Super-Sized Series

The Soundtrack of Our Lives

 

 
Sharon and Al Knutson

Waltzing with my Walker by Sharon Waller Knutson

Chris Stapleton sings: “You are smooth
as Tennessee Whiskey and sweet
as Strawberry Wine” to me like you did
in your cowboy hat and red shirt

with your dark hair slicked back
in Fritz’s Café while wildlife
you photographed stared
at us from the walls.

Your bearded best friend and bandmate 
batted his blue eyes at me behind
your back while the racoon tail
swung on his lead guitar.

None of us dreamed that in a decade
you’d both be dust in the desert
and I’d be waltzing with my walker
while wildlife watch through the windows.

“Go rest high on that mountain,”
Vince Gill sings. “I wish I could see 
the angels faces when they hear 
your sweet voice sing.”


Don't Think Twice It's Alright by Laurie Kuntz

Some things I will never do well:
So when you picked up your guitar,
  and asked me to sing, 
after a slight hesitation,
 unsure if the air was riddled, 
I followed you into song--
Dylan being our captain, 
certain that the chorus 
was a metaphor for our lives,
“we both gave our hearts by sacrificing a bit of our souls,”
but perhaps it is time to ignore the words,
and relish the cadence, 
the moment --
we are both carrying the tune.


Eighteen Wheeler by Judith Waller Carroll

That old song’s running through my head again,
the one whose title I can never remember

about the trucker driving through a snowstorm 
to his waiting wife and kids. 

The song that made me have to pull over
every time I heard it

those endless weeks before the birth of my son
my emotions so close to the surface 

anything would set me off.
Even now, as my brain plays a loop 

of the only lines I remember
I’m back in the Stop-N-Go parking lot

my enormous belly grazing the steering wheel
tears streaming down my cheeks 

as Mama gets the news that the Man Upstairs
was listening and Daddy is coming home

joyfully singing, “Roll on...Roll on… Roll on”  
as I pull back onto the freeway

and drive the rest of the way
to wherever it was I was going. 
 

 
Phillip and Rachael Ikins


I Want You to Stay by Rachael Ikins

“I have died every day waiting for you” Christina Perri’s song “A Thousand Years”, my twenty-something self falling into your brown eyes, steady pools over your mask, your hand’s warmth around mine before sleep.

“I have loved you for a thousand years” speaks my heart, yet how could I know this on an operating table in this OR.

A silver curl escapes the neck of your scrub suit, Hozier’s lyrics “Take me to Church” my truth, “good God, I give you my life.”  “You sharpen your knife,” and yes, “this is hungry work.”

This saving me. Your name scrawled beneath my armpit forever, where you cut, touched my heart as you removed what was damaged.

Six months later we healed, together, 
that first visit your magic pocket produced eggs, cream, butter, omelets for my empty cupboard.  Your eyes invited with Rhianna, “Stay”
“If you dare, come a little closer.” 
My refrain took up the verse,
“There’s something in the way you move,
I want you to stay.”

Now I wonder if that was real, 
some memories, visions more solid than reality, the colors, scents, lyrics singing from an iPhone not yet invented when you saved my life; records, cassettes, CDs and you, gone, 
the way my chin fit into your collarbone’s hollow, like an egg in a nest we were 
once that close.


Spring by Tamara Madison
 
Someone loans me her cassette 
of Paul Simon’s latest album. 
I listen to it as I watch snow fall 
through the pines outside the window. 
“Four in the morning/crapped out/yawning.”
 
I listen to it as I watch snow whiten the river. 
“In my little town I grew up believing”
Listen to it as the ice begins to soften
“God keeps his eye on us all.”
 
We are nearing the end. Grass and mud 
begin to show through the ski paths. 
Soon kayakers glide down the river, 
finding channels through the ice. 
“Step out the back, Jack.”
“Make a new plan, Stan.”
 
People were nice to us here. 
We didn’t mind being sequestered. 
It was a long 15 months, felt
four times as long. Decades later
my mind returns to the icy river,
the snow-bound woods,
whenever I hear these songs:
“Still crazy after all these years.”

