Tag: memory (Page 1 of 2)

Bad Land

1 May 2026 / Editor

Fiction by A.S. Gordon

She called me this morning because the planks have begun falling. There are red wasps nesting in the eaves. I can hear them buzz low in the wet air.

Dad brought me with him when you first began hauling the lumber out. You showed him where you aimed to build it. “Bad land,” he told you. You said there was no such thing. That to say so was an oxymoron. I stared eye level at the bull pressed into your belt buckle.

Within months the thing rose and shrunk, went up and came down again. You damned the lowland mud and the murky mirror the rain made it hold to the plans behind your eyes. The wind brought down the doorway I watched you spend an afternoon setting.

She leads me through the living room where the March breeze creeps through the window to rustle the plastic Christmas tree. Neither of you can take it down anymore. Her hands are like pincers. When I see you sitting out back her fingers bite my wrist. That it’d be best not to. That you’ve been having a rough morning.

You told me once that you weren’t woodworking if you didn’t walk out of the shop with a splinter when all was said and done. I wonder now if I could’ve taken yours and mine once, bit my lip and held out my palm to squirrel away a painless day for you.

I can see us again past the scarce wisps on your head, standing out against the whites and yellows on the honeysuckle vines. Before I knew what this state was called you told me they came from Japan. Years later I asked you about them again, some other soggy spring, after I’d read the species was invasive. You said that nothing belonged to anyone. It was here because something wanted it here, nothing more, and it would stay no longer than anyone wanted it to.

“Just like us,” you said. You were the commie Hoover saw in Guthrie.

She leads me around the side of the house, says there’ll be Kool-Aid for when I get hot. Even with the rainstorm I can’t believe it didn’t burn. I watched you carve nativity scene crosses inside the walls of that little shed, fashion violas and birdhouses and haggle with the summer sweatbees for your workbench. It’s all black as tar now. The lightning wanted it here no longer.

I turn again and there you are, sitting on the patio, rocking, rocking. You’ve muttered to me before that people come in the night. They track mud on the ceiling, they leave your truck door open. They cut your driver’s license in two. They know each twist of your safe, each disc in your spine, each dogeared page on your bookshelf. You find the crumbs they leave on your plate after she has filled your belly with pills. But now, here, you only raise your hand.

Where are you, man? Where have you gone to?

A.S. Gordon is an emerging writer from Murray, KY.

A Small Memory

20 March 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Carolyn Chilton Casas

Some winter evenings, snow piled
against the door, my mother would open

the living room sofa bed in our one-bedroom
clapboard surrounded by woods

for us to watch TV, warm popcorn
in a blue plastic bowl, my infant brother

determinedly crawling over the blanket
to reach the treat. She taught me

to bite off the harder kernels
he couldn’t chew with just my front teeth,

place only the soft, milky pieces
in his baby bird mouth. Each time, he flashed

his big infant grin, making us laugh
over and over with abandon.

Carolyn Chilton Casas’ poetry has been published in multiple journals and in anthologies including The Wonder of Small Things, Thin Spaces & Sacred Spaces, and Women in a Golden State. More of her poetry can be found at www.carolynchiltoncasas.com and in her last book, Under the Same Sky.

Crow Vision

6 February 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Ellen Roberts Young

Crows, who see both near and far, sky-wide view
or attention to the detail of seed and twig,

also can identify a human face—potential
predator or friend—and remember.

Crows confront more than a language barrier to teach
us, who make “birdbrain” an insult, their wisdom.

Living in fellowship, they can see clearly
that standing on two feet isn’t always enough.

Ellen Roberts Young’s third chapbook, Transported, came out in 2021 with Finishing Line Press. She has two full-length collections, Made and Remade (Wordtech, 2014) and Lost in the Greenwood (Atmosphere, 2020). Recent publications include Slant, Oyster River Pages, Rockvale Review, and Caesura. www.ellenrobertsyoung.com

food healthy wood nature — Photo by Yulia Ilina on Pexels.com

summer season

1 July 2025 / Editor

Poetry by Erin Lorandos

you
pulled the folded
pocket knife from even
older denim
as you looked towards
the horizon of this life –
saying nothing

and now you open
the knife with one hand
deftly pushing the blade
out and away –
one thumb resting
against that sharp edge

for just a moment
my eyes are pulled to
your left hand –
that’s palming the red,
delicious apple

so fresh
the tree limb
still sways in protest

[Originally published in The Bluebird Word in March 2022.]

