Tag: memories (Page 1 of 2)

Making Beds

7 May 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Alexandra Newton Rios

I throw the clean sheet up into the air
that my mother bought us
from the United States
to stretch it across the wide algarrobo bed
and as I center the white-and-light gray striped top sheet,
tuck each side along the bed
with the tips of my fingers
because the top sheet has not held bodies,
cradled them across the years
unlike the bottom fitted sheet grown threadbare
and sewed back into life several times,
I think of my mother before she is gone.
I have been doing this a lot lately
and wonder if the memory of her
will remain in the sheet
when I fly it into the air
and let it down on my bed.
Will memory cover me and warm me
when I need to be warmed?
How do we suddenly stretch memories
so that out of the old the new may come?
My mother taught me to fold
hospital bed corners at the end of the bed
holding sheets and blanket together.
I gained a Housekeeping badge
as a Junior Girl Scout.
We are so different.
Throughout my years in another land
where she was born I have only needed
to know she is still living.

Alexandra Newton Rios is the mother of five children and a marathon runner. Nueva York Poetry Press published Poemas de Georgia/The Georgia Poems, one long poem in 34 parts as a dialogue with American artist Georgia O’Keeffe in November 2024.

Sparks

1 July 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Daphne Riddle

A night in September
surrounded by water
that’s when we first sparked

gentle as ever
I never felt better
meeting your light with my dark

your hands in my hair
that shirt that you wear
our love summed up in parts

the sparks aren’t there
and I wish that you’d care
I’m lost here in the dark

I look for you everywhere
and you just carry on
I’m questioning all those years
but all I really want
is floating in September

with all of the fish
and the stars
and the songs
and the sparks

Daphne Riddle is an artist from Southern California. She is a music student at CSU Long Beach and an active songwriter. She is largely influenced by her study of international art song and her career as a musician. Writing is her foundation to heal.

The Horses

1 June 2024 / Editor

Nonfiction by Kandi Maxwell

I miss the horses. Those wild Mustangs that filled the fields near the old, abandoned house. I imagined the house, as all that was left by the time I visited was a stone chimney. In spring the large pasture bloomed yellow with stink weed. I loved those tall, ruffled leaves and yellow flower heads. The plant is actually named Tansy Ragwort—an invasive, noxious weed, but who couldn’t love them with a nickname like Stinking Willie? I savored Willie’s weedy, earthy smell like a sweaty man who worked the land. I never saw those Mustangs eat the plant. Instead, they ate the hay thrown off an old truck and onto the ground by a rancher.

I visited in the mornings before work. I’d bring a lidded cup of coffee that was always too cool for my liking, but I willingly gave up the heat for moments. Snatches of wild. Dust. The soft, high-pitched neigh, or whinny sounds the horses made while feeding. I drove to the old road in my Nissan truck. Pulled into a pocket of packed earth and parked. Opened the truck bed and sat on the tail gate. Sipped cold coffee. Soaked in the soothing smells of hay and horses and dirt.

I was an idiot. Knew nothing about horses, but there was an attraction, and I wanted to be near them. I knew enough not to touch them. They were wild, after all. Still, sometimes I walked into their pasture. Got too close so I could take photos. I look at one now. See numerous paint patterns in colors like copper, red, black, and white. Long tails touching hooves. Noses buried in hay. Their black shadows on the golden morning landscape.

Later, when my husband and I moved onto thirty acres in north-eastern California, we had six horses. Lloyd is my second husband. He had owned horses for years before we married. Knew how to handle them. How to ride. We adopted a wild Mustang with colors of black, white, and reddish brown. She was stunning, but never ridden, though Lloyd managed to halter her for brushing and hoof trims. There were evening runs. The horses seemed to instigate this play—walking towards the dogs who waited by the fence. When the horses and dogs were almost side by side, they ran. Horses on one side of the fence, dogs on the other; joy emerged through sounds of hooves hitting the ground, horses neighing, dogs barking.

After twelve years, we sold the place in Modoc County to return to family in the Sierra foothills. We were down to two horses when we moved. We sold our rideable, paint quarter horse. Oreo, the Mustang, was given to a trainer who specialized in wild horses. We no longer have horses, so I yearn to hear them running— their drumbeat, the song of wild.

