Taking Poetry Public

The breeze still threads through
the last orange trees—
stubborn old witnesses
who remember blossoms
drowning the valley in scent,
bees drunk on nectar.

Now wind carries sugar-ghosts
past NO TRESPASSING signs,
over rivers buried under concrete.

I press my cheek to bark,
listen: “We were giants once.”

The trees tremble like widows
as bulldozers circle.

Born to asphalt,
my blood still sings
when a mockingbird trills
from a power line.

Some nights, fractured stars
flicker through light pollution—
Orion’s belt smudged
above the CVS parking lot.

Children here will never know
how the Milky Way dripped silver,
how cosmos once pressed close.

City girl, country bones—
this body wasn’t built
for cubicles. I miss soil
that didn’t taste like gasoline.

Streetlights swing jaundiced fruit
over another compromised night.
An orange rolls into a storm drain.
The earth forgets.

by Jennifer Villegas

before the tall stems 

of the pre-blossom wildflowers called me 

into their bamboo-stalk 

labyrinth of swaying 

singing forest

and small brown birds 

erupted like cruise missiles 

crossed the continent 

of front yard 

to strike the lone magnolia

splashes of lavender 

primroses seduced 

the sun and a sphinx 

moth and cheating-heart bees

the ungrateful crows 

I've been feeding 

cheap puppy chow 

from the discount store 

land like Omaha 

Beach and squawk 

orders for cups of kibble

and the hawk screes somewhere 

in the tortured gray 

mottled sky

and I unmoor 

from the perception 

of biological superiority 

and face 

the truth 

of my degenerative 

soul

and I can again 

and never be 

anything but… 

but I won't be 

the same one

By James Mathis