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Fish Tales

21 February 2023 / Editor

Special Selection for One-Year Anniversary Issue

Fiction by Foster Trecost

Boredom lurked like a silent companion, sometimes causing him to see things that weren’t there, sometimes causing him to miss things that were. Such was the case when he caught sight of something he’d never noticed before, though it had been there all along. He moved in for a closer look, so close his nose nearly touched the glass, and what he saw, in the language of his age, was an assortment of creatures, some big, some small. They moved about the confined space and he wondered if they were bored, too.

His brother, a bit older and much wiser, knew things and knew how to explain them. “Where’s my brother,” he asked.

“With his friends.” The answer was always the same, just like everything else. But the creatures through the glass were trapped, they weren’t going anywhere and neither was he.

“What are you looking at?” His brother had returned.

“Them,” he said, then streamed a series of questions so fast, each was asked before the prior could be answered.

“Slow down. One at a time.”

“That one,” he said, pointing to a large figure hovering in the back. “Why is that one bigger than the others?”

His brother presented a different view: “She’s the biggest because she’s everyone’s mother. All the others are her children.”

“All of them?”

“Not the skinny one. He’s the father. He worries all the time, that’s why he looks sick. They’re just like us.”

He believed every word and should have because every word was true, or at least the truth as his brother believed it. He spent the following days matching his newfound knowledge with what he saw, and concluded, just as his brother had, that they weren’t so different.

“You still thinking about them?” asked his brother. “Don’t waste too much time. It’s hard enough understanding our side of the glass.”

“You’re right.”

“Not always, but most of the time.” The two boys laughed, then his brother said something he’d never said before. “Come on, let’s go play.”

“I can come?”

“Sure, the others are waiting.” They turned away from the glass. “You want to race?”

“Can I have a head start?”

“Okay, but you better take it now before I change my mind.”

Without another word he swam away, his fish tail all that could be seen, swishing from one side to the other, and his brother swam after him just as fast as he could.

Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work appears in Potato Soup Journal, Halfway Down the Stairs, and BigCityLit. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.

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Stage IV

19 February 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Susan Miller

She graced many stages
in her 29-year-old life.
Clumsy, giggly ones
with slick patent leather,
pigtails, snug pink tights.
Sweaty, clingy ones
bent and twisted
under cruel disco lights.
Floating, chiffon ones
with crimson-lined lips,
pointed toes, height.
But in that icy, antiseptic
room with its swabs,
ceiling stickers, scopes
and gauze-filled jars,
the man with joyless eyes
rolled over in his squeaky
chair. And the words sliced
into the air like a scalpel,
shredding her satin heart.

Susan Miller is an editor/reporter for USA TODAY who enjoys writing poetry as a hobby.

Remember Me

18 February 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Lauren Oertel

I grew up near the redwoods.
Cinnamon-barked queens towered over us,
each containing their own majestic ecosystem.
They provided oxygen, a fresh earthy scent,
relief from the heat and noise of the city.
They whispered the soil’s secrets into my ear.
A few had been hollowed by fire,
or reduced to a stump.
Rings chronicled their long lives,
the history of what they had witnessed.

When I die, cut me in half
right across the middle.
See my rings.

Joys and terrors over the years
each reduced to a simple circle
that captures and carries it all.
They will honor the tears shed,
wounds healed.
The fine grain, nicks, and bumps,
all smoothed over with time,
turned into natural beauty.

When my body becomes a stump,
the rings will prove I was here.
Some of them will show when I stood tall,
lush with sprays of needle leaves,
umbrella-scaled cones.
My crown stretched toward the sun,
piercing the sky.
In those times I hope I gave you shelter
from the weight of daily survival.

That’s how I’d like you to remember me.

Lauren Oertel is a community organizer for Texas and New Mexico. Her work has been published in The Ravens Perch, Evening Street Review, and The Sun Magazine. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her partner Orlando and their tuxedo cat Apollonia.

Tony Told Me

16 February 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Susan Mannix

I remember the moment. The look he gave me through the iron bars of his stall, straight in my eye, said it all. “It’s time to let me go.”

