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A Woman and a Waterfall

2 August 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Robin Greene

We found a spot to park near the Moore’s Cove trailhead, along highway NC 276 that meanders through the Pisgah National Forest from Brevard to Waynesville.

Our plan was to take the short but rather vertical hike up to the impressive waterfall this autumn afternoon before returning to our home in Hendersonville, about forty-five-minutes away. We’d been out looking at raw land that day, thinking to purchase a couple of wooded, undeveloped acres for a second home, and we’d been previewing possibilities.

At the car, my husband decided to take his hiking stick, leave his phone and his jacket, while I decided to take nothing. I usually carry my phone to snap photos, but my pants pocket wasn’t deep, so I left it in the car.

On the trail, we met people, families mostly—kids scampering up the trail or complaining about the difficulty of the hike. There were babies in carriers, and moms and dads loaded down with backpacks. Late October, the leaves were turning and falling, and already the forest offered more winter than summer views.

Then, arriving at the waterfall, there she was. Very pregnant and almost naked. Barefoot, standing on the slippery stones just in front of the waterfall. She had a woman photographer snapping photos, and a man, probably her partner, stood out of frame, but by her side.

She wore a sheer robe and some kind of thong that didn’t cover her backside. Her large breasts bulged from what appeared to be a bikini top. Her dark skin was smooth over her enormous belly, and I thought she must be eight or even nine months along.

Then, I noticed the crown, a gold-colored tiara on top of her head.

Behind her, the large waterfall cascaded dramatically across the rocks, and hikers gathered in small groups to admire the spectacle of her. They also snapped photos. Something I, too, would have done—and, at that moment, I regretted not having taken my phone.

What had inspired her to do a photo-shoot here? What had inspired her to be so naked, so vulnerable on the wet slippery rocks? And the crown—what was her thinking about that?

I had no answers. But I, along with the crowd, watched her for a long time. A black woman, a pregnant woman, a woman barely dressed on a cool fall day, standing against the wild backdrop of a large and powerful waterfall.

As I stood there, I thought back to my own two pregnancies, which resulted in two boys, now grown men. I thought about this woman’s upcoming childbirth, imagined her struggling through contractions, and then nearly exhausted, finally pushing her baby out, into the hands of a doctor or midwife or perhaps her partner. I thought about the next decades of her life as a mother. Like the waterfall behind her, they would be an onslaught, an unstoppable rush.

She had paused to capture the moment. She probably felt like a queen—like so many women about to become mothers.

On the hike down, I found a quiet place to sit and think about this woman, this stranger, who was not a stranger because I recognized her. How she felt like royalty, something special. How her nearly-naked pregnant body was part of the larger naked world. How a woman might feel that the momentous events of her pregnancy and upcoming childbirth might shift the universe.

And now, at my desk, thinking back at the image of her, I feel both joy and sadness at my own journey of motherhood. As women, we are powerful—opening our bodies to allow another human being to enter the world. And we are powerless, as there’s so much about this human being that we won’t have the ability to control.

And after giving birth, our lives are never the same.

So, I take this moment to pause and to thank this anonymous woman for reminding me of the powerfulness and powerlessness of womanhood, of motherhood, and of the inevitability of change. And although I’ll probably never know her identity—and even without a photo to remind me—this woman’s image remains.

Robin Greene is the author of five books, and she regularly publishes her short work in journals and magazines. Greene is co-founder and current board member of Longleaf Press, and she now teaches writing and yoga in Western North Carolina.

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Field Work

1 August 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Alison Arthur

Her eyes are close-set, small, appearing to sink into the sides of her nose. “Hmm,” thinks Lilibeth. “Problematic”. Perhaps some foundation will make her nose appear narrower. That might relieve the piggy quality of her eyes. Good big ears, though. A definite plus. And, they don’t protrude overly. Her mouth is unremarkable.

Lilibeth has a theory about the size and placement of facial features and how this relates to the intelligence of a person. The larger the facial feature, the greater the intellectual capacity. And, of course, the reverse is also true. Perhaps her big ears and small eyes cancel each other out and the net result is average ability. Of course, close-set small eyes are a particularly bad sign. Difficult to say; perhaps a bit of a dim wit.

“Are you finished?” he calls from the adjoining room.

“Just a minute. Almost,” Lilibeth puts a few more dabs of contour powder on her cheeks and expertly blends. Good enough, she concludes. Ready. She closes the casket lid in preparation for transfer to the chapel.

Once the casket is in place, Lilibeth opens the lid to reveal her handiwork. Not her best, but adequate, she decides. The first mourners are arriving now, and she discretely slides into a seat in the back row as is her habit. She always attends the services of those she has prepared. She likes to listen to the eulogy to see if it validates her conclusions. Her version of field work.

