My mother passed away

years before she died.

At first the dry-rot

was barely noticeable,

a gap here,

a draught there

easily shored up

and forgotten about.

‘My memory’s not what it was,’

she would say.

And then say it again.

She gave away her things

with disregard,

but with them went her past.

And her present.

The twilit rooms of her mind

closed up and were locked,

draped in dust cloths,

peopled only with shadows.

Bare walls, with pictures taken down

or hung askew,

rooms that echoed

with things not heard

Until even the ghosts of her past

were gone.

Stumbling down an endless, empty corridor,

doors slamming shut on either side,

until she trembled

and howled with loneliness.

My mother passed away

years before she died.

I mourned her passing many times.

After spending many years working and living abroad, in China, Hong Kong, Turkey and France, Seonaid Francis currently lives in the Western Isles of Scotland with her husband and three children. She has previously had work published in Scottish literary journals such as New Writing Scotland, Northwards Now, In On the Tide and Valve Journal and takes much of her inspiration from the landscape of the Hebrides and the complexities of life there.

She also runs ThunderPoint Publishing, which publishes both fiction and non-fiction.

“…the location where Hubble has repeatedly stared since 2003, trying to build up a picture of objects whose separation from us is so great that their light arrives in dribs and drabs.” – BBC News, “Hubble Space Telescope achieves deepest cosmic view yet”, December 12, 2012

observe deeper and you will see
the earliest years of cosmic expansion
when its light arrives in dribs and drabs
from the Furnace stretched by time–
blue to red– looking backwards toward
the beginning of cold neutral gas
the dark age before stars switched on
making the first heavy elements
then intergalactic plasma, not iron
or calcium, not blood, that came far,
far later with a kindly hand
in our own shape, a mirror of ourselves
reflected in the dark firmament
when the stars came to rest
above a wide slow river
and we walked cautiously at noon
fearful of the loss of sun at dusk,
of every bright sky streak, tides, wind,
as we explored the stones and saw
our own features in every leaf, became
masters of the seen and by extension
the imagined, this red light arriving
finally after billions of years,
before this galaxy coalesced.

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry. Over 130 of her poems appear in dozens of online venues and in anthologies. The natural world is generally her framework; she often focuses on the tension between nature and humanity, using concrete images to illuminate the loss of meaning between them. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

The need for geometries runs
through your veins: lines, arcs, circles –
shapes you want to embody.

Each day you practice:

unfold limbs until they stretch like vectors;

carve through fields, forming arcs,
swooping from bend to bend;

circle, pulling space towards you
like a black hole.

The paths carve neurons through your brain,

and you see the shapes in every space,
in every body:

every circle a perfect pirouette,
curves unbroken;

every arc a torso bending;

every limb a line

that seeks
the vanishing point

Francine Rubin’s chapbook, Geometries, was published last year by Finishing Line Press. Her work has recently appeared in Border Crossing, Coin Opera 2 (Sidekick Books), and Spiral Orb, and her poem “Sacagawea” was the third place winner in Calyx Press’ 2013 Flash Fiction contest. A former dancer and ballet teacher, she now works as the Associate Director of the Learning Center at SUNY Purchase College, where she also teaches writing. More poems and thoughts appear at http://francinerubin.tumblr.com.

She never asks,
afraid to explore the depths
of the deluge,
the town flooded
to keep her out.
But she wonders
what streets ran through
your heart, what elm-
shaded paths
she might have explored,
how the home fires
scented the air
on chilly evenings.
All she knows
is that she drowned there
on your orders
before she touched bottom.

Caitlin Johnson is the Managing Editor of CAIRN: The St. Andrews Review. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in All Things Girl, Boston Poetry Magazine, Charlotte Viewpoint, Foliate Oak, Fortunates, Gravity Hill, Infinite Press Literary Journal, Pembroke Magazine, and What the Fiction.

This is a church of no denomination
where flat pew seats face each other
instead of a nondescript altar
and communicants receive a different grace.