I live about an hour from where the stone chimney stood and the Mustangs ran. Both are gone, the land covered over by apartment buildings and new homes. Across the street is a medical complex, a few restaurants, more new apartments. So much lost in all this new. I’ve come to an age where I’m often distraught by changes I don’t want to see. Wistful of an imagined simpler life. I tell myself to be more present, but I resist. My future is shorter than the past, and I miss the horses.

Kandi Maxwell is a creative nonfiction writer living in Northern California. Her stories have been published in Hippocampus Magazine, KYSO Flash, RavensPerch, Wordrunner eChapbooks, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her memoir, Snow After Fire, was released in 2023 by Legacy Book Press. Learn about Kandi’s writing at kandimaxwell.com.

The Block

1 April 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Richard Higgins

The keyboard avoids my fingers’ touch
as if words I need are in its clutch.

My pen sits unused without a care
and lined notebook pages blankly stare.

Neurons fire on an unrelated task
ignoring the questions that I ask.

I have a great story here to tell
but too many memories to quell.

Richard Higgins retired from the nuclear operations business after 50 years and became a writer. He lives in the Detroit Metro area. This is his first published poem.

Blue Snow Globe

31 December 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Jennifer Smith

My winter is ice, but its depth is of my choosing.
Not a sharp, piercing icicle to stab my soul,
but slender glistens of frozen branches on bare trees along our Smoky Mountain trails.

My December ice is not the weak spot on a frozen Tennessee lake.
It is twilight snowflakes with sapphire and silver sparkles,
brushing our faces and street lamps on a Winter Solstice walk downtown.

This seasonal ice is not the danger of a polar path I slip on.
I select shelter in warmth of a southern snow castle,
illuminated in pink pearl tones of protection from darkness and harsh mountain winds.

The blue of the season is not desolate steel grey from a palette of mourning.
My shade is Atlantic Ocean turquoise,
washing ashore your message in a bottle at wintertide on Orange Beach.

Any frost of mid-winter blues is soothed by tunes from a playlist of our Maui shore memories.
My coldest days are layered with island glory,
in songs and swirls of ultramarine and sea, of cobalt and sky.

On a night designed for confetti and celebration, the clock counts down hours, minutes, seconds.
I wrap myself in luxurious, rich velvet of indigo midnight,
and see our friendship amid the stars of a New Year.

Jennifer Smith is a retired speech-language pathologist, residing in Northwest Georgia. She is published in Fictionette and Fifty Word Stories. Jennifer holds an Educational Specialist Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Lincoln Memorial University and a Creative Writing Certificate from Kennesaw State University.

Family Photo courtesy of Terri Watrous Berry

Jack and the Box

31 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Terri Watrous Berry

It was the perfect size to hide a dog toy, plus it needed no wrapping since a brightly colored festive design ─ Santa in fact ─ was imprinted right on the cardboard. A loose-fitting detachable lid made it easy for him to nudge open with his nose, and since we used it year after year to hide his gift, Jack knew that box was his. We watched in awe once as he located it among other wrapped gifts, nudged it off the shelf where it was being kept with the rest until Christmas, flipped off the lid and trotted away with his new toy like a successful bandit.

The first Christmas after he passed, seeing his box again of course broke my heart anew, but I decided to make use of it one last time to hold a gift for my daughter Cathy’s cat, Misty. After stuffing two bags of cat treats inside, I inscribed the cat’s name across the lid in indelible red marker and placed it under the tree with the rest.

After all the gifts were opened Christmas day, Cathy began to scoop up the mountain of crumpled wrap, beleaguered bows, and boxes too abused to be of future use, stuffing it all into a big black garbage bag. When she picked up the box, she paused before calling, “Mom?” and then asked gently if I wanted to save it. I hesitated only a moment before telling her to dispose of it with the rest, thinking to myself of its heart-wrenching memories.

Apparently, however, Jack did not agree.

We live on several acres in a rural area, and our trash cans have to be hauled down the long driveway to the road the evening before the truck comes the following morning. The first pick-up day following that first Christmas without our beloved Springer, after donning coat, hat, boots, gloves and wrapping a scarf around my neck, I stepped out into the frigid air to retrieve our emptied cans. Jack used to accompany me on that chore.

I was keenly feeling his absence again on that drab grey Michigan morning, head down, listening to the snow crunch while watching my boots shuffle through even more that had fallen during the night. Rounding the bend as I approached the road, I looked up and saw the emptied cans lying in our yard as usual, their lids flung nearby, but something else caught my eye, something colorful standing smack dab in the middle of our driveway.

