Super-Sized Series

 Magical, Mystical and Supernatural

 

 

The Feather by Laurie Byro

My mother was an athlete, almost 6 feet tall.
At the age of fifty, she played in volleyball leagues
on winning teams with twenty-somethings.
 
I am 5 foot 2 and hate sports. Mom called me a wimp.  
I was diagnosed with MS in my mid-forties. Yet,
I am a big walker and may have kept myself mobile
by walking two miles every morning
and swimming in the lake in the summertime. 
 
After this long winter, I am so out of shape
I cannot pull myself up the last rung of the ladder
to hoist myself on the floating dock. 
The lifeguard says "it's the ladder, it's bent,
try the swim raft further out." 

That dock is another 50 feet away but I stubbornly
aim for it, the lifeguard will watch out for me, I figure.
As I get closer, I see what I think is a white bird perched
on the top rung.  But as I get near, I know what it is,
and my heart quickens remembering my mother.

A feather waves like a flag. It was caught
in a spider web.  Beckoning me as I got closer.
I easily hoist myself onto the raft, give the guard
two thumbs up. 

On her deathbed, at the age of seventy,
a few years older than I am now,
my mother said: “Whenever you see a feather
after I’m gone, it will be a message from me.”
 
I stretch out on the raft panting, "message received Mom."
“You did it” the feather whispers in the water
 and I reach for it to catch it before like my mother, it leaves. 


The Plucky Heroine by Sarah Carlton
- after “The Bear,” from
The Grey Fairy Book

The witch who acted as nursemaid
knew some girls were born to mischief 
and a craving for costumes

so she helped her charge sneak
away after dark, cloaked in bear. 
Muscular and sharp-toothed,

this girl-bear felt free to prowl the forest 
and let the story discover her. Like most 
teens, she was both beast and diva.

When the royal hunting party stumbled
on her lair, she cried, Call off your dogs!
knowing a prince tired of court 

manners would deem a talking bear 
cool enough to take home to meet 
his mother. And indeed, she made 

a good impression on the queen
—all fuzz and teddy, hunkering down 
in the palace kitchen with bowls

of blueberries and platters of salmon—
but at night she pulled from her sack 
a moonbeam gown perfect 

for cosplay and dashed off to dance 
at the ball, light as flight, skirts like clouds 
sailing behind her, not a claw in sight.


In the High Desert, She Is No Longer an Aries by Marianne Szlyk

That sign strides the wide sidewalks of Chicago
with wider red shoulders and matching leather pumps.
Pert and brunette, its curls bounce
but stick like plastic when Tom Cruise
(or his look-alikes) touch them.

Aries never listens to lyrics and wears a bow tie.

But she is no longer an Aries.
She is waiting
for the Age of Aquarius to resume.

In coach, she leans back
to watch the high desert become
green, sprouting trees
cloaked in bright moss,
frilled with ferns,
bubbling with mushrooms,
rivers clean and cold to the touch,
tiny houses the color of dirt, grass, and rocks,
color to blend in, not stand out,
nothing red, nothing plastic,

everything
she is waiting for.

Previously published in What's Your Sign? a poetry anthology inspired by astrology (Western, Chinese, Indian) 


Night Sounds by Sarah Russell

She tiptoes to the garden
on cricket nights to visit beings
busy in the grass, sycamore and willow,
hidden except for a swoosh, or chortle,
or pounce and small scream.

This night, she settles herself
on a stone in shadows, watches
moonlight tremble through leaves,
breathes moss, larkspur and clover.
Her fingers play with the hem
of her nightie, and she shivers.

Soon, she hears the wind chime cadence
of fairies dancing. The moon casts
a wildflower path to a clearing,
but the sounds drift ahead, out of reach.
She fears she’ll be lost and returns
to her stone in the garden.

Inside her house are loud voices
and sobs and the thud of something
falling. But she hears only the tinkling fairies. 
She knows someday they’ll find her 
and bring her to another garden
where another girl, sitting on a stone,
will hold her hand.


Auntie Aggie by Lynn White

It was a beautiful seventeenth century farmhouse 
in a picture postcard English village,
the family home of Liz
who would drop me off there 
on our way back home from college.
I would pick up the bus for the last fifteen miles.

That night was my first overnight stay.
Liz lived with her parents and granny
and inside it was as olde worlde as out
with creaky floor boards and beamed ceilings.

It was Saturday and her parents were out
so we played our music loud.
Granny was said to be a little deaf
and she didn’t complain about the music.
I could hear her as she crossed the room above
to open a drawer or cupboard and then return
to her favourite chair in the corner
but there was no angry banging on the floor,
just frequent sorties back and forth,
her footsteps sprightly and unremarkable.
I didn’t mention her to Liz,
it felt rude, somehow.

At about eleven we heard a car draw up
and turned our music down.
Liz’s parents came in
followed by Granny.

Confused, I asked about the footsteps above
and they all laughed.
“That’s Auntie Aggie,” said Liz,
“She lived here when the house was first built.
She always walks when someone new visits.
She likes to introduce herself.
She’ll stop now you’ve acknowledged her.”

