Tag: gratitude (Page 1 of 4)

Alma’s Baked ‘Possum: A Thanksgiving Tradition

5 December 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Mark Hall

Times were often lean, growing up in rural South Georgia, where a Thanksgiving turkey was a luxury many families could not afford. But a holiday feast could still be had with “Alma’s Baked ‘Possum.”

Fresh out of college, I left my Southern home for a job on the West Coast. In California, I missed the simple country food of my upbringing. At the time, I helped out occasionally in the kitchen of my friend Shoen, a personal chef recently returned from a stint cooking on Cher’s latest tour. While I zested Meyer lemons for flambéed peaches with cognac and Cointreau, I chronicled my hunger for the ordinary. Instead of the nourishing goodness of Hoppin’ John, collards, and cornbread, in California even the humble burger seemed to be tricked up into something needlessly complicated. Draped with sheep’s cheese and wilted radicchio bathed in balsamic vinegar, meatless patties were delivered to the table not with fries, but with a thimble full of chilled carrot, orange, and cardamom soup, with a delicate tower of sourdough crostini perched on top.

The Southern palate, I explained to Shoen as I stirred toasted cumin seeds, is fundamentally different from those of other regions. According to Mrs. S. R. Dull’s 1928 Southern Cooking, the Bible in my grandmother’s kitchen, Southerners don’t even have the same food groups as other folks. Instead of Grains, Fruits and Vegetables, Dairy, and Meat, Mrs. Dull taught us that there are not four but five food groups:

Cereals, wheat, flour, cornmeal, rice, bread, and macaroni
Milk, eggs, cheese, meat, fish, peas, beans, nuts, and game
Fats, butter, butter substitutes, drippings, cottonseed oil, olive oil, and bacon
Sugar, syrups, honey, jelly, and preserves
Vegetables and fruits

If Shoen’s menus of iced black bean soup with chipotle cream and chargrilled Belgian endive with Fontina and yellow pear tomatoes were any indication, however, Californians eschew the humble staples of Southern cooking. Folks from San Diego to San Francisco apparently live their entire lives without the “drippings” necessary to nourish the body.

When a ‘possum set up housekeeping in my basement just before Thanksgiving, I saw this as a perfect opportunity to demonstrate my point about the simplicity and goodness of Southern food. A neighbor loaned me what he termed a “humane” trap to capture my visitor. Three nights and as many pounds of Purina Dog Chow later, I found a dazed but sated ‘possum squeezed into a too-small cage intended for an errant squirrel.

In the meantime, I consulted Mrs. Dull for advice about its preparation. No haute cuisine Mrs. Dull’s cooking. Of ‘possum she directs: “Put 1⁄2 lime in about 1 gallon of boiling water and scald quickly, and pull off hair while hot. Scrape well—remove feet, tail and entrails—like you would a pig.”

I photocopied the recipe, affixed it to the ‘possum-stuffed squirrel trap, then left them together on Shoen’s doorstep. Her apartment was one of those in which all the entrances open onto a common hallway. As a result, mouths watering, neighbors sniffed the air and leaned in each day as they passed her door, wondering what delicacy simmered within. Shoen would not be home for some time, and to me, this was ideal. Neighbors would have ample opportunity to walk by and see the live caged ’possum waiting at her door. Hearing its faint scratch-scratch, they would move in for closer inspection, only to find those bulbous pink eyes staring up at them, along with Mrs. Dull’s recipe for “Alma’s Baked ‘Possum.” I imagined Shoen’s own walk down the hallway, arms piled high with Bosc pears, watercress, and lamb shanks. Slowly the cage would come into focus, then the ‘possum itself.

