Author: Editor (Page 37 of 62)

On Observing My Daughter At Breakfast

7 May 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Clarence Allan Ebert

My daughter wears a hand-me-down shirt
tie-dyed with the stars, three sizes too big.
Her clothes arrange themselves
in psychedelic constellations.
Her face is a yellow rose through the light
of honey dollops dropping in milk.
She has never tripped and has no band-aids.
She makes no fuss and sleeps with a night light
She is barely aware I love her so much,
oblivious to her own impermanence.

Clarence Allan Ebert celebrated his 70th birthday recently and pledged to maintain some Baby Boomer relevance in the world through the fine craft of poetry. Read his poem from The Bluebird Word‘s January 2023 issue.

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What They Can’t Take Away

4 May 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Raymond Berthelot

The sailboats at anchor
are pulled in one direction
by the tide between the keys

Remember that woman
crazy or drunk, walking by the sanitarium
she too, refused assistance

What is it about moonlight and tropical flowers?
for a while at least
peace seems possible

But back to the sea
and the sun distantly setting, swollen
at a place we’ll never be

Raymond Berthelot is the Historic Sites District Manager for the Louisiana Office of State Parks. His work has appeared in publications such as Progenitor, Mantis, Peregrine Journal, Apricity Magazine, The Elevation Review, the Carolina Quarterly and DASH Literary Journal. A chapbook, The Middle Ages, is available with Finishing Line Press.

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Wolves

2 May 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Alice Collinsworth

When I was very young, my parents assured me
there were no wolves near our home, in spite of fairy tales.
Wolves lived in forests, in mountains, they said.
We had neither trees nor hills.

When I grew older, we visited a zoo, where I saw wolves
kept in cages, pacing, squinting through the insufficient bars
between us. Calculating.

Then came rumors of wolves roaming the plains,
sightings at local farms, small dogs
suddenly missing. I could hear them wail.

Then they came to live with me, right here in town.
They’ve built a den on the porch and they come inside,
helping themselves to sandwiches and wine,
sharpening the knives.

I no longer have a cat.

I slink upstairs and listen to their laughter
and the clink of silverware.
Helpless, I howl in anticipation.

Alice Collinsworth retired recently from a career involving journalism, writing, and media relations. Her poems have been published in several online journals, and she was twice selected as one of Oklahoma’s Woody Guthrie Poets. Her writing has won awards in numerous local and regional contests. She lives near Oklahoma City.

The Litterer and I

30 April 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Marcia Yudkin

This year the litter is blue – a bright, metallic hue found nowhere in nature. Not even our lake sparkling in the reflection of a cloudless sky matches that color. Nestled among stalks of ragweed or heaps of dried-up leaves along the roads near me, blue cans glint in sunlight.

In the past I spotted much more variety in the tossed-out containers: amber Michelob bottles, fruit-colored hard-seltzer cans, translucent one-shot nips of brandy or vodka, red pop-tops sporting the distinctive Coca-Cola script and white Budweisers speckled with red and blue swirls. But this summer and fall, it’s overwhelmingly blue Bud Lights blighting the roadsides.

For years I’ve waged a secret campaign against such aluminum discards. During my daily five-mile walks from home, if a can catches my eye in the quarter-mile or half-mile stretches without any houses I’ll gingerly pick it up and drop it off in the brush beside the next driveway. The cans normally disappear within a week rather than start to form a junkyard. In this way, I spread responsibility for restoring nature’s harmonious palette of greens, grays and browns, so restful to experience.

Why don’t I instead blitz through my walking routes once in a while, adding all the tossed-away cans to a trash bag like a reverse Santa Claus? Humorist David Sedaris did this obsessively in West Sussex, where he lives, his hauls becoming legendary to the point that his district named a garbage truck “Pigpen Sedaris” to honor him.

For me, though, the idea of getting known in my neighborhood as a trash vigilante makes me uneasy. While some would applaud my public service, others might kick dirt in my face over it, like the gun-loving guy one town over who taunted his opposite-politics neighbor by plunking a ratty old portable toilet at the outlet of their shared driveway. It feels safer not to be conspicuous, to carefully stick to the path of peaceful co-existence.

Until this summer and fall, I assumed from the variety of roadside trash that it came from random passers-through, drivers from other towns who had no reason to care if they littered here. “Why do people do this?” I once asked a hiking buddy who grew up in our area. In Massachusetts, Anne told me, it’s illegal to have an open container of anything alcoholic in a moving truck or car. For some reason I didn’t know this.

