ILLUMINATED  PLACES    

by Martha Ellen


The night she died 
I had a dream.
I saw her walking 
in a pleasant landscape
on an uphill footpath
toward an illuminated place.
Her back was to me.
She turned and saw me 
watching her leave 
for the last time.

Thrilled to see me,
she smiled and
waved with the familiar 
excited anticipation 
I had seen so many times 
before when I arrived
at her sheltered home
and we would go for coffee.
There were days I thought
this a chore, a boring task
that subtracted
from my important life.
But, in that moment, 
in her joyful smile, clarity.
She knew I feared 
to carry on without her.
“You will be OK. 
I will wait here for you.”

Everyone had believed
I was the stronger sister.


* * * * *

Martha Ellen lives alone in an old Victorian house on a hill on the Oregon coast. Born and reared in Chicago. Retired social worker. History of social justice activism. Old hippie. MFA. Poems and prose published in various journals and online forums including North Coast Squid, RAIN, Words Have Wings and others. She writes to process her wild life.

A Hundred and a Handful

by Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

     “The U.S. government was giving away land; that’s how my great grandaddy ended up in north Texas,” my mama tells me as her hand moves deftly around the diorama we’re making. In school, we’re working on family history. Mama already helped me draw a family tree. Now we’re working on a replica of a town where someone in our family lived.

     “It wasn’t much,” Mama says, placing the cardboard church at the top center. “But it sure was special to me growing up, you know.

     “Orinston, Texas,” she tells me with a nod of her head.

     According to Mama, Orin Stocker, my great, great granddaddy moved his family from the Galveston area and settled just shy of the New Mexico border. He worked hard and eventually invited kin and friend to join him. When I asked how many people lived there, Mama says, “About a hundred and a handful.”

     The church stood alone on its block. Mama swirls glue on the board on both sides of the building and invites me to sprinkle the green construction paper we cut up confetti-like over it. When it’s dry, we’ll place flowers made from crepe paper and toothpicks to show the gardens that everyone in the community tended to.

     “The office where my granddaddy and, before him, great-granddaddy, ran the small town was here,” she says, placing the miniature building adjacent to the church.

     “The school was across the street, here,” she continues. For a moment she is lost in its memory as she cradles the replica in her palm. “I loved going to school. We had two rooms for learning and a library! A library at the school and another one for the public right next to it, can you imagine?”

     She instructs me where to place other buildings we’d made. There is a mercantile next to the city office. The doctor’s office and that of the Black woman dentist. There was an empty lot where fresh vegetables from people’s gardens were swapped and bartered; we placed little baskets full of paper corn and beans to show that. Houses where the people lived are nearby, within walking distance, though some people had cars.

     Mama eyes the board curiously. “I never planned to leave that place,” she says under her breath.

     “Then why did you?”

     The water tower we made from a ping pong ball and pipe cleaners suddenly trembles in her hand. She turns to me, and I watch sorrow’s fingers press the corners of her mouth downward.

     “Didn’t have a choice,” she says.

     I ask her what happened, but she doesn’t tell me; just keeps instructing me where to put things until the town is done.   

     “Now, let’s see if my memory’s right,” Mama tells me, pushing the diorama away for a better view. She sighs.

     “There were a lot of people taking the government up on the land,” she says. “People moving west, coming from places like Georgia and Alabama. Ranchers and farmers. They brought their way of thinking with them.

     “That little town of Black folks wasn’t a bother to nobody but them. We were on some good land. Maybe they wanted it. Or maybe they couldn’t stand us building something of our own. They decided they’d take it away.”

     “What’d they do?”

     Mama shakes her head. “You are too young to hear about it. One day, when you’re older, if you still want to know, I’ll tell you the details. But for now, all I want to say is that a lie made a group of White men destroy our neighborhoods and terrorize our people.”

     “Did they hurt you?”

     She shakes her head again, swiping tears from her cheeks. “Daddy got us out of there. Mama threw me and your aunt Cissie in the backseat and then he drove until we couldn’t hear the screaming no more.”

     “Can’t you ever go back?

     Mama says she can’t. “Your granddaddy went back with some men a short time later, and they salvaged what they could. Before I went to college, I felt brave enough to ask him to take me there. I don’t know what I was expecting.