But I wasn’t ready, no one in my family was, most of all my sixteen year-old daughter Lauren. Tony (Registered Jockey Club name: Spartans Pride) was her heart horse. The one we searched for and she chose. The one who started making her dreams come true. I remembered how her face lit up in surprise and delight as she ran across the grass parking lot to our trailer. “Mom, I won! I won! My first blue ribbon!” She held it up proudly. That was a year ago and just a month after we bought him

What a day that was.

So different from today.

Tony started showing signs of discomfort earlier while Lauren was at school. “Camping out” (stretching his hind legs behind to relieve abdominal pain), pawing, pacing. This wasn’t the first time with him and I waited for it to pass like it usually did.

It didn’t. The pawing became more frantic and he started to roll.

Phone in hand, I ran out into the paddock and hollered at Tony. He popped up and as I lead him into the barn, I called our veterinarian. In the twenty minutes before he arrived, I walked Tony around in the front of our barn to keep him from rolling, which could cause a deadly twist in his intestine.

The vet determined it was an impaction – a blockage caused by a mass of grain and hay in his gut. The only thing to do was pump mineral oil and warm water in him in hopes of loosening it. Once done, Tony was given a dose of Banamine, an equine pain reliever.

The wait began. I checked him often, relieved to see each time he was comfortable. He even passed a little bit of manure – another good sign. Once the drugs wore off in a couple of hours, we’d know more.

The pain returned. Then came the on-call emergency vet. By now Lauren and her sister, Brooke, were home from school and had set up in the barn with a close friend to keep constant watch on Tony. More mineral oil and Banamine, Another wait. If this didn’t work, the only option was surgery.

“He seems more comfortable.”

“I bet this will work.”

“Look, he’s nosing around for hay. That’s a good sign.”

Statements of hope that were delivered with eyes that were desperately grasping for reassurance. To each one I nodded vigorously and gave an enthusiastic “Yes, I agree!” I sent the girls up to the house for a quick break and stayed behind.

The soft spring air and the chirping of the tree frogs could not ease the heavy stillness of the barn. Darkness pressed in on all sides.

I looked into Tony’s face seeking a way to push back the darkness. Our eyes met. Mine begged him to get better; his said it’s time to face what’s happening. That’s when he told me, even though he stood quietly.

Hours before we loaded him onto our trailer and made the fifty-minute drive to the Marion duPont Equine Medical Center in Leesburg. Before his worried, scared eyes said “I can’t do this,” as veterinary techs took his vitals. Before the staff prepped him for emergency surgery, his body wracked with pain. Before my daughter sat for hours on the cold hard floor of a dimly lit hallway, offering up her dreams so her horse could graze once again in our pasture.

Before the phone call that woke us after only two hours sleep.

Before the desperate voice of the veterinary surgeon came through the receiver begging for permission to let him go.

Before I knew it was time, Tony told me.

Susan Mannix is from Maryland, where she lives on a small farm with her family and menagerie of horses, dogs & cats. Formerly a biomedical research editor, she is now working towards a Master’s degree in creative writing from Wilkes University. Find her at susanmannix.com and on Twitter at @lynsuze.

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The Books We’ll Never Read

15 February 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Francis Conlon

Sometimes the jacket stands alone,
A book cover with title embossed,
The text itself seems a weighty tome,
Whose message long ago was tossed.

Yet, I love a place with books,
Of course, there’s a fine library,
With small study spots in the nooks,
And, study of old thoughts contrary.

Is there a place—a writer’s cemetery?
Old thoughts and books gather about,
Ideas antiquated little scary,
In grumbling whispers but no shout?

So dusty is the old collection,
Stacks with volumes musty,
Nothing overdue in this section,
Just old spirits and grammar fusty.

