Tag: family (Page 1 of 4)

Julia

1 June 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Pama Lee Bennett

I’m standing beside a gurney in the emergency room, a gurney on which my great-aunt, age 104, is lying. Some preliminary tests have been done. A doctor we haven’t seen before enters and stands opposite me across the gurney. He doesn’t address her but begins talking over her to me.

“She appears to have a kidney condition, but I’m not sure we can do much to help her at her age.”

I look down at her, and back to him.

“Doctor, I’d like you to do for her whatever you would do for me, or yourself, or your own mother.”

“Well, your aunt is very old. She is probably at the end of her life.”

I think to myself, wait for it, wait for it.

My aunt looks up at him sweetly and says, “Doctor, I would like to live. But if I die, it’s all right.”

The look on his face: priceless.

He mumbles that certain procedures might injure her delicate body, but he can order some medication. I say, “Ok, I can understand that, but let’s do what we can.”

He leaves the room.

He can’t know that she walked on her own and lived on her own until 100. That she loves to play Skip-Bo with family members every week. That she reads voraciously and still keeps in touch with former students from her days as a one-room school teacher. That she hushes me in conversation if Tiger Woods comes on the golf channel and she wants to watch him play.

I can’t know that nine months from now, she will die suddenly and quietly of natural causes one afternoon, just short of 105.

I can’t know that. But neither can the doctor.

Pama Lee Bennett is a retired speech-language pathologist living in Sioux City, IA. She has taught English at summer language camps in Poland and at a school there in 2019. Her work has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Evening Street Review, The Bluebird Word, The Penwood Review, and others.

Enthusiasm for the Smell of the Sea

29 May 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Allan Scherlen

Open the car windows
and feel
the sea breeze blowing
through seats—
thick with smell
of salt and sand;
we drove over rice fields;
seagulls swarmed
the field’s grain;
and we crossed a causeway bridge—
seeing birds soar
over mirrors of water fields,
our family singing to the radio,
with enthusiasm for the sea.

Allan Scherlen’s experience is rooted in San Antonio and exploring roads along the Gulf of Mexico; eventually he moved to the Appalachia mountains. Along the way, poetry arose. And some friendly animals stuck around. Trips to Mexico and China influenced his writing. Being a librarian brought him close to books. For a specially-created video of this poem, please visit YouTube.

tree

16 May 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Miguel Rodríguez Otero

the tree at the back of my yard is scheduled
to be felled by the city in the coming days
its roots spread well into the wildflower patch
then outward and deep
eventually intersecting with fiber cables

my father planted it soon after i was born
in the black-and-whites he is digging a hole
while mom is breastfeeding me

half my life is scattered around this tree
playing fetch with dog
first cigarettes at night at the swing

the other half is buried
childhood thoughts and teenage obsessions
that have hidden away
inert like cables that intertwine with adult fears
which i always say i’ll unearth
and get rid of in the winter

but all of them – roots and fears –
have continued growing

the tree remains quiet
probably considering whether
to change colors and shed leaves
as if nothing was to happen

my feet are now restless
waiting for a sign
unsure how to say goodbye
to mom and dad
raising me away from fears

Miguel Rodríguez Otero’s poems appear in The Lake, Book of Matches, Red Fern Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Scapegoat Review, Last Leaves Magazine, The Bluebird Word, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, and The Raven’s Perch. He likes walking country roads and is friends with a heron that lives in the marsh near his home.

Sestina for a Beloved Son

24 April 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Alice Collinsworth

I start the journey to see him before dawn, a long stretch
of interstate highways and two-lane roads to follow,
traveling alone a long distance with only the voice
of my mapping app for company. I turn
on the radio for a while, looking for distraction, but time
passes slowly nonetheless. I turn it off again. Straight

ahead is the entrance ramp to I-35. “Drive straight
for 148 miles,” Google instructs me. This stretch
is well known, comfortable, traveled many times
to class reunions or family gatherings in Kansas. “Follow
the yellow brick road,” as they say there. I turn
my mind to autopilot and talk to myself, my voice

rising above the hum of the tires; the only voice
answering is the one in my head (not always on straight,
I admit, muddling conversations). I can turn
that inner voice off sometimes, but not today. It’s a stretch
to engage with it, honestly, but we reminisce together. I follow
a red Peterbilt to Wichita, making good time.

