The Bluebird Word

Puddle

1 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Haily Gagliardo

A puddle lies still
stale from a morning’s rain
Once crisp with crystal hues
now brown and dull
giving way to dirt

Only the day before
she was one with silent waves
taken suddenly
through the Sun’s blazing heat
To become one with gentle mist
fluffy and white

Until a darkness overcame her
Thundering light flashed
as drops of water fell
like stone to the earth

Now she lies in wait
for the day
to once again
become one with the heavens

Haily Gagliardo is freelance writer and singer, majoring in commercial music at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Growing up in a mixed family, with her mom Jamaican Indian and her dad Italian, she developed a deep appreciation for different views on a familiar subject, which she enjoys expressing through her art.

We Sat You at the Water’s Edge

1 May 2026 / Editor

Nonfiction by Aldo Giovannitti

Bruno does his business by the bench by the parish, then he pulls. This is station two of our morning circuit. The road climbs and then levels, and you trudge along, as we crawl arm in arm, the leash in my other hand. Going back, you murmur, I would try not to escape all the time from myself. Then you disengage, and let your eyes be carried by the asphalt flowing below us.

You sit on the couch, hands on your knees, your robes hung on whatever is left of you. I notice your hump for the first time, then I look at my watch. Still one hour to the next round of pills; after that there’s lunch. She bends to lay a towel on your chest, so we won’t need to clean your shirt when you’ll wake up. She knows that in the wait you’ll let your eyelids go, bring your lips apart, and abandon your head to its weight.

Your attention span has contracted to a handful of seconds, and we need to pull words out of you quick before they are gone, before they drag with them your blurred intentions. Have I run away from here searching for what was closest to you? You made it, you said seventeen years ago standing on this very rug, holding my visa in both hands, staring at my portrait superimposed on the filigreed page.

Now you can speak only a tenth of what you used to, but each word is made of rock; the unessential has fled you. I’ve never paid as much attention to what you say as I do now—mumble, in truth—and the more I listen, the more I see you too had an entire life of your own. You too have wandered the lands, swum the seas, spun through the clouds I believed were mine alone. Your world, infinite as mine; I have finally surrendered not to comprehend it.

After dinner comes the fourth and last round. You lay the pills on the tablecloth, lining them up as you did with most things in your life. This is a ritual, and we follow its steps with devotion. You unscrew the plastic bottle, tilt it together with your chest, and pour the water onto the tablecloth, beside the glass, for the time it would have taken to fill it. We let you do that without intervening, watching the water spread on the double-folded cotton, because that is the least respect we can pay. And when you set the bottle aside you find out the glass is empty. You jerk back. Fooled again. Then we fill the glass for you.

We’ve spent the last day of this rare visit, before I fly away, at the beach house you both returned to for the past fifty-two years. A silent drive got us here. And by now an entire day has passed, and Bruno has run along the water’s edge to exhaustion. We sat you on a chair in the sand, but you didn’t like the wind and turned your gaze away from the sea.

The sun has set, and I walk past your bedroom heading to mine. I see you sleep in a fetal position, hiding into the wall, holding onto the orthopedic pillow she has bought to you both. I didn’t know you slept this way now, and that she let your bedside lamp burn through the night.

The lamp is recycled from my childhood; it diffuses a dim red light. And the light fills your heart more than it fills the room, while you dream of a decades old, Italian summer.

Aldo Giovannitti writes about shifting perception, moral ambiguity, and transformation. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Open Journal of Arts & Letters, The Bookends Review, and Corvus Review, alongside essays in The Diplomat and South China Morning Post. He is a member of The Poetry Society and PEN America and is based in London.

Like Neighborhood Kids

1 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Jeffrey Sommer

Behind the house an Italian Cypress shares the yard
With a Japanese maple and a Mexican Palm

Like neighborhood kids they grew up together,
Drinking the same water, fed by the same sun

The evergreen Cypress guards the fence
Star-shaped leaves decorate the Maple tree
Palm fans dance in the wind

In their glory, in their permanence
They bring joy to the morning
Calm to the evening

In their blessed co-existence
They bring hope to our own

Jeffrey Sommer enjoys writing poetry on social issues as well as relationships between people and the environment.