People who chug a beer on the way home from work therefore toss the can when it’s almost empty, Anne said, so as to not get in trouble if a cop stopped them. Yet never once in 20 years have I seen anyone pulled over by police on our back roads – not for speeding, for having an out-of-date inspection sticker or for anything else. Or maybe they didn’t want folks at home to know how many beers they were drinking.

And now because almost all the cans matched one another and because new empties would show up like overnight tin mushrooms right after I cleared a stretch of road, I began to suspect that this was from just one Bud Light fan who lived nearby. If I tracked where the blue discards appeared and which roads never had them, mightn’t that indicate the culprit’s homeward route – and maybe lead like breadcrumbs to his location? Perhaps he (yes, in my mind it was a man) would nod nicely when I told him the impact of his tosses onto seemingly neglected yet actually cherished verges.

After all, soon after my husband and I first moved to the country, a guy who often canoed in the marsh behind our house came by and complained that the regulation-blue tarp we’d hung up to shelter our back deck from rain spoiled his view. Couldn’t we put up something brown instead? Surprised, we replaced the tarp – almost exactly the vivid hue of the Bud Lights bothering me now – with something matching our dark wood shingles. Since then, the natural colorscape I live amongst has grown on me.

But most likely the litterer would respond with “Who do you think you are, lady?” Right. Who do I think I am? Am I being righteous or self-righteous? Asked in my imagination, the questions echoed and echoed.

As a cleanup fairy, I’m not doing any harm, I finally decided, especially if I move the litter to unobtrusive staging areas instead of next to driveways. One Saturday I hauled seventeen half-smashed blue beasties to the town dump along with my own week’s trash. Soon a blanket of white, growing higher and higher, began to cover any cans I missed. And when the winter sun twinkled, winking at me as I walked were Bud Light-colored reflectors, waist-high on long metal stems, telling the snowplows where not to go.

Marcia Yudkin lives in the woods of Goshen, Massachusetts (population 960). The author of 17 books, she publishes a Substack newsletter called Introvert UpThink (https://www.introvertupthink.com) in which she critiques society’s myths and misunderstandings about introverts.

The Phone Call

25 April 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Laura L. Feldman & Stephen M. Feldman

I willed my phone to ring. The literary agent had scheduled the call for 2:00 p.m. Not yet late, still one minute before the hour.

I had dreamed of being a writer since junior high, when I’d written my first story for an honors English class. The A+ didn’t hurt, and neither did my mom’s encouragement.

My novel manuscript had consumed two years of writing and rewriting. Before contacting agents, I devoted a month to crafting a query that pitched the story and my writing background in three flawless paragraphs. I sent it to fifteen agents. Three requested the full manuscript.

A month later I received an email scheduling this phone appointment. Soon I would be talking with an agent who wanted to represent me and sell my novel.

I would be a writer. ‘Yes, I’ve published a novel,’ I would say. No longer a poseur.

I checked the time again.

Two minutes late. It didn’t mean anything. I needed to relax, act as if I spoke to agents all the time.

I glanced at my list of questions, lifted from several books about landing an agent. Prepare for the phone call, they all instructed. Don’t immediately say, ‘Yes, yes, yes! I want you to be my agent.’ Ask questions. What did she like about the manuscript? What were the weaknesses? What changes would she want to see before submitting it to publishers? Did she have a plan for the submission process?

Act like a professional writer.

Three minutes late.

Had I gotten the day wrong? Was the call scheduled for tomorrow rather than today? I opened the agent’s email.

I’d already read the brief message at least a dozen times. But I reread it again, twice: “Can you talk about your ms. this coming Thursday at 2 p.m., ET?”

No mistake. It was today.

The phone buzzed. I checked the screen and my stomach hardened into a knot. This call would change my life.

The phone buzzed again. I took a deep breath and answered.

“Hello,” I squeaked. “Sorry.” I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello, this is Sara Klein.”

“Hi, Sara,” said a sweet lilting voice.

“Hello,” I said, for the third time.

“Just so you know, I’m not calling to offer representation.”

“What?”

“I want to be clear at the outset. So you’re not disappointed. Or confused.”

The ice cracked and I crashed through. Panicking, I opened my mouth to scream and freezing water rushed in. I was drowning in the darkness. Which way was up, which way was down?

“Some writers,” she said, her voice muffled and distant, “think this first phone call is to offer representation.”

“No,” I croaked. “Of course not.”

I glanced at my list of questions. Nothing there suggested an appropriate response.

“If you’re amenable,” she said, “I’d like to discuss your manuscript and some changes I’d like to see.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, holding in my tears.