Alison Arthur is a a retired Counselling Therapist living in rural Nova Scotia. She is new to flash fiction and is excited about this new adventure in her life.

Why the Rabbits Run

30 July 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Lindsay Dudbridge

When I first visited Madrid, just three months before moving there, my Spanish partner and I crossed the central part of the city, erratically dodging and weaving our way through people like bats catching flies. Panicked, I said, “It’s like we’re in New York City. This is too big. I don’t know if I can live here.”

I grew up in the Adirondack Park—with six million acres to explore. I trained for my high-school cross-country team in the footsteps of deer, bear, and coyote and recovered in rocky streams or still lakes set to the soundtrack of loon calls. Born into a life of “forever wild,” I wondered how I could ever replace soft pine and mud with concrete and stone, forests with buildings, and rugged with landscaped?

By the time I was wandering the streets of Spain, I was no stranger to cities. I had been living in the Washington, DC area for nearly 20 years. Though I always sought the wildish spaces, no matter how tiny—running thin strips of trails between backyards and strip malls. The last several years, I lived in the city itself, next to the large, forested Rock Creek Park. I mentally mapped the Park’s trails in ways beyond their intersections and where they led. If I ran up a specific hill at dusk in the spring, I could see nesting owls. If I kept running a little further along the ridge just before dark, I would meet volunteers setting up nets to capture and study bats. I knew where to see the woodpeckers, which rocks to avoid stepping on after a heavy rain, and which trees had fallen with the last heavy storm.

Madrid feels so different—like chaos. It’s an introvert’s nightmare: people are everywhere and everywhere is loud. So I run at the quiet time—the cusp of sunrise—when it’s light enough to not need a headlamp but early enough that it’s not yet considered morning by many here. I start out along the paved, well-lit river trail and head into Casa de Campo, which was once the King’s hunting grounds. There are few people, just a spattering of other runners and dog walkers at the lake near the entrance.

The damp days are my favorite, as a light fog nestles in among the tall pinyon pines. These days, I crunch along the dirt roads because the trails are covered in a heavy mud that cakes the shoes. As I jog along, some of the many rabbits freeze and others bolt, zigzagging to safety. At first, I wondered why they ran. The park seemed so tame. But one morning, I stopped in my tracks as a rabbit came tearing toward me. The fox chasing it slowed to a trot when it saw me, reluctantly turning and heading back into the field in search of more prey. How lucky to see such a thing. I felt guilty for interrupting its hunt and relieved for the rabbit. I continued my run, holding those conflicting emotions and watching the carboneros, so similar to the chickadees of home, flit from branch to branch.

I often feel like I will never fit into this new culture—the late dinners, the lack of personal space, the constant conversation. But these mornings, I can at least immerse myself in this land and understand why the rabbits run and where the foxes hunt. So I run, I learn, and I listen to my footsteps patting a rhythm into the earth. I can almost follow it, like a thread across the Atlantic to the forest where I’m from.

Lindsay Dudbridge is a professional editor from the US who has been living in Madrid, Spain since 2019. When not manipulating the written word, she is outside running, mountaineering, caving, and climbing.

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Between My Toes

28 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Ann Ingalls

I walked along a sandy shore
And watched a curling wave.
It rolled right up between my toes,
And this is what it gave…

A small pink shell that curled up tight,
Was right in front of me.
I closed my eyes and then I heard
The whispers of the sea.

Ann Ingalls is a children’s writer with over sixty books in print or forthcoming. She writes both fiction and nonfiction, picture books, leveled readers, and teaches classes for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, The Writing Barn, local libraries, and universities in Kansas City area where she lives (http://anningalls.com).

Photo by Joshua Oluwagbemiga on Unsplash

Two Poems from Ouagadougou

26 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Suzanne Ondrus

The Exhaust Pipe’s Kiss

Out of her black skin,
a three-inch by three-inch
pink square
rises
from her right calf.
The square’s white
puckered
periphery frames
this event
that happened a year ago.

An Un-moveable Feat

Parked,
stretched out
from head to feet,
reclining over this stagnant metal beast,
with hands folded
over chest,
head
between handlebars
and feet hanging off the seat,
the driver sleeps

Author Note: Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso located in West Africa. The city is known as the premier motorcycle city in West Africa because motorcycles are the major means of transportation. In fact, Burkina Faso is called “the African capital of two wheels.” These poems were based largely on my time living in Ouaga from 2018 to 2020.

