Tag: relationships

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My Wife Explains How My New Book is One Long Love Poem

1 November 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Steve Cushman

They’re all love poems,
Julie says, holding up my new book,
and I say, I don’t know about that.
What about the sad dog poems?
Love poem, she says,
The broken bones of childhood poems?
Love poem, she says,
The difficult relationship with my father poems?
She bites her lower lip. Definitely love poems.
And the ones about you,
which are sort of true, but also
an idealized version of our life?
Those, she says, are the loveliest of all.

Steve Cushman has published four poetry collections.

Hawaiian Sunset

4 October 2024 / Editor

Nonfiction by Alice Lowe

“You’re going to Hawaii with your ex-wife?” It wasn’t a question, despite the upspeak. The question mark underscored my befuddlement as I woodenly repeated what he’d just told me. A statement of fact, offered up nonchalantly like a gesundheit after a sneeze.

“Yeah,” he said. “Cool, huh?”

Garrett wasn’t my boyfriend, but that’s where we seemed to be heading. We’d worked for the same organization for two years, but in different locations. We didn’t see each other frequently, but we became friends. I met his wife, Willie (can you imagine naming a child Wilhelmina?), on various occasions. We can’t know what any relationship is really like, but they seemed like a happy and compatible couple, so I was mildly surprised when he told me they’d separated.

He and Willie had drifted apart, he said, saw different directions for their lives. I liked that he spoke respectfully and fondly of her, that they remained friends. Over the following months we started spending more time together, hiking in the nearby San Diego mountains, exploring quirky rural towns with musty shops full of bric-a-brac, driving to Rosarito Beach for margaritas and shrimp burritos. We shied from the label, but we were pretty much a couple.

Willie was a flight attendant, and as her husband, Garrett could fly with her at no cost when opportunities arose. She suggested the trip, his last chance, since their divorce would be final soon. “Couples go on honeymoons—this can be our sunset.”

I shrugged off my apprehension. Worse case, they’d get back together, and if so, good for them. My ego might be a little bruised, but I wouldn’t be broken-hearted.

He sent me a postcard from the Kona Coast, “thinking of you.” It made me recall a story my boss at one of my first jobs told me when I made a terrible typo in a letter, one that could have cost us an important client. He tried to assuage my guilt and chagrin by telling me about the man who went to a tropical resort on a business trip and sent a postcard home to his wife: “Wish you were her.”

He brought me a puka shell necklace and showed me pictures of palm-lined beaches and ominous-looking volcanos, himself and Willie sipping rum drinks with orchid blossoms floating on top from shaded decks with ocean vistas. He told me how they were fussed over by amused and possibly envious passengers and crew on the trip over after telling a flight attendant about their “sunset” voyage.

Never very fiery, our relationship gradually cooled. Still friends, we formalized its closure over beers and popcorn at a beach dive. As I recall, it was an overcast day, the sunset barely visible through the clouds.

Alice Lowe writes about life, literature, food and family in San Diego, CA. Recent work has been published in The Bluebird Word, Change Seven, ManifestStation, South 85 Journal, Eunoia, Tangled Locks, MORIA, and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. She’s been cited twice in Best American Essays. Read and reach her at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.

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Changes

25 July 2023 / Editor

Fiction by Brian Daldorph

“The only thing that changes,” Sheila says, “is that nothing changes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say.

Sheila’s been taking night classes at Juco, and she reads books of poetry in the kitchen while I’m watching TV. We used to sit together on the couch, our thighs pressed together, our arms around each other, and I’d tell her things about the nature shows I watch all the time.

Do you know how much a grizzly bear eats in a day?

Do you know how fast a tiger shark swims?

Which is bigger, the Taj Mahal or a humpbacked whale?

Sheila would ask me how I knew these cool things and I’d say, “I’m just a smart guy, that’s why you married me.”

But now she’s the one telling me things about Buddhism and poetry and this Russian story about a rich man falling off a chair, hitting his side and then he’s dying and his family and colleagues gather like vultures waiting to feast.