I returned home to wait by the phone. Shoen, herself a vegetarian, would free the ‘possum in the park across the street, and later, when I’d let down my guard, she would get even. Shoen can give as good as she can take, and so I set myself to imagining her revenge. But no phone call came. Had Shoen stayed out all day? I worried that the ‘possum might suffer in the cage, dehydrate, or worse, die. Should I return to check? I waited. Late that evening, my doorbell rang. On my doorstep I found several covered dishes. Atop the largest was an artfully calligraphed menu:

Bacon, Arugula & Leek Salad
Petits Pois & Prosciutto Soup
Lemon Mint Tagliatelle with Truffle Butter
Alma’s Baked ’Possum

As expected, Shoen gave as good as she took. The next morning, she phoned to ask how I had liked my supper. Only then did she reveal that “Alma’s Baked ‘Possum,” was, in fact, organic free-range turkey.

Mark Hall lives in North Carolina. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Timberline Review, Lunch Ticket, Passengers Journal, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Hippocampus, The Fourth River, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere.

Poinsettias

1 December 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kathy Pon

You wait three days on a pallet
for our return. I panic
about frost and your need
for a drink of water.
But when we open each box
red bracts burst and blaze
our home with your magic,
elegance draping each corner festive.
Our holiday breathes before us.

Years past, we drowned in excess,
gold garland and strings of blinking lights
crammed our Christmas house.
Sensory overload from rooms littered
with glittery noise that seemed
to muffle our seasonal joy.

When we found greenhouses bearing
your stalks, you brought us delight
in fields of matted crimson, candy cane
pinks and whipped-cream whites.
Your yellow-button flowers
seemed to smile at us.

Now, no need to shine up
these simple lives. Surrounded by quiet,
our orchard stitched in winter stillness,
we drink black coffee in the dark
of our winter bedroom, dogs dug in
blankets beside us — and you dance
in the hallway, poinsettia-children
lifting our spirits like a secret promise.
Each potted star radiates enough,
all the holiday we need.

Kathy Pon lives with her husband, a third-generation farmer, on an almond orchard in Central California. Her work has been featured in Passengers Journal, Canary, RockPaperPoem, The Closed Eye Open, and other places. Her chapbook, Orchard Language (Finishing Line Press) was published in October 2025.

Perfect Day

1 November 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Susan Wolbarst

The day unfolds
in its own sweet way:
sunny, highs
in the mid-seventies,
light breeze. Zero
chance of rain.

Its slow perfection
savored
by coastal retirees
breathing deeply
exhaling thanks.

The most ambitious
get some steps in,
or re-pot baby
tomato plants from
the greenhouse.
The rest of us

sip coffee on
the deck and,
due to bad habits
we cannot shake,
read newspapers
on our phones.

Susan Wolbarst is a newspaper reporter in rural Gualala, California. Her poetry has been published in Plainsongs, pioneertown (pioneertownlit.com), Naugatuck River Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Alchemy and Miracles: Nature Woven Into Words. A chapbook of her poems, It’s Over, published in August 2025 (Finishing Line Press).

Lessons Woven in Time

1 November 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Ron Theel

We learn by doing, and experiences can be great teachers.

Don’t get too comfortable as your life can change quickly.

One winter, we had an unusually warm early March. Everyone hoped for an early spring. A bitter cold front suddenly swooped in, bringing with it sleet and freezing rain. While walking my dog, I came across two robins, their backs frozen to the sidewalk, feet sticking up in the air. The promise of early spring vanished overnight.

Follow your heart and your passion.

One of my college roommates, Ben, was a gifted viola player. Ben wanted to pursue a career in music, but his father insisted that he enroll as a pre-med student. He became disinterested in his coursework and dropped out at the end of his sophomore year. Several years passed until one day I received a letter from Ben. He graduated from the Royal College of Music in London and was making plans to audition for the London Symphony. Always remember that your life is your journey.

Travel as much as you can. It will change the way you view the world.

I’ve been to China five times. Billions of people don’t live the same way we do and don’t share the same beliefs, values, and way of life that we do. You will realize what a tiny speck we occupy in the world and be grateful for the things we do have in America.

I do have some regrets. I wish I had been more of a “free spirit” earlier in life. On a beautiful morning, it’s okay to hit your “pause button.” Grab today. Spend a day at the beach. Hike in the forest. Claim your day. It belongs to you and to no one else. It took a progressive, incurable disease for me to realize this. No one is guaranteed tomorrow.

