Month: July 2023 (Page 1 of 2)

The Garden

30 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Thomas Feeny

for Lorelei

Somebody has to dig,
someone’s called to plant, you say,
shrugging off all those who
with smart grin place
themselves well beyond
remembering how to
scratch and hoe,
turn the soil, pat it, work it.
Yours ever a warm touch
to growth still unfolding.
Like the sun this long season
you are needed.
Later, edging into
winter, how content
you’ll be when,
left to examine your hands,
you nod, wait, anticipate.

Thomas Feeny teaches Italian and Spanish at North Carolina State University. His poetry has appeared in California Poetry Quarterly, Chiron, and Hiram Poetry Journal. He has also done considerable translation of poems and short stories written in the Romance languages.

Queen Elizabeth II died while I was mowing the lawn

27 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Joshua Zeitler

I had let it grow longer than I should, and was thinking about how
I had let it grow longer than I should. Weeks, maybe months, of growth.
The mower was having a tough time of it. I had to keep backing up

and pushing forward. One of the wild plants I’d never noticed before
had fruit that looked like little green paper lanterns, a groundcherry.
I had decided to steer around it when the mower choked out. I tried to start it

back up again but it just billowed smoke, and then chugged along
billowing smoke. I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping for air, and besides,
I wanted to give the groundcherries a chance to grow, and the other

plants I would have loved if I’d given them time: the goldenrod, the Queen
Anne’s lace, chicory—yes, even the thistle—have you ever seen
how beautifully the bull thistle blooms? I’ve always dug it out before

it could truly flower. Call it pragmatism, or fear, those formidable
needles. I’m changing my mind. I’ll let it grow. Maybe
I won’t even fix the mower, which doesn’t really look broken,

it just looks like it always does when I’m not using it—slim, and quiet,
and polite in its stillness, which might now last forever. Not laziness, I insist
to myself as I head inside, but a kind of mercy, of grace—and then

I see.

Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer hailing from the heart of Michigan. They are pursuing an MFA in poetry at Alma College, and their poems have been previously published in Black Fox Literary Magazine.

purple and blue light digital wallpaper — Photo by Tuesday Temptation on Pexels.com

Changes

25 July 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Brian Daldorph

“The only thing that changes,” Sheila says, “is that nothing changes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say.

Sheila’s been taking night classes at Juco, and she reads books of poetry in the kitchen while I’m watching TV. We used to sit together on the couch, our thighs pressed together, our arms around each other, and I’d tell her things about the nature shows I watch all the time.

Do you know how much a grizzly bear eats in a day?

Do you know how fast a tiger shark swims?

Which is bigger, the Taj Mahal or a humpbacked whale?

Sheila would ask me how I knew these cool things and I’d say, “I’m just a smart guy, that’s why you married me.”

But now she’s the one telling me things about Buddhism and poetry and this Russian story about a rich man falling off a chair, hitting his side and then he’s dying and his family and colleagues gather like vultures waiting to feast.

“What’s the big deal about that?” I say. “That’s what happened when my Uncle Alex got sick.” (We all thought he had money, but we were wrong).

Sheila asks me if she can read me one of her poems, so I say, “OK, just wait until after my show, please, because this is really interesting. It’s about tarantulas down in New Mexico and the border states.”

The show ends and slides into another about hyenas, and I keep watching though I know Sheila’s hovering, poem in hand. She’s in bed after the hyena show, turned away from me.

I don’t mind her doing some of what she’s doing but not all of it because we had things really nice just the way they were so why make changes?

I’ll tell her in the morning that I’d like to hear her poem, please, and tell her too that I bought chocolates for her. I put them in back of the refrigerator and forgot to tell her about them. She can write a poem about them, about how just like love they’re dark and sweet but sometimes difficult to find.

Brian Daldorph teaches at the University of Kansas and Douglas County Jail.

Some Days

22 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Carole Greenfield

Some days it feels like I will never be free from dread,
never escape the darkness, always be lugging those bushels
of rocks, the weight I drag behind me.

Some days it feels like I will never have time to say thank you,
never have heart to share love, never know grace to let go.

Some days it feels like I am trudging through a swamp
filled with skunk cabbage and quacking of frogs
and when I stop to listen I know their voices
are pure silver, a chorus of answers and questions.

Some days I remember all I need is to stand still
and let the quiet rain of their chirps, squeaks and creaks,
the half-notes of their small hearts fall into and over and through me.

Carole Greenfield grew up in Colombia and lives in New England. Her work has appeared in such places as Amethyst Review, Humana Obscura and The Plenitudes. Read her poem “Trace Fossils” published in The Bluebird Word in October 2022.

