Month: July 2022 (Page 2 of 2)

My grandmother in one sentence

13 July 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Reena Kapoor

When she died I was well into engineering college battling my own confusions, resisting demands on my loyalty from family, country, love and looking ahead with such desperation that I refused to bother with any kind of history, even that which surrounded me protruding from the earth in every stone at the shallowest dig, brimming over walls of old buildings awaiting renovation, bubbling up in street corners among hawkers of food, color and cloth in of one of the most history laden cities of the world so much so that part of the city had been named “New” Delhi – even this naming was by now history – in an eagerness to cast off the old and tell the world we were new and arrived and secular and departed from our native soil and brothers and concerns and even this departure came back to haunt us years later but we didn’t know it then in the same way that I didn’t know she would come back to me later in life so when at the sight of her body a shaking sob broke through my worldly concerns and forward-focused attentions, I involuntarily reached out to touch her face, causing all the micromanaging elders around me to yell, “don’t touch the body” for now she was just “the body” and not the matriarch she had once been, which they didn’t like to admit she hadn’t been in over a decade since she was forced to live not on her own terms but those of her children within their rules and fences and with Alzheimer’s merciless dissolution of her identity, the same one whose sense and strength had built and rebuilt all our lives when the fates had come knocking to extract usurious debts which she could be held responsible for only as much as any woman in a society that made it a habit of heaping responsibility and duty and tradition and religious stricture without agency at her door can be, but which were now all paid or abandoned in this final departure so all her beneficiaries could pretend to pay one last homage to her glorious past and her sacrifice, iron will and fearlessness, except at that age I wanted no part of this remembering because I had heard this ancient history umpteen times and knew it would devolve into a multilevel contest of tears and grief that uselessly distracted me from my singular focus of looking ahead to places my life was going to go where no one would want to know my tired history or even more tiresome stories of why my grandmother was forced to flee Peshawar, her home, her mohalla, her town of generational soils and how a woman who was barely fifth grade educated in a language and script whose use was confined to a daily reading of her holy book so much so that none of her children bothered to learn it and I most certainly did not except for the recitation of prayers that she taught my sister and I as children called paath which literally means “lesson” beginning with Ik Onkar (there is only one god) which I strategically utilized before school exams even as I was slowly turning atheist, something I never told her, I don’t think, but now in my middle age as I look for my voice and myself in the universe and wonder what I will leave behind, she often comes back to me and when I confess my atheism to her and that I have no use for religion and don’t find bliss in the paath she taught me, although I do remember it all, she simply ignores my protestations proceeding on to tell me qissas from her time and her journeys and when I marvel at her refusal to be cynical until the end, her kindness even to those who came to steal from her, and her steadfast attention to dharma in the face of insurmountable odds she simply smiles saying these are the only paaths I need remember.

[Author Note: paath = lesson; qissa = story; dharma = duty or the right thing to do]

Reena Kapoor grew up all over India. Her poetry collection Arrivals & Departures reflects this wandering sensibility. Work has appeared in Tiny Seed Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Visible Magazine, Poet’s Choice and India Currents. EnActe Arts produced four of her plays in 2021. Visit arrivalsanddepartures.substack.com/.

before the sky

11 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Ken Cathers

you sit on the handlebars
I’ll pedal like crazy

we’ll be a great fabled bird
on a dirt road journey

hang onto the wind
my little one, hang on

nothing can
catch us now

we will be home
long before

the sky can open
and crush our joy
with thunder

Ken Cathers lives on Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada and has spent much of his life working in the forest industry. He has been writing for several decades and has seven books of poetry. Several poems have appeared in Impspired (England) and the MacGuffin (U.S.).

The Greeting

10 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Leslie Dianne

I stop time
with words
and images
I shake
loose
sleepy syllables
and let them nudge
the atmosphere
I fill this space
with myself in another shape
and I am letting you know
that the
flicker of joy
that passes in the breeze
and tickles your memory
that gravityless pull that
makes you want to fly
is me
in a different form
greeting you
saying hello

Leslie Dianne is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and performer. Her work has been acclaimed internationally at the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy and at La Mama in NYC. Her poems appear in Noctivant Press, Moida, Treouvaille Review, Constellate Magazine and elsewhere.

worms eye view of spiral stained glass decors through the roof — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Someplace Else

8 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Valerie Valente

Snails line the slick pavement
like a stagnant post-office queue
They probe the damp air
with gelatinous horns
as if they would enact
a slo-mo battle with the mist

I veer gingerly around them
as they forage in scattered directions,
blindly heading
someplace else
My eyes scrunch tight and I grimace
as I hear the inevitable
crunch of my misstep
A wayward journey swiftly ended
by the grime-laden sole of my shoe.