Don’t get trapped in the past. Be a forward-thinking, lifelong learner. I wish I had kept more current with our ever-changing technology and made more of an effort to adapt to an ever-changing world. Changes come so fast. Moving forward in life is about adaptation.

Remember that your life is your journey. Be sure to make the most of it!

Ron Theel is a freelance writer, photographer, and mixed media artist living in Syracuse, NY. His writing has appeared in The Bluebird Word, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, and elsewhere.

Early Harvest

8 October 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Margaret Morth

The print date on the black-and-white’s border says “Aug 60,” and that might well be spot on. Film processing was an extra cost in a household that afforded no extras, and our family photos were taken with deliberation, usually by my father. A roll of film could sit in the camera for quite some time. But here the corn is far enough along that I’m checking it for ripeness, so I’ll call it: late July-early August 1960. At that time in northern plains summer when everyone’s taste buds hum in anticipation of the first steaming platter of yellow-gold corn on the cob.

I hadn’t considered before who took the photo. But now it seems obvious that it was my brother, two years my senior, using the little “Brownie” camera that had mostly replaced the bulky, fussy flash cameras of our 1950s photos, birthdays and Christmas. Dad didn’t want us handling anything that could break or get mussed up, but the Brownie—casual, inexpensive, ubiquitous in its time—was of another, easier-going state of being. And my brother, longer-schooled in how not to upset our father, had access to this companionable camera, and took it out into our little world.

My father and I, together on a summer day. That sounds simple, ordinary enough. Though for us this is a singular moment, and that it was caught out of time is extraordinary too.

I am a month shy of my seventh birthday. My long French braids are pinned up in the warmth of summer. Already evident are the long arms and large hands, mark of the big-boned paternal line that bred me. It’s hard to see, but my father is smiling slightly, maybe talking about the ear of corn I’ve singled out. My face is hidden but the set of my head and my hands about to enfold the chosen ear show an intentness, a seriousness about something important to get right. Dad looks relaxed, pleased even. That in itself makes this a moment apart.

It must have been a Sunday, otherwise he wouldn’t have been with us in the middle of the day and not in work clothes. Still, it seems notable that he’d spend his brief time of leisure with us like that, just hanging out. Maybe that’s why my brother snapped the shutter. Aware of rarity, he documented it.

Throughout my childhood and beyond, “relaxed” was not a word often connected with my father. Later in life I realized that he, like his siblings and parents, struggled with what people didn’t have words for back then. Moody, they’d say, nervous. He’s such a nervous one. That tribe are all moody, you know. The hounds of anxiety and depression stalked them throughout their lives and passed into generations.

But not on this summer day in 1960. I can almost hear him, his voice low and easy: That’s a nice one, peel a little from the top, just a peek. No wonder I was so intent, almost reverent.

Dad is wearing his American Legion T-shirt, white with dark blue accents. Years later I found the shirt in a drawer, long packed away. I asked Dad if I could have it. He seemed surprised but said sure, take it. It was worn pretty thin by then but still up for the beer runs, impromptu volleyball games, and happy hour bars of college life. It had a good second run. I wish I had it now, even the remaining tatters of it.

Since retiring from a career in the nonprofit sector, Margaret Morth is immersed in a long-held passion for writing. Her work has appeared in Under the Sun, The RavensPerch, and TulipTree Review. Originally from North Dakota, she resides in Brooklyn NY, her adopted home of many years.

