Temperance

Editor’s Letter

Welcome to an edition of limitlessness. Where every cup overfloweth to the next. How do you write about everything? I woke up at 3:29 am and wrote in my notes app what I was thinking of telling you, what we hope you are able to find here.

“Total sovereignty over yourself and our future. Boundless optimism.”

Over the last nearly two months, we have been confronted with horrors beyond comprehension and that honestly made writing for these themes we laid out before us difficult. Those of joy and abundance.

But I want to focus on liberation, as liberation goes hand in hand with the rest.

In these times, its easy for light to be obscured by darkness. Eclipsing our collective will to imagine a future offering us anything else but suffering and mayhem.

We hope here, you are able to slow down and grasp onto the life that is yours and feel deeply, sincerely, that we deserve and steward a boundless, borderless, abundant life. A life of passion, joy, and endless possibilities to liberate our every space.

Stay not afraid and approach every day with the wonder of youth and the mysteriousness of the night. Hold our hand as we cross from the threshold of ceaseless destruction into a world of limitless creation.

We continue, and more than ever, to stand in solidarity for the liberation of Palestinian people in their struggle towards liberation and sovereignty. We encourage you to not look away from suffering, but to also keep a hopeful eye on the peaceful future possible for all people around the world.

In solidarity, awe, and reverence,

claude joven

signed the editors of Opal Age

Katie Harrison & Peter Rogers

On any version of the fourteenth card,
a figure pours a cup into another cup:
time denoting time
but for a time, temporarily.

Or it calls to modify one’s moderation:
wine diluted with water,
desire diluted with whatever,
any other deliberation.

My first sponsor told me sobriety takes a garden.
It was a metaphor, I think,
but he was a gardener and sober 15 years besides,
so I took his word for it.

Years later and four months in,
I thought I knew temperance,
but then I turned Monday’s rain
out of the 5-gallon bucket and into the can,
and then the can over onto
the pots of herbs I had by the door.
In reflecting the figure,
I finally felt the figurative.

Temperance is not what’s happening between the cups.
Temperance has already happened, is happening.

Temperance is the continuity of the careful attention,
the thought as it turned to intention in the tilting
of those purposeful wrists, and the history of the idea.

Temperance is lifting up the cups in the first place,
is the holding of them in your hands.

Temperance

by Acie Clark
they/them

Aleena Sharif

she/her

Plan B = Liberation

by Lev Raphael
he/him

The Fates seemed to turn against me when I hit sixty—or sixty hit me. My husband and I had been going to a health club for over two decades, we took spin classes, hot yoga, and even worked out with a trainer. I was fairly trim, had low body fat for my age, and felt comfortable being who I was even with amazingly fit people working out around me at our palatial health club. I was past the age of invidious comparisons. Admiring them didn't make me feel lesser or ashamed. I felt part of a team.

And then a car accident changed everything. I was driving back on a rainy afternoon from presenting a writing worship at Oakland University in southeast Michigan on a slick highway. Suddenly I woke up in a wide grassy median, dazed, wondering why there were all these trees and shrubs in front of me. I was surrounded by air bags and my head hurt a little.

Before I could reach for my phone to call home, a blue Michigan State police car pulled up behind me, two cops got out and I was able to roll down my window. They asked me to step out and I did, surprisingly steady and calm. The whole thing had the air of a dream. They asked if I was hurt and I didn't think so, asked if I could make it home once they cut away the airbags. I thought I could.

They had me follow them out of the median which had a treacherous ditch I had apparently slid into and out of thanks to the slippery highway, and they drove part of the way home with me to see if I was okay. That moved me deeply.

Three days later I was in the ER with a concussion: nauseas, dizzy, and a bad headache. I was ordered to take things easy for a few weeks, though my avuncular GP said I could teach my classes at Michigan State University if I was driven there and back and otherwise rested at home. Easy-Peasy, right?

