An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Tag: Winter Holiday Issue 2023 (Page 1 of 3)

Tanka for the New Year

Poetry by K.L. Johnston

cathedral of pines
capturing
                   light and silence
carpet of needles
shushing our footsteps
                                                 our breath
rising white
                  with songbird wings

 


K.L. Johnston is an award-winning haiku poet and author whose works have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. She holds a degree in Literature and Communications from the University of South Carolina and is a retired antiques dealer. You can follow her on Facebook at A Written World.

Some Kinder Resolutions for a Better Year

Poetry by Cecil Morris

Learn from the cat. Settle in sunny spot and stretch
oblivious to obligation or cascading shoulds
or judgmental stares. Let the bones go loose,
all muscles relaxed and negligent.
Turn off notifications and ringers,
all beeps and trills and buzzing vibrations
that call the mind from its rightful work
of undirected cogitation.
Commit to silence for one hour
each morning and each night and, maybe,
each noon, too. Take those quiet hours
to notice the world at its business—
the pale shoot splitting the sunflower seed
to seek the sun, the unhurried humming
of a bee progressing from blossom
to blossom, the tulip’s reverent pose,
the way a bit of dust can levitate
in a slice of light. Do not make haste.
Every moment does not need to yield
a product or an accomplishment.
Laziness is a healthy pleasure
so make of its indulgence an art.
Make of indolence a new hobby.
Linger over a favorite song.
Let it play twice.
Enjoy.


Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, and now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and (he hopes) to enjoy. Poems appear or are forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and other literary magazines.

Brixen in Winter

Poetry by Jeannette Tien-Wei Law


Frost flakes, Yule tide, blink lights glow

Dove haze, slab streets, wish for snow

Star child, sweep stacks, coal smudge face

Sky blush, Year dawns, white spot doe


Jeannette Tien-Wei Law grew up celebrating the holidays with her family in St. Louis, Missouri. Festive dinners often touted steamed rice and stir-fried broccoli alongside the roasted turkey and traditional trimmings. Jeannette now makes her own stuffing with apricots, wine and Italian sausage as an international educator living in Milan.

Christmas Dessert

Poetry by Inge Sorensen


Black, Blue, Raspberries

Topping Dollop, Fresh Whipped Cream

Festive Pavlova


Inge Sorensen is a poet and short story writer born and raised in California’s Bay Area. Her pieces have been featured in the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast, Wingless Dreamer, the Humans of the World blog, and Poet’s Choice Autumn Anthology.

Sing a Song of Midnight

Poetry by Bonnie Demerjian

Step through the door into the new-hatched year.
There’s promise of a light ahead,
the balance tipped, the finger points toward spring
but not just yet.

For now, we’re in that spacious room of dark —
no floor, no walls, no roof above.
In amniotic space, we’ll first unfold
then wait to be unsealed.

In this hour the frost world is our home
so sink into its artful wealth.
Fluff your feathers like the roosting hen,
and settle safely in.

Outside the porcupine and deer will roam,
so wary in the light of day,
tonight in silky freedom nose your gate,
befriended by the shade.

Oh birds, the city lights scream certain death,
a warning never known and yet
somber incantation chants a highway for
your journey lit by dark.

Unlatch the door to constellations and
the fickle waltzing moon.
A shooting star may plunge and bring you promise
of a world renewed.

Curtains drawn and door against the night,
turn again to your true love.
The candle of affection brighter for the
season’s windblown gloom.

So welcome Mother Dark, she nourishes,
sustains us with her mystery.
And though our hearts quail with diminished light,
her secrets feed our journey.


Bonnie Demerjian lives in Southeast Alaska and writes from her oceanside home which inspires much of her writing. She is a birder, a gardener and a cellist. Her work has been published in The Bluebird Word, Tidal Echoes, Blue Heron Review, Pure Slush, and Alaska Women Speak, among others.

Two Dolls and Three Kings

Nonfiction by Antonia Wang

I only ever owned two dolls, delicate treasures in a world where Barbies belonged to children with ties to distant lands like the United States or, in a bygone era, Venezuela.

My dolls weren’t the coveted reborn dolls of the ’80s, the ones I daydreamed about swaddling and adorning with miniature outfits like real infants. No, my dolls were not my first choice, but they were unique— a second-hand, silicone-skinned Japanese doll with straight chestnut hair, a miniature yogi ready to bend and twist to my whims. The other, a robust, plastic blonde doll with pigtail braids, remained shelved most of the time, but I could never forget her.

