Author: Editor (Page 35 of 62)

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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.

The Dawn Chorus

15 June 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Ruth Holzer

House sparrows, dull smudges of brown and gray,
begin to chirp. Though they sound like dripping faucets
they’re welcome as the messengers of light,

for another night has passed and we’re still here;
for the day approaches when we won’t be roused,
but sleep on, unaware of them and every other thing.

Ruth Holzer is the author of eight chapbooks, most recently Home and Away (dancing girl press) and Living in Laconia (Gyroscope Press). Her poems have appeared in journals including Southern Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Slant, Poet Lore and Freshwater. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations.

piano keys — Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

For Sale: Kawai Upright Piano, $1,250

12 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Angela Kasumova

Available now! A Kawai Upright Piano, in excellent condition, beautiful walnut finish. Purchased new eight years ago by a father for his daughter. She’d been taking lessons for six years and practicing on a broken, hand-me-down piano, but when her father started having an affair, new things suddenly materialized. Like a computer, to replace the typewriter she struggled to write school papers on, and then a few months later, the piano. The daughter treasured this piano, its timely arrival allowing her to finally take pleasure in playing her most practiced and favorite pieces: Daydream by Tchaikovsky and To a Wild Rose by Edward MacDowell. And though she only played it for a year or so before she stopped lessons, it was the one thing she absolutely had to bring with her when she and her mother eventually fled. It moved with her from her semi-rural childhood house to an urban apartment, and finally to the condo her mother purchased upon her divorce, where it resides now. It’s been gently used these past few years to play Christmas songs or figure out melodies the daughter and her boyfriend enjoy, like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which is much harder than it sounds. It breaks this daughter’s heart to be selling this lovely instrument, but she needs extra money to pay for student health insurance, and this is the only item of value she owns. She doesn’t know how much she’ll miss this piano or how much she’ll regret letting it go. She doesn’t know how she’ll wish she’d found another way. Financial worries and unprocessed grief cloud her vision, but perhaps her loss may be your gain. See above: excellent condition, beautiful walnut finish.

Serious buyers only, please.

Angela Kasumova is a lifelong writer and reader with over a decade of experience working in the fields of mental health and education. She lives with her husband and sons near Boston, Massachusetts.

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.