Author: Editor (Page 59 of 70)

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We Were Bugs

24 August 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Thomas E. Strunk

Growing up in a trailer park, one rarely feels significant. But we still had the bugs to look down on. I don’t know what went wrong with me, a boy from the forest bothered by bugs. Sure I was fascinated by the water-skaters that danced over the crick out back. I stood in awe at the ant hills we’d come upon in the woods, but had no desire to poke them. At best I ignored the daddy-long-legs that crawled over the hillside in summer. Yet at some point in my youth a fear crept in at things that crawled, perhaps it was a late-night movie, but more likely the katabasis I endured when I was twelve, my descent multiple times beneath our siding-enclosed trailer.

A real man of the woods my father, not frightened to inch his way along the length of the trailer and then creep to the other side where with flashlight and wrench he could turn off and on again the water. He wasn’t the kind of man to worm his way out of his responsibilities.

“We’ve got to crawl under there so I can show you how to deal with the water.” But I was not that man and begged off the mission.

“Can’t you just do it before work?”

Until my father made it clear, “And leave you with no water all day? There is no choice.” For the workers were coming to the trailer park when he was at work, and I was at summer bored and idle and able to go inching my way under the trailer.

And so I followed him on my belly the long way – the door through the siding at the back left of the trailer, our journey’s destination, the water pipes at the front right, so I could learn, like him, how to turn the water off and then on.

The next day, alone and reluctant, I entered through the siding door and left the daylight behind me. I held the flash light before me but did not look at what it illuminated for fear what I might see; rather I wriggled in the light’s general direction. I crawled with all that was under there in the darkness, sweeping cobwebs as I went. I made it to the water pipes and plied the wrench hurriedly, hoping I had twisted it enough to choke off the water. And then the return, always harder than the descent. I turned myself around on the dirt and made my way towards the light peeking through the siding door, far in the distance at first. Yet I hastened and did not turn to see what I left or what followed behind me. I came at last to the exit and crossed the threshold.

When I emerged from beneath the trailer into the light, I did not come forth braver or with new knowledge that I gained along the way, but joyful to see the blue sky and its birds free to fly above the ground. I feverishly shook off the dirt and whatever bugs had found me, never wanting to know their wisdom.

Thomas E. Strunk explores nature and working class life and strives to express the longing for spiritual, emotional, and political liberation. His literary work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pinyon, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Northern Appalachia Review and East Fork Journal. Thomas blogs at LiberationNow.org and lives in Cincinnati.

Robins

22 August 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Margaret D. Stetz

Headlong into glass
two collisions
in rapid succession
after the crashes
wreckage outside the door
small bodies sprawl motionless
on a cold morning.
What compels me to push
beyond the door
to sit down on grass
in nightgown, slippers
to gather their corpses?
Cradling both in flannel-sheathed hollows
staring at membranes closed over eyes
at beaks gaping emptily
ignoring the chill through my legs
I see—movement.
Then pouring my heat and will
into the moment
watching as one
then the other
slowly
looks back.
(Is this how a surgeon feels
holding a heart as it beats?)
They owe me nothing—
the same miracle likely
to happen without me
their crimson breasts already skyward
harder to follow.
But if only they could
raise me too
high higher
never again
to enter that house
to stand hopeless
unrescued
from crashes collisions
behind the door

Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware. She began writing poetry again after several decades away from it. Her new work has appeared in “Azure,” “Existere,” “Review Americana,” Kerning, and many other journals.

The Basil

20 August 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Emily Rankin

He bought it during quarantine, on one of our rare outings. He’d decided spur of the moment to make a new recipe, and we found ourselves wandering the grocery aisles at 8pm. He needed fresh basil, and I suggested we buy a small plant in place of a plastic carton of browning stems.

I padded into the kitchen the next morning and found it, wilted and half dead, on its side on the countertop. He’d used a handful of leaves and left it to rot. I considered abandoning it there, letting it go to show him what he’d done. But it looked so small and hurt and tired. I stood it up, pruned the decay from it, and set it in water on the sunny windowsill. I tended to it, and it was happy. It grew to be nearly two feet tall, and I bought a real pot for it, and soil. He never looked at it, never watered it. I wondered if he felt guilty. I hoped he did.

