PLATINUM Poetry

Morgan Elaina Fenick

St. Joseph Cemetery in August.
Or My home. My heart. My heat.

Sitting amongst the tombs of centuries past
Sweat pours down my body, baking in the languidness of the present
The minimal southern breeze
Rustles my thin skirt, the dust of the decay sticks
To my bare legs, it glitters in the light, what could be a strippers delight

Back in the comfort of the shadows, against the
Stone, spirits embrace my body
Cool and comforting
Amongst pill bottles and garbage
Others have taken sanctuary here
Everything is broken, the old,
Sometimes rebuilt, more than often not

I can hear the sirens of the city,
Walkie-talkies, children playing,
Unattended in the street, dogs, hungry and mean

Silk flowers once presented with grace
Are faded, and covered in mold
Through it all, all the concrete and plastic,
The tendrils of life, fern fingers, aspirations of youth,
Reach for the sun

The grass grows green with triumph
Then fades with the constant struggle of survival and urban decay
Under steamy skies.
Life goes on.
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Morgan Elaina Fenick, is an artist, flower designer, writer, and connoisseur of fine wine. She moved to New Orleans in the summer of 2016 after years of desiring to do so. The magic, the spirits, and the colorful co-habitants are her muses. “Peace and Love to all.” Morgan

PALLADIUM Poetry

JAY CASEY

“America”

“Is this what I think it is?”

“I’m hoping it ain’t.”

The tottering old cemetery
On small, soggy bluffs
To either side of America Street

Helter-skelter cement company’s dream
With scratched-on names
Mother and Daughter, broken slab
Jagged Take Thy Rest
Ragged Gone But Not Forgotten
Inlaid bathroom tile porcelain mosaic

Crammed together
Gapping open or boarded up
Rusted tin covering
Like the rows of shotgun cabins
In the neighborhood adjoining
A weigh station, only more symmetrical

Uncovered glass treasures
In the side drainage ditch
Familiar short soft drink bottles
Face cream
Liquor corked and unscrewed
Broken and scattered

An old black man
Working out of an old black car
Fighting and losing against grass and weeds
Snake holes, faded flowers, rotting trees

Red spray paint I Love (heart) You
Dripping on top side of cover
Faded, white-washed angel
Barely discernible
Carrying, is it a child? On High
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Photo: Peter Vahlersvik
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Jay Casey is a writer and teacher who lives on the Gulf Coast. He is inspired by the history that is around each of us and the ways that history offers connections between the people of the past and the present.

PEARL Poetry

Photo: © fate atc

JANET GHIO

Burnt Offering

Mark the spot, where our house once stood
High on this hill, so tall and proud. These charred remains
of what was our Nirvana, now scorched
wasteland of naked trees, waving fire-bleached
branches at the fiery sky.

The empty butterfly jar, prepared before Piposa’s Fete
Stands in a dusty corner; the brilliant creatures already
soaring above the shelter’s star to the heavens above;
like them, my thoughts are free to rise or tumble
Yet bind me to the burning shackles of this war.

Wild fireballs blast across the blackened fence,
Their garish leaps as circus flamethrower’s sleight of hand,
Yet deadly accurate; images around my head,
creating patterns like Aunt Mo’s paisley carpet of the 50’s.
Why skin so sore? Movements faltering, smoke so dense.

I press my face into the crude black earth; charcoal
debris swirling in the windborne flames, scar my feet.
My present, past and future, all exposed in an acrid
mass of scorched dark hell. I lift my head and meet
the blast head-on and know that all is done.
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“‘Burnt Offering’ is an ever developing metaphysical kaleidoscope of reality and thoughts, of events and of dreams; it is a multitude of personalities, developed throughout my life; it has no beginning and no end as yet!” – Janet Ghio