, given as a present to a budding writer. The ink that stains the pages.

The Danish have a term for this feeling. Pronounced hoo-gah, spelled hygge, and almost untranslatable. It is a time of peace and comfort, a space in which all you have to do is exist happily. The moments of simple pleasures in which the heartbeat slows and the limbs grow heavy, eyelids weighted with warmth. The Danish write books about it, promote it as a lifestyle, make it seem like a new concept. These books are pretty and happily colored, placed on the front display at bookshops. But once again, mankind is generations late.

The Bible has a centuries old term for this lifestyle. Pronounced say-lah, spelled selah, and felt more than translated. It is the space between heartbeats, the moments of everyday life in which God is a constant presence. The feeling of complete rightness as you go about your day, typing at a computer, drinking coffee, walking the street. It is not a lifestyle that requires you to set aside a time for hot drinks and soft blankets, carving out a portion of our day. It is an idea woven seamlessly into your day, prompting you to smile and thank God for cold mornings.

It was a sleepy morning. The kind of morning where even the clouds are too weary to hold themselves aloft, so they sink to rest in rolls of cold fog on the earth. Spider webs draped the bushes like recently abandoned fairy beds. The only sound was the lone bird, a soloist in the dawn chorus. The morning smelled like mist, tasted like black coffee and poetry.

A Fractured Memory
Hannah Cauthen

Eight years old in a shiny fish-skin bathing suit on a white plastic bench swing, feet dangling and toes wiggling like live bait; my aunt Jane and I sit, watching my cousins splash in the turquoise pool that was a red hole in the ground just last fall. The thick July air, filled with chlorine and shrieks of laughter, hangs even thicker above the water. My temperament could only handle so much shrieking and splashing, so I had ambled up on the swing and plopped down next to my aunt. My parents and other aunts and uncles sit around a blurry glass-topped table a few feet over. Diane and Jerry smoke, their grey plumes mimicking the cloud of grey kittens weaving through legs and tumbling across concrete. The cacophony of sights, smells, and sounds create a chaotic peace; this is summer at Jane and Jerry’s.

I pick up a handful of Goldfish from a salmon-pink plastic bowl and toss them in my mouth. “Here, this is what I do,” my aunt says. She picks up one Goldfish, one of the puffy ones, and sets it between her molars. With a gentle crack, she splits it perfectly down the middle and exposes its hollow insides; she sees the wonder on my face and adds her bubbling laughter to the surrounding melody. I spend the rest of the hazy afternoon trying to split Goldfish in half, never getting it quite right—leaving the bowl littered with fractured tails and smiles turned to dust.

Views from the moon
Chase Rogers

I’m starting to find my voice in these pieces
I can unleash my stress upon the pages
The words pour out these nights

Inspiration strikes like a lightning bolt straight through my fingers

It comes in scattered storms though
Droughts occur and lightning is scarce at times
So I search the sky elsewhere for another spark

From the window of my bedroom I gaze on the moons night journey

He climbs up the stars to his seating place
He paces himself greeting each star I’m sure
It’s his turn to occupy the sky

The moon is my only companion at night

The sight of the moon inspires prayers of flight
Lord grant me the ability to fly
so that I may see earth as the moon does

I doze off for a moment, it’s late

My dreams allow me to visit my rumored to be made of cheese, pal
I follow the moons climb up the stars
The moon allows me a polaroid with the US flag upon arrival

I didn’t speak to the stars yet

He would introduce me once I reached his resting place
The stars are more welcoming than expected
I’m reminded of the actual significance of my existence as I look down

The earth can fit in my hand

I spring myself from my lucid dream
The view has to be better from the roof
Caution on the climb up

My thoughts were correct on the view

Now maybe the moon can hear me
I call him by name to come and pick me up
I’m ready to see what he sees

No response was received

How could the moon hear me
Writers lose their minds when it’s the moons turn to occupy the sky
I still pray to leave the ground, for example

The moon follows his same path these nights

I’m still aimlessly searching for a revelation
As I gaze at the moon and I’m reminded of the view of my dream
But the lightning still eludes my fingers

Perhaps I should sleep and contact the sun when he shows his face
Writer’s block is real

Upon the Walls of the Cosmos
Fabrice Poussin

A flame in a gentle breeze she oscillates above the sea
writing volumes of moments known and those to be
gliding softly upon the crest of the luminous waters.

Tapping the sun with a delicate finger extended to heaven
she awakens the elements to the tale she must carve
with a nonchalant wrist made for a new born babe’s comfort.

Another step forward beneath the undulating silken dress
waves of a voice she does not yet dare to raise above the flow
the curves of a light ankle trace vowels on the changing floor.

Contemplating a darker star in the great expanse above
she slowly freezes for but a moment tilting her head in a smile
she barely opens those blues to tell the stories hidden beneath the oceans.