I pause to contemplate
my habitual direction,
a path so repetitiously followed
that my muscle-memory
just pulls me along
I point my face skywards,
feel the mist upon my cheeks,
and reverently turn towards
the silver moon’s beacon
With a tentative step
I abandon all direction,
blindly heading
someplace else

Valerie Valente’s first love was poetry; she has been writing since the age of nine. Valerie has self-published two children’s stories. She is now launching a creative writing workshop business, Kist Creative, which she hopes will expose people to the joyful, therapeutic benefits of tapping into their imaginative energies.

Sweeter Than Your Name

6 July 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Josephine Greenland

She can taste them as she puts the jars on the shelf. Plush blueberries, sweetened with sugar, exploding on her tongue like a thousand desserts. Her best batch yet, too good to be eaten, too good for the stale biscuits on the table. They could belong in a shop, in those shiny glass jars—gherkin jars she waited for the family to finish. Washed and scrubbed, to erase the brine residue. Polished so the glass can be used as a mirror. Labelled and dated, Blueberries by Ruth, July 1932, in a longhand rivalling her father’s.

‘Aren’t you done yet?’

Another face in the glass, battling her for room. Blonde and bright where she is red-haired and dull.

Mary, apple of father’s eye. Faultless, no matter what she does. ‘You promised you’d play with us.’

Us. Mary and the merchant’s daughter, who eats store-bought jam with a silver spoon, who makes Mary forget where she belongs. Ruth motions around her. ‘I have to clean up.’

‘Then let me taste!’

‘I’m saving the jam.’

‘Why?’

Because of the sigh of an empty purse. The smoke and liquor on father’s breath. The snatching of their savings when he wants more. The curses, the bruises. The suffering no mother should endure.

Ruth goes to the sink. ‘Because butter and cheese are running low.’ Mary’s been away too long, she wouldn’t understand why they can’t buy more. ‘And mother loves it.’

Mary’s eyes flash. ‘I bet father hates it.’ She edges up to the cupboard. ‘No one cares about your jam.’

Like a bird taking flight, she leaps and grabs two jars. Empties them out the window as Ruth rushes to pin her down. Their screams, like their bodies, twisting round each other.

And swarming over the jam outside, the ants.

Josephine Greenland is a Swedish-British writer from Eskilstuna, Sweden, with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham. Her debut novel, Embers, was published by Unbound in 2021. She has won and been shortlisted in five writing contests, and had work published in various online and print magazines.

Upwellings

4 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Chris A. Smith

The wind is wild and self-willed,
and I mark its passage through the trees,
shaking them like marionettes,
the neighbor’s rainbow flag snapping with each gust.
High-pressure systems, temperature inversions,
ocean upwellings, the Bernoulli effect—
the language of meteorology fills my head.
Still, there’s mystery in the wind’s rough grip.

Next to me on the couch a sleeping cat,
an ouroboros of fur, snoring lightly.
I scratch behind his ears and,
still half-asleep, he flexes his paws,
his tiny motor rumbling to life.
He’s warm, and smells of sleep,
whiskers twitching, eyes dancing behind his eyelids.
I watch the trees tremble, and try to imagine his dreams.

Chris A. Smith is a writer in San Francisco. Though trained as a journalist–he’s reported on topics ranging from African acid rock to killer asteroids to revolutionary movements–he also writes fiction and poetry. Find him at chrisasmith.net.

vinyl albums near player — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Jukebox

3 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by C.T. Holte

Most nights, I am a jukebox.
Tunes play from the stash in my head—
doo-wop to Debussy,
Bach to Beach Boys—
chosen by a mysterious mechanism
and repeated as many times
as the system specifies:
no Next button,
no Mute switch,
no Off to let me sleep.

The selection varies:
last night, the top hit
was Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus,
reprise of a piece I had sung recently
at a choral workshop;
tonight, perhaps a favorite or two
from American Bandstand
or Casey Casem’s top forty countdown.

Music and memory are amazing gifts,
even at the price of sleep interrupted
by random hours of Deck the Halls
at any time of the year.

C. T. Holte grew up without color TV and played along creeks and in cornfields. He has been a teacher and editor, and now migrates between New Mexico and a tiny New Hampshire cabin. His poetry is found in Words, California Quarterly, Months to Years, Pensive, and elsewhere.

brown and green mountain view photo — Photo by Christian Heitz on Pexels.com

Paperboy

2 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Cosmo Goldsmith

From my bedroom window, overlooking
this tableau stillness of sheds and fields,
there is movement below
among the avenue of chestnut trees.

A paperboy ghosting through stippled shade,
luminous orange postbag strapped tightly
across his thin shoulders, first job perhaps,
so young he seems, restless and impatient,
eager to complete his round on schedule,
and keep in check the heavy tread of time,
those allotted hours and binding routines.

This is the crossover point he has reached
where suburbs give way and the fields begin;
a whole future unfolding before him
in misted prospects of treetops and hills.

And all I can do is watch and observe
from the opposite end of the telescope,
from the shrinking lenses of my vision,
for all my outlooks are gently receding.

The world out there belongs to him.

Cosmo Goldsmith is a ‘semi-retired’ English teacher with a passion for all forms of creative writing. He has taught in both the UK and Greece and still divides his time between these two countries.

Bees

1 July 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Iris J. Melton

“How many this week?” I asked.

“Three,” she answered.

“Three’s a lot. What did they say?”

She continued typing. The tap of the keys was the only sound other than the dog licking his paws under the table.

“The usual. Not the right fit for us. The selection process is so subjective. Thank you for submitting, but…”

She continued to type. “Would you mind making the coffee? I just want to finish this bit before I take a break,” she said, adjusting her tortoiseshell glasses by the earpiece.

I ground the dark, oily coffee beans and placed them in the carafe of the french press. When the water I put in the microwave began to boil, I poured it over the ground coffee. Then I collected two teacups and saucers from the cabinet. None of the teacups matched. She only used bone china teacups, never mugs. She said the coffee tasted different from a teacup. Lucy and I drank from mugs at home. But it always felt like drinking coffee was a secondary activity when I drank from a mug. I was also reading, writing, or driving. But when I drank from a teacup with a saucer, I was only drinking coffee. That was the primary activity.

“I dreamt of bees again last night,” she said as I placed the cups on the table.

“Bees?”

“You know those films where they show all the bees crawling over a big piece of honeycomb?” She pushed the press down to the bottom of the carafe slowly and then poured the coffee into my cup. It smelled of bittersweet chocolate and orange peel.

“Was it scary?”

“Scary?” She considered for a moment and pushed a loose strand of her dark hair behind her ear. Then she poured coffee into her own cup. “No, not scary. There were just…so many.” She held the cup under her nose and inhaled slowly. Then she lowered it to her lips.

“Have you been reading about bees?”

“No. Swords,” she answered.

“Swords?”

“For the book. How they’re made. The percentage of carbon to steel. How a smith forges and heats and quenches them,” she answered.

“Quenches? What’s that?”

“It’s when the sword-smith plunges the heated blade into oil or water to rapidly cool it. Part of the process,” she answered. “I like that word. Quench.” She took another sip of coffee. The teacup made a small, clinking sound as she replaced it in the saucer. “What would it mean if it were a noun. What would a quench be?”

“Oh, I don’t know…maybe a small, nocturnal mammal that eats only…honey?” I mused. I rubbed the knees of my corduroy trousers and looked at the gray afternoon sky out the window.

“Hmmm…I like that. Only honey,” she said. “How many for you this week?”

“Five,” I answered.

“Five’s a lot. Time consuming,” she said.

“What else am I doing?”

“Still, five. Five resumes, five cover letters. It’s a lot of stories. A lot of different stories.”

“Everything’s a story,” I answered.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you…I got an interesting rejection last week. It wasn’t the usual rejection letter.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“They said so. They said This is not our usual rejection letter. Then they complimented me on my writing and suggested I send them more.”

“Well, that’s encouraging, isn’t it?” I asked.

“A no dipped in honey is still a no,” she said. “Imagine if it were like the old days and I had to print everything and go to the post office.”

“That would be a lot of postage,” I said.

“Expensive…paper, ink cartridges, postage.”

“But you’d get to know the postal workers. Probably by name,” I said. “And they’d probably talk about you when they went in the back. They’d say It’s that aspiring writer again.”

“Oh, I hope they wouldn’t say that.”

“What would they say, then?” I asked.

“Writer. Just writer.”

She poured more coffee into my cup, and then refilled her own. The loose strand of hair slipped out from behind her ear.

“Don’t they die after they sting you?” I asked.

“What?”

“Bees. Don’t they die after they sting you?”

Her mouth slowly widened into a wicked looking grin. “They do,” she answered.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Just an evil thought,” she laughed. She stretched her hands on each side of her cup, with the fingers outstretched. The nail of her index finger was broken down to the quick. “I know what a quench could be…a writer in her forties who desires to be published but has not yet found a publisher. In spite of actively looking.”

“Assiduously looking, maybe,” I said.

“Yes. That’s better. Assiduously looking.”

“Or maybe a quench could be a man in his forties who desires to be employed. But has not yet found a job. In spite of assiduously looking,” I said.

We sat in silence for a moment.

“Where are you off to next?” she asked.

“The post office, oddly enough. I have to mail some pillows for Lucy,” I said.

“Who ever thought people would buy so many decorative pillows?” she asked. “I think Lucy is brilliant.”

“When we were first married, Lucy used to buy a lot of decorative pillows. We even used to fight about it,” I said.

“It probably wasn’t the pillows you were fighting about,” she said.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“What were you fighting about?” she asked.

“I don’t remember. I just remember being really angry about the pillows. There were so many!”

“Like the bees.”

“The bees?” I asked.

“There were so many,” she said.

Iris Melton is a former waitress/attorney living in the Appalachian Mountains. She learned to swim from a book and has a perverse affection for the Oxford comma.