Tag: life (Page 6 of 6)

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This should’ve been an Urdu ghazal instead

19 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Uday Khanna

While being buried I thought why spare me space for breathing,
I should’ve been wound in white and cremated instead.

Waking has taken up the place of life,
I should’ve been nostalgic for a time which passed me by instead.

Living has come disarmingly too fast lately,
I would like a stern word instead.

Someone asked me how I write so beautifully of terrible things,
I should’ve been a keeper of chopped meat instead.

I was named ignorant far too many times,
I should’ve been left blissfully unaware instead.

I keep meeting myself on different horizons for novelty,
The mystery of time is repetition instead.

This circle tells me I’m merely a handful of mistakes,
I should’ve been a fistful of wasted sperm instead.

Soon poetry will become unattainable,
I should’ve gone back to plucking flower buds instead.

O poet, you’ve spent all your life seeking to write about an ungrateful ant,
You should’ve stepped on it instead.

Uday Khanna is a research scholar currently pursuing his MPhil from the University of Delhi. His research interests lie in the fields of postmodernism, media theory, cyber-culture, and 20th century short-story genre.

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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My Youth

9 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jeana Mahan

Waiting by the water
a girl stands
round belly and barefoot

She’s afraid that it’s cold
or a shark
will bite at her ankles

The fear will follow her
while she lives
or until she’s sixteen

Why doesn’t she just jump
push her now
before the mud takes her

It’s life or death for her
her toe dips
she lets out a brief yelp

The water did not win
she lives on
though the sharks circle her

Jeana Mahan lives in Los Angeles, California. Her fiction has previously been published by Maudlin House.

Life and Love as Seen Through My Plum Tree

5 March 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Michele Tjin

The delicate popcorn balls of flowers have appeared again, the herald of a new season. The arrival seems earlier each year.

The plum tree was already a mature specimen when we moved into this house. That first July, one of the first things we did was to pick up the rotting fruit off the ground. I whispered to the tree and my pregnant belly that in a year or two, there would be small hands to help harvest the fruit.

How does this tree of the family Prunus salicina know when to emerge from winter and make slivers of leaves and dainty blooms?

How do I know when to kick off this curtain of chaos and confront hard issues, difficile confligit?

Other signs of life and hope in my backyard: tiny sparrows and hummingbirds dancing around the flowers of the plum tree; songbirds trilling. The harshness of winter is behind us.

Despite not watering and pruning this tree, not giving it any real love or attention, it continues to be dependable and prolific.

I look forward to the perfume of plums ripening in my kitchen. Nothing is as wonderful as biting into the amber flesh and allowing the clear juice to run down my chin.

After a few weeks of non-stop eating, I’m satiated. Yet others tell me they can’t get enough of this fruit.

Don’t you forget about me this year, a friend says.

If you want to come over and climb a ladder, help yourself, I answer.

If I climb a ladder to bridge the chasms, will it be worth it, or will I fall?

In the summer, this tree is weighed down so much by its fruit that it needs to be propped up with a stick, a visible reminder of how much goodness this tree gives.

I imagine the tree’s complex network of roots searching deep underground to find a source of life-giving water to nourish itself.

How do I nourish my spirit when it’s dry and withered?

Things this plum tree has witnessed: birthday cakes and birthday parties. A kiddie pool that lasted just an afternoon one summer. A bounce house that winter. Another bounce house the following winter. That time we dyed socks. My efforts at being a backyard gardener. Dinners outside. Ants. The neighbor’s cat. That stray rabbit. People who once came over frequently but no longer visit because of quarantine, new seasons of life, or small conflicts that festered and coalesced into something bigger, something that doesn’t have a name or shape anymore.

Or maybe it’s just a lost connection. I’m not sure anymore.

These blossoms are fleeting: in just a few weeks, they will be torn apart by the wind. Their fragile nature and impermanence have always struck me, like they’re a metaphor for something.

My hands and a pair of smaller ones will collect the plums in four months when the green small marbles deepen into crimson globes, and we’ll give much of our harvest away.

