Author: Editor (Page 18 of 46)

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.

Beauty

5 July 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Paul Hostovsky

The way her hands danced across the braille page, it was a beautiful choreography to behold. Her left hand beginning each line, handing it off to her right hand halfway across the page, the right hand finishing the line as the left moved down to begin reading the next line. Left hand to right hand to left hand to right hand. Expert, fleet, like a concert pianist, or like relay runners in a race, the handoff accomplished seamlessly over and over, line by line down the page, page by page through the book, book by book through his entire childhood.

There was never a time when he didn’t know it. He’d learned it with his ABCs, fingering the raised dots with his tiny hands, sitting in his mother’s lap as she read to him aloud from the print/braille children’s books while he looked at the pictures. B was but, C was can, D was do. M was more. M with a dot five in front was mother. White dots on a white page, but they cast these tiny shadows so he could see them in the light. Like a country of igloos as seen from an airplane on a sunny winter morning.

Having blind parents was as unremarkable as having breakfast in the kitchen, having mail in the mailbox, having rain on rainy days and sun in the summertime. Lending his mother or father his shoulder–his elbow as he grew taller–was like offering his arm to the sleeve of his own jacket, like giving his hand to his other hand. He thought nothing of it, didn’t even have a word for it until he started kindergarten and the word got spat on the ground by some ugly mouths on the playground, older boys snickering and pointing, mimicking his parents as they swept their white canes back and forth, back and forth. Click sweep, click sweep, click sweep.

Those white canes. At home they leaned quietly against the wall like backslashes in the unpunctuated dark. Or else they sat folded underneath a chair or table like bundles of long chalk, a red one in each. K was knowledge. P was people. And the braille dictionary in seventy-two volumes was stacked practically to the ceiling, like a cord of wood.

His mother would stop reading, open her watch then close it, click, reach under her chair for her cane and open it, chick-a-chick, into a white line which she swept across an invisible line which she walked, out the door and down the street to the grocery store. Q was quite, U was us.

Braille was dots in a cell, lots and lots of cells. Each cell was a three-story building at dusk, the lights on in certain windows, not others. Each book was a city, where he and his mother looked through the windows, their fingers pressed to the panes.

Outside it’s beginning to snow. And each snowflake is a different character in the Complete Works of Beauty, which contains no mistakes that he has ever been able to find. And he has looked—he has looked his whole life—but has never found a single mistake.

Paul Hostovsky makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter and Braille instructor. His latest book of poems is Pitching for the Apostates (forthcoming 2023, Kelsay Books). Website: paulhostovsky.com

Roller Coaster

3 July 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Mary Zelinka

It’s 1973 and I’m working at the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Denver. I’m twenty-five and at the tail end of my marriage. Only one of our two cars runs at a time and my husband uses it. After we drop our four-year-old Bobby off at the sitter’s at 6:00 AM, he drives me to work. I’m always an hour early. I spend this hour in the bank cafeteria’s kitchen tagging after Velma and her twelve-inch beehive hairdo as she fixes me breakfast and spouts raunchy jokes. This is the best part of my day.

After work, I take the bus home. This is the worst part of my day. Crowds of people jostle for position – if you don’t make the first bus, which I rarely do – you have to wait twenty minutes for the next. Then I’m late picking Bobby up and we have to walk the mile home in the dark.

On this particular summer afternoon as I’m being shouldered about on the sidewalk, I hear a loud voice, thick with accent, “Vitch bus the Elitch Garden? I must to ride famous roller coaster!”

It’s sweltering hot, in the way heat beats down on a city. My thin cotton dress feels damp as my opponents for the first bus press close. But the louder the Voice grows, the wider the space between me and the crowd becomes. Finally, the Voice is right next to me, and, since I haven’t learned (will never learn, actually) not to make eye contact with anyone in the city, he is looking at me right in the eyes.

“Vitch bus the Elitch? I must to ride roller coaster!” I look around at the other bus riders, but everyone keeps their gaze firmly fixed at some point far away. I shake my head and shrug my shoulders at the man.

Deep lines cut through his big square face, his smile wide. He laughs, a great booming laugh. And then, to my increasing anxiety, unbuttons the left cuff of his heavy long-sleeved shirt (how could he wear such a shirt on this hot day?) and begins rolling up his sleeve in an alarming manner.

He flexes his bicep at me and laughs. “Russian! Ninety years! Strong!” Not sure of the proper behavior in this situation, I nod at him and smile.

