Excerpt from The Last Leader (Chapter 13) by Joe Moody

The Milky Way marched toward the moon like a procession of candle bearers. Atop the Pink House, the face of the moon reflected upon the glassy surface of a koi pond. A sobbing, swooning tune radiated from a golden harp.

Emperia strummed the harp with eyes closed, creating melodies of pining and regret. She wore a silk gown inspired by the American flag, with silvery stars and red stripes draped down her leg. White flowers adorned her hair like a crown.

Deliberately, her fingers swept the strings as the despondent dirge took form. She swooped up the scale as the pace quickened, plucking with rapid-fire precision, stomping the harp’s pedals like weapons of war. At the climax, the pond’s surface rippled in cascading circles, and the koi jumped and danced. Finally, with a gentle sweep of the strings, she drifted down to the resolution where chords lingered like clouds. The pond became still again as she returned to the melancholic opening, notes evoking deep violet and blood red hues that gave the moon its howling face.

When she stopped playing, she gazed skyward, her powderwhite skin glowed under the stars. Her red lips quivered as she whispered. “My father, why did you leave me?”

Only silence answered, until the gentlemanly voice of Vincent lifted the mood. “Pardon me, Madam President.” He stood in the arched gateway of the rooftop garden in his metallic tuxedo. “I bring good news.”

The presence of her robotic confidant pierced through her inner fog like a sunbeam. “Yes, Vincent?”

“We made progress in our search for the rebels. Underwater drones tracked an unidentified submarine that made a brief stop at an island in the Caribbean Sea. There is a high probability we located our runaway vice president, and perhaps a rebel base too.”

Emperia’s gaze sharpened. All sadness left her body. Confidence bloomed in her expression. She stood up from the harp, straight as a pillar, clasping her hands. “Prepare three warships. Let’s show the world what happens to traitors.”

by J.D.

Each day is a new one

Made special by me.

I breathe deeper, dream harder, look closer.

It’s all here right now,

All that I need or want it to

be.

I’ve no time for playing

Earth Mother, Hecate or Crone.

I’ve found out the mystery—

My wise woman’s alive

Every minute inside me.

by j.d.

I practice a hundred frugalities

I eat my toast without jam

I shut off each light I’m not using

I try to live small as I can.

But, music keeps playing inside me

My mind sings a million new tunes

My-self is a universe unfolding

I’m a river that will not be damned

I run into mornings with laughter

Little Goddesses dance on my windowsills.

Perchance a bleak future awaits me

Living does take what it can

and

Death may be an added adventure

Yet, to living I answer

I am!!!!!

by Josette Davison

Wandering…

Through fields of tiny flowers

Mindful not to tread on them

I wonder…does God hear me?

Hear my prayer?

Why am I here?

Stumbling over stones

His answer comes

In a trinity of bright violets

Blooming midst the rocks

In the whisper of trees

In bird song — in scented air

He speaks to me

Answers my prayer

I hear — I care —

by Josette Davison

The night has death within its hold

Not a creature creeps

Nor a baby weeps

As on the edge of day we wait

Each mind suspended fear

by Josette Davison

Lord, let me not be bitter

For bitterness crawls into itself

And awaits a shrunken death

But let this raw heart

Stand back from its wound

Accepting and knowing

That love is its healing

by judy cassidy

For thirty years, this exotic immigrant from the tropics has been part of our family. She’s irresistibly sexy, sassy, her feathered, outstretched arms poised in dance. Her head gracefully tilts to accommodate her regal eight-foot height to an intrusive ceiling. She coos evergreen to her tree children, who gather close to her spindly trunk, growing under her protective canopy.

We attend her. In warmer seasons we move her to the deck where she sunbathes and is replenished by storms and gentle rains. We bring her inside in frosty weather.

Our children have known only She for holy days. As the winter solstice nears, when all else is dark and barren, she announces the coming year in splendid regalia, festooned in a holiday robe generations in the making. Her lighted undergarments gleam red, yellow, green, and blue. Following tradition, ornaments adorn her: framed photos of the young ones, sparkling pipe cleaner dream catchers and spirals from the granddaughters, sprightly Santas of red pipe cleaner Grandma Mommie Lemm conceived during the Depression; yarn and popsicle stick weavings by one of our boys, a bell ringer by the other; our daughter’s fluffy cotton snowman. Friends contributed crocheted Morton House wreathes and snowflakes, a British gentleman with a light bulb head and proper collar; a simple star of dry reeds.

