I wonder, I say to the double-breasted Cormorant, who unfurls his black velvet wings to dry in the morning slice of blinding sun floating on the blue steel of the Willamette River why some revile you as a voracious nuisance who devours more than your fair share of salmon steelhead and tiny bottom fish and never see that sleek black-satin yellow-beaked body dive into the water’s welcoming embrace deep so deep you punch through the bitter brawling barrier between light and dark nor seldom notice the blue of your eyes almost but not quite the star- sapphire blue my husband’s.
Pattie Palmer-Baker lives in Portland, Oregon, where for many years, she exhibited mixed- media artwork—paste paper collages combined with her poetry in calligraphic form. To her surprise and delight, viewers often responded more strongly to the poems than to the visual art. Encouraged by this, she now focuses primarily on writing. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Bacopa Literary Review, Military Experience and the Arts, Ghazal Page, Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Calyx , and Phantom Drift. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her work has earned several awards, including: First Prize from Timberline Review, the Bivona Prize, Ageless Authors Anthology prize, First Prize from Oprelle Oxbow, and First Prize from Pulp Literature Press. She is the author of the chapbook The Color of Goodbye (Kelsay Press, 2021) and the full-length collection Five Fundamental Forces (MoonPath Press, 2023. A Thousand Rainbows Flashing (Finishing Line Press, 2026) contains her new poems alongside her original artwork.
A Thousand Flashing Rainbows is available from Finishing Line Press
Visit Pattie’s page at MoonPathPress.com
—Carl Sagan
If you could stop, stay pinned on the canvas of my eye,
night’s velvet moth-struck, single wing of crescent moon
risen above, dear Brother, my late life love,
then I would take back our years of enmity
as sibling enemies, rewind our clock to Lawrence Welk
on black-&-white TV, champagne bubbles
and our shoveled-out nor’easter snow forts,
the snowballs and fatso nicknames
you pummeled me with growing up—
but you’ve gone, so please allow me to summon you
here from the grave, Brother. For days on end, I will
sate you with custard creams supple as deer’s ears,
bewitch you with brave tales of laparoscopic surgeries,
dazzle you with mysteries of tardigrades and theorized atomic
particles, the stuff of dark stars, with flying cars become nearly
real, a newly discovered species of electric eel sparking 850
volts—current enough to jolt any expired heart—yours—
back to life. Oh, forgive me, Brother, that last one I made up.
Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. She’s published twelve chapbooks and full-length collections, with two more titles due out Fall 2026. Her poems appear in such places as Peregrine, One Art, Bluebird Word, Anti-Heroine Chic, Quill & Parchment, The MacGuffin, Braided Way, Amethyst Review, Swing, and Exterminating Angel Press. In her free Poem After Poem email newsletter, Lana sends out a weekly poem she’s fallen in love by a variety of her favorite poets—sign up here. She leads generative writing workshops, facilitates a Poetry Community Book Club, and hosts the Poem After Poem Round Robin Poetry Reading Series. A time travel enthusiast, her favorite color is the swirl of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Lana lives in Oregon, on the unceded lands of the Yaqo’n people, with her beloved husband and fur babies. On clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon. Visit her online at LanaAyers.com
All proceeds from sales of Sky Over will be donated to Blook Cancer United to honor of Lana’s brother Alan who died of a 9/11 related leukemia.