Suzanne Ondrus‘ first book, Passion Seeds, won the 2013 Vernice Quebodeaux Prize. She was a 2018-2019 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso. Her new poetry book Death of an Unvirtuous Woman is available from Finishing Line Press. Hear her read on her YouTube channel Suzanne Ondrus and find updates on suzanneondrus.com.

Life’s a Mystery

25 July 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Ale Malick

My friend and I were on a barge, crossing the wide river, when the deadman’s telephone rung. He shouted spools of embarrassing self-defense into the phone, which was tiny in his chunky, rubbery hands. There was a whole world on the other end of that call which we couldn’t engage with, but to which he had much to say. Us, the people on the barge, were nothing to the great expanse of life that existed out there, somewhere, for him. The barge, packed tight with passengers as it was, meant I could smell his sweat and catch droplets of his spital. But we were not there to him.

Without a pause in his tirade, or even completing a sentence, the man threw his phone with as much power as an aging, obese, wheezing, suited man could do. We all watched it fly, then drop quickly into the muddy swollen swell. It had rained for days, and the river stood higher than it should have done.

I didn’t see him fall. I was still watching the ripples the phone had made. But my friend saw him go, though even he couldn’t say if he’d done it on purpose or if the force of throwing had toppled him. The man hit the water with much more impact than the phone had done, and he didn’t stay afloat any longer than it. We watched the spot in case he reemerged and swam to shore. But no one went to help him, it was impossible. In this current, the deadman was going to stay dead.

The excitement brought benches free, which my friend spotted, and we sat down for our sandwiches. He began to talk, which was unusual for him. The deadman’s sudden exit had inspired it I think. “I was in India once, long before we met of course. On a crowded street, waiting for something, but I can’t remember what. A crackle across the road gave me a focus. A bird had landed on the electricity lines and was being electrocuted. It fell after a couple of seconds, stiffly to the floor. A poor looking man, the poor of a poor city, walked over to him with a cup and fed the dying bird water. Touching of course, but in amongst all the poverty I’d seen, children begging, crippled and diseased bodies, dirt, dust and roaming wild dogs, he chose a bird to care for.”

The captain started shouting instructions about being ready with our bags. We were docking. Time had gone already. My friend never explained why he told his story right then, and I could never know if the deadman was killing himself or saving his phone.

I did ask him, but he only said, “Life’s a mystery.” Like he didn’t know himself why he’d said it. He hailed us a taxi and we moved on to something new.

Ale Malick has been a lecturer, playwright, actor, stand-up, elevator operator, labourer converting a Soviet army barracks into a factory. He writes for ROUTE magazine, on all things Route 66, and has been shortlisted for a HarperCollins anthology. He won an international award for his novel Pizza with Jimbob & Twoforks.

Barry and friend, photo provided by author

Polio

23 July 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by David Blumenfeld

August 1, 1944

I’m almost seven. Mother tells me she’s going to have a baby. I think: That’s why her belly has gotten so big. Smiling, she says how nice it will be to have a little brother or sister. I’ll be the big brother. I feel grown up and hope for a boy.

October 3, 1944

Mother returns from the hospital with baby Barry, a fair-skinned, blond, blue-eyed boy with a tiny, button nose. In our family, only Bubby Rebecca, my paternal grandmother, has blue eyes and everyone says that’s where baby Barry’s eyes came from. I wonder: Do eye colors come from relatives? How? But there isn’t a single blond in our family and Barry is a tow head, whose yellow-white hair is like a gold and silver crown. A flaxen-haired babe has miraculously been born to a dark-skinned, eastern-European Jewish family! Friends needle Dad that someone else got into the act. I ask myself: What does that mean? But Dad adores his blue-eyed baby. Does he adore him more than he adores me? Me, who was here first? Aunt Gert and Uncle Murph, who have no children, treat Barry like their own child, the one they want but, for some reason, cannot have. As the years pass, Barry becomes even more beautiful: the bright-eyed, good-natured, golden-haired child loved by all.

Summer, 1951

Every parent and every child old enough to read the daily paper or see newsreels in movie theaters lives in fear of polio, the crippling disease that typically strikes the young, especially in the summer. It has even struck President Roosevelt, though the press keeps it hidden. Newsreels show physically stunted young polio victims with crutches and leg braces trying awkwardly to relearn to walk. Worse yet are those who lay prone, encased in an “iron lung,” or early respirator, a huge box that covers them from neck to foot, leaving them immobile, imprisoned alive in a metal tomb. I shudder and pray to God neither I nor anyone I care about will suffer such a horrific fate.