Faded Picks and Broken Strings for Eric

1 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by James Fleet Underwood

My gait aches, Kwan says I’m stooping,
and the nose I broke brawling with your cousin
wheezes in the winter, but more times than not
I’m staring at my toes and laughing
as if I just found the man I was looking for
standing sunburned in the grass.

You chat easy with us here, old friend,
our table cleared of plate and cloth,
smoking Drum and pushing coffee round a saucer
with your thumb, that waggish smile
tucked in several years of beard, and if I
don’t recognize the manifestation of your intent,
I know it’s love you always bring me.

We’re taking longer walks these days,
Kwan and I, going back to Strummer’s Hollow,
to that shed where you holed up with your Gibson,
where you wrote that tune of gals and gin,
a raunchy 12 bar riffed off with a grin,
and we kick up faded picks & broken strings – I
think she found that charm of yours,
the one you swore the barmaid stole in Reno.

Your spirit’s strong and flies here with October,
a stormy Michigan wet wood thing, though I
know you bang your can amongst the living,
and I wake those nights, hear a strumming,
get honey from the bed, and we walk the trails
swinging lanterns, asking wisdom from the bears.

James Fleet Underwood writes poems rooted in place, season, and daily life. His work explores quiet relationships with the natural world and the small rituals that shape human presence within it. Find him on X: @jamesfleetpoems and Substack: jamesfleetpoems.substack.com

Learning to Drive

1 May 2026 / Editor

Nonfiction by Dr. Nancy J Rennert

Daddy picked me up outside my cousin’s apartment building in New York City for the drive home to Long Island. Our car crawled in the rush-hour traffic.

As darkness approached, Daddy weaved back and forth over the line separating the driving lanes, his neck craned toward the windshield, eyes darting back and forth. His left foot came off the recently installed left gas pedal as he depressed the brake, then returned to the gas pedal. His right artificial leg, no longer attached to his body, was splayed on the front seat between us.

“I can’t see the lines…”, he said, his shoulders sagging. His advancing diabetes was slowly eroding his eyesight.

“I’m pulling over. You drive.”

At seventeen, I’d passed the written test to get my learner’s permit. I could stop at a stop sign, make a right turn and drive slowly on local streets with my instructor in the car. I wasn’t legally allowed to drive in New York City with my learner’s permit.

“But, Daddy, I can’t drive legally without…” I began.

Daddy interrupted by wrenching the steering wheel to the right. The car careened off the highway and then skidded to a stop, on the shoulder.

I tried to breathe, my heart’s lub dubs pounding against my chest. Usually, I accepted a challenge, but this was so risky. I knew we could get hurt, even die. I wanted to run away fast and disappear. But there was nowhere to go.

“You have to drive. I’ll talk you through it.” Daddy said. I heaved myself out of the front seat and watched as Daddy slid his right stump into the artificial leg. I didn’t want to drive but he was already out of the driver’s seat. He leaned on the car door with all his weight, stood and then hobbled around the front hood, holding on until he reached the passenger side door. I held him under his arm so he could ease down into the passenger seat.

Daddy had diabetes for as long as I can remember. About five years before the drive, he started to gradually lose his eyesight. Six months before the drive, when an infection took his right leg below the knee, my mother, my three brothers, and I visited him in the rehabilitation hospital and it was the first time I saw him cry.

After a few months of physical therapy, he walked with the artificial leg, and then he wanted to drive. A gas pedal was installed to the left of the brake in his car, which he operated with his remaining foot. The right pedal still worked in case someone else needed to drive his car.

The two gas pedals scared me. I’d never driven on a highway, let alone in a car with two gas pedals. Still, I moved the seat forward, adjusted the side and rearview mirrors and checked the dashboard, just like in driver’s ed class. Engine off, I moved my right foot from the right accelerator to the brake for practice. I kept my left foot as far away from the extra gas pedal as I could.

“Start the engine, and put on the left turn signal,” Daddy said.

Can he hear my heart pounding against my chest?

“Look for an opening, then give it some gas and get into the right lane. Keep your eye on the white line and follow it.” Hands trembling, I put the left turn signal on, but there was no opening to merge.

“I’ll tell you when… I’ll say NOW and then you turn the steering wheel to the left slightly and push on the gas pedal. You can do it – you have to – ease your way in.”