From there it’s a less-familiar route, traveled only a few times,
northeast to Kansas City to see my son. His voice
on the phone had sounded so earnest, beseeching – so I follow
the compass of my heart, though our relationship was never straight-
forward. There were years we barely spoke, long stretches
of distance and silence. He has reached out now, so it’s my turn

to make the effort, to reach back. We had issues, but he’s turned
out so very well, and I yearn to be there now. This time
I’m determined to connect, to build that bridge. I stop to stretch
my legs and buy coffee at a truck stop, where the cashier’s voice
reminds me of my own late mother – a strait-
laced woman if there ever was one, who followed

her Bible’s rules doggedly. One of the rare, true followers
of Christ, she called herself. “You must turn
from your evil ways,” she would admonish my son. “Strait
and narrow is the gate, you know.” She railed at him so many times
that we stopped going to her, stopped calling. I don’t want my own voice
to sound like hers. Love needs to bend, to expand, to stretch

and embrace. I follow the guidance of the GPS and not my mom this time,
turning onto the last highway that leads to the voice of my dear son,
heading straight to him, stretching out my arms.

Alice Collinsworth worked in journalism, writing and media relations during her career and is now happily retired with her cat, Cookie, to keep her company. Her poems and stories have appeared in several online journals and local collections. She has won numerous awards in regional contests. She lives in Oklahoma.

Memory, a Satellite

1 April 2025 / Editor

Poetry by KB Ballentine

Oh, my grandmother’s hibiscus!
Her begonias were bright and beautiful,
but her hibiscus was magic. Sunbaked
and salt-sprayed, filaments and anthers
waving wild in Florida rain brewed an elixir
that made the hummingbirds chirp.
An instant brightness, that shocking red
(matching my skin one summer),
where bees hummed praises and nuzzled
into the honeyed hearts. Forget the oranges
bulging behind blossoms, hibiscus let me know
I was home—wherever I happened to be.

KB Ballentine’s latest collection All the Way Through was published in November 2024 from Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. Other books are published with Blue Light Press, Iris Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Additional writing has been published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal. Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

Reminiscence

8 March 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Kandi Maxwell

My mother’s fingernails are perfectly painted a deep shade of red. She sits upright in her maroon leather recliner, a soft white pillow on her lap. Sunlight filters in through the sliding glass doors near the kitchen in her Southern California home. Outside are roses, geraniums, begonias. A small, green-grass lawn. I sit beside my mother. It’s lunchtime. Today, her caregiver has made a pretty plate of Wheat Thin crackers, each topped with cottage cheese and a dab of ruby-red strawberry jam in the center.

With her left hand, my mother holds her plate on top of the pillow. She uses her right hand to daintily pinch her thumb and forefinger on the edges of a cracker. Slowly, so slowly and carefully, she lifts the cracker to her mouth. She chews her cracker thoroughly before reaching for another. Her movements are measured, as she savors each bite.

When lunch is over, my mother naps and I chat quietly with my two sisters who are also visiting. The day is tranquil, as we reminisce about our childhoods. My mother, who isn’t really sleeping, occasionally throws her thoughts into the conversation making us laugh. Two days later, I fly back home to Northern California.

Although my mother had been suffering from heart failure, I didn’t know those moments would be our ending. I didn’t know how vividly memories of that scene would evoke my mother’s essence. Even now, four years later, when I miss her and need her familiarity, I picture her brightly painted fingernails; her unhurried manner; her humor. Her gracefulness throughout her physical decline and her strength in confronting mortality.

Kandi Maxwell is a creative nonfiction writer living in Northern California. Her stories have been published in Hippocampus Magazine, KYSO Flash, Raven’s Perch, Wordrunner eChapbooks, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her memoir, Snow After Fire, was released in 2023 by Legacy Book Press. Learn about Kandi’s writing at kandimaxwell.com.

Family Flock

23 February 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Danita Dodson

Daily I count turkeys on my land—
one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine—
willing this family unit
to stay together forever, wishing
to goodness that not one of them
will ever be lost from the circle
when winds blow or rifles rise,
hoping they’ll keep close to home
in the unknowns of shifting storms.

At twilight, they nest in the trees,
finding refuge in the folds of earth,
the sky a quilt of fading autumn light
that draws them near as one,
like a cabin’s warmth at day’s end,
kinship a shield against the cold.
And I pray for them as a brood—
one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine—
what I’ve prayed for my own family.

Danita Dodson is the author of three poetry collections: Trailing the Azimuth, The Medicine Woods, and Between Gone and Everlasting. Her poems appear in Salvation South and elsewhere. She is the 2024 winner of the Poetry Society of Tennessee’s Best of Fest. She lives in Sneedville, Tennessee. More at danitadodson.com.