And she did!

First published in Dark Winter


The Bowls by Elaine Sorrentino

They nested
blue inside red
inside green
inside yellow,

the largest Pyrex
ideal for summertime fruit salad
and Thanksgiving stuffing prep,
stored on the top shelf

where my mother
tall in heart, short in stature
was incapable of reaching,
so, she shook her fist in the air,

Herb, why did you leave me?
My father, two months buried,
answered the only way he could−
placing the yellow bowl on the counter.

Momentarily disarmed  
she chose not to question the miracle
but continue slicing apples, peaches, grapes
for other-worldly ambrosia.

Good Friday by Joe Cottonwood

Old man Bud hires me
to install an electric outlet
in his spiffy townhouse
because “they forgot this wall.”

Bud watches from a Barcalounger
with a blanket on his lap
as I cut holes and run wires 
and he tells me he died 
three days ago. 

His heart stopped during surgery.
I ask “So do you remember?”
“You mean the tunnel?”  
“Anything.”

“Naa. I woke up with 
a brain like a bowling ball. 
Like I dreamed something. 
Scored a spare.” He laughs. 
“Maybe next time a strike.
Wanna beer?” 


Drawing by Rachael Ikins

Kiss-Me-Kate and the Green Hooded Sod Fairy by Rachael Ikins

Kiss-me-Kate and the blackberries, a green-hooded sod fairy. You offer night’s garden, a pair of open hands. 
Green Man casts a long line until he hooks. Roots grip. Old trunk withers. 
Blackberries bound across the brook, bounce off steppingstones set too far apart. Smear my mouth.
Word-flow trickles, evaporates. Kate kisses the Green Man. His lips bleed.
I make lines, still juice, purple fingers, lines not shaped like letters. 
Paint, 
pastel, 
ink, 
burdock-leaf baskets  sewn with twigs spilling berries, 
 
it is all poetry.


The Psychic in the Seminar by Sharon Waller Knutson

asks me to read the mind of the sceptic:
a pale petite pony-tailed princess 
sitting in the front row staring
off into space like she wants
to be anywhere but here.

A room full of females
stare at me as I describe
what I see in the movie of my mind:
a log cabin nestled in the hillside
populated with Ponderosa Pine
and a red-breasted robin
perched on the porch.

I expect the skeptic to snicker
and mock me because I was sure
her mind was a blank screen.
But instead she whirls around
her blue eyes big as balloons. 
“I was thinking about my grandmother’s
cabin in the mountains,” she says.

The only person in the room
including me who wasn’t surprised
by my mind reading was the psychic
conducting the seminar.

“I knew you had psychic powers
the minute you walked in the room.
You could do what I do,” says the psychic
who charges big bucks in her San Diego
Suite predicting the future for clients.
.
I never hung out a shingle because
my psychic powers came out of the blue
like lightning and thunder 
and I was wrong more than right.

Like when I had a premonition 
a female friend in her fifties
would drop dead from a heart attack
which I shared with my healthy
husband who drove 100 miles
and shopped at six stores
the day before I found him
dead of a heart attack.

I would rather have the powers
of a medium so I could communicate
with him and family and friends
who are already on the other side.

Something Is There by Arlene Gay Levine

not really you and yet…
Something exists underneath
all those bits and pieces creating
whom you imagine you are,
more enigmatic than the mortal
looking back at your face
in the mirror every day.
It is the one gazing at you
from the inside, peaceful,
old as forever and younger
even than tomorrow.
 
When the you that you know,
perhaps falling short of how
you wish you could have been,
is no longer here, something,
that other boundless, soundless
light made of love who is and is not you -
will still be waiting,
an open hand inviting you to
the magnificence of its Mystery
once again.

Previously published in Quest: The Journal of the Theosophical Society of America 


A Dream/A Nightmare by Marilyn Zelke Windau

With wide open eyes,
I sat bolt upright in my bed.
A greyish-white figure
with a human-like body
sat there at the edge.
 
Its strange ghostly face stared at me.
From out of its mouth poured
round metal washers—
hundreds of them.
They clunked to the carpeted floor
silently.
 
It didn’t speak, just eyed me.
It never blinked.
 
I tried to scream, to make noise
but no sound exited my mouth.
 
I ran to my parents’ room to escape.
In horror, I told my middle school friends
my dream/my nightmare later that morning.

From my book: "Living with the Dead" Water's Edge Press publisher 2026


Like the Magic of Cygnets by Abha Das Sarma

I hoped for a transformation.
And to my amazement,
my son was effortless
in Indian percussion—
‘tabla’ flowing from his hands
with the very rhythm 
I practiced 
when I held him in my womb. 

Inspired by my friend
who produced a swimmer
being one. 

Yes, the science may say
It’s but natural 
but for me every beat
is a secret we shared in the dark,
a quiet, lifelong promise.
Magic and wonder that keeps us so
In love.

 
Year of the Black Water Dragon by Rose Mary Boehm

Lichened pillars support
a pier that leads into the turning.
I walk towards a small lake where
the chanterelles open their crooked
fans. Examine the underbelly of the
snail that carries Fibonacci’s
spiral. Canal dreams.
The cranes' mating dance.