I gripped the steering wheel; my body hunched, and my jaws clenched.

“NOW” he said. I pressed on the accelerator and edged the car into traffic.

“Damn yes!” Daddy said.

On the drive, Daddy repeated “You can do it” so many times, I began to believe it. A shot of adrenaline surged through my body, recharging me. I focused intensely on the road, concentrating on following the lane lines, as honking cars whooshed past us.

“Just drive slow if you want. Who cares if they honk at you. Screw ’em,” Daddy advised. The next passerby gave me the finger. Same to you buddy! Get out of my way, I thought.

I’m driving!

When we neared home, the traffic let up, and Daddy began to tell jokes, which I had heard before, but they still made me smile. The one about his friend who was pleased with his new hearing aid. Dad asked, “What kind is it?” and the friend replied, “about 11:30.” Daddy also had some great one liners! If someone repeated a story, he would say “This is where I came in.” – and that was that. Conversation over. Humor was his way of coping, his shield against adversity.

About twenty minutes later, I parked the car in our driveway and stumbled out of the driver’s seat. Exhausted and triumphant. We had made it home. “I knew you could do it”, Daddy said softly, with tears in his eyes.

We shared a hug in the car. We weren’t very close, but this drive had brought us together. As we entered the house, Mom was upstairs, and my brothers were watching TV and finishing homework. I went straight to my room, plopped on my bed and thought about my fear, my accomplishment and my newfound power.

I’d been terrified of driving, but Daddy pushed me to do it. He believed in me and helped me believe in myself. Somehow, I found my strength.

A few weeks later, Daddy went to the eye doctor hoping he could have more laser treatments to improve his vision, but the doctor told him he was legally blind.

He hired a driver that day.

I passed my driving test the next month. From then on, I only drove my mother’s car.

Dr. Nancy J Rennert is a deaf physician, Chief Endocrinologist at Norwalk Hospital, CT. She is exploring creative nonfiction writing focusing on medicine, disability, family and the intersection of all three domains. Prior publications in Cool Beans Lit and Pulse–Voices from the Heart of Medicine.

Photo by Ramakrishnan Nataraj on Unsplash

Standing

1 May 2026 / Editor

Nonfiction by Thomasin LaMay

They stood. And stood for something. Just by standing.

“Lupins” by Seamus Heaney

Last summer, a business planted dozens of tiny saplings in a field near my home, green space in an urban area where I walk my dog. It was an attempt to fix poor choices, but the project went untended. The young trees tried to root through a dry fall, then rare, brutal winter. Now, in spring, they stand.

Proud, bone brittle, brown.

A mirror of world events. So much broken, being torn. I used to think I was in the world to look with goggle eyes, that awe was grace, maybe even faith. Now I am unsure. Feelings fracture. Kindness is scared. I want to feel useful, for things to make sense.

So there’s a certain perspicacity in these fragile and mostly dead trees which I start to embrace. I’ve watched them all spring as everything else turns green and flowers. Cherry limbs with pink blossoms dance against a bright blue sky. New-born fawns wander the creek’s edge. And all across the field, those un-bloomed saplings stand full-flaunt in their plots, stretching their splayed tips to the sky like cheerleaders. As if they were actually alive. Birds sing from their branches. A snapping turtle burrows and leaves her eggs. There’s no judgment, no anger at their neglect. They take what is given, as if to say yes. Yes, and thank you.

Mine are timid hands, but one morning I wrap them, warm and wanting, around each little spindle. You can do it, I say. You can do it. But I’m not sure what I mean by “it.” Perhaps their stand is not static. I wonder if such “standing” is a way of intrinsic belonging, that we’re all doing the “stand” but we just don’t (want to) see it. Because Heaney’s lupins, like these little trees, are also readying their own transformations, the inevitable. Knowing that is hard. Even though we’re doing it, all of us, together.

I’m not sure why that brings me comfort. Maybe because it makes sense.
The saplings remained through much of summer, but today when we go for our walk they are gone. Dug out. Small holes left behind, clumps of black dirt in a freshly cut field. Scraps of bark in the grass. Some were simply mowed over, their bodies intact on the ground. We bring one of them home, stand it in water on the porch.

