Dancing In High Heels

by Marisa Cimbal

After Nancy Krygowski


She’s knitting a sweater, she’s dancing the jitterbug with me,
she’s wearing a colorful pants suit hiding her deformity. She’s playing
canasta and mahjong. She’s shuffling the cards, singing
you are my sunshine. She’s polishing my nails, brushing my hair, saying she’s proud
of me. She’s turning 85. She’s calling from Florida, saying
it’s humid and sweaty. She’s writing a letter saying she’s making
me a hat, what color should it be, she’s missing me. She’s sitting at the pool, swatting
flies, baking sugar cookies. She’s shopping at Publix using a cane. She’s reading
Danielle Steele, line dancing, watching Jeopardy. She’s washing
her clothes with Clorox, hanging them in the shower. She’s wearing
red lipstick, waving at the airport, saying she’s not
what she used to be. She’s cooking pot roast with potato pancakes, moving
very slowly. She’s telling my boyfriend to marry me, she’s giving
him a ring. She’s in a wheelchair, singing songs, smiling. She’s telling
stories of her youth, saying she wants me to be happy. She has a feeding tube, she’s saying
it’s OK, she’s not hungry. She’s asking mom to let her go, she’s barely speaking. 
She does not remember me. I see her in my dreams – she’s dancing
in high heels and she’s finally free. 


* * * * *

Marisa Cimbal lives in Hoboken, New Jersey with her husband and dog, Elsa, and is the mother of twin daughters. She works in New York City in healthcare communications and is now fulfilling her dream of being a poet and a writer of nonfiction. Most recently, her work has appeared in Children, Churches and Daddies, Rat’s Ass Review, Sad Girls Literary Magazine, The Ravens Perch, Humans of the World and forthcoming in The Academy of the Heart and Mind.

LOVERS DEPART

by Violeta Zlatareva


Now it's my turn. Pain comes
in the fragile shoes of misplaced trust.
There's something to lose, but can we
even say that we've gained anything?
The city's crows circle like in a fairytale.
A fair-skinned girl watches them, amazed.
The beggar in the corner falls into panic
for her delicate, pink bow and goldish hair.
The boulevard buzzes with cars and money,
everyone involuntarily breathes in other people's thoughts.
Cigarettes lie moistened deeply in my coat,
ready for death whenever I desire.
Now it's my turn. A red light
tells me I can leave forever,
but a few honks suddenly stop me
and I understood—the girl had left before me.


* * * * *

Violeta Zlatareva was born in 1992 in Velingrad, Bulgaria. She is the author of Whale Academy, a collection of short stories published by Ars in 2021 and adapted and presented by the theater Via Verde. Her second book, Register Misfortunes,  was released in September 2023. Her work has appeared in a variety of print and electronic media, as well as poetry collections and anthologies such as Flight, Magic in Green, Poetry Against the War, and others. She has received national and regional literary honors.

ALMOST FEARLESS

by Violeta Zlatareva


I'm not scared by the empty night streets,
or the coughing drunkard around the corner.
I have bitten hands,
to steal from the air;
I’ve been eaten by dogs,
while I was starving.
I'm not afraid to tear my shoes,
they used to be cheap and often tore.
My feet
breathed the night streets,
but I was afraid of no one.

Rabbit throats squealed bloodily
as I smiled and sang like a child.
I didn't weep for hugs so I wouldn't
end up at the sink next to their eyes.

Water in the cement, brick upon brick -
all existed in alignment.
Until you decided to unleash your hair.
Tie it up before I collapse.


* * * * *

Violeta Zlatareva was born in 1992 in Velingrad, Bulgaria. She is the author of Whale Academy, a collection of short stories published by Ars in 2021 and adapted and presented by the theater Via Verde. Her second book, Register Misfortunes,  was released in September 2023. Her work has appeared in a variety of print and electronic media, as well as poetry collections and anthologies such as Flight, Magic in Green, Poetry Against the War, and others. She has received national and regional literary honors.

 

ODE TO THOSE IN A TRAUMA CENTER WAITING ROOM

by Lorri Ventura


Together alone
While their loved ones undergo medical procedures
They stare blindly at a crookedly mounted TV
Offering soap operas at full-volume

They fan through dog-eared pages
Of months-old People magazines
And gnaw on ragged fingertips
As their lips dance with anxious prayers

Around them, an intercom crackles
Calling color codes
That trigger storms of scrubs, lab coats
And rattling service carts
Flashing past

They pace back and forth
Across threadbare carpeting
In front of an aquarium
Filled with colorful tropical fish
Placed there to provide cheer and diversion
But ominously message-laden
With two rotund goldfish
Floating upside down at the water’s surface

They pretend not to see the people
Who share the crowded room with them
Each one emotionally isolated and unprepared

Like those in the throes of surgery
Those who wait
Hover between life and death


* * * * *

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured in AllPoetry, Mad Swirl, Parapraxis, Quabbin Quills, and Red Eft Review. She is a three-time winner of Writing in a Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.

 

 

Snapshot
            -after the composite photograph Secret Garden
            by Karen Elias

by Marjorie Maddox


In the photo within the photo, the small girl waters the earth, 
the dirt-tinged past wedged between twigs in a garden 
fenced-in by stones and memory. The imaginary, the dead, 
the living—all crisscross like brittle vines. Who is looking out
at the world now? Beyond the bright blossoms, a coffin
looms small. Or is it a working well? At the edge of the yard lies

the future. Gray or green? The end of the story lies
in what we choose. The small child waters the earth.
Is she me? Is she you? She knows nothing of coffins
at the edge of the world, just keeps watering her garden,
the seeds she cannot see. She believes someone else looks out
for the rest of the earth, for her. She doesn’t know the dead

sky has something to tell her, the fragile dome already dying
the day pride and desire cracked Eden with the lie
of plucked dominion. All she wants is to look out
at the well at the end of her yard. There, beneath the earth,
more water hides. She believes this, feeds her garden
religiously. Will you tell her? Will I? Soon the coffin

looms larger; the stone wall cracks. Someone is coughing.
A child peers from behind a crumbling fence. Is she the new Eden, dying
again? But still, there is that old photo; the small child loves her garden.
Surely, she can learn to till and plant, to care for the creatures that lie
beyond the boundaries of her own square of walled-in earth. 
Surely, she can look within, then learn to look outside

her small plot. Will you teach her? Will I? A garden is a lookout
for the world, the view long. What will you build? A well? A coffin?
In the photo within the photo, a child waters a new old earth.
Will she replenish the dried-up well, follow the wisest dead
and recover Eden, detouring around all lies?
Will she sense the Christ child there, digging in the garden?

