Month: September 2022 (Page 1 of 2)

Jacaranda

29 September 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Alice Lowe

A stroll through Old Town on a quest for yard art yields a 7-foot-long bronzed hummingbird rain chain to hang in the corner of our porch. Returning to the car with our treasure, my spouse and I stroll up Juan Street under canopies of lavender blossoms, floating off trees, carpeting lawns and sidewalks, lighting gently on my hair and shoulders like a soft, sweet-smelling snowfall.

Each spring we’re stunned anew by the blooming of the jacarandas, their purple flowers feathering the sky, blanketing the ground below. They flourish in Southern California from April to June and in Australia during corresponding spring months. While both we and the Aussies like to claim them as our birthright, jacarandas are native to South America. The name, from the Guarani language, means “fragrant.” They represent wisdom and wealth, and if a flower drops on your head it means good fortune. Lucky me!

Gorgeous specimens abound in our San Diego neighborhood, but one tree on this Old Town jaunt brings me to a wide-eyed, gape-mouthed standstill. Tall and full, perfectly shaped, it towers over an unassuming ‘50s-era duplex. A VW bug parked in the driveway underscores the tree’s magnificence, emphasizing that it isn’t the purview of the privileged. The next day I’m still thinking about that tree—I have to see it again. “That one!” I say as we drive down the hill. My husband takes pictures of me surrounded by a cloud of lavender.

Gail, the protagonist in an Alice Munro story, travels from Toronto to Brisbane, Australia, where she’s astonished by the wildlife and landscape, the galah birds—rose-breasted cockatoos—and the blossoming trees: “The flowers are a color that she could not have imagined on trees before—a shade of silvery blue, or silvery purple, so delicate and beautiful that you would think it would shock everything into quietness.” A local tells her they’re called “Jack Randa.”

I lived for several years on a street bordered by alternating palm trees and jacarandas, one in front of my house. The fallen blossoms surrounded the tree in wide circles, and I would scoop piles of them into a basket that I’d place on my dining table, refreshing them regularly until the last blooms had fallen. Not everyone was a fan. “They’re so messy,” a neighbor complained, raking them off his manicured lawn. My housemate considered them a menace. “Goddamn purple flowers; they’re ruining my paint job.” Are you kidding? Get a car cover, I said. Park somewhere else.

That silvery blue-purple or purple-blue evokes the bluebells that Leonard Bast wades through in the movie adaptation of Howards End. They’re what I see when I imagine myself similarly ankle deep in fields of jacaranda blooms. I have a pot of lavender lobelia that stands in for them on the deck just outside my window. And a purple chenille bathrobe, it’s soft nubby texture a reminder in winter months of the treat in store for me come Spring.

Alice Lowe writes about life, literature, food and family in San Diego CA. Recent work has been published in Big City Lit, FEED, Borrowed Solace, Drunk Monkeys, Midway, Eclectica, and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. She’s been cited twice in Best American Essays Notables. Read her work at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.

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The Heart Unfurled

27 September 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Karen Luke Jackson

for Juniper

Her skirt billows as she skips the graveled lane,
chases a squirrel across the lawn

and up a flaming maple, tumbles
into a hammock which swallows her curls,

swaddles her legs, this fawn-eyed child
with a page-boy cut who bubbles song.

Somehow her heart knows
that she, too, belongs here

with the redwing blackbird
whose call she returns,

with the wooly worm
she cheers across the road.

Karen Luke Jackson draws inspiration for her writing from oral history, nature, and clowning. Her poems have appeared in Ruminate, Broad River Review (Ron Rash Poetry Award), Ruminate, One, Atlanta Review, and Channel Magazine. The author of two poetry collections, Karen resides in the Blue Ridge Mountains. www.karenlukejackson.com

Voicemail

25 September 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Megan E. O’Laughlin

You can’t seem to do the things to help you feel better. You can’t keep food down, not with this feeling of something tied around your throat. You wake up in a cold sweat, a murder of crows in your head. You sigh when you send calls straight to voicemail; the number in the little red circle increases daily. You struggle to buy groceries, walk the dog, to drop the package off for the Amazon return. You can’t make that bottle of wine last longer than an hour. Your bad memories are now three-dimensional; they sit on the couch in the living room and eat all of your chips. You just can’t seem to do the things to help you feel better. You can’t even think of what those things are anymore.

