Author: Editor (Page 23 of 50)

a close up of herbs in planter box — Photo by Ashley Levinson on Unsplash

John Greenleaf Whittier to the Root-Bound Marjoram

10 June 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Deborah Doolittle

Little bush, gone are the leaves we
lunched on. Gone, too, your green shrubby
symmetry. So like a tree you
stood in the windowsill to view
your cousins—fennel, basil, dill—
thrive then succumb to winter’s chill.
You alone saw the snow blanket
everything in white. Now to get
to this season of brittle twigs
that snap, not bend, devoid of sprigs
that we can eat. I pull your bottom
out, the dirt and roots all clotted
together in the shape of your
container, and I conjecture
on how we should all do so well
with our allotted spot to dwell.

Deborah H. Doolittle, born in Hartford, Connecticut, now calls North Carolina home. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Floribunda and three chapbooks. Some poems have recently appeared in Cloudbank, Comstock Review, Kakalak, and Iconoclast. She shares a home with her husband, four housecats, and a backyard of birds.

Magpie

7 June 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Andy Larter

First of all I hear their harsh clacking. There they are in the cherry tree, two of them, thank goodness, ying-yang, bold and brash. I hold a cup in one hand, towel in the other and, despite their reputation as nest robbers, I love their brilliant whiteness, their dark, glossy tails and wings.

They cackle me back to that time we heard a thud on the window, the one I am looking through now. We turned to see what made the sound and there on the window was the shape of a bird like an old photo negative–vague, ghostly, wings and all. Yvonne locked the cat away as I prowled into the yard. Under the window, stark against the earth lay the bird. I thought it had died but it quickened in my fingers.

Dad said they were evil birds. Yvonne said it’s not all black and white. “Look at that green and blue shimmering in its tail,” she said. He pointed out the cruel dark bill, the way they frighten smaller birds. Mum told us how they often taunted Patches, perching and cackling just out of the cat’s reach. Yvonne thought them clever creatures. She brought a shoebox, some cotton wool and a couple of writhing worms she’d collected from her bed of herbs, placed it on a shelf by the window in the shed.

“I’m going to take care of him,” she beamed. “Make him well again.”

Back indoors I saw the image of the bird remained on the glass and I gazed through it to the yard outside. I took a photo of the pattern, saw that moment through the bird’s eye, tried to focus on what it had seen.

The following morning, when Yvonne went to the shed, the bird had gone. Dad said he had found it on the floor of the shed pecking at crumbs and dust. “I thought it best to let it go,” he said, “and it flew to the aerial. Another one joined it and they went away.”

As I watch the antics of the magpies in the tree today and listen to their bold, aggressive chatter, I shrug and salute them. Then a vision of her magpie reappears in my mind’s eye and, beyond that, some blurred movement in the shed.

Andy Larter is a retired teacher, who, since retiring, has taken writing more seriously. He has had a few pieces published in local magazines and a couple online. He probably doesn’t submit enough but some friends encourage him to do more. He lives quietly in UK with his wife.

close up photo of birds — Photo by Hal Moran on Pexels.com

Wizardry

5 June 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Susan Shea

While I was choosing a
casket for my father a bluebird
tapped on our front living room window
flew to the back window
kept tapping until my husband
stood up to join him
he flew to a nearby branch
making his tu-a-wee sound
sitting right next to a female

my husband immediately believed

it was my father making him know
that he was now with my mother again
tu-a-wee two are we

I mentioned this story to my niece

two days later I gave the eulogy
mentioned that my daughter
repeatedly noticed me singing “we’re
off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard
of Oz” while driving to visit my father

right after the eulogy my niece presented me
with a framed photo of two bluebirds on a branch
with the quote “somewhere over the rainbow
bluebirds sing…the wizard of Oz”
we all made the connection at that moment

tu-a-wee
tu-a-wee
tu-a-wee

you are here
out from behind the curtain
here from beyond the veil

Susan Shea is retired school psychologist who has been a poet since third grade. She has been published under her previous married name, Susan Townsend in Plainsongs, Pudding, Poetry Forum Newsletter, Oxalis, The Orange Review, and the Accordion Flyer. Poetry is what keeps her pilot light on.

bunch of photo print — Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

The Old Photographs

3 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Joan Potter

My ex-son-in-law, who’s been out of my life for several years, just mailed me two photographs. I’m looking at one of them now. It’s an 8 x 10 print, in muted colors overlaid with a faded golden tint. Resting on a table in the foreground is an oblong Pyrex dish holding the remains of a green bean casserole, some creamy sauce still coating the inside corner. Next to it is an earthenware bowl with a spoon balanced on its edge, and a glass half full of red wine.