“If you rewrite it,” she continued, “I’d be willing to take another look at it.”

“That would be great,” I managed to say.

“No promises of course.”

“That makes sense. You’ll have to read the—”

“I don’t want to mislead you. I plan to read the rewrite, if you do it. But at this stage, I can’t promise I’ll have the time.”

“Oh.” I squeezed my temples. What were we even discussing, then? “I understand.”

“Do you still want to proceed?”

“Please,” I wanted to hang up, throw my manuscript in the trash, and cry for a month. “Go ahead,” I said.

“Wonderful. The first thing I noticed was a problem with the plot.”

“The plot?” Shit. Shit. Shit.

“That’s right. After the first plot point—”

“Hold on,” I said, clicking my ball point pen. “Just one second.” I flipped the page where I’d jotted my useless questions. “Sorry. I’m ready.”

And she was off and running, tearing the manuscript apart. I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t comprehend enough to ask intelligent questions. I tried to take copious notes, nearly transcribing the conversation. Later on, after I calmed down, I might be able to learn from my notes and benefit from this torturous experience.

If an agent, any agent, was willing to critique my manuscript, I should consider myself lucky—that’s what I reminded myself. Despite my disappointment, I would rewrite and send the manuscript to her again. Of course I could do exactly what she wanted, and she could still reject it. Or I might not even hear back from her. She hadn’t even committed to reading the next version.

As she talked, I decided to send the rewrite to other agents as well. Why not?

The phone call ended abruptly. She had another appointment. Maybe with an actual client? I didn’t ask.

Hollowed, drained of motivation, I riffled through my three pages of notes without comprehending them. My gaze shifted to the desk drawer on the lower right. I didn’t want to do it. But I couldn’t fool myself any longer. Neither this agent nor any other would likely offer representation.

I swallowed, my throat dry and raspy. Then I slid open the drawer and pulled out a stack of law school applications. I’d put it off long enough.

Laura L. Feldman writes and edits for the Wyoming Survey & Analysis Center. She has degrees and certificates from the University of Oregon, Stanford, and Harvard. Stephen M. Feldman is the Housel/Arnold Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Wyoming. He has published several short stories and nonfiction books.

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I learned self-destruction from a cartoon

23 April 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Esther Sadoff

All morning, sweat springs from Arnold’s brow
as he awaits the beatdown at the end of the day:

a pummeling between him and a huge kid
and everyone knows who’s going to win.

I’ve been lowered a few rungs by self-deprecation.
Folded myself into impressive origami-smallness.

I’ve thrown in the towel, waved a white flag, and run
for the hills but in this episode of Hey Arnold!,

Arnold actually starts to hit himself in the school yard,
a dizzying kaleidoscope of faces spinning round,

but what stands out most are their egg-shaped
eyes vacant and hungry for action.

Arnold gives himself such an insane beating
that he scares the bully into submission.

I’d like to think of myself exactly like that:
two sides of the mirror fighting each other,

a reflection that won’t quit, myself standing over
(or under) my other self and declaring it some kind of win.

Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others.

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The House

20 April 2023 / Editor

Poetry by G. Milton

The house, like my childhood, abandoned.
Withered, worn, and saddened.
The broken door hangs by its rusty hinges.
Once mighty, now only cringes.

The windows, like my dreams, shattered.
Shiny shards of glass tossed and scattered.
The ragged steps creak and sway
buckling under the stress of another torrid day.

The roof, like my life, dilapidated and leaking.
Much like the tears I’m constantly weeping.
The paint just peels and fades away.
Once vibrant, now, only a somber gray.

The foundation, like my soul, buckled and cracked.
Trembling like a kitten being attacked.
Once strong, stubborn, and sturdy.
Now, broken, weakened, and dirty.

The house, like me, has been through it all.
Beaten, battered, ready to fall.
Although we dread the next inevitable storm,
inside us both, it is still inviting and warm.

G. Milton is a part time writer and full-time grandparent.

Counting

18 April 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Ann Bracken

I always count. Drinks, that is. I notice how many times a guy refills his beer glass or how many glasses of wine my friend drinks. I used to count my husband’s beers every night—up to three, he was pretty nice. After that, at around five, he went one of two ways—either he fell asleep on the sofa and snored like a buzz saw or he wanted to have sex. Go figure, especially after so much alcohol.

I counted how many cases of beer I had to buy a week. Why did I have to buy the beer anyway? I wasn’t drinking it. I hated beer, its stickiness, its stale smell in the morning when he didn’t finish a can. I drank wine, but usually only one glass. The two hangovers I’d experienced in college acted as powerful deterrents. And looming over every social occasion, the specter of my mother’s alcohol abuse clung to me like a shroud.