Your friends and family notice. They say—are you okay? They seem worried, maybe even annoyed, and definitely tired. They all say it’s time to get some help; perhaps something can help, someone will tell you what to do, and then you’ll do it. If you get some help, they can feel some relief.

Something needs to change, but you aren’t sure what. You need to accept some things, but you aren’t sure how. So, you finally decide to do it. You type some words in the Google search bar: Therapists near my city. Therapists for depression. Therapists for anxiety. Therapists for grief. Therapy for I-don’t-know-what.

I probably received your message, but I rarely check my voicemail. Also, I don’t have any openings. And, I don’t take your insurance. Maybe your friend recommended me, your doctor gave you my name, or you liked my website. I’m that professional person with the education and approved license to do what you are finally ready to do: psychotherapy, some coping skills, process some childhood issues, psychological assessments, even medication management. We are psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, or licensed counselors. You tried to figure out the difference between all these things, and it doesn’t make much sense. All the acronyms blur together: LICSW, PsyD, LMHC, not to mention the things we do, that we spend years and thousands of dollars on, the acronyms like DBT, CBT, ACT, EMDR. What are these things? You don’t know. You just need someone to call you back. There’s simply not enough of us to go around, especially now, especially since the pandemic, and we are burned out too. So, I’ll give you some referrals. Maybe they are full, too, and don’t call back either. Or you can go to that agency, where brand new therapists are overworked and underpaid, and yes, I used to work there too.

Maybe you come in after you waited for months. You will tell me all about your childhood three times a week. Or I will prescribe you three kinds of medication; only one is habit-forming, one causes terrible side effects, and one seems to help. Maybe I will teach you some coping skills, listen with care, and start and end our sessions on time. I might fall asleep, call you by the wrong name, or ask you the same questions every week, and you realize, wow, this therapist has a terrible memory. Maybe I’ll cry when you cry, and you feel seen. Or I’ll sit with a stone face, and when you ask me a question about myself, I’ll say, “why do you ask that question?” Maybe we’ll meet for years, months, or just a few times, but our time together will change your life. Perhaps you’ll meet with me and then decide to meet with someone else, and then they will help you change your life.

Please know it’s not your fault that it’s this complicated. Please know it’s not my fault either and yet here we are, in this system, that doesn’t work so well for any of us. It’s not perfect, but don’t give up after one call. Call again. Send an email. Show up, and then show up again. I will show up, too. In our perseverance, we might find the things to help you feel better.

Megan E. O’Laughlin is an emerging writer and MFA candidate at Ashland University. She writes about mental health, ghosts, and mythology. Megan works as a therapist specializing in mindfulness and trauma recovery. She lives on a peninsula by the sea in Washington state with her spouse, child, and two dogs.

Grandpa Taught Me to Garden

24 September 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Scholl

how to measure the black bed,
count out seeds resembling small
splinters shedding torn coats.
I watched as he poked a finger
into soil dense as chocolate cake,
dropped one seed in each moist well.

He taught me to plot my planting
into harmonies of pattern, leave
room for my sprouts to breathe
so every leaf has space to stretch.

I noticed how he flicked moisture
from his fingers so all could drink
but none would drown,
how he set the watering can swaying
like a pendulum toward his open palm.

Every spring I renew his lesson,
measuring, counting, planting,
watering, taking my turn to care
for this young and fragile life.

(Author Note: Inspired by the poem by Shutta Crum, My Mother Taught Me to Quilt)

Sharon Scholl is a retired college professor who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website of free original music. Her poetry chapbooks, Remains, Seasons, Timescape, are available via Amazon Books. Current poems are in Switchgrass Review and Green Ink Poetry.

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Choreography

22 September 2022 / Editor

Poetry by David Curry

First there’s that exhilarating “Haste thee, nymph” segment
of Mark Morris’s l’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, a dance
seen live some years ago and, gratefully, again tonight
in a camera-smart clip posted on Facebook.

And then, this afternoon, there’s this bent woman leaning on a walker
with a broad smile for — what? — the uncommonly fair December day?
She’s by herself, oh so slow, takes two changes of the lights
to cross the street. At least one driver is impatient
and thoughtless enough to hit the horn. When
the woman gets to the other side of the street, she pauses
and looks back over her shoulder and then moves on
with her serviceable old blue coat and her intention.

David Curry‘s second collection of poetry, Contending to be the Dream, received “Special Distinction” in the Elliston Book Awards. He has been a writing fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. For 10 years, he edited and published the poetry magazine Apple.

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A New Heart From Somewhere

20 September 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Ethan Kahana

Sitting quietly in my small room overlooking the graveyard, I heard a sudden burst of joy from the halls that got me out of bed for the first time that day. What I saw was a young, skinny boy in the same light blue gown that I had neatly folded in my room. His bony legs, splayed open to fit into the wheelchair, were remarkably long. And, most notably, his mouth was dropped open in shock as he set the telephone down on his lap. His mom, holding the heart medication that fed into her son’s IV, was crying while laughing. His dad simply stood there in silence, his head buried into the shoulder of one of the doctors.

They had been wearing the same clothes for days and the wrinkles showed. Both had the look of people who had been under extreme stress for a great deal of time; there were shadows on their faces that I previously deemed impossible. When they started walking through the halls as a family, we all whooped and cheered at the opportunity that this child was getting at a new life. A second chance, albeit an arduous one. When he passed me, I excitedly held out my hand to give him a high five. He stopped, looked at me with his big brown eyes and smiled, holding my hand in his own.

Elated, I paced around my room until the resident came by. Expecting him to be happy after participating in the joyous occasion, I was surprised when he sat down, hunched over, with his light blue eyes looking conflicted and almost mournful as he stared at the blank TV screen. When I asked him what was wrong, he mentioned how pediatric transplant was an extremely difficult rotation for him because while you do see lives saved, you also have to understand that his new heart comes from somewhere. I just stared at him.

Recently, I was observing a heart surgery on a six month old baby with aortic valve disease and was delighted that this difficult surgery went well. Although it took more than six hours, the surgeon told me that the patient should lead a normal life. As the baby was wheeled out of the room, looking so tiny and vulnerable with the pink scar on his chest, I noticed a sheet of paper on the counter: 15 months old, death by drowning.

Ethan Kahana is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan studying data science and pre med. He has work published in Idle Ink, Across the Margin, Potato Soup Journal, and Five Minutes.

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First & Last

18 September 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Travis Stephens

I am the first brother,
the worst brother,
first to go to college
a little college, Tier 3, maybe.
The first to think it possible
to work with my brain
instead of my hands &
almost do it.
I am the worst at
staying in touch,
moving west,
then north,
then south & staying
west until the salt tasted fine.
I am brother divorced with no children.
Last to mortgage. Broke.
I was the first to go gray & to
write poems about our family.
Brother drunk.
I stood by the graveside of
one brother,
standing with the others.
Somebody cried.
Somebody said say something.
Say something.

Travis Stephens is a writer and tugboat skipper who lives in California with a muse and her extended family. His book of poetry, “skeeter bit & still drunk” is available on Amazon or at Finishing Line Press.

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Just a Glimpse

16 September 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Pat Hulsebosch

Scratchy stubble on long muscled legs. That memory from my 12-year old self comes unbidden in a lifetime of moments. Powerful for its uncharacteristic intimacy, and for its peek into a mother I seldom saw.

Our new color TV was reason enough to gather, and Sunday night was special. First came the magical fairy dust over Cinderella’s castle alerting us that Disney’s Wonderful World of Color was about to begin. The Ed Sullivan Show at 9 pm was a stretch, since tomorrow was a school day. But tonight, the star was Topo Gigio. I knew Mom hoped this squeaky-voiced charmer would occupy us while she got things done.

