Month: December 2023 (Page 3 of 3)

Nutcracker Memories

2 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Marianne Lonsdale

I was in my attic, organizing the boxes and piles of the stuff of my life, when I came across a theatre program from 1961, for The Nutcracker Ballet, that transported me to the steps of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. My memories of that day surged back.

I am six, my sister Cathy is nine and our big brother, Jimmy, is ten. Mom bends down, holds my coat collar and tells me to obey Jimmy and Cathy. No squirming around and no talking during the performance. Her voice is firm and strict, but she hugs me too. She will meet us back on the steps after the ballet is over.

I’d not thought of that sweet day in years, the gift of a day. I wrote to my mother that December, sharing my memories on holiday paper, a soft red with a banner of green wreaths across the top. My mom and I spent more time being annoyed with each other than we did feeling affectionate. I wanted her to know that I remembered her kindness.

My mother had scraped together the money for our tickets but could not afford one for herself or to pay a babysitter for my two younger brothers. Mom was thirty years old with five children, making ends meet on dad’s firefighter’s wages. But she wouldn’t let her older children miss the magic of The Nutcracker. She drove us from our suburban home to San Francisco, dropped us off in front of the theatre, and picked us up a few hours later.

I wrote of the beauty and sequins of the ballerinas, the enchanting music, the fighting rats and sugar plum fairies. Swirling collages of colors, and sparkling silver and glitter. That ballet was the most glamorous event of my young life; the beginning of my love affair with dance and theatre.

After Mom received the essay, she called to say she loved the piece. Her voice choked on the words. We talked a bit more, and as I got ready to end the call, Mom said “I don’t remember taking you to the ballet.” I was taken aback but she’d had lots of kids and memories to keep track of.

At our Christmas gathering at her home, Mom shared the printed story with my older brother and sister.

“That is so sweet,” my brother commented.

“I love that story,” my sister said. Then looking at my brother she asked “Do you remember going? I don’t.”

He shook his head. I was flabbergasted. A standout event in my mind, and none of the main characters besides me even remembered. If I hadn’t saved the theatre program, I might have wondered if I’d made it up.

Marianne Lonsdale writes personal essays, fiction and poetry. She’s looking for an agent for her novel, Finding Nora, a story set in 1991 Oakland about love and friendship during the AIDS epidemic. Her work has been published in Literary Mama, Grown and Flown, The Bluebird Word and several print anthologies. Read her nonfiction essay Parting Gift from last year’s holiday issue.

Thrift Shop Santa

2 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Melissa Wold

Santa, my man. How did you wind up in this place?
Santa, my man. How did you crack your face?
Tossed amid dusty knickknacks, chipped china plates.

Did Mrs. Claus catch your paws on the photo gal at the mall?
Did Mrs. Claus without pause pack your bag? What gall!
Now you sit lost on a shelf without an elf or Ken or Barbie doll.

Santa my man, come on home with me.
We’ll boogie round the tinseled tree.
Santa, my man, come on home with me.

Did you take to bettin’ on reindeer races?
Did you take to bettin’ on penguins running bases?
Money squandered on plastic roses in cob-webbed vases?

Did you binge on Jim Beam at the corner bar?
Did you still white lightning in a mason jar?
Serendipity plunked you into a martini glass tucked in a boxcar.

Santa my man, come on home with me.
We’ll boogie round the tinseled tree.
Santa, my man, come on home with me.

Did you and the elves have a spat?
Did they pull your beard? Did you rip off their hats?
Letters flake off a weather-worn welcome mat.

Santa, my man, hang your head in shame.
Santa my man, fess up, who’s to blame for your flagging fame?
Ninety-nine cents buys you and a sea-shell picture frame?

Santa my man, come on home with me.
We’ll boogie round the tinseled tree.
Santa, my man, come on home with me.

Melissa Wold is retired from a career in student services area of higher education. She writes with a group affiliated with Mobile Botanical Gardens in Mobile, Alabama. She shares her poems with Rocket, her rat terrier. He is quick with his barking critiques. Read her first published poem in The Bluebird Word from November 2022.

Fear of Falling

2 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Suzy Harris

They say we have not seen this high-piled snow
for more than thirty years. For three days now,
few cars snow-crush silently down the roads,
and walkers teeter on ice-crusted sidewalks.

Just yesterday, as I walked past a bus stop,
the woman in front of me fell thud-hard.
Another passerby and I reached our hands
to her, hefted her back up, handed her
her glasses clattered under the bench.

I knew her – not the falling woman,
but the other – and after, we stood together
under the snow-blue sky, exchanging a few words
before setting off, she to the bus,
me walking toward home,
imagining myself pillow-padded,
light as breath-puffs, balancing on air.

Suzy Harris is the author of the 2023 chapbook Listening in the Dark about living with hearing loss and learning to hear again with cochlear implants. She has served as a poetry editor for The Timberline Review and several of her poems have won recognition from the Oregon Poetry Association.