It came to me in dreams. I’d see myself, in the kitchen in the night, finding it dead. Pulling it from its pot and seeing strange roots all through the soil. Then looking more closely and discovering that it was in fact very much alive, new shoots everywhere, overtaking everything.

When I finally got out of that house and into my own apartment I took it with me, hung a shelf for it high enough that the cats wouldn’t disturb it. Watered it, added new soil.

That summer I was gone most days, no air conditioning in the place. The basil started to wilt and shrivel and no matter what I did it wouldn’t stop, until all that remained were two gnarled sticks with a few inches of new growth at the ends. I thought it was as good as dead, and it made me more sad than I’d like to admit. I gave it water and set it on the porch, in the noontime sliver of sunlight, to live out its final days with the wind against its face.

But it didn’t die. It hung on, struggling and stagnant at first, then finally growing again, slowly, in ever more bizarre twists. New shoots completely sideways, leaves sprouting at odd junctures, those two remaining branches twined like ivy. I was afraid to pull any leaves from it, afraid I might disturb its new health. After a month, I finally began to trust it wouldn’t die. At least, not imminently. I gave it new soil, more water. Set it outside in good weather. What remained of it came back to life.

A year later, it sits, sometimes, on the shelf I hung for it, winding spring-green tendrils around itself. Drooping with the weight of its own strange design, and growing ever more wild.

Emily Rankin was born in Riverside, California and attended Abilene Christian University, where she received a BFA in 2011. Her body of work deals with the tangled threads of human connection and liminal space. She is currently based in New Mexico.

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Flamingos

19 August 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Satish Pendharkar

We’ve never made passports or visas
Nor purchased air-tickets to fly;
We’ve entered and exited places at will
For ages and since times long gone by.

Every winter flying in from far-off
Onto Mumbai’s mudflats we descend;
To binge on blue-green algae
Before roosting to let our minds unbend.

However, this year (though even) has been odd
People have not flocked to see us;
No cameras clicking away, no tourist boats
Why have folks quarantined themselves thus?

Not that we’re missing the ruckus they create
Not that we’re missing their lasting stink;
For, flouting all social distancing norms
We’re preoccupied in painting the place pink.

Satish Pendharkar lives in Pune, India. His poems have appeared in Agave magazine, Parody, New Asian Writing, dotdotdash, and Indian Literature. He has published a book of poems titled “Nocturnal Nomad” and a novella titled “The Backrush of Memory”. He loves singing and hiking.

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Widowed Memories

17 August 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Paul Rousseau

I rent a forty-four-year-old brick house. It is a modest single-level structure with a small garage. A young couple purchased the home from an older couple and provided minor updating. I moved in once the renovations were complete.

I have been in the home for four years. I intended to stay one year, two at most. Lassitude and complacency altered my plans; that, and the death of two dogs and the sickness of another, my own health woes, and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.

A few months ago an older man named Thomas rang the doorbell and inquired about the previous owners. I informed him the older couple had moved but did not leave a forwarding address. He told me the wife of the older couple had died—he noticed the obituary in the newspaper—and he assumed the husband still lived in the house. He removed his glasses and patted beads of sweat with a bandana.

“Nothing stays the same, does it?” I nodded. “We lose a lot as we get older, don’t we?” I nodded, again.

Then, unexpectedly, he heaved a deep, sobbing breath, and blurted, “I lost my wife a few years ago myself.” I gently touched his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he muttered, “she was filled with cancer. But she gave it a good fight. We were together forty-nine years.”

He pulled a yellowed, dog-eared photograph from his wallet; it was a panorama of them at the Grand Canyon. “She loved the Grand Canyon. I drove two days to the South rim to release her ashes. It’s what she wanted.”

“You’re a good man, Thomas,” I replied. He pivoted toward the living room. “We spent many an evening in that room. Drank beer, played cards, watched Ed Sullivan. Good times, good memories.” He paused and scratched day-old stubble.

“But somehow our families drifted apart. I don’t know, I guess it was because the kids grew up, our jobs wore us down, and we got sick: high blood pressure, diabetes, and emphysema for me, two heart attacks and a mild stroke for him. And as I said, my wife…” He stood silent, as if in pilgrimage, then asked if he could walk through the house one final time. I jiggled my head and motioned for him to follow.

