Fall 2025

Childhood Summers

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by Maureen Hatch

In summer we three sisters loved to swim,
In the ocean, out to the barrels
and back.
In the pool, counting laps and
watching handsome Freddy Harlow
on the diving board.

Then a drive to Main Street, to
Gloria’s for goodies.

At home, we played clubhouse
under the lilac bush,
with me as big sister boss;
and rode bikes to the McCarthy’s
for volleyball and visits to
the playhouse.

Summer evenings could be nice, when
Mother invited lifeguards for cocktails, to
thank them for watching over us,
Or not so nice,
when Daddy added ice to too many
glasses of scotch.

In childhood summers we survived Daddy’s drinking
as the next day brought us back,
to the ocean and the pool –
to swimming.

And for me, the oldest,
to the hunt for handsome Freddy.

 

NYC born and bred, with childhood summers on the East End, Maureen Hatch is still a fan of summers—and the City and of membership in LP2.

 

 

Per Ignam Ad Lucem–Through the Fire to the Light

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by Carmen Mason

 

I …….we are
………arsonists
………born for conflagration
………kindlebones coalhearts
………distilling all to ashes
………ashes ashes
………embersouls cinderhearts
………stopped caught
………tempered by the dew

II…….taking hold of light
………anyway we can
……....taking hold of emptiness
………neediness
………nastiness
………the thing not there
………the link not linking
………the egg in the mind unhatched
………the dream undreaming
………we start
………we start

III….. the soul’s commotion
………the heart unleashed
………after soaking up
………so many fabrications
………to start again
………again
………wet wombstroked
………the heart
………the soul of the matter

IV …..oh, would that the
………face of the world
………had been born
………with a caul
………unveiled by the
………hands of the dew
………not by the hand
………of our longing
………but the pure, gentle hands
………of the dew

 

Carmen Mason has been writing poetry and prose throughout her life and has won a few prizes (including Seventeen Magazine’s International first prize short story contest when she was seventeen) and a few other poetry prizes in her senior years.  She is, therefore she writes.

The Box

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by Judith Meyerowitz

Square box
best friend of childhood,
from which magically Voices come
Miss Frances wishes me good morning.
I “Cry” with Johnnie Ray.
Place my hand to the screen’s forehead,
Oral Roberts has the power.
I feel the heat.
Place the plastic screen and Roberts transforms into Winkie Dink.
Yo Rinty and Howdy! Howdy Doody
Out of the square box,
Voices of my gods
My ears my eyes you kidnap.
I stay inside.
Your light replaces the sun’s.
Snatch my soul
Zombie child
Mother trapped in her bed,
me in my box

 

Judith Meyerowitz has submitted poetry and prose to Voices for several years. Thank you also to Neil Grill’s study group for which this was developed and to Voices for publishing. 

 

 

What to Make of Time

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by Mary Padilla

Not a sensation, but a concept,
just an abstraction we concoct,
merely a means to keep what happens
from trying to go on all at once.

Though we can measure it precisely,
to experience it is not the same.
Once we look below its surface,
the when is quite a different thing.

The now is vanishingly thin,
poised between before and after,
on the cusp of evanescence,
on the verge of not forever.

While it never leaves the present,
the eternal exists but out of time,
failing to engage with either
what once was or what’s to be.

Though inexorably marking passage,
of itself it alters nothing,
as it flows on without ceasing,
soundless, its own hourglass.

All around us and within us,
though with tangible effects,
time itself remains unmoved,
as it can merely mark the change.

It is left to us to be
the ones to come to terms with it.
For in the end, time simply measures
nothing other than itself.

 

Mary Padilla writes to see what she thinks.

What Does it Matter?

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by Mary Padilla

What’s the matter with you?
Could this be a minor matter?
Does it actually matter if it’s true?

But then, what if you think the latter?
What if it truly does matter to you?
But just why should it matter to you?

Can you pretend that it doesn’t matter?
Or do you think that it won’t matter
if in the end you don’t want it to?

Anyway, does mattering really matter?
But just what does that actually matter,
if this is something that matters to you?