Slightly bob your head an inch or two
till you feel it in your shoulders.
Swing your torso slightly. Pull your left oar first,
then your right. Dip your paddles.

Learn to reach and pull and stretch
in and out of water
until the beauty and the effort
leaves you breathless.

At a moment of your choosing
draw the oars across the gunwales
to flow on your momentum and the tide.

A calm horizon spreads across the Eastern way.
Whitecaps sparkling in the distance reflects the low sun
that stands so cool above the dark green hemlock.
Away to your back lie miles and miles of endless water.

You are a simple boat surrounded by extraordinary marriages
of vast and unlike things.
Sky flowing into Water.
Water bumping against the Earth.
Earth cradling all the Sky.

To reach this necessary place
requires no word of faith
just an urgent need within
to bob and row.

Patricia Kennedy from Gig Harbor, Washington, has published poems in online journals, regional print anthologies, a chapbook, Gods & Goddesses, (2013), and at the Washington State History Museum. She writes with the encouragement of the Pot Luck Poets and other friends. She is the coordinator of the Gig Harbor Library’s Poetry Series, a six-year endeavor that has brought together some of the finest poetic voices in the Pacific Northwest for free public workshops and readings.

Calves, chiseled:
convexity,
concavity.

Buttocks cut
as if by Michelangelo’s
knife.

Limbs speaking
golden ratios: intelligent.
geometric.

To move
is to embody
and engulf perfection,

the mirror beckoning
with shapes so ideal
they are erotic.

He devours himself,
second by second,
an aesthetic autophagy –

bones, tendons, muscles;
then creates himself anew
flexing a muscle,

conjuring his moving image
for his own pleasure,
propelling up,

down,
everywhere
he finds himself.

Francine Rubin’s chapbook, Geometries, was published last year by Finishing Line Press. Her work has recently appeared in Border Crossing, Coin Opera 2 (Sidekick Books), and Spiral Orb, and her poem “Sacagawea” was the third place winner in Calyx Press’ 2013 Flash Fiction contest. A former dancer and ballet teacher, she now works as the Associate Director of the Learning Center at SUNY Purchase College, where she also teaches writing. More poems and thoughts appear at http://francinerubin.tumblr.com.

— heading for the cosmos at 38,000 miles per hour.
—New York Times, June 27, 2013

Blind Willie never remembered what the stars
looked like, they say his own mother blinded
him in a fit of rage, he built himself a cigar-box
guitar, preached on the streets of Texas, ran
one House of Prayer and lived in its burned ruins
at the end before he contracted malaria along with
syphilis, no hospital would take him in, he died
penniless bundled in wet newspapers.

He sang for tips, made five records, rhythmic
pickings and slide guitar, moaning in wordless
hums Dark was the Night now on gold sailing
far past Pluto, our world’s tale to spacefarers,
40,000 years to the next planetary system
or an advanced civilization in interstellar
space, a bottle into the cosmic ocean
Blind Willie never saw that far.

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry. Over 130 of her poems appear in dozens of online venues and in anthologies. The natural world is generally her framework; she often focuses on the tension between nature and humanity, using concrete images to illuminate the loss of meaning between them. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

The square of any number is positive.
Two x’s for the same y:
A bigamy.

Ditch the pen;
Pick a brain.
What do you see?

Range travels through infinity
with domain, that extends
far beyond the origin.

And then, images are born:
One side exactly mirrors the other,
like identical twins
on a race toward forever,
growing distance in between.

Tell me,
How hard is it to visualize
A Parabola
With just one look?

Odessa Gheeneil R. Agbas has a Bachelor degree in Mathematics, but she loves words more than numbers. She started writing at 14 and took serious interest in poetry at 20. Her works also appeared in two other digital magazines such as WalkingBlind Art and Literary and Emerge Literary Journal. Most of her poetry is posted on her site, www.plathinson.wordpress.com.