Brown and burgundy leaves rush
towards the rotting hut as on a mission.
The mistral sends black flakes
from the burning pines,
and the red of the sky fills with
dark fingers pointing accusingly
upward. Looking inward

Skeletal beasts with crumpling horns
are offering planetary solutions.
Night-sky cravats in all fire colors
weave divisions that recover
on the leaf boat sitting on glittering
pinpoints of light on tiny waves.

Like transparent boulders, raindrops
roll towards the green tunnel
of a giant rhubarb leaf. Don’t
walk on water lilies. Make
a place to trust with peacock
feathers that lead you to sanctuary.

Snakes in the bonsai between
old railway lines. Is a blob of butter in
flour the same as a stone in sand?
Lightning stallions make sharp shadows.
Snow geese sit in baobab trees.

Do not judge your mind.
The world is a loud place.

From my book The Rain Girl


GHOSTS by Lorraine Caputo
 
I am chasing
the ghosts
of my past.
I’m running away
from them.
 
I want to confront you,
grab your wasted,
bloated arms,
force you
to look into my eyes.
I want to confront
your myth,
your reality.
The madness
I fear grows within.
I run from you
screaming
denying your existence,
whether in some reality
or only in my mind.
I want to flee
from you
& yet
I find my Self
confronted,
surrounded by you.
 
I’m chasing the ghosts
of my past.
I’m fleeing
from them ….
 
Previously published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal 


Not Meant for Humans by Luanne Castle
after Claude Monet's The Artist's Garden at Giverny

The walkway seems to have no beginning, and so I tiptoe through the purple and blue blossoms to reach the rough path, feeling naughty and bold but safe for its proximity to a well-painted building. I circle the garden of Iris, the rainbow herself. Round I go three times and then spy a spot of bone under the willow. The sun ray has moved, so now I can see what I have missed. Or did it just appear? I step closer, into the flowers, careful not to crush the blossoms themselves, aware I might be harming stems.  My curiosity draws me in. As I bend toward the ground, I part the plants and see a very small skeleton, as of an excruciatingly tiny human. Her shredded wings are faded with age, but once must have been the blue of Iris with yellow dots like bright and miniature suns. Perhaps she fell from the branch above when she was asleep. I understand now why the path repeats itself, an endless spinning trail, meant as it is for those with wings to fly above the garden and to rest in the shade of the well-nourished trees. Still, being human, I invite you to share in my experience.
Watch for tiny wings
hidden by goddess Iris
and her endless path.


To read more Storyteller Halloween poems

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2024/10/

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2025/10/super-sized-series_0576861597.html

Book of the Week

 

Shortcut to Thief River Falls, Kelsay Books, 2026 

by Shoshauna Shy 

 

By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Sassy, smart and satirical is the best way to describe Shoshauna Shy's new full-length poetry collection, “Shortcut to Thief River Falls. ” I was charmed and chuckling and couldn't put the book down until I read it cover to cover.  I was impressed with the way she tackles the difficult subjects of adoption, separation and divorce as well as elderly romance and the realities of being a poet and artist with her signature style and sardonic wit.  Shoshauna says in the book she is first and foremost a fiction writer so most of the poems are written from the point of view of someone else and only a few of them are autobiographical.  I can always recognize a Shoshauna Shy poem by its unique metaphors, sharp wit and the element of surprise.  She grabs my attention with intriguing titles and surprises me by swerving in a different direction.  I would have bought the book based on the tile "Shortcut to Thief River Falls" without even knowing what it was about.  Shoshauna admitted she came up with the title first and then wrote a poem to fit it.  I have been hooked on Shoshauna’s storytelling style since I read, “Bringing my Son to the Police Station to be Fingerprinted” selected for the Poetry 180 Library of Congress program launched by Billy Collins when he was US Poet Laureate.  In reading her latest collection, I admire the talent, imagination and research it took to write persona poems about adoption, separation and divorce since she was raised by her birth parents who were married for seventy years before their deaths and she has been married for forty-six years. Yet, her characters and stories are as authentic and believable in the persona poems as her autobiographical poems.

I’ll let the synopsis, blurbs on the back of the book and some favorite poems speak for themselves.

About the book:

Shoshauna Shy writes of belonging, the ties that bind, and the longing for connection when those ties are severed by adoption, divorce or estrangement.  

Praise from her peers:

Storyteller Joe Cottonwood, author of “buck naked is the opposite of hate” writes:

Shoshauna Shy’s poems come in a turtle-tough shell with a soft soul inside. From the stony mysteries of adoption to the peachy flesh of romantic connection (with its tooth-breaking pit), like the folks at her imaginary poetry recital, you’ll feel “those sweet little throat-clucks / the audience makes as they resonate / with the final line.”


