Trina Ortega

Trina Ortega is the managing editor of Mountain Flyer magazine and the founding editor of Carbondale’s The Sopris Sun. Whether in prose or verse, Trina loves to tell the stories that connect us as humans. And poetry, specifically, has given meaning to the question: What is life all about anyway?

Soul Mate

What else is there but to lie
on the golden brown pine
needles. Nestle
into the lush
fluorescent moss. Run
your fingers
through the loose, forgiving
soil.

Trace the grooves
of the chiseled juniper. Feel
sorrow and survival
in its feathered gray
bark. Interlace your fingers
with its woody knuckles.
Touch your lips
to its bones.
Submit
as if it is both
a first and familiar
love.

Michele Burkey

I write poetry to understand myself. I write because in this life there can be immense pain, and through that pain and out of that pain, if you allow yourself to feel it, arises flawless beauty–the rain and the rainbows. Every time I write a poem I feel a little freer.

The Moon is Broken

Under the covers I hide from my son
until he finds me, says it’s his turn
disappears under the flannel sheets that are borrowed.

When I tell him I have something important
to say, he says, “ting” and “love you” because we
have played this game over and over, my way
of getting his heart to confess.

When he was born his eyes were furrowed
                neck scrunched, I wasn’t sure
he was really mine.

9 days overdue and 9 pounds small, burrowed
into my breast moments after my hands brought
him from the water. Moments before the midwife
arrived.

When he looks at the moon half full
                He says, “the moon is broken”
And I believe him.

Mothers carry the weight of their children
on their backs, in the crook of arms, nestled
deep in the back of their necks.

Mothers alone carry more. Mother and Father.
Soft as the light that touches the skin at the bottom
of the bath, hard as cobblestone on the streets
of Maine. Sometimes my children break
                my heart. Crack it open, an egg
on iron, see what I am made of, see if I can expand,
hold more. Be more.

                Every morning they make me coffee,
the good kind, pour over, with cream and sugar.
We are not alone. I am never alone. But I feel
lonely anyway. I feel tired with the hope in their eyes
the wishes on their cheeks, their want. They fill and
empty my glass.
                Sometimes the moon looks broken, and sometimes
we just can’t see it all, the dark and the light.

Natalie Rae Fuller

I write poetry to release internal voices. I give a voice to frustration, joy, liberation, anger, denial, renewal… emotions I find in myself and assist them in moving through.

On The Bus

Owen Farrell

Poetry (to me), more than the eyes, is a window to the soul. It allows a greater introspection than would normally be possible, and aids in the pursuit of finding what’s true.