Tag: family (Page 4 of 4)

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Where to Start

11 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Sara Sherr

Let’s play this backward, that could be the place to start.
Driving home from practice with your dad, fear sang
you’re the worst one on the team, you’re the worst one on the team.

Remember us at Hannukah, you’re a baby with curly hair,
you’re safe, you’re protected, everyone here loves you and always will.
The four of us, forever, you loved your little sister,
you’ll always miss her. You fell asleep with your hand on her arm
at your grandparents’ while the cars rushed by below. Go to sleep now.

Remember it with me, shield your eyes so love doesn’t blind you.
Fear lived inside these stories. But what did the trees say?
Love sung on, floated in the sunlight on the lake
your mom, your girlfriend, lying on the blow up boat and there were no mirrors
and there were no cell phones there was just
the present, the radiant, exalted now.

You never really rode horses, your bike never really got crunched,
you never yanked up a whole garden at its roots. Bravo, my love, I’m proud and
you made it all up. You never got to be a boy but you’re glad about that now, right?

You made it all up. You never got to be a boy, but you’re glad about that now. Right?
You never yanked up a whole garden at its roots. Bravo my love, I’m proud and
you never really rode horses. Your bike never really got crunched.

The present, the radiant, exalted now.
And there were no cell phones there was just
your mom, your girlfriend, lying on the blow up boat and there were no mirrors.
Love sung on, floated in the sunlight on top of the lake.
Fear lived inside these stories. (But what did the trees say?)
Shield your eyes so love doesn’t blind you. Remember it with me.

At your grandparents’, while the cars rushed below, go to sleep now,
you’ll always miss her. You fell asleep with your hand on her arm,
the four of us, forever. You loved your little sister.
You’re safe, you’re protected, everyone here loves you and always will.
Remember us at Hannukah, you’re a baby with curly hair.

You’re the worst one on the team, you’re the worst one on the team.
Driving home from practice, with your dad, fear sang.
That could be the place to start. Let’s play this backward.

Sara Sherr is a writer and high school English teacher who lives in Yarmouth, Maine with her fiancé and their dog. Let’s get in touch: [email protected].

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Some Evidence

20 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jen Prince

There’s a little church in my hands—
supplicant fingers that petition the kitchen table, fracture,
find broken only the bones that matter.

Hound the relics of god’s own garbage that thrum under my skin, gentle and wicked,
blinkering as through a veil.

What I find I pull close, press in, tuck under my chin. Now
this is the dark-eyed child who takes after her mother.
This is the daughter who speaks softer.

Down the hall the dog is barking, marking the wail of a plane through wafer-thin walls—
there’s a certain pitch at which my brain just breaks.

My voracious father, a dog lover, has been known to lose his appetite from time to time.
Has been known to gorge instead on godly ferocity, the muscles in his jaw flickering
like the first light of the world.

I know you better than you know yourself, he said: when I met your mother,
I warned her I could yell.

In my own home moonlight passes over like a benign plague or stranger’s favor,
and an owl calls me alone from sleep.
The iron words lie hot on my tongue, drowned and hissing.

Jen Prince is a writer and editor based in Memphis, TN. Her poetic work centers on ideas of separation, memory, and myth. Her poem “Brittle Mirror” has been accepted for publication at the Scapegoat Review.

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At Dawn Where Two Worlds Meet

12 March 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Hope Nisly

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
-Rumi

The light of early morning is magic, pure and simple and full of possibility. I believe this, even when I am rudely jolted awake by the ring of my phone and it is barely light out. A voice asks, “Can you be ready in five minutes? I’ll pick you up. I want to show you something.” Because the voice belongs to the quietest of my five brothers, the one who seldom displays strong emotion or succumbs to any hint of urgency, I respond quickly and without a clue of what might be coming.

Now here we stand quietly at the fence row of a neighbor’s farm. We are looking out over a convocation of bald eagles, at minimum forty, that landed in a field newly-covered with the aromatic debris from a farmer’s barnyard. I take a deep breath and hold it, as if any movement or sound might obliterate the tranquility of this early morning tableau.

In several weeks, this field will be covered with green shoots pushing up through the rich, muck-covered soil. This morning, however, it is covered only with majestic birds that swoop and peck at the dung, hunting for a mischief of mice or a labor of voles too slow to evade their talons of death. The eagles, so recently snatched back from the edge of extinction, ignore our curiosity.

In the pink glow of the rising sun, our shoes damp with dew, all hints of our political differences have faded into the shadows of this flood of early light.

Words are superfluous in this light. Side-by-side, we stand in silence and solidarity and hope, basking in this breath-taking view of these birds of prey. I am content to stand quietly in the lengthy early-morning shadow cast by my brother, this quiet man whose soul is full of love for all living things, who wants to share this with me just because I am; just because he is; just because we are.

Hope Nisly is a retired librarian living in Reedley, California where she gets up early to catch the full moon going down and watch the sun rising in its wake. Her writing has appeared in Mojave River Review, Fredericksburg Literary and Arts Review, and Persimmon Tree. Her stories have aired on Valley Writers Read, a program of the local NPR-affiliate station.

The Single Story of a Latinx Pinocchio

11 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Amelia Díaz Ettinger

1.
My Puerto Rican aunt in North Carolina, lived in pearls, three-inch heels, and illusions.
“There is bigotry for blacks, but we are white.”
And yet a woman stopped her car at my aunt’s Corinthian columns
“How much do they pay; I can pay you double.”
The Gucci suit and diamonds was no shield.
Still, my aunt, mi tía, insisted; “ignorance vs. prejudice.”
(A PhD from Columbia in New York assured her notions had to be right).
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“Don’t be impertinent.”

