Send up to three poems on the subject of or at least mentioning the words hell and/or heaven, totaling up to 150 lines in length including stanza breaks, in the body of an email message or attached in a Word file to donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59 PM PDT on September 22nd. No PDF's please. Color and B&W artwork are also desired. Please send in JPG form. No late submissions accepted. Poets and artists published in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Hell or Heaven will be published online and invited to read at the Saturday Afternoon Poetry Zoom meeting on Saturday, September 23rd between 3 and 5 pm PST.

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Maria Duarte

This is not like the movies

 

I.

 

I stood perplex on the front patio

of my grandfather’s ranch admiring

the sheet of fog, almost translucent,

coming down on the pines of the canyon;

it was almost romantic like a gesture

of caress, as if the hand of God

had come down and had put that sheet

for protection, but this moment lasted

only a few minutes and then the forest

was bare again to the mercy of the sun.

 

II.

 

Standing in the same place

I had looked away to the right

side of my shoulder to discover the cat

eating a rat, I wasn’t disgusted or surprise,

I stood there my body calm, my skin

was beginning to be cold, but there was

no sudden movement to cover myself

or seek refuge inside the house;

I wanted to know how it felt to be cold

in the lovely hours of the evening.

 

III.

 

Loneliness; a sudden realization 

of the standing of my body,

unprotected, as if waiting 

for a change in the moon’s rotation. 


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