Catherine Jagoe, author of "Praying to the God of Small Things" and "Bloodroot" writes:
 
Shortcut to Thief River Falls is a clear-eyed and compassionate exploration of the ties that bind and what happens when they are severed by adoption, divorce, abandonment, or estrangement. In these wise, generous, and often funny poems, a protean “I” frequently records moments when a life starts to unravel, an irrevocable decision is made—or, conversely, when a character recognizes the blessing of a deep bond to a partner or child. While the longing for human connection is everywhere in this book, its intermingling of persona poems with personal lyric blurs the boundary between self and other, connecting all the speakers in a capacious imagined community that is its own form of healing.

 
 Ronnie Hess, past-president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and former Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission writes:

Genealogy has become an industry where technology and science revolutionize what we uncover about a shared past. In this affecting, wide-ranging poetry collection, Shoshauna Shy mines the emotional terrain DNA results can’t touch–the ache for both connection and disjuncture, and the meaning of belonging and abandonment among children, lovers, mothers and fathers, both biological and adoptive.


The 134-page collection contains 65 poems and is divided in six sections. 
 

I share with you some of my favorite poems including two autobiographical poems about her mother-in-law who died one year short of 100-years-old.

The Adoptee Tells Her Story
 
I elbowed in
on their flirtation,
their catch-as-catch-can
drunken immersion
one night in September
on a silver lake.
I was the spark
not stomped to ash;
the wind lifting curtains
that knocked over the lamp;
the party crasher no one
wanted to bounce.
I slid down a shortcut
to Thief River Falls
 
until eviction, a lay-off,
a bout of colic
conspired to give me
the boot.


The Conversation,
Asbury Avenue 1959
 
My mother informed me
that my first best friend,
the five-year-old next door
with whom I did cartwheels,
traded Jujubes and Chuckles,
called for yard-to-yard
was adopted.
There was such a thing?
Children were movable,
removable, interchangeable?
Was this why Mary Sarah
had no brothers nor sisters,
looked like neither parent
way older than mine;
why her residence in a bedroom
wallpapered with roses
seemed incidental?
As if there were a clause
in a 3-ply contract:
Subject to revocation
upon due cause


(No) Return to Sender
 
When you’re adopted, the appearance
of envelopes with unmarked photos inside
tugs you into days of rehearsing different
combinations of verbs, adverbs, pronouns
to unleash during the ride to school or in
the bakery aisle at Winthrup’s Stop & Shop
to a grown-up who has proven that despite
holding all the winning cards, they are not
about to place them on display.
He or she might put you on display in hand-
knitted cardigans boasting reindeers, give you
bananas sliced into pinwheels, allowance for
dish duty, but when it comes to facts
and figures and all the many who what whys
                   
up goes that cyclone fence that won’t bend
even when you curl both hands over the links
and shake. Envelopes, plain white ones,
with photos of bare-legged children on tricycles,
men wearing flannel shirts, wives with ponytails
 
slide out of a basement desk drawer or surface
from a hatbox on a closet floor or arrive
in the mail addressed to the household
by surname without a note, an explanation
or return address so you invent farmhouses
 
for them–waffle breakfasts before the harvesting
of hay, or jungle gym whoops between orange
Popsicles in backyards where cocker spaniels chase,
hating the carrier for not bringing a sequel,
the machine that smeared the clue of a postmark,
wondering how to recover those consonants
and vowels, locate the place of its starting origin,
what route will allow your return.


The Week He Asked
for a Trial Separation

She had not realized
that she had come to relish
the heft of her braid
hanging down her spine
slapping a rhythm on
each cheek of her buttocks
as she jogged the bike route
that met Fairview Lane
How she savored its swing
this rope between shoulders
needing its weight against
the skin of thin shirts
in the same way cats need
their tails for balance


Once They Decided on Divorce
  
First it was a tent flap.
He whispered to her from one side
and she responded.
 
Then it was a screen door.
Although she kept her back to him,
she still listened.
 
Next a storm door.
He had to shout to be heard.
She didn’t shout back.
 
After that, an oaken entry
with a brass knocker and kickplate.
She never answered.
 
Now it was a bank vault.
Not even their daughter was willing
to carry his messages inside.



One Thing You Never Want
to Learn the Hard Way

Don’t place an order for roses
to be sent to your wife
with a card that claims Darlin’
I’ll do anything you say
 
at the same time you order
asters for the neighbor
whose cat you ran over
on your bicycle last night
Joni forgive me

Marriage Proposal @ Age 96

They're joy-riding again–my
mother-in-law and the man 
across the hall whom she met 
at the Angel Park potluck.
Daughters forbid she drive
her Buick but he still has his, 
and she tells him when it's safe 
to accelerate through the yellow 
before it goes red.
They picnic on Evergreen Island
if there's a table in the shade,
cruise to the family cabin to catch
sunset on the pier, to her childhood 
church and farmstead before brunch
at The Silky Spoon.
As if his were a 50's Skylark
with fins and dog dish hubcaps,
and he wore jeans with the cuffs
rolled up, Lucky Strikes tucked 
at his bicep, her cardigan buttoned 
like a cape, blonde curls
streaming backwards.
It's a pandemic summer slick 
with Purell, but the wind washes
them both clean.
The rosebush they bring to our patio
blooms beyond the season's first frost.
    