2.
A woman with puffy bleached hair, and a ‘T’ shirt of compassion says,
“Tell me your hardship story,” empathy fills her eyes, and I almost laughed.
I know what she wants, but living in a palace surrounded by cultured men would unhinge
what she expects and I am tired
half a century of talk. I want calm, and I want peace, and I want somehow to fit
in this olive brown skin, so I gift her;
“Born in a shack without water or electricity. It was the slums, el barrio.”
She tearily pats my knee, my father in his grave protests, ‘Remember Caruso and Barcelona’,
he says and I silence him, so I swallow memories in surrender
and I become the Latinx Pinocchio.

3.
It is easy to release a single story,
harder to pretend virtue,
so I talk in a soft voice,
when pain blinds me in anger.
And I work harder,
three times, five times, a billion times,
knowing it would not be enough
I still will be the sleeping effigy
under a large sombrero.
Above all entomb lust under a blue tarp,
along with my ambitions,
my culture, mi gente,
and my nose grows long,
but I can’t bury the rhythm of my hips,

4.
I can accommodate, I can give and I will take, will sigh after I cry, and smile until I make a grimace, but when my children are denied— yes— then, I will justify this constant view,

I will lose my temper.
Time after time, my children were told:
“You can’t write Hispanic in these forms.”
“What do you want? Some sort of privileges?”
“You are white”
I see the pain each time they denied
my part in them.

Now, my grandson is too young to understand,
“Yes!” he screams, “she IS my Nana,” Confusion in his eyes.
To me, carrying them in my arms:
“Where did you go to adopt these children?”
“Tell me the truth, are they adopted? Or are they albino?”
“No! You can’t possibly be their mama!”
This I cannot give.
Here I draw the threshold.
I will cut this wooden nose to spite my face.

Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a self-described ‘Mexi-Rican,’ born in México but raised in Puerto Rico. As a BIPOC poet and writer, she has two full-length poetry books published; Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, and a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a la Vez by Redbat Press, and a poetry chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies and have received honors and awards. A new full collection of poetry will be released by RedBat Press in the fall.

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Morning Texts

27 February 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jon Wilder

Hi Good Morning, can you remember to call Grandma today, it’s her birthday and yes I know she didn’t really encourage you growing up so your allegiance isn’t there and yes I know she has support where she’s living, but after Grandpa died she’s just kind of pacing around the house reading magazines and sewing his old shirts into pillow cases so she can still sleep with him at night. Can you please just call her, I love you have a good day.

Jon Wilder is a poet and musician living in Portland, OR. He writes, records and releases music under the name Boom Years and his poetry has been featured in Levee Magazine, Duck Lake Books, Sonder Midwest & Salem State. His first book “Bullpen no. 1” was released in 2016 and his second collection of poetry “Original Fear” comes out on May 13.

Maybe Death Smells Like Onions

20 February 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Pamela McCarthy

Presentation is important. Set the table with good dishware, with the silver placed just so, with the napkins folded. Maybe light a candle or two.

Who am I talking to? I guess I’m talking to you, ghosts.

Make something that won’t tax your resources and that will be delicious. What I mean is, use what you have on hand. Cut things evenly, add salt—always add some salt—add the spices and flavorings you want. Maybe cook with a little of the wine you were going to drink in the hopes it would lead you to where everyone is, where you can at least visit with them for a while.

This is why it’s important to buy the ingredients before things go to shit. Before you can’t get to the Indian grocery store and can’t get your hands on asafoetida. Well, I got the asafoetida a while ago, it’s been in my cupboard. Its stench is legendary, like death according to one vlogger, so when I sniffed it, I was disappointed. It smelled like onions to me. It still does. Old onions, I suppose, but …onions.

Where was I?

Make something that can accommodate the remaining chicken in your freezer. Something that will tie the past and present together. Something you would proudly serve to your family or friends, if they were here to eat it.

We won’t think about that.

Pour yourself a glass of wine while the chicken roasts in the marinade you prepared. The power could go out any minute. Pour yourself another glass of wine when it goes out just after you take it out of the oven. Toast the grid. The grid is dead, long live the grid.

After raising your glass, remember why you’re doing this. Why am I doing this? Well, we all do things like this for a reason, I’m sure you have your own. Maybe it’s to remember eating with your loved ones.

Look at the photographs of your family, your friends, the ones who can’t be here because there’s no safe passage any longer, the ones who can be here because they are ghosts. Remember that you have to eat what you’ve prepared. You are on your third glass of wine, you lush! Haha, I am hammered. Alone. Drinking alone was never on my bucket list, and it wasn’t anything I did before all…all this.

The chicken is good with the asafoetida. Resolve to use more of it in your cooking, then realize that the grid is sputtering in its death throes like everything else. You’re in a condo, one that’s been awfully quiet. Did everyone die? Wouldn’t there be a smell? Would it smell like the asafoetida?

I know I’m drunk. Here I am, giving instructions and advice on cooking to ghosts. If you pay attention, you can see them from the corner of your eye in the shadows thrown by the candles you lit for ambiance, but which are now for light.

Pamela McCarthy spends her days working in healthcare fundraising and her nights writing short fiction. When she is not working or writing, she is buying seeds for her garden, creating more garden space because she bought so many seeds, or reading.