“What’s the big deal about that?” I say. “That’s what happened when my Uncle Alex got sick.” (We all thought he had money, but we were wrong).

Sheila asks me if she can read me one of her poems, so I say, “OK, just wait until after my show, please, because this is really interesting. It’s about tarantulas down in New Mexico and the border states.”

The show ends and slides into another about hyenas, and I keep watching though I know Sheila’s hovering, poem in hand. She’s in bed after the hyena show, turned away from me.

I don’t mind her doing some of what she’s doing but not all of it because we had things really nice just the way they were so why make changes?

I’ll tell her in the morning that I’d like to hear her poem, please, and tell her too that I bought chocolates for her. I put them in back of the refrigerator and forgot to tell her about them. She can write a poem about them, about how just like love they’re dark and sweet but sometimes difficult to find.

Brian Daldorph teaches at the University of Kansas and Douglas County Jail.

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.

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Feed

29 November 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Natalli Amato

It’s the good summer. Connor and I are out on the dock, beholding the St. Lawrence. There are more lily pads right here, right now, than there are lily pads I have stumbled upon in my lifetime before this point. Some of them flower. Some of them are just green. There are geese milling about on the lawn near the shoreline. We talk out loud about how much we love them.

We also talk about the seaweed we see, how Maxine wants to get rid of it all; it clogs up the boat. She thinks she can get the fish to do the excavation work for us. Connor explains her methods: the fish will uproot the seaweed, even eat the seaweed, if we lure them there by tossing scoops of corn feed into the river. This is why there is a stout metal tin at the end of the dock, full of pounds and pounds of corn feed. Connor opens the tin, scoops a good scoop, and throws the kernels. Repeat the process. Offers me a turn.

I look into the corn feed tin. The fish are not the only ones being directed towards something they would otherwise not pay a visit. There is also me, a human girl, following kernels to a different place: burlap sacks in the log garage, the cabin house, Plank Road. Nowhere near this river. Forest.

I can see the line where our property met the forest. I can see where I spread the corn feed down on the pine needled ground before the forest’s feet. I can see, too, how small I am. Four-year-old hands. So who carried the burlap bag? Who opened the burlap bag and showed me how to scoop and where to pour? I know I am here for a purpose – I am here to feed the deer. But who has taught me this? Who has told me we are people for whom the deer matter? I open my eyes as wide as I can in this vision. Someone else must be here. I see only, though, myself.

My buck shooting father. He is this someone, here but not.

I know this because of a card I found cleaning out my mother’s desk – a card he sent her from such and such recovery center, the post script note reading, Ask Natalli what a deer says.

Connor is scooping corn feed into the St. Lawrence. I am walking the forest line on Plank Road. He does not see me leave.

One fish swims to the weeds and its cousin is not far behind. One deer lowers its head to eat and its cousin is not far behind. Memories are like this, too.

Connor and I are in 113 Brady. Our apartment. I am not sure the time of day. I am fairly sure of the season, fall, because Connor is studying for exams and the good summer has already happened but the murderous spring has not.

I’ve returned from the grocery store. I’m sitting on the couch reading a magazine, Cosmo. I took the long way from the grocery store back to 113 Brady so that I could speak out loud to my father. I do that when I am alone in my car. I am alone in my car less often now that I love Connor and Connor loves me.

My conversation goes something like this:

I’m sorry I told mom to tell you I didn’t want to read the letter you’d written me that one year you were probably in AA or something because why else would you write me a letter but now I want to take it back now I want to have the chance to forgive you and have you know it now I want to know if you like country music now I want to thank you for my life now I wish I could have a beer with you even though its all those beers that killed you and I wish it could have been different and when I see the blood moon hanging low over black ontario and it is so mystifying that my heart aches instead of smiles which seems to be the more logical response to beauty – I think that has something to do with you or at least I inherited it from you or maybe I didn’t and I’m just checking in because maybe you can hear me.