What followed over the next few years was a series of surgeries that weren't connected but somehow seemed to be: reconstruction of my heavily arthritic right thumb, the same surgery on my left, hernia repair, removal of a bone spur on my right foot that was waking me up at night, and escalating migraines.

My time at the gym kept getting interrupted by all these "procedures," and migraines that sent me to bed. I stopped feeling myself moving through the world with relative ease, unencumbered. None of what I was dealing with was remotely life-threatening but it sure threatened a lifestyle I was used to: heading to the gym three-four times a week. And all of it was traumatizing me, slowly.

As my sixties advanced I felt more and more besieged until I decided I needed something new in my life and started taking voice lessons at a school affiliated with Michigan State University where I was teaching at the time. I hadn't sung in a choir in decades and wasn't interested in doing that again. I wanted something private, a present for myself, and the intimate studio crammed with an upright piano and a bookcase filled with an odd miscellany of books and do-dads seemed the right place. My cherubic, warm-hearted, curly-haired teacher Natalie told me I had a two-octave range, was a bass-baritone and working together would be fun. And definitely not a waste of my time.

I had some years of German behind me because I'd been doing book tours in Germany, and the classes helped me feel comfortable navigating around that country, so I picked some art songs by Schubert and Schumann, and the work lifted me out of my state of unease. It also gave me a new sense of control.

My goal's been simple through the whole process: enjoying myself. Yes, I was starting solo lessons quite late in life, but I still have a voice, I can make music, and that's sustained me as new surgeries wait for me. I still feel old and shaken at times, but my singing has kind of set me free. When I listen to the lesson I've recorded, when I practice between lessons to get a note or line just right, I'm in a beautiful, sustaining world.

My husband is a bit tone deaf, but he loves to hear me sing anyway, and as a former teacher, he enjoys my sharing what it's like to be a student again and what I think about how my voice teacher is coaching and coaxing me. I grew up with a great deal of body shame: I was chunky, had bad teeth and flat feet, so performing even for one person has taken courage I didn't know I had.

But that's all the audience I need.

And when I sing, I feel completely free.

Temperance (dead dog)

by Acie Clark
they/them

A window at night is a mirror in a lit room.
We listen to the fan while looking at Mother.

Mother explains the dog is gone.
The fan whispers, this too is a negotiation.

We say, where did he go? and blink back the knowing:
a flash photograph of the dog’s eye dulled.

Mother is crying. We close her door behind us.
There — did you hear it?

Dogs make the worst ghosts: bells, barking, the reek of meat.
Dogs and children know the high stakes of goodness.

Or no — it’s not goodness, is it? It’s being afraid.
It’s realizing the threat of the people who keep you fed

and behaving accordingly. See,
Mother and father used to have a daughter.

Mother was a dancer until her legs snapped.
Father has three guns, and I’m all of them.

There are so many ways to harm a body
and they each taste different.

The dog had bitten her only once,
but then I became me and she became you,

and now father buries the dog in the yard
while mother watches through the window,

and I am still trying to tell you about it.

Buttercups and Baby’s Breath

by Mina Janssens
she/her

Like the afternoon sun, like sparkling wine
Like morning dew, like mountain air
Fears and worries seem meaningless now
No insecurity can touch me

Like buttercups and baby’s breath
Like soft delicate clouds
This feeling so strong
It’s expanding outside me

Like sunlight through tree branches
Like fresh yellow plums in late summer
Like a mountain river

Like a falling snowflake in January
Like a flock of birds
Like the ringing of bells from a goat herd

I feel light
Relieved
I feel like I can breathe again

Karin Chastain Turner

she/her

Temperance

by Acie Clark
they/them

“The private palindromic world / of fear and recognition” - Joy Ladin

How else to explain it? The first time I got high,

I learned how to love my father: understanding

another thing we could pass back and forth between us.

The first time I decided to get sober was the morning after

my mother passed a kidney stone the size of a lemon seed.

I picture her there, on the cool tile, alone

in her bathroom: a comma curled around

the toilet bowl, unsure of the end of the sentence.