Ser Mujer 2023

20 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Alexandra Newton Rios

This is how a woman
grows into her own.
She takes the moon that for too long
she only saw in another hemisphere
hang full and white in the night sky
turning into day.
She takes the sun rises with which she runs
and the sun sets behind the Statue of Liberty
with which she ends her day.
She takes the students who suddenly smile
as she works each day
the fields of their hearts
as she once walked the moist earth rows
of her five children’s dreams.
She takes the man she is going to meet
who has been waiting and waiting
and waiting for her to free herself from her past,
from her present overflowing with possibility
to become finally open fully to him.
It is a busy life.
It is a woman’s life.
She takes the sudden focusing,
this giving herself a season
to learn more
to focus more
to do more
to reach a new plane
of being alive.
Change is real.
Real the ways of being in the world.
They should not be menospreciado,
belittled, thought any less of
while it snows the softest of flakes
across the day.

Alexandra Newton Rios, a bi-hemispherical mother of five, lives with her mother in New York City teaching Spanish, and English in San Miguel de Tucumán. She ran eight full Argentine marathons and the New York City Marathon for the joy of having her Argentine mother, a cancer survivor, at the finish line.

Author’s Note: Ser mujer in Spanish means to be a woman in English. The Ser Mujer poems are written once a year on March 8, International Women’s Day, written since 1996, and gather in a poem a definition that changes across time.

Last October

18 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by John Surowiecki

The mountain laurel is as green as the
maples are orange. Deer visit as if on cue,
hoovering the seeds we left for doves
and newly arrived juncoes.

Anything to do with spring and summer, with lilacs
and irises and that wistful pneumonic yellow,
is long gone, escaped in the raw humidity of

night. The wigs of dead leaves
are already caught up in scattered whirlwinds.
It’s clear we don’t have much time together.

Rainwater that leaks from the driveway gravel
has pooled in unlikely places,
not the swales that engineering has intended.
The silence between a breath and the breath that

follows it seems to last forever. October
is no longer with us: you’ve taken its place.
It needs a new face, yours, a new voice, yours.

It needs your swallows and mourning gnats
your own phrase on the fiddle which everyone can hear:
you, the season of leaving, have your music too.

John Surowiecki is the author of fourteen books of poetry. His latest, The Place of the Solitaires: Poems from Titles by Wallace Stevens, was recently published by Wolfson Press. John is the recipient of the Poetry Foundation Pegasus Award, the Nimrod Pablo Neruda Prize, the Washington Prize and other awards.

The Pink Rosette

15 July 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Sarah Das Gupta

Hi! I’m Susie. I have brittle bone disease. But I don’t want to bother you with all that medical stuff. It means my bones fracture easily. I’m ten and I’ve had nearly twenty breaks. I look a bit funny but I don’t bother too much now. I’ve had lots of stares and insults. They just bounce off – fly past me somewhere into space!

When I was eight, I went on a bus. Didn’t usually go on buses ‘cause they jolt you too much.

That day I was with my sister and my best friend, Jodie. A gang of boys got on. They made funny noises and shouted ‘monkey face’ and ’chimpanzee’. I broke one of my cheek bones when I was seven. Kids in school called me the same names sometimes. I didn’t care much.

But these boys started throwing coins. They were hard. I was scared of breaking something. The gang said my lips looked like a money box. I thought they might push coins into my mouth.

I meant to tell you; my teeth are a bit brittle. I’ve lost a few. Jodie said they were ‘stupid’ and ‘ignorant’. I just kept my head down. It was ok ‘cause the driver stopped the bus and sorted them out. I haven’t been on a bus again.

I’m not supposed to do sport, well only swimming. My walking’s not too good. My mum thinks I’m getting slower. I think it’s ‘cause I’m tired.

My best day so far was when Mum took me and Lizzy to a riding school. Lizzy’s my baby sister. I call her that but she’s much taller than me. The ponies were lovely. They ate more of my carrots than Lizzy’s. She said I had more in my pocket than her. She was just jealous. I knew the ponies liked me better!

I couldn’t sleep that night. It’s hard anyway. You see, I’m propped up in bed. My breathing’s bad at night. But that night was different. I knew it straightaway. I wanted a pony! I wanted one just for me. I could look after it. It might take me longer than Lizzy and her friends. But my pony wouldn’t mind. I’d get there in the end!