My younger sister and brother watched from the couch’s comfort, leaving me, the oldest at 12, to the maple rocker. Disdainful of that option, I sprawled at my mother’s feet as she perched stiffly in her recliner. A whiff of fresh paint mingled with the smoke of Mom’s cigarettes laced with Youth Dew as I leaned against her legs.

My brother’s and sister’s eyes were riveted as the diminutive puppet skipped onstage, pirouetting and bowing. But I had more important things to think about. My fingertips skimmed Mom’s calves as the sound of opera mixed with Topo Gigio’s giggles filled the air. Mom’s legs softened against my spine and I glanced up, knowing that my explorations could continue only as long as they went unnoticed.

We had recently settled into this new brick colonial. Our Texas to Florida move had followed my father’s fishing business. This house had been the lure that drew my mother across the Gulf, marking her success as a wife as my father’s just-built steel-hulled boat marked Dad’s cutting edge reputation in shrimping. With that boat Dad could now trawl farther and farther out into South American waters, staying for eight or more months at a time instead of the usual three. We barely noticed the difference.

Mom was usually on the move, bustling about, finding work where no one else would know to look, famous for trailing behind us, scrubbing floors as friends entered the front door. But tonight seemed different as she tenderly selected deckle-edged photos, one-by-one, from well-worn shoeboxes. Strange behavior for such an unsentimental woman, a fact attested to by my baby book, blank after the first page.

I was preoccupied with legs since I’d recently started shaving my own peach fuzz. Rumor had it that the razor magically left you with the smooth sleekness that every woman longed for. So far, I only been able to manage bloody nicks. As my hands ran up and down Mom’s womanly legs, I was startled by coarse prickly hair scattered from ankle to knee. Expecting the silken smoothness promised in Nair ads, I felt betrayed.

Ugh, is this what I have to look forward to? I wondered.

Mom glanced down.

“Patty, what are you doing? Stop rubbing my legs!” she scolded.

Caught, knowing I’d violated unspoken rules, I steeled myself to be banished. Instead my mother’s voice softened. A faint smile crossed her face, coupled with a faraway look. I was fascinated. Smiles were almost as rare as touch in our house.

“You know, my legs have always been my best feature,” Mom crooned. “When I was young my nickname was ‘Gams’ because I had terrific legs. See, take a look at this.”

Mom held out a snapshot. I recognized the Jersey Shore beach from summer visits to Grandma’s. A young woman stood on the beach on a bright sunny day, staring boldly into the camera, smirk on her face, hand on hip, as if she was in on a joke told just before the shutter clicked.

That’s my mother, I thought, noting the crisply ironed man’s dress shirt trailing over a barely visible two-piece Miss America bathing suit. Her bobbed brunette hair, flipped on either side to frame her face, seemed untouched by the sun and surf. The jaunty angle of her pose made this woman look ready to take on the world.

Her legs do look pretty good. Lean and strong and very long. Maybe I’ll have Mom’s legs when I’m older.

I was yanked back from the future by Mom’s voice as she continued.

“We were always fooling around, playing ball, hanging out at the beach, wandering around town,” Mom recalled.

“I felt like such a kid with this crowd. I was the baby in the family – really an afterthought,” she added. But I had brothers and sisters who looked out for me, and nieces and nephews who were my age,” she explained.

“How old were you there?” I asked.

“I was 28,” said Mom. “I’d come home from secretarial school in New York City. No job, no ambitions. Just having a good time, playing ball and going to the shore,” she added with a twinkle in her eye. “Then, two years later, your father proposed and friends said I’d better say yes since I this might be my only chance.”

Topo Gigio bowed and left the stage. I held my breath, longing for more, even as I began to inch away, sensing we were done. My mother stiffened as she stood up and briskly shoved the shoeboxes back on shelves.

“Bedtime you kids,” she commanded. The moment passed as suddenly as it had arisen.