     “There was a highway and a strip mall where we thought Orinston used to be.” Mama turns the diorama in a slow circle. “The town is gone, like we’d never been there at all.”

 

OPACITY

by Isabel Cristina Legarda

 

You found the letter I never sent.

I held my breath while you read it,

the light a halo just behind you,

your shadow on the page

a partial eclipse. I could see

my words through the paper

in your hand. You had no words

for me, only deepened lines

in a furrowed brow, your face

a palimpsest of love and hurt.

That night the sheets were rumpled

and tugged and tossed by our unrest;

you wouldn’t let me take my words back,

and by morning we were nowhere,

unable to read each other or see

through the curtain around us

to the world we had once inhabited,

the light of a new day no more useful

than fog, the fabric of us unveiled

by a transparent leaf of words

suspended between us in a sudden gust,

fluttering, fragile against our breath,

hanging on an imaginary line.

* * * * *

Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to the U.S. She is currently a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Smartish Pace, FOLIO, The Dewdrop, The Lowestoft Chronicle, West Trestle Review, and others. Her chapbook Beyond the Galleons was published this year by Yellow Arrow Publishing. She can be found on Instagram: @poetintheOR.

 

MATING DANCES
regarding Hal Fischer’s not-so-secret code

by Isabel Cristina Legarda


Active on the left, passive on the right –
the semiotic instrument being
a red or blue kerchief in a back pocket,
or, less reliably, an earring’s glint.

It can be exciting and playful,
this game of ciphers,
but for those unaware of the rules
perhaps a little perilous.

For instance, a black ribbon,
choker-like, around a woman’s neck
looks lovely with her dress
but could put her at the receiving end

of a blow she didn’t mean to ask for
or nights in which her paramours
end up wondering why she tried,
in self-defense, to annihilate them.

Even when the signs seem plain –
a lingering pressure, a long embrace,
chest tight, hand over nape,
impossible to restrain that gaze–

our signals can get crossed.
Why can’t we just speak the truth –
I want you, but for just this moment.
I want you, but I recoil from loss.

And the truth for which no code suffices,
the one we crave and dread most of all:
I love you, and I always have.
I love you, and I always will.

If only we had signals for that
that didn’t cost our entire lives.
If only it were enough to light a fire
and send smoke into each other’s skies.


* * * * *

Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to the U.S. She is currently a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Smartish Pace, FOLIO, The Dewdrop, The Lowestoft Chronicle, West Trestle Review, and others. Her chapbook Beyond the Galleons was published this year by Yellow Arrow Publishing. She can be found on Instagram: @poetintheOR.

Maybe, Maybe Not

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso


Sylvie checks the café where a couple is performing ‘duo-poems in rhythmic impulse,’ the man lisping lines that stop and start, the woman shouting jerky poly-syllabics with snap-click sounds and sharp twists of her head. Suddenly the man kneels, does a quick cucumber roll, jumps up to applause. But Sylvie’s looking for Ricardo, relieved to see him in the hall on his phone, “Tonight’s good, Henry,” he says, trying to accommodate the head honcho of Ristographic, a company that might invest in Omni-Designs.

“Henry gets our potential better than anyone we’ve met so far, though likely more about money than art,” his partner Jonas says.

The quasi-poetic hollering is still going on when Ricardo hugs Sylvie and says, “Maybe we’ll get rich yet,” and hurries off somewhere. An hour later he’s back, looking like he’s been smoking weed, his mood genial to the point of grinning silliness.

Jonas says, “Relax, Sylvie,” meaning she needs to get used to the jumble of uncertainty, even consider it charming.

She teaches freshman English at a local college, struggles to pay rent on their attic flat, visits mom in the nursing home, sad to see her wobbly state, blinks tears when mom says she’s glad Sylvie’s her daughter but so is that lady across the room who’s dozing, slumped in her chair. Grateful that mom doesn’t seem to be in pain, Sylvie gives her goodbye kiss-hugs, then walks back to her VW Bug, bumper duct-taped from a recent rear-ender, wipes tears, starts the car.

