what remains
new poetry and art inspired by ancient
the past lingers. we sit in it’s resonance. the life of a great great grandmother has impact. red as our blood as our own body. in the strata of the personal and the collective. our actions will affect the future and the poetry and art curated here today ask these questions. we hope you are moved by their answers.
our image is an exquisite collage and tapestry hybrid by Jenny Lloyd, from her Wildflowers in Palestine series followed by two affecting poems by Hayley DiRenzo and Dan Hughes.
AMONG THE RUBBLE Haley DiRenzo A tilted porcelain bathtub still intact fallen from an upstairs floor arm of a couch frizzled and frayed a refrigerator unmelted, food rotting inside Marking the backyard garden remains melted buttons, construction tape dust of golden necklaces and earrings Broken open at the flame sifted through the sand ashes coating everything, carried away. ROPE SWING Dan Hughes frayed knots double over leaves rising with the sun, leading down to a seat that was once a galleon’s hull. Centuries of cherry pip laughter and simple memories rocking back and forth—children becoming push-swing parents to propel their bairns forward, and so on. The tree, bark-worn yet Biblical, has seen the landscape morph in more than a million ways, as it sways, and swings, and sways. Patient-cum-stoic, for the rope that hugged its branched used to be a noose, culling humans gleefully. A voyeur of barbaric ways, it now soaks its roots in brighter streams—it's no longer a hanging tree. Haley DiRenzo is a writer, poet, and practicing attorney. She has a Bachelor’s in Philosophy and English Literature from the University of Colorado and a Juris Doctor from the University of Denver. She currently practices eviction defense and lives with her husband and dog in Superior, Colorado. Dan Hughes is a content writer by day and a scribbler of oddball fiction by night. Some of his work features in the Black Pear Press, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, Jack Wild, aAH! Magazine, The Poetry Cove, and The Black Cat Poetry Press. He also co-runs The Nuthatch Lit Mag with his partner, Ally.
ANCIENT is available now in print via Amazon.
Next week we have some great new poetry and the announcement of our new monthly competition, The Winged Muse. This will begin in September and run monthly.
until then
Incredibly beautiful!
These poems offered me something a bit different. The language has a somehow different flavor than the flowery or trivial language of a great deal of poems I read in many magazines. I like this kind of diction quite much. Well done!