When I speak out loud to my father I also cry. Not too hard but enough. Enough that Connor notices my eyes look off when he emerges from the study to give me a squeeze and remind ourselves that we are here, together. Connor asks me what’s wrong and I do the degrading thing –

I say, what are you talking about?

I say what are you talking about to the person who loves me and I love best. I say what are you talking about when he notices my suffering. I exclude him – this man I will one day break my own world over, so bereft I will be when he leaves me. I turn away and assume I will always have this option.

How far have I traveled from this? Far, far, far. And also not at all. I exist as a girl and I exist as a hungry ghost with unfinished business. It is for this reason I return here.

What’s wrong?

The corn feed, say it, the corn feed, the corn feed, my own dried kernel heart.

Natalli Amato is a poet, fiction writer, and journalist. Read her work at www.natalliamato.com

nephelococcygia

2 May 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Alyssa Harmon

you say
it is rare for two people to see
the same image in clouds.

we see each other’s hands
drifting away in the wind and
pretend the blue sky
is not dividing us.

Alyssa Harmon is working on her master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of West Florida. Her poems have been published in Merrimack Review, Minerva Rising, Shaking the Sheets Magazine, and Odet Journal. You can find more of her work on Instagram @alyssa_harmon_.

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Time-Tested Tenets

24 February 2022 / Editor

Fiction by Foster Trecost

The handwriting was so overly scrolled, some letters looked like caricatures. I never knew funerals could be by invitation, but there’d been a death and someone wanted me at the service. I returned the card to its casing and placed a call, asked the answerer if he’d received an invite. Continuing his role, he said he had, then we swapped roles and he asked if I was going. I unsheathed the invitation, read it again, and said, “I’m not entirely sure what I’ve been asked to attend, but I’ll be first in line to find out.”

The parlor filled with seasoned socialites alongside newly assigned A-Lister’s. I claimed neither title, but a shared curiosity landed us in the same place. That, and the open bar. Occasional guests deserved closer scrutiny, but only because they had yet to master the rules of invisibility, a skill that would allow attendance at such events to be recorded only in the register. Music oozed from hidden speakers, but I only noticed when it stopped. The lights dimmed to a point just past dusk and everyone stared at the stage, empty except for two podiums. And our hosts appeared, Justin and Claire, neither deceased.

Claire thanked us for coming, then said, “You’re expecting a funeral and that’s what you’ll get. But this one’s different. Nobody died.”

Relief. Confusion. And yes, disappointment. Just a bit, but some.

“I’m here to pay final respects, not to Justin, but to the relationship I had with him.” She looked to her right.

True to his cue, Justin: “I’m here for the same reasons. Claire, the woman I hoped she’d be, but never became.”

“He was a good man.”

“She had a heart of gold.”

And that wrapped up the niceties. The volley of insults that ensued played out like a tennis match. Before long I could see Claire’s bottom lip began to quiver. Justin’s voice cracked like an adolescent. And I started piecing together what this was all about.

“He was condescending, he needed to feel smarter than everyone.”

“She didn’t like to read but wanted everyone to think she liked to read.”

And with this she left her post and crossed the stage. I imagine the acoustics made the slap sound worse than it was, but she struck him and I’m unsure who was more surprised, us or him. “I like to read,” she said. He raised a hand to cheek like he was checking for blood. Then she surprised us again by kissing him.

“But I’ve got more,” said Justin.

“So do I,” said Claire. She pointed to the rear of the room, to the bar in waiting. “The funeral is on hold, but drinks are on the house.”

A cluster of confused faces made their way to the bar. Everyone seemed to have a theory: public therapy, performance art, a happening. I had my own take. We saw two people who so desperately sought closure, they staged a funeral for their relationship, but they weren’t ready to bury it, not just yet. And we watched them begin again.

A man standing nearby asked my opinions on the proceedings, but he wouldn’t get them. Never respond to questions, a time-tested tenet of invisibility. I turned my back to him, faced the bar, and ordered an Old Fashioned.

Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work appears in Harpy Hybrid Review, Right Hand Pointing, and BigCityLit. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.