It’s still summer here in Phoenix but the heat is letting off, somewhat. That means it’s time to cut the grass and work on the magazines and publish some of your excellent writing.
As I write, I thought I’d let you in on other things going on. I have started looking forward to retirement and am focusing on what to do. My own grandfather died when he was 82, while riding his bicycle, to his daily job at a factory. My father went out at 92.
I want to go out like that, doing something that I enjoy and being productive.
So, this year, I have taken up the contrabass. I am also moving forward into filmmaking and podcasting in addition to writing and editing. You may have noticed the new header at the top: Podcasts.
It is populated by only some initial efforts but the larger effort: “The Nephilim Hunter” is a series that is in the end stages of post-production. Look for it this fall. Like anything, I’m sure these will get better with practice.
This was a busy summer for filmmaking. Here is a link to a recent film of ours that made the film festival circuit a couple of years ago: Because I Could Not Stop Death (youtube.com)
We completed four new short films this summer (all heading to the festival circuit) and we are working on a longer film: “The Tragedy of Pontius Pilate.” Currently, in pre-production, we have started building sets and casting. Here is a link to our fundraising site if you care to throw a nickel or two into the project: GiveSendGo | The Tragedy of Pontius Pilate. We truly appreciate anything you might contribute.
That’s all for now. True Chili and Black Works are in progress and should be out in September and October.
Amy and I are barely talking. Since my decision to bring Mother home, and not to hospice, a decision that Amy thought a mistake, we’ve settled into separate routines. And a lot of silence. We wake at different times, make our own meals, and sleep in various rooms. When we talk, we talk about errands, or bills, or how Mother looks. We keep a corkboard with notes for doctors or nurses or anyone who calls and leaves a message. We are not fighting, like so many have implied. We are distracted.
We are also grieving. Whoever said that is right. But I am still shocked to learn that we don’t have each other to lean on. I think of Amy and me as people who come together in times of crisis. But we aren’t.
One day crashes into the next. I sit by as Mother, closer really to Amy than me, strains to fight the disease that is crunching her lungs. She is losing. I wouldn’t say she is giving up. I’m not even sure what giving up, while lying in a bed, hopped up on pain meds and hooked up to oxygen, even looks like. But she’s not doing well.
Neither am I. I’m a sad, worn-out zombie. I spend most of my free time alone, watching TV, or sleeping in front of the TV, with the TV watching me. Late last night I woke up on the couch and watched a rerun of an old cop show. I cried stupidly at the sadness of it all.
Amy is also struggling. She spends her extra time at work, or running errands that don’t need running, or talking on the phone with her friends. She misses Mother. Before she got sick, the two of them talked every day. Mother is mostly sleeping now.
***
Today her lungs stopped working. The home health nurse was there, and they rushed her to Mass General. Amy was home and followed the ambulance. I was out and met them there.
They have her on a ventilator and tell us to expect the worst. Today is my birthday, a week before Christmas, but that ain’t neither here nor there. Mother is sedated and she looks different, like she’s got one foot out the door. I have to turn away. She’s unconscious but stable and so Amy and I drive home in our separate cars to our house with our undecorated tree. I stop to pick up a bottle of wine. I buy Amy’s favorite. When I get back, she is sitting at the kitchen table with her coat still on. She looks tired. We talk about the breathing machine not being as loud as we thought it would be. She says, “We should turn it off. The doctor says we should, and she’s suffering.”
“I think she’ll suffer more without it.”
“I’m talking about her dignity. I’m talking about that look in her eyes, like an animal caught in a trap.”
“I didn’t see her awake, but I get what you mean.”
We go back and forth until I say what she knows I am thinking. “I want it on until Matt gets here.”
Amy holds her face in her hands. She’s angry. She says, “He’s probably not coming Dan.”
“She’s his mother. He’ll come.”
Matt still lives in California. He has not come back since Mother got sick. Matt and Amy never warmed up to each other, and Matt’s absence hasn’t helped. Amy tells me Matt doesn’t deserve the chance to see her, not at Mother’s expense. She’s probably right, but still I disagree.
And, because she is my mother, I win.
***
I pick up Matt at Logan Airport. It’s cold here. December. Steam rises from the factories across the bridge. City smells hang low to the ground.
He gets off the plane with Toni, who he has lived with for over a year. This is the first time I knew she existed. Matt is 38 now, three years younger than me. I don’t think Toni is 25.
I knew he would come, and I know why he didn’t come before. This is the shared knowledge of family, of blood, of people who grew up together. It is the mystery I didn’t try to explain to Amy, who has no brothers or sisters. Mother always understood. “That’s Matt,” she said when she could still talk, forgiving him. Amy is not as forgiving. She has been badmouthing him frequently. She thinks I am too accepting of his flighty, absent behavior. She is right, at least from her perspective.
Matt and Toni are dressed for an LA winter. They are freezing and disheveled from the red-eye flight. Matt and I shake hands. We embrace but say little. Toni says nothing. She looks shy and worried about Matt. I like her before she’s introduced. She’s composed and solid, unlike Matt, who looks like he’s falling apart.
Amy is at the hospital waiting for us. Her arms are folded across her chest like she does whenever she’s mad or impatient, and she barely acknowledges Matt. She eyes Toni up and down, and I see she doesn’t like her. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell by the way she looks past her.
Matt walks past Amy without speaking and into the room. Toni and I follow. Matt staggers when he sees Mother. Toni catches him. “How long?” he asks me. His voice is a whisper, barely audible.
“Not long once they shut the ventilator off.”
“Does dad know?”
“He knows enough. I’ll call him when she passes.”
“Where is he anyway?”
“This time of year? The house in Florida. I haven’t talked with him in weeks though.”
***
Matt is far more of a mama’s boy than me, though most people think the opposite. Most people think that when Matt left town, moved to California, and never came back, that he abandoned us. People say he sides with our father, that he blames her for whatever went wrong in his childhood. Mother’s done nothing to dispel that. She couldn’t care less what other people think. She maybe felt hurt, but she never said so. What people don’t understand is that she never thought Matt should stay in Massachusetts. People notice that she hardly ever mentions him anymore, but I think that’s because she misses him. He is her favorite.
And as for Matt, he didn’t move away from Mother, he moved to California. When he first moved there, almost twenty years ago now, he would call every week. But, when things started happening for Matt, that once a week turned to once a month, then once every few months, then even less. It wasn’t intentional and I know he’s always felt guilty about it. He’s told me that. But he was busy building himself a life at first, and then he got one, and then that kept him busy. Mother understood that. I did too.
***
“When do we shut it off?”
The heater buzzes and hot air hisses into the room and creates a smelly and stifling humidity. Toni sits on the empty extra bed in the room. She’s tired from the flight and the cold trip from the airport to the hospital. The room is filled with turned off medical equipment, like they stuck my mother in a supply room. The only stuff that’s on is the ventilator and the thing that watches her vital signs.
“Whenever you’re ready,” I say.