Too heavy for her delicate limbs, some ripened fruits settle easily around the goddess, surrounding her on the coffee table, windowsills, banister, lamps, rims of hanging pots: Mom’s home-made golden globe studded with sparkling beads and sequins, Bruce and Maggie’s Mexican nativity; Aunt Francis’s music box topped with a choir of cherubs; fragrant candles with gaily flickering flames.

Wind chimes carol outside the east window. Cedars scent the path. Blue spruce, now sixty feet tall, stretch skyward, were once lugged into the house for the winter solstice in pots bigger than they were. Now they wear cranberry and popcorn garlands for the birds.

We are replenished by what we offer.

by Meta Marie Griffin

by: carolyn c. rice

he said my hair was
the color of honey.
his lay in soft
shiny-black commas behind
his ears against
the smooth, brown skin of his neck.

I looked into his
dark eyes, a little tilted,
like Pan.
he said, careful
fingers unbuttoning the top two
buttons of my blouse,
may I see?

so polite.
so unassuming.
who could say no?

“Pretty Please” first appeared in The Petigru Review.

by: carolyn c. rice

Skin heating
Noon’s caress
Hands busy, leaves
haired, thick springing
Fingers stalk kneading
teasing top ruddy glowing

Mouth filled – flesh,
juice overflowing
Nectarous
Stinging kisses, touched,
releasing perfume –
earthy balm

“Strawberry Pleasures” first appeared in Horizons.

by: carolyn c. rice

lift and fan
fluff and smooth
brush brush brush
artlessly proud
humorously vain

red changing to green –
one last preen and
satisfied glance at his
hair in his rearview mirror
before driving away

“Peacock Display” first appeared in Horizons.

by: carolyn c. rice

It’s been too long since I’ve been lost.
I don’t mean the common or mall variety of lost,
though I do that too.
I don’t mean the scary nighttime Oh my God I’m running out of gas kind of lost,
though I do that too.
I don’t even mean the middle of the night in my own house lost.
No, I mean a full of myself lost,
a secret mischief lost,
an I can do anything hide and watch me lost.
Myself, lost and found.

I mean the kind of lost I was in New York City on foot
when I went out the wrong exit of the Museum of Modern Art,
wandered clueless as a cloud, and ran right smack dab into a Shoe Museum.
A SHOE museum!
Fifteenth Century Venetian noblewoman’s shoes,
medieval peasant clogs,
Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz slipper.
You could have a fit a shoe in my smile.

I drove down to New Orleans for the King Tut exhibit.
I got lost.
Round and round humid, shady streets,
past wrought-iron balconies and bougainvillea,
back and forth on the bridge over Lake Ponchartrain,
until the warm wet air blowing in my car window,
spicy as Cajun sausage,
smelling of mildew, oil refineries, and heated swamp,
became familiar again,
scents of childhood.

I flew to Holland for my sister’s wedding.
After the wedding I took a train to Amsterdam.
I ended up in The Hague.
I met three college students
who took me to the Madurodam,
through village streets no wider than my shoe,
by church steeples no high than my knee,
alongside a solemn procession of altar boys, Lilliputians.

On the island of Hydra in the Saronic Gulf off the cost of Greece,
only a few steeply-climbing streets and one long dusty road.
I got lost anyway.
Flame-blue sky pressing the noonday heat onto the white stone walls.
Houses, their bright-painted windows tight-shuttered,
keeping out the sun and strangers.
I followed a dog
to the fish market.
Bins of squid, lobster, shrimp,
pans of whole anchovies,
pushcart grill, man cooking octopus,
tiny tables filled with men drinking ouzo
who helped me get back to the ship.

My straight-arrow cousin from Texas came to visit me.
I took her to Asheville, and, of course,
I got lost.
She was outraged.
She needed guidebooks, compass, maps,
paper security,
blue and red lines weaving a safety net,
pathfinders to follow down a narrow, hard-paved road.
She was so angry that I let her drive my new car.
She drove it backwards down a freeway entry ramp.

I do use guidebooks to plan my treks,
each historic site safe recorded on my written plan.
But … I turn the wrong way at a corner.
I see an alleyway, a gate, a door.
I find an old woman sitting on her doorstep making lace,
her gnarled fingers moving swift as swallows’ flight.
Her wise old eyes nested in wrinkles watch me watching her.
Spindles, stacks of slender pylons, frame her lap.
Wings of fine threads, secured to a solid body of pins
on a runway of red and blue cloth.
Above, clouds, constellations of lace.

One day soon I will find myself again
wandering
down an unexplored street, driving
along an unknown highway, a sojourner
beneath unfamiliar skies, a striver struggling
up a steep hill and across the wide ocean,
even in and around my own home place, an explorer.
Somewhere in this strange and magical universe,
I will be lost again.

“Lost” first appeared in Earth’s Daughters.