Month: August 2020

Night Talks by Terri Kirby Erickson

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Night Talks

When one would wake in the night, the other
followed. Then, in their bed, next to their window
that was always open, my mother and father
would talk to the sound of cars going by,
the hum of streetlights, the occasional bark
of a neighbor’s dog. They spoke of high school
dances, family vacations, raising children,
being grandparents. And their faces, soft
with age and sleep, were hidden in the dark,
so they could speak at last of their lost son,
without any need to shield each other from
that pain. It must have been a relief to unpack
the shared sadness they courageously carried,
to put it down, if only for an hour. It was like
I could hear them from my own bed
across town, as I slipped into a deeper sleep,
reassured and comforted by their beloved
familiar voices echoing among the stars.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53, Fall, 2020). Her work has appeared in Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, Poet’s Market, The Christian Century, The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many others. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nazim Hikmet Award, and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

Radiance by Laura Foley

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Radiance

I remember when I stopped
not believing in God, it sent me
to my knees pleading,
hands clasped like a penitent
or a medieval saint transported
to the modern age,
struck by my mother’s stroke.
A Litany flowed through me,
of faintly remembered prayers,
growing as I spoke,
my knees impervious to the hard tile,
cramped between sink and bath.
Yet, when I opened the door,
I feigned no inner change,
knew my husband’s unknowingness
would try to eclipse my newfound light,
turn brilliance to a dull watered gray
with his scoffing gaze, the planet
of his non-belief
blocking me from radiating.
I didn’t wish to rejoin him in the cave
where I once found comfort,
watching shadows dance.
It was the start
of the end of us, the beginning
of my brighter epoch.

 

 

Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review, was among their top poetry books of 2019, and won an Eric Hoffer Award. Her collection It’s This is forthcoming from Salmon Press in 2021. Her poems have won numerous awards, and national recognition—read frequently by Garrison Keillor on The Writers Almanac; appearing in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Laura lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among the hills of Vermont. www.laurafoley.net

 

5 Poems by Katie Richards

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Goddess

The summer days my mother sits out with us
are not the days we find dead birds with
the neighbor boys screaming watch out

as we toss them at each other, or the days
we play with a pocket knife one boy swiped
from his dad’s dresser, or the days we smash

fire ant mounds just to watch them flood out angry
like lava, their venom just as hot. The days
my mother sits out with us in her swimsuit,

pink blossoms patterned hot across emerald
leaves, ruffle border mapped against chest’s
edge, shoulder straps pulled down to avoid

tan lines, are the days we play house, put
the baby doll in the buggy, the days I trick
one of the boys to kiss me, the days we chalk

hopscotch on concrete in baby blues and hot pinks,
convince the boys to hold our ropes as we skip
to Cinderella dressed in yella went upstairs
 
to kiss her fella, made a mistake On these days
my mother doesn’t notice me pause to watch her
pull her fine brown hair into a ponytail delicate,

high up on her head with a scrunchy borrowed
from one of her girls, then pause and take a sip
from her diet coke, the tender kiss of lip-

stick a crescent moon blushed pink, hung sideways
against can’s edge silver, her fingers breaking
beads of sweat that pop out and pour down

its side. She doesn’t notice me stare in awe as she
squirts a palmful of baby oil out of the clear oval
bottle with the baby pink top on her thighs, watch

as her hand glides across oil glistening sun’s heat into
body, as she rubs it silky into her tan skin. These are
the days I learn how my mother keeps beauty in.

Foaling lesson

look girls my mother points as my father
stops the car and there we sit in the middle
of the country road no traffic to block my father

pulls out his camcorder pops in a new cassette
tape hits record for thirty minutes we sit
there and watch the slow pushing of foal

folded body in sac purple coming more out less
in like the ebb and flow of ocean waves spreading
their water thin onto sand until finally crashing

sac pops out tumbles foal bewildered and
clumsy mother nudging it to stand her muzzle
pushed up under its chest firm and unshakeable

 

Gardening after miscarriage

Abandoned shells glister
earth. Green shock rebirthed,
cicadas gone now. Folded fingers
into palm, she crushes their remnants
and sprinkles exoskeletons over flowers.
Dirt pressed to nailbed, lullaby of pressure
meets skin’s retreat.  A groove counts
for each moment left. Pressure fades.

Is there a way to resurrect the lost
blooms? Zinnia buds burn the sun
under. She can’t unremember two
unbodies she never buried.
This year, spring beats green
into the dogwood.

Winter walk 

I don’t know what to say. I point
the deer out anyway. Silent body

half gone, present in its decay.
I count aloud its ribs, then

the puppy dogs we pass. My son
flaps his mittened hands

in approval. Only three out
on an afternoon so cold.

Our cheeks blossom red as amaryllis.
I have taken to separating green

bananas on the counter to ripen
them faster. When we get home,

I place him in his highchair, watch
him bang his tray. Banana

squishes through baby’s fist.
Outside, the cardinal’s song

afternoons through the naked
dogwood. Day bruises itself to dusk.

Birthday poem

Sunflowers wilt on the counter, stems bent
necks in prayer. Fallen pollen circles the base,

circumference of week’s passing. James jumps on
the couch in his diaper, cookie in hand. His thighs

have abandoned their last hint of infancy. Claire scoots
along the coffee table, a pigtail loose, whining at me

to get her. Today is your birthday but you are out
getting your hair cut and oil changed. The dog waits

by the couch ready for scraps, while the cat scrounges
for crumbs in the highchair. Up to my elbows in dishes,

I wish the kids to entertain themselves. Soon we’ll miss
the intensity of these moments clustered together

like willow oak leaves in midsummer. Mourning
dove’s song pulses through their silent congregation.

Katie Richards is an MFA candidate at George Mason University. She is the recipient of the 2016 Mark Craver Poetry Award and the 2020 Mary Roberts Rinehart Poetry Award. Her poetry has previously appeared or is forthcoming in the South Dakota Review, DIALOGIST, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and The Inflectionist Review among other places.

Two Poems by Diane Kendig

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MATRILINEAGE

“I am looking for the women of my house.”

–Daisy Zamora

Trying to find a woman can be trying.
The damned name change,
that name named “maiden,” lopped,
as never was a Manx tail.

Childbirth takes them too.
My great-grandmother died
in the moment of my great-uncle’s birth,
grandmother, age five, told nothing,
only recalling lullabies in Welsh.

And other early deaths:
my single sister diagnosed with lymphoma
when her sole daughter was three, an old story, that,
the mother who dies when the daughter is five.
See Felix Holt. See Bleak House. See
Dombey and Son. See daughter.

 

 

ANOTHER GAP

My dad developed his photos in a changing bag
on his army cot, got shots from his tail gunner window
in a B-17. And he took pictures of the bodies at Dachau,
hid them from us when we first found them and asked,
“Daddy, what are these black and white ones of piles of rags?”
He sold the battle scenes, bought land with the money,
built a house on it. I do not say, had a house built.
He hand-dug the basement, learned brickwork, installed
furnace and wiring, set in a secondhand mantle
on weekends and evenings after his day job welding.
“So much blood, sweat, and tears,” Mom sighed,
years later. “My blood and sweat and your tears,”
he laughed, which did define their division of labor.
Today, I hear a young writer say she never knew
other people’s houses were not designed
with a developing room. Different class,
different generation.  Mine’s the one that knew,
my parents’— the one that made do.

 

 

Diane Kendig was born and raised in Canton, Ohio, left for 40 years, and returned recently to live in her childhood home, which her father built with his own hands when he returned from WWII. She has four collections of poetry, most recently Prison Terms (2018).  Also she co-edited In the Company of Russell Atkins and translated Nicaraguan poetry for A Pencil to Write Your Name. She has published poetry and prose in many journals and anthologies such as Valparaiso Poetry Review and Under the Sun. A proponent of public workshops and local poets, Kendig conducts writing workshops in prison, schools, and community centers, and she curates the blog, “Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry,” with over 4,000 readers, for National Poetry Month. Find more at: dianekendig.com

Two poems by Carla Sarett

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You know, life

You know the story.

A woman’s seeking,

you know,

And she meets,

you know,

And he’s just what she,

you know.

And everything seems fine until,

marriage,

well, you know.

Her mother,

His mother,

And couldn’t he,

And couldn’t she,

And really, who could with…

And no money.

And children, oh, the children,

And maybe if he,

And maybe if she,

But no one expected,

well, you know.

 

 

how suddenly

how suddenly
padded shoulders vanished,
bodies unbranded were
never seen except
in old movies

hats of miraculous shapes,
black veils, gloves of lemon yellow
died along with her old face,
no longer hers but
a sadder woman’s

her to do-list
had nothing to do
with anything
anyone ever
wanted to do

 
Carla Sarett’s recent appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Prole, Third Wednesday and elsewhere; and her essays have been nominated for Best American Essays and the Pushcart Prize.  Her novel, A Closet Feminist, will be published in 2022 (Unsolicited Press.). Carla has a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania, and lives in San Francisco.

Notice Breath by Ona Gritz

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Notice Breath

for Julia

 

Notice Breath, my yoga teacher says.
It’s the year of Corona and I take her class
in New Jersey from my house across state lines,
and what I notice today is the lovely unspecificity.
Not notice my breath, or hers, just breath itself
moving unhitched, animating each of us.

One friend with the virus describes
a burning like inhaled chemical fumes.
Another, a pressure like a cheetah
chose her ribcage as a place to rest.
So, yes, these days I notice breath
the way you’d notice a bouquet
on your scarred kitchen table, gathered
bursts so bright at first it’s easy to forget
they’ve been clipped from their roots,
their fading not even all that slow.

Mother’s Day, I watched as two teenage girls
sung a hip hop love song to a masked and gloved
woman on her porch. They stayed on the walk
and I on my side of the street,
but when their song ended, the mom, or aunt
or favorite neighbor, crossed the divide,
took those girls in her arms, deciding
the feel of their heat and heartbeats and sweat
was worth daring the beast for once.

Every day, we’re made to weigh it like that,
sucking in our breath, letting it out
against paper or cloth,
noting its warmth as we do.

 

Ona Gritz’s books include the poetry collections, Geode, a finalist for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and Border Songs: A Conversation in Poems, written with her husband Daniel Simpson. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Catamaran Literary Reader, The Bellevue Literary Review, Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and elsewhere. She and Daniel served as poetry editors for Referential Magazine and co-edited More Challenges For the Delusional, a writing guide and anthology featuring prompts by Peter Murphy. Ona is also a children’s author and essayist. Her nonfiction is listed among Notables in Best American Essays and Best Life Stories in Salon.

Self-Care by James Crews

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Self-Care

 

Some days it feels like a foreign language
I’m asked to practice, with new words
for happiness, work, and love. I’m still learning
how to say: a cup of tea for no reason,
what to call the extra honey I drizzle in,
how to label the relentless urge to do more
and more as poison. And how to translate
the heart’s pounding message when it comes:
enough, enough. This morning, I search for words
to capture the glimmering sun as it lifts
above the mountains, clouds already closing in
as fat droplets of rain darken the deck.
I’m learning to call this stillness self-care too,
just standing here, watching goldfinches
scatter up from around the feeder like pieces
of bright yellow stained-glass, reassembling
in the sheltering arms of a maple.

 

 

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of the popular Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The Christian Century, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. Crews holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a PhD in writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He works as a creative coach and lives with his husband on an organic farm in Vermont.

Missive to Nancy by Cathryn Shea

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Missive to Nancy 

Dear sister, you would be astonished to know
that I now occupy a house (with only my husband
and cat since the kids have left) which is the same
architecture and plan, built the same year
as that place on Santa Maria Avenue.
It’s a pattern house, a kit. A step up maybe
from ticky tacky, a little box nevertheless.
When I sit in my living room now,

I imagine you shaking your crib into the hallway
from our parents’ bedroom where you were supposed to be
sound asleep for the night per our mother’s anxious prayer:
God Almighty, make baby sleep. Amen.
But, no, you would appear in the hallway at the helm
of your slatted conveyance. Shaking, banging, rattling forward.
Pointing to mother on the couch in front of the TV.

So now I sit here and recall you in your Annie Oakley getup
with six-shooter and holster. Or I see you in your highchair,
bowl of cereal spilled over your head,
milk dripping everywhere, our mother wiping up the mess,
cussing then apologizing for words
that had no meaning to her little girls
who didn’t have a vocabulary for what would be
the design of their lives in this world.

 

 

Cathryn Shea is the author of the full-length poetry collection “Genealogy Lesson for the Laity” (Unsolicited Press, September 2020) and the chapbooks “Backpack Full of Leaves” (Cyberwit, 2019), “Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree” (dancing girl press, 2019), and “It’s Raining Lullabies” (dancing girl press, 2017). Cathryn’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears in New Orleans Review, Typehouse, Tar River Poetry, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. Cathryn served as editor for the annual Marin Poetry Center Anthology. See https://www.cathrynshea.com/ and @cathy_shea on Twitter.

Whale Bones by Melissa Chappell

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Whale Bones

That night we were in the ocean,
wonder cresting and breaking over me,
the crescent moon sailing on tides of spilled light,
its sails filled with a bitter wind.
You were the oceanic phantasm,
who left me yearning for more.
But as the sun shone
golden through the seam,
you had flown away.
I am left on the encrusted shore alone,
with whale bones and a bottle, emptied of spirits,
with no message.
Sorrow whistles through the bones
and by my wasting fire I weep,
binding my silent wounds.

 

 

Melissa Chappell is a poet residing in South Carolina where she leads a rural lifestyle on land passed down through her family for over 120 years. She enjoys spending time in the woods. She is also musical and is a novice player of the eight course Renaissance lute, along with the piano and guitar. She shares her life with her family and two miniature schnauzers.