“I like you!” He’s no taller than I am, but he wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the sidewalk. He tosses me upwards a bit, the way you would a child, and then sets me down. My legs wobble.

“I find the Elitch Garden! Ride roller coaster!” And he marches on down the street just as the first bus sighs to a stop. The crowd shoves past and I’m vaguely aware of the bus leaving without me as I stare after him.

My husband and I divorce not long afterwards. He leaves me the car with the payments and my bus riding days come to an end.

Six months later, I am downtown at night on a date. It’s late and has been snowing. The sidewalks are slick and Jack has his arm around me as we leave the restaurant.

Suddenly a short square man marches up to us, stops, and peers into my face. “You!” He laughs his booming laugh. “I find Elitch! Roller coaster fast!” I laugh with him, but I notice Jack takes his arm from around me and moves a half step away.

“Still strong!” The Russian flexes his bicep at me, thankfully leaving all his clothing securely buttoned. He wraps his arms around me and tosses me upwards. This time my legs do not wobble when he sets me down. He laughs and then marches off into the night.

I look up at Jack, thrilled that he witnessed this event. He had accused me of making the Russian up.

His face has gone dark.

Later I will realize Jack’s reaction accurately foretold my next four years. And by the time I escape him, this dark look has become normal.

But in that moment, watching the Russian materialize through the snow, giant flakes clinging to his hair, his wide smile upon recognizing me, I am so taken with the magicalness of his existence I am filled with joy.

Mary Zelinka lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and has worked at the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence for almost 35 years. Her writing has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Brevity, and Multiplicity.

Photo of Father's Coat (courtesy of author)

My Father’s Coat, in Three Acts

1 July 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Cheryl Sadowski

How old am I—four? five? awaiting my father’s arrival. I stare out the picture window of our living room watching snow fall like feathers when his car rolls into the driveway. The door swings open, and my mother cheerfully calls out. I see my father’s face and run headlong into his herringbone coat: it smells of spice, wool, and winter. I huddle against his legs and look down at his shiny black shoes. Whether or not my father loves his herringbone coat, or even likes it, I cannot say. Only that it is his.

So called for its resemblance to fish bones, herringbone is an interlocking pattern of zig-zag lines known for strength and durability. Ancient Egyptians borrowed the design from nature for their jewelry. Romans laid roads in a herringbone pattern. Herringbone tweed began as a working man’s cloth, serious and sturdy, to guard against the damp climates of Scotland and England.

My father’s coat is classic herringbone, tightly woven, with woolen Vs in black and gray, and an expertly tailored, glossy black lining. A sewn-in patch indicates provenance: Diamond’s Store for Men, a sartorial staple for professional attire during the 1960s and 70s.

For years the coat hangs in our cramped foyer closet amid a cadre of more flamboyant jackets: my mother’s Christmas cloak, my younger brother’s recreational wear, my high school letter jacket with a giant green ‘M’ emblazoned on the breast. I catch a glimpse of herringbone pattern—steadfast, stoic—whenever I grab my own coat and run out the door.

II.

My father’s coat accompanies me to college in Wisconsin, though I have no memory of asking him if I could take it. I wear it walking to classes, laughing and kicking through snow drifts with friends on the way to Ivan’s Pizza. Wisconsin winters are stark and cold. The herringbone acts like armor, blunting the sharp winds.

The coat is too big for me, but when I pair it with black biker boots and patterned tights, I love the way it makes me feel: artistic, complicated, like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. It is a warm, woolen talisman, cloaking me after nasty rows with my boyfriend. When I wear the herringbone with a pink velvet scarf, I am La Boheme! conjugating French verbs while I walk … je travaille, tu travailles, il travaille.

I recall a scene from Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary: Emma Bovary, fresh from the winter air, lifts her hem to warm her foot by the fire, the allure and power of her well-revealed ankle. The hem of my father’s coat brushes over the tops of my boots when I walk. My calves are strong and young beneath its shelter. I saunter, sing-songing, insouciant, and free.

III.

It’s February. Seated on a cold, steel outdoor bench, I wait for the train. Beneath the elevated platform, office workers escape the manacles of cubicles and conference rooms. I, too, am tethered to the office, and to Chicago rents and utility bills. My father’s coat, now vintage, is admired by colleagues.

Snow sifts down through the mesh muslin sky. I raise the crook of my elbow to my nose and breathe in deeply. The coat’s fibers are still coarse and sturdy, the herringbone pattern so close, familiar. But the memory is thin, a wavering white veil between myself and my childhood.