It wasn’t the fact that my father was only ten feet away,

too blasted to hear her screaming, it was that my mother called

to ask me to call my dad’s mother to let her know

neither of them would be able to make it by in the morning.

That they’d call her back a little later, could you call,

she asked, would you mind?

Salt and Sand

by Dane Lyn
they/them

I am a bog witch with a
chlorine scented, mermaid
tail. I am a mass produced

cuckoo clock, faux wood
carvings singing welcome.
I am graffiti, peel back

layers of color to reveal a
concrete gut. I am fog as it
bubbles over mountainous

cauldrons, smelling faintly
of salt and sand. I am a
dime store paperback. I am

a holy book.
I am.

Pollinator

by Finnegan-Eustace Leclair
they/them

If I could peel off the magic
from him and stick it all over
everything the walls and windows
onto the shirts of strangers
and the feathers of birds
into the wind

(concentrated beauty
walking across the other side
of the world in
swift fantasy I’m often
seeing through,
fully young living
in my cloud)

(separation and a feeling
of doom–is this pain art? Will it become
less sore as I mark the days,
locations of memory reviving
into buds blossoming this one
special flower)–I would

Fire Water Lyn

by Kate E. Lore
she/they

Content Warning: Mention of sexual assault

My first memory of Lyn I was drawing whiskers on her face. She couldn’t stop laughing. They came out crooked. We tried to throw gold fish crackers into each other’s open mouth from across the kitchen. She had such a warm energy. Pure California sunshine.

Lyn is the one who introduced me to Blatz lake. Private property meant nothing to her. It was just some words printed on a sheet of metal. She was a rebel in that way. She was brave. She never hesitated to dance. She was never ashamed of liking country music. Never once denied being someone’s friend.

When we rode canoes down the river and stopped at the bridge she did not hesitate to jump of the ledge, even though you had to kick off several feet to come down in just the right spot, or you’d break your legs. Lyn was the shortest amongst us but she never let those little legs hold her back. She kicked the ball and ran the bases with us any Sunday she wasn’t hungover.

But Lyn was often hungover, almost always drunk. That first birthday party I saw her fall down in the grass and roll before she got back up. The third one she face planted directly into a wall. The fifth year she asked me to have the party somewhere else. We were set to do it at her and Mo’s place. This was the year of Covid and they had a bigger back yard. But she asked me the day before. It was too late of notice. I ignored her plea. I looked the other way and continued charging forward.

Mo had to take care of Lyn a lot. More often than not she got black out fall down drunk. She had to be lead up the stairs with support, then laid down on the bed. She told me once, she had to get drunk to have sex. She said it quiet and quick, through a hiss of smoke, as we stood out on her front porch. Another day we stood out on the same spot as it was pouring down rain. Lyn is a chain smoker. If she isn’t filling her mouth with booze she’s filling it with nicotine.

I don’t remember how it came up but one of the other girls said;

“I’ve been raped before.”

“Me too.”

“Me too.”

“Me too.”

And suddenly I saw Lyn a little bit clearer. Glossy eyes gave way to a moment of clarity. I saw the girl beneath the cloud of smoke. I saw the girl who always swam out too deep.

I’d known her for at least a year before I noticed all the scars all over her body. She’d had multiple skin grafts from severe third degree burns, from a time she was too drunk, it was a party with a fire on the beach, nobody was looking, and she was black out drunk. She fell in and there was no one to save her. There are parts of her body Lyn cannot feel. A thick layered numb. Like the way you can’t feel the cold if you get drunk enough. Like the way she drinks to forget.

Lyn fixed my car twice. She was there for me. She made us dinner once and then we went walking along the train tracks by her house.

When the breakup happened I refused to take sides. Mo and Tay were my friends too. Lyn saw me talking to them at the bar. She pushed me away after that. And I let her. Like a passive beach ball caught in the wind I’m just drifting off in the other direction.