Across the table sit three of the dozen or so family members celebrating Thanksgiving in my daughter’s dining room. I’m on the left, wearing a red ribbed turtleneck, my grey hair cut short. I’m looking off in the direction of someone out of the picture.

Next to me is my youngest grandson, still with the chubby cheeks of a twelve-year-old. He’s smiling as he digs into his plate of food; he always loved to eat. On his other side is his teenage cousin, face partly hidden by the wine glass in the foreground, glancing with amusement at his young relative.

We always gathered for Thanksgiving dinner at the house my daughter shared with her then-husband and their two girls. It was just a few miles from where my husband and I lived in our New York City suburb. Their house had the most room, as well as a fireplace we could relax in front of after dinner.

The second photograph my ex-son-in-law enclosed was taken in the living room. In this one, my eldest granddaughter, a teenager then, is in the foreground, strumming a guitar with her lips parted in song. My husband, wearing a colorful sweater and khaki pants, is seated in a chair near her, looking thoughtful.

These pictures were taken almost twenty years ago. I don’t know why my former son-in-law decided to send them now. Perhaps he’s feeling sentimental. He and my daughter have been divorced for several years – amicably, she says. The chubby-cheeked grandson is now thirty, an engineer. His older cousin, my second daughter’s son, works on an upstate horse farm. I never hear from him.

The guitar-playing granddaughter lives in a small Midwestern city where she moved to be close to her younger sister, whose husband is studying at the university there. The younger sister is now planning to file for divorce. The older one, the guitar-playing one, is pregnant with her first child. She says she’s been having some problems with her boyfriend, the baby’s father, but they’re working things out. My husband, who was pensively listening to his granddaughter’s song, has been dead for six years.

Now that I’ve pored over these two photographs long enough, there’s no reason to keep them. They’re too big to store and the quality is poor. I already have closet shelves full of albums and boxes stuffed with hundreds of pictures of family as toddlers, teenagers, new parents, grandparents. It can be both enjoyable and painful to sift through them – my mother and father smiling in front of their California house, my four kids eating lobster rolls in Maine, and the many images of my husband, looking proud and content, with various babies resting on his lap.

Joan Potter‘s personal essays have appeared in anthologies and literary journals. Her piece, The Blur, appeared in the January, 2023 issue of The Bluebird Word. Her work has also been published in Persimmon Tree, The RavensPerch, Bright Flash Literary Review, Iron Horse Review, and others. She has published several nonfiction books.

colorful male specie of eastern bluebird starting flight — Photo by Skyler Ewing on Pexels.com

The Bird’s View

1 June 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Tarah Friend Cantore

I perch in my favorite maple tree outside of her home
Grateful to reach my most northern destination from the South.

I peer in through the window.
She is where I left her late autumn.
Writing at her desk
still
I am thankful that hasn’t changed.

What has?
She is wearing glasses. I don’t recall her having them before.
Is her hair more gray or is it just my imagination?
More wrinkles too

Her shoulders are elevated.
Does she recognize the stress within her body?
Should I let her know?
I leave my branch and fly to another nearby
hoping to get her attention.

I do.
She turns to look at me
saying “Hey, Blue! Welcome back!”
She looks back at her journal,
rubs her neck and sensing the tension
instinctively rolls her shoulders
Her chest rises and falls
She’s not coughing anymore. Wonderful.
Three cleansing deep breaths
and another
She likes even numbers.

At the other end of the room
I see more bright paintings
She’s been busy.
One in progress on the easel
Teal fence, blue sky
the Outline of a lighthouse?
Has she traveled recently
or is this a memory from her favorite place
and summer vacations in Maine?