Overheard, an offering

3 October 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Michelle Hasty

The line of us waits silently for the audiologist
Leaf green chairs face closed white doors
We seem ordered according to age and startle
When a mechanical voice shouts at us
From someone’s purse saying that she has reached
Her destination and the owner of the phone
Stops the sound, shakes her head, and says
She’s asked her son to quit with the technology
But he tells her she must join the 21st century
I’m here, she says, giggling, I just don’t know
What to do here. The line of us giggles with her.
Silence broken, a pair to my left discusses ailments.
It’s always something, one says.
I can’t hear the specifics—this is why I’m here–
But I catch a phrase from the other: I can’t really complain,
She says. The phrase catches me up short: I can complain.
I don’t want pink plastic devices attached to my ears
When I’m barely fifty. The possibility of a piercing
Shriek emanating, of my body beeping, I’m here!
Seems like a good reason to complain. Wasn’t I just
In middle school forever scrambling on the grass
Searching for lost contact lenses, or praying in ballet class
That the sound of music would cover my knees cracking?
A white door opens and a wobbly woman emerges,
Sinks into an empty chair at the end of our line.
Dizzy, she mutters. Getting crackers, the technician calls
Bustling past us, using her badge to exit the corridor.
The woman who can’t complain digs something
Out of her purse, holds a cupped hand to
The one who is dizzy, and asks, would you like a peppermint?
I am grateful to have heard this offering.

Michelle Hasty is a professor of education living in Nashville, Tennessee. Her academic writing has been published in literacy journals, such as Voices from the Middle and The Reading Teacher, and her short story, “Prone to Wander,” was published in the Dillydoun Daily Review. She is new to poetry writing.

Railroad Run

1 September 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Dick Daniels

My favorite race tee came from the Amory Railroad Festival Run. Bright orange and black, which happened to be my college colors, the front displayed a grinning locomotive chugging down the tracks in running shoes. Whenever worn, it stood out and drew favorable comments from other runners.

The shirt has long since gone the way of so many other articles of clothing: either victimized by my laundering inadequacies; passed down to one of my three sons; or packed in a grocery sack for donation to a local charity. However, my memories of that race day remain—as vivid as the orange of that shirt.

Amory didn’t have the appeal of other Mississippi towns like Natchez, Oxford, or even neighboring Tupelo. If Elvis had been born about twenty miles further south, that tee might have had a different face. But Amory had given birth to a thriving rail center, and that was the part of its history around which it created a festival every spring.

I was living in Memphis at the time and Amory was only a two-hour drive. The race brochure was particularly inviting—something for the whole family. Train rides on authentic railroad cars! Merchandise drawings! Colorful t-shirts! And the unstated possibility to a man nearing forty that he might have a chance for an age-group trophy at the small-city event. In those days, I eagerly journeyed to such out-of-town races as the Okraland Stampede and the Trenton Teapot Trot. The idea of accumulating more race shirts than you could ever wear had not occurred to me.

So off we went, my wife and youngest son along for the festivities. The sun came up early that late-spring day. Its warmth was particularly soothing after so many cold and dreary days of winter. The temperature eventually reached about 85 degrees, which doesn’t sound all that scary to a Southern runner. It was, however, the first day that year of any significant heat, and I would later calculate that it was nearly 30 degrees warmer than the average temperature at which I had been training just a few weeks prior.

As we gathered at the starting line, a quick survey of the field indicated a supreme effort might indeed result in age group recognition. For some reason, the actual start caught most of us by surprise, and there was an excessive amount of chaos and jostling for position as startled runners surged ahead. I remember seeing a young boy of ten or eleven who lost one of his shoes in the ensuing panic. He fought to retrieve it without being trampled by the herd of thinclads, then wisely retreated to the safety of the sidelines to lace up. A Stage Mom shrieked at him the whole time, ‘Hurry! You’re going to be last!’ Mercifully, I was soon out of earshot and had some running space.

The Amory Run, as I recall, was a five-miler, and I expected it to be less demanding than all those 10Ks which were the standard race at that time. My split times were pretty good the first two miles, but it was soon painfully apparent that I was overheating. I could visualize wavy vapors coming off the top of my head. That sinking feeling of knowing that you had ‘gone out too fast’ slowly overtook me. A mile later the disgrace of stopping to walk during a race had to be endured. It was my first time, and it was humbling. But I knew there was no other choice.

With each person that passed me, I suffered a little more as runners with excess weight or without the smoothest strides went streaming by. There were even children passing me. Among them, I recognized the boy who had lost his shoe at the start. His labored breathing had been audible before I saw him. As he went by, I could see a face flushed as red as a warning light on a car’s dashboard, similarly indicating an impending boilover. In that instant, I imagined how he might be struggling to gain his mother’s approval, thought about my own upbringing and how achievements had been expected by my parents, and knew how proud I would have been to see one of my sons showing that much determination.