I can’t see my father’s face to know if he is happy or tired or anxious. I long for the smell of spice, wool, and winter. My black biker boots are long gone, and I have no idea what became of my pink velvet scarf.

I reach back to the classroom: Nous travaillons. We are working.

The train approaches, a rushing ribbon of herringbone on iron wheels, unspooling, unstoppable. I stare at the long track ahead. It bends around the corner and disappears into the distance. Briefcase in hand, I rise and brush the snow from my lap. For the first time I notice that my father’s coat is heavy.

Cheryl Sadowski writes essays and short fiction that explore the connections of everyday life with landscape, literature, art, and the natural world. Her writing appears in About Place Journal, Vita Poetica, Orchards Poetry Journal, EcoTheo Review, Broadkill Review, After the Art, and Bay to Ocean Journal. She lives in Northern Virginia.

Defining Silence

29 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Candy Hamilton

As I take notes on Latin influence in Indo-European languages, playground noises easily distract me. On the school playground across the street, a dozen or so kids are shifting in some ad hoc football game, full of passes and soprano yells. Long after the bell shrills over the thuds on the playground. Mostly the voices blur, but now and then from my living room rocking chair, I distinctly hear, “No it didn’t go out. No we don’t need ’em.” I have much more to do than watch youngsters celebrating a warm fall day, but nothing better to do than watch surrogates for my grandchildren three hundred miles away, so I lean forward in my chair to peer through the storm door window.

Two kids weave their bicycles through the ad-lib formations without bothering the football players. I’m watching two ballet performances winding through each other. One boy, (They are all boys, I think) taller than the others, already has that loose-limbed walk that comes with adolescence and for some never disappears. Slack arms pumping faster, more flowing than his legs, he moves as if his muscles and bones float in water. He knows nothing about gravity, and his shoulders have a life of their own.

Finally a smaller boy actually catches the ball and runs triumphant toward the fence—straight toward me. If he knew I was here, now standing behind the door, perhaps he’d leap the fence, the road, score his touchdown through my front door. Green Bay style. Perhaps he’d prefer to leap the tree where the birds and squirrels make up the cheering section, or perhaps they sound more like coaches cussing and raising hell over so many dropped passes.

The kids don’t have a running game except for chasing the ball bouncing in its oval wobbles around the paved playground. A break in the action, and finally I notice the empty parking lot—no school today. These boys have scrimmaged through a perfect unending recess while I dreaded the arrival of teachers or a principal full of discipline.

Then the kids start a kicking game, pretty much straight up straight down, so that one kicker catches his own punt—the only catch in this game. Nobody cares. They just want to run, kick, and yell the freedom of their day-off. The bicycles join two rollerbladers, a moving horizontal backdrop to the vertical kicking game.

One last thud and the players disappear, only their voices (words even less discernible) walking back through the trees. They wander off in all directions, pairs, threesome, a little round one churning his legs to keep up, three spans of his legs to the others’ steps. Only the squirrels and birds and I remain to consider an empty, silent playground. Now so many distant words run together, they are like silence; the same as the blend of squirrels, birds, refrigerator hum, my breathing, the occasional turning of a book page, no silence at all.

Having celebrated the freedom of ignoring school bells, the kids go home to complain they have nothing to do. I do not have to hear those words to know they say them.

Candy Hamilton, an award winning journalist and poet, has also published essays and short stories in many literary magazines and national publications. She lives in Rapid City, S.D., with three rescued dogs and a ridiculous number of books.

Julia and Chang

27 June 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Brett Scott

And here’s the opening, the opportunity you’ve been waiting for, Julia told herself, looking in Chang’s direction, who now sat alone on the other side of the garden. His assistant, after seeing him to a comfortable spot and getting all of his various affairs in order, had promptly left him unattended, which was a rarity as far as Julia had seen this week. Although she and Chang had known each other as children, he was eventually transferred to California, leaving the two out of touch. Chang was famous now, and far too good for her, as far as Julia was concerned. In truth, his success was somewhat more modest than she understood, but his image did grace screens and billboards across the country. He had returned to Omaha just a handful of times on his promotional tours, and Julia had finally worked herself up to trying to reconnect with him on his present trip.

The garden was Julia’s favorite place. In the middle of a bustling and chaotic world, she had only this small piece of paradise. The sunlight, filtered through the shade of the lofty trees, gave her body comfort, and the sound of the softly trickling stream gave her spirit peace. And although she couldn’t believe he had started showing up there out of the blue that week, she was overcome with excitement to see him again. Just do it, Julia. It’s now or never, she encouraged herself, standing up from her spot beside the stone wall.