In the photo within the photo, the small girl waters her garden:
there is no fear or drought, no contamination. Look out
at the world. Look in at the sins of omission. Prophecy lies
just beyond our garden walls; the now rusted nails in the coffin
pollute even our wells. And yet, the small girl is listening. The dead
teach us this. Return with her to Eden. Show her the earth

can still bloom with God’s glory, can deconstruct the world’s coffin.
The dead rise up calling for mercy. Will you listen? Will I? The earth
waits impatiently. Outside/within us, the secret answer lies: Look—the Garden.

* * * * *

Secret Garden by Karen Elias

"Snapshot" was previously published in Caring for Creation: St. Andrew's Episcopal Church 2022 Poetry Contest Anthology, "Snapshot" (poem), "Secret Garden" (photo).

Professor at Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 16 collections of poetry—including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? (Kelsay); Seeing Things (Wildhouse); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (International Book and Illumination Book Award Winners); Shanti Arts ekphrastic collaborations Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (w/Karen Elias) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (w/Anna Lee Hafer www.hafer.work and others. is forthcoming. She also has published a story collection, 4 children’s books, and two anthologies (co-editor), and is assistant editor of Presence and host of Poetry Moment www.marjoriemaddox.com.

Karen Elias is an artist / activist who uses photography to record the fragility of the natural world and raise awareness about the climate crisis. Recently she has also been using photo-collage techniques to explore more complex and psychological aspects of our human connections to nature. Her work is in private collections, has been exhibited extensively, and has won numerous awards.  

Ode to Almost-Silence

by Marjorie Maddox


Praise to the door clicking shut,
to absence warming up the room,

but not completely: fireplace flame still
spitting its lazy opinions, radiator

humming its calm, the floorboard’s creak
letting you know it’s still there

but won’t interrupt like the brash
morning jazz your husband plays

before coffee opens the ears
to thought and conversation.

Here: the louder hush of outside world
kept out—wind, occasional cat,

an emergency (not yours)
begging for someone else

to run, or fix, or bark commands
that can’t break into this cordoned-off

zone of chosen contemplation—
where, sometimes, even now, you hear

the memory of waves, the scratch
of sole on sand, the swirl of shells, and even

your chin lifting into salty air
as you listen not for the lost

and gone, but for what is
there and here inside

the ear and the empty
house, not empty after all.


* * * * *

"Ode to Almost-Silence" was previously published in The Grotto and Heart Beats and is forthcoming in the author’s book Seeing Things (Wildhouse, 2024). The author retains all rights.

Professor at Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 16 collections of poetry—including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? (Kelsay); Seeing Things (Wildhouse); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (International Book and Illumination Book Award Winners); Shanti Arts ekphrastic collaborations Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (w/Karen Elias) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (w/Anna Lee Hafer www.hafer.work and others. is forthcoming. She also has published a story collection, 4 children’s books, and two anthologies (co-editor), and is assistant editor of Presence and host of Poetry Moment www.marjoriemaddox.com

 

This month, another Moon Prize, the 135^th, goes to June Crawford Sanders's exuberant poem "Not Grimm."

 

Not Grimm

 

by June Crawford Sanders

 

 

I'm no princess but there's this one hill

on the way to my house that when

it snows then melts then refreezes

is as smooth as the fairy tale

glass mountain which was said to be

as smooth as ice and I'm not sure

a prince himself could ride up

even if I threw three golden apples

but if he did we sure could

have fun sledding back down.

 

 

 

This month, the 134th Moon Prize goes to Susan Isla Tepper's riveting story "Air Over Hanoi."

Air Over Hanoi

by Susan Isla Tepper

 
Soldiers are filing across the tarmac earlier than was scheduled.  We just de-planed a load of them from Guam, and now we stews are tearing through the Boeing 707, cleaning up as best we can.  Until a few bombs showed up on the planes, recently, Vietnamese ground service did the cleaning.  Not anymore. In a moment soldiers will be boarding and we don’t have our hats on yet.      
 
“Boarding!” comes over the intercom.  
 
Lana is rummaging through the overhead rack.  “Who put their damn crew kit on my hat!   It’s all crushed!”    
 
We’re proud of our hats with our wings pinned to them.  Stiff blue pillbox hats a la Jackie Kennedy.  It’s a reg to wear your hat during boarding and deplaning.  Even in Vietnam. The bulkheads have been yanked out turning passenger planes into troop ships.  A seemingly endless number of young boy-men to fill every seat.
 
I traded into this trip for the Honolulu layover.  I don’t hold this line. Girls way more senior than I am hold this line; though I can’t imagine why.  Despite the wet oppressive heat I still get a shiver down my spine as the first of the soldiers start climbing the metal stairs.
 
“Don’t forget to smile,” Margie is saying. 
 
She’s twenty-seven and thinks she knows it all.  I’m 19 and a half.  The youngest you can be to work for this airline.  I’ve been flying less than a year.  Mostly Madrid and Lisbon, sometimes London and Paris.  In London the hotel towel racks are heated.
 
I stand beside Margie at what is normally the first class cabin door; under normal circumstances.  The first soldier steps into the plane. He looks old around his eyes.  Margie and I smile saying, “Welcome Aboard.”  
 