Marriage Proposal @ Age 98

He asks her again–
she ten years widowed
after seven married decades,
her name engraved on a tombstone
where her first husband lies.
Marry me please
this one bringing her peaches,
not wanting to die with no record
of their love.
And love him she does

for his yes-let’s-go lightness, dapper
countenance, easy humor, caring
kindness, pious nature.
But she is also fond of their separate
apartments; the freedom for holidays 
with her own blood kin;
breakfast at six or maybe 10:30.
Besides, there’s that plot
on the other side of town,
someone waiting.

Please contact Shoshauna via shoshaunashy@gmail.com for copies

To read Shoshauna’s poem that got me hooked:

https://allpoetry.com/poem/14374591-Bringing-My-Son-To-The-Police-Station-To-Be-Fingerprinted-by-Shoshauna-Shy




 

Life Through the Eyes of My Grandchildren

 Lori Levi

 

 Lori Levy and her grandchildren

By Lori Levy

I get a lot of pleasure from my grandchildren, especially observing how they experience life, what excites them or moves them, what they love doing. Sometimes that means dressing up as batman and a ballerina. Sometimes it's being in love with the tattoo on a father's arm or with rabbits in a yard on the way to the park. Sometimes it's serving me coffee made from soap bubbles in the bathtub. The first photo shows me with my gang of granddaughters. My grandson isn't in this picture (sorry, Isaiah!). It also doesn't include my youngest granddaughter, Olive. She's in the second photo and was born December 29, 2025. The last poem is about her.



WHEN THE DOORBELL RINGS

I open the door as if clearing a dam,
and in they surge:  batman and ballerina,
flying and leaping down the hallway—he, with a mask
and a black shirt taped to his back; 
she, in a pink skirt, arms outstretched,
twirling the way Mommy showed her.
He tells me about the movie he watched, he and Daddy;
about batman and his bat mobile, bat cave, bat wings. 
She, too, chimes in.  They have so much to say, 
both at once, about Robin and the Joker, Flash, the Penguin.
I swallow their words as fast as I can,
shifting my gaze from him to her, her to him,
trying to keep it straight:  who rescued, who destroyed;
who’s a good guy, who’s a bad guy. 

Later, when we play with the Lego men,
I want to change the game:  just good guys today.
But he scrunches his face, bares his teeth, 
slides his figure towards mine and knocks down my house.
The bad guys are coming, says his little sister.

Before they leave, they want Grandpa to be a monster,
chasing them, laughing and screeching, to the car.
We kiss them goodbye, belted in their car seats.
In that moment, that kiss, 

the bad guys are gone.


Previously published in Iris Literary Journal


BELOVED TATTOO

I watch entranced as my granddaughter, not yet two,
circles her hands around her daddy's arm. Huggie, she says,
and embraces it—smiling, adoring, in love 
with her daddy’s tattoo.

Not a heart or a rose or even her name—
just the logo of his former band,
her daddy the guitarist in Poopan Hooligan.

She presses her cheek to her beloved tattoo,
says, Hi, Tattoo, kisses it, cleans it,
tries to feed it. What is this love?
Is she soaking in music through the sunburst image?
Hearing a beat, her ear on the P of the logo? 

She copies her mommy in a hip hop dance,
clapping, bouncing, swaying her hips.
She laughs when we laugh,
laughs some more.

I think of the future.
Maybe she’ll grow up to be
a math professor. Anything's possible.
But look how this little girl enters a room,
how she tilts her head, brightening her face
into one big smile till all her features
are teasing, flirting, joking with us.
This is Emilia Rose.
I think she emerged from the womb
as a singer/dancer/entertainer.

Previously published in Poetry Breakfast.


IN LOVE WITH

Mindfulness is all the rage now.  They say it's good for our health.
Wake up, breathe, pay attention to the moment.  When I do,
I fall in love with the red, orange, gold leaves
I pass on my walk through the neighborhood:
L.A.'s loud winter leaves, intense as extroverts.
I fall in love with quiet, too:  the chill of morning
when I slip out in my pajamas 
to get the newspaper tossed in my driveway.  
I could say I'm in love with boring things, too,
like oatmeal, still and bland in its bowl.
In love with this porridge—and how seductive it becomes 
when I add chia seeds, cinnamon, and blueberries. 

My granddaughters can't wait to see the bunnies 
on the way to the park, two of them behind a fence
in a neighbor's yard.  We stop to watch them eat carrots,
lettuce, cucumbers, twitching as they stare back at us.
Scampering from here to there, one corner to another.
It's enough for the girls, more than enough.
I'm in love with their smiles, their hi bunnies,
bye bunnies, their giggling love
for these creatures who don't do much more—
one could say—than eat, sleep, twitch, scamper,
which—one could argue—is just what we do.

Previously published in Your Daily Poem.


GRATITUDE

Where is it today?
I can’t find it, can’t feel it.
I think I chased it away
with my complaints, my disappointment.

Must be hiding outside—
in the neighbor’s rosebushes, perhaps,
or in the purple Russian sage down the street.