The sun reflects off of her wedding rings.
Thank whatever higher power for that.
She has worked hard on her marriage.
Sparkle

She looks up from the page
out at me again
she wills me to stay
and ask my friends to join
Sunshine and warmth

She looks down
resuming writing
What emotion is she spilling onto the page?
Fiction or nonfiction?
A poem?

Her attention is drawn to the computer screen
She writes a few more lines
concluding with pen down

She looks at her reflection
adjusting her position.
Is her head on straight?
Literally- her posture has been called into question
Figuratively too- her sanity is questionable recently
Is she participating in another virtual writing group?
Does she finally see herself as a writer?

She nods to the other humans,
to me,
to herself.

She believes.

Tarah Friend Cantore has been writing for three years, starting with a non-fiction memoir incorporating her artwork in tough & vulnerable. She wrote and recently published her debut work of fiction, Spiral Bound. Her poetry has been published in the Telling Our Stories Through Word and Image Anthology in 2021 and 2022.

As Simple as That

30 May 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Dale Ritterbusch

My daughter sends me
a photograph of her cat, her lone cat,
lying on her bed next to two other
cats, her boyfriend’s cats
that have just moved in.

They seem to like being together,
no turmoil over the turf,
no petty jealousies
evinced as they lie there, resting
in a cat’s repose.

I think of times lying next to my wife,
just lying there, no movement,
merely an occasional touch,
a hand trailing lightly
along the arm, the shoulder.

It is as if we were cats;
nothing profound escapes our lips,
nothing of importance
to communicate, to fill the silence.

What is profound is the silence,
the touch, the recognition
that this space is filled,
that words are an unnecessary encumbrance
like an additional blanket
when we are already warmed enough.

Dale Ritterbusch is the author of four collections of poetry. He recently retired as a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. His creative work is currently being archived in the Department of Special Collections at La Salle University.

Winter, Snow

28 May 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Luke Nadeau

I am a child of the North,
At the first signs of fall,
It’s like a switch flips,
I’m eager

And by the time those soft, white flakes fall to the ground,
My heart grows tenfold

My skin readily turns pink in that winter chill,
Curious,
That my face should flush the color of spring buds.
When the warmth of longer days is long forgotten,

I recall playing in the snow as a kid,
Making snow angels, snow men,
Doing cartwheels in the snow in my bathing suit,
Then jumping right back into my friend’s hot tub,

But somehow,
In the theater of my mind,
I am not cold

My chest, rather, is warm,
I find solace in these snippets of my past,
Where the biting chill of winter cannot reach me

I wrap myself in the coat of my memories,
Let the scarf of tethered dreams wrap around me,
Keep me safe

With any luck,
I shall never freeze

Luke Nadeau is a student studying Creative Writing at Anoka-Ramsey Community College living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When they aren’t putting pen to paper, or hands to keyboard, they are trying desperately to find their next big CD.

Common Loon

25 May 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Debbie Theiss

Golden glow of aspen sandwiched between
spruce and pine cast shadows across the lake.
Summer wanes, dark comes early. Even loons
give up summer plumage of black-and-white
checked back, black head and neck iridescent.
Replaced with gray feathers, white breast— ready
for migration. The handsome waterbird
calls to its mate, lets out a haunting wail.

Like the formidable swimmer, I molt
throughout the seasons. Auburn, wavy hair
once thick, now gray streaked with white. Bright blue eyes
weary, plump lips drawn into narrow lines—
life’s winter. I let out a mournful cry
for my mate—but—there will be no answer.

Debbie Theiss is an award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee. She finds inspiration for her poetry in the unfolding art of daily life and nature. Her chapbook Perfectly Imperfect was published in July 2021 by Kelsay Books. She has poems published in I-70 Review, River & South Review, and others.

photography of yellow hibiscus under sunlight — Photo by Khanh Le on Pexels.com

Reverie

23 May 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Peter McNamara

I interrupt a cockroach
attempting a backstroke
through the leavings of dinner stew;
he/she seems certain to survive
the age of man.

A guy comes to my door—all insistent
knuckles—with a petition for
improving peninsular life;
I muse as I turn him away . . .
have I thought to return his pen?

Yesterday’s hibiscus wither like
retirees languishing for a
fountain of youth. Lives crisp
beneath remorseless sun:
shadowless, unvarying days.

