Tag: life (Page 2 of 6)

Wednesday in the Neighborhood

22 October 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Bonnie Demerjian

Because my dearest friends are dead or distant
I eavesdrop on the sparrows’ whispered conversation in the blue-green grass.

Because the red-hot scream of chainsaws makes the forest weep,
I bury my face in the cool fountain of lobelias.

Because the flag is like a furious fist,
I melt into the marbled eyes of my old-lady dog.

Because lies multiply like hawkweed on the highway,
I harvest the truth of blueberries.

Because the longed-for heat of summer became instead a fiery furnace,
I rejoice in rain and the chance to pull on socks again.

Because the whirling hulla hoop of years slows and settles,
I putter among exuberant late-blooming lilies. They have no foretaste of grief.

Because these burdens must not win the day,
I beckon to the easeful gulls to lift our weight.

Bonnie Demerjian lives in Southeast Alaska and much of her writing is flavored by this place of forest and ocean. She has written four non-fiction books about the region and her poetry has been published in Blue Heron Review, Pure Slush, Tidal Echoes, and Alaska Women Speak, among others.

Circumlocution When Speaking of Water

13 October 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Whitehill

I don’t want to talk about water.
How it feels on the body, or in the mouth:
the salty surprise of a first ocean swim;
or bathwater swaddling your body in heat
on a wintry day; or such crystal clear springs,
filtered through sand, as Michigan’s Kitch-iti-Kipi.*
I don’t want to talk about iron-tinged water
tasting of blood, of snow creeping into the mittens
and chapping the wrists; or of the lake
that swallowed and swallowed and swallowed
that girl until the lifeguard dove in. Nor about water
as currents that roil the rapids or crest into waves;
or pond water swirling with creatures that shock school children.
Truly, I don’t want to talk about water.

Rather, I want you to notice what springs to your mind
about trees, clouds, or water: these are yours,
yours alone, to express. Which will free me
to sit here in silence, looking back on my personal trees,
looking out through my window at Florida clouds,
looking inward to contemplate water—
that power that governs my zodiac sign,
that mutable element pulled by the moon into tides,
that sustainer of life and relentless dissolver—
in my own way.

*Ojibwe for Big Cold Stream

Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. Apart from poems published in literary magazines, her publications include two scholarly biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a collection of poems. Her chapbook, This Sad and Tender Time, is due Winter 2024.

The Scent

12 August 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Barbara Siegel Carlson

The heart’s fingerprints are everywhere.
Richard jackson

From somewhere in the city
come the colorful pungency
of oils and spices,
the scent of wet stone,
a woman perspiring
in her high heels that click by,
and the smoke a squinty-eyed man
exhales as he taps
his ashes to the ground
a few feet from the doorway
where a raw-cheeked woman sleeps
under a blanket of particles
near a piece of mooncake some pigeons
& sparrows are sharing.

Barbara Siegel Carlson‘s third book of poems What Drifted Here was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2023. Her previous books are Once in Every Language and Fire Road. A chapbook Between the Hours was published in 2022. She teaches in Boston and lives in Carver, Massachusetts.

In My Mother’s Last Garden

12 August 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Regina Berg

The roses near the house have bloomed
and bloomed again.
The tomato vines are lush, laden
with fruit, sun-warm, red, taut with sweetness
and crisp green globes you will slice
thin, cornmeal coat, fry golden
and wrap in a fold of white bread.

The collard greens and cabbages are full grown,
though you will leave them to tender
with the first frost. Cucumbers secret themselves
on the other side of the neighbor’s chain link fence
until your quick eye guides me.

Your eyes and ears are the only things quick about you now.
Cancer and age have leached your bones.

We sit on the small concrete patio where the sun rests
on your thin shoulders and a wind warm
as the remembrance of a Mississippi spring
soothes knuckles swollen with years and labor.

Silvered hair scraped into a single braid and pinned
at your neck, you lean close and laughingly gossip
about the young man who bought the derelict
house next door, though you call hello and wish him well.