Wait. Why down the street?
It doesn't hide: it waits to be found.
It's probably here in my house, curled up
with my complaints—napping in the gloom
until I welcome it again.

I think it's peeking at me now
from the bubbles in the bathtub
where a five-year-old—
my Rio Belle, my granddaughter—
pours soapy water in a cup,
serves me coffee, cappuccino,
then shoos me away and tells me
to come back as a new customer. 
I remind her that her hair needs washing.
You're being so dramatic, she responds.
I crack up, she guffaws,
we call each other hilarious—
life shining again, like the olive oil
and lemon on the salad I made earlier,
fresh as the taste of gratitude.  


Previously published in Your Daily Poem.


WELCOME

I am reading a novel called Oh, William!
but I want to say Oh Olive, hello,
welcome to the world, to your family.
Oh Olive, I wish I could tell you 
it’s a peaceful world
where people are all kind to each other,
but, oh Olive, I’m sorry, that’s not the case,
we’re still fighting wars,
still haven’t learned to get along together.
But, oh Olive, I promise you
that we, your family, will do our best 
to make your own little world
feel warm and loving.
Oh Olive, you bring me hope:
I say your name and think
of an olive branch extended in peace.
I think of olive trees,
how tough they are,
surviving in the driest soil,
blooming, offering their gifts.
Oh Olive, you are a gift.
Hello and welcome, welcome.
Our arms are open.
We’ve been waiting for you.

When My Heart Forgot the Dance

 Rachael Ikins

 Rachael Ikins the day after the ablation

By Rachael Ikins

These poems tell the story of my heart arrhythmia and procedure May 2018. It was many years before I understood this is a thing you live with like your eye color. In 2015 I was defibrillated at the Emergency Room of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse NY.

 The ablation for afib happened at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. I went home that early evening. A friend stayed with me for a week because I wasn’t allowed to lift or exert myself. The cardiologist who did the ablation told me a lot of the erroneous activity was coming from the nerves in the stump/scar of the part of my lung my husband operated on so long ago. Felt like Phillip was talking to me.

The last poem about the voice was written one of the times post ablation when I wore a monitor for a month. They look like smart phones. But the leads come unstuck sometimes and the red light comes on so I ended up phoning the 800 number in a panic. The lovely man on the other end had a voice like melted chocolate and talked me through redoing the leads while I stood in the bathroom mirror telling him what I saw. I decided they must hire people with those voices on purpose. Sure calmed me down.

I’ve just now started to feel a degree of knowing what to do when it bothers me rather than panic.

 Boundary Violation was previously published in an anthology by IndieBlu press.


When My Heart Forgot the Dance

Always happened autumns—
when my heart forgot the dance. light shortened, 
darkness chilled pavements, speed up, 
two step, cha cha, break dancing

red phone in my pocket,
ambulance, ER,
alien spaceship’s inner dome.  I remember 
the EMT’s kindness, my panic attacking me, 
how she said to blow through my mouth 2, 3, 4, 
5, 6, 7, 8,
suck in, nostrils only.

In a cargo bay, 
hooked me to leads, at one 
with the Mothership, did bleeds 
they left me. 

To study the dirt on the baseboards 
where the wringer mops flipped their hair. I had to pee. 

Two years later, October, 
after a beer and a bowl of chili, 
a ride to Urgent Care even though last time
 I remembered they said: heart = ER.
I was too busy breathing to argue. 

EMT injected me, something warm
 that told my heart to stop fucking around. 
When we got there, a-fib. They could 
turn me off, shock me on again.

I came to chattering. Lost an earring. 
Before zap, all metal must be removed, 
collected in a plastic bag. I wanted to get back 
to myself, but that earring never found its way.

After years of donut holes, 
drugs that didn’t work. 
Spring, ablation. 

Information minimal about just how asleep 
you are or not during this procedure with wires
 snaked up your hoo hoo and a floating level of consciousness
 that thinks “How obnoxious!” that jack- hammering 
in your chest. I said it aloud.

Home late afternoon, subcu Loop recording my every beat 
and tattling wifi.

Years passed. There is still a-fib now and then, not much, 
and phantom sensations left from the jackhammering 
“They may never go away”
Beat, beat, squeak

Loop’s battery dying. I can opt to have them dig it out. No,
say, leave it with my tats and scars, all friends by now.

Last night we fell back an hour, 
nights leave frost-lathered dawn lawns. 
I realize, beat beat, it’s the time of year when shit happens
 and me without my Loop. Who knew I would miss that tattletale?
On news they say daylight saving fallback stress 
causes more heart attacks and strokes. 

I wake up 2:10 a.m. right after the time changes,
Doo be doo be shaboom, 

have faith little girl
Your heart is strong.


Boundary Violation/Heart Surgery

I entered the machine.
On my own soft feet.
Murders of black robots like crows 
rustled and hummed, 
exhaled frigid breath. 
They stripped me,
taped me, needled and sprayed me.

And I laid my body down
in this glass room. They kept me awake. Bitter herbs.
A white rabbit larger than a man
grinned vampire teeth,
hammer in one paw to pound my heart.