Poet’s Note: This poem is from my upcoming collection, Russian Honeymoon, a memoir about the 15 months I spent in the USSR as a young bride. This poem is set near the end of the tour, after 15 long months of the hard work of being young Americans in the USSR, tasked by the U.S. Department of State with "telling America's story to the world."


Long Play Records by Mary Ellen Talley
Dedicated to the One I Love

Sure, we sang along with Leslie Gore’s
“Sunshine, Lollipops, and Raindrops”
but our ideal was Simon and Garfunkel’s
“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” even as we swooned
at Paul McCartney singing “All My Loving.”
Time scratched our grooves. We replaced LPs 
with cassettes we had to rewind with pencils.

James Taylor, then with full head of hair 
contemplated “Fire and Rain” but romanced us 
with “How sweet it is,” and every time I felt 
“You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman,” 
I slid Carole King’s music in the cassette slot
even though I was struggling
to be my own version of Gloria Steinem.

Mama Cass sang us into “California Dreamin’”
and the Beach Boys revved up 
“Good Vibrations.” 
Every song dove deep
into angst and joy. We knew “Don’t Worry Baby” 
meant more than just a car race 
back when scarcity of birth control
could scare the crap out of any couple.

Now new cars aren’t sold with CD players.
Our kids grew up with iPods
and I was too busy to make playlists.
Everybody’s streaming onto cell phones
while we play retro stacks of CDs.
Our son who values vinyl
knows despair is still “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

We’ve stopped buying new paraphernalia.
Our son gave us a turntable for Christmas
so we can play old vinyl 
As the stylus descends, we listen to Elvis sing
“Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
then The Righteous Brothers “Soul and Inspiration”
as we move about the living room in a slow dance.


Sweet Betsy by Joe Cottonwood

Happened in a grocery store, 
I was fondling a can labeled 
Betsy’s Sweet Peas, reminded of 
“Oh do you remember 
Sweet Betsy from Pike
Who crossed the wide prairie 
with her lover Ike”
which made me wonder if 
Ike and Betsy were, like, 
making whoopee out of wedlock
all over the wide prairie 
before finally they marry 
at the end of the song, 
a song they taught us in 
grade school for Pete’s sake 
when a stranger with infant swaddled 
to her chest blocks the Safeway aisle 
and sings soprano:
“With two yoke of oxen, 
a big yellow dog, 
A tall Shanghai rooster 
and one spotted hog.”
“Excuse me?” I say. “Was I singing? Out loud?”
“Better,” she says, “than the crap they’re playing.” 
Harmony, you know, is intimacy. Instantly.
We, strangers pushing carts. 
The baby wide-eyed, silent. 
A minute later from the next aisle 
I hear her soprano: 
“One evening quite early 
they camped on the Platte.
'Twas near by the road 
on a green shady flat.”
But she falters. Over the shelves I offer:
“Where Betsy, sore-footed, 
lay down to repose
With wonder Ike gazed 
on that Pike County rose.”
Ah, love, and the day is plenty. 
The infant wails. 



Plastic Pipeline by Lynn White

“He’s got a plastic heart, plastic teeth and toes,
plastic knees and a perfect plastic nose.
He’s got plastic lips that hide his plastic teeth and gums,”
so sang the Kinks then about their plastic man in 1969.

Now in the twenty-first century it seems he’s here
as plastic gushes everywhere
over land,
over sea
and into our very being
as plastics ingested from our food,
and inhaled in from the air we breath
become part of our bodies,
part of ourselves
to be inherited 
by our children.

We fill every hole in the ground
and soon the sea will be transformed into plastic land.
We re-cycle it by the shipload from rich places to poor,
places where the people don’t matter,
where “plastic man don’t feel no pain”.
There we dump it on the newly plasticised people 
in the plastic land we’ve created for them.

First published in Ekphrastic Review challenge for Benjamin Von Wong


A Car That Could Fly

By Joan Leotta

Domenico Modugno sold me my first car when I was twenty-seven. Although a Northern Virginia Chrysler Plymouth salesman pocketed the commission, Modugno's award winning song, Volare convinced me to buy. The rolling lyrics of this ballad about love, achieving one's dreams, and the simple freedom of dreaming one's way into the sky, were stamped on my psyche. 