Parties were the worst—when he had too many beers for me to count. I could always tell because he’d come find me, and spit out a barrage of cruel jokes.

One of his favorite lines went like this, “Man, you should see her when she stumbles around the badminton court. She couldn’t hit the birdie if it flew into her racket.”

If we were playing pool, he gave a running commentary of every shot I took. “Whoa, first time you ever picked up a cue, sweetie?” or “If you want to be sure and win, just ask Annie to shoot a round with you.”

He’d get everyone laughing at me and then refuse to leave the party when I’d had enough. He always drove home. I was so numb to his drinking and pot smoking, I never questioned his fitness to drive.

“Sounds like an alcoholic to me,” the counselor said when I described how Randy never appeared drunk even after five or six beers. “High tolerance. That’s a sign.”

I never connected Randy’s drinking and his abusive behavior because he always teased me or made fun of me in front of people. It was just worse when we were at parties and I couldn’t leave when I’d had enough.

After the divorce, I dated a great guy—a lawyer at the EPA who invited me to dinner and a jazz concert. He had a martini before dinner, and I joined him. Then he ordered a glass of wine. I began counting. On our second date, he told me one of his brothers was homeless because he was an alcoholic. “My dad’s an alcoholic, too, but he always kept his job.” I figured his odds for having a problem. Every time we went out, he had a martini or Manhattan before dinner and then some wine. I kept counting.

“Last night, I went to a dinner party with some friends, and I had too much to drink.”

“What does that look like?” I asked.

“Not much. I just get kind of loud and talk a lot. Make stupid jokes.”

Sometimes the danger signals flash early. My stomach lurched as he described his embarrassing behavior, which sounded all too much like Randy’s.

“That’s not going to work for me,” I told him. I added “bad dinner party behavior” to his count.

One night as he measured out gin for his martini, he spilled it on the counter. Before I could give him a paper towel, he bent over and slurped it up. The next morning, I asked him if he’d ever gone to AA. “Yeah, but only because my ex-girlfriend insisted. I’m not really an alcoholic.”

I totaled up his count. “If you want to keep seeing me, you need to stop drinking and go to AA.”

He called me a few days later. “It’s 9PM and I’m having my first glass of wine for the evening.”

When I asked if he’d made a decision, he said, “You’re almost enough to make me stop drinking.”

I was tired of counting.

Ann Bracken has published three poetry collections and a memoir. She serves as a contributing editor for Little Patuxent Review and co-facilitates the Wilde Readings Poetry Series in Columbia, Maryland. She volunteers for the Justice Arts Coalition, exchanging letters with incarcerated people to foster their use of the arts.

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Hide and Seek

16 April 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Robert F. Bradford

First, I hid my opinions
Nobody wanted to hear them anyway
Then, I hid my desires
Nobody wanted to fulfill them anyway
Next, I hid my plans
Nobody was interested anyway
Automatically, I hid my visions
Nobody shared them anyway
Of course, I hid my songs
Nobody wanted to sing them anyway
Always, I hid my stories
Nobody could grasp them anyway
Barely, I hid my art
Nobody could fail to distort it anyway
Finally, I hid myself
Away from all the nobodies.

Then I sought that hidden self
And all the lovely somebodies
Appeared.

Robert F. Bradford has won two Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards (Best Play, Fringe of Marin Festival), and been produced in the Midtown International Theatre Festival (NYC). Stories in The Raven’s Perch and Slow Trains Literary Journal. He is an Adjunct Professor of English and Humanities at Dominican University of California.

Epithalamium

13 April 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Trent Busch

The quilt rack I’m building
for my nephew was commissioned
in a silent deal: I’ll make
you one on the promise
I’m spared the ceremony.

He made no promise, nor
was asked for one outside
the conversation I
tied the ribbon on of
present without presence.

How could he? Those other
ones who see the moment
of their lives beyond the whims
of sickness, golf, or I’d
rather be in Georgia.

It’s three-quarters finished,
the arches a ring of
laminated oak,
dowels, stretchers, and base
a half year in the planning

to remind them on their June
day of Christmases
and the hard snowy nights
shared by their ancestors
in new, west Virginia.

In my mind, except for
flowers, I’ve played their song,
done the dance and built my
part of the bargain. Where they’ll
get the quilt I don’t know.

Trent Busch, a native of rural West Virginia, now lives in Georgia where he writes and makes furniture. His poem “Edges of Roads” was the 2016 First Place winner of the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize.