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Gypsies

25 March 2023 / Editor

Poetry by David Sapp

The tour book
My vade mecum
In prudence or prejudice
Warned of nimble
Pickpocketing gypsies
Roman Romani
For the entire trip
In heightened vigilance
I was prepared to dispatch
As so instructed
“Hit the road!”
In perfect Italian
After the Caravaggios
At Santa Maria del Popolo
Paul’s conversion
Peter’s crucifixion
Their world their view
Turned upside-down
In aesthetic inebriation
We sat put our backs
Against the chiesa wall
An Egyptian obelisk
An arched Roman gate
History looming
Heavily in the piazza
Gelato on our minds
And there approaching
Finally! the unkempt woman
Her intent quite clear
And my opportunity:
“Vada via!”
Immediately I apprehended
My impertinence
As her expression was more
Disappointment than anger
As if: “you seemed like
A nice young man your
Rudeness unnecessary”
Rome was her city
Rome was her suffering
Her Via Dolorosa

David Sapp, writer, artist, and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Don’t Miss the Boat

23 March 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Gloria Lauris

What had started out as a lovely, lazy excursion soon turned into a nightmare.

“The boat’s gonna leave–without us! But where is it?” I cried to my son Alex, who had scouted out ahead.

“There!” he shouted, pointing to our cruiser at port in the distance. My heart sank. No way we would make it in time before the 4 pm set-sail time. It was 3:30, and we were far away and up a hill. We had no transportation and didn’t speak the local language.

I mentally reviewed how we arrived in this predicament. Our luxury liner had moored in the Baltic Sea’s cyan calm waters at Tallinn, and we had earlier strolled ashore. My main purpose here was to buy a wood icon dating back to the 18th century from an Estonian shop, located in the city’s Old Town Square. Given my art history training, I was excited to pursue these panels which had been obtained from the hallowed walls of old Eastern European churches, and even more keen to secure a piece.

Alex and I wandered leisurely through the quaint, walled seaside town. We admired the time-worn architecture of the well-preserved medieval city, peering into windows of old museums and galleries, and picking our way along the meandering cobblestone walkways.

Stopping at the well-known antique store, I spent over an hour agonizing over the many religious items, focusing on the more affordable ones. I finally settled on a work featuring ‘Archangel Michael with St. Florus and St. Laurus’ which especially appealed to me due to the similarity to my last name. The mysterious painted eyes of the archangel’s face looked as though they held secrets or at least stories from the icon’s time on church walls.

Clutching my new prized possession, I joined my impatient son waiting for me outside the shop and we walked along the city’s streets within the marketplace, examining the fresh produce, assorted merchandise, and colourful cotton clothing.

The intoxicating and exotic smells from the food vendors mingled with the fragrant air of the lazy summer afternoon. We seemed to merge into the historic, serene landscape, caught up and lost in a timeless trance—in a dance of sorts—of life in that ancient town which was foreign yet somehow familiar. Time stood still for awhile.

Eventually rousing from the lull of relaxation and daydream, we realized that the sun was no longer overhead and it was time to return. In fact, it was very much past time to go. We also then realized that we weren’t sure exactly where we were or how to navigate our way back.

Panic set in.

Despite the day’s warmth, I felt a chill as the potential seriousness of the situation sunk in. My hands formed sweaty beads and breaths started coming faster through my parched throat.

It would be a tight race to get to the vessel in time, assuming we were going the right way at all.

Our once casual pace now quickened in an increasingly desperate effort to get back. If only we could find which road to take! This one? Or That? Signage was not helpful since we couldn’t read the words.

In asking several vendors how to find our way back to the seaport, we used charade-like gestures to communicate as their English was poor and our Estonian was non-existent. We later learned we were pointed in the wrong direction and went even further afield. We tried unsuccessfully to find a taxi.

The outline of the massive ship could be seen far away in the harbor, blasting out its loud and final no-nonsense warning signals. It was calling for us, its wayward passengers, one last time.

We were stranded and miserable.

Then, what seemed like a miracle happened.

Unexpectedly we found the right road back towards the cruise liner. Did Archangel Michael himself hear, through our icon, our feverish muttered prayers for literal guidance, and compassionately and invisibly intercede?

Separated from the ship by a steep hill, we abandoned any pretence of decorum, desperately throwing ourselves down the grassy knoll, traversing rocks, ignoring blisters on our feet, and trying not to stumble or fall. Cutting away from the pathway, we scrambled, taking the most direct way back we could.

