June Full Moon - Submissions and Selections

Hi friends -

well, everyone's very busy with summer outings. Our June submission pile was quite a bit smaller than May's - but in some ways even more provocative. We've decided to post everything we received for June, so you can see what we mean, closing with our Selections, and opening with this delicate haiku by Thomas Snow.

Racing in the night

Dark clouds across the full moon

Firefly loop-to-loops

Our July Full Moon is almost upon us, and we look forward to continuing to hear from you!

Other June Submissions, Mancuso

Wonder


The Dragon will be eating the Moon soon

He has a history of doing that

Laying on the grass watching

I can't help but wonder

What I have lost

Lately.

---Joe Mancuso

Other June Submissions, De La Vega, Krumbein

What if the Moon....

What if the Moon kept our choices in shadows
What if She grew our secrets as flowers
What if she lied every night with her beauty
What if she heals every tear with her white heart
What if she sneeks out tonight and reveals in her darkness
Our choices, our secrets, our magic, our beauty
What if the Moon...

---Lilyan De La Vega

warm water pond
little boys collecting frogs
captive audience

---Bill Krumbein

Other June submissions, Hopper

On Time


The steamy window veils the rainy sky.
The shut-in kids careen around the room.
My cell phone rings, the laundry falls awry,
my papers drift like snow upon the floor,
the newspaper crawls gasping up the drive.

How do I choose, this cloudy, cluttered day,
between the childrens' talk, their needy cries,
the heaped-up tasks all shouting for their pay,
a distant cousin’s struggle to survive –
the chopping, shopping, wallop of the day?

The rain falls hard, the youngest pirouettes.
The torrent of my world whirls me along,
the dishes, clothes, the politics, the pets,
the boss, employees, taxes, and the game,
the car, the kids, the dinner, and the debts.

The youngest falls, a crash, the sound of thunder,
and my most urgent task is briefly clear.
The torrent in my mind whirlpools me under,
I'm going down in this barrage of things,
or not the things exactly but their natures,

for things have needs and characters and cries:
the things to read and watch and learn and love,
things to keep up, express, and build and try -
my studies, my pursuits, my idle games –
the lamp, the child, both weeping where they lie.

I kiss, chastise, and soothe, I tie the laces,
I gently, cruelly, softly set aside
all other pains in all the other places,
I gather them in tissue in my hand,
kiss what I see, absorbed in tiny graces.

---Deanna Hopper

Other June Submissions, Pointe, Hopper

dandelion

oh gentle breezes blow
soft upon this downy head
that doesn't know
that it is dead

---Joyce Pointe

Three Thousand Dollars

Not much in the news these days

so many other troubles

gushing up

so many prisoners dispersed!

the notorious facility sinks

from neglect to oblivion.

Some, of course, will never be able to forget,

for example, Murat Kurnaz,

who will perhaps one day be able to weep,

who will perhaps send Mr. Rumsfeld a tear-stained letter

saying, “I am sorry to have given you nothing

for your three thousand dollars and five years of trouble.”

Now that Murat is free,

perhaps he will travel again,

for example, to Pakistan, land of his abduction,

and see what the Pakistanis did with that three thousand.

Did they plough it right back into abductions?

Or did they perhaps open a school,

and then, perhaps,

Murat can tell us what they teach there.

---Deanna Hopper