September 14 – 16, 1951

Barry goes to a summer camp and after a few days, returns home with a violent illness. I try to read to him but he is too sick to listen. Mom and Dad rush him to the hospital, where they learn that he has bulbar polio, the most devastating form of the disease. The next day the family gathers at Grandpa Ben’s and Bubby Rebecca’s apartment waiting for news from Mother who is at the hospital by Barry’s side. After what seems like endless hours, Mother staggers into the apartment, her face bloodless and ghost-like, and collapses into a chair. “He’s dead,” she says, grimacing and clearly in shock. After a second’s pause, there bursts from the rest of us a wail the likes of which I have never heard before and, God willing, I shall never hear again. It says: Everything worthwhile, everything good and bright in the world, has vanished and can never be restored.

September 17, 1951

In the following days, Dad cries only briefly but looks as though someone has kicked him brutally in the stomach. Then he sucks it up and soldiers on, hiding his grief as best he can. Everyone fears that Mother, who has a history of mental illness, will collapse. But she does no such thing. She collects herself and, as if on autopilot, mechanically and with blank eyes, arranges for the funeral and for sitting shiva, the week-long Jewish mourning period when friends gather at the home of the bereaved family to support them. In the next few days, with a stolid and impassive visage, she does much else and makes many wise decisions. For more than a decade she speaks of Barry almost daily, visiting his grave at least once a week.

Years later, while rummaging through a drawer of old clothing in a room Barry and I shared, I find a little, neatly-ironed suit of his that she has preserved as a keepsake. I suspect that it is not the only such memento mori buried in the house to remind her of him. Polio casts a pall over my mother for the rest of her life.

1952

1952 sees the worst polio outbreak in U.S. history: 57,000 cases, primarily among children. In 1953, Jonas Salk successfully tests a polio vaccine and, despite some early setbacks, hope arises that someday polio will be eradicated. By 2020, the three most common forms of the disease are declared eradicated everywhere but in Asia and are endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet new strains of the disease are beginning to emerge and as we have learned, viruses that threaten one country, threaten us all. Caveat mundus: Let the world beware! May there never again be polio deaths like my brother Barry’s.

(Editor’s Note: On 22 July 2022, the New York Times publishes the story Rare Case of Polio Prompts Alarm and an Urgent Investigation in New York. “Health officials in Rockland County…urged the public to get shots as they investigated whether the disease had spread to others.”)

David Blumenfeld (aka Dean Flowerfield) is an 84-year-old retired philosophy professor and associate dean who only recently returned to writing stories, poetry, and children’s literature, which he abandoned in his thirties to devote full-time to philosophy. He is happy to have returned to a road only briefly taken.

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Places I Have Unexpectedly Found Tears

22 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Samantha Ashe

a spin class,
the final song
that one collective push
the recognition of each other
in this synchronized struggle

a Macy’s,
after overhearing an adult woman
refer to her mother as “Mama”
the softness of its sound
the summoning of sweetness
the remembering of my own

in traffic,
interstate 5 heading north
the woman by herself
a passionate steering wheel drum solo
head swaying
screaming the words
witnessing a spirit
unleashed

the bathroom,
in the middle of the night
the fifth ungodly night of no sleep
palms cradling my face
pleading to the sleep gods

in my daughter’s room,
watching as she tucks
each of her babies in for bed
the gentle timbre in her voice
the tactile tenderness of her hands
the hope
that maybe
she learned this from me

Samantha Ashe lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and daughter where she works as a personal trainer and fitness instructor. She spends her free time writing next to an open window or in the woods, chasing summits and sunrises.

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Elegy to Winter

20 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Pete Zenz

I love you snow,
But for a while
You’ll have to go,
No more compile
And make way for
A time of glee
Your absence shores
The florist prix

The snowman melts
And leaves his soul
And scarf of felt
And eyes of coal
Upon the ground
And dissipates
Without a sound
He ‘vaporates

The jutting veins
Of naked trees
Free from your chains,
Now budding leaves
Where once your hoar
Gathered like moss
They bear no more
Your cold emboss

The scent of spring
Is in the air
The birds will sing
And flutter there
But you’ll return
My frosty friend
Take your adjourn
‘Til summer’s end

Pete Zenz began writing five years ago after 35 years in food service. He has two self-published poetry volumes and a third manuscript finished; he has written a children’s story and a cookbook. Currently, he is working on a volume of children’s poems and a collection of holiday-based flash fiction.

King

18 July 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Margaret Kelliher

Sadie opens the door. The dog stretches and his yawn evolves into a whine. Sadie and the dog head towards the dollar store where she works.

Blue and gray clouds bruise the eastern sky purply-pink. The dog walks with his ears up, tail down. Always awaiting the enemy.