Roy Orbison renders “Crying” as
Montserrat Caballé paces the wings.
Does time come, or only go?
I should have taken this up
with the cockroach.

Peter McNamara’s “Eating Up Light” appeared in 2022. His work appears in such journals as Center, Main Street Rag, Pembroke Magazine, The Paris Review and Pleiades. He’s a former Wall Street financial editor and lyricist with Polyhymnia and the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus.

The Smart One

21 May 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Lexie Kauffman

“Does anyone know what a heuristic is?” My professor’s voice echoes throughout the expansive biology lab accompanied by the chittering of critters living in the dozens of glass terrariums that line the room. The projector pull down screen shows a stark white PowerPoint slide with only “Heuristic,” written in black text, at the very top. The fluorescent overhead lighting beams onto the class full of unfamiliar faces. Everyone looks older and wiser; they look like they know what they’re doing.

It is my first class on my first day of college and no one knows me. I sit alone at a table meant for four, palms sweaty in the humid room, debating if I should answer the question; but this is my blank slate, my chance to make a first impression on my class and professor. This moment creates my new identity, completely separate from high school.

I can picture the definition of heuristic, painstakingly written out in my AP Psychology vocabulary journal. It sits on the second page of Unit 7.5, nestled between “Algorithm” and “Trial and Error.” The word “Heuristic” is written in red pen, quickly underlined to make it stand out. Underneath lies the definition in black pen: “A rule of thumb problem solving strategy. It makes a solution likely, but it does not guarantee it.” Below that, written in blue ink, is the example: “i before e except after c.” The journal lies forgotten in my bedroom 100 miles away. The black and white composition book with only my name on the cover sits abandoned on an empty desk in an empty bedroom.

I know what a heuristic is. I could easily raise my hand and explain it, but a quick glance reveals that the room full of upperclassmen is confused. No one else knows what a heuristic is, so I stay quiet.

This silence is my new identity. After thirteen years as the “smart” one, I can’t do it again. I owe it to little second grade me who sat suffocating in an observation room as administrators watched her perform academic tasks to test her IQ. I owe it to that outcast that was the only student from her grade in the gifted program.

The silence is synonymous to my response when I was asked at eight years old, “You play video games? I thought you just went home and read textbooks.”

I deserve the silence after teachers called on me for thirteen years, regardless of the status of my hand, because they knew I could answer or ask a relevant question. I revel in the silence, this moment where I am choosing to take control of my intelligence and who knows about it.

It’s powerful, but why does it make my stomach sour?

In my head, I hear the screeching voice of my psychology teacher begging me to raise my hand, insisting that this exact moment is why she filled her class with so much passion.

I imagine my high school gifted teacher’s disappointment that I am letting myself stay silent. If I was in his classroom, I would be teaching the class for him.

I feel my mom’s sadness that I am hiding my intelligence: the part of myself that I place most of my worth in.

But, behind the loud wall of those that have helped me grow and learn, are the sobs of younger me, wondering why she doesn’t have friends, asking why she’s always bored, questioning why the only time she’s chosen first is for group projects.

Everything I’ve ever done is for her. The fancy plaque from graduation was earned by my hard work and dedication, but it belongs to the lonely smart girl that nobody understood. The gold-plated name applies to both girls, but it truly belongs to the one alone in the tiny closet of a gifted classroom, doing group activities alone with the teacher, completely isolated from her peers. I earned that plaque for the girl who sat by herself on a bench engrossed in a new book every day at recess because no one shared her interests. I had to make it mean something, because otherwise all of the pain and heartbreak that public school brought would have been for nothing.

So, I say nothing. The professor proceeds to explain the definition of heuristic and how it applies to the particular slide of information. I’m only half listening because the definition is already scrawled in black pen in my new college-ruled notebook.

He changes the slideshow to the next topic. Text fills the screen accompanied by a grainy black-and-white photograph of Charles Darwin. I let out a little sigh before lifting my pen and starting to write. For the rest of the class, I remain silent.

Lexie Kauffman (she/her) is a Creative Writing and Publishing & Editing double-major at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. When she’s not reading or writing, she is most likely watching Netflix with her friends. Previously, her work has been featured in Rivercraft.