It took almost a year. I pestered Dad most! When we passed horses on the road. When I saw them on tele – in the Derby or the Queen’s Jubilee, I said, “You know what I want, Dad!” Once I just cried when I saw the perfect pony in a magazine.

I knew he’d give in eventually and he did! Someone he met had an old pony. It was too small for his son. No problem. I told you I’m small. When I saw Barbary, I had to have her! I loved her chestnut coat with flecks of white. Like those glass balls you shake, and snow starts falling. She knew I’d hidden some carrots. She followed me. She nuzzled very gently, pushing her nose into my pocket. Her muzzle was soft as velvet. I sat on her for a few minutes. For the first time I was taller than Lizzy, nearly taller than Dad. I didn’t have a saddle. I could feel her warm back touching me.

Most people don’t like touching me or being close. Mum says they don’t want to hurt me. I’m not sure. Barbary didn’t mind at all. I could put my face against hers. She seemed to like it!

Next, we had to buy a special saddle. It had a metal bar across the front. I could grab it if I felt a bit wobbly. The reins were thin. They were some sort of white material. I could manage them easily.

I learnt fast. Soon I could trot, turn, stop, start. Barbary was learning too. She began to listen to my voice. Of course, Mum had fits! She had nightmares of me falling off. Being trampled by Barbary. I knew I wouldn’t fall. She would look after me. Lizzy joked and said, “If you fall, Barbary will haul you up with her teeth! “

One day we cantered up the hill in the field. I’d never gone faster on my own than a slow walk, dragging my right foot behind me. Now the wind blew in my face. The hedge flew past! Lizzy said it wasn’t a proper canter. By then, I didn’t listen to her much. I knew it was a real canter!

June 14th would be the greatest day of my life. It would be my first Horse Show. Well, more of a small gymkhana really. The evening before, I washed Barbary’s mane and tail. Actually, I did the bottom of the tail. Mum did the rest. Mum thought she liked the full beauty treatment. I thought she liked the bucket of horse nuts better!

As I went to bed, all I wanted next day was to win one rosette. I dreamed of tying it on Barbary’s bridle. I didn’t expect a first, second or even a third. The white ones for a ‘good try’ would be great!

It was the last event, Musical Sacks. Music plays. When it stops, you have to dismount and stand on a sack. They take one sack away each time. I was allowed to ride into the ring. Barbary stood on the sack. I couldn’t get on and off on my own. Seven riders were left.

There were only six rosettes. The music stopped. Barbary trotted into the middle arena. She stood on the last sack! I was out next go. I didn’t care. Mum tied the pink rosette on Barbary’s bridle. With all the other winners, we trotted round the ring. Mum cried. Dad took a photo. Lizzy muttered something about not playing the game properly. I didn’t care. I had the pink rosette with me in bed all night!

Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher from near Cambridge, UK. She has work published in over thirty different magazines, including: Paddle, Waywords, Dipity, Pure Haiku, Rural Fiction, Green Ink, among others. Her interests include most subjects except computer games and football.

Evanston in June

12 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Rosalie Hendon

The taste of sun-ripened mulberry
A two-hour rain delay
A deluge pouring over rows of white chairs
Homemade bagels, bowls of cut fruit

An elderly woman in a mask
hovering behind a glass door,
hand on her cane

Rings on my brother’s hands,
silver paint worn to copper
a purple stone found gleaming in the dust

Speeches in sunshine,
a sea of purple
Cheers of recognition
effervescent under the late afternoon sky

The future as tangible as a ripe fruit,
as a mulberry plucked from the branch

Rosalie Hendon (she/her) is an environmental planner living in Columbus, Ohio. Her work is published in Change Seven, Pollux, Willawaw, Write Launch, and Sad Girls Club, among others. Rosalie is inspired by ecology, relationships, and stories passed down through generations.

sunset monument mill windmill — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Whooshie and Me

10 July 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Kenneth M. Kapp

I was visiting my grandkids, who can be a handful. There’re two of them, twins. So after the first day I told my son, I have to take at least three walks each day. “Doc says if I don’t, my arteries are going to clog in short order and ‘Mr. S, it’s sayonara.’ So I take my walks, mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and after supper.”

I’m not totally heartless; I told the twins: “You want to walk with grandpa, you need to behave for 30 hours straight – then you can come with me the next time I go out.” They looked at me as if I’m nuts. I tell them: “Look at the clock, little hand goes around three-and-a-half times – good behavior – and you can come with me next time I’m out the door.”

“Grandpa. We only have digital clocks and 30 means we’d have to add. We’re only in 1^st grade.”