Jonas says, “We need an investor or this business is going nowhere, and we’ll be waiters forever, hand-welding wire star-designs.” His girl friend recently left him for a guy with a ranch in Colorado, claims he’s ‘fine about it’ and maybe he is.

Next morning she’s up early to teach morning classes, Ricardo still asleep, no idea when he got home as he works late.
 
One of her students speaks so little English he struggles trying to write a paragraph never mind a three page paper. The department head advises giving him an incomplete and referral to the language specialist. She hopes he’ll understand, won’t whine and make another scene in her office.

That evening, no idea where Ricardo is, no call, no note, maybe at the restaurant?  Her friend Judy keeps telling her, “Don’t waste any more time on a guy who’s good-looking but going nowhere.”

He arrives after ten, puts a container of gazpacho from the restaurant in the fridge and says “The deal with Ristographic is off as Henry wanted sixty percent of the company. Said I’d ask my partner, but no way we’re giving up control. Meeting folks in Miami tomorrow.” 

She watches him change into a suit and pack his suitcase. “You don’t need to drive me to the airport as Jonas is picking me up,” which probably means he’s meeting people he doesn’t want her to see. When things go well, he helps with rent, always cash, no explanations. She needs to pay bills, but fears he’ll get hurt, arrested.

Last summer they traveled for months, first to Lisbon then Vigo, Santiago de Compostela, Toledo, Madrid, Cordoba, ferried to Tangier, back to Malaga. They visited friends in Nerja, spent weeks in Barcelona, strolled La Rambla eating churros, visiting Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia cathedral. No teaching, no business, no schedules, no pressures. 

Summer ended with a heavy thump. Back in Cambridge they see Harvard Square ripped apart by riots, anti-war protests, chaotic sit-ins, broken windows, bashed phone booths, police everywhere, dogs sniffing for bombs. Their apartment’s dusty, months of junk mail shoved under the door by a neighbor. Ricardo goes back to work at the restaurant, welding wire designs, dealing pot.  She’s afraid he’ll get busted or attacked, tells him she’s thinking of leaving, but she’s still there, doesn’t want to leave, loves him.

Thursday her friend Macey comes to ballet class after missing several weeks, looking thin and depressed. She whispers to Sylvie, “Billy’s dead, a horrible accident,” something to do with a bad drug deal, then describes sprinkling his ashes in the ocean from a helicopter she rented. Her story sounds edited, details deleted, remembers Macey saying her husband was into ‘serious drugs, not just pot,’ but can’t ask as she’s in pain, traumatized.

Sunday night Ricardo’s back, says his suitcase got lost in the Miami airport, obviously upset but provides no details. Did it disappear or was it ripped off? Money? Drugs?

A letter arrives from Jean-Luc, a guy Sylvie met at a meditation conference in France last year, as he’s touring the states, wants to see her. He teaches biology at a university in Paris, good-looking, dark hair, trim beard. During the conference she and Talia planned to share a room, but  one evening Talia returned and saw Jean-Luc hugging Sylvie and took her things elsewhere. On the flight back to Boston they talk and she says she figured Sylvie was trying to break away from Ricardo by being with someone else, asks if it worked?  

Sylvie says Jean-Luc was merely “okay, nothing marvelous, has another girlfriend.” Talia nods, “When I broke up with Chris, it wasn’t heartbreak, just time to move on.” Sylvie’s gazing out the window at the choreography of clouds, “I love Ricardo, but hate what he’s doing.”

“Move in with me, try to get some perspective,” and Sylvie agrees. A few weeks later Jean-Luc visits from Paris, and again asks her to travel with him to California, but she can’t do it, refuses. “No spark,” she tells Talia.

The next night she has dinner with Ricardo ‘just to talk,’ but they touch, and she moves back in with him. Did he stop hustling pot?  No. Did she accept what he’s doing?  No.


* * * * *

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The New Boston Review, Nixes Mate, Peacock Journal, Broadkill Review, Southern Women’s Review, etc. Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake by Cervena Barva Press, her story collection Distractions En Route by Ibbetson Street Press, and her poetry collection Travels With Fernando is about to be published by Wilderness House Press.  She’s also the editor of Constellations: a Journal of Poetry and Fiction (constellations-lit.com).