But I keep thinking about that last time we went to Blatz lake. She almost fell into the fire. Mo had caught her. But who would catch her now? Maybe I’m turned away because I can’t look. I can’t bear to see that face now empty of smile. I saw her fail school. I saw her get fired again and again. I watched her take shot after shot. Puff after puff.

Maybe it’s that she scares me. Maybe through the distorted surface of the water I suddenly noticed, through our reflections, the ways in which we are similar. The ways in which we both jump in and radiate out a circular pattern, which repeats itself like an echo, over and over.

Befriending Peace

by Kouseyi Saha
she/her

It’s been a while
Since I started finding peace in colours.
Soft solitude in the blues of the skies,
Healing my heart from the green of the trees,
Bathing my skin in the reds of the sunsets,
Breathing in the dark purples of the night skies,
The lingering warmth from the orange embers in the fireplace.

I’ve found peace in the cracks of time.
Between the seconds of the water boiling in the kettle
Between the minutes savouring the sweetness of the maple syrup on my tongue
Between the hours of the shadows traveling from one corner of my room to the other
Peace peeped out from that one window
Lit against the darkness of the witching hour
Keeping me company in my myriad musings.

Looking for peace in people
I found it in their actions,
The gentle caress on the head to wake them up
The sloppy jam smiley on the toast
The discreet blow on the tea to cool it down
The eyes creasing into a smile
The touch of red spreading across the cheeks.

I found peace in the chaos,
In the ringing notes of disharmony.
When I stood against the world,
The black sheep of the flock,
In the comforting union of dissent.
To stand hand in hand
To claim with courage our rightful space.
For what is peace
If not the battle for justice?

Not Weightless

by Odi Welter
they/she/he

Clouds weigh more
than whales

Yet both float through the space
they have been given

Effortless but not weightless

You don’t have to think light
thoughts to float

Treat the rain as a friend
and the waves as a staircase.

tiny white dogs shall inherit this earth

by Ollie Shane
he/they

i. 
i coo when she rises from whatever nest she’s dug herself into
one of the better creature hunters in our family

ii.
She sprints 
Ready to go to hunt whatever’s killing us

iii.
silly dog, don’t you know
bunnies don’t live in the air?

iv. 
she wanders around the fence
Steps over the corpse of a unlucky visitor 

v. 
She looks out onto a world 
Totally alien to me and her

vi.
There’s mounded dirt where people shelterered underground
i don’t have that luxury

vii. 
i hustle round this chewed up ground
and tell strange tales to people who pay

viii. 
i only know so much about those who came before us
Whatever’s left is for the archaelogists

ix.
i watch the sun set over the gloom
it glows like DC

x. 
She carries a dead bunny when we go inside
like the huntress she is

xi. 
not for the first time, i wonder
what she could’ve been with my father.

Paper Bag

by Anonymous

Bitter on the tongue black

nail polish to go after: a slice of

thick free chocolate cake, yellow cough drop.

A prosciutto sandwich that

you don’t even like but 7 years ago

unfathomable –

Take another bite

eat the paper bag too

My Gender is My Name

by Dane Lyn
they/them

I move through the world
with this name, or that one,
hiding behind a stylized
black cape.

no face, opening jaw-wide,
consuming the tokens for
my own good luck. is my
tantrum scaring you? do

you wish me to empty
myself, black hole into the
chaos that is
factory-equipped gender?

is the harsh light speculum
glare revealing my gender?
relax. the probing will be
over before you can say

your name. metal caster
smooth click-click, is this
cold? does the headlamp
wink at the nurse as if they

know where between my
stirruped legs my gender
hides? where it stops
belonging to science and

becomes mine?
I try to sing along, my
voice now choking on
gender, melody dissonant,
sour etched into my

tongue. is it ringing any
bells? a game of name that
tune, tick-tock, times up,
mic turned on, do you

know? and the correct
answer is? hive swarm
music reveals where each
dancer is. maps patterned

with lacy stitched
movements search for my
honey. I ask the bees if
they know in what

wildflower hillside lies my
gender. winged pied pipers
whisper hum their own
names, as settled into their

path as I am cramped into
mine. I try to fit myself
into the shoebox-shaped
scantron bubble that is the

answer Alex has as correct.
the name that other
contestants dismiss is the
millionaire-making final

jeopardy response in the
gender category. the thing
that even the studio
audience is unable to

know, I know. my
gender
is my
name.

