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Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus. She is the 2016 winner of Main Street Voices, a finalist in the Robert Fraser Competition, and second place winner in the 2023 Crossroads Poetry Contest. Recent publications include Gyroscope, Gargoyle, River Heron Review, One Art, and New Verse News. Her collection Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay. She is the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com
I love the process of getting to know you.
The ins and outs and all the pieces
that come together to form your beautiful mind.
You have always wanted to be understood
So allow me to know the answers to the questions
that unlock your heart without scaring you.
Sometimes love that feels too good;
feels like a setup boo
And we all have small triggers
and it’s inevitable that I might be the cause
of one of these at some point.
Especially when it’s that one thing,
that reminds you of that one time,
that has etched itself inside your mind
and makes you shudder at the thought.
But together we can create a new version of love’s art.
So let’s communicate through it
and place brushes to canvas
to paint the beauty of forever
give Van Gogh a run for his money
help you forget everything you learned over time that love is not.
….
By Aries Franklin Ortiz
DOUBLE HELIX
As if heart and lungs flatten back to ribs
a clearing inside the body. As if there is
no use in a center, you can live
hollowed out, away from one taking the place
of a mountain, you whose bluff body
has the power to part water,
to spin parallel wakes, to stand in the way
of wind’s blunt edge, diagonal to the flow.
As if standing at the crossroad
buttoning your coat, wind-whipped,
the coat scissoring into tatters and you
spiraling into cloudscript,
a double helix across the sky, the future plunging
to the past, where friction and pressure
shed a signature
here, now, on the body vibrating.
Heather H. Thomas, from Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press)
First published in Barrow Street
Poet and teacher Julia Blumenreich is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Arts Council grant for her poetry. A finalist for the Brittany Noakes Poetry Award, she is a founding member of 6ix, a literary journal devoted to cutting-edge poetry, edited by six Philadelphia-area women poets. Blumenreich has read her work in various venues including the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and Muse House in Philadelphia. She collaborated with the visual artist Wendy Osterweil on Reforesting: An Homage to Gil Ott, a poetry/sculptural installation/print show at The Painted Bride Art Center. Four of her poems have been set to music composed by Kyle Smith and were performed as part of Lyric Fest. Her work has appeared in journals including The Whirlwind Review and Philadelphia Stories, and in An Anthology of Philadelphia Poets, edited by Valerie Fox and translated into Romanian by Daniel Dragomirescu. She has published four chapbooks: Meeting Tessie (Singing Horse Press), Artificial Memory (Leave Books), Blue Angel of a Day (Moonstone Press) and The What of Underfoot (Finishing Line Press).
Julia Blumenreich, from The What of Underfoot
Now
-1-
We really do need to know what we want
the situation in this country
after all untenable, which we try to hold.
-2-
It turns out that hunger isn’t the only reason that life breaks apart
the petals on the lilies too long in the vase
but odd now to know such a thing.
-3-
How can I tell which of us is absent?
A set of streetlamps extinguished by one
what our responses should be or are.
-4-
Reacting with shock my mind went on and said too much
I cannot see to see
but such happens to me.
-5-
When can we disregard the course of these events?
maybe a long time
I’ve been all wrapped up in my bits and pieces.
-6-
This is an instance of the world
meaning to leave myself open
a moth in a jar, once caterpillar
