2017 Volume 11 Issue 2 $23.00

Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat by Vincent van Gogh

River Poets Journal

2018 Seasonal issue

The Conversation by Camille Pissarro

2018 Volume 12 Issue 2 $23.00

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River Poets Journal 2018 Seasonal Issue

Peasant Girl with a Straw Hat by Camille Pissarro

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Seasonal Issue - 2018

Volume 12 Issue 2 A Collection of Poems, Prose, Stories, and Art

Poets Glenda Parson Simon Perchik Sean Tierney John Shand Catherine Arra Mark Trechock Dan A. Cardoza Richard Luftig Robert E. Blenheim Betty J. Reed Milton P. Ehrlich Yuan Changming Robert Salup Lennart Lundh Erren Geraud Kelly Fay L. Loomis George C. Payne T. John Bartlett Bobbi Sinha-Morey John Kojak Marietta Calvanico Donald Gasperson Susan Tepper Sarah Rehfeldt Judith A. Lawrence Jesse Wolfe Authors Aarushi Bhardwaj George Korolog Kevin Daiss Hibah Shabkhez Mike Todd Clifton Bates Tom Sheehan

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River Poets Journal 2018 Seasonal Issue

River Poets Journal Published by Lilly Press www.riverpoetsjournal.com Judith A. Lawrence, Editor & Publisher lillypressrpj@aol.com All future rights to material published in River Poets Journal are retained by the individual Authors/Artists and Photographers

River Poets Journal

2018 Seasonal Issue

Gathering Herbs by Camille Pissarro

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Dear Poets and Writers, My apologies for the late publication of this Seasonal issue. In mid-August I downsized from a two bedroom apartment to a one bedroom, a major feat some would say, as one of my bedrooms was used as an office for art and writing. Loaded with art supplies and my collections of books and journals, I somehow dwindled the mass down, and strangely enough have more room here, though it took three months to settle the dust. As always this issue is chuck full of an eclectic mix of poetry and stories with the introduction of a few new writers to River Poets Journal. In the midst of the chaotic political world we live in, I am thankful for the number of talented prolific writers whose work I am privileged to review and select work from. As in most literary magazines, in the selection process, space and several readings are required to fit the overall tone of the journal which seems to take on a life of its own particularly with poetry, often mirroring the works of others. I am very proud to say, this concludes the twelfth year of publishing River Poets Journal. Wishing you health, wealth, peace, love, creativity, and joy in the New Year. Judith Lawrence, editor

Upcoming Publications in 2019

The Special Edition Theme Issue for 2019

will be announced online sometime in February.

Submissions for the Seasonal Issue are open year round.

River Poets Journal retains one time rights to publish your work online and in print. All future rights are retained by the author. Although River Poets Journal prefers first time submissions, previously published exceptional work is accepted with a note indicating previous publication. We ask if your work has been published previously by another literary magazine, please provide acknowledgement of the first publication, such as, "previously published by River Poets Journal, plus month/year.” Simultaneous submissions are accepted. We ask that the author notifies us as soon as they are accepted by another literary site or publication. Please provide a short bio of 2-5 lines with your submission. Either a personal bio, current list of publications, or combo will do. Please list your name and email on all pages of your submission. Column space presents problems when formatting a poem in a journal. Please refrain from mixing long lines in a short or average line length poem. Although it might be an excellent poem, it may not fit publication space restrictions. Thank you for submitting your work to River Poets Journal.

Please Note Editorial

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River Poets Journal Submission Guidelines

River Poets Journal Accepts: New and Established Writers Poetry - up to 6 poems - please include your name and email on each poem submitted. Short Stories - under 5,000 words Flash Fiction - under 3,000 words Essays - under 500 words Short Memoir - under 1,000 words Excerpts from novels that can stand on their own - under 3,000 words preferred Art (illustrations and paintings) or Photography A short bio of 2 - 5 lines Simultaneous and previously published “exceptional” poems are accepted as long as we know

where poems are being considered or have appeared.

We prefer:

Work that inspires, excites, feeds the imagination, rich in imagery; work that is memorable. Work that is submitted in the body of an email or as a word attachment, but will accept work

through snail mail if the writer does not use a computer. Unselected snail mail submissions are returned if the author requests and SASE is provided with sufficient postage.

When submitting work, please provide a short bio of 3-4 lines. Listing all your published work is not required. If not previously published, write something about your life you would like the readers to know.

Previously being published is not a requirement for publication in our Journal. We love new writers with great potential.

Send work in simple format, Times New Roman, Arial, Georgia 12 pt font, single spaced. Please note long line poems may need editing to fit constraints of formatting. We do not accept: Unsolicited reviews Pornographic and blatantly vulgar language Clichéd or over-sentimental poems or stories Response time is: 3 to 6 months depending on time of year work is submitted. All submissions are thoroughly read. River Poets Journal Print Editions: $23.00 per issue plus media postage cost. Note: International shipping cost varies. For ordering multiple copies, please email me for exact cost to avoid overpaying postage. Payment accepted through Paypal, Money Order or Check. Please do not send cash. Delivery of printed copies ordered take 4-6 weeks due to response time of orders placed, and fitting into the Print Shop schedule. Contributor Copies: River Poets Journal issues are free in PDF format online for easy access. We do not offer free contributor print copies with the exception of a featured poet, featured artist/photographer, as the printing cost would be too prohibitive for a small press.

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Poetry

The Way Spring Comes Prim and proper and all gussied up even when you ain’t ready to chase no butterflies or smell the climbing jasmine or stare slack-jawed at the wedding cake blossoms on the magnolias Spring comes on cat feet even when you’re filled to the brim with hate even when you hurt all over even when you wanna hit somebody real bad Spring comes when you’re alright and when you ain’t alright and when you live huddled in an alley and when you’re scared It comes when your face aches plumb aches from too much talking explaining what you’d rather not explain to somebody already lied

Spring comes in uniforms of pink and lavender and sapphire blue It comes when your shoes and pockets got holes and when strangers laugh at you for standing tired and confused in the park on the soggy grass on the rainiest day since the last hurricane and the nice lady at the Super k so nice smiles at you when she rings you up and bags your groceries reason I go there anyway to see somebody anybody not looking mean you’ve seen her with the gold front teeth and tattoos of her kids’ names dancing up her arms well she told me she’s dying “this tumor…” just blurted it out after telling me that all the fresh vegetables except the broccoli and string beans were the same price and did I know there was a sale on Clorox through the weekend? Oh, spring comes with a vengeance now don’t it. ©Glenda Parson

Gathering Herbs By Camille Pissarro

Female Peasant Carding Wool by Camille Pissarro

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* You stir this can before it opens as the promise a frog makes when asking for a kiss :the paint warmer and warmer will become an afternoon with room for mountains and breezes close to your shoulder though that’s not how magic works –there’s the wave, the hand to hand spreading out between the silence and your fingers dressed with gloves as if it was a burden and the brush raising your arm the way this wall needs a color that will dry by itself leave a trace :a shadow not yet lovesick no longer its blanket and cure. * It’s a short step from winter and the bed yet you can’t hear its sheet narrow, become the stream pouring from each stone fountain and graveyard, can’t touch her breasts now that every handful turns to powder smoothed over the way a motionless cloud is tracked drop by drop –you count backwards though every room in this place is taking on water –what you hear is the last drop falling through her arm as a single word –Mickie! louder, louder and you hold hands, go on drowning.

* You water her grave with words –they never dried, were written at night, sure this stone would rot inside the note though you don’t fold your arms –what spills has eddies, swells shorelines reaching into the Earth no longer certain –this stone doesn’t recognize itself is growing roots, sags becomes a sea, the bottom holds on, unable to stand or come closer, cover her without seeing your fingers or what it’s like. * There’s no shore though all armies are used to orders, wait to be led at attention as if this great lawn was always here, theirs for the taking would honor their dead the way all statues begin their slow march to the sea and nothing change –your mouth still bleed, gnaw on a single block left standing for every day use –you don’t shrug or inhale or going down unveil your broken teeth already inscribed with the only chance to know you’re back.

Four Poems by Simon Perchik

Winter at Montfoucault by Camille Pissarro The Orchard by Camille Pissarro

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Poetry

Shampoo the sweet smell of 76 degrees cars swimming through the empty spaces in a fence like hair through a comb how smoothly time flows yet tangles in the mind ©Sean Tierney Libel I miss the snow and the flat, brown grass when winter was a cold, wet bird its empty nest sits in my brain where two branches meet - yesterday and today and I'm sliding through this nostalgia like boots through mud unearthing a lovely scent ancient, flat, wet, cold and brown, but certainly not aiding my current condition - here in this chair with thoughts so inaccurate life could take me to court ©Sean Tierney

Home What is left after all are gone? Not emptiness but presence Not just the lurking dead But also yourself before An overarching glance backwards From the day you left Too much remembrance of things passed It stays just like that The ones who were there dead or alive Along with furniture And mother’s sink And father’s tools Space into which things were said Seemingly pointless. But then, eventually, something happens The place that was lost to those who go Is found anew to be enjoyed and loved And rendered home where they come To feel secure A harbour from which they too Will set out upon the world. ©John Shand Egret Great white gussied up in verdant stalks tiptoes marsh grass edging the lake, coral with clouds, blue with shadow, hunting. Ballerina grace, she dances her lissome neck up—over—out—curling in— down— now snake-squiggled at the ready— cantilevered—reaching long and lean, her feathered tutu as if floating upon green before the strike. ©Catherine Arra

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Poetry

Flat Land There is land not far from Whitman, North Dakota lying flat as the pages of Leaves of Grass or maybe a Sandburg poem about traveling by train across a prairie of empty thoughts to Omaha. Rows of wheat and flax run across it like long lines neither ever got around to writing, and in the fall tumbleweeds hang along the fences like notes from the treble line of a Dvorak symphony. The land seems about to say something that no one has found the words or music for, as though silence is the only commentary that won’t seem maudlin or go misinterpreted as some kind of metaphor for the cosmos. It is a manuscript composed of pure utility whose lyrics might be written by swathers and combines, then erased by the plow and written again next year, unsung, uncontradicted, keeping its thoughts to itself. ©Mark Trechock ("Flat Land" was first published in Noctua Review, Volume XI, 2018).

Walking Alone at the American River At dawn, I finally find both feet, as I walk the river's stony bank, cautiously over oily stones of moss. A solitary crow harvests the last stalks of darkness in the furrowed sky, with caw & wing, announcing the sun in the tip-tops of cottonwood trees across the river. He circles back, vocalizing, squawking, talking trash like a feathered Mohammad Ali, fresh from a Trilla in Manila. We quickly make peace. Up toward the canyon, in a swoop of wind, wet rocks bulge, as the river plays Fur Elise with only strings. I am here yet another day, September’s guest, just as Fall ignites the bows of Sycamore trees, surely I can make the best, of the best of days. ©Dan A. Cardoza

Winter is arriving as an afterthought. Gulls nibble at the nape of a beach. Scrub pines stand lonely sentry duty to sea grass and windbreak dunes. The far-off water is like a poem that no one can quite scan. Then night. A pale moon imbibed with stars: separated lovers on the margins of their lives. It is cold now and growing colder. Each inbreath catches in your throat, the sound of each heartbeat, new, unannounced, inevitable as snow. ©Richard Luftig

Road to Versailles at Louveciennes by Camille Pissarro

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My Poetic Imp I'm not the poet: there's an imp, A roguish rascal like a pimp. He stops to visit in my head Collecting subjects of ill-bred. He lives on dust of crumbled kings And bloated maggots, beetles' wings; On broken hearts and trunkless heads And lusty harlots in their beds. But now at rest between my ears, He shuffles through my dreams and fears. From frolics throughout space and time He's come to deal out thoughts in rhyme. They come out rather cruel with spite, Iambic mischiefs, dark and light; Seeped somewhat in romantic charm They irritate, but mean no harm. So if you hate my piddling verse, Or feel offended, or much worse, I beg of you this modest plea: Please keep in mind--it isn't me! ©Robert E. Blenheim (Winner, First Place: Russell Leavit Memorial Award, Florida State Poets Association, 1996. Published in Anthology 15, Florida State Poets Association, 1997).

The Picnic Table A bonfire blazes and crackles on this lonely autumn night. No children beg for s'mores or burn sparklers to wave in a mad chase across the hillside, but I have mementos of the past to price or to burn. Silhouettes of distant days push through my mind's shadows: we parked our baby on this tabletop admiring him from opposite benches. We watched a skittish four-year old shrouded in a kitchen apron perch there for his haircut. Children giggled on these benches, celebrated warm weather birthdays with cake and peach ice cream from a churn….happiness reigned. But this battered table provided space to retreat for silent grief at the death of a loved one or a son's going to war, or a daughter's miscarriage. Tears could be shed here, unnoticed, bringing the comfort of release. Its cedar-stained wood boasts names proudly scratched by childish hands alongside hearts etched to boast of young love. This relic echoes memories of family, scattered abroad for decades. — Now an aging, splintering table with benches rarely used, but tears sting as I price it for tomorrow's yard sale. ©Betty Jamerson Reed

Poetry

Female Peasant Carding Wool by Camille Pissarro

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Poetry

The Silence of Nobody Cares When he saw pictures of starving children his heart heaved in a slough of despond. His dreams became Bosch-like images whirling around a flaming satanic tail. All his money went into the pushka. He fasted one day a week, became a strict vegan and volunteered to feed the hungry. In Africa, he viewed the bare trees and drought-stricken dunes barren as a moonscape of cosmic dust. He realized no torture designed by the Grand Inquisitor or interrogators at Guantanamo, could match the excruciatingly slow, lonely torment of starving to death. Blown about by Sirocco driven winds, he watched starving refugees roam parched deserts. They no longer knew where they were going, wandering aimlessly under an unforgiving blazing sun. Buzzing flies fed on stunted toddlers’ oozing sores, their protruding ribs all bone and gristle, a dim echo of forgotten hunger pangs filled the air. They trudged along listening to the silence of nobody cares. Pot-bellied children with matchstick-thin fingers forgot they were children, unable to laugh or play. They gave up waiting for food under a jaundiced moon, a sky no longer blue. No amount of frankincense and myrrh could quell the stench of rotting carcasses. Scavenging raptors circled overhead eager for a feed. Their lackluster eyes shed all their tears, marasmic wastrels mired in stillness became stationary ghosts that no one wanted to see, gnawing the dry sands of barren deserts. One billion mouths strewn about woke up and went to sleep hungry. The unspeakable negligence of: The infinite task of the human heart. Under flapping buzzards dumpster-divers in the smoldering garbage of Rio searched for charred remains of rancid bones. The happy majority in a state of culinary rapture lit up Macanudo cigars, relishing a smoke with an after-dinner cognac at The Inn at Little Washington, after feasting on truffle-dusted divers’ scallops harvested the same day off the coast of Maine. Who can look the other way when their bellies are full, knowing so many others endure the grinding pain of hunger? Victims of famine with empty lunch pails can only dream of swaying palm trees raining dromedary dates, wheelbarrows full of pink pomegranates and figs falling from trees, laying down a carpet that will lead them back to the Garden of Eden. ©Milton P. Ehrlich

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Poetry

Snowing in Spring In the wild open west, flakes keep falling Like myriad baby angels knocked down from Paradise Blurring the landscape behind the vision Hunting each consonant trying to rise above The ground. The day is brighter, lighter & Softer than the feel. Soon there will be Dirty prints leading to everywhere (or nowhere) & no one will care how the whole world will collapse In blasphemy. The missing cat won’t come to Trespass the lawn, nor will the daffodil bloom To catch a flake drifting astray. Nobody bothers even to think About where the season is held up on its way back, how The fishes are agitating under the pressure of wintry Water, why people wish to see more and more snow ©Yuan Changming

I thought we would do this together. Flatline, the blue light. The two dozen small birds fluttering, grabbing what's left of you, your soul, by the corners and slowly flying skyward. We've done everything else together. I'm not sure about alone. Both of us alone. All this light. All this darkness. My pockets are full of empathy. My socks are soaked through. I eat the dust of birth which has never left my mouth. My shoes are on my ears. All I hear is the sharp chord of running away. I learned to be a magician but the magic closes my eyes with its bony fingers and stares down my heartless sockets. "What we had was not love" you said, with my blood creeping out of your lips like silence. " the night is not dark if you avoid looking" I replied. The wind, in fury like time, blows away what's left. Conversation evacuates. Consequence sleeps on your head while you lay with your face hard against the brown dirt. ©Robert Salup

Montmartre Night by Camille Pissarro

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Prose Poetry by Lennart Lundh

The kids are gone again, and the exes still. Feeling too old for a puppy or an even slightly younger lover, it’s just her and the cats and the sound of coyotes. Days off and evenings are hers, remodeling to her own tastes and needs, writing or reading or old movies, maybe wandering the scrub land around the place with a camera or bottle. Nights are for satisfied dreams of living happy and nightmares that will never get enough of her. With the dawn she undresses and swims in the pool, no one to criticize or shame the skin she’s grown comfortable with except the high hawks who fix on every movement of her body carefully but could care less. Naked to each other at last, they stand at the edge of the lea, looking towards the forest. They’ve come so far together. Her striped gown, cream and the color of her undone ginger hair, is marred by green at the hem from the walk here. His dark suit speaks of a formality belied by their embrace. They enfold each other as a sailor would cling to flotsam while awaiting a rescuer’s hand, afraid the hand might never appear. The woods are dark, faintly featured, even darker and less certain when compared to their path so far. They’re afraid to enter, afraid not to, while knowing one must occur. The woods blazed beneath miles of crumpled, leaden sky, each curling leaf a bright maple ember rising and falling like your breasts at the whim of otherwise unnoticed currents. You leaned against a tree, back straight, head leaned slightly as you measured the skies. A shaft of light met you, took your face and my breath in its dancing hands. Asking if I was jealous seems poetic and rhetorical. I should have had a camera with me. I could have taken a picture. I would have kept the moment unseen in my wallet, tired paper immobile and forgotten. Instead, I carry the weight of a memory constantly ready to ambush me, squeeze my heart with fingers of regret and time. We were young; this gets old. It seemed a good idea at the time, with blue skies, light breeze from the north. If you can’t talk a long hike on a day like this, when can you? A pop-up drizzle, more a misty passing affair, nothing that can’t be borne. I mean it’s how it is, and it’ll come and go. And then the hard rains come, stinging at the winds’ direction, but you don’t get to quit now. You’ve traveled so far. It’s still a ways to the end, and this is the part of the journey where you’ll need each other more than ever in your life together. Like Caillabotte’s man on a bridge, alone but for his despair, I am pensive. Unlike him, invisible in the throng, to me humanity is hidden now, when I could use their unknowing company regardless of any need, or not, for me. I wish I could go home, any of them, which must surprise you, coming from an angel. Still, consider how I first came to be. I was cast out of a womb. These wings, once white, were rewards for losing a physical life while saving another. They blackened when I was cast down for arguing with Him. Now they’re failing because, well, I tried too late to be good again. Angel: That noun doesn’t fit comfortably with homesick, the adjective. But what else can I be, after being cast into nowhere from the Pit? Where is home now?

(All first appeared as drafts on the Lexington Poetry Month site earlier this year).

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Poetry

The Woman In The Red Hat i looked for her as i walked to the train The woman in the red hat Chestnut hair hiding under it like a torch She walked like she had a purpose in life she looked like she should be singing Christmas carols Her face was Christmas Childlike and girly Her smile, a silent night holding blessings Maybe next time I see her I'll give her this poem I'll tell her You're never too busy To stop and watch the snowflakes fall Even something as simple as A snowflake has a Destiny ©Erren Geraud Kelly Prune aggressively expert says lop, cut, chop After winter’s melt skeletal bush grows my heart’s anguish Spring twice renewed joy beats to the savage rhythm of burgeoning branches I will remember trim gently ©Fay L. Loomis

Skye.... moves herself into fall with legs that hold spring she spins herself into a blizzard with the fire of angels her ballet shoes feels like wings and her song is the song of storms she staccato steps into her summers like hip hop beats hard like rain against the urban streets her eyes are the green light to the blues and all that jazz lives in the body of a walking poet beats herself into her self into a song of seasons..... ©Erren Geraud Kelly Black billed Magpie With melodies like medieval madrigals, Black-billed Magpies are more alive in other realms; their wings glitter in the azure shade of Aspen pines floating through a fence-less paradise. ©George Cassidy Payne

Peasants Heaving Straw, Montfoucault by Camille Pissarro

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Poetry

A Spell on the River There’s a nice place to rest just past the river ford; A vast pool of dark water where pine timbers moored. In this peaceful space within the crisp air of Fall The woods whisper where log driver’s voices once roared. Near shore, deck of cull logs on the forest floor lay Midst moss, duff, and bracken of woodland bouquet. Those that have fallen yield themselves to the others Whose spirits take root among the greens of decay. Below the mountain peak where the river is born, Ringing axes and windfall begotten slopes worn. Streams become artists cascading the granite slides To sculpt ancient bedrock that concedes chance to mourn. And now the autumn air induces change in leaves; Descending from the boughs the chill zephyr bereaves. The fallen slip by absent any trace of green; Departed from above; yet no barren limb grieves. Accordingly seasons make a river fickle; Spring snowmelts are torrents to Fall’s placid trickle. Yet through ages of seasons its course has forged forth; Cold reaper of leaves spares the river the sickle. It seems this tranquil pool portends a certain end; As siren songs rise from beyond the river bend. Perchance the stopping here was seeking more than rest, And been a spell shorter than some fate would intend. There’s a mill town below that I’ve seen on my map; The river rushes there tumbling through gorge and gap. My soles long to saunter in the presence of path; To amble beaten trails beyond the waters lap. This rest in brisk air has brought upon a shiver And conjured up thoughts that cause heartstrings to quiver. From here I travel onward beholden to fate, And under a spell that was cast by the river. © T. John Bartlett

Autumn, Montfoucault Pond by Camille Pissarro

Goose Girl by Camille Pissarro

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Poetry Below An Aurorean Sky I woke in a world lit by an orange red aurorean sky, a yellow-breasted pygmy nuthatch just beginning his morning rhapsody and bluejays blithely courted their ladybirds; it made me think of hearts, their shape like lilac leaves; and, if I listened quietly, I'd hear the soft gasps of snapdragons. Just beyond my window a phoebe's song joined in dawn's chorus, red-flowered salmonberries dangled their fruit, and all the winged kin were joyous over the tangle of blue and white forget-me-nots untied by the wind. Even in the wet season birds lifted their heads when rain whirled in the pine tops like Ginger Rogers in her prime. God must be on his patient perch in the heavens, basking upon us, ankled in dusk. ©Bobbi Sinha-Morey

The Day After The day after, I stood on a beach three thousand miles away. While your body cooled on a cold steel slab, rays of the drunken sun washed over me. Children ran screaming along the sandy shore, their laughter soaked innocence not yet betrayed by the knowledge of death. Desperate to escape the clear blue heat, I buried my toes deep into the damp sand and let the waves roll gentle over my feet. As I felt the water's cool release, someone there pressed a button, that ignited the spark, that lit the flame. Quickly you were gone from this place (Your big toes and oddly shaped head), reduced to something less than a memory. All that remains now are unwritten stories and the tears of your daughter. She cried beside your hospital bed. She hasn’t stopped. ©John Kojak

A Peasant in the Lane at Hermitage, Pontoise by Camille Pissarro

La Ferme à Montfoucault (Mayenne) by Ccamille Pissarro

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Poetry

Continuum (for Nicholas and Nicholas) My father’s camel hair brush sits on the second shelf between Pop Pop’s carving, Gooney Birds on Driftwood, and the framed sonogram that hopefully promised the coming of my grandson, the tube of the brush, no bigger than a lipstick, the bristles impossibly soft On Sundays, my father would carefully clean Rachmaninoff or Stravinsky or Tchaikovsky and gently place the record on the turntable, then, with calloused fingers free the brush from its casing twisting to expose the soft camel hair, a sweep over the diamond needle— now we are ready to begin Listen, he would say, for the oboe Wait—hear the strings ease in the wholeness of music filling my ears while each part called separately, clearly workday labor dropped away— we were luxuriously rich, in our own private concert hall the music belonged to my father and me Now, some days, I let the music be my company, I let the instruments voice our conversations, I time travel in between the strains I let the oboe pull at me I ride the waves with the strings but the whole of it makes everything present tense once again I will slide from the sleeve and carefully clean Gershwin or Chopin or Strauss, but most likely Rachmaninoff, and place it gently on the turntable I will twist the camel hair out of its tube and I will say to my grandson Listen for the oboe Wait—hear the strings ease in ©Marietta Calvanico

The Bodhisattva in the spring a bodhisattva enters on the dew and the world is less intent nurtured by her practice the bare limbs of an orchard relax becoming buoyant so after another thoughtless winter filled with all its grievances practice mindfulness again I think to trim the trees while the lady quietly crafts buttons of green leaf and after each leaf is pinned until the branches overflow a rush of cherry blossoms ©Donald Gasperson Some Rooms (for my mother) you could pat down chairs all smooth and dusted horse-hair— mute now, forgot to say goodbye give you a smile, remark that you're pretty The tall arc lamp burned a ridge at night iron-scorched the arms of the couch your arms each birthday take time to circle the lake birds dip to plunder ©Susan Tepper

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Poetry

On Detachment This is what it feels like standing here and looking there: A rough sketch of land looking out across the water; The emptiness of water dissolving into shapeless gray; Gray, the unmarked paper taking up almost the entire sky. We try to explain what this is to people who cannot understand it, people unable to find out for themselves what was written on it. Words, I have asked for many – What can you say of stars, the vast collection of them? What can you say of eye and heart? How to explain the wide expanse of darkness you go into before you start to notice? First, there is nothing; and then, there is everything. ©Sarah Rehfeldt

Still Life There is a scene in a movie where the heroine runs away to a shore motel a few days respite no television, phone, paper, nor humans, the sound of waves lapping on the shore she drifts in and out of sleep wrapped in white sheets the salt water infused in the air she breathes. The young woman leaving home, husband, children. floats between what’s real and imagined succumbs to the dark side where time is unmeasured returns a bit damaged but withstanding. Yet it seemed to me this creature was ill-fitted to her life from the start. She was a moon dancer, keeper of secrets, a spinner of tales, an imaginative adventurer stifled by the confines of a June Cleaver life. I envied her brief episode to the far shore wanted her to linger, to become a woman made of ocean, sand, salt and air, eyes of ocean green washed pebbles, hair of flaxen seaweed sweeping behind her erasing footsteps so none could find her. ©Judith A. Lawrence

A part of Groettes, Pontoise, Gray Weather by Camille Pissarro

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Poetry

Remainder When I started, I only had images: A stretch of freeway in the desert, Barbed wire, either a wild animal Or a memory of one. I wasn’t writing about anyone From history books, newspapers, or my own life, Nor working up a theme: loss, The stupidity of bitterness, The importance of beauty. But I imagined I wrote toward something, That it was meant to emerge If only I lured it craftily—or waited. If a sequence seemed immanent (Wildflowers on a hillside Where a family plans to picnic, A restaurant with a waitress who dreams Of being punished), Would it cohere? Or was it a way of lying to myself? As I lay awake in the motel, Hearing water forced through the pipes overhead, With no fealty to inspiration, To how I felt then, or now, nor to facts, All I thought about were the last two months: If you meant what you said, or if that feeling carried over From Milwaukee, years before I mattered. ©Jesse Wolfe

The Distant Hours In the distant hours jasmine sugared the air under a pale rose sky and I heard a grove of trees calling to me. I wove my way towards it, through the meadow dusted with buttercups, self-sown amid the tall grass, and somewhere nearby a shallow brook chattered over stones and butterflies sailed the breeze. I carried a blanket under my arm and it smelled so reassuringly of laundry flakes and potpourri; and when I sat down enclosed in the tall grasses I felt so deliciously alone; a tremulous joy inside my heart, the chiffon of my dress that billowed about me, and a daydream of cotton scattered from heaven on this day in spring.

©Bobbi Sinha-Morey

Peasant Girl With Stick by Camille Pissarro

Seated Peasant by Camille Pissarro

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The End of Time by Aarushi Bhardwaj

The cost of peace turns out to be too profound yet too simple to be paid. -

Its quarter past three in the afternoon. The radio is buzzing with a low static noise, a mosquito lazily swoops in and settles on the dark mahogany of her desk. A scone is lying half eaten on the thin, delicate linen of a napkin, topped with a dollop of cream dusted with small pieces of orange zest. An antique grandfather clock chimes in the living room and a pack of peppermint flavored gum lies half used beside an almost empty glass of orange juice. Its normal. Its monotonous. Its ominous. She had always thought the end of the world would be more exciting, truth be told. The ringing stops. She shakes her head.

- She isn’t sure when it happens, not exactly. But it does happen. It isn’t as dark as it’s supposed to be. Not when electricity is a swiftly diminishing service and its past midnight in January. There’s a thunderous surge of noise as the rickety old fence crushes under the weight of the incoming crowd. The fan overhead spins slowly, sluggishly, tauntingly in a precarious circle- -destroy those who hate- The crowd gets louder. -four, three, two- Its inescapable, unpreventable, inevitable. -one! The fan continues to spin. -and that’s it, knock it down! -and then it crackles. Produces a short spark of orange and red, fizzles. Dies.

- Its chaos. Its pandemonium. Her father and mother are fighting one of the Goldstein brothers, two of her brothers are covering for Charlie, who is trying to fight off their old neighbor, her best friend is screaming murder and she whips around for half a second only to see her other best friend fall down in a pile of rubble to never get up again. Better news is that she no longer cares about things like goodness, righteousness or morality. Her brother is dead, and her childhood best friend is dead and she can’t bring herself to face- to recognize- the bodies lying scattered in her way and so many people are dead. The worst thing is that she recognizes some of those that come after her. Its jarring, the realization.

- Peace being destroyed in the name of peace.

- There isn’t a bench anymore. She doesn’t know why it’s the first thing that she notices- leeches onto- but her steps are frail, and her eyes are bloodshot, and her hands are trembling, and she can’t bring herself to look at the pile of bodies strewn along the streets. Streets she had walked upon- had called home. She can’t. But the bench-

21

The End of Time by Aarushi Bhardwaj

It’s in pieces. Several wooden planks are splintered and scarred, the plaster is off in most of the places and there’s more blood than paint on its surface and a peculiar grey haze that’s sitting- settling- in the back of her throat, sticking to it, like a lump she has trouble swallowing. She looks around uncertainly. She doesn’t know where to go, not now. And then- She sees a familiar face detach himself from the arms of his parents and move towards where the bench used to be. A childhood memory of them eating ice lolllies in the summer heat, lazing on that very bench ghosts on the edge of her mind, and despite herself, the corners of her mouth turn slightly upward. Two more faces emerge from underneath the shattered canopy of the boathouse; and there’s the other three- faces streaked with blood, dirt, shame- and its equally horrifying and fascinating- this fragile convergence of their shared pasts and delicate future. Almost in unison, they reach the bench, mutely folding themselves into a tight huddle. She sees the red of their eyes, the hollow of their cheeks- and something in her breaks seeing her friend’s watery blue gaze turn haunted- and her grip on the wood is so tight- so desperate- that her knuckles have turned white with the sheer force of it- But still. She has never felt such crushing, overwhelming relief that all of them are breathing and all of them are alive and relief that they are standing and relief that surpasses the mixture of guilt and regret that has settled in her stomach and she is relieved and she knows that nothing will ever be the same and nothing can erase what they have seen, what they have done and nothing can bring back her brother and the gash on her forearm is permanent, but they’re here, they’re together and that’s what matters- it has to be. Still, no one speaks. The weight of the moment is unbearably heavy. Until it isn’t. Someone snorts. Its sudden and uncharacteristic and totally unpredictable but it’s something and something is better than nothing- A muscle in her neck twitches. It spreads- laughter. Contagious and so unbelievably reliving and its equal parts terrible and beautiful and war shouldn’t be a part of any sixteen-year old’s life, but they’ve seen things, experienced things that destroy the meaning of the word humanity but they’re together and alive and safe- peaceful. And it isn’t comfortable, and it isn’t joyful, but it isn’t vacant either, and even though their homes are gone, gone- reduced to ruins and ashes- They can be rebuilt. She’s sure of that.

- People might dream that justice and peace win the day, but that’s not how the story goes.

- Perhaps the anguish of war is the cost of peace that, in the end, the future generations must swallow. The thundering helicopters and the dogs snarling at crying children, those are the ones who know the cost of peace. The millions of Africans who fight for the abolition of racial injustice while the government saturates on the idea of war and desolation; the hundreds of innocent victims of terror attacks; those are the ones who pay the cost of peace. The slaughtering of hope is the price a common man pays for peace.

22

Southern Exposure by George Korolog

The mountains had an explicit smokiness, with a glare that was not nearly as natural as it was exclusionary. Coming down the backside, on my way to see Mom’s people, I could feel the lazy misgivings of the sun grimacing on the surface of the Ocoee as I wound my way south through sleepy towns with names like Murfreesboro, Tullahoma and Thomson’s Station . Going to visit the family. Family with names like Ezra, Flossie Mae, Mildred, Everett, Grace and Bobbie Lee. Miss Ruth and Robert Morris, who had a still up in the mountains whose recipe for mash was so clean, I was told, that the police in three counties would drive a hundred miles just to rinse their mouths with it. Was real easy to tell when I was a few hours into the trip. There were signposts. I’d pass the last of the rotted, bug-infested billboards that were still standing, bound together, not by bailing wire and chewing gum, but by cathedrals of praying insects, weevils on their knees, saved by the glorious Word, still trying with everything they had left to keep the sign vertical, their final redemption, asking you for the faith honey, just the faith. All sticky and sweet. I’d pass the paint chipped windows anointed with the taped cut outs of Christ Jesus, facing out, or just around the corner, the promise of Boo Radley lurking behind Tennessee Williams at the next rest stop, drinking sweet iced tea mixed with hard Rye, with Horton Foote, Faulkner and Beauchamp, dear Beauchamp, talking about the old times, dripping salt chaw over his cracked lips. I’d look out the window, and see the familiar warped sign that had survived the winter and announced “Turkee Shoot every Thursday at 6:00 PM,” scrawled hastily on the scrapped flat of crooked plywood. From the road, at the right speed, the sign would lean towards you, nonchalantly, goading you to come on down, take your best shot. Dare ya sweetie. Then there were the strip clubs set down right next to the Baptist churches with names like The Rabbit Hole and Buck Shot, where angelic, where cherubic, wore sequined G-strings that cut the flesh into fine innocent baby rolls and rounded them into soft protruding waves that curved and taunted while their babies cried in the corners, cradled by more spangled plumpness during a break, while Mom pumped her ass for the money. These were dirt roads with a clear direction, with destinies, a familiarity of where to go and why, of signs stretching to the horizon for fresh corn, heirloom tomatoes and sweet peaches, homemade jams, pancake and waffle houses, hot biscuits, chicken gravy, grits with butter and fried chicken wallowing in tallow so thick that you could spoon it out, drop it on toast, spread it all around and then cover it with crab apple jelly. When I would get to the crest of the hill to take a piss at the rest stop just above town, I knew that there would be a man in the bathroom, standing in the corner with a jar of glistening hair pomade, with little to do and nowhere else to go. He’d personally thank me for coming, pull a paper towel, hand it to me, say “thank you “sir,” and back away slowly with his hands cupped, palm up, more of a supplication than an offer. On the chipped counter, you could choose between a Scope or Listerine, pre-poured in tiny white cups or you could pick from a plate of stale mints for a buck and perhaps consider using one of the combs that had been marinating in a mason jar of cobalt blue since last Easter, take it out, slow and easy, slide it through your hair, as if to say, “now I’m ready.” I’d swing by the convenience counter on my way out and buy some food that had been made in a back room six months ago, still settling on a buyer, waiting for someone to say, “sure, I’ll give it a go.” Pickled eggs or spiced pig’s feet that I could buy from a woman so friendly that you knew that if

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Southern Exposure by George Korolog

you asked her, she’d drop everything and leave with you just so you would buy her some new shoes, slide them on for her, then let you slowly take them off while you licked your lips, so she could slink into your motel bed in black silk, dripping hot fat, sizzling on the sheets with her knees apart, her toes digging into the mattress. Ended up getting the speeding ticket right before Tuberville. Pulled me over and told me the ticket was going to be $425, but if I wanted to hang around town for a few days and pay the fine in person next Wednesday, the judge would reduce the ticket to $100. Cop looked into the back seat and wanted to know if the stripper, the baby and the barefoot girl in the backseat were family. Told him they were just along for the ride, but did mention that I was heading up to RM’s sometime before dinner and would pick him up a bottle.

(Previously published by The Southern Indiana Review (Fall 2014 Issue)

Festival at the Hermitage by Camille Pissarro

24

Night Swimming by Kevin Daiss

(Variations on a theme by John Cheever) The summer we went night swimming was the summer I almost drowned. We had been planning our route for about two weeks or so after school let out. Jared and Elloree could drive, but Elloree would be the official driver because she had her mom’s Oldsmobile—which had a huge backseat and windows tinted with something so black that inside the car existed a permanent nighttime. Her house was also our launch pad anyway, so to speak. She had an in-ground pool in the backyard, so we had been practicing our techniques there every afternoon into early evening for those weeks. Truthfully, we all more or less found ourselves at her home regardless of what we were planning, even if it seemed like her mom was checking in on us every thirteen seconds. A note about Elloree’s parents: Her mother is a tall, somewhat stretched woman--both physically and emotionally; her height, her supremely arched eyebrows, and her Victorian neck that Elloree inherited all elongated her well past any kind of normal human proportions. Elloree’s father all but abandoned his family when he suffered the unfortunate accident of having his soul torn at the precise moment he first saw Elloree as a newborn in the hospital. He blamed her for it even though the cause was something else entirely. Maybe that is why Elloree’s mother kept a close watch on her daughter, but she was mostly a warm, inviting woman. She would always say to me, “You can stay for dinner—we love your company, Jackson!” and I felt like she was being completely sincere. I liked how she and Elloree both used my name a lot when talking to me. Like those words were just for me, and this conversation was just ours alone. The cul-de-sac was another reason we liked Elloree’s house better than mine or Jared’s. Her house was the one at the very center of the circle, which means that as soon as a car turns down the street, you can see its headlights through the dining room window—and that gives you just that much more warning before anyone drives by or comes in. Being in this advantageous spot in the cul-de-sac afforded us a certain flexibility when reentering Elloree’s backyard after our swimming session since we could come from a number of different directions should anything go wrong. Another reason I liked Elloree’s house better than mine or Jared’s: I liked Elloree. I mean, I know we’re friends, and we’ve been friends—all three of us—since 8th grade. But I liked her, and I think she liked me too. Anyway, all of this secret activity and the long hours of planning had given a conspiratorial air to pretty much every conversation I had with Elloree, and that made it seem romantic and dangerous. And when we would sit in a tight circle and have our whispered conversations she would be so close to me that I could feel her breath, the coolness of her spearmint gum brushing against my cheek. Even though Jared was there and Elloree had to lean in close to him too, I noticed that she would always put her hands on his thigh or shoulder when she leaned in to say something to him, like she was trying to keep her distance by putting her weight on him, subtly pushing him away. She didn’t do this with me, and that made me feel like she wasn’t afraid to get close to me. Jared didn’t get those minty exhalations on his cheek like I did. All the while we were making our grand plans, I had been making my own grand plan on the

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Night Swimming by Kevin Daiss

side—and no one else, not Jared and especially not Elloree knew about it. After a couple of weeks of practice, like I said, it was time. We chose a Wednesday night, since it was smack in the middle of the week and there was nothing good on TV. It was important to do it on the right night—a weekend would be utterly disastrous, and we didn’t want to be too early or late in the week either. Wednesday seemed just right. The night was the tiniest bit overcast, and the wind was blowing steadily so that we would get about a minute and a half of moonlight to get our bearings before the next cloud enabled us to move in utter darkness. Mapping out our path was probably the toughest part since we could get back to Elloree’s house a number of ways. We chose to go in a sort of star-shaped pattern through the yards because then we could cut it short if we needed to. We were very careful during our recon missions and practice run-throughs. We made sure we knew which yards had lights with motion sensors, where they were, and how close we could get without setting them off. Practicing this bit had almost gotten Jared shot at, swear to God, but we think he fired in the air just to scare us. Wednesday night came, and I ran out silently to Elloree’s mom’s Oldsmobile when she flashed the headlights from outside. I plopped down real hard in the passenger seat, and it hurt my balls a little, but I thought I might have looked cool. She was listening to “Night Swimming,” by R.E.M., which was a little corny, but I laughed at it with her and she skipped to the next song, which was the Mission: Impossible theme. “Did you make a whole CD for this?” “Yeah, but I lost interest in the theme after the first few songs, so after this I think it’s Japandroids or LCD Soundsystem. You like them, right, Jackson?” It was a song Belle and Sebastian; “Seeing Other People.” I made a face. “Oh, sorry,” she said, “Jared likes them. I must have put it on there for him, but we can skip it.” Elloree’s smile as she said this: slightly crooked, and only showing the tiniest sliver of teeth; like the moon on a better night than this, or the ray of light that first shoots out of the refrigerator door when you open it real slow in the middle of the night. As we rode to pick up Jared we kept listening to the CD she made. We listened on a Walkman that ran through the tape deck. She had Velcroed the Walkman to the dash of the car. She was really proud that she didn’t have an iPod or CD player, but she would never really show it; you could only tell if you knew her different smiles. Jared got in the front seat, and I climbed to the back. I sat behind Elloree so we could see each other in the rearview mirror. Just before she turned down her cul-de-sac she switched off the music, cut the headlights, and drove so slowly that the car could have been in neutral. “This is it, then,” I whispered. “One for the money…” Jared started, but—

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Night Swimming by Kevin Daiss

“Shhh!” Elloree had parked the car in her garage and gone inside to tell her mom goodnight, that she was going to watch some TV before going to bed. Jared and I snuck out of the garage through the back door and crouched along the bottom of the fence as we walked the perimeter until we were in the back right corner of Elloree’s yard, right by her pool. “Did you bring a bathing suit?” I asked.

“No, but for your consideration, I’ll at least swim in my boxers.”

I felt stupid for wearing a bathing suit underneath my jeans. We saw one bedroom light go on. Then another. The first light went off. The second went off for a moment. Then the pale blue glow of a TV flickering lit up the curtains in the first bedroom. This was our cue. Jared stripped down to his boxers, and I pulled off my jeans and t-shirt so I was in my bathing suit. We put our clothes inside the neighbor’s recycling bin, which was just on the other side of the fence, and waited by the edge of the pool for Elloree. Jared’s choice of attire for the evening, and a question of possible symbolic value: His boxers. Jared’s boxers were a rarely seen item. Even when his mom would come into his room during the morning after a sleepover and put his clean laundry on the bed while asking us what we wanted for lunch, he was quick to hide his boxers away in the drawer, ignoring everything else in that moment. During P.E., in middle school, Jared changed clothes inside the toilet stall, being careful to hang his boxers up on the hook jutting crookedly from the top of the door. Jared’s boxers, for most of his boxer-wearing life, had been a tightly-lidded secret. Why had he so casually stripped down to them tonight? What happened to make him so comfortable in them now? Jared dangled his legs over the side, splashing carelessly. I stood more or less at attention, nervous until I saw Elloree come out the side door. She had been so silent that I didn’t even see her leave the house. I only first saw her silhouette against the white stucco of her house when she was already halfway towards us. Jared whistled—quietly, I’m sure, but you have to understand that any extra noise at this point was aggravating. The tense quiet that followed was twisting my insides into origami. “Shut up,” Elloree scolded, though she was suppressing a laugh. Jared winked at her. “The first meeting of the NightSwimmers has come to order!” he whisper-shouted. We exchanged silent high fives. Elloree looked at me, then giggled at what she called my “propriety” for wearing a bathing suit. She slid off her denim skirt and lifted her t-shirt above her head so that she, like Jared, was in her underwear. Her hair came down to just the middle of her back and it touched the clasp of her bra there. A note on Elloree’s hair: It is a startling mixture of blonde and brown, with some strands of red thrown in just so they can catch the sun and keep it there; it is straight, but it still has bounciness, especially at the ends where it curls just a tiny bit. There is a moment, which has played a thousand times in my imagination, in which I move toward Elloree, and in one stride

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Night Swimming by Kevin Daiss

brush her hair out of her face behind her ear leave my hand just on her neck by her jaw thumb on her cheek kiss her. Her lips taste like the chocolate chapstick I let her take from me a couple weeks ago because she uses it every day, thinking that my lips have touched this, too. Jared is momentarily dumbfounded, but then says, “About time, you two!” I hear “Come on!” whispered at me, then a splash followed quickly by another splash so that the first bubbles were eaten hungrily by the second. Jared and Elloree both had jumped into the pool and were swimming across to the other side. I had to hurry to catch up. An important part of this for me was keeping together until the crucial moment. We had to be in unison. Our plan, in brief, with some background rationalizations for the purpose of justification: In our neighborhood there are about six really nice swimming pools in six really nice backyards. There is no neighborhood pool. Which means that every summer, you either find a friend with a pool (or community pool in their neighborhood) or you waste your time running through sprinklers, slip’n’slides, and the like. Ever since Elloree, Jared, and I have lived in our neighborhood, we have never once seen anyone using one of these pools—with one notable exception. Elloree. Elloree was always in her pool, and Jared and I, being friends since we were in 1st grade, and being obsessed with, but terrified of, girls when Elloree moved in halfway through our 8th grade year, went around to each of the other five pools asking if we could pay to swim. We were willing to shell out our hard-earned lawn mowing money for the privilege of a dip in the crystalline waters of one of these pools. You can figure out the rest: We got cruelly rejected each time, and then, too scared to even speak, we showed up at Elloree’s door in our swimming gear, and the rest, as they say, is history. Ever since then we’ve been swimming at Elloree’s pool and the three of us have become best friends. We’ve still never seen anyone using the other pools. So the summer before our senior year we made our plan to become Night Swimmers. We would run marathons through all the pools to make up for lost time. We would jump in, swim, jump out, run, and in so doing be demonstrative, active proof of the victories and indefatigability of youth. We would be throbbing heartbeats stuck in throats. Each time we met as the Night Swimmers we would start in Elloree’s pool and then run through the backyards between to the next pool. The rule was that we all had to jump in, swim across, and jump back out before we could move on. No stalling, no playing, no funny business. It was a mix between misdemeanor trespassing and triathlon. We had planned to leave thank you notes for each resident on our last meeting of the summer. They were halfway across when I splashed in and did a couple of big strokes underwater to catch up. We stood briefly at Elloree’s poolside, exhilarated and dripping and cold, but feeling good since the summer nights in South Carolina are just as humid as the days and adrenaline was flowing freely. “The next ones have to be better than that,” Elloree said. Jared and I nodded our agreement. Elloree had a leaf stuck in her hair, just beside her ear. I reached to brush it out, five years’ worth of a single imaginary moment pulsing behind the movement of my hand, but she dodged it and got the leaf herself. “Don’t,” was all she said then. To the Tamarack’s we ran, slipping and sliding on the grass here and there. The more manicured the lawn, the more dangerous it was for our wet bare feet. Jared spilled once and slid for

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Night Swimming by Kevin Daiss

a bit; grass was stuck all over his legs, but it would wash off as soon as we jumped in. In and out of the Tamarack’s diamond-shaped pool, over the privacy fence, and through two more yards en route to the Westover’s. This yard was tricky since it has motion sensor flood lights all over it. I mean, they even put some way up into the oak trees around the edge of the yard. Squirrels and possums would set them off, but we wouldn’t. We cut a zigzag pattern through the yard until we reached the bare patio. Once we got there we were in the clear because there were no lights that shone directly onto the patio. It was definitely a weird setup; no wonder we never saw anyone using this pool. At any rate, we got through the Westover’s no problem, and my bathing suit got ripped on my right thigh trying to scale the shorter part of the fence near the gate. I think I was even bleeding a little, but I can’t honestly remember now. And it wouldn’t have been important if I was, anyway. That bit of blood would be insignificant in due time. After the Westover’s house there was the Leightums’, Carr’s, and finally the big finale in the Briarson’s. We had planned our route to get progressively difficult as we advanced. This might have had something to do with the amount of Nintendo we played as kids. The Leightums posed no real problems. They had a dog, but at night the dog went inside. That was really the only wildcard for this house. The dog had no schedule of any kind—its bladder-control issues took precedence over sleep for Mr. Leightum. If the dog had to be let out, we would be stuck because there were no trees or any other kind of cover in the yard. Needless to say, we were trying to be as quick as possible here—even more so than the other houses. But I did notice something that is worth relating again. It is now a memory of a memory, since I didn’t think of it until we were running pell-mell through the Leightums’ yard. Jared’s boxers had become iridescent. I’m not sure why or how. Maybe pollen he picked up when he fell in the Tamarack’s yard. But they were glittering as we ran back through Elloree’s yard on the way to Mr. Carr’s house, which was the right foot of our star pattern. At Mr. Carr’s house Elloree was a few yards ahead of Jared and me. She was running, but she skidded to a halt at the edge of the pool, which made Jared and me skid to a halt as well even though we were still in the grass and hadn’t even reached the ugly sea-green patio furniture yet. Reconnaissance: Up until the Carr’s pool, we had planned our route so that we would always be approaching each pool from the deep end. This hadn’t been intentional, but when I noticed it, Jared and Elloree were appreciative. Coming at the pools from the deep end side made it easier to dive in at full speed and get out quicker from the shallow end. Mr. Carr’s pool was the only exception to this happy accident. Public Knowledge: Mr. Carr was widely recognized as the neighborhood pervert. I’ve heard multiple reasons why, but I wasn’t sure if they were true. He came to every single girls’ volleyball match that our school had. I mean, he was at every match, and he didn’t have a daughter or anyone he knew on the team; he just always came. Mr. Carr being a creepy perv wasn’t really worrisome to Jared or me, but I was scared for what might happen if he saw Elloree that night.

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Night Swimming by Kevin Daiss

At the edge of the pool, Elloree flipped us off, then turned around and dropped her panties, mooning us. Jared laughed—too loudly for my comfort, but no one awoke in the house. She unsnapped her bra and jumped into the shallow end. The lack of tan lines on her skin shocked me, for some reason. A brief note on Elloree’s skin: Flawless. Even in the blinking intermittent, unintelligent moonlight I could tell that her skin was flawless. Unlike her hair and the kiss, I had never imagined Elloree naked. It was the same propriety that made her laugh at my bathing suit, I guess. The light was brightest on her hips. It was brighter there than in the reflections of the water or the red streaks of caught sunlight in her hair. As she bobbed then swam in the water, shoulders up and arms extending legs moving softly calves flexing, I understood how something had torn inside of her father at the same moment he saw Elloree in the hospital. But he had blamed the person, not the problem. There she is, going, away, and she will not be coming back. Something tore inside me, right then. I’m not sure what it was, but I know that it’s not coming back. My legs fell from under me, and I felt concrete scraping against one set of knuckles while my other hand grasped at air, reaching up at nothing. I screamed in pain, in fear, and in embarrassment. Upside down, I saw Jared kicking off his boxers by the side of the pool and jumping in, so close to Elloree. They were upside down and moving their arms and legs together. They were kissing. Their legs would move side-to-side together and their arms would support each other and their faces would mash together. I was bleeding at this point, which is why the cut on my thigh was an unimportant detail earlier. The blood was coming from behind my left ear, or maybe it was my right one. When I hit the water they weren’t upside down anymore. They weren’t in the water at all. I saw them running on, laughing, naked together. They would go through one more yard, then to the Briarson’s for the grand finale. My grand plan was leaking slowly out of my lungs, and water was filling the empty sacs there as I screamed bubbles globbing up from under the water of Mr. Carr’s pool. I remember that the light was brightest on her bare hips. Mr. Carr heard the commotion and woke up. He found me some moments later. He pulled me out of his pool and laid me out on the concrete beside a smear of blood and next to a bra, panties, and boxers. That was the only explanation we would both ever get.

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Stella’s Starwish by Erica Verrillo

The List by Hibah Shabkhez

The ship was swaying too much to read without getting a headache and Klytie Dunthair had fallen asleep on top of her dolly. She was too much of a scaredy-kitten to be much fun anyhow, so when I was stuffed full of the ship’s crumbly cupcakes, I snuck up under Aunty’s table to listen. She was still munching away on the biscuits, though her newly-acquired to-be-dumped-as-soon-as-we-docked friend Mrs Dunthair contented herself with punctuating sips of tea with soulful sighs.

“They should not let Ilken on passenger ships,” Aunty Merinantha was saying, in that flushed squeaky way she has when she is annoyed. “I spoke to the Captain and he is most unhappy about it. They have a list, of course, but it still isn’t safe. In Enalton I heard there was a boy they let in last month who …” The Ilken-Knilde, the fang-blooded clans of the Ryokoi … Their voices sank to low whispers, as people’s voices always did when they talked about them, and I could not hear them however close I drew. So I decided to try naïve curiosity instead.

“Are we stopping somewhere, Aunty? Who’s coming on board?”

“Bless the child!” exclaimed Mrs Dunthair as my head popped out, falling back upon her cushions in a half-faint, though without spilling a drop of her tea.

“No one,” said Aunty sharply. “How many times have I spoken to you about this nasty habit of eavesdropping, Aziantha? You will go down to your cabin and remain there until I tell you otherwise. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Aunty,” I said meekly and fled, resolving of course to do nothing of the kind.

The day dragged on through the sweltering heat, and I fell into a real doze in my hammock, from which the landing-blasts of the horn yanked me awake. Aunty was safely nodding over her knitting in the lounge, and I climbed up to our almost-deserted deck, dodging the gauntlet of heads craning out of something or the other.

Slowly I crept closer along the rim of the ship for a look at the dreaded Ilken, with their ash-coloured hair and their startling blue-green eyes standing out vividly in high-boned reddish faces. Grotesque, misshapen savages with noses hooked like hawks, they said, fang-blooded creatures who could shoot poisoned pine-needles from their palms … The very worst of the fang-blooded were the dread spell-weavers with fire-tinged hair, like the girl staring at me from the cliff, holding up her little brother so that he could see too. I was too fascinated to be scared and matched her stare for stare, and so without a wave or even a smile we became friends.

In the berth next to ours there was another ship, surrounded by crewmen with quarterstaves just as ours was beginning to be, holding off the horde of people stretching all the way back to the thrice-curtained ruin of the Last Castle. Here they were scattered and crumpled upon the flint-sand beach like a bouquet mussed underfoot by careless children, and none of them shot poisoned needles, not even when a sailor pushed a little girl back and made her cry.

At the rim of the land they were forming a kind of ragged line, and my witch-friend was in it too, holding the little boy’s hand and helping along an old lady. The captain was tacking up a huge scroll that dipped past his knees, scratching out names as he let a thin trickle of them onto our ship, one by one, forcing the rest back.

The first people they let on were the family of the little girl the sailor had hit. She was tugging

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The List by Hibah Shabkhez

at her mother’s skirt and saying over and over “Where’s Asrai, Mama? Isn’t he coming too?” And the mother, in that singsong I-am-lying-to-you-but-you-will-believe-me falsetto my Aunt always drops into when talking about my parents, prised her away … “Oh yes, darling, but his family is on the other ship, the one over there. When we reach the Kinshuredor you can play with him again.” She was still half a baby, and even now at fifteen I would not dare to ask questions of that voice.

Anyway, I had my eyes scrunched on the witch-girl just then. Everyone was backing away from her family, even the other Ilken-people, but she walked right past them without flinching. She glanced up at me, though neither of us gave so much as a nod, bound by some mutually-understood agreement of secrecy.

They were too busy to notice me as I wormed my down through the Ilken and the sailors to the captain with his list, only just in time for her turn. The little boy from the cliff was clinging to her skirt and on her other arm she was propping up a trembly old-faced lady.

“Philliantha Amakuri” The woman with her rasped. “This is my son Nyrfael, and – my daughter, Lyrderi. I know you have us on your list.”

The captain frowned his way down the scroll, and back up again. “We have you and your son, but there is no daughter listed,” he said.

“There must be a mistake in your list. She is my daughter, I swear it!” And then of course everyone knew she was not.

“Philliantha Amakuri – you are the wife of Caél Amakuri, are you not? Offered refuge in exchange for valuable information.” The distaste in the Captain’s voice made her cringe, but she shuffled forward and fastened herself to his hand.

“Aye, I’m a traitor,” She whispered. “I betrayed my own people, the vilest crime on the face of the earth. Yet I did not do it – for – for money, or – I meant to stop this, you see, I thought if I could warn them in time no one would have to die… They promised – they promised no harm would come ... scorn me all you will, I have deserved it. But this child – she is innocent, and good. She saved my boy’s life. We had no food and no one would help us – who would sully themselves with a traitor? ... She is only half Ilken, you know, her father was an Ephelain, and she could have stayed if she had not looked so much like her mother, but they won’t listen, they will kill her now if they see her. You wouldn’t let a good, kind, innocent child die, would you, Captain? Please, let her come … ”

“Unfortunately, she is not on the list, unlike you and your spawn.” Snapped the captain, shaking her off. “Get on or get ye hence, I care not.”

I was looking at Lyrderi – everyone was, except the captain. She was looking only at me, and I swallowed hard again and again to snuff the war of the voices inside my head. “Say something, do something …” “Like what? They won’t listen to me, and if Aunty finds out …” To this day I do not know what else I could have done, could have been in that moment, and to this day the guilt of a craven silence more contemptible than any overt treachery poisons my heart, although there was nothing accusing in those flint-flecked eyes of the sea’s own green; instead, for the first time, she was smiling, and as distinctly as if she had said it I could feel in her the echo of my own absurdly trivial regret that we would never really get to know each other.

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The List by Hibah Shabkhez

Gently she drew her arm away from the woman and knelt down beside the little boy, who was clutching her gown with both hands, too old to cry, too young to do anything else. She detached the gown, flicked his hair back from his forehead, pulled a little whittled scare-crow doll from her pocket and gave it to him, and then turned around and ran, as though all the clubs on the quay were aimed at her head.

They pulled the limp weeping woman on board, and the little boy. As she arced around to the cliffs and out of sight, the grim reserve he had set upon himself broke and he began to cry, screaming after her “Come back! Come back! Take me with you! Deri! Deri! Come back!”

I scanned the crowds for her, like her not-quite-brother beside me gripping the scarecrow-doll. All through the sunset we watched, until the last name on the list was crossed off. They began to pull draw up the ropes, hoist the sails – and then, over all the commotion, the crying and the wailing and the shouting and the creaking, rose a clear whistling song from the cliffs.

A hush had fallen now upon the very wind, and we were all of us gazing up at her. There she was, my witch-friend, Lyrderi Ephelain, waving from the cliff, head held high, fiery hair flying in the wind, forsaken unto almost certain death but still with courage enough still to share with us who were sailing away to life and safety.

('The List' has appeared online in a writing challenge.

https://12shortstories.com/2017/06/08/the-list-by-hibah-shabkhez/)

By the Water by Camille Pissarro

33

Transgressions by Mike Todd

My father and he were not much alike. They did, of course, resemble each other physically as much as most brothers did. However, in their hearts and in their minds, in their speech and in their actions, they differed. Uncle James smoked Camels, unfiltered. Dad smoked the occasional cigarette as a young man, later experimented briefly (and somewhat pretentiously) with a pipe when professional success seemed within his grasp, but otherwise abstained from tobacco. Instead, my father's drug of choice was coffee. He introduced me to its pleasures when I was a toddler--not the drinking of the final product, but the sniffing of the aroma that leaked out of a new can just punctured with an opener an inch or two below our noses. That was the smell of my father. Uncle James was the smell of stale cigarette smoke, bologna burps, and beer farts. This, too, can be said of Uncle James: he was crude, but somehow forgivable; he was generally lazy, but also generally self-sufficient; he was uneducated and unlearned, but still very opinionated. Most of all, he was a bigot. He was Southern, white, and male and did not think highly of those who were not. If someone asked him, he claimed he was a Christian of the Protestant flavor (though the first time I ever saw him in a church was at his funeral). He could stand other Protestants of most denominations (but not Catholics or non-Christians) as long as they did not start Bible-thumping around him, trying to save him, and so forth. And he did not care much for people who had more or less money or education than he. Unfortunately for him and those who cared--or might have cared--for him, his bigotry was much too prominent a characteristic. His bigotry was, in essence, his entire personality. He never married because his views of the opposite sex limited the field to women who agreed with him, which not only were few, but also undesirable because, by definition, they thought so little of themselves. He never had many friends because his criteria culled out almost everybody, leaving only a few men like himself: suspicious, self-adulating, self-defeating men, prisoners of their own mind's self-imposed limitations. His own family loved him, but never really liked him, put up with him, but only to a certain point. He had created a large gulf between him and the rest of the world, then stranded himself on a small, lonely island in its middle. He died in September, 1964. That year he witnessed the adoption of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, the one that eliminated poll taxes. He did not like it. "Those Yankee bastards! The Declaration of Independence is the most perfect thing ever wrote, next to the Bible, and ever since the Civil War, they have to change it ever time the niggers start boo-hooing about how unfair everything is. Well I say, if they don't like it, then they should just haul off and leave. Talk about being unfair, them niggers are taking jobs from white men, trying to take the women from white men--that's what it's coming to, that's what they want--and ever time they get a little more, they start crying for something new. I think we oughta just ship them all back to Africa where all the other monkeys are. Or at least do like they do over in Mississippi. They got the right idea. Niggers start bitching and moaning down there and they just catch them a young buck and lynch him. I'm here to tell ya, that'll shut the rest of them up real quick." He witnessed the British invasion, the one led by the Beatles. I do not know that he cared one way or another about it. If he did, I am sure that he did not appreciate a bunch of foreigners coming over and taking a boatload of our money with them back to England.

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He witnessed the reports of three civil rights workers disappearing and later being discovered dead and buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi. He liked that. "Well, what the hell'd they expect? A nigger and two nigger-lovers trying to stir up things in the heart of Mississippi. They was practically just begging to be killed. Serves them right, too. FBI should just stay the hell out of it, too. It ain't none of their damn business. Ever heard of states' rights? Besides that, they ain't gonna catch them boys. Even if they did, a Mississippi jury won't do nothing to them. They's good ol' boys. They's their friends and neighbors who was just looking out for the whole community. Hell, they's heroes to that town. Ain't no jury gonna do a damn thing to them boys." He witnessed the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He did not like it. "My God, what's the world coming to? When are they ever gonna stop with all this bullshit?" He witnessed the surrender of his second favorite state, Mississippi, to the evils of elementary school desegregation a full decade after Brown vs. the Board of Education. He did not like it. "What is the world coming to?" He witnessed Miss Arkansas attain the Miss America crown. Of course, he liked that. We all did. Then on September 23rd, he died up in St. Louis. He missed Johnson winning the Presidential election. I do not think he would have liked the outcome of that race either way. He did not like Johnson because he, like so many before him, became "a traitor to his race." He did not like Goldwater because he was a Yankee(?) and a Republican. My uncle's idea of a dream ticket was Faubus and Wallace, or maybe vice versa. Then he missed what he surely would have thought was the greatest of all possible calamities that year, the ultimate insult to the white race: Martin Luther King, Jr. winning the Nobel Peace Prize. "What in the hell is the world coming to?" I can hear him say. "Peace Prize my ass! How many people's died since he started stirring up all this bullshit?" The way I figure it, it was just as well that Uncle James died when he did because he only had a few weeks to live anyway: this one surely would have killed him. As it happened, it was not King but another black man that killed him in September. At least that is how we heard the story from a friend of his who was with him when it happened. We had never heard of this friend before he called my grandmother with the news, but he told her the story of how James had died defending the honor of a white woman whom he did not even know, how a nigger had insulted her within my uncle's earshot in a restaurant, how he had made vulgar and suggestive comments, how she had naturally become disgusted and turned to walk away, how he had grabbed her arm harshly and called her "Baby," how Uncle James had rushed over to her defense and dressed the nigger down, how he had been rewarded with a knife in the abdomen, how the nigger had fled never to be seen again, and how my uncle had died in this friend's arms saying, "Tell my family I loved them," as his damsel and a few bystanders wept because of the injustice of it all. We did not know how much of this story was true and how much had been fabricated (or at least exaggerated). Upon speaking with the police in St. Louis, Deputy Taylor discovered that the "restaurant" was really a strip club. He told us this after his phone conversation, then seemed immediately to regret having said it in front of Mom and me. He pulled my father aside and

Writers’ Bios

Transgressions by Mike Todd

35

Transgressions by Mike Todd

conveyed the details privately. Neither would answer my questions, but from their expressions I could infer a couple of things: the assailant was not necessarily black and Uncle James was probably drunk and, therefore, doubly antagonistic. My dad, of course, took care of all the arrangements: getting my uncle's body back from St. Louis, getting an undertaker, getting Grandma's preacher. "How's she holding up?" he (the preacher) asked Dad about Grandma when he came over to our house to plan the service. "Oh, as well as can be expected, I guess," Dad said as he sat across the kitchen table from the preacher. They both seemed somewhat relaxed, drinking coffee and fiddling with spoons, but my mother sat beside my father straight and proper without a prop. "The only thing is--she's handling his death about as good as can be expected, as I said. Of course it isn't easy to outlive your own son--" Mom stiffened even more and sighed a little as my father patted her hand. "Of course it's not," the preacher said more to my mother than to my father. "I understand. And it's not easy to have to see another mother losing a son, to have to live through all that." "No," my mother said, her voice breaking slightly. "No, it's not," Dad agreed. He patted Mom's hand again, then turned back to the preacher. "No, it's not easy for many different reasons. Of course, dealing with James' death is a little easier in some ways because, even though it was real sudden, it was still more like him dying from a long, drawn out disease. Ya know what I mean? I mean, it sounds kinda bad when ya say it, but none of us were really too surprised when it happened. We always figured something like this would end up happening someday. I hope that doesn't sound--" "No, no. I think I know what you mean," the preacher said. He gave my father a small smile to assure him that there was no need to feel guilty about recognizing my uncle's shortcomings. "I had met James myself a couple of times, so I think I know what you mean. Of course, your mother was always worried about him, always talking to me about him, always at a loss, wanting advice and guidance, always praying for him. I did what little I could and tried to make her see that we could--and should--pray and hope, of course, but that it was ultimately up to each and every individual to save their own souls, that we could try to lead them to Jesus and Salvation, but that nobody else, no matter how much they loved them, could do it for--" "That's the thing, though," my father said. "That's what I was trying to get at. Mom is handling his death about as good as can be expected, she really is, but it's tearing her up to think about James burning in Hell now. It's tearing her that he wasn't ever saved." "Oh, yes. Yes, I see. Poor gal. Well, she's certainly got enough to fret about right now. She doesn't need to be worrying about that. I think I can take care of that for y'all. I believe I can ease her mind."

***** At my uncle's graveside, the preacher began to say some final words. Two days earlier, he had told my grandmother in private how James had come to him just a week before he went to St. Louis confessing how he had lived for too long as a sinner and now wanted to get right with the Lord.

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Transgressions by Mike Todd

Grandma, relieved, cried tears of happiness when her preacher told her how James and he knelt down and prayed for his eternal Salvation, how James opened his heart to Jesus, how James repented, how James asked forgiveness for his past transgressions, how James had finally been saved. She and her preacher marveled with joy at the mysterious ways of the Lord leading a soul to Salvation just days before he called him home. And she and her preacher marveled with joy that all those years of prayer had paid off. Then they prayed again, thanking the Lord for his mercy and kindness. Now at the graveside, the preacher mentioned my uncle's last minute Salvation again. Grandma, who had been weeping, straightened her back, raised her head slightly and looked on with pride, pride that her son had been saved, pride that she had contributed to his being saved. Her son had not failed in his primary obligation in life. She had not failed as a mother after all. I was proud, too. I was not nearly as religious as Grandma, but the fate of my uncle's soul had also been bothering me the last few days. Now, as the preacher told us of the miraculous timing of my uncle's Salvation, I was happy. It did not occur to me for several years that the preacher had been lying, that he had made this whole Salvation story up. When one day years later I did, for some unknown reason, think about it and finally realize that the whole thing had been pure fabrication, I was angry that a preacher of all people would have engaged in such dishonesty about something that he himself should have held so sacred. Then I thought about how much relief it had provided Grandma and I understood. Maybe he had not saved James from eternal torment in the afterlife, but he had saved Grandma from tormenting herself for the rest of her natural one. He lied, yes, but it was the most honorable lie I ever heard. After delivering this lie to the mourners, the preacher mentioned something about Jesus being pierced in his side with a sword, which I guess was supposed to be similar to my uncle's being stabbed. Then he reminded us how God Himself had lost His son, that He had given him up to save us all, and that we should take joy in that, for after all, our lives here are just temporary and we would all meet again in the great hereafter. Then he walked over to where Grandma was sitting on a folding chair under the canvas canopy erected by the funeral home, held her hands gently, whispered something about being truly sorry, then walked away. The service was over. We sat for a while as the other mourners paraded by paying their respects to us, mostly to Grandma. Then as the other mourners filtered out, walking to their cars then driving away, Grandma began to realize that she would also have to leave soon. She began crying a little louder. Dad wrapped his arms around her. Mom rose from the chair beside my father and sat on the other side of Grandma so she, too, could offer her comfort. "There, there," she said to Grandma as she began to cry more herself. "It'll be alright." "Oh, I know it will. Now I won't have to worry about him any more," Grandma said. "I shouldn't say it, I know, but he always worried me so. I loved him with all my heart, but he always worried me so. So now I won't have to worry any more. We'll all be alright. But it's still so hard. Mothers shouldn't have to bury their children." Mom began crying harder and Grandma followed her example. Grandma broke away from my father's embrace and turned towards my mother. They hugged each other tighter for a few moments. "No, they shouldn't," Mom said as she sobbed and hugged her mother-in-law.

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Transgressions by Mike Todd

Then they slowly pulled apart and Grandma returned to my father's arms. Mom stood up and said, "Well, I think I'll take a little walk." She turned and walked away leaving my uncle's blood relatives alone at his graveside. We sat for just a few moments as Grandma's sobbing ebbed and as she steadily loosened her grip on my father. When she reached the point where she was merely weeping softly and leaning into my father's embrace, she said, "Well, Son, I guess I'm about ready to go." We stood and began to walk slowly up the hill. Mom was in a far corner of the cemetery looking down at a small headstone. She saw us moving toward the car and began walking in the same direction. She, too, wept softly. She joined us as we walked the last few feet toward the car. Dad put his arm around her, then looked inquisitively at the part of her dress where a flower had hung earlier. "I put it on . . . on the grave," she said as she walked to the passenger side of the car. We got into the car and drove away leaving James forever behind. In the end, Uncle James had been alone. He might have died in a crowded "restaurant" like his friend said; nevertheless, he was always alone. Even though he had this friend, he had no friends. Even though he had had women, he did not have a woman, he did not have the woman. The most he had was his family, those who had to love him, but did not have to like him, those who had to accept him, but did not have to respect him. I loved Uncle James, yes. I missed him for a while. I was saddened by his death. But I did not truly mourn. Most of those who knew and loved him did not. We had expected something like this for years and were, thus, quite prepared. So as we buried our family's black sheep, we did so lamenting not the tragedy of a life lost too early, but the tragedy of a short life wasted.

(Originally appeared in AIM)

Study of a Peasant by Camille Pissarro

38

Living and Dying Naturally By Clifton Bates

“It takes a long time to grow an old friend.” J. Leonard When they visited their childhood spot near the wide river, the two Yup’ik Eskimo men sat on the same driftwood benches they had carried there and arranged long ago. Sammy often spoke of his wife and children to Kim-boy when they visited Where the Ravens Play: the crude camp they made on a knoll behind their village when they were young boys. He shared his latest family news and how his daughter and sons were growing and changing. Kim-boy was comfortable listening and speaking with Sammy. He would tell Sammy about his latest hunting, trapping and fishing efforts. One log bench they never sat on. That was Cutty’s in tribute. It was where he was sitting years past when he excitedly pointed to the sky after spotting the ravens rolling and playing in the wind currents against the hill that first time. That is what this place was still called by the two aging men who occasionally came to sit here and share coffee. “My mother, my grandmother and Sophie, they died in natural ways and that was good. My father, Cutty, and Andrew died, but it was not natural in any way.” After some silence passed Sammy quietly offered, “People should do their best to die naturally.” Kim-boy agreed and figured that was what he surely planned to do. And he wished the same for Sammy. They’d quit drinking years ago. They sat and were silent, and he reflected on his grandparents who all died naturally. He was glad he got to know his mother’s and father’s parents before they died: especially his dear grandmother who he got to know oh so very well and whom he missed so much.

*** Kim-boy didn’t really enjoy ice fishing because he didn’t like to just sit in one spot. But he liked gathering the catch into gunnysacks for the women and being a part of the goings on. And he was always interested in the little squirming worms that fell off the flapping lush, white fish, and pike as they quickly froze on the ice after being jerked from their world through the hole and into the fisherman’s world. His grandmother and his mother loved to ice fish and that made him happy too. Anything that pleased his grandmother and his mother, made Kim-boy happy. As a boy he was mystified by the curious, eerie sounds the huge, frozen river produced: like the sharp, loud phhhhsssssstt when the ice cracked, split and shot scarily across underfoot or somewhere nearby. Or at times when it sounded like giant empty oil drums were colliding and booming against each other, echoing mysteriously deep under the ice. These were things that made him wonder and imagine, but he never told anyone how they also frightened him. It was Kim-boy’s grandpa, his father’s father, who used to tell him all kinds of interesting, curious things that made him wonder and consider. One day he explained to Kim-boy the reason why the villagers upriver spoke so much faster than the people who lived around Qavik. “Upriver the water flows much more quick. If your boat gets loose, you have to yell fast for someone to grab it before it gets carried away. Around here, if your boat gets loose, there’s no real rush. No reason to get too bothered about such things. It ain’t going very far very fast. That’s why the upriver folk speak so much faster than us.”

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Years later Kim-boy was told by a Coastal friend that it was upriver people who spoke slower than downriver folk! So, he didn’t know what to believe. He could never tell who spoke slower. All he knew was that the teachers he had spoke really fast. His grandpa had many other peculiar theories he shared with Kim-boy. He told Kim-boy the reason Kass’aqs, white people, ask so many questions all the time is because they are scared of silence. “What other reason could there be? They don’t often seem to be too interested in listening to answers much. Sometimes they should maybe just watch. Look and not just talk and talk. Nothing afraid about quiet.” Then he explained that, “It’s best to say you don’t know to whatever question they ask, unless it is someone you know who really wants to know the answer. “You can tell most of the time if it is a real question or not,” his grandpa added. It wasn’t until Kim-boy was older that he understood. It brought to mind a time in school. A new teacher asked him what a fish camp was. He told her he didn’t know. Maybe he answered her that way instinctively. This grandpa lived to be over ninety years old. It seems what he spoke when Kim-boy was young was true. Kim-boy heard him say it over and over again, every time they went ice fishing. Every time they went down river to where the other river came into the Kuskokwim, Kim-boy remembered what his grandpa would exclaim. Whoever caught the first big lush fish called out for his grandpa, “Here you go. A fresh lush liver just for you!” His grandpa waddled over to the fisherman with this lush fish, and he stooped down and cut open its belly, reached in and pulled out the liver. Sometimes it would be almost a foot long. He stood and his parka hood fell back as he tilted his head and he slowly lowered the dripping, raw lush liver into his mouth as he chewed and swallowed until it was all gone. Afterwards, every time, he licked his lips and patted his chest once or twice with his open hands and announced to anyone, everyone, and no one, “Keep me warm. Make me strong and live real long!” Kim-boy pondered that maybe what he spoke was true.

***

After the long quiet between the two men when each had been doing his own private thinking and reminiscing, Sammy poured coffee from the thermos into their mugs that spring morning, and he looked up to see if the ravens were playing. The sky was empty. He hoped some would come before they decided to leave. It was plenty windy. He knew Kim-boy was headed back upriver soon, and he didn’t know when they would be here together again. Sammy broke the silence telling Kim-boy with a smile, “The ravens are maybe off somewhere thinking and talking about dying too.” After a bit, Kim-boy spoke what was for him a little speech, “You and your wife and boys are healthy and strong. Your family has been my family for a long, long time. On that hand, I am very lucky. And I am so happy for you. We both have lost our mothers and fathers, you and I lost my brother, Cutty. We all lost my son Andrew.”

Living and Dying Naturally By Clifton Bates

40

Then Kim-boy started to say something more about Andrew. Then about his late wife, Sophie, but he stopped. Tears welled in his eyes. He shook his head slowly back and forth and then smiled, “But I take great pleasure in your youngest boy and his wife naming their little daughter Sophie. That makes me very happy, and I will be good to my little wife, your granddaughter.” “That’s right, Kim-boy. If we think of little Sophie maybe both of us would be talking more about living and not so much about dying.” What Sammy said made Kim-boy think of something from their past that would move their talk to a lighter subject. He smiled and brought up the memory of old Gramma Esther and her unusual dog. They laughed together and talked about the widow’s old dog. It was like that dog was always there. It was a fixture on a chain hooked to a stake in the front yard of her one room shack in Qavik. “I think it was an old dog even when we were kids,” Sammy said. Kim-boy said, “He was still there in the same place after we graduated high school!” “That gray dog didn’t even have a name. It never exercised. Never got off his tether. I never seen a soul pet that dog,” Sammy shook his head. “I don’t think it ever even barked one time.” They talked about how Gramma Esther somehow deemed it time, and she walked out of her house with a whole salmon in her gnarled hands. Without saying a word, she tossed it to her dog and then went back inside. Frozen salmon in the winter, fresh salmon in the summer: that dog would just gnaw on the fish and after a few days there wouldn’t be the tiniest part of it left to be seen. Maybe a week would go by before Gramma Esther got to thinking that dog needed another salmon. As they did for all the elders and widows, the villagers provided food for her. And the people in the village argued about the age of her dog. Everyone seemed to have their memories that allowed them to calculate his years. Some were sure he was at least twenty, some said even more, and some offered that it could be a world record. The world’s oldest dog, right here in Qavik. Others scoffed at that and tried to give evidence that it wasn’t too much more than seventeen: eighteen at the most. People wondered who was going to live longer, the dog or Gramma Esther. If nothing else Sammy thought that veterinarians might learn something from Gramma Esther’s way of caring for dogs and reconsider their theories on diet, exercise, and longevity. “Maybe if I hadn’t taken such good care of my dog, Won-One, he would’ve lived a lot longer,” Kim-boy smiled. “Us kids used to hear Gramma Esther singing strange songs alone in her house all the time. We were scared of her. There were all those rumors. She was maybe a witch or something,” Sammy said as Kim-boy nodded. “I remember some people whispered she had animal eyes.”

Living and Dying Naturally By Clifton Bates

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Living and Dying Naturally By Clifton Bates

“But I think kids stopped being scared of her when they heard what she did for Oly’s wife.” Kim-boy and Sammy reminisced how trappers and hunters secretly gave her mink belly pelts for years. No one knew she saved them until she had enough. Then she sewed a beautiful floor length parka made only out of mink bellies. It took her many winters. They recalled that when she finally finished it she brought it to Oly’s trading post one Christmas and gave it to Oly’s wife. “You were there, weren’t you?” Sammy asked. “Yeah, I remember that it made her cry. She was so surprised and happy and she cried hard.” “Maybe we weren’t scared of Gramma Esther so much after that.” Sammy and Kim-boy knew well when Gramma Esther passed away but neither could recall whatever happened to her dog. They smiled together and wagged their heads at their memories of that old, old dog that was always there in that yard as they grew up. But they agreed even that aged critter must have died sometime, finally, of very old age. “I didn’t mean to, but we ended up talking about dying again anyway,” Kim-boy realized, as he smiled and calmly reached over and clinked his coffee mug with Sammy’s: “Here’s to Sophie, your precious granddaughter. And here’s to living, and to one day us dying naturally.” Sammy nodded in agreement; then they both looked up into the sky in hopes the ravens were there playing in the wind.

Woman Digging in Orchard by Camille Pissarro

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Alias Santa for a Time by Tom Sheehan

Christmas was coming. Who'd be Santa Claus had suddenly gotten sticky. There had to be forty or so kids living in the urban cul-de-sac, all of them in squashed-in apartments in a dozen three- and four-decker buildings, the pigeons on the roof often mingling with the kids at tall hide-'n'-seek, romances in dark budding, now and then some contraband or stolen goods getting exposed, two or three gymnasts every generation that managed and used the roof tops for exercises, dares, escapes of one sort or another. Merton Place, from various points of view, was a city in itself. And Christmas was coming. It was around the corner. And Tony Andrelli and Studs Noffclip had been here longest of the tenants and enjoyed liberties that others had not attained. Tony collected the rents for the owner who was never seen in this inner-city, and Studs was responsible for light maintenance ... for that's all there was outside of the self-taught, self-fixers in this inner population for whatever goods or trade could get them. The favors for such work extended in all directions, north, south, east, west and up and down ... the up and down usually was a mutual sharing of tenderness and decent excitement under good cover or locked doors. And Christmas was coming. The two hirelings received free rent for their labors, each task differing by varying degrees depending on natural damages (like lightning, rust, leaky roofs, lay-offs, company strikes, sudden market changes ... the corner market where credit was tempted, hampered, shunned, punished), intentional complexities forcing or demanding Studs Noffclip' intervention with a night visit, tenant characteristics like smoldering anger and jealousy of a father whose weekly pay on his own job often did not cover the full rent or only a heavy portion of it, an abrazingly slow, teasing handover of rent accompanied by unsaid promises from an older daughter of a young widow, for Death and Banishment, both being kind of an exile, hung in the late shadows as though they had also rented space on Merton Place. Tony was a good-looking forty-year old widower of a dozen years who viewed Merton Place as a kind of heaven, swearing he'd never leave there. Studs Noffclip was fifty if a day, had a better sense of humor than Tony, could be lied to by adults and kids alike because none of the lies were allowed to mean anything to him or his relations with people. He swaggered home late on Saturday evenings now and then when he'd "leave the territory" so his footprints, fingerprints, bloodline and owed favors had no traceability. He could carpenter an unlevel door, wire a new or replacement electrical outlet, knock off a leaky faucet as if he'd said "See Studs in reverse," repair a fan or an A/C with the best of them and could wallpaper a room or a hallway (at one level) in one day ... for hire. He was called Mr. Fix-It by the ladies of the cul-de-sac. His face was "Healthy-square," as one tenant fixed it, "like one of the heroes in the comic section of the Sunday Globe. You know, he'll be there when you need him, 'no doubt about it, no bout about it.' He'd stick his finger in an open socket to save your kid or mine. He's not as good looking as Tony, but he's warmer, his curls are still in place on the back of his neck and sexy where his T-shirt shows him off, and if he ever lets go of that smile of his he'd own more places than the landlord. But it's got to be reserved for someone special and it looks like she ain't here yet." That view found agreement all over Merton Place, from the ladies, daughters, boys whose trykes and

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Alias Santa for a Time by Tom Sheehan

bikes needed fixing and helpless fathers who looked at electrical outlets like they'd look upon a thick, leather-bound book of Western Civilization. To a woman they called Tony "Lover-Boy," some of them directly in person, and with or without smiles or any serious leaning to their intent ... as so read by the general population of Merton Place ... with curiosity. Tony, on the other hand from Studs' stand, was suspicious of every story told him by renters, by their daughters and sons if substituted at due day. He felt they impacted his standing in the community, made him a lesser man than was his fellow worker. "Being lied to cheapens both sides of a story." Tony's heaven should not be rocked by such insults, as they twisted his view of mankind. All duties and directions should be easy and comfortable; a "yes," "no," or "I sure will as soon as I'm done with this one," did the trick On rent day they called him, "Groucho without the glasses and the mustache." Mrs. Heckles (her real name FYI) yelled out her window to Tony Andrelli, caught down below as a light snow whipped between her building and the next one, 12 feet apart, where the widow Dunne lived on the third level with her brood of kids, all six with her blood, from ages four to 15, and her husband dead for six of those years, rental funds now in return for good graces, Mrs. Heckles might advise. She knew that Marcy Dunne would hear every word and actively join the conversation, as Tony Andrelli particularly favored one of the Dunne boys. "Hey, Tony, if you want a hot coffee, c'mon over. Christmas is comin' and I'm pavin' the way. If you don't like my brand of coffee on a cold day just before Christmas is comin', I'm sure Marcy across the way has another kind you'll probably like." The window was wide open and a few flakes and a slight breeze came in as company, only making her shiver a little bit so long as she could deliver her message. "Hey, what the heck," she continued, "Christmas is comin'," remembering one time she had thrown a bit of light garbage out the window and down into the tight alley and Tony saw her do it and never told Studs Noffclip. It would mean something to Studs but not to Tony. "People did such things," he'd probably muttered to himself, and then lied about it or evaded it entirely. You had to take three steps to their one to keep ahead of them, lies covering more ground than one can imagine, even on a snowy, cold day and Christmas on the horizon. Marcy Dunne's window snapped open and she leaned out into the soft snow. "Tony," she yelled in a voice softened from usual, "I heard you were going to be Santa Claus this year for the little kids. I'm glad to hear that. You'll make a great Santa Claus for them and for us too, us old but not too old folks. Bring me a present when you get a chance." She didn't wait for an answer, didn't look at Deborah Heckles, and shut the window with loud punctuation. The snow continued in the alley, the sky getting grayer and grayer, the flakes smaller and smaller. Old timers knew the difference. Tony said to Studs, window to window on the third deck of their separate buildings, "Some one of them's elected me as Santa Claus this year, and I hate that stuff. They'll try to fill me with a bunch of lies and bologna about the rent and I hate that stuff. I really hate it. They lie with their back teeth floating on their tongues like the Devil's rotating the liar's tiller by hand. You have to do me a favor, Studs. You got to be Santa Claus. I can't handle that stuff. It drives me crazy. They lie like tomorrow's

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Alias Santa for a Time by Tom Sheehan

never coming down the home stretch." "Think they'd get mad? Any of them?" Studs spoke seemingly just above a whisper as if night was bringing guests, or he didn't want the topic to transfer to all the tenants. The evening, though, came descending in spasms of shades caused by the snow and a sudden brisk breeze, and night was in the spasms flickering with the snow and the city lights and a bare yellow bulb leaking a yellow glow clawing its way between the houses, from where it burned nightly in the deepest curve of Merton Place, oftentimes the signal to "the way home." Studs realized, for the first time, as he leaned over the windowsill, that he was bigger and stouter than Tony, especially around the gut, and would make a better looking Santa Claus than Tony. Whoever played the part would never measure up to Jackson, who had a gift for it, who didn't have to pick up a red and white uniform once a year to improve himself. Jackson was different than all of them ... him, Tony, the landlord, the tenants. He wondered if the red and white suit had transformed him from what he might have been. It all made him think heavily. Studs was looking out his back window at the city, now shrouded by the thin whitish-grayish curtain of snow, so light it promised a heavy and constant fall. They were in for good one. Where lights were popping on and others, more distant, went dimmer and were lost in the thin veil as swift as cancellations. A swift thought slammed into him ... an army buddy swallowed by an avalanche on a skiing trip high in western mountains, the only time they had ever skied, he and his old comrades. They hunted two days and never found him, never skiing again, that band of comrades, never coming together again. "All the ladies are counting on you, Tony, so that means the kids. That's the way it stands. Too bad old Jackson had to pass on. He was a great Santa for a dozen years. I thought he'd never leave us, the kids really loved him, even the ones that have grown up and pass Christmas like it doesn't count anymore. That Junkins kid's a perfect example. Never learned a thing from Christmas, never gave anything to anybody except heartache to his folks and ten straight facing him in jail for one stupid mistake." "You believe that, Studs, that it was a mistake? Kid's been a liar his whole life. I saw it way back. He even stole from Jackson one time, nothing big, but stole a package." The falling snow drew Studs out of the past and he wondered what Tony really thought about when things happened to kids, like Spud Jenkins. Tony had told him, on the sly, that he had seen Junkins steal a package left right at Jackson's door. "Took it like it was his own delivery. Stuffed it in his shirt like he used to load up on candy at Arthur's Variety." "You tell Jackson? You never told Arthur any of that stuff." Somehow, with all past histories of the "known felons in our midst," as Tony whispered, chanted, dispensed as a guarded aside even when they were away from the cul-de-sac, Studs didn't have to imagine what Tony was thinking, or in this case, cross over to the next building to find out. He looked at Tony as Tony studied the snow, determining that he too saw the snow as minute pieces

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Alias Santa for a Time by Tom Sheehan

of a blanket that would cover everything in sight. Eventually it would hide all surfaces, all projections, all outlines, under its virtual cape, coat, canvas, coverlet, whatever they'd readily call it. For starters, the finest snow falling for hours was able to hide monuments, the Statue of Liberty, the four presidents of the mountainous park, the highest peaks of the Alps, the Himalayas, the Pyrenees, all the mountains he'd try to forget himself, that even Jackson had tried to forget in his half cruise through Hell in WW II ... as well as all the lies and feeble excuses ever told. Perpetration, at least, buried for a season. Was Christmas any different there, in those places? The split in the two-way conversation and attendant thoughts came with a sudden and strident female voice from below them. "Tony, if you were thinking of wearing Jackson's Santa Claus suit, you're not getting the chance. Myrtle just told me it went out with the trash one day. She says she doesn't know who tossed it, but it's gone, been gone since just after the funeral, July not having much call for Santa Claus get-ups." There was a pause. "You better hurry down to Overton's and get another one. He's going to close down pretty soon. If you don't get it at Overton's, you'll have to go to Cotton City in this weather to get one." Tony, Studs knew, hadn't been in Overton's since the great argument over ten years ago. He wouldn't go now. And he'd never get to Cotton City in this snow, the wind now whirling, the breeze gone to a wind, the spasms now crossed over from sorry palpitations to aches and pains and pure anguish for anyone on the road ... and Christmas Eve not holding back for anybody or anything, even old Jolly Nick with a grouch on rough as a P12 grit sandpaper. That's what the successor-by-demand for Santa Claus had looked like since he had assented to motherly demands. "Motherly" meaning one mother in particular and no name crossing Studs' lips. "I can't do it, Studs. I know I promised, but I can't do it. No Overton's either. Never that." Tony was looking at Studs as if a favor was due, not eye-to-eye, but keeping his head lowered like one lion in a cage of two, his brows just touching the soulful pupils to be seen where they sat in the fluid of sympathy's request. Studs was measuring his silent neighbor, the speed of the wind now accompanied by screams, screeches, howls coming off downspouts, building corners, sheet metal edges of roofs where ice tended to build up in the old days. Studs didn't look at his wrist watch or the wall clock behind him. He studied more of the lights out beyond them. Saw a dozen more distant lights in a matter of seconds dim, twinkle, sputter, die out. Sideways in a hurry came the snow, banks of it, clouds of it, billowing white, blinding. Travel was out for the night; it was Overton's or no Santa Claus for the kids, and for the squads of mothers. Studs got to Overton's just as the lock clicked in the door, Harry on his way home. He opened the door for Studs, greeted him like an old friend. "What brings you down here, Studs?" "I need a Santa Claus suit. Jackson's was thrown in the trash by accident." "I got just what you need, yes sir, just what you need. Perfect fit. Tried it on another fellow just yesterday and he thought he was swimming in the Red Sea. Imagine that." His smile was as wide as a

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Alias Santa for a Time by Tom Sheehan

canyon.. "Don't I have to try it on?" "No worries, Studs, a perfect fit, I swear. Like that jacket I saved for you. A perfect fit, and at a reduced price on a rental or a purchase." He looked closely at his watch. "Melva will shoot me if I'm late. She worries so about my driving since that last accident, the insurance case, her sanity, she says." His hands were wrung as if he were squeezing pain from them. "Look," he said quickly, as he checked the time again, "ten dollars for the holiday, twenty dollars for keeps. No buy in town like this one." He sent one of his special Overton looks; it said all he could amass (Melva waiting, the snow relentless, the traffic forbidden, past favors all lined up in a row). "I'll take it for the $20," Studs said triumphantly, just the way Overton liked it, he was sure. Tony's light flashed twice and Studs opened his window. "You get it?" Tony said. "Yup, I got it. Christmas Eve tomorrow and we're all set." "You're a real pal, Studs," Tony said and brought his window down with a quick slam. Snow, the light fluffy kind, flew off the window sill, and running drops of melted snow showed on the window as it hit the sill. Studs couldn't see Tony turn away from the window, but he knew he did, as usual when he was through window talking. Christmas Eve rolled in on top of a day's plowing, the big rigs running three times through the cul-de-sac, shovels at work at all parts of the day, the alleys cleared, cars moved, small arguments about assigned stations for vehicles, kids throwing snowballs, Studs in a relentless attempt to get into the Santa Claus suit that was generations too small for him. No part of it was sufficient for him. Time pushed its way forward. The younger kids were down in the snow, dancing in the curve of the street, in the great arc of the cul-de-sac, waiting on Santa Claus, the secret pile of gifts locked in Sadie Quinn's closet, the key in Studs' pocket. Studs Noffclip figured it was time; it didn't come as retribution, but as a piece of reality that had been bent out of shape, that needed fixing. He switched the light on and off, his signal to Tony. Tony's light flashed on and he pushed up his window and leaned out. "What is it, Studs? You ready?" Studs let it go. "It doesn't fit me, Tony. I can't get one piece on. Not one arm or one leg. It's too damned small. It's your size. It's a special fit for you." Tony had never said it before, not this way. "You're lying to me, Studs. That's your problem. You promised." It looked as if he was going to slam his window down on top of Christmas Eve. That would be the end of it all, he was certain. Everything they had ever done, alone or together, as a team, or as double agents for the landlord.

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Alias Santa for a Time by Tom Sheehan

But there was left-handed support in the matter for Studs as he thought about settling with Overton, but more so, saving Christmas Eve for the toddlers, the kids, the ones hanging on the edge of Santa Claus, their fingers in the final grip, mothers with their fingers crossed for one more year of innocent smiles, acute acceptance. Mild, sometimes passive, always pleasant, well-liked though he was getting stouter than ever, "He'll never be as lean as Lover-Boy," Studs Noffclip leaned way out the window and yelled, "Marcy Dunne, will you come up here to see me. It's pretty important." His voice shot down into the alley like bomb bay doors had opened. A single light went on in Tony Andrelli's apartment; he was wearing his old black jacket, soon it would be a red jacket, of that Studs was sure ... he knew Tony as well as anybody ever would, both sides of him, the outer and the inner. The only thing he'd worry about would be the Santa Claus smile, the "Merry Christmas" salutations, how Tony might handle his own biggest lies.

(Previously appeared in DM du Jour, 2017).

Camille Pissarro Self-portrait

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Writers’ Bios

Catherine Arra is the author of Slamming & Splitting (Red Ochre Press, 2014), Loving from the Backbone (Flutter Press, 2015) and Tales of Intrigue & Plumage (FutureCycle Press, 2017). A native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York and a former English and writing teacher, Arra now teaches part-time and facilitates a local writers’ group. Find her at www.catherinearra.com T. John Bartlett is an emerging writer from upstate New York. His work has been featured as a winner of the posterproject.org 2018 contest and is forthcoming in various literary reviews. Clifton Bates has lived in Alaska as an educator and a writer since 1977. His poems, plays, short stories and articles on education have appeared in venues around the United States and in various countries. His book “Conflicting Landscapes, American Schooling/Alaska Natives” is used as a text by several university professors. His latest work to be published is a one act play, ‘Witnesses’, which will appear in CIRQUE’s Winter Solstice edition. His home is in Chugiak, Alaska. Aarushi Bhardwaj is a school student from India and has been previously published in Teen Ink Magazine and The Hindustan Times. “Writing can change lives, and there are lives that need to be changed. I care about the future and write about what matters. I wish to write what otherwise remains unseen: millions dead, due to the action of a few.” Robert Blenheim founded The Live Poets Society of Daytona Beach in 1993, and is its current president. His poetry experience includes many speaking appearances and lectures. He is Past President of the Florida State Poets Association (2004-2008). He has won over 120 national and state poetry awards since his entry into serious poetry in the mid 1980's. Bob also loves singing, and he got to fulfill a life's dream by playing Koko in Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Mikado" at the Sands Theatre, Deland in 2008. Marietta Calvanico lives in Staten Island, NY. After spending a bit more than two decades in advertising/marketing, she now works with her architect husband and has been able to devote more time to writing and music. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in print and in on-line publications. Dan A. Cardoza has a B.A. in Psychology and a Master of Science Degree in Counseling from the University of California, Sacramento. Partial credit review: Pierian Spring, Brandon University, Canada, Aleola, Earthwise, Avocet, The Archer, Poetry Northwest, Ardent Poetry Journal, Dead Snakes, Pacific Poetry, The California Quarterly, & Curlew, UK. (Fall 2018) Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan; credits include ten Pushcart nominations, the 2018 Naji Naaman's Literary Prize, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline and others. Kevin Daiss lives and works in Savannah, GA with his wife, son, two dogs, and a guinea pig named Mouse. His work has appeared in Literary House Review and RAW. When he isn’t writing, he is working for the government or searching for vintage video games. Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph.D. is a 87 year old psychologist and a Korean War veteran who has published many of his poems in periodicals such as the Toronto Quarterly, Wisconsin Review, Mobius, The Chiron Review, Descant, Arc Poetry Magazine, London Grip, Taj Mahal Review, Poetica Magazine, Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times. Donald Gasperson has a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Washington and a Master of Arts degree in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. He has worked as a psychiatric counselor. He writes as an exercise in physical, mental and spiritual health. He has been published or has been accepted for publication by Five Willows Literary Review, Poetry Pacific, Three Line Poetry, Quail Bell Magazine and Big Windows Review. Erren Geraud Kelly is a two-time Pushcart nominated poet from Boston. He has been writing for 28 years and has over 300 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine(online), Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications. His most recent publication was in Black Heart Literary Journal; He is the author of the book, "Disturbing The Peace," on Night Ballet Press. John Kojak crafts his writing to speak in diverse voices. His short story “Don Pedro” appeared in Beyond Imagination magazine, “American Hero” in Down In The Dirt, “Beauty and the Beast” in Third Wednesday, “Happy Hands Cleaning Service” in Bête Noire, and “Elizabeth Beatrice Moore” in Pulp Modern.

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Writers’ Bios

His poetry has also appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Dual Coast, The Stray Branch (featured writer), The Literary Commune, Dime Show Review, The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, and Chronogram. George Korolog is a San Francisco Bay Area poet and writer whose work has appeared in over 100 literary journals internationally, including The Los Angeles Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Bookends Review, Tar River Review, Pithead Chapel and many others. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. He can often be found backpacking alone in the mountains or forests, along the ocean or in the desert, and is sometimes known to write on bark and rocks with pine quills. His first book of poetry, “Collapsing Outside the Box,” was published by Aldrich Press in November 2012, His second book of poems, “Raw String” was published in October, 2013 by Finishing Line Press. He is working on his third book of poems, “The Little Truth.” Judith A. Lawrence is the editor/publisher of River Poets Journal. She is currently final editing a memoir, “What Fruit She Bears,” and a second book of short stories, “Uncharted Territories.” She has published several chapbooks of her poetry. Her poetry/fiction/memoir has been published in various anthologies, chapbooks, online and in print literary journals. Fay L. Loomis lives in the woods in upstate New York. Although Prune was written before she had a stroke a year ago, it foreshadowed changes in her life: stark limitations, slow bursts of growth, and hope of full recovery. Encouraged by fellow members of the Stone Ridge Library Writers, she has begun writing again. Her poetry and prose have appeared in print and online publications. Richard Luftig is a former professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University in Ohio now residing in California. His poems and stories have appeared in numerous literary journals in the United States including River Poet’s Journal and internationally in, Canada, Australia, Europe, and Asia. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart prize and two of his poems recently appeared in Realms of the Mothers: The First Decade of Dos Madres Press. My latest book of poems will be forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2019. Lennart Lundh is a poet, short-fictionist, historian, and photographer. His work has appeared internationally since 1965. Glenda Parson is a gifted poet who off and on lives on the restless streets of Daytona Beach, Florida, and records on paper her unique searing vision stirring the hearts and souls of many. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, New York (U.S.). His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, The Mindful Word, MORIA, Poetry Journal, Chronogram Magazine, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in Nonviolence Magazine, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pace e Bene, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News and more Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Osiris Poems published by boxofchalk, 2017. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8 Betty Jamerson Reed, a retired educator, remains active both as a writer and as a grandmother. Her poetry has been published in Lucidity Poetry Journal, Friends Journal, Echoes across the Blue Ridge (2010), It's All Relative: Tales from the Tree (2016) River Poets Windows Anthology (2017), and Mountain Mist (2017). Her nine grandchildren live in Hawaii, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina, which makes travel not a luxury, but a necessity. Sarah Rehfeldt lives with her family in western Washington where she is a writer, artist, and photographer. Her poems have appeared in Blueline, Weber – The Contemporary West, and Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction. Sarah has published two collections of image poems – most recently From the Quiet Edges of the Forest in 2018. It can be purchased through her photography web pages at: www.pbase.com/candanceski

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Writers’ Bios

Robert Salup lives in Ewing, NJ. Former Slammaster of The Great New Hope Poetry Slam and the Urban Word Poetry Slam. His new collection of poetry " My New Girlfriend" Selected Poems, is due out this Spring on Moving Adverb Press. Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Studying life, languages and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. Blogs: https://hibahshabkhezxicc.wordpress.com/ and http://languedouche.blogspot.fr/ John Shand is an Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at the Open University in Great Britain. Tom Sheehan, in his 91st year, served in 31st Infantry, Korea 1951-52, graduated Boston College 1956, has published 32 books, multiple works in Rosebud, Literally Stories, Linnet’s Wings, Copperfield Review, Eastlit, Frontier Tales, Faith-Hope-Fiction, etc. He’s received 16 Pushcart nominations, 5 Best of Net nominations, other awards. Books include Beside the Broken Trail. Epic Cures; Brief Cases, Short Spans; A Collection of Friends; and From the Quickening. Four books in Pocol Press production cycle (Between Mountain and River; Catch a Wagon to a Star; Alone, with the Good Graces; and Jock Poems and Reflections for Proper Bostonians; and a novel, The Keating Script, at Hammer & Anvil Press.) Bobbi Sinha-Morey's poetry has appeared in a wide variety of places such as Plainsongs, Pirene's Fountain, Helix Magazine, The Wayfarer, Miller's Pond, and Old Red Kimono. Her books of poetry are available at www.Amazon.com. and her work has been nominated for Best of the Net. Susan Tepper is the author of seven published books of fiction and poetry. Her many honors include 18 Pushcart Prize Nominations and a Pulitzer Prize Nomination for a novel. She lives in the New York area with her husband and her dog Otis. Sean Tierney is a poet and printmaker from New England, currently residing in South Florida. His poetry has been featured in The Curlew, Right Hand Pointing, Canary and other various publications. Mike Todd's literary/mainstream material has appeared in Gallery, Writer's Journal, Futures, AIM, Split Shot, Thema, and Rose & Thorn. His first novel, A SPARROW ON THE HOUSETOP, is currently being presented to publishers by his agent. He can be followed at facebook.com/ByMikeTodd. Mark Trechock lives in rural western North Dakota, working since 1993 as a community organizer. When he retired about three years ago he started writing again. He has previously been published by Glassworks, Visitant, Snowy Egret, and Raven Chronicles. Jesse Wolfe is an English professor at CSU Stanislaus and the Faculty Advisor to their student-run literary and art journal, Penumbra. He is the author of a scholarly book entitled Bloomsbury, Modernism, and the Reinvention of Intimacy.

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The Garden at Pontoise by Camille Pissarro