I duly wrote it down my Dad’s advice but…. when the salesman showed me a blue, two door model of the car inspired by the song, the words "Nel blu dipinto di blu (in the blue sky, painted blue)" filled my brain. 

Distracted by the car's beauty, I didn’t notice any problems, bought it and named it, "Victor." At first, Victor seemed to be all I had dreamed. Then, came the problems that made me a regular at the repair bay. Worked fine there but as soon as I got home, Victor would refuse to start without ten minutes of engine warming. Victor's good nature was only paint deep.

When my job offered me a two-month assignment in Dallas Texas, I accepted with alacrity and opted to make the three-day drive. Once arrived, Victor’s starting problems continued so I took him to a Dallas Plymouth Dealer. They healed him! Together we flew along Dallas highways and explored Texas byways with nary another starting issues.

Just before Dallas assignment was finished, I sent a postcard to a guy back in DC who had laughed when I told him I’d bought a Volare. A few months after my return to DC, fall 1977, I married Joe, the laughing guy. 

Yes, a car is really nothing more than transportation from point A to point B, but there are days when I swing onto the highway in my current vehicle and gasp for joy at the  wide expanse of blue across my windshield, a sky so big that the road seems to disappear into it and I sing," Blu dipinto di blu”,  as I escape happily piu in alto, (higher) than the sun,  My everyday self disappears lassu (up there) and my dreams take over. Volare!








 

Book of the Week

 Scrap: Salvaging a Family (ELJ Editions 2026) by Luanne Castle

 


Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Fellow Arizonian, Luanne Castle is a masterful storyteller so it was no surprise to me when I couldn’t put down her unique well written memoir, “Scrap: Salvaging a Family,” until I had read it from cover to cover.  With powerful and poignant poems and flash fiction she tells the story of her chaotic childhood in description and dialogue so vivid it was like watching a movie.

Synopsis: Scrap: Salvaging a Family

Luanne Castle’s hybrid flash memoir explores the stain of childhood fear and anxiety on the adult spirit and the experience of reconciling with an aging or dying parent. A daughter has grown up in a household with an angry and abusive father. He keeps the secret of his biological father’s identity from his daughter for decades. When the elderly man faces his mortality, he finally names his father. The more the daughter learns about her father’s early life and origins, the more she understands him which leads to forgiveness for the past. 
Praise from Luanne’s peers:

Borne of shame and trauma, the secrets uncovered in Luanne Castle’s hybrid memoir reveal her father’s complicated childhood and the impact it had on their relationship. Told in brief, strikingly vivid fragments, and through various perspectives and forms, the book as a whole presents a deeply moving and unforgettable account. We readers are privileged to bear witness to this emotional excavation, one that ultimately reminds us that love is powerful even when it’s painful and that forgiveness is the only way forward. Scrap: Salvaging a Family is a gorgeous and brilliantly original collection. I highly recommend it.
–Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works

Luanne Castle’s “Scrap” is a memoir in flash. In flashes might be a more accurate term. This is a family story told in bursts of memory and image, puzzle pieces waiting to connect. It’s a young girl’s coming of age, navigating a path to womanhood out of hand-sewn dresses, gym class movies shown behind closed doors, stacks of moldering girlie magazines discovered at the dump. A girl living in the shadow of her father’s anger, violent and unpredictable as the tornadoes her family hides from. Behind the father’s anger, a missing piece. A hole where a father should be, a “space of unknowingness” both child and father must try to fill.
This lyrical, beautifully imagistic work is both an exploration of the long roots of generational trauma and identity erasure and a vivid look back at growing up female in mid-century America.
–Kathryn Kulpa, author of A Map of Lost Places

The vignettes in Castle’s Scrap are beautifully rendered. With house as vessel, we are voyeurs through her domesticity, the skilled lens of speaker Luanne’s traumas and perseverance as she navigates the rawness and fragility of youth. The book is both powerful and arresting—Castle is a deft miniaturist—each story etched with a fine blade, yet a delicate touch. Scrap is a collection of constellations of the ordinary.
–Robert Vaughan, Editor-in-Chief of Bending Genres, author of ASKEW.

 
Luanne as a baby with her father Rudy

Excerpts from the book:
Scrap
A scrappy boy fuses
himself a father out of wants
Out of the gritty street pavement
Out of throwing away the hurt
Out of fighting and scraping
punching cracks and potholes
Scrapyard salvage appeals to him
Each scrap reveals a system
Steel gears, bolts, and bushings
rake heads, trowels, posts
wire aluminum and copper, tin
everything, brass hinges, fittings
he rearranges and solders into
magical monstrosities 

My father was scraps of before
initials instead of names
his father before him scraps 
of place and name, the secret
middle name shared under 
its double-locked hiding place
What do I do with a sack of bits
his mother’s scissors left behind? 
Love’s been stitched into me 
by her threaded tongue 
By the snips and wisp
The junk or trash, recyclable
material, remnants, fragments
Puzzle pieces awaiting home

Below is a portion of a flash story introducing Luanne as a child and her father Rudy. 

At the bottom of the steps, you walk into a room without walls, merely a corner of the basement. Up high, one casement window looks out into a window well sprouting weeds and dead leaves. A man throws his efforts into the project. A little girl, face like a cup, watches his Superman arms crank the vise handle and tighten the grip. The girl is me, and the workbench, its surface scarred slick by hammer blows, belongs to the shoemaker’s elves that visit the man when I am asleep. He presides over the saw, aiming for the pencil line, sawdust falling away on each side as snow does from a plow. On the pegboard, pliers and screwdrivers line up by size like Goldilocks’ bears. I sit behind the man who is my father, the chilled concrete floor twanging my backside.

 
Luanne as a baby with her mother and father

This poem is about Luanne’s mother:

Mommy’s Keds bend almost in half.
The rubber soles jut out at the folds.
I feel a spit of jealousy at the smart blue label
at her heels. My mother kneels, facing the tub,
the can of Comet in one hand, a sponge in the other.
I can’t figure out why our bathtub needs scrubbing
several times a week. She might wear off
the shiny porcelain finish if she keeps this up.
Why don’t you go dust the living room?
I should have just kept walking fast past the door.
She likes me to dust, but she does the real cleaning
herself. It has to be done very well.

The book is divided in three sections. The first section is a coming-of-age story, told in flash and poetry. It shows Rudy’s anger, Luanne’s anxiety, Rudy’s hard-working single mother, and the missing piece that must not be spoken of—where is Rudy’s father? 

I wonder why I’ve never heard of Dad’s father. My mind is still inside the book when my father stops by to see if I’m ready for ballet. “You ready to go?”
“Dad, where’s your father?” 
My father’s face colors a dangerous red. Although he’s a small man, he fills my open doorway. He’s in HELL! The exclamation point seals off my question. Zip. Period. End of subject.

The middle section is a disembodied therapy section. The third section is in later years, when Rudy finally tells Luanne about his father and the two begin to reshape their relationship. Throughout the first and third sections are brief reflective pieces that “interrogate” Luanne’s memories. The middle section is also reflective and sheds light on the workings of Luanne’s mind about the events of her relationship with her father. Scattered throughout the book are imaginings of periods in Rudy’s life. In the middle therapy section he tells one of his Korean War stories. It foreshadows his loving grandparenting of Luanne’s adopted Korean children.

I might as well have eyes on the back of my head and in my ears because I feel theirs on me all the time. Whether I’m weeding or nailing framework, they are close by, watching. Who knows what they are thinking. Some of them are missing fathers. They’ve either been killed or will be. The kids are supposed to stay outside the wire, but they are so skinny and malleable that they slide in. Yesterday, Jake tossed a few Hot Tamales into his mouth, then had the decency to look embarrassed when he saw their eyes and mouths open wide as if they could taste the candy.

We finally got our guns, so sometimes I’m on guard duty and get to return some of the attention. There’s one girl, maybe 11 or 12, who I see bossing the little ones when they get too near where we’re working. She’ll be pretty one day, but right now I only know she’s a girl by her ragged dress. I’ve noticed her sneaking cabbage rinds out of the trash. Of course, I pretended I didn’t see. Sometimes she gives me a smart mouth though I must imagine what she’s saying. Maybe it’s “go home, American.” She might imagine that we’re the reason they don’t have enough food. Every day I hope I get a package. But it hasn’t come yet.

Rudy is awaiting a package of candy from his mother for the children.

In the third section Luanne researches her father’s father, eventually finding a DNA connection with a relative and acts upon this match. As she puts the pieces together, Rudy falls seriously ill, and he and Luanne begin to talk every day. When Luanne visits her terminally ill father, he hands her a diamond ring from his finger just before she leaves for her plane. It belonged to her grandmother before her father had it made into a man’s ring. The diamond is flawed and is a metaphor for the relationship between Rudy’s parents. 

This is the diamond in the thick gold band that I carried home through the TSA line in the pouch with dimes and nickels. You’re the only one that knows its story. On the plane trip home, I read that when a meteor strikes earth, diamonds form in an instant. Some foreign bodies contain trillions. And iron, fire, silicate. But this was an interruption so that I could sheath my emotions. 

The facets are cloudy with soap and my father’s sweat. At the open jewel bath, I stop. I can’t make myself plunk it in. Should I wear you or throw you in the lake? Do you know the ways to obtain a diamond? 24/7 open pit, marine, and coastal mining year-round, year upon year. But there are other ways, too. Both legitimate and illegitimate. Ask my grandmother, if you know what I mean. Nobody else wants this shitty diamond that looks hacked in two with a silver blade.  

About the Author

Luanne Castle’s poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, River Teeth, Your Impossible Voice, JMWW, Grist, Fourteen Hills, Verse Daily, Disappointed Housewife, Lunch Ticket, Saranac Review, Pleiades, Cleaver, Moon City, Moon Park, Anti-Heroin Chic, Bending Genres, BULL, The Mackinaw, The Ekphrastic Review, Phoebe, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gone Lawn, Burningword, Superstition Review, One Art, Roi Fainéant, Dribble Drabble, Flash Boulevard, O:JA&L, Sheila-Na-Gig, Thimble, Antigonish Review, Longridge, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Gooseberry Pie, Switch, and Ginosko. Her story, “Garden Seasons,” was selected for Best Microfiction 2026. She has published four award-winning poetry collections, and her ekphrastic flash and poetry collection Hunting the Cosmos is forthcoming from Shanti Arts in fall 2026. 

Scrap: Salvaging a Family (ELJ Editions 2026) is available on the ELJ Editions website as well as Amazon.

To buy the book contact Luanne Castle at luanne.castle@gmail.com

Super-Sized Series

 Odd Characters and Connections Part 1

 
 
Havana by Sarah Russell

Early morning on the wharf, sharing a thermos
with Juan Pablo. He’s brown and scuffed
as old boots, tough like that too, eyes squinted
with age and sun. He knows the ocean
like his woman’s face, reads stars, wind,
waves, like poems. He’s mending a net, hands
stiff and scarred, sorting gnarls and frays,
ash falling from a Camel held square
between his teeth. A tourist interrupts,
though no one’s talking, wants to hire
the boat to fish tarpon. Juan Pablo grunts
and nods toward a salt-soaked sign
with hourly rates. The guy says he’ll be back
with his wife and kid. Juan Pablo watches him
stride toward a hotel, New York cadence
out of step with the lap of water on pilings.
He snorts, then gathers up the net, half done,
stands with a stumble to favor his bum knee.
He jerks his head toward the seamless join
of sea and sky. C’mon, he says, taking the stub
of Camel and grinding it under his heel.
That cabrón can hire another boat.

First published in  Rusty Truck


Duplicity by Elaine Sorrentino

The TV lingered on PBS
her channel of choice until
she retired from the daily grind
and discovered Magnum P.I.,
Al Pacino, and Judge Judy.