After the summer, after a period of cold and reset, this tree will bloom once more the following spring and offer me hope again. Where will I be in a year?

Michele Tjin is an emerging writer who writes others’ stories by day and her own by night. When she is not writing, she aspires to be a better backyard gardener.

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Benthic:

3 March 2022 / Editor

Definition- the flora and fauna found on the bottom, or in the bottom sediments, of a sea, lake, or other body of water

Poetry by Johanna Tollefson

Then a realization— Underwater plants need sunlight to breath,
just like any other plant. You might think

this is a metaphor, but it’s just a fact. A fact like in her fantasies,
they are both fish. Fish have fish problems. Every day is swim
or swim away. You might think

this is a metaphor, but it’s the truth. The ultra-violet rays of the sun
spear through waterbodies. Waterbodies is the correct term for all bodies
of water, saline or fresh. Flowers and fish

are both easily killed off by phytoplankton. Phytoplankton accumulates,
grows thick in silty water, they are microscopic. In the scope of things
what else is the absence of sun but the end?

What else is beginning but a breath of fresh air and you the fish? This is benthic
living— A root in the mud soil. A fish to clean the water air. A sun to breath
light. And you, a metaphor for a rock at the bottom of a pond.

Johanna Tollefson is a writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, currently getting her MFA from Minn State, Mankato. She is new to the Midwest, hailing from Idaho and Oregon, but is settling into the long winters and humid summers. She loves all things sensory and is also growing a recipe resume which she loves to use on guests.

A wind blew through

2 March 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Steve Gerson

Monday, September 23, Grand Chenier, LA,
hurricane season. The sky was the color of silk

coffin liners. The wind was heaving, bowing
and rising as mourners in prayer, quiet then

shrieking when wailing began. Palm leaves
outside the bedroom window startled

and calmed and woke and roiled.
I sat in the bedroom and watched the storm

unfold as bible pages turning from John’s
hearts untroubled and unafraid to Ecclesiastes’

dust returning to the ground. Fronds on the
wallpaper, once verdant, now grayed in the storm

shadows. The chandelier swayed in the house’s
torment, casting light flickers like candles snuffed.

She was still. Only her brown hair now pewter
quivered on the pillow, a stray breeze from the window,

the curtain shivering as the hurricane descended. Others
entered the room. We stood silent, our breaths held

in her breath denied. Our silence was as the hurricane’s
eye, tornadoes swirling around a dead center.

Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life’s dissonance and dynamism. He’s proud to have published in Panoplyzine, Route 7, Poets Reading the News, Crack the Spine, Montana Mouthful, the Decadent Review, Indolent, Rainbow Poems, Snapdragon, the Underwood Press, Wingless Dreamer, Gemini Ink, the Dillydoun Review, In Parentheses, and more. He’s proud to have published Once Planed Straight, a chapbook of prairie poems through Spartan Press.

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Succulent

9 February 2022 / Editor

by Heather Bartos

Jade plants will never win beauty contests.
Snub-nosed, squat, solid-thighed,
Pudgy limbs and squinty little blossoms.
But deep roots and thick flesh
Gather what guarantees survival,
What grants longevity.
Absorb every drop of hope,
Each ray of encouragement,
All words of praise.
Slice a leaf, snap a branch
And it will heal itself whole again,
Scar and stump the only sign.
Its own replenishment, resource, retreat,
A deep, wide wealth of well,
A barn full of grain for swallows in the snow.
Current life from yesterday’s rain,
From last summer’s sun,
Dense from receiving and holding of the giving.
How amazing to hold within and inside
Memories of kindness
To shade and shield from the heat
To insulate and inoculate against the cold
Until without and outside
Become a friend once more.

Heather Bartos lives near Portland, Oregon, and writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her writing has been published in Miniskirt Magazine, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Porcupine Literary, You Might Need To Hear This, and The Dillydoun Review, and upcoming in Scapegoat Review and The Closed Eye Open.