You won’t come out here on your own, even
with your cane, you are so fearful of snakes.
and truly we may see one sunning itself
against the house once or twice a year.

When we lived in the small jumble of a house
just down the alley, you tended a patch
in a vacant lot hidden by weeds that towered
over your garden stakes.
There were surely snakes, but
you had children to feed and a sharp hoe.

You who made something from nothing
for so long, have a freezer full.

Now your garden runs
a slender path between the fence
and the concrete walk, filling every inch
with food that will feed us still
when you are gone.

Regina Berg is an emerging poet who resides in Chicago, IL. She is GGE (greatest grandma ever!), a baker, crocheter, and sometime traveler. She enjoys solitary writing, retired life, and lively conversations.

Queen Elizabeth II died while I was mowing the lawn

27 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Joshua Zeitler

I had let it grow longer than I should, and was thinking about how
I had let it grow longer than I should. Weeks, maybe months, of growth.
The mower was having a tough time of it. I had to keep backing up

and pushing forward. One of the wild plants I’d never noticed before
had fruit that looked like little green paper lanterns, a groundcherry.
I had decided to steer around it when the mower choked out. I tried to start it

back up again but it just billowed smoke, and then chugged along
billowing smoke. I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping for air, and besides,
I wanted to give the groundcherries a chance to grow, and the other

plants I would have loved if I’d given them time: the goldenrod, the Queen
Anne’s lace, chicory—yes, even the thistle—have you ever seen
how beautifully the bull thistle blooms? I’ve always dug it out before

it could truly flower. Call it pragmatism, or fear, those formidable
needles. I’m changing my mind. I’ll let it grow. Maybe
I won’t even fix the mower, which doesn’t really look broken,

it just looks like it always does when I’m not using it—slim, and quiet,
and polite in its stillness, which might now last forever. Not laziness, I insist
to myself as I head inside, but a kind of mercy, of grace—and then

I see.

Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer hailing from the heart of Michigan. They are pursuing an MFA in poetry at Alma College, and their poems have been previously published in Black Fox Literary Magazine.

Ser Mujer 2023

20 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Alexandra Newton Rios

This is how a woman
grows into her own.
She takes the moon that for too long
she only saw in another hemisphere
hang full and white in the night sky
turning into day.
She takes the sun rises with which she runs
and the sun sets behind the Statue of Liberty
with which she ends her day.
She takes the students who suddenly smile
as she works each day
the fields of their hearts
as she once walked the moist earth rows
of her five children’s dreams.
She takes the man she is going to meet
who has been waiting and waiting
and waiting for her to free herself from her past,
from her present overflowing with possibility
to become finally open fully to him.
It is a busy life.
It is a woman’s life.
She takes the sudden focusing,
this giving herself a season
to learn more
to focus more
to do more
to reach a new plane
of being alive.
Change is real.
Real the ways of being in the world.
They should not be menospreciado,
belittled, thought any less of
while it snows the softest of flakes
across the day.

Alexandra Newton Rios, a bi-hemispherical mother of five, lives with her mother in New York City teaching Spanish, and English in San Miguel de Tucumán. She ran eight full Argentine marathons and the New York City Marathon for the joy of having her Argentine mother, a cancer survivor, at the finish line.

Author’s Note: Ser mujer in Spanish means to be a woman in English. The Ser Mujer poems are written once a year on March 8, International Women’s Day, written since 1996, and gather in a poem a definition that changes across time.

Evanston in June

12 July 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Rosalie Hendon

The taste of sun-ripened mulberry
A two-hour rain delay
A deluge pouring over rows of white chairs
Homemade bagels, bowls of cut fruit

An elderly woman in a mask
hovering behind a glass door,
hand on her cane

Rings on my brother’s hands,
silver paint worn to copper
a purple stone found gleaming in the dust

Speeches in sunshine,
a sea of purple
Cheers of recognition
effervescent under the late afternoon sky

The future as tangible as a ripe fruit,
as a mulberry plucked from the branch

Rosalie Hendon (she/her) is an environmental planner living in Columbus, Ohio. Her work is published in Change Seven, Pollux, Willawaw, Write Launch, and Sad Girls Club, among others. Rosalie is inspired by ecology, relationships, and stories passed down through generations.