As I drifted to sleep, I reveled in the brief transformation from dutiful, detached Mom, husband perpetually at sea, to another mother. Mom as the baby in the family. Mom as an overgrown kid in her twenties. Mom with the gorgeous gams.

Waking early next day I ran downstairs for another peek at the photos, another glimpse at a young woman with her life ahead of her.

Gone. The shoeboxes had disappeared.

But I’d now had a glimpse of possibilities. Possibilities of playfulness. Possibilities of intimacy. I vowed I would be that kind of woman and that kind of mom. Long muscled legs that went on, maybe even danced, scratchy stubble and all.

Pat Hulsebosch is a queer Pippi Longstocking wanna-be who writes about cultures and identities in a never-boring life of teaching and learning. Her work has appeared in literary journals including Columbia Journal, Lunch Ticket, Furious Gravity, Grace & Gravity, Vol. I, and The Washington Post.

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Eagle Fantasy

14 September 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Michael Shepley

it was only just
an early morning dream

but for a time
I was an eagle

sharp hunter eye high
in a soft sunny sky

targeting a strange
shape shifting prey

running over the dun
furze of rounded hills

fast flitting slip of
snipped night sliding

quick as the wind
hugging ground like skin

when I woke knowing
it was only the hunt

for my own damn shadow

Michael Shepley is a writer who lives and works in Sacramento. His poetry has appeared in Vallum, CQ, Common Ground, The Kerf, Jonah, Blue Unicorn, Salt and a few others.

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Hiding in Plain Sight

12 September 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Lucy Fox

The trouble with being a therapist is I can’t switch it off. Constantly, I’m analysing
people, trying to dissect their triggers. It makes dating difficult. I’ve found men are often on edge when they find out what I do as if over our meeting of wine and breadsticks, I’m trying to work out if they have a good relationship with their mother. So, I haven’t told Thomas.

We met on a dating app a few weeks ago. I was surprised to see him on there; he
didn’t seem like the type, but he’s exactly what I go for. We started texting, but he said he prefers to talk over the phone, so our texts turned into calls. Now, here we are, sitting opposite each other, sipping wine and sharing stories.

Over the phone, we briefly touched on the topic of work. He told me that he doesn’t work much anymore and he accepted that I didn’t want to talk about what I do either. “So, what do you do in your free time?” I ask now, leaning forward, arms uncrossed, using my body language to show how open I am to hearing him.

“I do a bit of DIY, but mostly I play golf.” He smiles, it is friendly, not leering like some men. “Are you close with your family?” He mirrors my body language.

“Oh you know, the usual story. Dad left when I was three.” My throat closes up; I take a sip of wine, savouring the bitterness of the Cabernet Sauvignon Thomas picked out for us. “I don’t know him but it’s fine. It’s been thirty years, you know? And my Mum did an amazing job of raising me and my younger brother. When you have one incredible parent, who needs a Dad?”

“Mothers are wonderful. My Mum was a fantastic woman. She stayed at home raising me, looking after my Father and the house and she liked doing it. Never complained. Women aren’t like that now.” I bristle slightly; it’s involuntary and not professional – he’s not a client, Meg – I reprimand myself, but honestly, those views! If he was my patient I would say no woman will ever live up to his Mum. Obvious Mummy issues.

Our perky waitress bounces over as I’m trying to come up with an appropriate
response, “are you guys ready to order?” She holds her pen and pad, poised. I tell her what I want, while Thomas fiddles around with his reading glasses.

“Thank goodness it’s not one of those places where you have to order on an app.”
Thomas huffs, handing the menus over. The waitress smiles and Thomas lights up, “you look just like my daughter when she was your age.”

“Oh really?” She laughs, “is this your daughter?” She turns to me and my cheeks
burn red.

“No. I’m his date.” Is that what it looks like from the outside? Like I’m having dinner
with my Dad?

“Oh I’m sorry,” she turns scarlet and runs away.

Thomas chuckles but I feel sick. I need a therapist.

Lucy Fox is an aspiring writer who likes to write from the female perspective. She will study English Literature and Creative Writing at university this September.