Havik: Inside Brilliance

The Welcome Visitor
Poetry
Vialsy Cabrales Esparza
Lathrop, California, USA
I like to re-watch episodes of my
favorite shows when I feel sick.
It’s comforting to find myself
in fantastical, familiar worlds
with characters I’m as fond of
as family or friends.
Too often, I lose myself to fiction.
I enjoy the embrace of long weekends,
feeling secure and snug under a soft blanket
Knowing without a falter in the conviction
that I am welcome.
A repeat visitor and attentive re-listener
I can recite my favorites by heart
Like a best friend, I know what will be said
Long before the sentence even starts
I could, of course, explore anew instead
But these characters that hold me captivated,
They awaken in me a wonder and awe
to which the only response must be
inspired creation, pure and unweighted
unencumbered, understated
I acknowledge; therefore, I must create.
I acknowledge; therefore, I must create.
I acknowledge the beauty around me,
within me, the acknowledgements before
from those I’ll likely never meet
that there are stories meant to be incomplete,
characters destined to fail,
unable to reach what they need;
creators that know, the only comfort
I need (when I feel frail)
is that I will, indeed, prevail.
There was a lump
Poetry
katie pfeifer
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
There was a lump
The size of a penny
This tar lump
Staining her breasts in mammograms
Lurking for ways to cling to the nipple.
Everyone tells me they’re sorry
But how can I be sorry
When I want to get on my knees and thank whatever God that will listen
It was caught in time?
That the stain image of chemo burned tits won’t be my mother
Or the ghostly bald women
Who linger in society
Wearing the scarves where their hair was
Like a white sheet over a dead body.
The doctors comfort her
By saying she was lucky
But I could still see the fear possessing her through her eyes
Wanting to be awoken
So she didn’t have to do this.
But I inherited the fighter in me from her
The woman who won’t let me forget
She was in labor with me forty-three hours
Because I wanted to snuggle in her uterus more than climb down her
canal.
And on January 22, 2019
She made that cancer her bitch
And I get to hug her now
And not have to remember each strand of gray hair
Or the fighting she still has in her.
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