Night Monster

by Dane Lyn
they/them

the mother birthed me, not
the father. the earth herself
fashioned a clay soul, gave
me garments of peat and

moss, braided my hair of
sand, secured it with gems,
upon my papyrus skin she
inked star maps, molasses

tar stained my ankles with
rings to count the ages, in
my eyes were found as sea
glass, in my ears she

placed my name.

Limeration

by claude joven
they/he

I find my freedom in the liminal
In the wistful dark nights, train halting
Station to station
Endless possibilities to
Connections
between coming and going

The stop that your neighbor
departs
and a man from your mothers’ home-town
Nestles

It’s in liminality
Where you are the closest to being touched
By the flirtatious, gentle lashes of
universal winks

Benefic kisses of fate
beauty in boundlessness

It’s the liminal where i live
Not in the nation state
That lays the rails down

I exist
in the unreal encounters
crossroads

The uncanny kicking of pebbles
Down streets you know you
don’t
know the direction
but you do and you
don’t

Because you never have
but always will
kick down this cobbled alley
Through lifetimes
For the first time

Time binds
Through repetition
the unrecognizable
weaving of fates

Fate belongs to cosmic liminality
And is yours for but
A brief moment
When you decide where to stop
taken away
by the stranger sitting next to you

Futures entwined
Pasts’ presents wrapped up
In the network of queer ancestors
radical fairies
Tented up, boundless, free
At each train stop
In every cunt-ry

Summer Day Spinning

by Allison Burris
she/her

She sees everything and nothing
reflected in the circle span of sky
clouds puffed into circus animals.

She spins arms outstretched
spins her limbs heavy heavy
the grass a dew damp pillow under her feet.

Colors blur. The world reduces
to a single knot in the fence & fluffy alyssum.
She keeps twirling

her steps turn fluid &
the world runs like ink, pools
into watercolors & faster until

she can’t stand the trickling paint
& thumps down giddy on the grass
dizzy blades fill the space between her fingers.

She listens to the grasshoppers’ lazy waltz
& smells the summer morning dirt,
feels her heartbeat hummingbird.

She’s trying to steady the world with her eyes closed.
It is time to become a new creature, warm & circling
and dripping raspberry popsicle.

Aspirational Rituals

by Allison Burris
she/her

I want to be a witch without having to believe in
the coincidences of numerology. Link me to the stars
through meteors, to the moon through the tides—
give me power. Just let me remember the meanings
of tarot cards long enough to tell a story. I have
no patience for crystals when there are smoother stones
to press to my cheek still sun-warm from the creek bed.
What is there to believe in besides the fact that fingernails
keep growing? I hold hope to my head like a hat on a windy
Sunday afternoon, dollop cherry preserves onto cookie rounds
and fold them into triangle wombs. Come and taste
my childhood. There’s a hint of orange juice. Magic

Test Results

by Frederick Groya
he/him

It was the early 1990s. Many lives were still being lost, but the mood had changed with proof that sex could be made safe. We rode the new wave of optimism, making up for the dark fearful years of the preceding decade. We went to the new clubs, found each other, and fell in love.

Having been monogamous for six months, Tom and I reached a milestone in our relationship. It was time to get tested for HIV since an earlier test could produce a false negative. On a Saturday morning in May, we returned to the downtown health center where we had blood drawn two weeks earlier. We sat side by side on plastic chairs in a stark white waiting room. Three other men, looking both fearful and hopeful, each with their own private stories, sat with us.

No one talked.