It was a head-scratcher why
this crotchety old woman spent
hours in front of Jacque Pepin,
Julia Child, Jeff Smith, when
she rarely held dinner parties,

yet thrived on every occasion
to pontificate her views on how
local government was taking
advantage of an old lady
on a pension; expecting her

to contribute to schools
when she had no children,
to maintaining ball fields
when she didn’t follow sports,
to supporting senior centers

when she never ventured out.
Such views might stem from someone
unfamiliar with “love-thy-neighbor,”
but she bragged of hosting weekly
Bible study for fellow “holy rollers.”


Neighbor by Wilda Morris

I squeezed the loaf of bread tighter, 
as tears burned a path down my 
dirty cheeks. Here I was,
in the middle of the block,
on the right side of the street,
exactly where my house should be.
But it was not. What evil magic 
had changed the world?
Where was my home, with Grandmother 
waiting for bread? My head 
turned to the ground. I shrank,
my wails now larger than I. 

Hearing something, I looked 
through the fog of tears 
and there you were. 
You - the wolf who ate 
Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother,
Peter, Peter who kept his wife
in a pumpkin shell, the witch
who tried to push Hansel in the oven.
I'd known who you were since I was four!
If I peeked between lilac bushes 
and saw you in your garden, I would run.
Fridays, I saw taxi drivers bring you home, 
help you stagger to the door.
I heard your wife crying in the night,
your son's shrieks, saw welts
and bruises next day - and his eyes.

And here you were.
You knelt, and with a tender voice
I'd never heard you use, 
asked, What's the matter, Billye?
How could you understand the words
I sputtered, saying I was lost?

And yet you did. And with one hand
lightly on my shoulder, the other 
pointing, said, Look, 
you can see your house from here.
I bolted across the weedy field,
still clutching the bread, 
not saying thank you.

First published in Prairie Light Review.

 

Collector of Days by Rose Mary Boehm
 
An old man. Stooped. A black suit, cardboard collar.
A grey beard, glasses over sad, sunken eyes.
A much-fingered wooden box. An old, dark shop.
Antique clocks, hesitant chimes.
 
The old man buys days; dog days,
death days, murderous ones...
The day a woman caused her lover’s death,
the night a father witnessed his daughter’s suicide,
the afternoon a mother helplessly
watched her small son drown,
the day the earth stood still.
 
All come to him to sell their worst days.
And nights.
Twenty-four hours.
He takes them off their hands.
He guards them in the box, cherishes
the treasures it contained. Strokes it
gently before he settles for the night,
but he doesn’t sleep. His clients forget
their transaction. Men and women wonder
where Tuesday has gone, Monday,
Wednesday, or Friday, or why the matron
down the road is dressed up
to go to church on a Saturday.
 
Emptiness accompanies the collector.
His clocks ring hollow.
The light stops at the dirt-covered
windows, his hunger never sated.
Some days cannot be bought.

From my book Whistling in the Dark


So Like You by Mary Ellen Talley

It was the ten-pound chocolate bar
you left on our doorstep,
in the cardboard box—size of a turkey 
platter, generous, & too large for the occasion.

Imagine an ex-pro football tackle
of overwhelming size & conversation
but with a backstory 
of loneliness.


ordinary friend by j.lewis

such an odd request
how could i refuse--
i'd like to be an ordinary friend
not so close that you tell me
secrets you kept from your father
or so distant that you only post
“happy birthday” because facebook
reminds you it is time
 
no, ordinary will do, thank you
share a picture or two online
let me know your public wins
and shared losses, your child's
first steps or words
some new restaurant you tried
that i might also like
 
no burdens or obligations
no midnight messages to ask
why you haven't answered
my last fifty emails
none of that at all
just be there enough
that i can go to sleep
feeling that someone important
has my back
 

Bandage Man by Martha Ellen

He appeared beckoning,
wearing all white.

Driving the coast highway
at night a woman alone

can’t be too careful.
I don’t stop. 