How did I come to possess a Japanese doll while living in the insular mountains of the 1980s Dominican Republic? My recollection is hazy, but I remember it as a gift from a Spanish missionary whom my family hosted one summer while she worked with the church. The doll had meager clothes, so I fashioned her an outfit with the little fabric I could find and my rudimentary sewing skills.

The blonde doll had been a “Three Kings” gift from my dad. Christmas gifts were for Americans. Dominican kids didn’t have Santa. We had the Three Kings, who somehow made no noise as they filled our rooms with their camels on the eve of January 6th, delivering our toys. Oh, coveted joy! They were the only gifts of the year for many of us. “At least you had toys,” my siblings would chime in. But this isn’t a sad story about growing up in a small town in the countryside of a humble island. This isn’t a sad story at all.

Sure, we had limited means, but we never lacked what truly mattered: a roof of our own, honest and loving parents, friends galore, and a multitude of cousins. Cousins to play hide and seek with, tackle homework with, attend church together, and, of course, get into the occasional trouble with. And then there were the lush mountains, always smiling around me, offering endless adventures and mysteries. Our home had no television when I was a kid, and it wasn’t until I reached my teenage years that we got a fridge. Bicycles or scooters were scarce, and cars? They were a luxury reserved solely for the ‘rich,’ although even those we deemed ‘rich’ carried their own burdens—a spouse who had migrated to the United States, the trials of managing a small-town business, or concealed guilt.

No, I never felt poor. We had what we needed and nothing more, except for food. Come what may, we had food—for everyone at home, for the neighbor who couldn’t afford to cook, for my grandpa who preferred my mom’s cooking though he didn’t live with us, for the occasional country visitor, my father’s third cousin, or the Haitian woman with a child who stopped by every few months. I couldn’t remember her name or whether she had a home. There was always plenty of food, even if my mom had to make herself a meal from our leftovers. But this isn’t a sad story, no.

This is a tale of devotion—a father who wanted to give me the childhood he never had growing up as a farmer’s kid in the mountains of Camú.

One evening, approaching January 6th, I witnessed a secret ritual. My late father, convinced I was asleep, concealed a grand, plastic doll within a duffle bag hanging from a nail on the wooden wall, believing he had hidden it where I would never think to look. I smiled and turned sideways, pretending to be sleep.

Outside, the chorus of crickets remained silent. The unsightly toads in the nearby miniature swamp, where taro root and yautía malanga thrived unbidden yet embraced, also remained silent. Nor did I hear a whisper from the brown geckos that crept about our small-town dwelling, which we regarded as an auspicious omen.

The next day, I didn’t say a word, filled with excitement as I eagerly awaited the surprise at the foot of my bed on Three Kings’ Day. I remained silent because, more than a toy, I cherished the joy of my father’s belief in magic.


Antonia Wang, poet, nature enthusiast, and yogi, weaves intricate, symbolic poems from the tapestry of everyday life and the natural world. Exploring universal themes of relationships, self-discovery, and philosophy, Antonia’s work exudes a nostalgic Caribbean essence. She writes in English and Spanish, and lives with her family in the USA.

Blue Snow Globe

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.

January 1

Poetry by Alexandra Newton Rios

This is a new year I rise to meet
to run to the sun rising red
amidst eucalyptus and slender-leafed tarcos
running the track of black earth softened
by the rains in a province of deep heat.
I run to the rhythms of a life
found in the doing
the raising of five children
transformed into leading five adults
into their next steps without me.
All is well say the birds as I run
this leaving one place for another
this removing myself suddenly with gratitude
for all that a tree over two hundred and fifty years old,
a mountain and the birds give.
We are rising to meet the new year,
the new day, the new possibility
which is beginning.
Yellow-bellied quetupí  know this every day.


Alexandra Newton Rios is a University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop graduate. Madeleine L’Engle spoke highly of her poems in 1995, and she received poetic praise from W.S. Merwin in 2011. She is a bi-hemispherical mother of five. Read an earlier poem in The Bluebird Word from July 2023.

Jack and the Box

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.

Days After Christmas

Fiction by Gregory Cusumano

The Christmas tree had begun to sag. It actually started to sag several days ago, but it was a slow process— incremental, first the bottom branches drooped, then the next row up, and the next. The pine needles dried, and the trunk slumped to its side. Now, the needles were pallid, and the string lights had slipped low on the branches. It was daytime. The apartment dim, lit from only the front window, which was defused by flurries of snow.  