Francis Conlon is a retired teacher living in Salt Lake City, Utah.

that’s enough

13 February 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Corey Bryan

I’d walk again through icy rain
to eat a chicken salad sandwich on
the world’s driest bread with you
just one more time.
I’d pretend to like seafood and say all
the right things like, “shrimp are the blue collar
workers of the ocean and it feels bad to eat them
but this cocktail sauce is way too good”
and stuff my face.
I’d support everything you
say no questions asked even if you do get a
tiny bit conspiratorial after the third glass
of the house red.
I’d tear down those reality tv show posters
they hung up on Boulevard
which cover your favorite piece of graffiti.
I’d cook you dinner
and buy all your favorite ingredients like
watermelon radishes and dinosaur kale and all the
other vegetables that sound crazy like that.
I’d watch all those shark
documentaries you love and
the more I think about it the more I think I’d
punch a shark in the nose, saddle him up
and take off for Lisbon where you are
now and say to you
“I hate shrimp and watermelon radish
and red wine and graffiti and I especially
hate dry bread
but I love you and I think
that’s enough.”

Corey Bryan is a fourth year student at Georgia State University majoring in Rhetoric and Composition. He is currently writing daily poetry prompts, along with some original poems, with a friend of his at poetryispretentious.com. He has one poem forthcoming at Sage Cigarettes Magazine titled “her kind of love”.

Thumbing a Ride

12 February 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Alison Arthur

She shifts uncomfortably in the deeply upholstered seat. Perhaps she should not have accepted the ride, but it’s too late for second thoughts now.

He pilots the car down the country road, the sun escaping below the horizon in the rearview mirror. There is a smell. Mints and something else she can’t quite place. Perhaps shaving cream or soap. Desperation? Can you smell desperation, she wonders?

The conversation is cordial, but cautious. He wants to know where she is going, where she came from, why she is on the road thumbing a lift. She answers politely, but minimally, not sure of her situation. But he seems more paternal in his concern than intrusive. She begins to relax, sinking into the plush upholstery, her sense of dread subsiding.

He tells her he is a distributor for car parts, traveling between stores. Often with only his own thoughts to occupy him, he is happy for some companionship. When they stop for gas, he returns to the car with packaged sandwiches and juice that he shares with her. “You look a little hungry,” he says with fatherly concern. The conversation is lighter now, and she dozes for a while, hunger satiated and fear assuaged.

When she wakes, it is dark. She is unsure where they are. A backroad with no street lights, swirling mist caught in the headlights in the chill night air. Noticing that she has stirred, he chuckles and says, “Nice to see you are feeling so comfortable. Guess you have decided I’m not a serial killer.”

She straightens herself in her seat, shaking off sleep, and turns her face to him. “Oh yes, quite sure,” she replies. “After all, what are the chances there would be two of us in the same car.”

Alison Arthur is an emerging flash fiction author residing in Nova Scotia, Canada. Read earlier work from the August 2022 Issue of The Bluebird Word.

Feather Meme

10 February 2023 / Editor

Special Selection for One-year anniversary issue

Poetry by Marianne Brems

Hikers before me have left feathers
stuck in the cracks of a wooden trail marker
at a junction.
Small feathers with downy barbs
flutter in the fall breeze
where delicate shafts may not hold.
Large feathers with curled edges
and sturdier shafts sit deep and solid.

As memes they stand
to carry the import of one road taken,
not another,
on this day, not that.
This small family of Kilroy was Here
gather in good company
to speak to a public not yet come,
inviting them to leave their own mark
across a waiting space.

Marianne Brems is the author of three poetry chapbooks from Finishing Line Press. The most recent, In Its Own Time, is forthcoming in 2023. Her poems have also appeared in literary journals including Nightingale & Sparrow, The Sunlight Press, The Lake, and Green Ink Poetry. Website: www.mariannebrems.com.

small

8 February 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Michele Johnson

1. Not large, comparatively less-than, insignificant (see also: slight, tenuous, negligible)

You were small to begin with. During freshman year, your health professor has everyone perform a skinfold test to calculate their BMI. He announces yours in front of the class. The room is filled with desks and the increasing distance between them. His voice sounds far away: You’ll have babies soon. Eat for them.

2. Minor in influence or power, unlikely to cause problems (see also: secondary, inferior) 3. Humiliated, as in (H)e made me feel small.