We visited each room. He stroked the walls, turned the doorknobs, flicked the light switches, opened the blinds. Afterward, he wiped his eyes and begged an apology for the intrusion. I told him no need for an apology, I appreciated the company. He took a final glance at the house, bid goodbye, and shuffled to his car. He plopped into the driver’s seat, lowered the passenger window, and shouted,

“Some memories are best forgotten.”

My shoulders slumped; the reminiscing had seemingly kindled the cinders of old grief. I began to walk toward the car to offer comfort when he turned the ignition and disappeared down the road.

That evening, while lying in bed, I thought about the older couple. They had resided in this house for forty years. It was their refuge, a shelter from an often unfriendly world; how difficult it must have been to surrender four decades of security and stability. Yet, they had their memories; abundant memories.

However, as I reflected on Thomas’s heartrending lament, “Some memories are best forgotten,” I was reminded of the book Prince of Thorns, in which the author, Mark Lawrence, writes, “Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.” He seems to imply that all memories are dangerous and painful, an implication that is contrary to my personal experience.

And as a person who has also lost a spouse, I speak with widowed authority in agreeing with Thomas’s assertion that some memories—but not all—are best forgotten, for there are memories that provide us solace, and there are memories that remind us of what was, and what will never be again.

Paul Rousseau (he/his/him) is a semi-retired physician, writer, lover of dogs, and occasional photographer published in sundry literary and medical journals. Co-winner of flash fiction competition, Serious Flash Fiction 2022. Nominated for The Best Small Fictions anthology from Sonder Press, 2020. Twitter: @ScribbledCoffee

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Joy of Chewing Gum

15 August 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Adnan Onart

Her name rhymed with inch;
“joy” in my mother tongue, Turkish:
Sevinç, o Sevinç!
Dark skin, black hair,
and I was told,
eyes blue-green.
All the boys in the neighborhood
between 11 and 15
were after her:
starting fights in front of her house,
sending poems to her,
bribing her baby brother
with his favorite
pistachio ice cream.
No avail:
Never smiling, always serious,
she carried an adult anger
around her as a shield.

What chance had this skinny boy
with good grades in math and sciences?
None, you would think.
This is how I learned
that kittenish life
is full of opportunities,
we don’t dare to grab:
on the day of our move,
she called me out of the truck
and gave me five tiny sticks
of chewing gum
without saying anything.

Adnan Onart lives in Cambridge, MA. His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Colere Magazine, Red Wheel Barrow and The Massachusetts Review. His first poetry collection, The Passport You Asked For, was published by The Aeolos Press. He was one of the winners of 2011 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition.

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The History of Everything

14 August 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Alexandra McIntosh

My mom took Lamaze classes before she had my brother. The instructor—in neon pink 80s workout gear—told the expectant mothers to focus on something and breathe through contractions. My mom chose my dad’s gold chain. She practiced watching it in class, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, leaning against him while the instructor counted. The chain flashed in the fluorescent light of the delivery room while she brought my brother into the world. I love the pictures of them in the moments just after— feathery Farrah Faucet hair slick against her temples, her tired smile, my dad’s eyes beaming above the gold and the tiny body of my brother.

These days my mom and I do yoga together. She likes it because of the breathing, like Lamaze; she reminds me often that you can breathe through anything. In downward dog I look under my armpit to watch her body next to mine, and imagine my small life folded into hers in the months before my birth.

My friend Brad wants to visit the hospital room where he was born. I’ve never thought of this, though I live close to my own birth-hospital. When my mom’s colon ruptured spontaneously my senior year, I did loads of homework there in the plastic chair next to her bed; and before my grandpa’s death, I spent five days and nights by the big window in his room, looking out on a gravel-covered rooftop, the wooded hillsides, the church steeple on a distant ridge. Brad thinks the room number should be on the wristband his mom keeps in his baby book, along with a plastic bag and the stump of belly button that fell off a week after she brought him home. I tell him he should paint the room—he’s a painter. A self-portrait I call it. He likes this idea.

He tells me about his grandparents from Kentucky, the house they lived in by the railroad track, his grandma who held him when he was born and died a week later from cancer. He shows me a picture of her and her sisters in the 1930s in front of a mural of a swimming lady, the sisters playfully pointing at the lady’s nipples, their faces bright with laughter. He’s been busy lately, teaching classes and restoring old houses, but yesterday he painted a picture of his sister’s puppy: a Christmas present commissioned by his mom. He scrapes colors off his fingers and says it felt good; it had been days since he’d opened his box of paints, and even the smell was nice.