“I’m ready,” Matt says. And he means it.
I leave Toni and him alone with her for the last time. I don’t kiss her or say goodbye. These things are done. Amy meets me in the hall, and I see that she’s irritated, “Well?”
“Tell them we’re ready.”
“OK,” and her eyes go soft. She grabs the two little fingers of my left hand and squeezes, our most tender gesture in weeks.
Nurses arrive, confirm with me, go into the room, and Matt and Toni come out. They’re both crying. Matt gathers himself and walks up to Amy and gives her a quick embrace. He steps back. “This is Toni,” he says, moved and proud.
Amy looks Matt straight in the eye and says, “She looks like she’s twelve, Matt.”
Matt stiffens, meets her gaze, and turns away.
I say, “Jesus, Amy.”
She turns to me, turns on me, says, “Go to hell,” and walks down the hallway, away from the room.
Matt turns, puts his arm around Toni, and they walk past me, past the room, and out of the ward.
***
I sit by her bedside while Mother dies. Is it ever supposed to be like this? Almost alone after a life filled with others?
It doesn’t take long. It’s late afternoon when the head nurse, a woman about my age, Jamaican, heavier than me but who moves across the room with grace and purpose, with a calm urgency, taps me on the shoulder. I’ve been watching her come and go for hours, before Amy stormed out, before Matt and Toni came and went. She moves between Mother’s room and other rooms, and the oval station the nurses use as home base. There are other nurses too, and various orderlies and maintenance people, and even an occasional doctor, but this one nurse is the one I see the most. Her first name is Cheryl. She walks straight to where I am slumped in a chair. She pauses while I meet her gaze, then takes a deep breath and sits down next to me. “Your mother is passing onwards now.” Her phrasing strikes me as odd. She stands and watches me and waits for my response. Your mother is passing onwards now. The words get stuck in my ears. What a strange and singular moment hearing that sentence.
I look away when she says it, but then I return my eyes to hers. They are kinder than I remember from a moment before, more sympathetic than I expect. “Thank you.”
I make my way to Mother’s bed, and I kiss her on her forehead. I tell her I love her. I tell her I am proud to be her son. She is unconscious, and her breathing is deep and loud, and very slow. There’s a long build up to each breath, a heaving in her chest and throat, as if her lungs are a motor trying to start in the cold. When she catches her breath, her inhale is sharp and loud, very quick, and is followed by an equally fast and audible exhale. In between it is quiet. She’s only taking about two breaths per minute. Her heart rate is also low. The machine that monitors her vital signs is in alarm. Cheryl shuts off the tone.
I stand by her bedside for a long long time. I wait for each breath, hoping for it, but dreading the discomfort it seems to cause her.
I wonder where Amy is. I wonder where Matt and Toni are, though I’m pretty sure they left. Matt said his goodbyes, and we all know he’s not one to linger. I wonder when I’ll see him again. I turn to ask the nurse to find Amy, but I am alone. Just Mother and me. I look toward the door and see Amy standing in the hallway, her short brown hair messy and tears streaming down her face. She looks younger. Beautiful. I motion for her to come in, but she backs away, unwilling or unable to join me.
I look back at the strong woman who brought me and then Matt into the world, cared for us alone for most of our childhoods, and dedicated most of her life to us. She was never rewarded with grandchildren. She inhales again, and then a thick, single tear rolls down her left cheek. Her heart stops. I wait for an exhale, but none comes.
I am horrified by the sudden stillness. I am horrified that there is no final exhale, like something is missing, like an exhale is something we both need to finally rest, but will never receive.
And this is the way her life ends.
***
After a minute the nurse comes in and I leave the room. I find Amy crying in the hallway. I put my arm around her. We are not distracted.
Gary Campanella writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He is a 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee and won an Honorable Mention in the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in print and online publications. He is Editor of the Muleskinner Journal. He lives on a dead-end street in Los Angeles.
Gently I approach. He’s there again, standing at pond’s edge, blazing yellow eyes gazing at me, pulling my image into his world.
I receive his splendid form with eyes full of gratitude— the blessing now complete.
Lynn Hoggard received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Southern California and taught at Midwestern State University, where she was professor of English and French and the coordinator of humanities. In 2003, the Texas Institute of Letters awarded her the Soeurette Diehl Fraser award for best translation. Her poem “Love in the Desert” was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize by Word Fountain, and her books, Bushwhacking Home (TCU Press, 2017), and First Light (Lamar University Press, 2022) won the 2018 and the 2023, respectively) Press Women of Texas awards for best book of poetry. Her poem “In the Garden” was nominated for the 2018 Sundress Best of the Net award.
He got clearance from the police first, then the doctor, that it was okay for him to see his father now. So he stepped around the officer guarding his father’s hospital room, entered, and was about to shut the door when the police officer commanded, “Leave it open. He’s under arrest, you know.”
“Yeah I know,” muttered Bob Van Opdorp.
Bob Van Opdorp looked at his father, the only patient in the room, closed his eyes and shook his head side to side. Tubes in and out of him every which of way, machine flashing blips across screens while humming a numbing incessant sound, an IV dripping fluids into him, and miscellaneous other attached hospital equipment for what purpose he had no idea. His father was still alive, thank God, still alive even after two bullets had entered his seventy seven year old body.
“How ya feeling Dad?” was all he could think of to say. He felt sorry for his father while at the same time was thoroughly disgusted with him.
“Fine,” came a weak but defiant response.
“You want to tell me what happened here Dad?” He knew what had happened from what the police had told him but he wanted to hear it from his father himself. He knew that his father would have his own version. His own story that would justify his actions.’s “Are you up to it?”
“You damn well bet I am up to it Maurice.” Bob VanOpdorp went by his middle name Robert but his father always called him Maurice, his first name since he had been named for a grandfather who died in Belgium long before he was born. He hated the name Maurice.
“You want the truth. By God then I’ll tell you the truth. Those damn cops got it all wrong.
It was them damn kids again. I tell you the neighborhood’s going to hell with all these damn Mexicans moving in. Them Mexican kids next door were messing with my pigeons again.”
Bob Van Opdorp and his siblings had grown up there in that part of town when most of the residents in the neighborhood were Belgians like themselves just off the boat so to speak. Even back then it was a lower middle class neighborhood with shanties, tar paper shacks, no indoor plumbing, houses with lean to’s tacked on, none of the residences totally up to city code. It was all his father could afford back then having spent all his money on passage from Belgium to America. He was penniless when he got here, an unskilled laborer, but he got a menial labor job at a factory close by so that he could walk to work since he couldn’t afford a car. The family, all six of them, had to do the best they could in a one room house. Bob was the only one who stayed here, living now in a new subdivision on the edge of town. His siblings had all moved away first chance they got and when his mother died he was the only one left here and thus he became his father’s caretaker. The neighborhood had disintegrated from bad to worse over the years and became known as ‘Funky Town.’ But now the Mexicans had moved in and actually started fixing up some of the old places so that they became half way presentable. But as far as his father was concerned, the neighborhood was going to hell.
“This was the third time they broke into my coop. I never gave them permission to see my birds. It was just like the other two times when I called the cops and again the cops didn’t do anything and put those little a-holes in a juvenile detention center like I asked them to. No, they just scolded them politely and let them go with a warning. I knew they wouldn’t do anything this time either. But I still called the cops like you told me to.”
“They didn’t steal any of your pigeons, did they, Dad?”
“No but.”
“They didn’t kill or injure any of your birds did they?”
“No but they shouldn’t be in there in the first place. Besides, I know that they’ve been shooting my birds with their bb guns when they land on their house. I’m just sure of it. I’m missing some birds I tell you and they killed them.”
“Dad, you raise homing pigeons. They sometimes get lost during races, don’t come home for some reason or other. You know that. You’ve been around racing pigeons all your life ever since you were a kid in Belgium helping your father with his pigeons. These things happen. That’s probably what happened here.”
“I tell you I’ve seen my birds land on their garage next to my coop and seen the kids shoot at them. Those kids killed them I tell ya.”
These kids were ten years old or so, no common sense yet, dumb preteens with bb guns, having a good time with their new toys. They didn’t know any better. After all, to them all pigeons were the same whether they were his father’s racing pigeons or common ferals. They all looked alike to them.
“They still had no business in my coop.”
“I told you to put a padlock on the door. Why didn’t you do that?”
“Why should I? I’ve never had to all these years and I ain’t gonna start now. Besides, they broke in without my permission and had a gun with them.”
“It was just a bb gun Dad. Nobody is going to believe you were in danger. That you didn’t know that. For God’s sake you shot a kid with a twenty two rifle. There’s no excuse for that.”
“I had it loaded with shorts not longs. You know as well as I do that those shorts can’t kill anything. There are just a bunch of little pellets, just a bunch of little pellets smaller than bb’s. They can hardly pierce the skin.”
Bob Van Opdorp was grateful for that for if his father had used longs, those bullets aren’t any type of pellets but a single bullet, and they can kill.
“Besides I only shot him in his hand as he was grabbing for a bird. I knew what I was aiming at and hit it. I told him to keep his grubby little mitts off my birds but he wouldn’t listen and kept reaching. I wasn’t trying to kill him.”
“Well the way I understand it, his hand is pretty torn up and will require surgery to correct.”
His father looked away. He was unapologetic.
“What about the police officer?”
“What about the police officer?’
The police had responded to his father’s call when he reported a ‘break in’ as he called it. The police came with lights flashing, sirens blaring, guns drawn, and when they saw what had actually happened, they took him into custody. The veteran officer told the rookie officer to handle it so that she could get some experience with these kinds of neighborhood disturbances.
“Well she took my rifle from me, my rifle. My father taught me never to give up your weapon. My father never did. He was in the resistance when the Boches,” his father still used the old derogatory World War I word for the Germans, the Boche, “invaded our country back then. He kept his weapon, fought in the underground, and survived. Never give up your weapon he always told me.”
Bob Van Opdorp had heard that story more than a few times before. Had heard a lot of stories about the old country. Had heard a lot of pigeon stories too and knew that he was a disappointment to his father because he had no interest in pigeons. But there was nothing he could do about it except put up with his father’s snide remarks and go on.
“So that why you shot her? Because she took your rifle?”
“Yah damn right. But she didn’t get my pistol though, did she?”
For some reason or other after she took his father’s rifle, she never searched him for other weapons. Never patted him down that is. Maybe because he was an old man and she deemed him harmless. Maybe because she felt sorry for him and wanted to spare him from any further embarrassment. Maybe it was a rookie mistake. But it was a mistake nevertheless and when she backed away with his rifle, his father drew his twenty two pistol from his inside coat pocket and shot her. Shot her with a twenty two long. Shot her in the lungs. And that’s when the veteran officer, who still had his weapon out and pointed at him, put two shots in his father.
“From what I hear Dad she’s going to make it thank God.”
His father sat there and looked away from his son staring out the window at the rain. The ominous storm had still not passed and it looked like it was only going to get worse.
“What about my pigeons?”
“You’re not going home again Dad, you know that. You’re done with pigeons.”
The old man knew it. Knew he would probably go to prison or to a nursing home if he could hire an attorney and work out some kind of favorable, but expensive, plea deal. Either way he was resigned to the fact but he had to look out for his birds.
“Call Camiel. He’s president of our racing club. He’ll take them and find homes for them. You remember Camiel don’t you? You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”
“Yes I remember Camiel and don’t worry I’ll see to your birds for you. Get some rest now and I’ll be back to see you tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay, see you then Maurice.”
Bob Van Opdorp went home. In due course he took care of everything. Took care of it all pursuant to a power of attorney that his father had previously given him when his mother died about a year ago. He put the house up for sale. Some Mexicans bought it. All the proceeds went to hiring an attorney for the criminal charge and to settle the lawsuit brought by the parents of the injured little Mexican boy. He trashed most of his father’s furniture as it was junk and what was halfway usable he gave to the Salvation Army.
And as to the pigeons, well he rang each and everyone of their necks, bagged them up and put them out with the trash too.
Author is a retired attorney who used to raise pigeons. Every so often he writes a pigeon story.
June stood with both hands in the ice chest gazing out the front windows of the Crossroads Store. She marveled at the way the late afternoon sun glinted off the shiny black rump of a mare hitched to a travelling cart. She pulled one hand out of the ice and swept it across her brow, letting it rest on the back of her neck. The rickety fan in the shop could not compete with the heat of the day and it wasn’t much cooler inside than it was out.
She forced herself to keep the other hand submerged, despite a wicked burning sensation that crept into her knuckles and settled there, stubborn as a toothache. Debilitating. She’d spent the better part of the previous day elbow deep in a bucket of lye, trying to scrub her one dress clean for market day. Now those raw knuckles were twice-burned and the irony wasn’t lost on her. June winced but put the other hand back in the cooler, waiting for it to reach the same state of numbness as its mate.
“Where you headed Father?”
June spun around to see a tall stick of a man in a black suit standing at the counter. From the back she could not see his face, but she noticed his neck flushed with the July heat – its mottled patches creeping up into a close-cut thatch of white-blond hair that disappeared under a lopsided fedora. She knew this wasn’t Stevie, the clerk’s, father – Stevie’s father was a short, round man who owned the Crossroads Store and made sure everyone knew it. Since he’d put in a gasoline pump he was even worse – bragging about how all the motorcars would have to stop here to fill up. But they had been few and far between.
The thin stranger replied, but June couldn’t make out his answer. She lifted her nearly lifeless hands out of the ice along with two bottles of Coke. She had to hug their cold hardness into her belly to keep from dropping them and she could feel the condensation through her cotton shift. The chill revived her as she walked up to the cash register to stand beside the man in black.
“Hey Stevie.”
“Hey June.”
Stevie packed the man’s purchases in a paper sack – a can of pork and beans, peanuts, beef jerky, some tobacco and a Cheerwine. June looked the man straight in the face and his eyes were so blue, she almost missed the scrap of white collar protruding from his black shirt.
“Howdy miss.” He nodded at her and turned to leave.
“Where you headed Father?” June parroted Stevie’s question like a trained bird.
“Down south – taking up a parish in Lumberton.”
“Oh – that’s not too far from me – I’d be glad to show you the way if I can catch a ride. That your horse and buggy out there? I’ll take you back roads – you’ll be less likely to run into motorcars.”
“Well . . . I’ve got a schedule to keep and I’m late as it is.”
“I won’t hold you up. Stevie?” Stevie popped both bottle tops and waved June out of the shop. He had a soft spot for her and she knew it. Enamored. He was always good for a free soda or a handful of fireballs when his Dad wasn’t around.
“Just got to get my Grandpa and Scout – won’t be a minute.”
The tall man strode to his wagon, stowed his purchases in back and was up on the seat before June could rouse her grandfather from his spot in the shade. She called out to the traveler.
“Please sir – it’s so hot and we’ve been standing all day at our market table. Sure would appreciate the ride – Grandpa here’s plumb worn out.” The old man wobbled on June’s arm while a scrawny coonhound nipped at his heels.
June saw the Father drop his shoulders in resignation and set down the reins. The horse whinnied and scraped a hoof through the dust.
“Hold on Delilah. Hold on.”
He got down from the driver’s seat and came around to the back of the wagon where he let down a set of steps. Then he reached for June’s grandpa and helped him up.
“That cur yours?”
“That’s Scout – she’s no trouble.”
The dog skittered up the steps and settled down beside the old man, eyeing the stranger warily. She let out a warning grumble as she curled up between a small Army trunk and a bulging canvas sack. Grandpa nodded his thanks at the man, shut his eyes and promptly fell asleep.
The Father returned to the driver’s seat to find June sitting on the bench, a satchel between her feet on the floor. She held two sweaty bottles of Coke.
“Forgot to give this to Grandpa – want it?”
“No thank you, I don’t take sweets.”
Abstemious. June shrugged and chugged one of the sodas in a single gulp. She drew the back of her palm across her mouth and licked her lips. Then she turned around and placed the empty bottle in the open cart, where it proceeded to make a tinkling nose every time the wagon hit a pothole. The extra soda she wedged between her legs, carefully holding it upright so it wouldn’t spill. She felt the damp coldness on her inner thighs and smiled to herself.
The Father watched June with a mixture of trepidation and titillation. Her yellow cotton dress was spotless, but thin and he could just make out the shadow of her bra beneath it. As she turned around he caught a flash of peachy skin between her budding breasts. When she placed the soda bottle in her lap he forced himself to look away and slapped the reins on the horse’s sleek rump.
“Hup Delilah. Giddyup.”
June was lost in thought as the journey began. She’d always been fond of teachers and here was a preacher – the best kind of teacher there was. And driving her preferred form of transportation too. Serendipity. She couldn’t believe her luck and it wasn’t even her birthday – not for another two weeks. Her mother thought it was funny naming her June when she was born in July. Her mother’s sense of humor was legendary, though it was not among the things June had inherited. June was turning 14 later in the month, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her. She was tiny, “no bigger than a tea cup” her grandma used to say. She was born too early and never did catch up. She still wore her sandy hair in two long pigtails and hadn’t had new clothes in a couple years, both of which gave her the appearance of a girl no older than 12.
June loved teachers because they had so many words. In school she was mesmerized by everything her teacher said – all the words on all different topics – history and science and geography and even math. The wonderful words for what you could do with numbers surprised her. But best of all were the books full of stories – they read all kinds of stories about faraway places, oceans and deserts, knights and battles, queens and princesses, witches and spells, good girls and bad boys and lions and tigers and bears.
Her teacher let June bring home a book from school and she could get another one when she finished. She’d trade one she read for a new one, until she’d exhausted the school’s collection. Then the teacher started lending June her own books, which made June nervous – she was worried she’d spill something on the book or that Scout would get hold of it and chew it up. The thought of the words being torn apart was dreadful to her.
Since she was a child, June had been fascinated by words. As a baby, she’d babble away, imitating what she heard. She loved to watch her parents play Scrabble – they talked about words as they played and June listened. Her Pa was known for making up a word when her Ma was winning and he got desperate. Sometimes they let her play too. June loved those little squares – smooth and neat with their sharp black letters that each stood for a sound. They seemed to hold such possibilities with their endless combinations. She pictured the letters arranging and re-arranging in her mind to form words and tasted them on her tongue as they appeared.
Her parents had shelves full of books and June remembered her Ma reading to her each night. They’d snuggle up under the covers and travel together to imaginary places. Pa loved to read the newspaper and he let June look at the comics. As a child, she’d made up stories to go along with the pictures. When her parents passed, times were tight and her grandparents had to sell off most of the family’s belongings – anything that wasn’t strictly necessary for daily life. This included the books and Scrabble. As they packed up the game, June secretly pocketed a J, a U, an N, and an E from the box. She kept them lined up on her dresser and made sure they were nice and neat each night before going to sleep. Now the bookshelves were empty except for Grandma’s old tea cups, which Grandpa couldn’t bear to part with after her death, and the books June borrowed. Books were not supposed to leave the school, but the teacher took pity on June since she’d lived through so much tragedy at a young age. Excruciating.
“You don’t have a motorcar?”
“Nope.”
“Wouldn’t that be faster for getting where you’re going?”
“Probably.” The Father seemed to June a man of few words.
She took a long swig of soda, grimacing at its lukewarm temperature.
“Your knuckles are so red – you been boxing bare handed?” The Father eyed June’s hands with one white eyebrow raised.
Inquisitive. “No Sir. Just doing wash and digging in the garden. Honest work.”
“Honest work, indeed.”
June caught what she assumed was supposed to be a smile, but looked more like a sneer. Father’s lips were curled back so his yellowed teeth gaped from his mouth like their old mule’s. June stowed the empty Coke bottle in the back with the first, then tucked her hands under her legs.
“I saw you buy that Cheerwine.”
“Yes. What of it?”
“You said you don’t take sweets.”
“That’s for my digestion – after dinner. Got a poor constitution from all my travelling.”
“You’re a preacher, that right?”
“Uh. Yes – Father Lyman.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m June. June Carson. That’s my grandpa and my dog Scout. We’ve just been selling our produce at the market. We go every Saturday.”
“How was business?”
“Oh fine, fine. Got a bunch of money I’m bringing back home. Saving up for something big.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Can’t tell – it’s a secret.”
As the cart rattled over the gravel road, Father Lyman saw June’s bag shift and a wad of bills spill out.
“Uh – miss?” he jerked his head in that direction and June followed his glance.
“Oh dear.” She reached between her legs and stuffed the cash back into the satchel.
The Father’s eyes went to the back of her head where her crooked part zigzagged in a creamy line through her golden-brown hair. He imagined her mother standing behind her fixing her hair that morning – the silky strands slipping through expert fingers to make two even plaits. But no self-respecting mother would settle for a crooked part. He thought about it more directly, remembering his own mother working on his sister Sara’s hair so long ago. No. No mother would have her daughter go out in public without a perfectly straight part. Sara’s was always arrow straight and smooth as a wet duck’s feathers. Now that he was looking closely he could see that June’s braids were slightly uneven, as a result of the crooked part. Crooked part meant no mother to do her hair, poor child.
“Your Ma and Pa at home?”
June looked up at the clouds before answering. “Yes sir – Ma’s fixing Saturday supper.”
So, he was wrong. Maybe her mother was one of those women who was too busy for her daughter, or worse, jealous of her looks and threatened by her beauty. June was beautiful, or would be. She was still a child, he reminded himself, couldn’t be more than 12 or 13. Her knee still showed the scar of youthful adventures. He could picture her falling out of a tree that she’d scrambled up to pick an apple – red and rosy as her cheeks were now.
“You always want to be a preacher?”
June’s question brought Father Lyman abruptly back to the cart, where the girl sat uncomfortably close to him.
“Yes, I felt a calling at a young age. The Lord spoke to me.”
June nodded as she watched the fields go by. A clump of cedar trees in the distance squatted dark green in a yellow meadow. The shade beckoned.
“You folks churchgoing people?”
“Of course.” June scoffed. Scratching her leg, she added, “We go to Cedar Grove Methodist every Sunday.”
“That around here?”
“Over yonder.” June gestured off to the right of the road.
“Well, I’ll be starting at Mt. Gilead church outside Lumberton next week.”
A bee buzzed by June’s head and she swatted at it. It circled around Delilah’s hindquarters and June leaned forward to shoo it away. She took the opportunity to stretch her left leg. Father willed himself not to look at the girl’s petite frame from the back as she half stood. Eyes on the road, he steadied the horse and scolded the child.
“Ho there Delilah. Watch yourself girl, you’re lurching the wagon.”
June ignored his words.
“You say the Lord spoke to you?”
“Hmmm?”
“Why you became a preacher.”
“Oh yes, well.”
“So what words did he use? And what did it feel like when it happened?”
Father Lyman looked confused. June waited patiently, eagerly for his answer. She was ready to memorize the words that came from the mouth of God.
“Can’t rightly say. I just knew it was for me.”
Obscure, thought June.
“I sure wish he’d speak to me. I bet he uses beautiful words. Words that sound like the sea or like wind across dry grass.”
She waited again for his reply, but in vain. She tried once more.
“Isn’t it hard to know he’s there when he’s so quiet?”
“That’s called faith girl, and if you have to ask, you probably don’t have any. Mr. Carson – you doing alright back there?”
There was no answer from the back of the wagon. June turned to see her grandfather slumped with his head resting on the sack and Scout spread across his lap.
“Say, I know a spring out this way – just beyond the field. We should stop and take a break in the shade.”
“Well, I’ve got to be in Lumberton . . .”
“Look – Delilah’s flanks are all frothy. She could use a rest and some cool water.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Turn left off this road – just ahead.”
Father Lyman steered the cart onto a rutted lane where two dirt tracks were barely winning the battle with advancing weeds. In a few hundred yards they entered a stand of pine trees towering high above. Copper needles covered the ground like a rusty carpet and the temperature was a good ten degrees cooler. It was like a cathedral – silent and still with only birdsong and toad trills in the air. Sunbeams slanted through the trees, cut into strips that glimmered on the surface of a small pond made by the spring.
Oasis. June tasted the word on her tongue as she thought about the cool spring water.
Father stopped the cart near the edge of the pond and unhooked Delilah. He led her to the spring and wrapped the reins around one of the rocks on the shore. Then he settled himself on the grass, using the rock as a bolster.
June stepped down carefully, sore and stiff. Her bad leg throbbed from the wagon’s jolting movement over stones in the road. She limped to the back to get her grandfather and as she walked beside the cart, she saw that Scout had nudged open the footlocker and was rooting around with her snout.
“Scout, stop it.” June let down the steps and climbed into the back, elbowing the dog out of the way. She looked into the trunk and saw stacks of books, all the same shape and size, with matching black covers. She reached in and lifted one out. The cover was pebbly like a snakeskin she’d once found just after its owner had outgrown it. She read the golden letters glowing on the black background: Holy Bible. She pulled another book out – it was the same. They were all the same. She riffled the tissue-thin pages and saw that each page was stuffed with words. So many words. Abundance.
“You coming to take the water?” Father’s voice startled June. She wondered why he had all these Bibles. The church he was going to was no doubt already equipped with the most important tool for worship. She put the books back in their place and closed the lid.
Then she shooed Scout out of the cart and roused her Grandpa. She helped him down the steps and across the clearing. She felt the stranger’s eyes on her as she moved gingerly under the old man’s weight. She set him on a bed of moss under a tall dogwood.
Father Lyman regarded June and her Grandpa out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t noticed before that the girl was lame. She walked with a clear lurch, nearly stumbling as she helped her grandfather to a seat in the shade. Poor child.
“Mr. Carson, that ought to feel good. A quiet spot where you’re not getting thrown about. The back of that wagon must be mighty uncomfortable.” He got no response from the old man.
After Grandpa was settled, June grabbed the empty Coke bottles from the cart and took them to the spring to fill them. She gave one to her grandfather and drank from the other herself. She noticed that Father had taken off his shoes and socks and was cooling his feet in the pond.
“Good idea” she said, and she did the same.
From her seat by the pond, June saw that Scout had plopped down in the shade beside Grandpa and was chewing on something. At first, she thought it was a stick, but then she caught a flash of blue – a bird? Father Lyman had taken out a pouch of tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette. He was contentedly puffing, leaned back with his hat angled down over his eyes. His toes kicked up little splashes of water. June went over to Scout and stuffed her hand in between the dog’s jaws. She gripped something hard – not a bird. She pulled it out and turned it over in her palm. It was a small rectangular notebook with a blue cover and a tiny pencil stuffed into the spine. June opened the cover and saw that it was a book of receipts with perforated pages. The first few pages only had the stubs, printed with dates and names and the same amount: $3.50. Exorbitant. Most of the notebook was still unused. Looking at the first stub she noticed a name at the bottom, scrawled in messy writing, and smudged now from being in Scout’s mouth. She could just make it out: Humbert Lyman. June crept to the wagon and stuffed the receipt book into her satchel. She grabbed out a couple of apples and tied the pack up tight.
Mrs. Archer in the market stall next to theirs often gave June the few remaining fruits that no one had purchased. Today she’d offered two apples, Arkansas Blacks, nearly as dark as plums, a pear and a few sweet potatoes. The fruit was slightly bruised and the potatoes pitted with eyes that scared customers off – but they were still edible.
“Apple?” she gestured with one arm to Father Lyman, but he was lost in his own world and didn’t answer. She flattened her palm and offered it to Delilah, who eagerly snatched it up with a snort of pleasure. Her bristly nose hairs and warm breath tickled June’s skin. June clicked her tongue quietly and rubbed the horse’s forehead, which was patterned with a white star.
“You’ll never get rid of her now. She’s spoiled rotten that one.” Father Lyman spoke from beneath his hat – apparently, he’d been listening.
“She’s had a tough day in the sun hauling us around – a treat can’t hurt. She deserves it.”
“Just like a lady, eh Carson – you know the type – always wanting sweets. I bet you’ve managed some horses in your time, and some ladies too.” The preacher chuckled lewdly. Grandpa was silent.
Delilah nuzzled into June’s neck, only proving Father’s point. June crunched her own apple.
“You know Eve’s apple was the downfall of mankind. The apple is the earthly manifestation of sin – picked by a woman. Ain’t that right, Carson?”
Preposterous. The word popped unbidden into June’s head before she could stop it.
“You’re forgetting that Adam and the snake had something to do with it.” She had her back to him, but she thought she heard the Father snort, although it could have been a frog. “I like to think that Eve was doing her part to forage for food. What was Adam doing? Reclining in the shade?”
The man in black straightened at this and shifted his hat back onto his head. June hadn’t meant for her remark to hit so close to home.
“She let the serpent tempt her. She fell for his tricks. She was weak. Carson – what is that church of yours teaching this girl?”
Still Grandpa gave no reply.
Misogynist.
Having made his point, Father leaned back against the rock again and resumed his nap. June went to get the Coke bottle from Grandpa to refill it. He smiled up at her and nodded his thanks. She skirted the edge of the pond and crouched down across from Father Lyman. From that angle she could see a strip of bare chest – he’d taken off his collar and unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt. But what June could see of his chest wasn’t bare – up near the base of his neck was a dark shape with some words below it. She put one foot into the pond to lean closer. The mucky bottom squished between her toes. Obscene. Now she could see that the shape was a crudely-drawn dagger and the words curved around its blade read “Romans 12:19.” She pulled her foot out of the sucking mud and as it squelched, it released a foul odor of decay.
June was familiar with body ink – some of the farmhands at the market were inked with the name of a girl or a rose. But she hadn’t expected to see one on a man of God. Peculiar. She rolled the word around her lips as she rinsed off her foot and re-filled the bottle. She brought it to her grandfather, who had dozed off. She sat down beside him and regarded Father Lyman from behind. The delicate skin on the back of his neck with its pinkish hue and fine light hair reminded June of nothing so much as a baby pig. When her parents were alive they had a pair of hogs which they raised for meat to sell. As a little girl, June had taken one of the piglets from its mother and kept it in her room for a week, feeding it milk from a bottle and bedding it down in the bottom drawer of her dresser, among her seldom-worn flannels. She remembered snuggling that pig in her arms and feeling its fine hairs poke her bare arms – just a little tickle. But then her Ma had discovered the theft and returned the piglet to the barn, where June watched it grow up to become one of her father’s famous sausages.
“We best be moving on now.” Lyman roused himself and packed everyone back into the cart. Delilah resumed the journey as the sun glinted at the edge of the horizon. Back on the main road, the ruts bounced the cart around and June rubbed her knee. A loud grinding pierced the thick air and out of nowhere a massive black automobile zoomed up behind them. June turned and was blinded by its shiny chrome jaws advancing toward her, its maw ready to swallow her up. At the last moment, the driver swerved around them, startling Lyman so that he jerked the reins and Delilah stumbled into the ditch. June felt her heart racing and her throat tighten. Beelzebub. They sat in the dip as the dust from the road settled around them. At the edge of the ditch June spied a flattened rabbit, the victim of some other crazy driver, most likely at night. It lay on its side, ears and legs curled up. It might have been resting except its body was flat as a pancake and tinged with brown-red blood. She could make out tread marks from a thick tire stamped across its fur. Motorcars were nothing but metal monsters belching smoke and fumes. Her Ma had never wanted one, but her Pa insisted it would be a mark of his success.
Lyman straightened his hat and eased Delilah back onto the road, glancing first in both directions. He muttered a few indistinguishable words under his breath.
“Where do our souls go when we die? You ever think about it?” Demise.
“Huh?”
“Our soul – it’s separate from our body, right? So where does it go? Bodies get buried in the ground but I don’t think souls do. Souls can roam.”
“Roam?”
“Yeah – move around, maybe visit the people that were left behind.” June paused to collect her thoughts. “Ever wonder why some people die – I mean before they’re old?”
Lyman felt his throat go dry while his eyes got moist. He saw Sara lying in her bed – thin and drawn – dwarfed by the pillows. The quilt she’d made herself out of scraps of old dresses a colorful rebuke to her pallor. He hastily wiped a tear from his cheek.
“Well, people get sick.” The words came out harsher than he intended, nearly a grunt.
“No, I mean when they’re not old and they’re not sick – like an accident of some kind. My aunt and uncle died in an automobile accident. Why does God let something like that happen?” Debilitating. She’d already used that one today. Words whirled in her brain slamming into each other like bumper cars. Torturous. June fought back her tears, focusing on the feel of the word in her mouth. She pressed her lips together, waiting for the preacher’s words of comfort.
They didn’t come.
Delilah’s clop-clopping on the gravel rang in June’s ears. Her stomach burbled as its acids digested the apple. The small snack had only stirred her appetite. Her leg throbbed. Vexation. She squinted her eyes shut and saw the butter yellow kitchen where her mother stood in a flowered and floured apron kneading biscuit dough.
“Ma’s back at home right now cooking up Sunday supper. A ham and butter beans and greens. And some of her famous angel biscuits. The ladies of the county have been wanting that recipe for years – they promise Ma all kinds of things in return but she just smiles and says ‘They aren’t all that special’.
“Mr. Lyman, you must stay to supper. I know you like beans – I saw that can of pork and beans you bought at the store – oh and pork too, so you’ll love Ma’s honeyed ham. And surely, she’s making a pecan pie for dessert. I know you said you don’t take sweets, but this one time you can make an exception, don’t you think?”
June was aware that she was gushing out a mouthful of words like a swollen stream after a hard rain. She turned to look at the stranger with wide eyes and her best smile. Disingenuous.
“Well, now, I’ve got that schedule to keep.” Lyman thought it was only polite to decline at first, but he felt his mouth moisten at the mention of honeyed ham. His own mother used to make a ham with honey glaze for holidays, before Sara passed and family gatherings were too difficult. He’d been on the road for two months straight with so few sales that he could only afford the occasional meal and even then, pork and beans was a splurge. He watched June with a side eye as she described Saturday supper at the Carson house. He’d never heard of angel biscuits, but as a man of God, he felt sure he’d love them.
“And your Pa – he’s at home today too?”
“No – he’s down the county checking out a new thoroughbred. He races them – well, he doesn’t race them, he has boys for that. But he buys them young and trains them up. He’s about the winningest trainer this side of the state line.
A buyer and trainer of thoroughbred horses must be flush with cash, Lyman reasoned. He was sure to make a big sale at the Carson house. A fine, God-fearing man like Mr. Carson would need multiple Bibles – one for every bedroom in his grand home and one for the parlor. Maybe he’d even want a few extra to give as gifts when he went horse trading.
“Well, I’ll be, that’s something. I’d like to meet your Pa. Maybe a quick supper couldn’t hurt.”
June nodded. “Then, it’s settled.” Duplicitous.
They rode on in silence for the last few miles. The sun sank lower and the sky began to glow pink and orange. As he drove, Lyman thought about June’s rosy cheeks and crooked part.
“Hope you’re good and hungry ‘cause we’re close now.”
Lyman felt his stomach grumble and hoped June hadn’t heard. He’d decided to allow himself a sliver of pie and a small scoop of ice cream, it if was on offer. It would be rude not to. Sara used to make a pecan pie that was the envy of all the girls.
June directed Lyman off the main road onto a small dusty lane. It curved through a field that looked like it had once produced wheat. Crows swooped across the sky scolding each other for some previous slight, as grasshoppers bounded among the weeds. As they rounded a bend, Lyman saw a clump of trees ahead and a gray outline that looked man-made. Coming closer he could pick out a squat building, listing to one side like a drunk. Creeping vines draped across its roof and curled down around the windows, which were shutter-less except for one hanging on by a single nail. Where the shutters had been he could just make out a hint of slate blue one shade darker than the rest of the house, which was faded to a dull gray. Reddish stains bled from the clay ground onto the foundation, just visible between a few shaggy azaleas, their bright fuchsia a slap in the face. The roof overhanging the porch was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. Lyman pulled Delilah to a stop at a rusty mailbox teetering on a crooked post planted in a rangy plot of ragweed.
He had to hand it to her. She’d kept it up until the end, when the house and its evident squalor could not be ignored. He thought it was his game and she’d played along. But, maybe it was really hers and he was the one who’d been played. He stiffened, then wilted. For her part, June kept her eyes straight ahead, hoping to get herself and her grandfather into the house without a scene. Perilous. She took a deep breath and exhaled.
Descending slowly from the driver’s seat, Lyman trudged to the back to help the old man out of the wagon. He guided Mr. Carson along the path, up the crumbly steps and into an old rocker on the porch. Scout followed along behind, eyeing Lyman’s ankles with suspicion, then flopped down at the top of the steps. While the stranger was otherwise engaged, June grabbed her satchel and reached behind her, maneuvering the trunk open with one hand, while she deftly palmed a Bible with the other. Her knuckles were mended by this time and ready for a challenge. She dropped the book into her bag and climbed down from the cart bracing herself against its side for support. Lyman was just stepping gingerly over the dog and down the front steps.
“Mr. Lyman.” June held out her hand to shake his. His blue eyes were so light they were almost white; his pupil a tiny black pinprick.
“Miss Carson.” Lyman tipped his hat, ignoring her proffered gesture and hustled up into his seat behind Delilah. June gave the horse one more pat on her star as she walked to the house. Delilah snuffled into June’s hand.
“Giddyup Delilah.” When the stranger slapped her flanks with the reins, Delilah turned to give him a look.
June listened to the horse’s hooves on the rocky lane as they faded into the distance. She heard Lyman sneeze three times, then heard nothing but the crows.
When the sun completed its journey below the horizon line and the fireflies began their nightly dance, June helped Grandpa inside to his inside chair. By the light of a kerosene lamp she fried up some eggs with a strip of salt pork and a corn cake. They ate in silence, except for the peepers, who serenaded them through the open windows. Scout sprawled under the table, just conscious enough to catch a falling crumb. A light breeze floated in, one of those July miracles in this part of the country. As she ate, June considered the events of the day. Implausible. She rubbed her knee and wished away its soreness.
After dinner she gave Grandpa a quick scrub with the water she’d drawn that morning. It seemed so long ago – like a different lifetime. As she tucked him into bed, he muttered:
“Don’t know what a Bible salesman needs with a preacher’s collar. Darn fool.” Astute.
“Hush now, Grandpa.” June made sure to maintain eye contact with him as she spoke. Since he’d lost his hearing he had to get by with reading lips. He was getting older and she didn’t want to think about what would happen when he was gone too. Inconceivable. She kissed his forehead and smoothed his counterpane. Surely, he didn’t need it on such a warm night, but it comforted him. Grandma had made it for their fiftieth anniversary – a Wedding Ring quilt.
As she closed her grandfather’s bedroom door, leaving it slightly ajar so she could hear him if he needed her, June felt the day settle heavily upon her. But, as tired as she was, there was one more thing she had to do before surrendering to sleep. The house sang with stillness as she went to her satchel and pulled out the Bible and the receipt booklet. The receipt book had dried into a series of ripples and she could make out some pinholes on the cover where Scout’s teeth had punctured it. The nub of pencil was battle-scarred but still usable. June put her treasures on the bed as she opened her window. The breeze had picked up and the peepers too had quickened their rhythm. She gazed at the sky with its multitude of stars – each one part of something bigger than itself, something with a name she could learn. Sidereal. They shone brightly like so many spotlights on June’s upturned face, punctuated with a giant grin, the new moon hidden away but full of promise.
After straightening the JUNE tiles on her dresser, June settled into bed, holding the Bible in her hands. She felt its rough cover – leather or something approximating leather, patterned with tiny bumps like the goosepimples that rose on her bare arms when she thought about her parents’ accident. Its surface was black as the sky above and just as full of promise. She opened the book and felt the pages slip through her fingers. She noticed that certain passages were printed in red ink – maybe to stand out from the black type that crowded the pages, and a thin red satin ribbon nestled in the spine. Flipping through the book to find Romans, she read the nineteenth verse of the twelfth chapter: “Vengeance is mine,” printed in blood-red type.
She shivered and whispered into the silence. Turpitude. She stowed the Bible in her nightstand.
Then she took up the receipt book and smoothed it with her palm. Fingering the little paper slips, it struck her that opening the booklet backwards would yield a series of blank pages. This was quite a prize in a house with few surfaces to write on. June had taken to using the undersides of can labels peeled off in one long strip. She had rolls and rolls in her top dresser drawer covered with a neat, tiny script. She’d trained herself to write small so she could fit more ideas in.
Withdrawing the pencil from its snug home in the booklet’s spine, she opened the last page backwards and wrote:
“June stood with both hands in the ice chest, gazing out the front windows of the Crossroads Store.”
Jennifer is a recovering academic who, when not debating the merits of media concentration with college students, prefers to read and write her own poetry and fiction. She lives in southwestern Virginia and travels elsewhere whenever she can.
The Wolf licks my wounds clean each morning, And the Lion lets me sleep in his mouth when cold. I do not hunt or skin them for clothes like the others, But hunt with them, killing what they kill, eating What they eat, wearing nothing as I prowl, sniff, Stare at the world from my red promontory rock. My wife says that I am no hunter, that our children Would starve before I ever laid a malicious hand Upon the Lions’s golden mane or the wolf’s dirty Coat of forest grey. She is right but bitter because I do not sleep with her but in the forest with the wolf And the lion who daily protect and purify the man In me that is much like a lion and wolf. Perhaps I am no Hunter at all, I admit.
The city is behind me, and all the wilderness opens Like the Promise Land when Joshua first saw it, The slaves, the exiles, within can relax and assure Themselves of having ceased the endless wandering Between work and home and anxiety and a job and A job that pays the hunter to kill what he is made by. Civilization, that gnarled bramble of dissoluble thorn; Reckless, heedless, nihilistically unexamined emotion: “Repent and repair yourself,” I say to the wind. I tell it To carry my message to all the beast ranging the city, And tell them I’ve found new but ancient friends. I bid the wind farewell, knowing there is no farewell With the wind and yawn and bark and get on all fours And roar and howl and trot like I owned the Earth.
Galen Cunningham is a single father from Boulder, Colorado with his small son. Apart from writing poetry and short fiction, he enjoys walks in the park, hikes in the mountain, and long meditations.
One white puff after another and four-footed hooves in a leap over a half-moon— that was the image in my mind when my mother sent me back to bed after I whined I couldn’t sleep. Go count sheep, she whispered.
The counting was never monotonous. One minute, they were cotton balls of bouncy wool; the next, tiny clouds of fluff with sheafs of glowing locks. Then I was at school with Mary and her lamb with fleece as white as snow. Or asking Baa Baa Black Sheep if he had any wool.
And so it goes with sheep.
Like pacifists, they leave before fighting. Inscrutable their docile, gentle affection, their guide-me coexistence. They form flocks as a bind of trust— nose-to-tail, tail-to-nose—they do not follow blindly.
Does the farmer see beyond the tail docking, the field foraging, the yearly shearing? They recognize his face and can manage a complex maze. They fall in love, form friendships, grieve when another dies.
All my life, the ovine were behind barbwire, no petting their V-shaped faces or pink ears. The bleating echoed from hillsides.
Until today, with permission, we walk the farmer’s dewy field to find the ancient Irish portal tomb.
All around, they nonchalantly chew, cloaked in wool coats, forever growing; black scat scraps dangle from their bums. When within a few feet, shy and meek, they up and move. A straggler particularly quickly.
The tomb now in sight. Incomprehensive, the passage of time, and yet here we are among the lambs, free of fear or pain. Still with tails, vigorously wagging, some headbutt and some leap, their back legs kicking to the sky.
Yvonne Leach’s first collection of poems, Another Autumn, was published in 2014 by WordTech Editions.
She has been published in literary magazines and anthologies in the United States. Her work has appeared in Cimarron Review, decomP Magazine, The MacGuffin, Midwest Quarterly, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Virginia Normal, Wisconsin Review, and Whitefish Review, among others. Her second book of poems will be published by Kelsay Books in the fall of 2023.
anguished ones testify girls to women, truth to power
penetrate deaf ears remove scales of blindness
hear their pleas scribe in your heart
Fay L. Loomis was a nemophilist (haunter of the woods) until her hikes in upstate New York were ended by a stroke. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and Rats Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose are published in a variety of publications, including five poetry anthologies.
When you are dying, the electric snow of oblivion falls slowly on the soft apricot pores of the brain that is growing cold. The snowfall waltzes, silent, subdued; the snow covers the misshapen statues of your ego in your inner garden, and the scared postman at the gate. Each snowflake, huge, light blue, is your distorted self-portrait. Like a thin piece of blotting paper, it melts on your dry hands. There’s no you anymore, but you go on jumping on the skipping rope of me-me-me-me, already listlessly, out of the unsteady inertia of existence, like an armless boxer. You grab with your teeth the rusty chain of hope, but then notice that the chain resembles a leash, but no one holds it, no one at all. It’s a look from the temporal nowhere, from the space where naked ideas, silvery clots of terror, finger the globular bones of planets, seeking for a pink substance.
You are not looking for answers, standing on the shore of memory, and your memories are tadpoles of worlds; the frozen waves are your past days: look, here’s you who found Elvis Presley’s glasses and jumped into the waves in them, like a St. Bernard dog, to make your beloved woman laugh; and look, here…
When you are dying, your brain still doesn’t believe that it’s the end of the road. It still grows new plot lines, like earthworms cut in half, but they have nowhere to crawl. Even now, the mind is trying to grow out of itself like a picture that is growing out of its frame, trying to touch the wallpaper. There’s a possibility that after death, a wonderful lottery of incarnations may await for us, that you can find yourself in hell, in paradise, in nowhere, or – but both hell and paradise require a complex nervous system, to feel the endless pain or eternal bliss, and neither of the dead ends is even one bit attractive for a flying soul powered by God’s shadow, imagination.
It’s so easy, so monumental to think ahead about what happens when you won’t be able to think ahead, but you never die because, because snails leave trails on statues. I feel and think, therefore, I am, therefore one of us exists: either me, writing these words, or you, reading them.
(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)
Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Rattle, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, The London Magazine, Guernica, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades and many others.. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). His poems have been awarded RHINO 2022 Translation Prize. He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine.
Frank William Finney is a retired lecturer in literature from Massachusetts. Joint winner of The Letter Prize for Poetry, he is the author of The Folding of the Wings (FLP Books, 2022), and other collections.
The thing about the book given to me for Christmas one year when I was a kid (I never got a book for a birthday present–don’t quite know why, just never did)
is that I still blow a kiss to my aunt each time I open it (and she’s long dead) or any like it. A book’s a present still present lifetimes after it’s been read.
James B. Nicola’s nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award. The latest of his eight full-length poetry collections is Natural Tendencies. A returning contributor to Underwood and graduate of Yale, he hosts the Hell’s Kitchen International Writers’ Round Table at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins welcome.
“The Thing about the Book” originally appeared in Wingless Dreamer.
sometimes we smelled skunk musk through the vents. other times, we inhaled the skunk itself, dead below the floorboards, rotting scent sifting through the kitchen.
there was a mouse who raced to hide behind the fridge. my aunt caught it in a tupperware, returning it to the summer soft grass where she would later bury her two old dogs.
today, there’s a skunk smell in the kitchen where my grandmother is eating breakfast, holding her piece of bread and red jam with bird claw fingers while she asks me if i live here. i tell her no. she stares a moment, then forgets the conversation, returning to her piece of toast and egg.
Jessica Armstrong is a writer living in Morristown, Tennessee. She enjoys writing fiction and creative nonfiction, but easily loses patience editing long works. She prefers poetry because it fits on one page.
