An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Tag: Winter Holiday Issue 2023 (Page 2 of 3)

If Not Glitter, If Not Gold

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

This early Sunday morning
my coffee mug steams.
A miniature Mauna Loa,
it resides within an archipelago

of trunk-top clutter: Solstice gifts,
dog-eared chapbooks, sun-bright
Satsumas. In this indigo light,
I scour Etsy for glitter-crusted

New Year banners, lunar calendars,
their moons of the year stamped
in bright gold, not just on paper,
but parchment. I can’t explain

this fiery December need for
glimmer & glam, twinkle & flash,
but I am ever the believer, searcher
for the harbinger of fortune & joy.


Kersten Christianson is a poet and English teacher from Sitka, Alaska. She is the author of Curating the House of Nostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig 2020) and Something Yet to Be Named (Kelsay Books, 2017). She serves as poetry editor of Alaska Women Speak. Kersten savors road trips, bookstores, and smooth ink pens.

Christmas 2000

Poetry by Nancy Kay Peterson

I.

A red grapefruit sunrise hugs the horizon
and stark sycamore limbs lance the lunar landscape.
Chimney smoke signals an unreadable message.
Snow creaks in protest at every step.
Cold pierces even the heaviest coats.
It is a handful of days till winter solstice,
then Christmas, then nearly half a year till
the bare branches vanish in greenery, chimneys quiet.

II.

Christmas lights glow like jewels in the dark room
where, Norwegian traditions passed on to me,
an unrelenting weight, will pass to no one.
My Jewish ex-husband tolerated the annual pine invasion.
My Hong Kong husband eschews the antique ornaments
in favor of a minimalist approach — less work.
Scarred globes of my childhood remain boxed
like the Christmas pasts sleeping in my heart.

III.

The few remaining family have happy hour,
call the one uncle left, his days now numbered.
My brother-in-law has brought his mother
from the Aase Haugen Home where an old man
sat in his wheelchair by the door
asking “Can I come, too?” I can’t erase
the thought of one of us there as he is now
waiting for a Christmas that will never come.

The moon’s grin is ever cold, never changing.


Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry has appeared in The Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, HerWords, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, One Sentence Poems, RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticke, Three Line Poetry and Tipton Poetry Journal. She’s published two chapbooks, “Belated Remembrance” (2010) and “Selling the Family” (2021). For more information, see www.nancykaypeterson.com.

The Walk to Ma’s House

Nonfiction by Diane Funston

Walking to my great-grandmother’s house after fifth and sixth grade once a week–I remember so clearly, see it right in front of me. Out of the old brick Lincoln school number 22 off Joseph Avenue. Turning right towards downtown, you could see the huge Baptist Church way at the end of the avenue, Xerox Tower beyond that.

My memory is always winter. This was a magical journey in winter. I remember huge soft snowflakes falling, the air cold but very fresh. Catching snowflakes on my tongue, on my fluffy mittens. It was almost like a Christmas card.

Passing Bodner Bakery on my right, the scent of fresh pastries and breads wafted out the door and smelled of warmth and love. Prune rugalach, challah, black and white cookies, sliced seeded rye in the slicer.

Blanks Market was next, a sausage shop with all the German wurst we would buy on Saturday. Sausages and hams hung in the big front window. Slabs of bacon in the case, along with homemade sauerkraut and potato salad. Across the street was Schmidts Market, a butcher who also made sauerkraut, sold in cardboard containers like Chinese food comes in. Schmidts also sold fresh ground round my grandmother used to make gahochtus, raw beef with onions, egg, and seasoning served on pumpernickel bread. Delicious.

I went past the fish market where whole fish with staring eyeballs looked out from the case. On Friday the place was alive and jumping with people lined up to buy take-out fish fry. Farther along was the Bareis Shoe store with Buster Brown and his dog Tige on a hanging sign. Saddle shoes were in the window, and black patent leather shoes. On a winter day there were lacy snowflakes glittering in the display window.

Next on my walk, right at the corner of Wilkins Street where I turned left to walk to Ma’s house was a tombstone engraver with monuments in the yard and samples of engraving in the window. Beautiful rose granite and white marble you just had to run your hand over on the way by. A gorgeous black wrought iron fence kept people away from the stones.

Walking up the street I pass rows of houses mostly from the 1920s like Ma’s house. Some are multi-family, large homes referred to as Boston style with big front porches, even on the upstairs units. The single family houses are mostly small cottage style. Nothing ornate about them architecture-wise. Small backyards, many with fenced front yards with gardens. I pass lots of roses wrapped for the winter, lilac bushes, barberry shrubs and a lot of city street trees that are maples or chestnuts. A few spruce trees and juniper bushes add green and blue to the stark landscape.