You are so small that men hold the door for you. This is called chivalry, a code of conduct named after a kingdom built high in the sky on an invisible pedestal. In the center of this kingdom is a town populated by little women who are seemingly never hungry, owing to a litanous supply of apples, which are espaliered along well-swept streets. The women navigate (never prune) the canon of sturdy trellises. Sticky, sweet juice drips from their chins.

You’d think it difficult to travel to, but Chivalry is actually harder to return from. A (M)an you used to worship blamed altitude sickness.

4. Operating on a limited scale 5. Young (see also: underdeveloped, stunted, child-like)

It’s obvious now; you’re getting smaller. After lying in bed for six weeks, there’s a full-inch discrepancy between the tips of your protruding hip bones and the salvation in your womb. Your left hand rests on a Ziplock bag warm with a few tablespoons of foamy yellow bile. Your husband offers to buy anything you might keep down. When he returns, he doesn’t tell you he stopped for General Tso’s chicken and ate it in the car. He doesn’t have to. You lose a few more tablespoons of yourself to the Ziplock bag.

Days later, the nurse tells you if you don’t eat we’ll have to put you in the hospital. Her breath stinks of fermented apples. You wonder why she’s scolding you as if you were a child.

6. Weak (see also: fragile, frail, ashamed)

Signs and Symptoms of Hyperemesis Gravidarum:

Severe nausea and vomiting
Weight loss of 5% or more of pre-pregnancy weight
Food aversions
Extreme fatigue
Confusion
Anxiety/depression
Increased ~~salvation~~ salivation

Though there’s no proven cause of hyperemesis gravidarum, researchers suggest several possibilities. These include genetics, rising levels of a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin, and increased estrogen and progesterone. If you weren’t so small, you’d add to their list:

eating affected apples
altitude sickness

7. To dwindle, as in * . . . smalled till she was nought at all.^{^[1]}

Years of altitude sickness (?) give you intestinal metaplasia, putting you at high risk of stomach cancer. Your physician instructs you to take smaller and smaller bites, which you do because you love your husband and five children (They, too, have sworn off all varieties of apples).

You somehow lose another ten pounds and wonder if this is how you will finally disappear.

^{^[1]} From “The Clock of the Years” by Thomas Hardy (1916).

Michele Johnson (she/her) (Instagram: @thelyricalwild) is an emerging writer living in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state with her husband and five unschooled kids. As an introvert, she enjoys exploring both the Pacific Northwest backcountry and her vast inner world, and she sometimes confuses the two.

The Hip

6 February 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Dawn L. C. Miller

Her ashes came to her grown daughters in a lovely box,
mahogany and rosewood,
accompanied by another box, containing
what had sustained her past the pain,
preserved her from disability,
entitled her to a parking permit.
It was her hip. Titanium and some ceramic.

Clarise and Susanne stared at it gleaming on the red velvet.
“It’s her hip,” murmured Clarise.
“Of course it is,” stated Susanne. “I can see that.”
“What are we supposed to do with it?” continued Clarise.
“Well, we can’t scatter it with her ashes. Someone might find it.”
They stared some more.
Together they debated all evening, agreeing on nothing.

The next morning it gleamed at them from the mantle.
Without looking at it,
in between angry silences,
and tears,
they talked.

The memories of places their mother had never been
floated into the morning light.
The seashore, when she stayed behind to take care of things at home.
The mountains she did not go with them to see:
no need to pay extra fare.
All the beauty and the music of far cities,
too expensive.
“Let’s take her there now!” they both said together.

And the journeys began.
Perched on a gunnel, their mother’s hip resounded with sea sounds.
Lost in the luggage for three days in Kenya,
Mother was found at last by a drug sniffing dog.
She rolled off into the snow at an Austrian ski resort,
but sat gleaming on a chair in the best restaurant in Paris
as her daughters laughed and toasted and remembered.

Dawn L. C. Miller has been writing poetry since childhood. Her poems have been published in Poetic Hours and Pegasus Review. She enjoys living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore with her two cats and orchids.

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