Tag: life (Page 2 of 6)

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.

a purple chiffon fabric on white surface — Photo by Saime Dal on Pexels.com

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.

A Windy Day on Sans Souci Drive

21 January 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Gordon W. Mennenga

There go the garbage cans
And my neighbor’s loose-lipped lover
Duck! here comes the Public Library snowing pages
And oh those unwilling Clydesdales galloping sideways
Next the organ from St. John’s Church humming a flirty mystery hymn
A police car celebrating being quick and blue
Some little things: a wig without a woman, a man without a damn
Uncle Frank’s rabbit hutch then Uncle Frank

Did I see truth chasing gossip?
A cart and then a horse?
A shoal of minnows swimming the wind to big water
A flock of hallowed words
A herd of No Trespassing signs free at last
Six senators chasing their reputations
Then naked notes of happiness, regret and ecstasy
A rapturous tillerless sailboat
Bubbles of existentialism staying low to the ground

Algorithms and syllogisms galore
Smokey riffs from Nina, from Chet, Dinah and Billie
Boredom blown to ashes
Sid, the cardiologist, wearing a nice pair of loafers
Herds, coveys, caravans, gaggles, packs and pods
Me, I’m lifting off, not clinging but joining.

Gordon W. Mennenga has had work featured on NPR and published in the Bellingham Review, Epoch, Citron Review and other literary journals. He earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Later

14 January 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Robert Nisbet

By now he was washing his feet
with difficulty, ached a lot
most mornings, but always he walked,
first with the dog, then, when she’d gone,
striding alone round his domain.

It was a tour of inspection, decades
of shift and character and happening,
remembered and re-created.
Most treasured of all, the Common,
its cricket pitches and its trees.

His initials and Moira’s were carved,
fading, blurred but readable still,
in the mighty oak beside the seconds’ pitch.
His sons, the crowds, the matches,
once, the breathless pleasure
of his granddaughter’s single game.

Walking back, through unexceptional streets,
he would trawl his shoal of recollections,
alliances and families, time’s dole,
how Moira married the aircraftsman,
but that didn’t in the end gainsay
the good of all that happened otherwise.

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet, a now-retired English teacher and college lecturer, who wrote short stories for forty years (with seven collections) and has now turned to poetry, being published widely in both Britain and the USA, where he is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

Farewell Season

23 November 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Whitehill

Poinciana, Your branches speak to me of love.
Buddy Bernier

The mellow close of a Florida day,
seats reserved on the wraparound porch
of a renovated Victorian manse:
a celebrative meal with my sister and Rick
before they head north for the season.

Alone on my side of the table,
I mirror their mutual delight
at the flamboyant tree across the road.
All of us awed by its scarlet-orange blossoms
ablaze in the pre-sunset light.

Snapping a series of photos,
I yield to the impulse
to sling my arm over Rick’s shoulder—
this brother-in-law, for so long a vexation,
gentled now as the soft evening air.

I lift my wine in a toast to the evening,
the bright-burning tree,
and our season together.

Now here comes Linda, our friend,
flashing a ring: I got married!
Though her exuberance fades
on hearing my news.

I was afraid of that, she sighs,
when I only saw three of you here.

A comment that crystallizes our mood.
The Portuguese call it saudade:
the sweet wistfulness of reluctant goodbyes,
honed to an edge by our silent awareness
of one empty chair at the table.

Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a full collection of poems.