The Radiator

2 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Charlene Stegman Moskal

My winter years speak softly.
The aroma of chicken soup
mixes with the slightly metallic
scent of steam hissing warmth from a radiator
in a pre-war building in Sunnyside, Queens.

I am looking out a second story window—
snow has fallen through the night.
My gravel playground transformed;
sleds zooming down a silent hill,
snowsuits, runny noses, frozen finger tips
in gloves with ice crystals to suck
until a pall overtakes the streets.
Cold loses its Macintosh Apple crisp bite,
angels melt into nothingness,
streets now perilous with black ice and slush.

There were magazines with pictures
of places that stayed white
dotted with dark green pine trees,
under skies the blue of my mother’s eyes,
where one ice skated on frozen ponds
ringed by white capped mountains;
places so dry, so cold that a child
would look pink-skinned healthy all winter.

I wanted to be that rosy cheeked girl
but I always returned to a second floor apartment
where the aroma of chicken soup mixed
with the slightly metallic scent of steam from a radiator
that hissed out familiarity, comfort and love
in a pre-war building in Sunnyside, Queens.

Charlene Stegman Moskal is published in numerous anthologies, print and online magazines. Her chapbooks are One Bare Foot (Zeitgeist Press), Leavings from My Table (Finishing Line Press), Woman Who Dyes Her Hair (Kelsay Books), and a full length poetry manuscript, Running the Gamut (Zeitgeist Press), Fall 2023.

Eleven Elves in Eight Elfchens

2 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Brian C. Billings

Stockings
hold two
for the children.
Four eyes keep watch,
judging.

Doorside,
one lounges
in our wreath’s
bedding of red bows.
Slacker.

Snap,
Crackle, and
Pop have a
friend in the pantry:
Quinoa.

Climbing
the tree
in the foyer,
one clings to a
garland.

Jesus
lies waiting
for his gifts.
An elfling offers him
peppermints.

Kitchen
candles nestle
in three laps
while the bread machine
bakes.

Guppies
rush past
a jolly figure
necklaced in a silver
ichthys.

Boxes
wrapped in
Santa paper camouflage
the final visitor in
scarlet.

Brian C. Billings is a professor of drama and English at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. His work has appeared in such journals as Ancient Paths, Antietam Review, The Bluebird Word, Confrontation, Evening Street Review, Glacial Hills Review, and Poems and Plays. Publishers for his scripts include Eldridge Publishing and Heuer Publishing. Read his poem from March 2023 in The Bluebird Word.

Photo by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash

Longing for a Close Family

2 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Sherri Wright

In little boxes I see living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and a lovely turquoise pool. Spread out over six states all eight siblings’ faces appear on my Zoom screen. I see white hair, wrinkled faces, sagging necks, thick rimmed bifocals. We have all aged precipitously since our parents’ memorial two years ago.

In my memory I see us young and laughing, amid a sea of Christmas gifts and children, Mom cooking, and Dad shooting grainy 8mm movies.

As young adults we did everything together. Wilderness camping — my older brother rigging ropes and pulleys to hoist food packs in trees away from the bears. Being a bridesmaid in my younger brother’s wedding. My sister and I taking our daughters to Hawaii when neither of us could afford it. Driving to Florida with my youngest brother and our kids through a snowstorm the winter after our divorces. Playing soccer and running a marathon with another sister. My siblings were my best friends.

My youngest sister announces brightly that she just had a COVID vaccine and asks if everyone else has. Moving screen to screen everyone nods yes. A granddaughter in Alabama had a mild case, another in Colorado is recovering. Florida brother asks, “So you all listen to the news and believe that crap about masks?” Minnesota sister cuts in abruptly to describe her beach vacation with her daughters and grandkids. No more talk of COVID.

I ask about a niece who lives in Brooklyn Center where protests continue after the shooting of a young Black man. Her dad is terse. “She lives far from that police station. She’s safe.” I say, “Oh good, I’m glad.” Nothing more. No mention of Black Lives Matter although we grew up in Minnesota where it all began.

Arizona brother sold his Arabian horses since he and his wife can no longer ride. Minnesota sister’s weight has stabilized and anti rejection drugs have been decreased since her heart replacement. As her face appears in the large center screen I see how thin she is. Utah sister makes us laugh. Her daughter in NYC adopted a cat because her apartment has mice. We smile when a curly black puppy crawls over Minnesota brother’s shoulder. We ooh and ah at old oil portraits of Mom and Dad on New York sister’s wall and remember them hanging over the fireplace at our parents’ house. The fireplace of so many Christmas Eves.

For a moment I feel a warmth that used to be so easy.

