The Three Tomatoes’ poets, have new poems that cover a range of emotions that will make you think, make you laugh, and pause for just a moment.

OCEAN PARKWAY

This is the place:

Where time seems to stand still

And only the clouds move above

To show those under the mercurial sky

That the weather is changing.

Decades ago:

I looked down from a window

In a building high over Ocean Parkway.

I can still taste my aunt’s sweet turkey dinner

On the day the red ripe cranberries rolled

Over my pink tongue.

That day:

On a bench,

The reader in a blue suit read his book

As a girl sat in a blue dress on another bench

And watched a rider pass on a blue bike

Going to a grey building down a shady road.

Now:

So many years later another face

Looks out of that same window and watches

An old man on a bench read a grey newspaper

As an old lady throws crumbs to feed pigeons.

In the rain:

A car passes going south and then

Slows down to a red light, a red light that

Only stops movement for a minute

A minute of time on Ocean Parkway.

~Marjorie J. Levine, author ROAD TRIPS

Take a Deep Breath

Mental health is hardly a breeze,

With blasted nerves and all unease,

Surrounded by uncertainty in every day life, What is the secret to assuage the strife?

I don’t have the secret to calmness and joy, If you have the answer, let me hear your ploy, When I get anxious from live TV news, And hear of war and the sadness it spews,

I change the channel before it takes a toll,

If only life had a remote control!

~Carol Ostrow, author of Poems from my Pandemic Pen

Kindergarten

I think it is fascinating

that we all came back to each other

without ever leaving.

We played together at 5

building block forts and castles

on colorful industrial worn rugs.

We amused ourselves

with nasty games of lemon squeeze

at slumber parties where there was no slumber.

We took busses to camps in the Catskill mountains,

where we gambled for Snoopy stationary

and dared each other to kiss skinny boys

who looked only slightly better

with their skin sun-kissed

from the period on the softball field.

We shuffle danced disco together

in Upper West Side apartments

and ate Entenmann’s doughnuts

and kosher pigs in blankets

while Donna Summer crooned,

and the record skipped and cracked.

We held that long breathy note

over and over.

We were in each other’s kitchens

slicing Velveeta

while subconsciously noting

whose parents talked, screamed or even showed up.

We picked up pieces

and built new forts.

We overanalyzed passed notes,

dramatic pauses and sideways glances

til we convinced ourselves whatever it was we needed to convince ourselves.

We applied to colleges apart

to learn even more

and made new friends.

We never lost touch

while others creeped in and out,

some like weeds and some like flowering trees.

We married, had kids, cooked

and no matter what stuck

and what fell away over time,

at 55 we still gather

with a newfound urgency.

We get to know

even more about each other

like the digging and planting

of the garden

of a blossoming courtship,

because we know how to know more about ourselves now.

I am still surprised

to discover new things about

the sisterhood I’ve always had.

They are nostalgia

but also testifying witnesses to all my accomplishments and failures,

monumental or slight.

I bleed and stop bleeding with these people.

We soar and swoop and fall together.

We are like ivy continually groping, growing and covering

each other’s walls,

reaching skyward

while adding color, texture and oxygen.

We creep and climb and stick to each other

by our unconditional aerial roots,

our vines woven so tightly together, forever.

~Nicole Freezer Rubens, author The Long Pause and the Short Breath

From Contentment to Confusion

How did this happen?

Possibly from forces

Beyond our control

Misunderstandings too numerous

To correct

We still love each other

But have decided to live apart

I’ve been told that works

But have yet to see

I’ll miss sweet good night kisses

Morning kisses too

Who will tell me that I look fine without makeup?

~Stephanie Sloane, author Dear Me

Wheel Is Always Turning