The ship would leave shortly for Russia. Not reaching the vessel meant we would have to regroup three days later somewhere else entirely once it exited Soviet waters. Missing the evening sail-off was unthinkable, not even an option as there was no Plan B. We pushed ourselves harder, hearts thumping in our chests, and gasping for air as we ran.

My memory of the rest is a blur, and I don’t know to this day how we did it, as it seemed impossible to get there in time. Did we fly? Somehow, we found the strength to stagger, exhausted, to our floating hotel, avoiding the stern looks from the boarding crew about to hoist the loading plank. I looked at my watch: 3:58!

I don’t think my son and I were ever more grateful to be on board a boat. The food tasted amazing, the shower heavenly, and my small bunk bed extremely welcoming to my aching body and feet. My precious icon stowed in my luggage, to be unearthed only upon our return home.

No one wants to miss the boat, whether figuratively or literally. My son and I occasionally refer to that fateful day and shake our heads with disbelief remembering how close we came to almost doing so. It will be a story Alex will tell his kids one day: the time when their dad and grandma almost didn’t make it.

When I hung that special item on my wall at home, I could have sworn the quiet and unassuming painted Archangel Michael winked at me.

I guess our Baltic adventure is just one more story added to his silent, secret mysteries.

Gloria Lauris is a writer in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She has degrees in sociology and art history and is a retired government analyst. Inspired by her education, experiences, and observations she writes nonfiction about animal welfare, travel, gardening, and food, as well as fictional children’s animal stories with a colleague.

The Universe on Rewind

21 March 2023 / Editor

Poetry by E.J. Mathews

There, at the end of everything
bodies birth bullets and ghosts
grow flesh. Liquid steel freezes
into stone and trees sink into soil.
Planets fling themselves thin
until they are dust and stars
suck light through fission.
Gold races towards a black hole
to become heat and light.
All knowledge learned will be forgotten.
Rusty wrecks repair themselves to
mint condition floating upward
through the dark water into the light
kissing the air.

E. J. Mathews has an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University. He is from International Falls, Minnesota, and has previously published pieces in Mistake House, rock, paper, scissors, and TeenInk Magazine.

Photo by Richard Pasquarella on Unsplash

Shells

19 March 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Fred Miller

Like a federation of flowers
with slick, shiny faces,
they sparkle in the light from above.

And dance with tiny ripples
that lap up on the shore by my toes.
Are those conspiratorial smirks I see?

Could these new arrivals be laughing at me?
Maybe it’s a gurgling gathering of giggles or
woeful mothers weaving tales of youth lost at sea.

What’s with the frozen faces, I wonder?
And where on this vast planet have they been?
And where could these vagabonds be going?

No doubt, they slipped in on the morning tide.
Will they steal out when the new moon beckons?
Please pause and share tales of daring treks to afar,

And tempests you’ve chanced on the angry seas.
Paint pictures of huge fishes of the deep
you’ve encountered across the vast, blue sea.

And of melodies of whales soothing calves.
Peering up in silence, they gently nod.
Small waves kiss this congress tumbling about.

Another brings another and more as
they roll and toss and sway and nod again.
And in the blink of an eye, they are gone.

Fred Miller is a California writer. His poems and stories have appeared in publications round the world over the past ten years. Many may be seen on his blog: https://pookah1943.wordpress.com

Trimester to St. Patrick’s

16 March 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Jeannette Tien-Wei Law

Ice morn, fog cloak, fierce gray snows
Ash trance, tree bones, stone mute crows
Steps swish, crisp blades, sham rocks crunch
Three leaves, talc coats, luck’s charm froze

Jeannette Tien-Wei Law was awarded the 2022 Newman Prize for English Jueju, an international distinction for original poetry in classical Chinese form, written in English. Currently an educator in Milan, Italy, her poetry has won acclaim in academic circles and a growing number of global publications.

From One Adult to Another

14 March 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Brian C. Billings

Let’s skip the gifts this Christmas.

Oh, let the children have their boxes
and stockings and weeks of waiting;
they have innocence and energy.

The two of us have jobs.

Why worry once again about
the niceties of equivalent exchange
or dropping hints inside of stores?

How much bric-a-brac can we afford to hoard?

