Singing Hands
by Ute Carson
Press your palms together
and sense the swirling energy.
Lean an ear into a cupped hand
and hear the pulsing heartbeats.
Hold hands with a child
and harken to the singing of its soul.
Clasp hands with a partner
and feel the love.
Take a frail hand in yours
and treasure its tales of life.
Through the melodies of hands,
we come to know each other.
Bio: A writer from youth and an M.A. graduate in comparative literature from the University of Rochester, German-born Ute Carson published her first prose piece in 1977. Colt Tailing, a 2004 novel, was a finalist for the Peter Taylor Book Award. Carson’s story “The Fall” won Outrider Press’s Grand Prize and appeared in its short story and poetry anthology A Walk through My Garden, 2007. Her second novel In Transit was published in 2008. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines in the US and abroad. Carson’s poetry was featured on the televised Spoken Word Showcase 2009, 2010, 2011, Channel Austin. A poetry collection Just a Few Feathers was published in 2011. The poem “A Tangled Nest of Moments” placed second in the Eleventh International Poetry Competition 2012. Her chapbook Folding Washing was published in 2013 and her collection of poems My Gift to Life was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Award Prize. Save the Last Kiss, a novella, was published in 2016. Her poetry collection Reflections was out in 2018. She received the Ovidiu-Bektore Literary Award 2018 from the Anticus Mulicultural Association in Constanta, Romania. In 2018 she was nominated a second time for the Pushcart Award Prize by the PlainView Press and a third time by the Yellow Arrow Press in 2021. Gypsy Spirit was published in 2020 as was her essay Even A Gloved Touch. Her Chapbook Listen was published in 2021.
Ute Carson resides in Austin, Texas with her husband. They have three daughters, six grandchildren, and a clowder of cats. www.utecarson.com
Supplication
by Lark Beltran
A tree, leafless,
becomes an outstretched hand.
A dry streambed
echoes an emptied life.
A hole in the ground
tugs at its rim of earth
as if aching to be filled.
Basic shapes look needful.
Bio: Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived in Lima, Peru for decades as an ESL teacher. Many of Lark's poems have appeared in online and offline journals, including Road not Taken, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Miller's Pond, Strange Horizons and Bolts of Silk.
soul passing through geologic time
by David Woodward
a tree
respired
one last
breath
greedily
ecstatically
i inhaled
one last
breath
exhaled
one tree
later.
Bio: David is a stay at home dad and writer from the Montreal area. In a past life he was a field biologist. Nature plays a strong role in his writing. It taught him all he knows about silence. It allowed him to cross the species barrier. Free to leave himself and all of his creations he was humbled back into life----a fuller, and more loving, being. This pantheist admits that he still does not know a heck of a lot about silence, but it always sounds right when he hears it.