When I can’t write I take Grizzly for walks, let him sniff the patches of grass browned by frost, high-step through the pile of oak leaves in the church yard. I imagine the symphonic alertness of his smelling, and wonder if he pictures deer and squirrels, the neighbor’s corgi. Three birds alight from the boughs of a dead honeysuckle bush and I think of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem written decades after the Industrial Revolution—a time that Brad reminds me brought forth a renaissance of arts and crafts. In those years of soot Hopkins wrote, “but for all this, nature is never spent./ There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.”

I’ve repeated this to myself so many times it evokes a collage of memories: the classroom where I first heard it, the university cross country trails I walked as I tried to memorize the poem. Later, the patches of chicory and black-eyed Susans tangled along the road by my first apartment. A hillside in Spain. The sun above the swimming pool in my hometown. The condensation on a bottle of water my grandpa handed me after I cut his grass. Sweat under my tee shirt sleeves, summer skin peeling. The backyard singing its bright insect song.

How humbling to know that each one of us came from the body of another. I think of this great symphony of connection, of birth and death and birth, of pain and joy, this great and marvelous history of everything, this dearest freshness. And I think of our small roles in it, of my mom preparing to welcome it in those 80s birthing classes, of her practicing her breathing, of my dad practicing with her, his smile above a gold necklace, of all the hair my brother was born with, thick dark hair, and the baby his wife will have in August.

Alexandra McIntosh lives and writes in Kentucky, her favorite place in the world. Her debut book of poetry, Bowlfuls of Blue, is available from Assure Press. You can find links to her publications and pictures of her dog on her website AlexandraMcIntosh.com.

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Trucker Coffee

12 August 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Mark Jackley

the word ‘one’
contains an O
same shape as
a little black pill
I am talking
trucker coffee
talking Omaha
to Council Bluffs
no commas please this is
basic math
I mean
one highway and
one exit
one darkness
and one me

Mark Jackley is a poet living in northwestern Virginia. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Talking River, Cagibi, Sugar House Review, and other journals.

The Heritage Park War

10 August 2022 / Editor

Fiction by William Falo

You bought a house near Heritage Park, and after feeding your cat Rogue, you walked outside. There was an old man there walking a dog. He waved, and you loving animals walked over to pet the friendly dog.

“Sophie.”

“Yes?”

“I recognize you.”

“From where?”

“You lived here as a child.”

“Yes, ten years ago.”

“How is your mother?”

“Good, she moved into an assisted living place, and I bought the house from her.”

“Welcome back to Marlton and Heritage Village. Do you still have your cat?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Do you remember the war?”

“No.”

“I was there. After it happened, your mother told me what you said that you saw, and I believed her. Do you want to hear about it?”

“Yes, let’s sit on the bench.”

The cawing of the crows got so loud that you thought they were gathering right outside your window. When you looked outside, there were some in the distance, and you saw what looked like an army of cats in Heritage Park behind your house in Marlton.

“Mom, there are cats and crows in the backyard, and I think they are going to fight.”

Your mother mumbled about fever dreams. You were sick and always felt tired lately. They said it could be the flu, but you might need to be brought to the hospital if you didn’t get better. That scared you more than anything. When your mother was in the other room, you opened the window and put pieces of bread on the ledge. One crow always came and ate it. It was always the same crow because it had a damaged wing that hung down, but it could still fly.

You saw the cats coming into the park, and they walked with their heads up, for they knew no fear. Their large eyes saw everything, and their claws cut like knives. You wished there was a way to convince them to go elsewhere, but they never listened to anyone.

The crows ruled the air, but the cats were fast, and feathers floated down after some encounters. It looked like it would go on forever until the leader crow picked out a specific plant, then flew above the cats and dropped it; the cats went crazy and forgot why they were there. They couldn’t resist the catnip. Some ran off, others chased imaginary birds, while others grabbed anything they could find, curled around it, and then kicked at it with their back legs.

Eventually, they all left with a few hisses as a warning that they would be back. You
believed them. They had nine lives.

You saw a man walking a dog.

“You?”

He nodded.

“Your mother said you woke up, and the fever was gone, so you ran to the window and looked out.”