Tom read a magazine while I shifted positions in my seat and reread, dozens of times, a wall poster promoting safe-sex behavior, and a pamphlet describing the proper use of a condom. I was somewhat certain I had been careful enough to avoid infection, but a doubt lingered in the back of my mind. No one could ever be certain. The virus could already be lurking in my system, a time bomb waiting to explode. I feared the virus and the diseases it caused ever since the first time I read about it and saw pictures of ravaged, once beautiful, young bodies scarred with lesions, when fear pushed me to seek safety in the life my family and society expected for me.

When Tom’s number was called and I was left alone, dozens of sexual encounters from before we met flashed in my head. Was I always careful? Doubts raced through my mind in waves as I imagined each possible moment when the virus could have found its way into my body. As the minutes ticked by, I had convinced myself I was infected, and prepared for a death sentence. Sweat formed in my armpits and dripped down my sides. At the sound of my number, my face flushed hot and my heartbeat quickened.

I entered a small windowless room with a health worker, a slight woman in her early thirties with a no-nonsense expression, seasoned, I imagined, by years of delivering unwelcome news. The woman took a seat behind a desk, opened a file folder, and perused its contents. Sitting in the visitor’s chair, I bounced my right leg on the ball of my foot, unable to stop.

Tell me!

Without looking up, the woman read the results. I exhaled the breath I had been holding, stood, thanked her, and returned to the waiting room.

“Negative,” I said to Tom.

“Me, too.”

With nothing else needed to be said, I left the center with Tom, confident in my commitment to him, a commitment with a new meaning. Breaking that commitment meant real life-and-death consequences. We needed to trust one another with our health and our lives.

As we walked along the sun-lit sidewalk filled with the city’s residents running weekend errands, I pondered the fact that being married during most of the 1980s might have saved my life. And I was grateful. We walked into a coffee shop filled with the aroma of fresh ground beans and the muffled buzz of strangers’ conversations, and a nagging guilt clawed at my gut. Aspects of my relationship with my ex-wife still haunted me. I had not been faithful to her, and that fact remained unspoken. I was moving on with my life and no longer hiding, but still I kept a secret.

Another Gift

by Allison Burris
she/her

I spend mornings with my dad over coffee
as he smokes weed before heading out to the garden
blasting music so the buds grow fat with flavor,
frosty with terpenes. We talk about philosophy
and the news and physics and being an artist.

Then he hands me a book. One I made for him
at nine, if you judge from the stickers.
Somehow he knew just how long to hold onto
these pages before sharing them back. He
tells me, you were always a writer.

In Our House

by Billie Jane
she/they

In Our house, He and I share a bedroom. She has Her own room. Currently, He stays in the living room, a fact that We are all grateful for. I share a bed with Them six nights of the week and with Her every Friday. On weekends, We all sleep-in and start Our days with languid shuffles to the kitchen for coffee. These days, They have typically already started a pot, and sometimes They’re already prepping a second (a growing necessity as We have yet to acquire a larger coffee maker).

She works from home, He works in the office, He works in childcare, and I work retail. We make joint, scribbled grocery lists with Our individual wants, needs, desires. Sometimes They come over and We order pizza and chicken wings, We drink beer, We shoot tequila (He and They shoot vodka; They don’t do well with agave).

Often, We laugh. Sometimes, We cry. Frequently, We sit in a comfortable silence between explorations of varied importance.

He and I watch movies and shows that She and They have no interest in. They and She have sushi when I am not home. He and They collect shared experiences and art amidst near-constant laughter (He and They are both very funny, in their own rite).

I help Her make her bed. She cares for me when I’m home sick. He will often do the dishes without being asked, another fact We are all grateful for. He reminds Me to take hormones. She comes-up with wonderful meal ideas. They bake wonderful delights. He decorates the walls with wonderful pieces of His own creation.

We cook and share meals together. We hold space for one-another. We dream of a better world and how We might have a hand—no, hands—in bringing it to fruition. We value kindness. We emphasize compassion. At the end of the day, when We have only empty wine bottles and embers in the fireplace, We retire to Our respective corners of the house, and then We do it again.