We long for that close family but none of us will dip below the surface. Over the years we’ve learned where the sharp edges are. Who veers right, who veers left, and who wants no conflict. Eight individuals raised under one roof by the same parents, we know how divergent our beliefs, how passionate our politics. How fragile the connection. So we tiptoe around the hearth, drop a few twigs and dry grasses on the ash and dart quickly away. No one wants to spark the fire.

Sherri Wright is a member of the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and the Key West Poetry Guild. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Dreamer’s Creative Writing, Persimmon Tree, Ocotillo Review, Delaware Beach Life, Raven’s Perch, and Quartet. Read earlier work in The Bluebird Word.

Cordially (in Winter)

2 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Jennifer Campbell

Each driveway is a scuffed shoe,
tick marks revealing the extent
of our waiting.

Days when blue sky pokes through
the gray, cars fill the roads
with more color.

The gray days are what I want
to tell you about:
landscape, water, and horizon,
different smears of charcoal.

I hope this letter finds you well
is something I could say
if I were being impersonal,
but formality went out the window
with your last address.

We may freely speak
about the steak you fixed
to perfection or how it felt
to play pool after all this time,
experiences that are so real.

Yet someone who intercepts
this letter could imagine
I am speaking of the afterlife,
the imagery of travel a tool
to express how we keep moving.

Jennifer Campbell is a writing professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. She has two poetry collections, Supposed to Love and Driving Straight Through, and a chapbook of reconstituted fairytale poems. Jennifer’s work has recently appeared in Healing Muse and Paterson Literary Review and is forthcoming in Slipstream.

Expectations

2 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Peter A. Witt

Winter arrived, unpacked its undressed trees,
waters that slowed to an iced tea trickle,
sun that slept late and went to bed early,
harvest moon that had completed its job,
now a memory of witches riding broom
sticks across its surface. We settled in
for weeks of log laying, kernels that
popped with a buttery rhythm, holidays
celebrated with family, few of whom
could remember their meaning, snows
that filled the yard with carrot-eyed statues,
and a groundhog that despised its shadow.
We looked forward to snowdrops,
robins, and waxwings, all harbingers
that warmer days, gentle rains, baby
rabbits, and softer skies were ahead.
All this we could count on year-by-year,
written only in our expectations, played
out with joy, wisdom, and wonder.

Peter A. Witt is a poet, family history writer, active birder and photographer. He took up writing poetry in 2015 from a 43 year university teaching and research career. He lives in Texas. His work has been published in several online and print publications.

Echo

2 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Christine Andersen

When the pond froze over
my father and I went out
with our skates and hockey sticks
slung over our shoulders,
trudged through the snow
to the log where we laced up.

He swept the ice clean,
gliding behind a broom
in the brisk air
with the grace of a floating swan.

We spun circles
end to end,
sliced the ice
with newly sharpened blades
in flurries of low, white storms
deking,
zigzagging the puck—
a deft strike
then another
and another—

wooden sticks clacking
against the whir of our blades—
the puck— a lightning bolt
across the glittered surface—

I yelled,
I got this!
Watch out!
SCORE!

Score
score
echoed off the ice
like rumbling thunder
through the winter woods,
where 40 years after,
when I walk by the pond,
it echoes still.

Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who hikes the Connecticut woods daily, pen and pad in pocket. The outdoors inspires many of her poems. Publications include Comstock, Octillo, Awakenings and Evening Street Reviews, Dash, Slab and Glimpse, among others. She won the 2023 American Writers Review Poetry Contest. Read her poem Wild from The Bluebird Word’s October Issue.

Feliz Año Nuevo/Happy New Year

2 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Amelia Díaz Ettinger

of course, most New Years
Eve, La Nochevieja, were spent
with mi Papá, at home or at La Casa
de España. Him in a tuxedo
to dance with me at intervals
between him and whichever
boy was my fancy at the time.

But mostly it was about the two
of us. Watching fireworks
from the roof of that club,
with its uncertain roots
forged on prejudice
and privilege.

Yet for me the pleasure of la Nochevieja
was staying at home in plain,
comfortable clothes,
with Papi throwing bucket after bucket
of water out the door
—a sacar los males del año

as if our sins and trifle peccadillos
could be washed away with rain

una Nochevieja, he smiled and said,
—pon un huevo en agua
and I did. Placing the raw egg
on a glass of water,
—En la mañana verás el futuro

but in the morning, the future in the glass
was a thin veil of clouded hesitancy,
just as the tide between the young
and the old year. It left no prophesy
of what we would lose, nor
what any New Year can bring back again.

Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a Latinx BIPOC poet and writer. She has three books of poetry and two chapbooks published. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies.

Month: December 2023 (Page 3 of 3)

Nutcracker Memories

Thrift Shop Santa

Fear of Falling

The Radiator

Eleven Elves in Eight Elfchens

Longing for a Close Family

Cordially (in Winter)

Expectations

Echo

Feliz Año Nuevo/Happy New Year

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