Some smile back, some do not.  I start feeling terrible.   I’m sweating from my armpits, across my top lip, my scalp, inside my shoes and underwear.    
 
Last to board are the stretchers.  Margie keeps smiling; I have to give her that.  She smiles through the moaning behind barriers made from hung bed sheets, where the seats have been removed.  Medics assist those men.  I am told to keep out of their way.    
 
I begin feeling wrecked.   I didn’t feel wrecked when we came in for landing.  I had looked down, saw the fires burning here and there, the expanse of green and the paddies.  
 
For take-off I strap in next to Margie on the (usually) first class jump-seat. “How many times have you flown this rotation?”  I say.
 
“A few years.”
 
“A few years!”
 
She scrutinizes my face.  “Someone’s gotta do it.”
 
“I suppose.” 
 
Finally the plane is beginning to cool off.  The cockpit door swings open and the flight engineer sticks his head out.  “Could one of you sweet things bring me a Coke.”
 
“Sure!” I unbuckle my shoulder harness, jumping up.  The Coke can is barely cool; but there’s no time to start cracking ice. 
 
He thanks me with a grin and a wink.  “We’ll have some fun in Honolulu,” he says.
 
On the jump-seat Margie is having a last cigarette.  “The no-smoking sign is lit,” I tell her.
 
“Hon, this is Nam not Dayton.”
 
I strap back in as music fills the plane: Up, Up, and Away.  The same old tune always played on take-offs and landings.  Everywhere.  Here it sounds strange, unsettling.        
        
Margie bumps the side of my leg with hers. “It’ll be fine.”
 
Suddenly I’m glad to have this senior girl beside me.  Even though she’s a little odd. She carries her own ashtray in her purse, taken from an armrest.  Behind her back the other girls laugh about it.  She catches me looking at the ashtray in her lap. 
 
“We all have our thing,” she says.  “What’s your’s?  Secretly married?”  That, too, is strictly against regs.
 
I shake my head.  “No. You?”
 
“Naw.  I date a pilot who’s married.”
 
I turn my head toward the cockpit.
 
“Not them.”  She smiles.  “They’re good guys.  Always with the jokes, keeping up morale for the men.”  She takes a few quick puffs. “My guy has a Rome trip this month.”
 
“Why don’t you bid Rome?  You have enough seniority.”
 
“His wife is on that trip.”
 
“You mean she’s working it?”
 
“Yep.”  Then the plane begins to taxi and Margie grinds out the cigarette in her little personal ashtray.  “How old are you?”
 
“Almost twenty.”
 
“You’ve got a lot to learn.”   
 
The plane shudders down the runway, gains speed then lifts, music soaring on the choral part, when the pilot breaks in staticky over the intercom.  “Welcome aboard ladies and gentlemen.  We are in the air over Hanoi.” 
 
A huge roar of laughter fills the cabin.  And we lift higher into the sky.    


* * * * *

"Air Over Hanoi" was first published by Gargoyle Online https://gargoylemagazine.com/susan-tepper-2/

Susan Isla Tepper is a widely published writer in all genres, and the author of twelve books and two stage plays currently in some form of production which changes periodically according to the covid stats. Later this year another novel titled ‘Hair of a Fallen Angel’ will be published. www.susantepper.com

 

(Self) Love Potion
Family recipe | Full moon required

by Marion Chiariglione


I.
Reach for your cabinets.

Get up on a ladder if need be
& find the strength to make this,
your own recipe.

Don’t deviate too much or you could lose
pieces of yourself only to be found
in someone else you’d call “soulmate”.

II.
Start with a pinch—2 or 3 grains—of confidence
obtained at the crossroads of external validation & emancipation.

III.
Do not confuse newly found attention for admiration.

IV.
Add in 1 cup of tears—careful!
These need to be collected on a new moon
after moments of unrecognizable abandon—

V.
Mix in 1/4 of trust issues.

VI.
Don't forget to add 10 grams of family trauma
& je-ne-sais-quoi
pulled from the depths
of ancestral secrets—no je t’aime allowed at the altar.

VII.
Extract from Maman’s body 26 years worth of self-deprecation
& from that lineage decide the amount of painful blood to empty out.
Commit—for once—to the feeling of abandon.

VIII.
Now, dirty your hands & take ownership of
the path you’ve walked for centuries.

Harness the power
of generations behind your eyes.

IX.
Mix all ingredients well—Watch!
Feel your selves come alive at the hearth’s
fire—center love within.

X.
Expect results three full moons from now.


* * * * *

Marion Chiariglione is a writer and artist from Avignon, France currently living in Columbus, OH. Her work as a poet explores what it means to build new identities, to relate the self to others and to embody and embrace one’s feelings. She holds a MS in Computer Science and has published scientific work as part of her day job as a Data Scientist at The Ohio State University. This is her first poetry publication.

 

Awakening

by Alethea Eason


You refuse to show a single petal of your rose of truth.
You have stayed until it is impossible to go.
You are blind to the world of gravity and atoms.
You don't see what is in front of your face.

How can your heart not break when the words
you need to speak, are buried and denied?
You are a solitary pebble most of the time.

Skip across the water before your momentum slows.

Open mouth.
Open eyes.

Pray on the ridge where you walk on unsteady feet.
Seek grace on the lips of friends.
Burn like the sun riding across the sky,
and become an azure thing with wings,

Become as real as bread fresh from the oven,
real as the butter spread on a slice freshly cut.
with channels in your arms where strange fish swim,
a river with no beginning, a storm rising
up winter slopes but never freezing.

Find the truer you
without the habit of putting on a face.
Create space. Be a mad person
with glitter and paint.

Gaze in the act of holy reverence.
You are God creating.
Close your eyes to a theater of color
imposed on a black screen,
the magic slate creating your awakening.


* * * * *

Alethea Eason's poetry has appeared in El Palacio, New Mexico Poetry Anthology, The
Ekphrastic Review, and the book Vision and Verse, published by the Redwood Writer's
Club. She has written four novels, Charlotte and the Demons being the latest. She lives
near a volcano with her husband, a dog and a cat.