Arms joined upon a fluttering life, wings bright as a butterfly’s
she levitates into infinity confounded into the thin ether
to vanish into the glow, her chapter done unto walls of the cosmos.

The Heather Girl
Alexis Wright

Her eyes are suns, and her ears
A flower each.  But her mouth,
She has trouble finding it.
Lost in a sea of voices
She has none, nor does she
Desire to be heard above the noise.
She paints herself heather
For it is a quiet color,
One that doesn’t speak unless
Spoken to.  But she dances,
Oh she dances, as if silence
Is her most favorite song.
Eyes ablaze and rosy lips spread wide
She reaches for joy, tip-toed, as if plucking
Stars from the sky.  Perhaps,
It is not another voice
That the world so desperately needs
But a smile soft, sweet, and powerful,
Like rain on a summer day.

That Old House
Jay Chambers

Rusting doors,
Rotting floors,
Discolored siding,
And a sagging roof.

The appearance betrays,
The significance of,
That old house.

The old house,
Was home to so many,
It birthed many children,
And memories as well.

I remember the Christmas,
Where the first great-grand,
Made her debut,
Dressed in red,
Tiny and beautiful,
We all took turns,
Cradling her in our arms.

One of my earliest memories of that old house,
Is of a party,
With a large coconut cake,
And a large Fortieth Birthday Candle.
I ate many meals there,
Breakfast, lunch and supper,
All prepared with love,
By my Granny’s aged hands.

She’s gone now,
And the house sits alone,
Empty of everything,
Except memories and,
Rusting doors,
Rotting floors,
Discolored siding,
And a sagging roof.

The One You Love
Whitney-Faith Smith

1.

I, in a bed lying 
and waiting,
in sickness propped up
as if I thought 
He was coming
to give me help

in the healing, to raise
from imperfection what could 
be made whole by Him. In this room,
the sun’s rays slip from view.

Darkness chased light.
Night has slithered 
within me.

2.

Black, can’t move, 
hard stone against my back,
suffocating, blind,
the smell of myrrh.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
“Come out!”

Immediately my swaddled  
feet strike the dirt.
No sight to guide me.
As if the rope of the
high priest were around 
my waist, out of death I am 
drawn. 

“Take off the grave clothes 
and let him go.” 
Warm hands touch me;
light. 
Tomb behind me 
I see the Son.

Scorched-Earth Policy
Kristin Towe

I remember the night we almost broke-in-two:
               outside my window all the world burned orange
               and mama had her hands lifted to the heavens
               and with a mouthful of ashes, she cried out “fire!”

That was after the wineglass was emptied:
               a tiny crystal relic from a thirty-year marriage
               a rescued artifact, never before needed to be used,
               the word “bride” traced in the white of fresh ash.

However, it was before I found the fork:
               near the fire pit, lit by the sun, Poseidon’s trident
               rusty, sticking up rod-straight out of a pile of dirt
               the American flag, marking the conquest of the universe.

                                                              What I saw from my window was a man
                                                                             who was not afraid to burn.

Everything afterwards looked like this:
              Persephone, with hair like fiery ribbons lit with sin,
              reached out to Hades, and he took her in his dead arms
              and the fire-pit smothered out, and my window darkened

                                                              And nothing was orange anymore.

Mama, mama, what compelled daddy to think he could eat the world?
               and why, when we had plastic, did he choose silver?
               and did he burn it first to swallow quicker?
               and why was his glass empty by the door,
               while yours sat full and bleeding on the table?

A Royal Crypt
Fabrice Poussin

She rests peacefully at the foot of twins
pillars of oak, pine and other trusted allies
a temple erected to the memory of a life
silent, under eternal blossoms, asleep.

Nature bursts with the life she bravely gave
emblem to the sacrifices as a giant is felled
dark pupils dream still of those gentle hours
ashes feed colossus reaching on high.

In her own infinite cathedral, immobile at last
warmed by the blinding colors of windows
made of a kaleidoscopic stain-glass of leaves
broken limbs, quick sprouts and seasons.

The visitor takes a respectful stroll through thorns
under cover of the everlasting expanse
closing into the intimate communion
he belongs as does she to this eternal home.

Selah
Jay Chambers

Selah,
What a mysterious word
Its function,
Is lost to the sands of time

It comes at the end
Of a line of tension
But can also be
A sigh of sweet relief

It can be the dividing place
Between waters that roar and are troubled
And streams that make glad the city of God.

It is a time
Where we go from
Lying awake on our bed
To sweet, God-given rest.

Selah can also be
The stillness found
In the eye of the great hurricane
That destroys all in its wake.

It can be found
In what time we find
In the midst of our toil
And our tears

Reflection so sweet
It makes glad our soul
With waters found
Flowing from streams above
Selah.