Well, I wasn’t about to teach the kids how to add, that’s what parents are for. Maybe it’s moot anyhow: the twins are high-spirited, that’s how my daughter-in-law puts it. I wasn’t going to argue, I like to walk by myself anyhow; it gives me time to think.

That’s how I met Whooshie, name I gave a boy I met on one of those walks. He was probably two years older than the twins and six inches taller. His head came up to my chin.

When I walk, I wander. Gets my kids mad when they ask me where I’ve been and I answer: “Oh, hither and yonder,” waving my hand above my head.

“Dad, one of these days you’re going to get lost and find yourself in a bad neighborhood.”

I don’t think so; I have a good sense of direction. Besides, I like the challenge of finding my way home after not paying much attention on my way out. Cloudy days can be a challenge since moss doesn’t always grow on the north side of the trees. I must have a beagle’s nose; anyway I always manage to find my way home. Heck, I know where my kids live, have their addresses and phone numbers, so what’s the problem if I’m rather vague where I walk. For an old man, it makes it more of an adventure.

With Whooshie I walked mostly in a southwesterly direction. Crossed the big divided boulevard. Other side of the tracks like they say. The neighborhood is a little less middle class, but the lawns are all well-kept. I thought I’d go a couple of more blocks, looked like some shops ahead, see if there was a place I could get a cup of coffee since I could use some caffeine for the way home. A block later this kid comes around the corner towards me, slinging his hands around like he was a human windmill.

I wasn’t far from the mark. As I got closer I heard him going, “Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,” making big, slow circles with his palms turned out to catch the wind. “Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.” I liked the sound and smiled. “Way to go kid. Can I try that?”

He comes up straight, almost could hear his heels clicking, snapping his arms to his side. He inclines his head. “My parents taught me that this is a free country but not in stores. There you have to pay. I asked them how can it be free? They told me it’s not that kind of free, more like free to be stupid.”

I laughed. Never thought of things that way. Racked my brains for a good question. I came up empty and could only think of a dumb one since I think I knew the answer. “You go to school?”

“No. I’m home-schooled. My parents said windmills aren’t allowed to go to school.”

“You’ve always been a windmill?” I couldn’t help asking.

“Ever since I read Don Quixote. I read it in Spanish when I was eight. Decided it was stupid tilting at windmills when you could be one.”

I had to step back – Whooshie started up his arms again.

I decided that was enough for our first meeting and went in search of a cup of coffee, leaving Whooshie to find his own way.

I went that way a couple more times over the next ten days – two weeks was my limit at one time with my kids and I was four days into the visit when I first met Whooshie. No luck. By the end of my stay I was friends with the barista, so I asked if he knew Whooshie, tall, lanky kid with a funny smile.

He laughed. “I think I know who you mean. Kid’s nuts, came in once and starts going round with his hands. I said, ‘Whoa, kiddo! You’re going to knock coffee all over the place. What do you want?’ Kid tells me his parents want he should get a summer job, so since it’s hot, he thought maybe he could get work here as a fan. ‘I can lie on the table, move my hands around like this.’ And he starts going with his whoosh, whoosh, whoosh thing. I tell him I don’t think it’ll work out, but I appreciate the offer, gave him a cinnamon bun for trying. He never came in again. You looking for him?”

“Not really. I met him a week ago. We got to talking and I thought of a question I wanted to ask him. No big deal.”

I went home the next day. Next time I visited my son, I failed to come across Whooshie. Ditto, the following year. Then my son gets a promotion and moves to another city. By that time I had forgotten the question anyhow. Couple of times I tried making like a windmill – whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. It wasn’t the same thing. Must be how you turn out your palms.

Kenneth M. Kapp was a Professor of Mathematics, a ceramicist, a welder, an IBMer, and yoga teacher. He lives with his wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, writing late at night. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. Read his earlier microfiction story in The Bluebird Word‘s May 2022 issue.

the Irish goodbye

8 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Christine Brooks

I was distracted,
looking this way and that
enjoying cocktails,
laughter & the company
of a stranger just for a
moment

one moment

I knew you were there,
always, so I took
another sip, laughed another
laugh and turned my back
on you
to dance

just for one moment

you had perfected it
though,
the Irish goodbye
and
I never saw it coming

sometimes, I still think
you will come walking back through the front door
and my heart
beats & a smile turns up

just for a moment

hello —
did you forget your cap?

I say to no one

Christine Brooks holds her M.F.A. from Bay Path University in Creative Nonfiction. She has two books of poetry available, The Cigar Box Poems and beyond the paneling. Her next two, inside the pale and the hook-switch goodbye, will be released in 2023.