a Noite

by gerrie schrik

a noite

Você já viu a Noite? Bem-visto mesmo? Sim? Então você sabe que as vestes macias dela são cinzas e azuis. Que mudam com a lua, o tempo, as estações...

           Na hora dos grilos e sapos encontrei com ela, ela me pegou pela mão e andamos na mata. Ela estava vestida de primavera; um azul profundo, cheio de vagalumes. Não sei se pelos movimentos dela, pelo vento, ou pelo voo mesmo, mas era uma dança de luz. De algum esconderijo uma Mãe-da-Lua estava chamando. Um Curiango respondeu. E a mata respirava verde. Mariposas boiavam no perfume de flores pálidas. O tempo ficou líquido. Mas o que mais me lembro é aquele azul profundo cheio de vaga-lumes.

dama da noite -
o luar coberto
de perfume

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Night

Have you ever seen the Night? Really seen her? Yes? Then you know that her soft garments are grey and blue. That they change with the moon, the weather, the seasons…

            At the time of crickets and frogs I met her, she took me by the hand and we walked in the woods. She was dressed in spring; a deep blue, full of fireflies. I don't know if for her movements, for the wind or even flight, but it was a dance of light. From some hiding place a Potoo was calling. A Nightjar answered. The woods were breathing green. Moths drifting on the perfume of pale flowers. Time became liquid. But what I remember best is that deep blue full of fireflies.

lady of the night - 
moonlight covered
with perfume

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Gerrie Schrik is an educator and translator who received an award for the children's story 'the Colours of Flowers' and had poetry published in Portuguese. She loves hiking and birding and lives in a small food forest close to a stream in the Piracicaba River Watershed in Brazil. Honouring and acknowledging the Guarani and Kaingang, the traditional custodians of these lands and waters.

Sea Change

by Sarah Fawn Montgomery

I am no longer

a woman who can

breathe underwater,

tread rising tide,

trade my voice

for the chance

to walk on land

pretend to love

a man who doesn’t

understand the void

of a cold open sea

strongest abandoning

the surface to survive

further in fathoms

that would burst

a body from inside

vessels wrecked as ships

made myth simply

because they could not

persist and I do not

want pearls for eyes,

prefer to wade alone

towards death’s ferryman

without proper payment.

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Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home, Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir, and three poetry chapbooks. Nerve, a craft book on developing a disabled writing practice, is forthcoming with Sundress Publications, and Abbreviate, a short collection of flash nonfiction, is forthcoming with Harbor Editions.

Watch for the Small White Flowers

By Amie Potter

Should I teach my daughter how to forage–to spot, for example, 

the Pennsylvania bittercress that might spring up as hope

to nourish her after a nuclear winter? 

Look for the leaves. They’re pinnate. Watch for the small white flowers. 

That kind, too, you take. See the fine hairs on the stems? The red veining?

(Or would a good mother lend purpose to chaos?)

Here are the seeds from the milkweed. Feel them. They’re like the scales

of a silken fish. Keep them. If anything happens, it is your job

to bring the butterflies back.

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Amie Potter is a writer, gardener, and overly enthusiastic community college English professor. Her poetry deals with nature, trauma, and the underbelly of the domestic. She has also been published in The Hopkins Review.