Blog Archives - The Voices Project

what i do know~ By Linda M. Crate

9/30/2015

i don't know what i want honestly
sometimes i want to be
on the pedestal,
and other days i hate you for putting
me on display
because i am not some pretty bird
to be placed in a gilded cage;
it's no wonder society is
confused--
we tell them to tell women that they are beautiful
but not to covet their looks
and to tell them they are beautiful
for everything based on their appearances
but not the scars they carry
or the strength of their endurance to keep going
through all their troubles and heartaches;
sometimes i'm even confused
i do know that i want somebody to grow old with
someone beautiful in heart and soul
whose eyes can take me
to the widest depths of my imagination
and inspire more words
to fly from my mouth, my heart, my soul
one that encourages my novels
and whose dreams i can nurture.

Author Bio:
Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. Recently her two chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014) were published. Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015.

Deconstruction~ By Leonore Wilson

9/29/2015

Matzalan around midnight a little wind whiffles the palms
scours the quick pink of walls lanterns bob on the Pacific

we’re pinnisulaed here for Christmas mother and I
in this desolate hotel in this inconceivable country suppurating
with affection

the dance music has all gone home the mariachi bands the salsa
dancers
patrons snorting coke lines drinking from shot glasses like giant
thimbles

the silence is like a heart full of nothingness
the lapis lazuli of the pool glistens blades overhead hum like a fuse

then the voice begins the voice jackhammers
a male voice from the next door cursing and pumping

bloodying the darkness like a burning wheel penetrating the plaster
you whore whore whore that’s all you are then a thump

another thump of a body thrown and the whimpering the sobbing
the pink wall vibrates the painting of sunflower shifts

I’m so sorry sorry sorry please don’t don’t I’m sorry please…
grave consonants scratched vowels against the wall what is
broken smashes

the sounds of syllables half-dead forgetting the love of sentences
then again the brutal voice of Zeus or Thor slut slut no good
Hooker

shattered glass and the Lucifer laughter and mother saying
sh-hh-shhh her finger perpendicular on her lips a metronome
of caution

the hills empurpled in the distance light splinters on the water
the stars stick and sting moon the color of detritus

mother bangs the wall with her fists says stop stop it we’re
sleeping in here
the male voice answers booms big as God the voice answers
huffs and puffs

Bitch, come over here and I’ll get you too! the wolf voice and the
fist against the wall falls heavy
pity the ears for what they’ve witnessed the eye cannot see in
the spilled sickness

Get the phone mother insists get the phone she whispers
I wish I were a mole I could see in the dark dialing furiously dialing

Hablas Engles? Hablas English? No English. Anyone one one
mother’s voice trails Police Police Please Please ease ease

and the phone drops like a stone in a hollow pond No one speaks
English.
Thump Thump. Shhhh-hhhh then the moan, blue moan of a
mourning dove

we cannot do a thing love deconstructing or lust I’ll
blow your house down
we’re holding each other mother and I twisted together like
two stuck pigs.

Author Bio:
Leonore Wilson is on the MFA advisory board at St. Mary's College. She has taught English and Creative Writing throughout the Bay Area. Her work has been published in such magazines as Quarterly West, Third Coast, Madison Review, Canary, etc. She has been nominated for four Pushcart Awards and has two poetry books: Western Solstice (Hiraeth Press) and Tremendum, Augustum (Kelsay Books).

Echoing~ By Carly Larkin

9/28/2015

It's upon these moments-
that I bear in mind-thought-
the walls of my mind are echoing,
and I know not which thought they've sought.

If this is me,
then I must not remember what me feels like.

Love should never simply suffice-
it's for this, that we pay the repetitive price; night after night-
we have sought for that which felt right,
and in love-again-lost our sight;
hung on an idea of perfection, perhaps too tight.

Author Bio:
I'm a senior in high school and take classes at SFCC through the running start program. My passion resides in poetry, through which I find tranquility through my search for truth. I have been writing poetry since I was 13, and have recently decided I'm ready to put it out there in hopes that others may gain from it as I have.

Give Rise to Your Voice and Be the Change- A Course

9/25/2015

A trusted friend to The Voices Project is giving a course/workshop entitled "Give Rise to Your Voice and Be the Change," beginning on September 29th, 2015. Since The Voices Project is an avenue for individuals around the world to express their voices, our missions are aligned. View details here:

http://www.liveyourfreedom.com/give-rise-be-change/

Last Dance~ By Kathy French

9/24/2015

We danced on my last day.
Women left their cooking fires and laundry
They gathered and gathered until two dozen of us
were clapping, stomping, singing, laughing.
We were 4th of July sparklers in Ugandan sunshine.
I grabbed a dark eyed toddler and whirled.
The modest young women thrilled at my double jointed hips--
Oh so old and moving so young!
Frenchie shake your bootie shake your bootie! they cried.

Finally we collapsed and feasted.
Friends came from afar, bringing memory gifts.
Then a van lurched to us.
Godfrey, Patrick, and fatherly John poured out.
Leave, leave! cried John. Now!
No more goodbyes!
Oh your tears and goodbyes will make us late!
So I left,
not all goodbyes said,
not all tears shed,
rushing for Entebbe through smoky air.

Author Bio:
Kathy French has been a lover of words and rhythms all of her life, so reading and writing poetry comes naturally. Recently she retired after many years of teaching and raising children. She has spent time in Uganda, the source of these poems. Kathy roams the Western states finding great satisfaction in her adventures with people, animals, and the wilderness.