 

Mary Padilla:  I write to see what I think.

Mele

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by Mireya Perez-Bustillo

                                                For Kamu Vicky Holt

                                                Hula Master Teacher

One could see
she was a Kamu Hula
achieving status in that dance
true to her teacher
chanting, weaving lau hala into baskets
shaping instruments mastering oli, Kahko, hula
to gain her five skirts for the umiki
fasting, purifying in the salt sea
rinsing with ginger to partake in the ailolo
consuming the fish or pig given her
savoring all parts
Climbing the hills for ilima, tilo
for her wristlets and anklets
gathering fresh water stones
her finger tips turn to castanets
listening to the war-like Wu’s whispers
learning healing cures for wounds and bones
Pleasing her teacher reciting from memory
the 2,000 lives of genealogy, knowing
the preparation of the hard gourds
to capture the ocean waves, the flying birds,
the whistling wind
She knows how to please Lolo, bringer of seeds
Extending her arms in front
Bunching her fingers in the flower gesture
Her bare feet in constant response
She is mana in motion

Mele is Hawaiian for combination of song, poetry, dance that expresses everything that they know about who they are

 

Mireya Perez-Bustillo’s poetry searches for  that “other voice” reaching  through entrapment and oppression. Her work appears in Revista del Hada, Caribbean Review, Americas Review, The Poetry Table 2020-2024, among others. Her novel, Back to El Dorado was published in 2020 by Floricanto Press.

How It Was

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by Mireya Perez-Bustillo

It’s the warmth
I remember.
The lacy net of the froth
emerging from the dark mounds.

Afros, espuma intricate foam forming
immortal skin woven across Uranus’
far-flung manhood cut by Cronos
to feed the mounting waves.

That is what I was told.
But for me it was burbujas
breathing, bubbling into skin
foam – oam – Aum forming me
froth alive from sea dark
bob bobbing life from wave to wave.

The stir of the froth
light afrós surfacing
Aphro Aphrodite, Me
Mother of Eros, Goddess of foam.
Foam . . . I remember.

 

Mireya Perez-Bustillo’s poetry searches for  that “other voice” reaching  through entrapment and oppression. Her work appears in Revista del Hada, Caribbean Review, Americas Review, The Poetry Table 2020-2024, among others. Her novel, Back to El Dorado was published in 2020 by Floricanto Press.

 

Table of Contents 2025 Post

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Prose

Robert N. Chan, A HELLUVA JOB
Robert N. Chan, Whether to Weather the Weather
Pat Fortunato, Il Dolce Far Niente
Sonya Friedman, Nikkatsu Film
Sonya Friedman, “The Phantom Tollbooth”
Jill Eldredge Gabriele, New Year’s Eve
Jill Eldredge Gabriele, The Harbor
Denise Heebink, Tiny Tears
Susie Herman, The Female Gaze
Carmen Mason, My Life at the Movies
B. Robert Meyer, One Year Later
Mary Padilla, Autumn
Mary Padilla, Sounds of the Wood
Mireya Perez-Bustillo, “Tendrá Sus Razones”
Jennifer Roberts, Call Waiting
Jennifer Roberts, Rain
Joan Rosenbaum, Heading Home
Jennifer Ross, God Bless America
Jennifer Ross, The Joy of Swimming
Carolyn Setlow, Male Mentors for a 1970s Feminist
Susan Smahl, “Kayfabe” or Everything Real is Fake
Charles Troob, My Face
Charles Troob, Rabat, Morocco

Poetry

Stewart Alter, Back to School
Stewart Alter, First Job
Mark Fischweicher, The Things That Return
Mark Fischweicher, Tirade to Dismiss My Fall
Mary-Joan Gerson, All the Time
Mary-Joan Gerson, Autumn Afternoon
Maureen Hatch, Childhood Summers
Carmen Mason, Per Ignam Ad Lucem
Judith Meyerowitz, The Box
Mary Padilla, What Does It Matter
Mary Padilla, What to Make of Time
Mireya Perez-Bustillo, How it Was
Mireya Perez-Bustillo, Mele