Later, you walked through the park, and the crow with the damaged wing circled above your head. You understood that she wanted you to follow her, and you did until it landed near a bush. Under the bush was a tiny kitten. It meowed and looked at you with sad eyes.

You brought the kitten home. The crow saved the kitten’s life; it would have died out there alone. Your mother was so happy that you felt better, she agreed to care for it and take it to the vet in the morning, and yes, you could keep it. It was a female, and you named it Rogue after your favorite Marvel character.

The next day, you walked through Heritage Park and thought of Rogue the kitten and how the crow saved it, which gave you hope for peace. Soon, you and Rogue were best friends.

Your eyes filled with tears, and you hugged the man.

“Please come for coffee later. I want to ask you more since my mother has dementia. I want to write it all down because I always thought it was a strange dream, and now that I have met you, it has all come true, and that is the most amazing and wonderful thing that has happened to me in a long time.”

“I’m happy I could finally tell someone.”

“Has there been another war?”

“No, but I keep watch, and now I hope you will help guard the park too.”

“I will.” You hugged him again. Above you, a crow cawed, and you wondered if it could be the one with the damaged wing. You knew you would put food out later.

You went home, and with Rogue climbing over your desk, you wrote the first line of a story nobody would believe. The war began in Heritage Park.

William Falo lives with his family, including a papillon named Dax. His stories have been published or are forthcoming in various literary journals. He can be found on Twitter @williamfalo and Instagram @william.falo.

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A Transformer Kind of Moment

8 August 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Clint Martin

1986

I’m a nine year old Clint. I’m on fold-down seat’s edge. Not just because scooching back risks being gobbled up by sticky, red theater chair. But also because Transformers: The Movie glows upon the silver screen. And that despicable Decepticon Galvatron has seized the matrix. He’s used it to summon the planet-devouring Unicron. This is indeed the Autobots’s darkest hour. With dozing dad at my side, I am understandably tense.

All Autobot hope now rests on the red metal shoulders of Hot Rod. And Galvatron knows it. As Hot Rod charges, Galvatron blasts. Both bots go down. I pop up. Sticky chair snaps shut. My adrenaline-crazed heart rhythmically pleads for the good guy to rally as unadorned musical notes harken from an 80s synthesizer. Hot Rod spies the battle-flung matrix. The music, the tension pulls me up onto toes. Rocker Stan Bush croons, “You’ve got the touch.” My heart spills into a sprint. Hot Rod reaches the matrix. Lifts it. “You’ve got the power.” Hero’s hands fit the matrix’s handles perfectly. He pulls. Blue lightning streaks from the opening orb. Power chords pulse, and in that cinematic instant, Hot Rod grows. Grows. Does more than transforms. He evolves. I bounce and beam in the theatre, overjoyed for the silver screen’s new hero: Rodimus Prime.

2016

I’m a beaten Clint. I’m horizontal. Crammed into couch’s crevice. It’s the middle of the day. I should be at work. But I don’t have the energy. Or the desire. Depression blasts me. Has been for years now. So much so that yesterday my wife signaled surrender: she’s filed for divorce. I have until the end of the month. So I’ve transformed myself by getting stoned. Again. Avoiding reality. Again. Stoned and horizontal and ignoring my troubles by scrolling back to the beginning of Facebook. The phone screen waterfalls before me. Like the last reel of a slot machine. As it slows, before my thumb can flick it back into full-on reeling, an unfamiliar face catches my eye. I stop my roll. The woman in the post is sitting. Cross-legged. Her eyes are closed, but it’s her forehead I’m drawn to. Her forehead. It’s soft, unwrinkled, unstained by the strain of brain. It is the opposite of the pounding slab of creases above my brow. It’s not a post I’m looking at. It’s an ad. I tap the screen.

“You’ve got the touch.”

Wi-Fi whisks me to a site on transcendental meditation. I spend a few seconds reading about the power of silence. Oblivious that the final reel has landed on Jackpot. I sign up for an intro class. It’s tomorrow night. There’s no Stan Bush soundtracking this scene, yet years later I’ll see this clearly as the transformer type of moment that it was. I will see that this was the first step in saving my marriage. This was the moment I saved my own Autobot family. This was the moment that began the from-the-ashes evolution of Clintonimus Prime.

Clint Martin lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife, two sons, and their yellow dog Waggie. When not writing, Clint enjoys transcendental meditation and identifying the birds visiting the backyard.