Before he got too far ahead, I broke into a half-sprint to catch up, resolved to help him finish. I pulled up beside him and asked if he minded some company. His breathing was so heavy, words could not be summoned, so a shake of his head was my invitation. Over the remainder of that course, he became the recipient of all the information I had ever read on breathing, relaxation and pace. ‘Hold what you got!’ was encouragingly repeated.

My own pain and humiliation had been forgotten, and before I knew it, we had turned a corner and entered a long parking lot that housed the finish line at its other end. The resilience of youth and the shouts of Amory citizens lining the course spurred him to sprint the final straightaway, and I watched him proudly as he exuberantly pulled away with arms and legs flailing. When I finally came up behind him in the chute, he uttered his first words as he turned and looked up to me, ‘Thanks, Mister!’ I nearly cried. To borrow from Charles Dickens, “it was the worst of times” I ever ran, but “the best of times” I ever had running.

Dick Daniels is a combat veteran from Memphis with nonfiction work in Submarine Review and several other military magazines. His fiction pieces, backboned by historical research, have appeared in multiple journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Hare’s Paw, Wilderness House, Cardinal Sins, Valley Voices, and Two Thirds North.

Baby Mama in Autumn

17 April 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Laurie Didesch

For my Mom

The radiant light intensifies the blue sky. It filters
down from on high. Baby Mama and I are walking
through the kaleidoscope of colors. Baby Mama

stops awestruck. With hand to mouth, she points
to a fiery maple tree and a sunburst locust with
golden leaves. Excited, she declares, I’ve never

seen such beauty. What has happened to these
trees? The day is bright and clear in contrast to
her memory. But this moment offers a glimmer

of hope that all is not lost. Baby Mama can still
experience wonder—the pure simple joy of a
child in a moment of discovery. She reminds

me that regardless of our plight, we can still
celebrate life. We rarely stop to notice the new
in every moment. She sends a message despite

her dementia. We need only look with fresh
eyes to experience delight. However, I still
mourn her illness and it’s devastating effects.

Baby Mama and I head home. We both have
a skip in our steps knowing that the mist some
times lifts and gives us a glimpse of eternity.

Laurie Didesch has poetry appearing or forthcoming in Ibbetson Street, The Comstock Review, The MacGuffin, California Quarterly, Third Wednesday, Young Ravens Literary Review, The Ravens Perch, and Stone Poetry Quarterly, among others.

While Walking Down the Twilit Road

29 March 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Brian C. Billings

While walking down the twilit road
that flows along my neighborhood,
I cast aside my daily load
and thought of comfort as I could
until a limping insect crossed
upon my way. So small. So lost.

It labored toward a leeward hedge
along an inconsistent line
that ended in the rounded edge
where bricking holds a crossing sign.
Six legs marched forth to meet the goal,
their push propelled by sturdy soul.

A line of molt had split the shell.
Two claws were badly worn and bent.
The bulbous head bobbed in a spell
while on the creature weakly went.
I felt a stir of comradeship
as I beheld this forlorn trip.

Too often have I dwelled these days
on thorny word and bitter thought
and given reign to black malaise
convinced depression was my lot.
Cicada nymph, your simple drive
reminds me how to be alive.

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, Confrontation, Evening Street Review, Glacial Hills Review, and Poems and Plays. Publishers for his scripts include Eldridge Publishing and Heuer Publishing.

Tsuga of the Pine Family (Haiku Sonnet)

13 January 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

Soft-needled hemlock,
sculpted by edged breeze, you are
both branched, bare-barked, your

evergreen voice notes
a wooden, wild chime chanting
against trunked neighbor.

Tonal clopping, wood
on wood on wood, whispering
needle, shuffling dried

pages of gale, tea-
tossed fluttering paper, winged
winter hummingbirds.

Twinkled spell of fête, nip, rime,
you are welcome in our home.

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.