There were balloons, liquid nitrogen,
a suggestion of microwaves and my secrets 
exposed on a 52” screen as snakes slithered 
through my skin into pathways only my blood 
should whisper.

They told me to breathe.

The next few nights I did not sleep.
Fearing the rabbit.

Where they planted a monitor in my skin, 
glued next to my cat tattoo, 
bruising spread, my left breast a purple Picasso 
masterpiece.
I did not sleep.

The monitor tattles my secrets all night after midnight.

The third day exhaustion took me. I slept hard, 
unaware when I woke of the day or time. I followed 
my mother into a field. She disappeared down a woodchuck hole.
When I called, she popped out, a large lynx 
with Mom’s three-years’-past-dying eyes, juicy 
bird in her mouth. 

“Eat, baby.”  she said. I was hungry.

Last night while the monitor recorded my regular rhythm
I camouflaged myself well with dusk, 

I arrived on Cape Cod. My husband and I argued and then 
I was running, running to the ocean, water to my waist. 
I embraced a mossy cliff. 
Salt-tinged rivulets flowed down my sore throat.
I need. I need. I need.

When I climb to the beach, fog obscures the world. 
No way back to him, our motel, or not to fall off a cliff. 
I slide one bare foot at a time along pavement, sand grinds skin.
My feet must be bleeding. It stings. 

A cottage looms. Woman bows her head over artwork 
she crafts by lantern light. I stand unseen, back to the shingles.
I shiver, fingers spread, full of splinters and peeled paint, to wait

for the sun to burn the fog away. 
To find my way.
Heart-percussion syncopates/ocean’s song. 
Beneath a May moon.
I pray
for peace.


My Heart is a Lonely God, Tearing My Guts

The voice of my heart growls like a stomach.
 bustles along tunnels in darkness thinks only 
of its next meal, rodent whiskers twitch over 
large black eyes. You prod and probe. The snail 
suspects a spy, curls in on itself, curses the magic wand 
depending on your hand’s angle.

The curve where the path branches 
off is a rush hour river. We raft in the arms
of all the layered voices that limped and skipped 
down these banks before us. A chorus.
This room, the white leaved tree of lights holds 
all their melodies, two notes, sometimes three, 
voices that say, Hey/mom and why/why/why. 

Heart is Gollum hoarding its ring,
does not appreciate your spying, 
taking notes for future to use 
against it.

 

Calling the 800 # Tech at 2 a.m. When My Heart Monitor Blinked Red

His voice is a hole in the box spring 
A haven I crawl into.

His voice is wrap-around sunglasses
smoky and cool, when I wear them 
nobody sees me.

Back here by the baseboard 
of betrayal, 
I carve two words into my skin, 
“No more.”

His voice holds my heart 
this heaving small animal,  in one palm, 
strokes with a single finger until I sigh. 
The dark fills with stars. My heart
whispers his name, melted velvet
I lick my lips

Zion. Zi-on. Zi-on

Super-Sized Series

 Dishing Out the Drama

 

 

Movie Life by Arlene Gay Levine

Before we chose
you and I sat,
discarnate,
discussed possibilities.
You: an actor.
Me: a poet selling popcorn
at the Loew’s Valencia.
 
Every day you show up to watch Gable,
the ripples beneath his shirt,
nothing escapes you except why
you don’t like yourself.
I write poems by the light
of the popcorn machine,
aluminum-lined odes
dribbled with butter.
 
One day you notice
a hastily scribbled sonnet
on your popcorn bag:
the last couplet,
my name and number.
You arrive at my star-plastered
apartment that night;
I call you
Rhett in my best Scarlett voice.
We go to a movie, some Hitchcock
thing that makes us both dizzy.
Over hamburgers
you deliver
your romantic soliloquy.
You needn’t have bothered.
I can hardly wait to get you
between the sheets; just a rerun
of my favorite feature fantasy.
I award you an Oscar.
 
I’d like to say it ended
happily-ever-after, like in the movies,
but we fizzled out before
the plot thickened.
Maybe the characters
weren’t sympathetic enough.
 
I quit the Valencia.
Got a job writing obits
for a local rag.
One day yours crosses my desk.
You jump from a fifteenth floor window.
What a mess.
Guess you never did catch on--
Gable would’ve used a gun.

 

 

 Worth the Wait by Elaine Sorrentino

Clutching the remote
I squelch the tendency

to fast-forward past
buffoonery and greed,

and bask in the instant
sacrifice and loyalty

are validated.
I like to think I’m Elinor,

cut from the same bolt
of moral integrity,

but who am I kidding?
I’m moony-eyed

Marianne,
shunning propriety for love.

Muddling through
Fanny’s hard heartedness,

Lucy’s nitwitted naivete,
Willoughby’s crushing cruelty

sweetens the penultimate
moment celibacy is revealed

and Elinor is free
to unburden her sensible heart;

a turn of events that justifies
two hours and fifteen minutes of angst.

 


Dear Juliet by Lynn White

Listen

to a father’s foreboding
it’s a difficult time 
when you’re half grown.
No longer a child,
but not yet an adult.