Originally from Wisconsin, Erin Lorandos is a librarian and writer living in Phoenix. Some of her recent poetry can be found in Drifting Sands, The Avocet, the 2021 Poetry Marathon Anthology, and in The Purposeful Mayonnaise.

Memory, a Satellite

1 April 2025 / Editor

Poetry by KB Ballentine

Oh, my grandmother’s hibiscus!
Her begonias were bright and beautiful,
but her hibiscus was magic. Sunbaked
and salt-sprayed, filaments and anthers
waving wild in Florida rain brewed an elixir
that made the hummingbirds chirp.
An instant brightness, that shocking red
(matching my skin one summer),
where bees hummed praises and nuzzled
into the honeyed hearts. Forget the oranges
bulging behind blossoms, hibiscus let me know
I was home—wherever I happened to be.

KB Ballentine’s latest collection All the Way Through was published in November 2024 from Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. Other books are published with Blue Light Press, Iris Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Additional writing has been published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal. Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

Muscle Memory

1 May 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Anne Bower

She’d told us the genetics,
smiled into the words
as if Alzheimer’s was just
some trip to the beach.

Now she can’t drive,
husband brings her to class,
where she’s
blank-faced at first,
repeats name of disease
that’s taking her mind.
Frowns as we start,
yet her body glides to tai chi.

A pause. She shakes her head,
not knowing what comes next.
A breath, shudder,
yet years of practice surge
her forward. She steps, turns,
gestures easy, smooth.
She’s swimming in a calm sea,
grins with delight.

Anne Bower lives in rural Vermont, teaching tai chi and training tai chi instructors. She has three chapbooks to her credit and poems published in The Raven’s Perch, Gemini Magazine, Cool Beans, Nine Cloud Journal, Plainsong, and many other journals and anthologies.

The Leaving Moment

9 May 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Tracey Ormerod

I don’t remember packing, but my things must have been on the truck: the plastic-yellow colander I still use every day, the one he cursed while poking the holes with a corkscrew to dislodge spaghetti starch; and the crock pot—just last week, it slow-stewed the roast.

I do remember what couldn’t go on the truck: the propane tank. Over thirty years later, the moving guy no longer has a face but I can still see his burly body hauling it over to where I stood and dropping it at my feet. The lawn muffled the thud. “It’s full … can’t go on the truck.”

He left it there and went back to lift off the truck ramp. He was ready to leave. I turned to my mother in a panic. “What do I do with it? Do I just leave it here?”

He softened and came back. “Here, you open it up, like this.”

He turned the valve. The tank whistled.

Researchers say we alter our memories every time we look.

Quantum particles are like that too. Scientists can’t watch them without changing them, so they’ll never know how they behave when no one is looking. Nonetheless, they can’t help themselves.

Maybe that’s why countries and cultures carve their collective memories deep into stone and story.

Families collect them too. They share ‘remember whens’ that hold their tales together, until there’s a rupture and the timeline becomes a shredded thread of itself.

In a review^[1] of the film, Women Talking, Eliza Smith reflects on her missing memory of leaving her first marriage:

“I may not be able to recall my own leaving moment … but I do remember the precarious, optimistic feeling of leaving one world for another that didn’t quite exist yet.”

She mentions a friend who can’t remember her leaving moment either. So, for the first time, I learn there’s at least two other women like me.

How many of us are out there? A collective without a memory.

I don’t remember why he didn’t get the tank, except maybe the barbecue had been a gift from my side of the family, like the bone china and crystal bowls.

I also don’t recall where my two-year-old was that day.

And then there’s the house keys. How did they get dropped off with the real estate lawyer? I’m not even sure how we sold our house; I don’t remember any sales agents or buyers.