The new Christmas gifts had been opened, played with, and now set up neatly in all their new homes around the living room. The hollow green Castle Grayskull, with its skeleton face, mouth for a drawbridge, sat at the foot of the tree. Across from it, next to the sofa, was the purple snake-like castle of Skeletor. A landspeeder sat above it on the side table, accompanied by a 4″ plastic Luke Skywalker on his Tauntaun battling a fluffy white horned monster called a Wompa.

On the TV stand, the new Donkey Kong Jr. and Q*bert video cartridges were lined up with the other Atari games next to a Zenith box tube television set.

Yes, all the presents had found a home except for the lone package beneath the tree. Its paper was crinkled, the rips taped, torn again, and re-taped again with stronger masking tape.  

The name tag lost days ago.

A strong wind whistled past the window, making it shudder. “Will you get off of there?” the mom said as she dragged a large suitcase into the living room. She was dressed for traveling, comfy jeans, a sweater, and sneakers.

“No,” said the boy sitting by the window, his nose pressed against the glass. He was almost too big to be sitting on the sill. Once upon a time, he could crawl along it with ease. Now, at nine, he had to balance carefully.

“It’s too cold to be sitting that close to the window.”

“I’m not cold.”

“I’m cold just looking at you, and it’s time to go. I’d like to get on the road before the weather gets really bad.”

“Can we wait a little longer?”

“We’re going to be late.”

“Half-hour?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Ok.”

“Can you at least get off of there and put on a sweater?”

“No!” said the boy, not looking at her. He was intent on staying there all day if he had to. He didn’t care if they spent New Year’s Eve with his cousins. He was half-hoping that they would get snowed in.

His mother came over to him, putting her arms around him. “You’re freezing. Come on, let’s get down.”

He didn’t budge.

Outside, a handful of kids dressed in snow gear entered the courtyard of their apartment complex, whooping and chasing after each other, throwing snowballs. “Nicky and Joel are outside. It looks like they are having a good time. Why don’t you go out and play with them? It’s as good as waiting here.”

“I’d rather stay here.”

“It will be more fun with your friends.”

“Can you call again?”

“I called already. There was no answer.”

“If you call him again, maybe, he’ll answer this time.”

“I’ve called! He swore he would be here Christmas morning. Then the next day and the next, and now today,” she looked at her watch. “He’s five hours late. No, I will not call him again. We should get on the road.”

The boy pushed his tongue against the back of his front teeth, crinkling his lips and nose, holding back the brimming tears.

“Please,” his lower lip trembled.

“If you get off there, I’ll call him again.”

The boy didn’t budge.

“Suit yourself.”

The boy watched the kids play. The chase had ended. Now, they were behind the short leafless hedges on the courtyard area that, in a different season, would be green with a manicured clipped lawn. They were building a snowman.

The flurries were picking up. Maybe he would get his wish. A gust rattled the window. The snow was making it hard to see. Yet the boy steadfastly continued to search. Then, in the distance, near the road, a man entered the courtyard. He was bundled in a parka, his arms laden with packages.

“HE’S HERE!”

The boy leaped from the window sill, running across the living room, hopping into his boots, tearing open the door, and bounding down the stairs.

“Wait, your coat!” his mom yelled out to him. THUMP – THUMP – THUMP, the sound of his boots thumping down the stairs to the front door.

He turned the knob, cold to his ungloved hand. It spun, he pulled the door open, and he was hit with a windy, white torrent of flakes. Wiping it away, he plowed ahead, running as best he could, slipping at times but righting himself before he could fall. He ran up to the man in the parka holding the packages.

“Hello,” said the mailman with a smile.

His face went gaunt.

“Hi,” said the boy. He blinked. One tear appeared, then the next. No matter how hard he pressed his tongue against his teeth, he couldn’t keep back the thing he had so successfully suppressed in the past.

From behind him, his mother approached with a coat. He slipped his arms into its sleeves. She zippered it for him. “You always have me.”

“I know.”

“Is that enough?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me either.”

They walked side by side back through the courtyard. She knew better than to offer her hand. After a time, he offered his. She accepted. The snow drifting around them, sometimes in torrents, sometimes in flurries.

“Do you want me to call him?”

“No,” said the boy, less sullen, “I think it’s time to go.”


Greg Cusumano‘s love of storytelling began at a young age sitting at his grandparent’s table for the traditional Italian Sunday meal. He is mainly known for his work as a film and television editor; his recent credits include Grey’s Anatomy, Teen Wolf The Movie and Wolf Pack. This is his first published story.

« Older posts

© 2024 The Bluebird Word

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