Cracking the ritual might hurt
but not so much as hemorrhaging
money and mind for months.

We’re neither one of us detectives.

I think we can agree upon what’s small
to mean the deepest feeling and allow
the credit cards a chance to cool.

I like a latte. So do you.

To be beyond eighteen should mean
cutting ties with those tyrannical lists
our mothers taught us we should make.

Gifts are hard. Leave penance for the cards.

Brian C. Billings is a professor of drama and English at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. His work has appeared in such journals as Ancient Paths, Antietam Review, Argestes, Confrontation, Evening Street Review, and Poems and Plays. Publishers for his scripts include Eldridge Publishing and Heuer Publishing.

close up dirty door door knob — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Trapped Door

12 March 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Daniella DiMaggio

When I was a girl, my grandma showed me a trapdoor in our house. She lived in the basement apartment, where the trapdoor was. I want to say that the door was by the staircase or in the alcove where the washer and dryer were, but I truly cannot remember. When you opened the door, there was a red ladder that took you far down into a white room that was filled with wonders that I cannot recall now. In my mind’s eye, it was filled with toys, and it was vaster than vast. It was the universe, ever expanding.

I want to say that I visited this trapdoor multiple times in my childhood. And I want to say that it was not in one single instance that this door disappeared. I want to say that as I continued to visit it, the door became more and more transparent; the handle, at first, difficult to turn, and then impossible to find. I want to say that the square outline of the door slowly faded into the wall.

I have many dreams that I’m somehow journeying through the foundation of my childhood home. In the dream, it doesn’t always look like my childhood home, but I know that’s what it is. There are secret passageways in the walls that allow me to contort and climb through. They don’t do much of anything other than transport me from one room to another.

I’m reminded of when my sister and I were girls sharing a room. We had a large white dresser, it almost reached the ceiling (or maybe I just thought this because I was small), and she used to climb on top of it and crawl across it to my bed. It wasn’t until we were older that we realized how dangerous this was, the top half of the dresser not being nailed down to the bottom half. My sister never realized that she was a precarious leaf on a branch. We laugh about it now.

I sometimes wonder if the trapdoor disappeared or if I disappeared. If I became stuck down there and slowly the wonders just vanished, and one day, a day close to my dying, in a new long lived-in house of my adult years (a house I’ve yet to even meet), I will discover a small square frame with a knob and realize that no one has been looking for me.

Daniella DiMaggio is a recent graduate of the Queens College MFA Program where she studied fiction. She teaches at Queens College and Plaza College.

Strategies for Defeat

9 March 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Erin Lunde

Are you mad at me? means: I’m worried about something I said to you/about you/around you a few days ago.

Are you mad at me? means: I’m waiting for you to be mad about the thing I said to you/about you/around you a few days ago.

Are you mad at me? means: You’re never mad at me, so I know I’m ridiculous.

Are you mad at me? means: You’re never mad at me.

Are you mad at me? means: Why aren’t you ever mad at me? Why aren’t you ever anything at me?

Are you mad at me? means: I feel like a child.

Are you mad at me? means: Take care of me like a child.

Are you mad at me? means: I’m waiting.

Are you mad at me? means: Something happened and I want you to know it.

Are you mad at me? means: Something happened and I didn’t tell you about it.

Are you mad at me? means: I am so mad at myself.

Are you mad at me? means: I should have told you about that thing that happened the other day and that it continues to happen every day.

Are you mad at me? means: I should tell you.

Are you mad at me? means: I probably never will.

Are you mad at me? means: Why don’t you ever ask me?

Are you mad at me? means: About anything?

Are you mad at me? means: See, it’s happening again, right now.

Are you mad at me? means: I’m mad at you, but you’ll never know because you won’t ask:

Are you mad at me?

Erin Lunde writes in Minneapolis, MN where she lives with her family of five. Her writing is published in Flash Fiction Magazine, The Bangalore Review, Intrinsick, Openwork Mag and others. She writes “Fiction at Five” on Substack; she’s on Instagram @everythingerinlunde, and at erinlunde.com.

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7 March 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Corinne Walsh-Williams

my age feels like a vapor
sinking into my skin
seeping inward
to the warm
watery places where
my dreams are swimming
in the lukewarm juices
of my soul –
and everything
all that is left at least
is simmering to a broth

Corinne Walsh-Williams currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island where she earned her Master’s degree in Creative Writing. Covid gave her the poetry bug and she considers herself an emerging poet.