So many details that would’ve been important at the time, while the only other thing I can remember is a song that played on the car radio: Wilson Phillips singing “Hold On, things can change. Things can go your way …”

We leave home. We get left—they say there’s fifty ways to leave a lover. Sometimes, we leave the country. There’s also the countless tiny leavings, like after a dinner date or a party.

We arrive. We leave. Over and over and over until, at last, we depart dearly.

I don’t remember why the mover left the tank with me, except maybe he was hungry and took a lunchbreak. It was full and emptying it would take time.

Even when gas weighs heavy in a tank, it comes out invisible, but I stood there and stared down at it like there was something to see while it hissed like a snake in a pressure cooker, making my leaving loud for the neighbours watching from behind their bay window sheers.

Silent together, we couldn’t help but watch as it grew quiet and the frost spread all over the tank, the kind that burns when you touch it.

^[1] Smith, Eliza. “The Most Satisfying Me Too Movie Yet.” The Cut, January 20, 2023. https://www.thecut.com/article/women-talking-me-too-movie.html.

Tracey Ormerod is a Canadian writer and photographer. After growing up in the wilds of the city, she now lives among the forests and farms of rural Ontario. At times an accountant, business analyst, website consultant, and classroom teacher, she is now enjoying a writing life. Read more at https://traceyormerod.com.

vinyl albums near player — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Jukebox

3 July 2022 / Editor

Poetry by C.T. Holte

Most nights, I am a jukebox.
Tunes play from the stash in my head—
doo-wop to Debussy,
Bach to Beach Boys—
chosen by a mysterious mechanism
and repeated as many times
as the system specifies:
no Next button,
no Mute switch,
no Off to let me sleep.

The selection varies:
last night, the top hit
was Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus,
reprise of a piece I had sung recently
at a choral workshop;
tonight, perhaps a favorite or two
from American Bandstand
or Casey Casem’s top forty countdown.

Music and memory are amazing gifts,
even at the price of sleep interrupted
by random hours of Deck the Halls
at any time of the year.

C. T. Holte grew up without color TV and played along creeks and in cornfields. He has been a teacher and editor, and now migrates between New Mexico and a tiny New Hampshire cabin. His poetry is found in Words, California Quarterly, Months to Years, Pensive, and elsewhere.

close up photo of sparrow — Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

Sparrows I Have Known

21 June 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Catherine Coundjeris

My first memory is of song–
song in sunlight rapturous and bright.
Elusive bodies hopping in branches
and on rooftops, lining wires
and chattering back and forth.

In Boston to my delight,
by old Ironsides, they
came to rest on my table.
Perching on the backs of chairs,
begging for morsels.

With my brother in Oxford,
we noticed their variety
marveled at their language
photographed them on walks.

Now in Frederick, outside Walmart,
they sit on baskets, flit
between cars, and angle
for scraps still curling along
the macadam.

It is April and I remember
our trek through back roads,
looking for hawks and eagles
with sparrows for company.

I have seen them
beat each other up
at bird feeders.
We have my brother’s old
feeder but we need
to buy a post for it.

They come anyway and
taste the seeds
on our fruit trees,
alighting on the wildflowers
on the hill behind our house.
My brother would have enjoyed it here.

A former elementary school teacher, Catherine Coundjeris has taught writing at Emerson College and ESL writing at Urban College in Boston. Her poetry is published in The Dawntreader, Visions with Voices, Nine Cloud Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Bombfire, Paper Dragons and many more.

Meeting

25 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by David Goad

There was a time
I took the train to see you in the outskirts of the city,
And from the gray
Disjointed sprawl of life,
You formed somewhere just beyond the line –
Past black and white
Nooks and crannies
Framed in trash along the tracks –
In the world’s singular course,
there comes the hammers, the ties,
The earth piercing nails
Laid by dead hands of men
Whose sweat formed the communion
Of your light
As you waited
Under the crooked streetlamp.

David Goad is an attorney who currently lives in Washington DC. He resides with his lovely partner and little puppy, Pennie. When not working, David enjoys writing poetry that touches on the nature of memory and the human experience in the modern world.