Magpie

7 June 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Andy Larter

First of all I hear their harsh clacking. There they are in the cherry tree, two of them, thank goodness, ying-yang, bold and brash. I hold a cup in one hand, towel in the other and, despite their reputation as nest robbers, I love their brilliant whiteness, their dark, glossy tails and wings.

They cackle me back to that time we heard a thud on the window, the one I am looking through now. We turned to see what made the sound and there on the window was the shape of a bird like an old photo negative–vague, ghostly, wings and all. Yvonne locked the cat away as I prowled into the yard. Under the window, stark against the earth lay the bird. I thought it had died but it quickened in my fingers.

Dad said they were evil birds. Yvonne said it’s not all black and white. “Look at that green and blue shimmering in its tail,” she said. He pointed out the cruel dark bill, the way they frighten smaller birds. Mum told us how they often taunted Patches, perching and cackling just out of the cat’s reach. Yvonne thought them clever creatures. She brought a shoebox, some cotton wool and a couple of writhing worms she’d collected from her bed of herbs, placed it on a shelf by the window in the shed.

“I’m going to take care of him,” she beamed. “Make him well again.”

Back indoors I saw the image of the bird remained on the glass and I gazed through it to the yard outside. I took a photo of the pattern, saw that moment through the bird’s eye, tried to focus on what it had seen.

The following morning, when Yvonne went to the shed, the bird had gone. Dad said he had found it on the floor of the shed pecking at crumbs and dust. “I thought it best to let it go,” he said, “and it flew to the aerial. Another one joined it and they went away.”

As I watch the antics of the magpies in the tree today and listen to their bold, aggressive chatter, I shrug and salute them. Then a vision of her magpie reappears in my mind’s eye and, beyond that, some blurred movement in the shed.

Andy Larter is a retired teacher, who, since retiring, has taken writing more seriously. He has had a few pieces published in local magazines and a couple online. He probably doesn’t submit enough but some friends encourage him to do more. He lives quietly in UK with his wife.

Common Loon

25 May 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Debbie Theiss

Golden glow of aspen sandwiched between
spruce and pine cast shadows across the lake.
Summer wanes, dark comes early. Even loons
give up summer plumage of black-and-white
checked back, black head and neck iridescent.
Replaced with gray feathers, white breast— ready
for migration. The handsome waterbird
calls to its mate, lets out a haunting wail.

Like the formidable swimmer, I molt
throughout the seasons. Auburn, wavy hair
once thick, now gray streaked with white. Bright blue eyes
weary, plump lips drawn into narrow lines—
life’s winter. I let out a mournful cry
for my mate—but—there will be no answer.

Debbie Theiss is an award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee. She finds inspiration for her poetry in the unfolding art of daily life and nature. Her chapbook Perfectly Imperfect was published in July 2021 by Kelsay Books. She has poems published in I-70 Review, River & South Review, and others.

gray house with fireplace surrounded by grass under white and gray cloudy sky — Photo by Sebastian Sørensen on Pexels.com

The House

20 April 2023 / Editor

Poetry by G. Milton

The house, like my childhood, abandoned.
Withered, worn, and saddened.
The broken door hangs by its rusty hinges.
Once mighty, now only cringes.

The windows, like my dreams, shattered.
Shiny shards of glass tossed and scattered.
The ragged steps creak and sway
buckling under the stress of another torrid day.

The roof, like my life, dilapidated and leaking.
Much like the tears I’m constantly weeping.
The paint just peels and fades away.
Once vibrant, now, only a somber gray.

The foundation, like my soul, buckled and cracked.
Trembling like a kitten being attacked.
Once strong, stubborn, and sturdy.
Now, broken, weakened, and dirty.

The house, like me, has been through it all.
Beaten, battered, ready to fall.
Although we dread the next inevitable storm,
inside us both, it is still inviting and warm.

G. Milton is a part time writer and full-time grandparent.