Slowly and nervously making her way across the garden, she watched as some of the passersby took notice of Chang. This was normal for him, she thought. As they smiled and pointed, he simply nodded back politely and resumed his business. Steadily, in only the time it took for her to advance, Chang’s number of gawkers increased to the proportion of a small crowd. Chang remained ever stoic, even as the cluster began pulling out their phones and pointing their cameras toward him.

Chang, peering subtly around the garden in hopes of catching a glimpse of his assistant’s return, instead noticed Julia, who now stood only several yards away beneath the shade of a pine tree. They smiled at each other, and Julia thought she saw his face warm with the spark of recognition. But just as quickly, Chang bowed his head politely, yet indiscriminately, toward her and then resumed anxiously scanning the grounds for his assistant. Discouraged, but not defeated, Julia approached Chang.

“Chang! I—It’s me, Julia.” Again, Chang looked in her direction, but his expression was vague and empty, as though he hadn’t heard her speak at all. Julia swallowed hard and spoke again. “I’m sorry. You might not remember, but we were friends a long time ago… Do you remember? We used to play in this garden. Chang?” Chang stood up and gazed deep into Julia’s eyes. A look crossed him as though he was about to reply. Instead, and without forewarning, he softly tumbled down onto the grass in front of her. “Chang?” Rolling onto his back, belly in the air, he turned his head away from Julia and back towards the direction in which he last saw his assistant. Tears began creeping into Julia’s eyes, but she did her very best to blink them away. “Anyway, Chang, it was nice to see you… And I’m sorry if I’ve bothered you.”

As she walked back towards the pine tree with her head down, she turned to get one last look at Chang. Still lying on his back, he was now grabbing fallen leaves from the ground and tossing them in the air to playfully enjoy their descent. He’s changed so much and yet not at all, she thought—the tears finally breaching from both eyes and rolling down her cheeks. Then, from high atop the stone retaining wall, Julia heard a young girl shout.

“Look, they’re bringing out the food!”

“That’s right, Addie. And what do pandas eat?” The girl’s mother responded.

“Bamboo!” Several of the children shouted in unison, having just learned this fact from the tour guide. The families watched as the enclosure door opened and Chang’s attendant emerged carrying a bundle of bamboo stalks. Chang urgently leapt upward and embraced his attendant with joy, almost knocking the poor teenage boy to the grass. The boy laughed as he surrendered some of the bamboo to Chang, who couldn’t get to work eating it fast enough. Grabbing the remaining stalks, the boy then came up to Julia, who was now lying sullenly in her spot on the other side of the enclosure.

“There there, big girl… He’ll come around one of these days,” he assured her, patting the top of her head and laying the bamboo before her on the rocks. Julia watched as the attendant crossed back through the garden, stopping only to rub Chang’s belly and then exiting through the same door in which he entered. She looked at Chang as he happily munched away, and then up to the families on the ledge, who laughed as they held out their phones—some of the children were doing their very best Chang impressions. Julia laid her head back down on the rock and closed her eyes, hoping the day would just end.

Brett Scott is a writer from the Kansas City area.

My one true love is golden like the sun

25 June 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Riley Davis

My one true love is golden like the sun
With specks of green like the fresh morning grass
Truly, for me you are the only one
That I will want forever in my grasp

I greedily want you all to myself
Since of you, there is not a great bounty
Although you are also selfish yourself
When I’ve had more than my fill, you hurt me

I love you when you are warm and fluffy
As everyone deems you should always be
I love you when you are cold and greasy
For I love you in all states, I decree

You nourish my heart and keep my soul fed
My true love for all of time: garlic bread

Riley Davis‘s eyes were first opened to the world of fiction with Harry Potter when she was eight, and they have not closed since. Although most of her creative work for her college career has been writing for games, she enjoys writing short stories and poems as well.

white duck swimming on clear water — Photo by hasan kurt on Pexels.com

Duck Duck Goose

22 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Alice Lowe

Sociability—inclined by nature to companionship with others of the same species

Singular in her snowy splendor, the white goose floated majestically in the Balboa Park lily pond amid a raft of small mallard ducks, the males’ iridescent green heads, the females stippled brown. A groundskeeper told me, “She appeared one day and hasn’t left.” Was she lost, separated from her flock? Or, maybe, a loner within her own species, she chose this idyllic spot.