When I realized what it was I stopped abruptly, and then I laughed out loud. For Jack’s box had managed somehow to escape not only the garbage bag but also the grinding maw of the garbage truck that day ─ it was the only thing that did ─ and had landed undamaged in such a conspicuous spot that I could not have failed to notice.

Make of it what you will.

As for me, that empty little gift box was a gift, and it wasn’t empty at all. No, it was simply brimming with wise advice from a dear and faithful companion, telling me to remember the good times we had together not try to forget them, and that those we truly love are never really gone. Still chuckling as I bent to scoop it up, I continued to do so off and on all the way back up to the house.

Misty’s name that I had inscribed on the box with what claimed to be an indelible marker easily wiped right off, and now every year when decorations come down from the attic, Jack’s box is one of the ones I most look forward to seeing again. And it never fails to make me smile.

Terri Watrous Berry is a Michigan septuagenarian whose work has appeared over the past thirty-five years in anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers, with awards for prose from venues as diverse as The Hemingway Festival and the Des Plaines/ Park Ridge NOW Feminist Writer’s Competition.

Nutcracker Memories

2 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Marianne Lonsdale

I was in my attic, organizing the boxes and piles of the stuff of my life, when I came across a theatre program from 1961, for The Nutcracker Ballet, that transported me to the steps of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. My memories of that day surged back.

I am six, my sister Cathy is nine and our big brother, Jimmy, is ten. Mom bends down, holds my coat collar and tells me to obey Jimmy and Cathy. No squirming around and no talking during the performance. Her voice is firm and strict, but she hugs me too. She will meet us back on the steps after the ballet is over.

I’d not thought of that sweet day in years, the gift of a day. I wrote to my mother that December, sharing my memories on holiday paper, a soft red with a banner of green wreaths across the top. My mom and I spent more time being annoyed with each other than we did feeling affectionate. I wanted her to know that I remembered her kindness.

My mother had scraped together the money for our tickets but could not afford one for herself or to pay a babysitter for my two younger brothers. Mom was thirty years old with five children, making ends meet on dad’s firefighter’s wages. But she wouldn’t let her older children miss the magic of The Nutcracker. She drove us from our suburban home to San Francisco, dropped us off in front of the theatre, and picked us up a few hours later.

I wrote of the beauty and sequins of the ballerinas, the enchanting music, the fighting rats and sugar plum fairies. Swirling collages of colors, and sparkling silver and glitter. That ballet was the most glamorous event of my young life; the beginning of my love affair with dance and theatre.

After Mom received the essay, she called to say she loved the piece. Her voice choked on the words. We talked a bit more, and as I got ready to end the call, Mom said “I don’t remember taking you to the ballet.” I was taken aback but she’d had lots of kids and memories to keep track of.

At our Christmas gathering at her home, Mom shared the printed story with my older brother and sister.

“That is so sweet,” my brother commented.

“I love that story,” my sister said. Then looking at my brother she asked “Do you remember going? I don’t.”

He shook his head. I was flabbergasted. A standout event in my mind, and none of the main characters besides me even remembered. If I hadn’t saved the theatre program, I might have wondered if I’d made it up.

Marianne Lonsdale writes personal essays, fiction and poetry. She’s looking for an agent for her novel, Finding Nora, a story set in 1991 Oakland about love and friendship during the AIDS epidemic. Her work has been published in Literary Mama, Grown and Flown, The Bluebird Word and several print anthologies. Read her nonfiction essay Parting Gift from last year’s holiday issue.

Photo by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash

Longing for a Close Family

2 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Sherri Wright

In little boxes I see living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and a lovely turquoise pool. Spread out over six states all eight siblings’ faces appear on my Zoom screen. I see white hair, wrinkled faces, sagging necks, thick rimmed bifocals. We have all aged precipitously since our parents’ memorial two years ago.

In my memory I see us young and laughing, amid a sea of Christmas gifts and children, Mom cooking, and Dad shooting grainy 8mm movies.

As young adults we did everything together. Wilderness camping — my older brother rigging ropes and pulleys to hoist food packs in trees away from the bears. Being a bridesmaid in my younger brother’s wedding. My sister and I taking our daughters to Hawaii when neither of us could afford it. Driving to Florida with my youngest brother and our kids through a snowstorm the winter after our divorces. Playing soccer and running a marathon with another sister. My siblings were my best friends.