 

How Had They Gotten Here?

by Anonymous

 

She knew something was wrong; had known it for weeks. She knew it in the way it felt like someone had wrapped her insides with barbed wire, and in the burn of unshed tears that constantly hovered behind her eyes.

“You’re crazy,” he dismissed her one day, when she finally voiced the fear that had been unrelentingly hissing in her brain. That phrase had become familiar, at that point, and rolled easily off his tongue after months of practice.

Is something wrong? Things have felt distant between us, lately.

Nothing’s wrong, you’re imagining things.

Has something changed in the way you feel? Her voice had cracked during that conversation, months ago, allowing past hurts and vulnerability to seep through.

Maybe if you stopped being insecure, you’d see everything is fine. You’re acting crazy.

Later that day, two little blue lines told her she wasn't.

***

The ensuing conversation seemed simpler than it should have been. A decision made, a quick Google search, and an appointment booked for a couple weeks later. The following conservations weren’t as easy– whether he’d go with her, if he’d help pay, and what would happen to her, after.

In the end, he went with her, but refused to go past the waiting room. She paid in full, stomach sinking at the amount, feeling dread burrowing into her, alongside the shame that had already made itself at home since that fateful night in the bathroom. The appointment was only an hour, and ended with a pitying smile and a small bag containing four pills.

***

That night, she lay in his bed, emotionally and physically exhausted. Her body still didn’t feel like her own as cramps seized her in their viscous, relentless grip– she was just a broken vessel, leaking blood and tears.

She wished he would stay in bed with her and hold her through the pain, but her quiet pleading earlier had been dismissed in favor of that night’s party. Hushed voices crept their way in through the cracked door, but she only managed to catch fragments of the conversation. “I can’t believe this… so selfish of her…”

She hugged her knees in closer, trying to become as small as possible, and wished for darkness to take her away in its embrace.

***

Two days later, she tried her best to be normal. She nodded and smiled at the right times, laughed when everyone else did, and made sure to carefully tuck her pain out of sight.

It was the fourth of July, and the air was heavy with humidity and things left unsaid. They were walking through a park, a rare reprieve from their urban neighborhood with its crowded duplexes and omnipresent concrete. She hadn’t had the courage to bring up the other night’s overheard conversation with him, hoping it was simply an imagined product of delirium.

He was smiling at her, dimples showing for what felt like the first time in ages, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him, despite her wariness. He had promised that today was for them, waving off her apologies when she admitted she wasn’t up to going to any of the evening’s festivities. She almost believed him when he said everything was okay.

She was a fool.

***

That night, after her famous home-made quesadillas, too much wine, and a movie she had cried far too hard over, they were laying in bed. He had his back to her, but she heard him when he whispered, “I need you to move out.”

Of everything she had gone through in the past 72 hours, those words hurt the worst. She cried, apologizing and swearing she would be better, and tried to reach for him. He just pulled further away, and all he said was, “Stop crying, I have work tomorrow and I need to sleep.”

In the morning, tense silence gripped the house in a chokehold. He said nothing about the previous night’s conversation, and it wasn’t until she was pulling into work that her phone beeped with a text– We should take a break from talking for a while.

She shoved her phone away, swallowed a sob, and headed into the office, a bright smile pasted on.

***

A couple hours before the end of the work day, she excused herself, feigning a headache, and drove back to the apartment. It had never felt like home, nowhere had, but it had come the closest. She carefully packed up her things and loaded her car, making sure there wasn’t a single trace of her left in that place.

***

The rest of the week dragged by, until he finally told her he was ready to talk. And they did talk, not about what happened, but about so many other things– how work was going, what they were looking forward to in their last year of college, and it had eventually delved into a deep conversation about what they thought would happen after death, about whether there was life after death.

He eventually sighed and turned to look at her, seeming to marvel at her just like the first time they had met, both standing on the subway and too stubborn to sit down first. “I can’t imagine having this conversation with anyone else. You’re my person, and I don’t want to lose that. I love you.”

There was that smile again, those dimples, and just like before, she was a fool to believe him.

***

It was only three weeks later when she found herself in bed with him, past midnight, getting her heart broken all over again.

“I want to break up… I’ve been thinking about it for a few months, and I needed to get it off my chest.”

Despite all those months of knowing something was wrong, of knowing the words You’re crazy were a flimsy defense against the obvious, she was caught blindsided.

She should have known– the peace brought on by their reconciliation hadn't lasted long before the fighting was back. She should have seen it coming– after their backpacking trip and his late night whisper screaming at her about all her inadequacies, about how awful she was. She should have known.

But just mere hours ago, things had been so good. They were at a wedding, her cousin’s wedding. They had smiled, laughed, had taken pictures and danced and drank too much spiked lemonade. They had been happy, whispering during the ceremony about what they wanted their wedding to be like. After the party, they had gone for a late night swim in the hotel pool, treading water and trading kisses like it was meant to be.

How had they gotten here? How did she go from all that joy, to sitting in a hotel bed, her tearstained face and the shattered pieces of her heart around them like a scene from a massacre.

Absent-mindedly, her hand fell to her stomach, to the emptiness inside of her and the phantom pains that hadn’t ceased, and she was reminded of what happened just earlier that month. She remembered the agony of it, hot like the blood that hadn’t stopped for days, hot like the tears that she still cried every night, hot like the shame she feared she would never stop feeling. She realized that today, the wedding, was the first time she had genuinely smiled in over a month. It hit her hard, how she should have known, nothing good ever lasts.

Where Did I Put My Spirit?

by Lynne Curry


Where did I put my spirit?
It was here the other day.
Must be somewhere close.
Unless
It wilted when I caved,
Ran
When I cratered.
Spirit, I need you—
Why should I come back?
Well, without you—
You took me for granted.
No. I never.
Yeah, right.
Well, maybe.
Here’s the deal.
I’m not coming.
Unless
You put up a fight.
But without you—
No, we’ve played it that way—
Too long.
This time, you go first.