Geese and ducks are social animals, happiest in groups, gaggles of geese, rafts of ducks. Marine turtles, blue whales, snow leopards, polar bears, jaguars, orangutans, giant pandas, and platypuses are instinctively solitary. Compared to owls, sloths, deer, octopi, wolves, beavers, meerkats, and house cats (mine included), which are considered introverts.

The cartoon shows a passel of partying possums, smiling faces and wine glasses in hand. One is splayed out on the floor, face up. A bystander says to another: “He’s fine; he just plays dead when he’s had enough socializing.” I send the cartoon to a few friends, with the notation, “This is me.” Except I don’t play dead—I disappear.

Humans are social animals, though to varying degrees. Sociability is a measure of how much interaction with others a person needs. Social isolation can lead to adverse health consequences, as was seen during the Covid pandemic, but most of us have regular interaction with others at work or home or out and about. I’m an introvert but not a recluse. I like people, but I prefer them one to one, in small doses. Being coupled with a kindred spirit, my social needs are satisfied without leaving the house.

One day, months later, as my goose glides around the pond, her mirror image reflected by the water, I suddenly question her identity. Back home I study photographs—geese and ducks, white geese and white ducks, side by side. The shape of the head, the curve of the bill, the length of the neck. Now it’s obvious—she’s a Pekin duck. Not quite the outsider I’d thought, she’s not alone or lonely. I suspect she’s like me, as sociable as she wants or needs to be.

Alice Lowe’s flash nonfiction was published in September 2022 in The Bluebird Word, and also this past year in Change Seven, Drunk Monkeys, Midway, Eclectica, Eat Darling Eat, Fauxmoir, Idle Ink, Potato Soup, and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. Alice writes about life, literature, food and family in San Diego, California, posted at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.

After the Blizzard

20 June 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Wally Swist

The fox prints puncturing the surface
of the snow after the blizzard
score its whiteness—
the same four notes pressing themselves
over and over again, in a meandering line
across a page, that is more silence
than music, but is still a melody that
can barely be heard,
shadows filling the tracks beneath
the pine branches shifting in the wind.

But it is the sound of the bells
that not so much startles me
as it offers me solace, ringing
from a distance, this soft chiming of sleigh
bells, until as it gets closer, it is more
of a whistle, the notes becoming distinct—
making me aware of its velocity, now
in flight, the tinkling call of a white-throated
sparrow, streaking close to my ear, melding
its voice with the streaming winter sunlight.

Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds and Nature, winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Poetry Prize.

Haleakala Sunrise

18 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Sherri Wright

The sky is pitch black and the temperature drops from seventy degrees to the thirties as our son-in-law drives the switchback road up the mountain. The trip is only twenty miles but it will take us more than two hours to reach the summit of Haleakala at 10,023 feet. Cramped into the back seat my husband, our nineteen year old grandson, and I flop into each other on every hairpin turn and our ears pop as we continue the climb. My daughter follows the route on her phone warning Azi of steep drop offs and approaching turns. Jenny wants to share with her husband and son the experience she remembers when she came here as a child.

At the top we step out of the warm car into a cutting wind and an immense dark sky — not just above but wrapping all around us — uninterrupted by tree or cloud or human made thing. And millions and millions of stars unobstructed by light pollution. The landscape is a monochrome grey surface of lava and rocks like I imagine on the face of the moon. We make our way up an uneven stone path toward the rim of the crater. Hundreds of people in parkas, rain coats and blankets murmur over the whisper of the wind. Jenny and I talk about how years ago we’d worn sandals and wrapped ourselves in beach towels but today the air feels so cold and the wind so bitter that I can’t stop shaking. Harry gives me his hoodie and swears he’s not cold. Sunrise won’t happen for another hour and a half. The thin air makes us feel light headed.

As the dark begins to lift, a warm blush rises above the horizon and exposes the width of the bowl and the depth of the cavern below. Few plants are able to survive here but scattered down the cinder slopes of the crater I see round grey bundles of silver sword. This ahinahina can live up to ninety years. Once in its lifetime it sends up a spectacular six foot stalk of vibrant purple flowers, then dies and scatters seeds to the wind. Here on Haleakala is the only place in the world the ahinahina grows. The mood is mystical. Early Hawaiians believed that the demigod Maui stood at this summit and lassoed the sun to slow its journey and lengthen the day. Thus, the name Haleakala means “house of the sun.”

In a swirl of light and grey and yellow, mauve and orange hues, a hush comes over the crowd and then an eerie silence. A silence I can feel in my chest and my bones. When the sun appears then quickly rises above the rim, the throng breaks into gentle applause. Black silhouettes in the glow, my daughter hugs her son.

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.