A Poem by Ida Rich

Winter’s coming.

I want to remember summer.

Skinny dipping

Ripe apples.

A cool breeze through open windows .

rain did not come to November

rain left the mountains and hills dry

rain browned the fields and grasslands

rain did not replenish small streams

rain went south for the winter

we pray for snow and sleet

–Valerie Burke

summer came back November

sweet smelling and apple ripe

shorts and t shirts before first cold

–Andrea L. Greer

A Druid plus three

one ghost and thirteen goblins–

pumpkin beer on me

—M. H. Brownstein

A Poem by Diane Webster

Three antelope lie on the sunny hillside
on Christmas eve day.
Brown fur blends into December weeds
while white fur imitates patches of snow.
The antelope with eyes closed bask
on the southern slope and dream…
dream of heatwaves rising
across the high desert trails
where lake mirages shimmer
a distance away…
dream of green grasses still fresh
in spring while each blade, each clump
sways in wind, waves to be eaten.

A Poem by Diane Webster

After the rainstorm
gravity collects
puddles in the parking lot.

A sparrow lands on the edge…
cocks its head left,
cocks its head right.
Wades ankle deep,
splashes its body
with wing vibrations,
shattering reflection.

“If the ocean can calm itself, so can you. We are both salt water mixed with air.”

— Nayyirah Waheed

This is the sound of drones and guns

Watch the people run run run

Shoot to kill them just for fun

Bodies falling one by one

Stood back while they blow the fumes

Those who win and those who lose

Those who conquer and abuse

It’s just the game

Everything that we have seen

Captured on your iPhone screen

Can’t conceal the howling screams

Oblivion, oblivion rains

Oblivion rains

Tell me

Why?

Let Gaza live

Song by: Annie Lennox

A Poem by April Salzano

in nearly equal proportions. What I can protect
you from multiplies thousandfold, hands
of strangers, lights too bright, sounds unrecognized.
When I am not there to translate, what happens?
There are pants on your legs, fabric
touching skin, arms around you, unwanted
as a straitjacket. Voices are but noises, meaning,
lost, bounces off walls, comes back more jumbled.
You have grown stocky. Your carbohydrate-bloat
has become a conversation piece.
I want to find the child you replaced, the tiny baby
you hid under the bed when you spread like ivy
in the sheets, taking over the house.
Vines hold my heart, walls eclipsed by climbing
shoots, searching for shade.

A Prose Piece by Nayeli Guzman as told to Beverly Bell

Damn, I should have brought my beans! I wanted to show you my collection. One of my favorites is called powami, a Hopi ceremonial bean. There’s a really beautiful one called Maine Yellow Eye, which is all white and right at the part where the bean sprouts, there’s a little yellow moon on there. There’s another one called Provider. When you put it against the sun, it looks like an oil spill from your car. Man, those beans are so beautiful.

We cooked some red Mexican beans for the harvest festival, and everyone loved them.

It’s always good to be able to give food. It’s the best, dude. We don’t think of what we’re producing in terms of money, but just in terms of health and food for our families.

Farming was in my prayers for a long time. This land is my teacher; it’s my altar. It’s at the heart of my culture. We’ve always done that. We’ve strayed so far from it that I feel we have to go back, no matter where we come from. I’m just being responsible to the struggles my ancestors went through. They fought for tierra y libertad, which means land and liberty. In fact, we’re still going through that struggle today, with our food and even our genes being colonized.

A non Jewish individual comes to Hillel and asks, with the obvious intention of provoking him, to be taught the whole Torah while standing on one leg. Hillel answers, “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary — [and now] go study.”

–Hillel the Elder

Haiku by Michael H Brownstein

the breeze a tradewind
creasing the trees with green light
–glitter of greens

A Poem by  Gabriella Garofalo

Why not? To every night a moon
Ablaze with fire, strewn with fear,
No use your stares, if they set them ablaze-
So stay awake, mind, if a dyslexic light
Parts life from limbs, and souls lash out
If you dare help them out-
Say ‘thanks’, stand fast, if branches
Send no shade, but thwart your eyes
As the sky gets dirty, or the gods play it cool
When you dye a white dress, or manes-
Give thanks, just stop to ask them
On a date on the riverbank,
If prophets hide behind the trees,
And her bloody dancer runs for the hills-
Bite your lips, soul, not silence, but loss,
Blazing rows, cryptic smirks,
The only answer you’ll get,
A starving wrath her heaven,
If the chirp of cicadas, the sound
Of many summers ask for God, downers, light,
But who can snuff out her fear,
Or shoo shadows away if she lit
So many fires eager to tear
The leaves apart, or snap at clouds,
Fires waiting for the wind to leave,
For the growth of trees to die,
For the speed of fields to silence her loss,
From generations of starving lights,
Or shadows-
And who’s your prophet, anyway,
A falling tree, a broken stem,
Or shattered symbols?
Who knows, just a matter of choice,
I’m afraid.

A Poem by Gabriella Garofalo

Souls apart, my friend, we don’t fare that badly-
Well, yes, the clouds playing up all morning,
The sea a fresh birth to wounds
As we had to wrestle with rebel souls,
Or downcast skies, so let’s head
For an outstanding sunrise, shall we,
While almost dark, almost a sound,
Silence is standing like a barren hill
And the night she snatched from your fingers
No longer freaks her out-
Soul, think yourself a riot of clouds,
Jazz up your light, but go easy on demise
Even if she shows up as a sister
In dire need of moonlight,
See, she can’t breathe,
Too sick of handling a silence
Where girls take a drag while helplessly staring at screens-
You know, bit sour the milk of human kindness
When love makes you a castaway into the lover’s eyes,
Or crowds the suburbia of heart, of life
With lost souls, or stoned minds laid on the ground-
Not exactly a fairy tale, I’m afraid,
So no use spreading crumbs along the way,
Much better wrong names, shreds of hope,
Or fuzzy hints, as fear’s done her bit,
She’s leaving, oh, and do they see straight,
Your astral maps, the North of your sky?
OK, but don’t discard her eyes
If next to souls still as clouds,
Or drifting as waves, she smiles
At wombs that never stay silent,
Notes from God’s song, or rowdy barks?
Well, who knows, so handle with care,
My light, my friend-
Look, Michael, it’s just her fire.

A Poem by Bob Boldt

I have stopped writing poetry.
Somehow I cannot get past the tears
and impotence I feel
every time I seethe pictures.
This little girl with half her brain
blown away
haunts me.
The IDF sniper would have
blown her whole brain away.
It was not his fault
that just as his round
was exiting the muzzle
she turned slightly
perhaps in response
to the song of a small bird
or the cry of her younger brother
buried beneath the rubble of
her home.
My soul is destroyed at that sight.
Her remaining eye
drills through me with a
greater laser-like precision
than any sniper’s bullet
tearing my soul from my chest.
How much longer must I see
children like her
before losing all my humanity?

Death to every murdering IDF soldier!
Death to Israel for their genocide!
Death for America for all its crimes!
Death to me for my silence and impotence!

Art by Sean Lee

A Poem by Marry Ellen Ziegler

Passing through the gates
There were men who could not cry
I became their tears
They became my eyes

I could not hold back 
Dams are not that strong
The trickle of their stories 
Soon became my song

A Poem by Mary Ellen Ziegler

Under the lawn, the dead sigh
Unmarked graves, bodies piled/
high/ without headstone or name

If the trees are speaking now
do they say? I remember?
How responsibility/
Lies within if the trees are
Speaking / Let your roots crawl out
On the right side of the wind
So all can finally hear!