* * * * *

"Where Did I Put My Spirit" was first published in the author's blog Writing from the Cabin. Credit for the first line goes to Aileen Holthaus.

Alaska/Washington author Lynne Curry has published six short stories, the most recent in 2024 (coming in The Sunlight Press); 2023 (The Big Windows Review); 2022 (After Dinner Conversations) and 2021 (101 Words) and six books, including Navigating Conflict and Managing for Accountability (BEP), Beating the Workplace Bully (AMACOM) and Solutions. She founded “Real-life Writing,” https://bit.ly/45lNbVo and publishes a weekly “dear Abby of the workplace” newspaper column, a monthly Writing from the Cabin blog, https://bit.ly/3tazJpW and on www.workplacecoachblog (2525 subscribers).

 

Trapped

by Renee Williams


When I was a little girl, I slipped in the pool,
and slid under the water, grasping the sides,

trying not to let the water overtake me, panicking,
no one around, and I couldn’t breathe,

I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe.
I feel that way now when others try to hold me

under their thumbs, under their desires, under their wishes,
leaving me stranded, struggling, pulling myself from the depths,

and trying so hard not to let all of that water, salty, sickening,
fill my lungs and overtake me.

Would it be easier not to fight it, to just let it all happen
to go with the flow and sink, down and down and down?

I probably shouldn’t admit it.
Sometimes I want to do that, too.


* * * * *

Renee Williams is a retired English instructor, who has written for Of Rust and Glass, Alien Buddha Press and Fevers of the Mind. 

 

A Day of Gulls and Ghost Trees

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley


Lapping water on rock
Simmering dry beech leaves
Floodwater in the dead of winter
If winter can still be called dead

I come to the river above the falls
to see the diving ducks
The lithe buffleheads, the stylish mergansers

But divers are few
On this wild water day
Mostly geese and gulls beneath the ghost trees
Their whitened limbs touching cloud

I climb out of the floodplain forest
And into the upland woods
Lying down on a fallen tulip tree

The kinglets, titmice and winter wrens
Treat me like an elder Cinderella
Flitting about, tiny and gentle
As so many forgotten things are


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees and A Year in Rock Creek Park. Her book, Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons will be released in June. Melanie began writing poetry during the pandemic and had the good fortune to discover Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site has featured many of her poems, including “How to Silence a Woman,” “If I have loved you,” “The Water Cooler,” and “Muddled Grief,” which won Moon Prizes. Her poetry has also appeared in New Verse News.   

Singing to the Cattle  

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley
           

The punchers on night guard
Rode around the cattle in a reverse
Direction, calling and singing to them
If the beasts grew restless

TR described this custom
In his autobiography
After playing cowboy in Dakota
Some form of sweetness in domination
 
With the ultimate aim of leading
The beasts to their death
This haunts me as a woman
How can I trust the songs of country and love

Are you singing me into submission and branding,
Corralling me softly?
Speak softly and carry a big stick
And perhaps more unsettling, sing


* * * * *

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is a naturalist and award-winning author of seven nature books, including City of Trees and A Year in Rock Creek Park. Her book, Wild Walking—A Guide to Forest Bathing Through the Seasons will be released in June. Melanie began writing poetry during the pandemic and had the good fortune to discover Beate Sigriddaughter’s Writing in a Woman’s Voice. The site has featured many of her poems, including “How to Silence a Woman,” “If I have loved you,” “The Water Cooler,” and “Muddled Grief,” which won Moon Prizes. Her poetry has also appeared in New Verse News.   

 One and the Same

by Tanya Newman

When Amelia’s eyes happened upon Aaron’s name, backlit by the lights from a marquee, she hadn’t been expecting to see him, now or ever again.  January, the icy darkness of winter had settled into Spartanburg, leaving the streets relatively bare.  Only the tiny coffee shop where Amelia and her man of the moment, Justin, lingered in, seemed to offer light and warmth that night.  Justin talked to her, at her, really, about how poorly her latest art show had gone, reminding her of the chance he’d given her.  

Amelia said nothing but nodded to let him know she was listening, even though she wasn’t, before looking down at her coffee cup.  Her eyes drifted to the floor-to-ceiling window they were seated in front of, to the concert auditorium across the way, and finally, to Aaron’s name. 

And that’s when something happened.  Amelia was still there, but wasn’t.  The icy wind as someone pulled the door of the café open, Justin’s voice, her untouched coffee steaming before her–these things didn’t exist, or did on a lesser scale because she wasn’t there.  The auditorium pulled her to an image of Aaron nearly fifteen years earlier, to the incandescence of his green eyes and how they’d looked at her as she stood on her mother’s porch before leaving her and the summer they’d spent between graduation and the rest of their lives.  They were young and free with all that season had promised them, and didn’t worry about the future or reality because those things were still so far away.  Money was sparse, but they were deliciously rich in time, and they spent it surfing along the low waves at the beach or in his parents’ garage as he and his band played songs by the Eagles or the Allman Brothers or Tom Petty.  He didn’t like contemporary rock.  Even the songs he wrote sounded like they were straight out of the 1970s, she noticed, as he strummed the guitar he’d bought secondhand and taught himself to play while she sat and sketched charcoal images of him and his band.  She never could get right the intensity of his look as he played.  But that didn’t matter, she’d thought back then.  She would eventually, and their whole lives were before them and their dreams of being a musician and an artist were going to come true.  

She still heard him say good-bye to her that afternoon in late August, heard herself vow to wait forever for him, saw him smile with only one side of his face, like he knew what she didn’t, that when the years would start to pass, she would begin to realize just how long forever was.

She was still there, back with Aaron, wondering if he and the one whose name she now couldn’t take her eyes off of were one and the same when Justin sighed, bringing her back to him.  She cut her eyes to his face, waiting for him to say more, to notice she wasn’t really listening.  She sat, balanced on the edge.   But then he got up and informed her he was going outside for a smoke.