In my backyard, late summer Obedient plants are starting to bloom. Not lupins, but a good look-alike. Tall, leggy, purple. Called “obedient” because if they fall over, you simply stand them back up. Also like lupins, they come back every year. New flowers, a long-established root system. Something to count on.

Thomasin LaMay is a writer, singer, and teacher in Baltimore, MD. She’s taught music and women/gender studies at Goucher College, and currently teaches high school. Her writing appears in Thimble Literary Journal, Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Yellow Arrow Vignette (online August 2025), and Tiny Memoir (January 2026).

Lives Intersected

1 May 2026 / Editor

Nonfiction by Gail Purdy

“Mom, it’s me!” I call out as I enter the apartment. Silence hangs in the air. “Mom?” I call out again before moving towards the bedroom and adjoining bathroom. I see the blood-stained towel first, then my 94-year-old mother lying motionless on the bathroom floor. One of the sliding glass shower doors is off its track and rests at an angle up against the shiny white tiles. Only the metal frame keeps it from falling further and landing on her. Is she dead? I hesitate for a second, which feels more like an eternity, before reaching for her wrist. Her eyes blink open at my touch.

An avalanche of emotion surges through my body, threatening to crush me. I want to scream and cry. Instead, I shove fear and anxiety into the shadows at the back of my mind.

“Do you feel any pain?” I ask.

“My back hurts . . . and my head.” She struggles to get the words out. Dried blood has formed a crust around the gash at her temple. A large purple and blue bruise is making its way down her cheek.

“What happened?” Should I try to move her or call the paramedics? I can’t decide.

This is the fourth fall in less than two months. I push the rising dread to the back of my mind, up against the fear and anxiety already exiled there. I reach for my phone and press three digits before sitting on the floor next to my mother. No words pass between us.

When the paramedics arrive, she complains of neck and back pain. Concerned about a possible fracture, they place a rigid collar around her neck, and strap her to an orange plastic stretcher, immobilizing the rest of her body. They move fast, wheeling her down the hallway and out the door to the waiting ambulance. “I’m going to the hospital too . . . I’ll be right behind you,” I shout after her. “You’ll be okay, Mom.” Are the assuring words for her or for me?

At this early hour there is plenty of space in the parking lot near the emergency entrance. Two streetlights cast a thin pattern of light across the gravel, but not enough to illuminate anything that might be hidden in the shadows. I turn off the car engine and sit motionless, except for my shaking hands, and watch the paramedics take my mother into the ER. I take a deep breath. My lungs resist the expansion, fearful the air supply will be cut off before they grasp what they need. I release several breaths before getting out of the car.

Antiseptic smells mingled with urine and fear assault me when the glass doors slide open. The familiar odours hang in the air threatening to suffocate like they always do when the doors close behind me. “Why isn’t anyone helping me?” My mother’s cries join the chorus of voices in the room.

“There are many people who need help. The doctor is very busy. You’re his next patient.” The lie falls easily from my lips. Heaviness sits in my stomach and the weight of it anchors me to the chair next to my mother.

“My neck hurts . . . and my back hurts,” she cries out. Her body is still immobilized.

A nurse moves between us and slips a little blue pill under my mother’s tongue before she turns and settles her gaze on me. Her eyes are soft with kindness as she places her hands on my shoulders. “Your mother has lived her life . . . you need to live yours.” Her touch is gentle, but her words split my heart open with an unexpected force. The weight of being a caregiver is slowly crushing me. I want to leave but I can’t move.

“Where’s the doctor? Why don’t they help me?” Mom’s voice now shrill.

My voice breaks through her mounting fear. “The doctor is busy. An ambulance just brought a man into the hospital. He’s been shot, and he might die if the doctor doesn’t help him first.”

I continue to evolve the fictional tale until I see the blue pill take effect. Mom’s eyes close, and I see her face soften. My eyes close too, releasing the tears I can no longer hold back.

Gail Purdy lives life on the west coast of British Columbia. Her writing has appeared in Four Tulips, rhizomag, Witcraft, Missing Pieces (a grief anthology from Quillkeepers Press), Last Syllable, The Bluebird Word, and the 2021 Amy Award Anthology. Long walks in the forest accompanied by her inner child nurture her creative soul.