Half grown
with fully formed temptations,
and such contempt
for adults,
fathers especially,

you always know best
but listen,

the forbidden fruit
of first love
is poisonous 
not for tasting
and when the feuds of the fathers
meet the dreams of the fathered
there are no happy endings.

You always knew best
until you didn’t.

So listen
and heed a father’s foreboding.

First published in Heretics, Lovers and Madmen


The Borrowers by Jacqueline Jules
 
“I can’t find Barbie’s blue shoes!”
“Well.” Mom winked at me.
“Maybe a Borrower took them.”
It was our private joke
whenever something small
vanished unexpectedly.
Maybe Barbie’s shoes
were under the floorboards
in a cozy miniature home
on the feet of a teensy girl
sitting primly on a thimble.
 
Like The Borrowers book
we read cover to cover
at least three times.
 
We spent so many sweet hours
between eight and nine at night,
Mom snuggled beside me,
reading just another chapter
in her crisp calm voice.
 
And for as long as I live
I won’t see
a lost toothpaste cap
as merely missing
but maybe swiped
by someone dainty
who needed a new cup
to set on her tiny table.

Originally published in Your Daily Poem


Phantom at Arrowhead by Wilda Morris
. . . one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
~ Herman Melville (Chapter 1 of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville)
 
I peered out the porthole of Melville’s office
at Arrowhead and saw Mount Greylock
pale blue in summer light. Whale-shaped,
seeming to swim, calm in tranquil green waters
along the horizon. Nothing haunting
or horrific. Nothing malevolent.
 
But when winter wraps the Berkshires
in frigid air and snow sweeps in from the west,
that creature turns phantasmagoric,
a great white poltergeist. Mist rises
from the specter like the spouting
of a sperm whale, mesmerizing, menacing.
 
That apparition disturbed Melville’s sleep,
pursued him in dreams through the dead of night
as he pursued it. Obsessed as Ahab,
he rose each day to write again about gods,
cultures, and people as changeable as the mountain,
as unpredictable and malicious as Moby Dick.
 
First published in my book, Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick (Kelsay Books).

A Crow on Roadkill by Rachael Ikins

Beef escorts Judge from courtroom, robes fly like crows’ wings. Senator knocked down, a question, statues stand silent.

I dwell in my house like a turtle it’s shell- all I need is just-enough. 

I fit my life into chicken noodle soup cans. Campbells $1.28 a can, generic $.95. Tastes close enough to five years old sick in bed, mom with lunch on a tray. Sided toast with crunchy peanut butter.

Heat is coming, an avalanche of it, pick spinach. Hose trickles slow-filling pool as if water is reluctant to leave the dark lake depths where I was born. Into that lake before birth my mother swam curled around me.

I drive past, my body craving.

Read James Patterson, swim his surfaces,  the Deep just too dark, seaweed and monsters. Watch feel-good movies over and over, like bed time stories, enough serial killers roam weekend nightmares. 

Childhood comforts, chicken noodle soup, toast dipped in. Peanut butter on generic saltines $1.19. I was never in love with brand names. We have to stay under this roof, we have to trim the fat. 

Eat your kale, quinoa and trendy protein. I’ll grab comfort like a crow on roadkill, my day-old cupcakes with red frosting that probably causes cancer. 

Published in the anthology Unhoused

 

 The Tale of Three Octogenarian Grandmas Living in an Electronic Age by Sharon Waller Knutson

The Doberman chained up next door howls
as my Ring doorbell chimes but the camera
shows no one outside but the Flicker
flying by the window. Feet propped up
on my walker, I watch Prime TV.

Judge Judy peers at a cellphone where a Ring
doorbell camera captures an unleashed
Pitbull attacking a German Shepherd
on a leash while her law clerk Granddaughter
explains to her how to bring up the video.

It’s refreshing to watch a woman of my generation
who speaks my language on television.
The mother of five with multiple grandchildren
lectures and teaches her litigants
like mothers and grandmothers talk
to their children and grandchildren.
She corrects their grammar and tells them
not to slouch, uncross their arms, put
their hands down, don’t interrupt, get a job. 

“In my opinion, what’s wrong 
with this country is the new generations’
sense of entitlement,” she says.
She believes in marriage not co-habitation,
that both parents have equal rights
and about has a coronary when a parent
who can’t afford to support their own children
loans money or buys an expensive pet
or runs off with the opposite sex,
leaving their children with relatives, 
neighbors or strangers.

On Peacock, a newscaster shows a masked
gunman caught on camera at the door
of Nancy Guthrie, a grandmother
and mother of a TV show celebrity,
seconds before she is snatched 
as she sleeps alone in her home
just a hundred miles from my home
where I sleep alone unharmed. 

The sheriff says Nancy had to be kidnapped.
“She is 84, a widow, and can’t walk very far.” 
He could be describing me, I think,
so I check my locks every night. “Don’t
answer the doorbell after dark,” says my son
from a thousand miles away
who is alerted on his cellphone every time
the doorbell rings and talks to the visitor. 
“It’s safe here,” I say, but I bet Nancy told
her son and daughters that before 
disappearing without any trace.