Caryn Davidson
Rufus Wright
Arvilla Fee
Joseph Hutchison
Patty Prewitt
James A. Mehrle
Maía
Zaqary Fekete
Beate Sigriddaughter
Michael McGuire
and J. Malcolm Garcia
Available during the month of May at:
56711 29 Palms Hwy
REVIEW ONE BY M a í a:
Dear Writers: Response to Cholla Needles 113
After
fully taking in this bold collage of word-built worlds, it felt impossible for
me to respond—in words. Though all
along, of course, I was responding–bodily and feelingly, to resonant and
unlikely juxtapositions of color, weather, landscape and beings…
Through
each poem/story, I became aware of something underlying and unspoken:
quantum-entanglements, invisibilities, inhabiting-spirits of chaotic cities and
ravaged forests. Each section of poems or prose finds its own way to ground us
in earth, wind, sky, fire—through heartbreak, war, forgetting...death. “As if to prepare.../to sleep forever.”
(Arvilla Fee)
I came to feel the writers here constituting a
kind of tribe “wanting the faith/ to feel the
word/not just find it” (Rufus Wright).
“ And suddenly there is sky, sky that knows (we) have waited a long,
long time to feel small and infinite again,” (Patty Prewitt).
It’s
true that some of our wrong turns are unredeemable. “When you thought you could do
better elsewhere, and you were mistaken.” (Beate Sigriddaughter)
In our separate desperate or tedious or curious lives
we fear we might have failed to give our full attention to what truly calls.
But sometimes strange consolations announce themselves, and we remember,: “our
apologies travel... down stairwells and settle… in other peoples’ dreams.” (Zaqary Fekete)
Heartbreak,
war. ”He recalls jungle patrols when
he slept with an arm tied to a tree so he would not roll downhill... He
showered once a month. He smelled like earth and moss and mildew.” (J. Malcolm
Garcia)
Bewilderment.
“Why
are the streets and the plaza filled with people knocked to the ground, being
kicked, being beaten?” (Joseph
Hutchison)
Still,
somehow we long to gather and to sing, “In unity’s embrace, a world divine.”
(James A. Mehrle) To invite one another. “Wake up, my love, wake up, see, the day
already dawns, the birds already sing, the moon already sets.” (Michael
McGuire)
No
guarantees, no absolutes. But sometimes—joy—.in the heart of unknowing.
“Cycles appear in all the seasons…we too, revolve around an/implacable truth
that remains implacably obscured.”
(Caryn Davidson)
**************
First
and last, “All of these writers fill me with hope for the future.” Rich Soos
I
agree. Thanks and appreciation to each and
every one of you,
-
M a í
a
enough, never say deep
enough,
the speech of love.
to touch Beauty. To see
God.
Because in the end
how silent words are—
I mean the handful
we know each other by. (M a í a)
REVIEW TWO BY BEATE SIGRIDDAUGHTER:
Inspired by
Maía's response to Cholla Needles 113, here's my list of lines that
particularly grabbed me in all the fascinating work presented in this issue,
with thanks to all of you for writing and to Rich for putting it all together:
Caryn Davidson:
the chorus
of voices
wanting and needing to know
The way things come and go
and yet they
still surprise us.
The wind is
so strong it seems
to push the
stars out of place.
Rufus Wright
learning
to ache for
no reason
get wherever
before
whatever is over
Arvilla Fee
wished she
had the courage to pour herself
over the
edge of a cliff
Joseph Hutchison
kid made parentless, the lucky bastards
a blizzard
of tweets, and his followers share each on without reading it
Patty Prewitt
I believe in
what lasts
without
asking permission.
A thousand
small freedoms
bloom where
rules once lived.
I step out
the gate like a comma finally freed from the sentence I never deserved.
grass still
grows with its green obedience
James A.
Mehrle
Your
laughter will never leave my heart.
Maía
beyond
the
garden wall of her mother-tongue
I
give my consent—yes
to love, and the dread of weapons—yes
The Mower Man, he steals the seeds
sells them back to us
In every human happiness
a
taste of elegy—what's here, already
vanishing—
Zaqary
Fekete
I
realized that in this building, none of us were entirely alone. Our failures
leaked upward. Our music vibrated through the ceilings. Our apologies traveled
down stairwells and settled in other people's sleep.
I
refresh the page twice, in case something changes.
I
wonder if the words I did not read are still waiting where I left them.
Or if they have already gone quiet without
me.
Michael
McGuire
Walls meant a lot to people. Juan Antonio sometimes wondered what they were walling in.
Or out.
J. Malcolm Garcia
Had they died in combat, I would have been allowed to make a story out of it. But they didn't.
He experienced a sense of disappointment, as if none of what he and his unit had done mattered.
Will skyscrapers devour the battlefields where so many died?