My youngest sister announces brightly that she just had a COVID vaccine and asks if everyone else has. Moving screen to screen everyone nods yes. A granddaughter in Alabama had a mild case, another in Colorado is recovering. Florida brother asks, “So you all listen to the news and believe that crap about masks?” Minnesota sister cuts in abruptly to describe her beach vacation with her daughters and grandkids. No more talk of COVID.

I ask about a niece who lives in Brooklyn Center where protests continue after the shooting of a young Black man. Her dad is terse. “She lives far from that police station. She’s safe.” I say, “Oh good, I’m glad.” Nothing more. No mention of Black Lives Matter although we grew up in Minnesota where it all began.

Arizona brother sold his Arabian horses since he and his wife can no longer ride. Minnesota sister’s weight has stabilized and anti rejection drugs have been decreased since her heart replacement. As her face appears in the large center screen I see how thin she is. Utah sister makes us laugh. Her daughter in NYC adopted a cat because her apartment has mice. We smile when a curly black puppy crawls over Minnesota brother’s shoulder. We ooh and ah at old oil portraits of Mom and Dad on New York sister’s wall and remember them hanging over the fireplace at our parents’ house. The fireplace of so many Christmas Eves.

For a moment I feel a warmth that used to be so easy.

We long for that close family but none of us will dip below the surface. Over the years we’ve learned where the sharp edges are. Who veers right, who veers left, and who wants no conflict. Eight individuals raised under one roof by the same parents, we know how divergent our beliefs, how passionate our politics. How fragile the connection. So we tiptoe around the hearth, drop a few twigs and dry grasses on the ash and dart quickly away. No one wants to spark the fire.

Sherri Wright is a member of the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and the Key West Poetry Guild. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Dreamer’s Creative Writing, Persimmon Tree, Ocotillo Review, Delaware Beach Life, Raven’s Perch, and Quartet. Read earlier work in The Bluebird Word.

autumn leaves placed on ground — Photo by Tim Samuel on Pexels.com

The Rains of November Have Come Again

13 October 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Lisa Ashley

nailing the metal roof. It falls steady on,
clicking like a bad wheel bearing.

The brilliant reds and golds
are getting battered, drenched
until they drown, mush up underfoot.

I want more of the sun’s colorcalling,
less of its slantburn in my squint here
where day gives way to black night by five.

I want to clutch that low down fire dazzle
before the clouds lower themselves over me,
a wet blanket disgruntled.

I want more sweet melancholy
autumn stretched over more days,
days that could bring back the siblings

that once surrounded me with noise,
sheared off like widowmakers
under winter’s snow-weight,

yet still moving about their lives—pinioned
in time, some strangers to themselves, one dead,
all lost to me.

I want more of our childhood games,
jumping in piles of leaves we raked,
undoing our work without care,

the lift of the leaps, the screams,
the soft landings we banked on without question.
I want to walk along small-town streets

lined with brilliant red maples,
leaves so blazed I can’t pick out singles.
Whole trees, torched and engulfed.

Lisa Ashley (she/her) Pushcart Prize nominee, descends from Armenian Genocide survivors and supported incarcerated youth for eight years as a chaplain. Her poems appear in Last Leaves Magazine, Amsterdam Quarterly, The Healing Muse, Blue Heron Review, Thimble, Snapdragon and others. She writes in her log home on Bainbridge Island, WA.

silhouette photography of trees near water — Photo by Blaque X on Pexels.com

Fall Sun

12 August 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Sharon Scholl

rises reluctantly through ground mist,
travels on the fringe of the horizon,
sinks into a cloak of early dusk.

I find the last of it in a tiny pool
and savor its remains reduced
from August lake to dim reflection.

Leaves enough remain to catch its light
and send their shadows dancing
with a scatter of dry weeds.

Lingering squashes dangle on shrinking
vines while single pumpkins sit deserted
in a field of empty furrows.

This is the season of farewells
to spring wonders worn and drab,
to the past that fades in memory.

Sharon Scholl is a retired college professor (humanities) who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website (freeprintmusic.com) that donates music to small, liberal churches. Her poetry chapbooks, Seasons, Remains, Evensong, are available via Amazon Books. Her poems are current in Third Wednesday and Panoplyzine.