Grounded

1 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Linda K. Allison

I was never a girl who could fly
Never one who could leap
A maple seed pirouetting in the breeze
I was not one to tumble
Head over feet
As if caught
In the frothy curl of a wave
Me, I was affixed to terra firma from the start
Planted securely with my first indignant bellow

I envied those girls
The ones who could leap and twirl
As if gravity did not exist for them
As if the rules of Newton applied to someone else

But eventually, I turned my gaze
Discovering a kaleidoscope of life
Unfolding below me
Flushes of mushrooms
Where none had stood the evening before
Appearing as if by nature’s sleight of hand
A bale of turtles
Collapsing like dominoes into a dark pond
Me, witness to their choreography
As I bend close

And so, while other girls flew,
I hovered
And now, many years later
While most who once soared have lost flight
I’ve only grown closer to the earth

Linda K. Allison is a recovering banker who lives with the love of her life among the trees in the The Woodlands, Texas. Her writing has been published in The Milk House, MoonPark Review, Pile Press, and others. Her photography has appeared in The Sun, Burningword Literary Journal and elsewhere.

Bad Land

1 May 2026 / Editor

Fiction by A.S. Gordon

She called me this morning because the planks have begun falling. There are red wasps nesting in the eaves. I can hear them buzz low in the wet air.

Dad brought me with him when you first began hauling the lumber out. You showed him where you aimed to build it. “Bad land,” he told you. You said there was no such thing. That to say so was an oxymoron. I stared eye level at the bull pressed into your belt buckle.

Within months the thing rose and shrunk, went up and came down again. You damned the lowland mud and the murky mirror the rain made it hold to the plans behind your eyes. The wind brought down the doorway I watched you spend an afternoon setting.

She leads me through the living room where the March breeze creeps through the window to rustle the plastic Christmas tree. Neither of you can take it down anymore. Her hands are like pincers. When I see you sitting out back her fingers bite my wrist. That it’d be best not to. That you’ve been having a rough morning.

You told me once that you weren’t woodworking if you didn’t walk out of the shop with a splinter when all was said and done. I wonder now if I could’ve taken yours and mine once, bit my lip and held out my palm to squirrel away a painless day for you.

I can see us again past the scarce wisps on your head, standing out against the whites and yellows on the honeysuckle vines. Before I knew what this state was called you told me they came from Japan. Years later I asked you about them again, some other soggy spring, after I’d read the species was invasive. You said that nothing belonged to anyone. It was here because something wanted it here, nothing more, and it would stay no longer than anyone wanted it to.

“Just like us,” you said. You were the commie Hoover saw in Guthrie.

She leads me around the side of the house, says there’ll be Kool-Aid for when I get hot. Even with the rainstorm I can’t believe it didn’t burn. I watched you carve nativity scene crosses inside the walls of that little shed, fashion violas and birdhouses and haggle with the summer sweatbees for your workbench. It’s all black as tar now. The lightning wanted it here no longer.

I turn again and there you are, sitting on the patio, rocking, rocking. You’ve muttered to me before that people come in the night. They track mud on the ceiling, they leave your truck door open. They cut your driver’s license in two. They know each twist of your safe, each disc in your spine, each dogeared page on your bookshelf. You find the crumbs they leave on your plate after she has filled your belly with pills. But now, here, you only raise your hand.

Where are you, man? Where have you gone to?

A.S. Gordon is an emerging writer from Murray, KY.

Endurance

1 May 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Joli Huelskamp

We exchange annoyed glances
as the noisy school groups jostle us
on their rush through the Shackleton exhibit.

We read the signage; they don’t.
We’re interested; they’re bored.
Except one little boy, standing rapt before a video on ice.

He’s not distracted by the tiny James Caird,
or by the haunting photo of Crean with the ill-fated sled dogs.
No, he’s fascinated by ice, how it forms, flows, breaks apart.

We exchange approving smiles, gratified that at least he—
“C’mon, Ernie,” barks the teacher, pulling him away,
“it’s time to go see the dinosaurs.”

Joli Huelskamp lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She won second place in the Knoxville Writers Guild 2025 Short Fiction Contest. Her work has been published in Bewildering Stories.

The Bluebird Word

Puddle

We Sat You at the Water’s Edge

Like Neighborhood Kids

Faded Picks and Broken Strings for Eric

Learning to Drive

Standing

Lives Intersected

Grounded

Bad Land

Endurance

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