Tilt

13 December 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

Under the Falling
Yellow Cedar moon
we solstice. Beef roast

in the slow cooker,
ham bakes in the oven.
Stars and moon align,

twinkle in cavernous
bookshelves, where
the printed word basks

in the spoken. My dad
and brother taste test
each other’s pickled fish,

banter over the better.
Gloria’s cake sports
jingle bells, boughs

from last weekend’s
tree falling in a windstorm.
We have come together

before and will again
to celebrate the U-turn
in darkness; name those

no longer with us
in this life, but within
memory’s reach.

Kersten Christianson is a poet and English teacher from Sitka, Alaska. She is the author of Curating the House of Nostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2020) and Something Yet to Be Named (Kelsay Books, 2017). She serves as poetry editor of Alaska Women Speak. Kersten savors road trips, bookstores, and smooth ink pens.

Imprint

11 October 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Carolyn Chilton Casas

How much of my essence
is imprinted for perpetuity
on the objects I hold dear?

My favorite coffee cup
stamped with a dragonfly,
stashed on a higher shelf,
waiting to be filled with a favorite,
freshly ground roast,
frothed cashew cream stirred in,
cinnamon sprinkled on top.

The colored notepads where I write
to my heart’s abandon,
or the dusty keyboard
with its smooth, black mouse cupped
for hours in my right hand.

The special pruning shears
and gloves only I use
while speaking kindly to each plant
and flower I trim.

A fraction of my being
infused into items often touched.

The rose-gold, ruby diamond ring
my grandfather presented
to my mother’s mother
almost a hundred years ago,
her legacy, the one she placed
in my sixteen-year-old palm
days before she died.

Carolyn Chilton Casas writes for energy and wellness magazines in several countries. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal. More of Carolyn’s work can be found in her second collection of poetry Under the Same Sky.

Photo by Valentina Locatelli on Unsplash

Way Back When

1 August 2024 / Editor

Nonfiction by Meredith Escudier

My little sister is seven, bundled up in a brown, corduroy car coat. I am nine, sporting a pair of orange polka-dotted pedal pushers and feeling fairly fleet-footed in my canvas Keds. Together we are walking home at dusk from our neighbor’s house where we have enjoyed yet another game of Chinese checkers.

“Can we play orphans?” she asks. Orphans. It’s a familiar game of ours, influenced by the thrill of childhood literature – The Boxcar Children or Oliver Twist or any number of hair-raising fairy tales that filled our impressionable psyches. According to the game’s unspoken rules, we must identify a house friendly enough to ask its current residents to take us in – two bedraggled sisters who have only recently escaped from the workhouse.

Perhaps in our mind’s eye, we are barefoot, ragged, dirty, but also surely sweet-faced, hopeful, and plucky. After some faux-hesitation, we will, of course, choose our own house – what else? – but the exercise allows us to flirt momentarily with independence and adventure, only to be flooded by a warm, familiar security afterwards. Our chosen scenario, as usual, unfolds with a practiced, codified dialog:

“How about this one?” she suggests, as we walk past a large corner house.

“No, too dark,” I respond on cue, shaking my head vigorously as we march along.

“Then this one?” She points to a house whose front lawn has recently been edged. A forgotten rubber ball is wedged between a planter box and a picket fence. I appear to inspect her choice before disqualifying it with a “Naah,” aligning myself perfectly with the unwritten script. “Not cozy enough,” I announce.

“Then how about this cute little house? It looks sort of friendly,” she says, tacking on a hopeful argument for good measure. Hmm, I take a look. She could be right. Among the cookie-cutter post-war housing that went up fast in the Fifties and that provided the parents of baby boomers a decent, if not charming, place to live, this house – with its ruby red front porch and generic cement driveway – just seemed to stand out. Well, at least to us.

We stop and peer in, evaluating the odds, wondering if this family might adopt our lonesome selves. Will they show mercy? Human kindness? Would they like the addition of two beseeching little girls around the dinner table tonight? I notice the glow from the light in the kitchen and guess at our older sister studiously setting the table, carefully placing our father’s milk glass at the helm. “Yes,” I agree companionably as we turn into our own comfortable driveway and trot up the front steps. Out back, between the clothesline and the dangling tether ball, is a likeness of our handprints, marking the day when three sisters leaned down and opened their hands, stretching and splaying their fingers wide as they pressed their palms into fresh cement.

Meredith Escudier has lived in France for over 35 years, teaching, translating, raising a family and writing. She is the author of three books, most recently, a food memoir, The Taste of Forever, an affectionate examination of home cooks that features an American mother and a French husband.