The Landscape of Childhood

5 March 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Janice Northerns

R-r-r-r-r-d-d-d. That sound, the bumpty-bump-bump of our car passing over the two cattle guards near our rural West Texas farmhouse, framed my childhood. Cattle guards, metal pipe contraptions used in place of a gate across a road, are designed to let vehicles pass through while keeping livestock in; however, they meant much more than that to me.

On the long trips back from town almost 30 miles away, crossing those cattle guards often jolted me out of a sound sleep or a dreamy reverie. But it was a comforting jolt, a rumbling almost home, almost home.

My mother sometimes used the cattle guard as a boundary marker when we went out to play: “Don’t go past the second cattle guard,” she’d warn.

Daddy referred to the cattle guards as landmarks when giving directions: “Turn at the first cattle guard, go across the second one, then take the right fork in the road and you’re there.”

And the cattle guards themselves, all those wide spaces between treacherously smooth metal pipes with looming chasms beneath, presented formidable obstacles to be crossed on foot when I was small. It was a test of bravery to see if we could make it across quickly without having to grab the triangular side rail.

For many years most of the place markers of my childhood remained intact, long after I left home. But I still remember the day when I mourned the absence of one of them. It was on a trip to see my parents, and as usual, when I turned at the first cattle guard, its low rumble whispered almost home, almost home. But as I approached the second cattle guard, I saw that something was not quite right. The road had been filled in, the cattle guard removed.

No more ditch to cross, no more bumpy jolt.

Instead of enjoying the newly smooth blacktop, I had the distinct urge to hang on for dear life as I crossed that spot in the road, as if I were driving across a high, narrow bridge with no guard rails. It was a visceral, physical sensation, one that surprised me. How silly, I thought. It’s just a cattle guard. But there was no denying that this change in my childhood landscape left me momentarily unmoored. This no longer felt like the road home.

My father explained the removal of the cattle guard. It was in need of repair, and since my parents hadn’t owned any livestock for years, there was no longer a reason for a cattle guard. It made more sense to simply fill in the road.

I puzzled over why such a simple change affected me so strongly. Perhaps there was no longer a practical purpose for that cattle guard, but for me it served as a talisman. The bumpty thud of cattle guards marked every entry and exit to and from the larger world, a border crossing into my home country. If the borders, or the border markers, change is there still a country to enter?

Of course, it’s only natural that those external markers of childhood become fewer as time passes. Other changes have happened over the years. The old schoolhouse down the road, empty for many years, was at last removed. Houses of childhood playmates have been gone so long that not even a trace of the foundations remains. My parents are also gone now, and the house where I grew up, though still there, is no longer ours. The cottonwood trees that I played in as a child have been cut down. But those cottonwoods, their leafy green summer stirrings, are as vivid to me now as when I last set eyes on them more than 15 years ago.

Maybe I really don’t need external markers to find my way. The landscape of childhood, far from fading away with the removal of its landmarks, seems indelibly etched on some map of memory:

It is a July day in 1965 and I am not quite nine years old. My little brother and I clutch sweaty nickels and dimes in our palms as we walk to the tiny country store located just around the bend after the second cattle guard.

Barefoot, as always, we race to the first cattle guard, keeping to the side of the road where the dirt is cooler than the blacktop pavement.

At the cattle guard, my feet curve to grip the hot metal pipes as I struggle to keep my balance, hang on to my money and scamper to solid ground. Safely across, only then do I look back and down, down into the ditch my little brother and I have once more successfully traversed.

One more cattle guard and we’re at Halley’s Grocery. The interior of the store is cool and dim. We luxuriate in the cement soothing the blistered soles of our bare feet, sidle up to the Coca-Cola chest cooler and open wide the glass lid for a blast of icy air.

On the way home, we swig cold orange Nehi sodas, a bag of peanuts dumped into them. As I make my way across the last cattle guard, there is no bumpty-bump rumble; I’m on foot.

But the sound is still there, always, in my head. I look up and the house is within sight.

Almost home, almost home.

Janice Northerns is the author of Some Electric Hum, winner of the Byron Caldwell Smith Book Award (University of Kansas), the Nelson Poetry Book Award, and a WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Poetry. The author grew up in Texas and now lives in southwest Kansas. Read more at www.janicenortherns.com.

The Bluebird Word