Poem by Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

Two Stones
for johnny and joey

She breathes these darkening stones alive.
They resurrect as children, parachute through
time as echoing whispers, take root in her weedy

and sleepful thoughts looking for their mother
and only for a short time do they survive
find their way home to her again in magical

whimsical world of dreams, where the
oldest spoke stone, I knew you would cry.
Youngest spoke only in flashing colors:

aqua blue toddler clothes, blonde head
bobbing up and down, measures just
below a crystal and brass door knob.

In waking, they have turned against her.
Stone her, stone her. Sustained
absence falls like a five year famine.

Trained herself not to cry, built iron
bars around each eye, caged in fierce
and wild tears. She too is turning to

stone. Invades their dreams, rattles
their thoughts to remember her?
The cure may be to take the two stones

out of the box of her brain allow them
to rest in the lining of night’s velvet drawer
like coffins in a vault, yet, how can a

mother forget those rattling dreams?

Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, native Philadelphian, is currently the Poetry Editor of The Fox Chase Review. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Images of Being, (StoneGarden.net publishing) was released October 2011. She is the recipient of the 2013 A.E. Ventures Foundation Grant for poetry and is poet in residence at the Ryerss Museum and Library. Her work has been published widely in the small and electronic press and she has performed her poetry at venues along the east coast of the United States.

Allison Goldin is an artist living in California. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles.