Tag: relationships

Three Poems by Ann Kammerer

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Robin

We sat around
my kitchen table,
my brothers in town
for Christmas,
Mom and Dad
long divorced
and dead
for decades.

They talked about
high school.
They talked about
sports.
They talked about
being All-Region
in baseball,
and how
they could’ve been
All-State,
if only Mom
had married
someone else.

“We would’ve
been better,” Freddie said.

“Yeah,” Charlie said.
“We would’ve been
All-Stars.”

Charlie drank.
Freddie smoked.
They went
back and forth
calling Mom an idiot
for not marrying
a college player
named Robin Roberts,
a stand-out pitcher
recruited by the Phillies
and enshrined
in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“She dated him you know.”
Charlie leaned in,
his head tipped,
his eyebrows raised
just like Dad
used to do
when he tried
to make a point.

“I doubt it,” I said.
“Like Mom made
things up.
You know.
To get Dad mad.”

Freddie leaned in, too,
his jaw squared.

“She wouldn’t lie
‘bout that.” he said.

Charlie nodded.
He rapped the table
with his knuckles.

“Yeah,” he said.
“She wouldn’t do that.
Never.”

They fixed
on each other,
their eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Freddie said.
“It could’ve been perfect.”

Reseating their baseball caps,
they listed the keepsakes
they found tucked away
in Mom’s dresser drawer,
the college programs
with Roberts’ name underlined,
the ’49 rookie card,
the mint condition
Topps and Bowmans,
and the ‘53 baseball mag,
with “Wonder Boy” Roberts
on the color cover,
sizing up his pitch.

“She had
everything,” Freddie said.
“All his cards,
all those stories,
all those things
about him,
about his kids,
about his wife.”

Freddie paused.
He blinked and looked
out the window.

“Like that could’ve
been us,” Charlie said.
“Imagine it.”

Chugging their beers,
they opened two more,
saying they could’ve had
a star-quality Dad,
someone who taught them
how to throw,
catch, and hit,
someone who
coached them,
instead of a dad
in worn suits
and scuffed wingtips
who never even
tossed them a pitch
when they played ball
with neighbor kids
in a fenced back yard.

*

Curation

Mom needed money.
Dad wouldn’t give
her any.
He said she spent
whatever she got
on stupid things
instead of what
she should.

Her friend Charlotte
told her to have
a garage sale.
She said Mom
would be surprised
at how much money
she could make.

“People like to buy
other people’s junk,” she said.
“I’m sure your husband
has a lot of it.”

Mom emptied cupboards
and rummaged through
dresser drawers.
She pillaged closets
and dug deep
into crannies
and crawl spaces.
She gathered anything
deemed useless
or useful,
not caring
whose it was,
just as long
as it would sell.

“No one’s gonna miss
this stuff,” she said.
“Especially your brothers.”

Freddie and Charlie
had moved out
the summer I finished
seventh grade,
getting an apartment
and taking college classes,
vying to avoid
the Vietnam draft.
They left stuff behind,
their closets jammed,
saying they’d come get things,
as soon as they were ready.

“If they wanted
this crap so bad
they would’ve taken it,” Mom said.
“Finders Keepers, right?”

We cleared their closets
and set things on
the scuffed plank floor,
creating a line-up
of boxes and bags.

Mom split the tape
and opened
a small cardboard box
labeled “CHARLIE’S CARDS.”

“Well looky here.”
Her eyes reflected
a colorful collection
of rectangular cards,
the ones paid for
with nickels and dimes,
originally packaged
with a stale stick
of pink powdery gum.

“I betcha there’s
a Mickey Mantle
in here,” Mom said.
“Or a Willie Mays.”

She held up each card,
looking for bends
or worn edges,
making stacks
of MVPs,
sluggers,
and pitchers,
a few catchers
in between.
Lopsided frowns
crossed her face
as she discarded
dispelled prospects
and hopefuls
in a jumbled pile.

“Help me,” she said.
“Let’s see
what we got.”

I set down my Coke
and stood beside her,
a light breeze
carrying the roar
of the distant highway.
Our fingers nimble,
our eyes fixed,
we worked in sync,
silently sorting
the cardboard portraits,
a curated gallery
of young men
in pinstripes
and ball caps,
poised on green fields
against the bluest of skies.

*

Rookie

My brother Charlie
got fired from his sales job
after getting too drunk
at a Christmas party
and spouting off.

“My boss had it
in for me,” he said.
“Everyone says
it’s bullshit.”

Charlie sat around
for a month.
He went to bars
and sat around
some more.
He got drunk
and called me
all the time,
ranting about
his ex-wife,
ranting about
some college girl
he picked up,
calling her a slut.

“I don’t want
to hear it,” I said.

Charlie got foul mouthed.
I hung up.
He called back.

“Hey.
Listen to me,” he said.
You’re supposed
to be my sister.”

I hung up again.
He kept calling back.
I turned off the phone.

Six months later,
Charlie ran out
of money,
his prospects dry,
his savings thin.
His phone got
disconnected
so I went by his house,
the lawn overgrown,
the front door
kicked in.

I found him
in the back room
sunk in a vinyl recliner,
ringed by beer cans,
empty chip bags,
and crusted-over bowls
of beans and franks.

“Why you here?”
Charlie stared
at an ancient TV
coated with dust.
“The Tigers,” he said.
“They’re on.”

A sour smell
hung in the air,
the carpet squishy
beneath my feet.
I pulled over
a folding chair
and sat for a minute
on the torn sticky seat,
asking how he was.

He lifted his filthy ball cap
and smoothed his
gray-blonde hair,
his skin sallow
with tungsten light.

“Doing good,” he said.
He dunked his hand
in a Styrofoam cooler
filled with melting ice
and Miller Light.
“You know, though,
I still can’t believe it.”

He looked at me
and shook his head.
I asked him what.

“You know what.”
Charlie slurred,
starting in again
about his baseball cards,
how he could’ve
cashed them in,
been rich,
if only Mom
hadn’t sold them
at that garage sale
years ago
when he was away
at college.

“Man oh man,” he said.
“Mickey Mantle.
Rod Carew.
Hank Aaron.
Plus all those
rookie cards.
Goddamn her.”

Charlie picked
at the cracked vinyl
on the arms of his chair.
He bit his dry lip
and said yepper yep,
once, then twice.

“Goddamn it.”
Rising in his seat,
his eyes blistering,
Charlie threw his beer
as a Tiger struck out,
ending the inning
one run behind,
with two men stranded
on base.

*

Ann Kammerer lives in the Chicago area, having relocated from her home state of Michigan. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared or are coming in Fictive Dream, One Art, Open Arts Forum, Bright Flash Literary Review, Major 7th Magazine, Workers Write!, Chiron Review, Thoughtful Dog, and Ekphrastic Review, and in anthologies by Crow Woods Publishing and Querencia Press. Her chapbook collections of narrative poetry include “Yesterday’s Playlist” (Bottlecap Press, 2023), “Beaut” (Kelsay Books, 2024), “Friends Once There” (Impspired, 2024), and “Someone Else” (Bottlecap Press, 2024). You can find her here: annkammerer.com

What has Become of the First Marriage by Carolynn Kingyens

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What has Become of the First Marriage

Whenever I see a mature-looking couple,
between early-to-mid sixties,
walking hand-in-hand with that obnoxious
look of late, middle age love,
I immediately know, stronger
than suspicion, that this is a second marriage,
possibly, a third.

Their bodies, still spry,
with the exception of their backs
now weary and slightly leaning
into the semblance
of a cursive C.

It’s at the garish, fluorescent-lit diner,
known for their early bird specials,
where I spot them next;
sitting side-by-side in the same
maroon-colored polyurethane-pleather
booth reminding me, for a moment,
of that yellow-tinged photograph
from a history book
back in middle school
of a pioneering couple,
sitting side-by-side as the husband
mans a dust-covered wagon
while his wife holds a long,
double barrel shotgun
across her lap during the era
of the California Gold Rush.

I ponder, wondering why
they just can’t sit across
from each other like the rest
of us disgruntled, cynical couples
well-seasoned in realism and romance,
knowing full well the value
of separate booths and bedrooms;
the value of personal space.

Perhaps we can blame it on
raising multiple children
notwithstanding the later care
of elderly parents
before the unexpected crash
and subsequent depletion
of your Roth IRA and 401K,
and our failure to launch,
rage-filled man-child, who’d turn us
prematurely gray in our thirties,
and who still keeps us
up at night with endless worry.

This is the kind of tumult
that depletes and desolates
first marriages into abysmal
shreds.

It’s as if some imaginary, sci-fi
vortex has sucked every
ounce of lust and desire
clean from the depths
of our loins, leaving our love
cagey and bone-dry.

Now when you reach out
your retired, manicured
hand across the tabletop;
across the universe;
it feels oddly foreign
and cold as a dead fish
with that thousand-yard
glaucoma-cloudy gaze,
finally yielding to its fate.

*

Carolynn Kingyens was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia. She is the author of two poetry collections, BEFORE THE BIG BANG MAKES A SOUND and Coupling, both published by Kelsay Books. In addition to poetry, she writes short fiction and narrative essays. Two of her short stories were selected for Best of Fiction 2021 and 2023 by Across the Margin, a Brooklyn arts & culture webzine. The audio version of the stories are available on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. And two of her essays, “There’s A Tiffany In Every Dysfunctional Family” (about the youngest sister of David and Amy Sedaris) and “How Creative Resilience Saved Me From Childhood Trauma” were recently republished by YourTango, a large, female-led NYC publisher. You can read some of her narrative essays on Medium, where she dives into a myriad of topics from The Royal Family to true crime.

Retrospective by Ace Boggess

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Retrospective

You needed a normal life; I needed attention—
both of us negligent drivers of intersecting cars,
adjusting radio knobs as one light reddens,
another greens. I couldn’t build a stable base
with sunlit gardens, a shade tree at one corner
of the property; I kept a cluttered junkyard in me,
flash-mobbed by rats & wild dogs.

You needed a normal life; I needed something
intangible like success or universal love.
I was a snow globe shattered on the street, & you,
you worked each job until it broke you more,
then moved on to the next, leaving you little time
to observe my fragments.

You needed children; I needed to be taught
the rate of decay of hope. I was a grocer who dreams, &
you were a shopper demanding to get your vegetables
scanned. I couldn’t place your produce in a sack
without reciting Shakespeare in dramatic pauses, &
you, who already heard soliloquies of tragic men,
didn’t see yourself waiting for the curtain.

*

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include poetry collections, My Pandemic / Gratitude List from Mōtus Audāx Press and Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press, and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press.

Two Poems by Tere Sievers

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Left Behind

One of us will stay,
the other will leave.
If you are first, I will hold
your knitted cap and red cup
to feel a trace of you.

If it’s me first,
what will you hold–
handles on the soup pot?
trowel from the garden?
the empty ring
from my finger?

*

Before You Are Gone I Miss You

I miss your half asleep voice
in the morning,
the pull of the blanket
as you get out of bed,
your shoelaces snapping
on the hardwood floor,
the half smile on your face
that isn’t a smile.
Each time you walk
out the door I miss
the tips of our fingers
touching in a long goodbye,
the feel of my hand
on the back of your sweater.

*

Tere Sievers lives in Long Beach California with her husband and four chickens and teaches in the OLLI program at CSULB. She attends a weekly poetry workshop run by her friend and gifted poet, Donna Hilbert. In that place she has learned to see clearly the joys of a long life as well as how to survive its losses. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, Picture Show Press and others.

Broken Wishbone by Steven Concert

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Broken Wishbone

The sum total of everything
brought you to me. We used

to break wishbones together.
Each time you let me win,

knew my wish would
be for us, not me,

and the happiness
of a lifetime together.

Two haiku, we were the words
that made it to the page,

and together we were divisible
only by the nothing that remained.

*

Steven Concert, gay American poet, resides in northeastern Pennsylvania. In June, Steven was elected 1st Vice President of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. His work has been published by Discretionary Love, Agates, Common Threads, Cracked Walnut, and Mad Poets Society. Steven can be found on Facebook @ Paperless Poets.

Two Poems by Shannon Frost Greenstein

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Your Hands
When you play music for me, I watch
the nimble joints of your practiced fingers
curl over the faded piano keys
like diaphanous wings unfolding in the heat of sunrise
and I feel something I did not feel before.
You play a chord and I see
a web developer, fabricating a brand-new reality
from a Lego pile of ones and zeroes; and
a surgeon, hands holding mastery
over the cellular processes of life itself; and
God, mixing the soundtrack of the cosmos
like a DJ high on bass and MDMA.
When you play music for me, your wrists
dance like Baryshnikov between sharps and flats and perfect fifths,
percussion as choreography as language as song,
and as your entire body resonates with music you yourself have scripted
I remember what it was like to fall in love with you.
You write me a song and I reflect
on tempo and poetry and heartbeat and joy, the privilege of immortality
captured in something beautiful and heretofore unknown –
art that exists where art previously did not exist,
a Big Bang birthing matter from the seeds of nothing at all –
and everything because I was lucky enough to meet a musician and my soulmate
one summer night at a bar.
When you play music for me, I forget all about how
I used to yearn for the touch of tragic artists
who sow the sort of lust and mystery
I would later reap as heartbreak
and instead picture the silk of your palms against the landscape of my naked back
as you soothe my restless body when I am unable to sleep.
You compose and I watch your fingertips
sculpting notes into paths and layers and staircases and peaks,
thousands of hours of work culminating in this very moment and,
in an act of primal validation orchestrated by Darwin himself,
a rush of neurotransmitters through my blood affirms my choice
that this is indeed the mate to father my young.
When you play music for me, I cannot look away
from your hands.
*
She Gave Me Her Last Diet Coke
I blame my mother, of course,
for conceiving
and birthing
my own addiction to Diet Coke.
They say eating disorders are a family disease;
they say an eating disorder is like a gun.
The pistol is the genetic predisposition
to seek out control when things feel uncontrollable;
the bullet is a culture that venerates thin
and praises the anesthetic of becoming less.
The trigger is unbearable anxiety or distress,
so is it any wonder that childhood trauma leads to eating disorders?
Screwed by both nature and nurture,
my mother’s eating disorder was planted in my genome
before I even had a say.
Ballet and abuse and mental illness and assault
germinated my Anorexia by the time I was eight.
And the rest of my life has been spent
grappling with the one firearm
I never wanted to fire.
They say recovery from an eating disorder can take over a decade;
they say maybe it isn’t even possible to recover at all.
After three decades of punishing myself
for requiring the fuel of food
I still don’t know if I will ever be free
from the voices that inform me I am worthless
deep within the bowels of my broken brain.
For years I have worked, and cried,
and done my best to get where I am today.
But my Diet Coke addiction remains a vestigial artifact
of the times it would take two twenty-ounce bottles
just to quench my hunger.
I eventually forgave my mother
for loading the gun that became my cross to bear;
after a lifetime of estrangement,
she was finally my friend
by the time she passed last November.
And I know she loved me
because the last time I saw her before she died
she gave me her last Diet Coke.
*
Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) resides in Philadelphia with her family and cats. She is the author of “Only as Sick as Your Secrets: Notes from Residential Eating Disorder Treatment,” a forthcoming memoir with Watertower Hill Press, “The Wendigo of Wall Street,” a novelette with Emerge Literary Press, and “Pray for Us Sinners,” a collection of short fiction from Alien Buddha Press. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee, with work in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Follow her at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre. Insta: @zarathustra_speaks

Ode to the rainstorms that keep my friends close by M.J. Young

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Ode to the rainstorms that keep my friends close

Bless my friends
who, when I came
out to them, said
deadass not because
they didn’t believe
me but because
I had finally said
I’m gay, bless
their hooting after
I confirmed
with my own deadass
even though I don’t
like using profanity
but their happiness
overpowered my guilt
so it was okay
even if
the librarians inside
were wondering why
five young
twenty-somethings
were huddled under
the covered patio
in the butterfly garden
when it’s raining
so thickly, laughing,
but it wasn’t as if it
was raining
when we got there
and when it started
to rain we figured
that it would stop
in a few minutes
because it’s summer
and the rains
are usually frequent
but quick,
spits, as my mother
says, but I don’t
because it reminds
me of having saliva
in my face
and the accompanying
words I’d rather forget
and I’d rather be happy
when thinking about
the little dash
of summer rain
we’re gifted, laugh
with my friends
who were scrambling
to pick up the pieces
of our board game
as the wind tried to
claim them for itself,
me hugging
a copy of The Goldfinch
to my chest
because even though
I wondered
if Tartt would make
Theo canonically gay
or bi or something
before remembering
that this book was popular
so that wouldn’t happen
I still like
her writing style
and besides,
I was with my friends
so who cares about
Theo who doesn’t
even exist
when the wind
made us hysterical
in a giddy way
because in that
moment
the most important thing
was to make sure
that none of
the character
or room or
weapon cards
or score sheets
got too wet or were taken
by the wind
which was a nice worry
to have
compared to everything
it is we were dealing
with on our own,
but under the patio
in the middle of
the butterfly garden
walled in by the rain
that smalled
our worlds,
we could laugh
with each other
and not look past
the problem
of getting out
of the rain unwetted.

*

M.J. Young is a writer and MFA student at Florida International University. His poetry can be found in Vagabond City Lit, Stone of Madness Press, and more. In his free time he enjoys listening to Philip Glass and exploring bookstores. He can be found on Instagram @mjyoungwrites.

Spelling Things Out by Elaine Sorrentino

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Spelling Things Out

It was a liberating Scrabble game;
she loved me, this woman who was my mother
yet not my mother,

soothing her burdened heart with a sip of gimlet
she confesses I cannot believe my son
does not want his little piece of the sod,

and as she places the tiles for ABSOLVE
on the triple word score, for 45 points,
her surprising instructions set me free,

If you find someone
who makes you happier than my son,
go with him.

*

Elaine Sorrentino is Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, MA. Her work has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Global Poemic, The Writers’ Magazine, Haiku Universe, Failed Haiku, and has won the monthly poetry challenge at wildamorris.blogspot.com.