She watched through the windows as Justin ambled along the side of the building, his back erect, shoulders down.   

Only recently had her talent, what little was left, began to wane.  She used to be really good at this painting thing.  Really.  She’d won Art Student of the Year in college, a merit she’d thought was prophetic of upcoming successes.  

She had a while before Justin came back.  He always liked to take his time when he smoked, like to think.  She got up from her seat and made her way to the door.  The icy wind lifted her hair off her shoulders and she pulled her black leather jacket, stylish but hopelessly inappropriate for the sub-zero temperatures, closer around her as she jogged across the wide street, never looking back at Justin, at the café whose windows illuminated the dark night.

She reached the square box office and looked all around for a poster or an advertisement, anything, that would tell her whether or not she was delusional, but found nothing.  If she really wanted to know, she’d have to go in and find out for herself.  She suddenly remembered how she felt as a teenager, standing in line for tickets to a popular movie she was desperate to see, tickets that would inevitably sell out any minute and crush her if they did.

She fished a twenty out of her jacket pocket and presented it to the bored teen reading a comic book behind plate glass.  He barely looked up as he rewarded her with a ticket and the information that the show was nearly over, that the singer she wanted to see was probably on his first encore by now.  

She didn’t say anything, only pushed her way through the double doors, into a warm two-story lobby floored with plush red carpet.  Cheers and the sound of an all-too familiar voice emanated from beyond a second set of double doors.  Amelia pushed through them with shaking hands that had nothing to do with the cold.  A slight breeze danced against her face, but it was the music and his voice that reverberated through her.  

And then, there he was.  

Everyone was on their feet, cheering and singing along with the familiar song as he stood in the center of the stage, strumming his guitar, looking down as he sang the words she’d become all too familiar with years ago.  

She didn’t bother with trying to find a seat in the chaotic crowd, just moved a few steps along the aisle, watching as girls near the front screamed and jumped for the stage, loving him unconditionally though they didn’t know him, never knowing that a woman who’d entered the auditorium really did know what it was like to know him, and love him.    

She could feel her face break into a smile as he brought the final chorus home, and for a moment, there was only the two of them in that cavernous concert hall, and he was singing that song only to her once again, and she was back in that summer, still living the best time of her life.  

When he finished, finally, he waved to the still-cheering audience, smiling, and she automatically raised her hand in response, and could swear, just for an instant, that he saw her.  He froze, staring right through her with those eyes, but never made a move to come toward her.  If anything, it was like he was moving farther away—his eyes, his voice, until none of it, not even the memories, felt real anymore.  And then, something began to hurt inside her chest and her head, something realized by the beginnings of hot tears.      

She turned quickly, taking the new memory of him with her as she hastened out of the concert hall, back through the lobby, and outside once more into the freezing wind as everyone still cheered relentlessly.  It was too deafening. 

Silent, thick snowflakes circled and twirled all around, and she stopped hurrying.  She held her hands out before her, as if receiving a gift, allowed a few crystalline flakes to gather in her palms.  She’d be in the cafe when Justin got back.  But now . . . now there was only the quiet, the darkness, Aaron’s name behind her, the snow, falling and whipping all around, the promise of a full-blown storm throughout the night.

* * * * *

Tanya Newman’s lifelong love of stories first led her to write a book of her own at age ten. It was only thirty pages, but cemented her love of writing, and eventually led to B.A. and M.A. degrees in English.  Her short fiction has appeared in Gadfly Online and The Fictional Cafe and she has published two novels, The Good Thief and Winter Rain, with Black Opal Books.  She lives in South Carolina with her husband, son, daughter, cat, and dog, and is currently working on her fourth novel.  For more, see her website: https://newmant720.wixsite.com/mysite

Ambition

by Elaine Sorrentino


Where are you ambition
I cannot find you anywhere
you refuse to be coaxed
from in front of the screen,
nor finessed
into abandoning your sweats.

You are neither at the bottom
of a wine glass
nor hidden in a bag of Ruffles,
I cannot sauté you into being
when you are not in the pan.

Another installment
of Gilmore Girls
or a round of Words with Friends
has yet to ignite
the extinguished flame.

I flounder
close to shore
hoping someone will lay out a feast
of inspiration
so I might celebrate
even a fleeting sense of accomplishment.


* * * * *

Elaine Sorrentino, Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, MA has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Gyroscope Review, Panoplyzine, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at wildamorris.blogspot.com. She hosts the Duxbury Poetry Circle.

 

Samira

by Nabila Kateeb

 

First night. A profile that caught my eye on a dating app: acceptable looks, good career credentials. Dark-skinned enough to remind me of the men back home, light-skinned enough that the men back home wouldn’t look down on us. Says more than a few words about himself, his boat-building hobby, his liberal-leaning politics. American-born, most likely. I swiped right, but told myself that with a name like Samira, he’d probably pass on me.

#

Second night, we matched. Now I have to explain Samira, why she exists, why she’s here and not hiding out in a bunker in Aleppo or cooking meals for Hezbollah soldiers in Marjaayoun. You’re educated? Yes, very much. He’s impressed. Thirty-two and still no partner? Oh, I’ve been focusing on my career. Don’t want kids? Well, I’m open to it. Just not sure at what point my ovaries will stop delivering. That’s fair, because he’d rather travel the world than have a family. We can always adopt if we change our minds.

#

First date. We went out to dinner; he got the pork buns and I got the chicken wonton soup. You don’t eat pork? No, but I promise I’m not religious. But you drink? Oh, yes. As evidence, I ordered a margarita. He had a beer, and then another while I was still halfway through my drink. He drew closer to me on his bar seat until our knees brushed together.

#

Second date, we took a walk by the harbor and he pointed out a boat, he wants to own one like that one day. I exclaimed about how exciting that was. When we said goodbye, he gave me the kissing look, so I leaned in. Our lips met, he smiled, and a pit of dread began to unfurl in my stomach.