Blue Morning Glory~ By Sheryl L. Nelms

9/23/2015

static
thunder

mango man

cockatiel
papaya drizzled
with fresh
squeezed
lemon

coconut cream
pie slice

flint arrowhead

limestone
fence
post

barbed wire

asphalt
dinosaur eggs

antelope
elk

grizzly bear

coyote
howl

fogged
in

Author Bio:
Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas and graduated from South Dakota State University. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including fourteen individual collections of her poems*. She is the fiction/nonfiction editor of The Pen Woman Magazine, the National League of American Pen Women publication, a contributing editor for Time Of Singing, A Magazine Of Christian Poetry and a three time Pushcart Prize nominee.

I Have Silent Tears~ By Trisha Kc Buel Wheeldon

9/22/2015

I do have silent tears:
An adaptation
For the overly--
No, not overly--
Potently emotional.
(As if silence was courage.)
But today I heard them,
My tears,
Hitting the feather filled deco pillow on my futon.
A steady thump/thud(?)
A hollow and dull round sound;
Pounding/beating(?)
(And I really thought this in that moment)
Like my heart.

Author Bio:
Trisha Kc Buel Wheeldon recently got up the courage to say out loud that she is a writer. A west coast native, but her current adventures have landed her in Eglin AFB, Florida with her husband, son, and daughter. She studied creative writing at Brigham Young University-Idaho. She writes both poetry and creative nonfiction. Her stuff has appeared or is forthcoming in Peaches Lit Mag, Segullah, and Mothers Always Write, Boston Literary Magazine, The Salal Review and elsewhere. Trisha's other love is yoga because the practice makes her feel like the phrases and pauses of a poem. Connect with her at https://www.facebook.com/trisha.wheeldon, https://instagram.com/kcbuel/, and https://twitter.com/kcbuel.

An Average Man~ By Bruce McRae

9/21/2015

Tertullian of Carthage, engaged in abstract reflection.
Origen of Alexandria, bewitched by sensory diversions.
St Augustine of Hippo, studying the synthesis of matter and form.

And yours truly, close to the ground, under an inarticulate sky,
unimpressed by metaphysics, banality my watchword.
Average only because sub-normality’s the norm.

A vagrant mind to the body’s squalor.

Author Bio:
Pushcart nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 900 poems published around the world. His first book, ‘The So-Called Sonnets’, is available via Silenced Press and Amazon. To see and hear more poems go to ‘BruceMcRaePoetry’ on YouTube.

What is the Lesson?~ By Colleen Wells

9/17/2015

My newborn niece, Marissa, died yesterday. Word came while protesting the planned deer kill at a nature preserve called Lake Griffy where I live in Bloomington, Indiana. As I think about my sister’s loss, I’ve got the bond between mother and child on the brain.

I spoke to Marge Davis, a 94-year-old wildlife rehabilitator in Sonoma, California, I had met while researching deer for a feature story I wrote about this widely-debated issue of the deer kill in our town. I wanted to know more about the bond between does and fawns, as many of those bonds will be broken when the sharpshooters enter Griffy. Marge explained that fawns are with their mothers for nearly two years. During this time their mothers teach them how to find nutritious food and water sources and how to avoid predators.

These are some of the basic things human mothers teach their children.
When a doe dies, her fawns will stay by her body circling around as long as she is there. Likewise, Marge has seen does follow her truck for 100s of yards when she carries off an injured fawn.
While juvenile fawns in the Griffy area can survive the loss of their mothers, they will be at greater risk, as they won’t even yet be yearlings. We all have a finite amount of time to teach our children, and I ask, what is the lesson in this?

Author Bio:
Colleen Wells writes from Bloomington, Indiana, where she lives with her husband and three children and their menagerie of pets. On her bucket list is to get a Celtic tattoo, visit Ireland, and earn a degree in environmental education. Her work has appeared in various publications including Adoptive Families Magazine, ORION, and The Potomac Review. Her first book, a memoir, was published by Wordpool Press in April 2015. It is titled, Dinner With Doppelgangers, a True Story of Madness and Recovery, and is about her experiences with bipolar disorder.

The circus called life~ By Jayashree Sitaraman

9/16/2015

This life is a veritable circus and we are all performers in it. We can be jugglers and gymnasts, clowns and trapeze artists, all in one life…

Gymnasts- We twist ourselves into thin pretzels to fit in the part in life as mother, daughter, in-law, wife, sister, friend, employee, neighbor.

Jugglers- We are adept at juggling things, be it appointments or activities and multitasking. We can open a cookie jar while cradling a phone on one shoulder and sweeping the floor.

Trapeze artists- We are constantly moving from one activity to the next. Now, we are dropping the kids off at activities, the next moment we are running errands and later we are off to something else.

Fumnambulists- We are all walking a tight rope of neither too much nor too little, be it dieting or leniency with the kids.

Clowns- There is no dearth of circumstances for us to be clowns. We goof up, bungle, fumble and laugh at ourselves countless times.

Once we are born as human beings, we have no choice but to live the life that is chalked out for us, whether or not we like the path we are taking. However, if we are able to accept and laugh at our mistakes and carry on with the show, then the circus is well performed-- and is a truly amazing show.

Author Bio:
I am a scientist by profession, employed in the life sciences industry, a mother of two awesome boys. I have always been interested in reading and writing. Words captivate and enthrall me. In my spare time, I like to write, read, go on nature hikes, try new recipes and travel.