Sadie had been that for him once, briefly. One winter night, the steady hum of the interstate beyond the scrub-tangled chain link fence lulled enough for Sadie to discern a melody of low growls and whimpers. She stood still and listened, her trash bag poised over the bin.

There it went again, several yards beyond the halo of her floodlight.

Sadie approached, her phone lighting the way. A medium-sized dog with mottled black, brown, and white fur paced and whimpered inside the fence. Semi-trucks rumbled down the highway just beyond.

Someone dumped you here. You think they’ll come back, Sadie thought. A twig snapped beneath her feet and the dog stiffened, his legs locking and eyes meeting Sadie’s with a growl.

No helping you, is there? Sadie backed away and went to her house. She emerged a moment later with a plastic spoon heaped generously with peanut butter. Sadie crouched low and extended the treat. The dog’s eyes darted from the fence to the spoon, then approached with his tail down.

The first night, he tore up her doormat.

You’re a real twit, she told him. She bought a bag of dog food the next morning anyway. She knew her fair share of twits from working as a cashier at the dollar store, had built up a tolerance for them. Folks who didn’t understand that tax wasn’t included in the price. Folks who couldn’t fathom that some items cost more than a dollar. Folks who didn’t bother paying at all. The manager blamed Sadie for that last bunch. As if she wasn’t already distracted explaining county taxes at the register. All of them, twits, including the manager.

All except one, a beautiful man with dark hair and pale skin who wore a black coat with its collar perpetually turned up. Otherworldly. Secretly, she called the dark-haired man her prince.

The day after she found the dog, she discovered that he knew how to pull open door levers. When Sadie left her shift that evening, the dog emerged from behind the outdoor freezer that housed jumbo bags of ice. After that, Sadie didn’t bother trying to lock the dog in the house.

I should name you, Sadie says to the dog as they walk to the store this morning. But no name comes to mind.

An older gentleman whose flannel smells like the cigarettes and the woods that stretch behind the gas station at the end of town walks up to her register. He plunks down a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a bottle of extra-strength painkillers.

Three dollars, the man in the flannel declares. He rotates his lower jaw like he’s nursing a toothache.

Sadie rings up the items and points to the green numbers on the display that read $3.51.

Three items, three dollars, the man barters. Over the man’s shoulder, Sadie can see that the dark-haired man in the black coat has entered the store.

It’s a premium whitening toothpaste, and then there’s tax, Sadie says.

The man pulls out three crumpled bills and a handful of change from his jeans pocket. Sadie smooths the bills and places them in the drawer, then bags the items and hands them to the man. The man leaves, grumbling something about government-sanctioned robbery.

Sadie cranes her neck, looking for her prince, but can’t find him.

Later that night, Sadie sits at her kitchen table, sketching the dark-haired man. She colors him in with pencils she bought with her meager employee discount at the dollar store. In the sketch, he looks over his shoulder, his eyes glinting over the upturned collar. Sadie examines her work. For someone who has only taken a handful of art classes in high school, it’s not bad. Her prince has never come to her register, so she doesn’t know what color eyes he has. She debates between the blue and green before getting up to change into her pajamas.

When she returns, the dog has snatched the blue, green, and black colored pencils and is chewing them to splinters.

You really want to end up back on the other side of that fence, don’t you? Sadie scolds the dog. He drops the pencil in his mouth and looks ashamed. At least the drawing is unharmed, she thinks, as she cleans up the mess of wood shards.

The next morning, the manager informs her that more products have gone unaccounted for. He threatens to let her go if she doesn’t catch the dollar store thief. In the very least, dock her pay. So, Sadie keeps her eyes open. Mostly she watches her prince, who turns and looks dreamily to the corners of the store, who delicately lifts items from the shelves, who angles away from her, those broad shoulders, those perfectly fitting jeans, long fingers pushing an empty shopping cart nearer to her, nearer to the door.

An empty shopping cart.

Sadie shouts. Her prince startles and bolts. The manager hears the commotion too.

The automatic doors whoosh open.

A lightning bolt of fur and claw springs from behind the ice freezer and topples Sadie’s prince to the ground. The dog’s teeth sink into the back pocket of the man’s jeans, who howls at the dog to get off. Deodorant, toothpaste, and a pack of razors all spill on the pavement from the man’s coat pockets.

Sadie calls for the dog to stop. The manager can handle it from here. The dog looks up at Sadie. Sadie looks down at the dog.

Thanks King, Sadie says.

King yawns and scratches his ear.

Margaret Kelliher lives on the south side of Chicago with her family and a cockapoo who thinks she is a big dog. She currently teaches composition and participates in the La Grange Writers Group, whom she would like to thank for helping her grow as a writer.

The Bluebird Word