#

Third date, he invited me over. His apartment was clean and the bed was tidied up. He asked what I wanted to drink, I said whatever you’re having. We sat on the couch and he filled my wine glass. Want to watch true crime on Netflix? Sure. I pretended to be as engrossed with it as he was. He leaned over to kiss me, and I kissed back. But wait, I thought. I haven’t figured out how to deal with this yet.

#

I’ll just go with the flow. Maybe things will be different this time. I want to want it. He grew more enthusiastic, he took off my shirt, and I took off his. He asked if I wanted to move to the bedroom. Okay, I said.

#

I lay down, bracing like a patient waiting for the procedure to be over. He tried with his fingers first, looking into my eyes and smiling throughout. I gave a strained smile back. You doing alright? Sure I am. I didn’t say that my pelvic floor had its own ideas about that. Maybe some music, to relax a bit, he offered. That would be nice, I said. He started a lofi beats playlist. I breathed in and out, unclenched my thighs, tried to override three decades of programming in my brain. It’s trying its best, but it’s got too much to work with.

#

My body’s trying its best too. Like an overprotective parent, it genuinely thinks it’s watching out for my best interests. Thank you, body; thank you for protecting me, but I got this. I’m attracted to him. But I’m afraid of what comes next. I can already see strands of silver in my hair, but when it comes to sex, I’m as clueless as a sixteen-year-old. I remember my first pap smear, only last year; oh boy, that was no walk in the park. I remember trying to wear a tampon, backing out at the last minute because tampons are ‘not for girls’, because unmarried women are girls.

                                                                           #

My dashing boat connoisseur kept trying to prod his way up my vagina. He was getting nowhere, and it only made him more insistent. My brain helpfully supplied commentary. Maybe your vagina’s become shriveled from lack of use and is just no longer up to the task. An image comes next, of my hypothetical blood filling the sheets followed by my date’s exclamation of dismay. My hips responded in kind, clenching again, not waiting to ask how I felt about the whole situation. That seems to be the common denominator here. Nobody seems to know how Samira herself feels about things; perhaps nobody wants to know.

#

Wanting it means I am immoral and shameful. Never mind, forget that, the new lesson is that I’m supposed to want it because that’s healthy and normal. But now here’s another lesson: I’m not supposed to have it if my body doesn’t want it. And yet still, I so wish my body would want it. It’s hard not to blame Samira’s body. But how much can you blame a body for not wanting to be ravaged by the eternal hellfire promised to it in the event that it agrees to house a sinful, adulterous woman?

#

I finally grasped his hand and guided it away. He looked up, and there it was: the confusion, the hint of betrayal, the realization at last that I was in discomfort bordering on pain. Can we stop? I said the obvious. I was about as embarrassed as I’d expected to be, and not yet equipped with the language of articulating the complex reasons for what had just happened. He got up, went to get himself a beer, a polite expression shadowing his vague frustration. When he came back, I was sitting up and putting my clothes back on.

* * *

Nabila Kateeb has lived in the United States for the better part of the last ten years. She enjoys reading, writing, cooking, and eschewing social media in favor of real community connections.

 

 

IF

by Kathleen Chamberlin

Felicia Latimore seemed to dwell in a perpetual state of regret, bemoaning every poor decision she had made from her early childhood to the impulsive pixie cut she’d gotten last week.

“If I had the chance to do it over again, I would do things very differently.” She let out a deep sigh, shaking her head from side to side, looking into her coffee mug rather than meeting her friend’s eyes. She knew what she’d find there: the patient and kind expression of Jordan St. John attempting to mask her frustration over Felicia’s dissatisfaction with the status quo. The two life friends met for lunch or coffee every Wednesday, a pact they had made during high school that, no matter what they would make time for one another.

“Really, Flea? Do you truly believe it would be that easy? That you could reinvent yourself if you could somehow step back in time and choose a different path? That that choice would lead to a completely different life and, consequently, to a totally different person than the one you are now?

Felicia met her friend’s green eyes full on. “Why not? With all that I know now about who I am and what I want, I would do things very differently. “

“For argument’s sake, let’s suppose that there was a way to go back for a do over. Then what? What moment do you choose to change? And what if by going back, you have no recollection of this life and, consequently, nothing to guide your choice? You know more now about who you are and what you want because of all you’ve experienced. If you went back, you wouldn’t have any more insight into what you want now than you did the first time you encountered the same choice. Not only that, my dear friend, what if things simply turned out the same in spite of your trying to change them? And if you are able to change things, who’s to say that you’re going to be any more satisfied with the outcome than you are now? Isn’t it just as possible for things to turn out worse? “

Felicia’s expression soured. “I suppose, but I choose to think that making a different decision in my past would lead to a more satisfactory existence now.”

“But which decision?  Every decision, no matter how inconsequential it may seem at the time, eliminates an entire array of possible outcomes. Remember the butterfly effect?”

“I know. I know. I just think about it sometimes. All the years wasted. The time squandered on a life not fully lived. And I wish it could be different. Don’t you have any regrets? Don’t you ever think about the life you could have had, if only…”

“What’s behind this? You and I have been friends for over twenty years and you’ve never wanted to undo your life. Sure, there were some hard years, but everyone has those. There’s no such thing as ‘They lived happily ever after,’ so what’s going on?”

Felicia reached into her briefcase and pulled out a newspaper clipping from their hometown paper. It showed the picture of a smiling man under the headline KEN YOUNG RE-ELECTED.

“I thought you were over that particular episode of your life. At least, that’s what you told me.”

“There’s unfinished business between us, Jordan. Things left unsaid. It’s like what they say people experience after losing a limb. You know it’s gone, but somewhere in your consciousness, or unconsciousness, it lingers. And awareness of the pain of the experience remains.”

“Whatever is unfinished between you was meant to be that way. Do you honestly think that going back to some point in that relationship, you’ll be able to salvage it?”