At last I arrive at my great-grandmother’s house. Up three steps then four into the small front porch and inside. I smell the chicken vegetable soup simmering on the old 1930s Magic Chef stove. I hug Ma, and she kisses me on both cheeks. She is 80, white hair in a tight bun held in place with barrettes. She has glasses, wears a tiny floral print dress covered by an apron. Her feet wear black, heavy shoes that lace up.

We talk about school and I have coffee and windmill cookies with her. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was ten. It’s a very German tradition to have coffee and a sweet around three or four in the afternoon. After my snack I help her dust. The living room has dark navy blue velvet and wicker furniture. There is a humidor where my great-grandfather kept cigars. I don’t remember him; he died when I was a year old. There is wallpaper in the living and dining rooms. The woodwork is dark stained oak.

The kitchen is painted a very light pink. Gray Formica covers the lower half of the walls like wainscoting. The refrigerator is very old with a tiny freezer and a handle that pulled toward you to open up. Westinghouse, I remember. A key-wound Art Deco clock kept time in the kitchen, it’s loud pendulum swung back and forth. A big rocking chair is in the middle of the large kitchen. The cat, Topper, on the cushion, sleeping.

Before supper I shovel a little path by the back door and sprinkle some rock salt. Both Ma and the neighbor Mable have luscious perennial gardens that bloom crazy in other seasons. The other neighbor Willy has a beautiful garden and a pond with goldfish that winter over.

We eat supper, the hot soup with little oyster crackers. She does a funny thing with her dentures where they jut out of her mouth then back in again. I feel very cared for and loved by my great-grandma and my grandma. I loved going to her house every week. It gave warmth to the winter, the walk over so full of all of the senses. It was a time of innocence, where I could be a young girl who didn’t have to have all the answers.


Diane Funston was born and raised in Rochester, New York, and currently lives in Marysville, CA. Diane has worked with adults with disabilities her entire working life. Besides emerging as a writer, Diane enjoys beading, hiking, her family, and her dogs.

San Marcos Christmas

Poetry by Steve Wilson

No snow for Christmas in Texas, where nevertheless
the inflatable snowman across the street seems jovial

enough. In place of new-fallen snow, we’ve
a freshly mown lawn and, in our front garden,

five yellow flowers confused into blooming
by warm afternoons and clear skies. Still,

the neighbors’ twinkling lights manage to coax us all
toward something approaching goodwill with the world

that’s stubbornly churning along upon its complaints
and recriminations, its internet trolls, its rising rages.

Candles glow in windows here and there. Someone
has tethered a Santa to their chimney; it totters drunkenly

upon the breeze. We’re weary of this weariness, the lot
of us. Bumbling through. Mumbling. Humming

ragged fragments of carols as we worry our way
through the evening’s always breaking news.


Steve Wilson‘s poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies nationwide; as well as in six collections, the most recent entitled Complicity. He lives in San Marcos, TX.

Shadows and Silhouettes

Poetry by C. DeForest Switzer

She stood her ground beside
the blue tarp, looking up at me in the window
from the new and unknown below.
I stared down, hoping to convey
that everything was okay;
But, of course, it was not.

My family hated the “pests”—
their destructive habits;
the drab, dirty-gray rabbits that lurked
constantly wary but secure,
indifferent,
bolting free with lightning speed…
No problem for Dad;
his pellet gun at the ready.
The offense?
Eating garden plants to nubs —
creatures older than us,
forever in the dark:
now a kit under my deck,
quiet and free of predator’s eyes
Silhouetted in the dusk.
A paper cutout, unconcerned,
nibbling birdseed on the flagstone,
feet away from her ground-level haven.
And me, in the gray twilight,
atop the shelter of her life,
My rustic deck.

As the winter wind blows the snow,
the blue tarp flaps
atop the sheltered haven.
“It’s okay,” I mouth, looking down
from my window above,
motioning with hands and body
as best I can.
“It’s still safe,” I say
to the rabbit looking up at me
Thumping her foot in reply.


C. DeForest Switzer lives in western Iowa’s Loess Hills. He loves the outdoors and studied at Cal State, Chico, competing in a South Lake Tahoe park design contest. He published a poem in the college literary magazine, “Watershed,” and has been writing since. Currently, he’s editing his first novel.

Target, at Christmas

Poetry by Allison Baldwin

All it takes is the laughter of children,
the screech of shopping carts
to remind me of love.

In the aisle on my left,
red shirts in straight lines
waiting to be purchased
one by one.

Several feet away,
my best friend, walking, in an opposite direction
toward Starbursts, Sweet-Tarts, Goobers.

I know her: a sugar queen,
even as she asks me not to let her be.

I know me: last minute shopper, buying gifts for family
even when the task is far from easy.

In a basket:
Two small notebooks
A Yoshi hat my brother will never wear
A pair of Mario socks he will.
Some dog toys.

Love is not always easy, either.
But it holds its weight.

At the register, my friend gives into temptation,
buys the candy anyway
yet I follow through, tell her not to.

(The secret: I’ve already bought her
the sweets she seeks)

When she wonders why,
I say, “I am just doing my job.”

We laugh,
and the clerk joins in.


Allison Baldwin is a poet who combines authenticity with sass. Her work has been published in print and online, with an essay forthcoming in Folkway Press’s Right to Life anthology. She holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetic Medicine from Dominican University of California.

Another Christmas

Poetry by Rohan Buettel

That time of year has come again.
We brave the crowds in shopping malls
and search the shelves but look in vain,
the perfect gift not on these walls.
The hours we spend in kitchens hot
preparing food that tastes so good.
A Christmas meal will hit the spot,
enough to feast the neighbourhood.

The cheer of hearing from old friends,
the family gathers round at last,
repair the breaks and make amends,
a time to put away the past.
The effort worth it all to place
a smile upon a little face.


Rohan Buettel lives in Canberra, Australia. His haiku appear in various Australian and international journals (including Presence, Cattails and The Heron’s Nest). His longer poetry appears in more than fifty journals, including The Goodlife Review, Rappahannock Review, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Passengers Journal, Reed Magazine, Meniscus and Quadrant.

Christmas

Fiction by Ernest Troost

She snatched the moon from the winter sky and buried it in the stubbled field. When she was done, the old lab sniffed the fresh dirt.

She walked back towards the house with the dog at her side, their breath little puffs in the dark. She could smell the wood smoke from her neighbor’s chimney. Fat snowflakes floated slowly down through the light from the corner streetlamp. The night was still, except for the soft jiggling of the dog dragging its leash.

What had he said? “I like it here on the coast. I’m going to stay.”

And then, nothing but the soft wash of white noise, sloshing between relay towers, through transmission lines, across the 3,000 miles between them.

She let the dog in and leaned the shovel against the house. She took one more look up at the December sky and thought, tomorrow night I’ll put out the stars.


Ernest Troost is an Emmy-winning film composer, and Kerrville New Folk winning songwriter. He is also a writer of essays and short stories when he is not composing music.

How Poppi Met Nonni

Nonfiction by Tarah Friend Cantore

I place the delicate ornament into the small box, nestled in the green tissue paper. It is a pink ceramic baby shoe with Baby’s First Christmas on it.

I imagine it is the year 2033. My family is gathered for the holidays at our New Hampshire home.


My youngest granddaughter, Ella, giggles and says, “Poppi, tell us the story about how you and Nonni met!”

From the kitchen, I can see Vinnie sitting in his leather chair in the great room. Bode climbs onto his knee, exclaiming, “Yeah, Poppi!” Ella is occupying the other knee, grinning from ear to ear. The four-year-old inseparable cousins are curly-haired, brown-eyed bookends.

Hazel runs from the kitchen to join her brother and cousin. As the flour from her auburn hair releases, a cloud of white dust trails behind her. At only nine years old, she has entered the Children’s Baking Show, and this afternoon, she is schooling us in the kitchen, baking Linzer cookies with raspberry filling.

My daughters, Brittany and Molly, as well as Molly’s wife, Jordan, are with me in the kitchen. Jordan is sitting at the island, where Molly is standing next to her, caressing her pregnant belly. I bring my favorite blue-glazed mug to my lips, appreciating the warmth in my hands and my heart.

“Bake at 350 degrees!” I shout at my new oven. Apparently, it will sense the temperature of whatever is baking or cooking so as not to overcook or undercook. While I am confident it will be efficient and accurate, there’s something to be said about slightly undercooked, gooey cookies. Besides, perfect baking doesn’t exactly fit with my hope to give my grandchildren the gift of imperfection, something I never had.

Hazel’s younger sister, Lydia, momentarily pops her head up from reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when Hazel enters the room, then she resumes reading. She is sitting in the “cubby” with her father, Bo. When our daughters were little, they referred to the “cubby” as the spot at the end of the couch where they would sit in the bend of someone’s legs. When our grandchildren come to visit, they fight for the spot, yelling, “I want the cubby.”

Lydia is seven years old and a real bookworm. She will likely complete the first Harry Potter book and bring The Chamber of Secrets home with her. She has wavy, auburn hair and resembles Hermione, one of the characters in her book.

Vinnie begins, “Well, first of all, I had a crush on your Nonni before we even met.”

Ella inquires in her soft little voice, “What is a crush?”

He tilts his head slightly towards Ella. “A crush is when you really like someone and believe you could even love them.”

Ella and Bode nod in sync.

Hazel looks at her father. “Dada, did you have a crush on Mama?”

Bo smiles and says, “I did!”

Without Lydia’s eyes leaving her book, she adds, “On the softball field.”

“That’s right! But that’s another story,” says Bo.

Hazel plops down on the rug in front of the fireplace and focuses on Vinnie.

He says, “I saw her that night at Minerva’s. The closer I got, the more pretty she was-“

Bode interrupts, “What’s Minerva’s?”

“It was a bar in Burlington where Nonni went to college.”

Lydia sits up from the cubby and exclaims, “You and Nonni met at a bar?”

“That’s right.”

He had all of the children’s attention now.

“I asked Nonni if she remembered me, and she did. We talked some. I was about to ask her to dance, but my friend, Mark, was bugging me to leave. I asked her if I came back, would she dance with me? She smiled shyly and said, ‘Yes!’ When I returned later, I found her, and we danced. But then she said she had to leave.”

I recalled the sticky bar floor, the 80s music, and his adorable face.

“When we walked out of the bar, I leaned over and tried to kiss her.”

Bode wrinkled up his face and said, “Gross, Poppi!”

Vinnie refrained from laughing. “Well, she didn’t let me anyway, Bode!”

I was no floozy.

“She gave me her phone number, though.”

“And that is how Nonni and I met!” Vinnie nods and falls silent.

Hazel pops onto all fours on the rug and shouts, “But what happened next?”

Lydia chimes in, “Yeah! What happened next?”

“Well,” Vinnie orchestrates the perfect suspenseful pause and then says, “I didn’t call her.”

Hazel shouts, “How rude, Poppi!”

“Very rude. I imagine she was disappointed. And maybe a little mad.”

Lydia shakes her head with disbelief. “Well, how did you ever fall in love with her?”

Hazel inquires further, “And get married?”

“Well, she called me a couple weeks later when she was home visiting Gigi. I guess I didn’t make a bad first impression after all.”

“Why would you, Poppi?” Hazel asks.

“Because I had a little too much liquid courage.”

Bode reaches up and takes Vin’s face in his little hands. “What’s liquid courage?”

“Well, I drank too many beers. I thought I needed them to be brave enough to talk to her.”

Hazel yells, “But you didn’t! You didn’t at all!”

“Why do you say that, Hazel?”

She replies, “Because Nonni had a crush on you too!”

I walk into the great room, like I’m accepting an Oscar, and say, “I really did!” I give Vinnie a kiss. My family applauds, hoots, and hollers.


I return to the present moment. I wrap the ornament in candy cane-striped paper and tie a red velvet ribbon around it. I feel the smooth velvet between my fingers, inspecting the asymmetry of the loops, and decide to leave them uneven. Vinnie and I used to joke about which version of the story we would tell our grandchildren, when we were old and gray, about how we met in a bar. This one is perfect.


Tarah Friend Cantore has published a non-fiction memoir incorporating her artwork in tough & vulnerable, in addition to her novel, Spiral Bound. Her poetry has been published in The Bluebird Word and in the Telling Our Stories Through Word and Image Anthology.

This peculiar work

Poetry by J.T. Homesley

This peculiar work. For this
lowest legal wage. Paid to
help people play. In the snow.
Tempting gravity. Nowhere to go.
But down hills high speed.
Not for me. Though I will
gladly take pay to keep it on
open all be it precarious
possibility for them. Others
buried in layered flannels
and rainbow goggles. I like
to imagine behind them, they see the world
like a horsefly gushing by trees
bristled hairs in loose tail
whipping. Ears twitching and
brittle as ice. Hit the landing
just right. Broken wings and six
shattered legs lie crumpled in a pile.
Rise from the white ashes,
laughing.
Clearly this whole thing is a peculiarity.
It’s just. They keep on insisting I call it work.


J.T. Homesley is an English teacher, writer, actor and farmer currently based in the Piedmont of North Carolina. He holds a Master of Arts in writing and has been published with collections including Ghost City Review and GreenPrints Magazine. Follow his journey at www.writeractorfarmer.com.

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