by Janay Cosner

Hospice called. My mother is dead.
“Thank you and thank God!” I cry.
Her ashes now under a cactus in Arizona.
Why is she frowning at me in the mirror?
Her bee-stung lips buzz with noxious words.
“You’re not smart enough, not pretty enough,
not good enough, not…”
I want to crack the mirror into smithereens,
slice my wrist with the shards,
take my blood and write, “Leave me alone!”.
Somewhere a building topples.

I play scenes in my head,
press PAUSE, REWIND, and PLAY
over and over and over again:
You never hugged me or said you loved me.
You skated with many men when daddy was in the hospital for years.
You faked cancer to get attention.
You never recognized my successes as a teacher and author.
You ditched the family and moved to LA with all of granny’s money.
You did not attend your only son’s funeral.
You adopted a Walmart greeter to replace me.

Finally I see the big picture of abandonment.
The enormity engulfs me.
I feel it tickle the back of my throat,
Slowly pour through my insides like mercury,
moving faster and faster before it settles in my gut.
Alone, I lie on the ground let the frost from the grass
soak into my clothes, crawl over my skin,
wrap me in a cloak of ice, protecting me from all the hurt.

But soon the sun appears, and I rise,
my fist in the air. Every step forward in the present
a leap toward freedom from you. The past – a bomb!
Bam!

by G. E. Schwartz

Strange, in the end: this world unworded word I leave unsaid;
Midday’s made blaze, praise-phrase of fires; night’s blonde-veined black outspread.
Nothing so precious, yet each breath brims hymn in the lung—
Grass touched, love mouthed; dusk-hush where childlike fading songs are sung.
Others will come with my same heart, same startle at the sky,
Turn at their name: flame in the frame of clouds that pass and cry.
Always a couple’s tremble; first light bright rite of dawn begun;
Always the waters, winds, and light; none passes but the one.

Why then this fear? the psyche’s fox gnaws bone and hidden thread;
War’s clang, shame’s brand; the mind’s confined to what the dead have said.
Joy leaks like wine—fine, sly—through grief’s split cup; the sea’s increase
Breaks thirst to birth; from salt vaults rise green syllables of peace.
Bag on the back, black lack of sleep still under heaven’s blue
I breathe thank you through wound and rune the Beautiful breaks through.

by G. E. Schwartz

Field first: pre-law pulse, phase-true, night’s knit coherence;
Spin speaks to spin; dark sparks mark matter’s adherence.
No lattice fathers this; form follows, late, a trace-
Glow grows grid; need seeds node; structure takes place.
“Hidden,” we said mis-said: side-lit, gauge-shifted sign;
Light writes it fine in current lines, ray-script, design.
Order occurs in situ, local, breath to breath;
Phase braids phrase; vow under flux; life schooling death.

So in the soul: pre-name, pre-face, a small consent,
Heart’s covert choir, fire-thread, immanent.
Dust turns bright; thought thins to thanks; sky enters lung;
Mass becomes manner; the dumb world wakes, word-tongued.
From field to form the real coheres-dense, blessed, compressed:
Flare into prayer; matter made praise; the whole says Yes.

by G. E. Schwartz

Einstein, who bent space-time, still balked at pots to clean:
Why waste a flame for one small egg when soup keeps heat between?
Drop shell in swirl—world within world-the white made tight by steam;
Time tends the rest; the least released completes the scheme.
So thrift of thought: spare means, clear lines, no needless art—
Let one field yield what many tools would tear apart.
The same mind curved the stars, made clocks unlearn their pace,
Found in a broth the law enough: one warmth, one space.

You matter mentoring mind, mild tutor, bright with breath,
You school us: form from field congeals, life out of death.
Star-cores simmer; suns drum light; the long equations sing;
We live inside that vast cuisine, each in everything.
Wash less, trust more; let being bear what we would force—
Mass turns to mercy, thought to thanks: love is the source.