“I ran away, Jordan. And for a long time, I question whether or not I made the right choice.”

“Look, I don’t know if you did or you didn’t. I only know that you did choose a certain path because it seemed to be the right one at the time. Let me ask you this: Are you willing to risk losing all aspects of your current life, your real life, for the unknown? If you say yes, then you are seriously troubled.” Jordan tried to say it jokingly but her concern gave her smile a strained look. “Everything would vanish: your career, your kids, even our friendship might cease to exist. That’s not something I would be willing to risk. Especially not for a relationship that died decades ago. Don’t play Scarlett O’Hara, for heaven’s sake! Ken Young might prove to be your Ashley.”

“Relax Jordan. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s just one of the activities I indulge in when I hold a pity party. Mom sent me the clipping. Her way of saying ‘you had a chance but you blew it’ and it got me imagining what life with him would be like.”

***

Later that evening, Felicia sat in her living room, feet curled up under her on the couch and surveyed her surroundings. She had a lot to be thankful for, she thought, and that, too, was a consequence of the choices she had made. The children were watching TV in the family room and her husband was in his office in the basement finishing up some paperwork. She had tried reading, but her conversation from this afternoon kept replacing the scene the author was depicting. She set the book aside and took the newspaper clipping out and allowed her mind to drift along the currents of the past. There he was, as she remembered him: tall, and firmly built, a mane of brown hair that was always wind-tossed, smiling that heart-stopping smile that even in memory made her catch her breath. “Are you my Ashley Wilkes?” she asked the vision. But being only a vision, he didn’t answer. He just kept smiling.

Felicia walked over to the picture window and took in the night sky, a deep ebony, sprinkled with scores of sparkling stars, overwhelming in their beauty. “Too many for that child’s game of wishing on a star to make a dream come true, but if I could have one wish granted, I would go back to my senior year of high school,” she confided to world outside the window.

As her words floated upward, spiraling across the sky, she glimpsed a shooting star, and thought that the universe had heard her. She turned toward the family room and called to the girls. “Caroline!  Yvonne! Bed time!” Then she called down to her husband. “Eric? I’m going to bed. Don’t work too late.” Eric wished her goodnight and said he’d almost finished working. She followed her girls upstairs and readied herself for bed, her mind racing through kaleidoscopic, conflicting images. She got into bed, pulled the covers up and buried her head in the pillows, willing herself to sleep. When sleep finally came, she found herself at the ocean, in deep debate with her college philosophy professor about fate and free will. Her thesis was that the two states were not mutually exclusive, that they could, in fact, coexist.

“Take Macbeth, for example. Let’s suppose that the three witches did know that Macbeth’s destiny was to become king. That’s fate. However, Macbeth exercises free will when he chooses to murder his cousin Duncan to ascend to the throne. He might just as easily have chosen to do nothing and wait, if he believed the witches knew the future. But he feels that future slipping away, so he acts. The same is true for Adam and Eve, according to Milton’s Paradise Lost. The pair have free will to choose, to follow their one prohibition as well as to accept or reject the Serpent’s words, even if Milton’s all-knowing God knows they will eventually fall.”

“Yes,” her professor replied, biting into an apple. “but what about the tale of Death and the servant? He sought to avoid Death by fleeing the city where he first encountered him, fearing Death had come for him. So, he borrows money from his master and heads to Samarra. When his master meets Death in the marketplace to ask him why he frowned upon his servant, Death replies… “

“I know. I know,” Felicia interrupted. “Death replies, ‘I was just startled to find him here because I was supposed to meet him tonight in Samarra.’ It’s another example of the simultaneity of fate and free will.” 

Her professor’s face faded and was replaced by Jordan’s.

“It’s what I tried to tell you! The path we choose may differ as a result of the decisions we make, but we will, inevitably end up in the place fate intends us to be. You believe this! Why do you think you’d be any happier with where your life is if you had made different choices?”

As she struggled to find an answer, a huge wave came out of nowhere, knocking them off their feet and choking them with its churning waters. Felicia swam to the surface and turned in a circle, treading water, searching for Jordan, trying to call her name, but finding her voice paralyzed. Frantically, she tried to scream for help. The effort woke her up. She glanced at the clock as her mother called upstairs to her.

“Felicia Anne! Hurry up and get down here. Jordan’s mom is on the way to pick you up for school.”

***

Felicia Young sat in the corner booth and stared at the divorce papers in front of her. She sipped her coffee, reflecting on the volatile relationship she and Ken had had over the years. The once sweet romance that had blossomed in high school had soured with each of Ken’s political successes until the only remnants were bitter tears and angry fights. His latest transgression, the infidelity she had discovered, had been the last straw. All that was left to do was to sign the papers and she could begin her life anew. Her thoughts were interrupted by someone saying “Well I’ll be damned. Felicia?  It’s been years! Do you mind if I join you?”

Felicia looked into the eyes of Jordan St John.

“Jordan! Oh Jordan, yes! I mean no, please have a seat! I can’t believe it’s you! How are you? You’re looking great!”

Jordan slid into the booth opposite Felicia and shrugged off her coat. The first few awkward minutes saw them engaging in small talk, but soon the two were laughing and reigniting their once very close friendship, bemoaning the fact that they had allowed it to slip away.

“How’s Ken? I see him on the news frequently. Did you ever imagine, when we were in high school that you would be married to such a political dynamo?” 

Felicia smiled a sad smile, debating whether to confide in Jordan about her impending divorce. “You know, Jordan, I had no idea back then that the choices I made would bring me to where I am today. And sometimes I think that knowing who I am and what I want...I think if I had a chance to do it all over again, I would do things very differently.”
 

* * * * *

Kathleen Chamberlin is a retired educator living in Albany, New York. She began writing creatively during the quarantine period of Covid-19 and her writing has appeared in both print and online journals and anthologies. In addition to writing, she enjoys gardening, genealogy, and her grandchildren.