On my way to a lecture.
Police work research.

Psychopaths. Monsters
walking among us.

The Dahlmers, the Geins, 
hiding in plain sight.

I hurry home, safe and sound.
An article in the Daily A:

“Bandage Man sighting”
not too far from Seaside.

Local silly myth like
Bigfoot or Yeti.

I blocked the door with a chair
even though it was locked. 


BEWITCHED by Lorena Caputo
      —para doña Elva
            … if you can hear these words …
 
I.
Barefoot a woman walks
south down the black highway
a blue shirt tied at her waist
hiding her bare hips
 
She crosses her arms
across her bare
large, sagging breasts
her eyes looking down
 
just walking, walking
 
Her sun-toasted skin
the color of the eastern hills
twisted from the earth’s depths,
sparsely covered with thorny brush
 
Above those heights circle frigate birds
flying inland from the deep-blue sea
on the other side of the highway,
ebbing, flowing upon sand
 
the color of her sun-toasted skin
 
 
II.
Quarter moon passes to new
 
& this afternoon
I see that woman
bewitched by her
husband’s lover
 
walking northward
up that black highway
bare-breasted, bare-bottomed
barefoot, sun-toasted
 
walking, just walking …

first appeared in The Fem

Tribute to Storyteller John Hicks

May 24, 1964-April 19, 2026

 
John Hicks and his wife Tolly 

By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Since Storyteller Poetry Review is a community of poets over sixty, I dreaded the day when we’d have to say a permanent goodbye to one of our poets but I didn’t dream that John Hicks would be the first to leave us since a few of us are older than him. I was shocked and deeply saddened to lose John because we had a personal connection. He lived in New Mexico, and I live in Arizona and we bonded over our love of not only poetry but desert life, animals – domestic and wild - sunsets and sunrises, nature and the recent loss of our soulmates. I published many of his poems in Storyteller Poetry Review features: Storyteller of the Week, Love Story, Special Gifts and Encore and the super-sized series. He was also very supportive of other storyteller’s poems. 

John Hicks has been called a Place Poet because he wrote many poems about the places where he visited and lived. In honor of John, I am publishing a poem I wrote about him and poems he sent me that I never had a chance to publish.which  show another side of him.

Biography John wrote for his Storyteller of the Week feature.

John Hicks took a poetry class in 2007 at The Loft in Minneapolis and began writing while working as a business systems analyst.  

He continued writing in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Connecticut while contracting on computer projects in insurance, brokerage, manufacturing, banking, and agriculture.  

His poems have been published in journals and anthologies like Constellations, Global Poemic, South Florida Poetry Journal, Panorama Journal, First Literary Review – East, Sheila-Na-Gig, San Pedro River Review, Shark Reef, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Bangor Literary Journal, Noctua Review, Poetica Review, Verse Virtual, and Wild Word.  

He’s been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net.  

To celebrate retirement in 2016, he completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska – Omaha.  

John and Tolly celebrated their 50th anniversary at home during the pandemic.  Their daughter, currently developing his web site, lives in Texas.  

He’s working on two poetry manuscripts in the thin mountain air of New Mexico’s southern Rockies.  

He is a veteran of the Vietnam War. 


Poems

John Helps Me to Grieve

By Sharon Waller Knutson

When he hears my husband died June 30, 2025, John, 
the only widower in my poet community emails me.
“Sharon, I'm so very sorry to hear this,” John writes.  
“As you know, I've recently gone through this.  
Let me know if you want someone to talk to.”

Six months later, I email him asking 
how he manages his grief after the loss
of his wife, Tolly, in 2023 two days 
before Thanksgiving, after 52 years of marriage.

 “Tolly passed a few days before I was scheduled 
to go to Denver for cancer treatments,” he replies.  “She insisted 
on my going.  So, as soon as I completed her final arrangements,
I closed up the house and, with our daughter, Megan, 
went to Denver for four months.  I'm not one for burdening others 
with my emotions, but during that time, the chance to help Megan 
with her grief helped me, too.  I'd like to say writing helped, 
but for months medical treatments taxed my mental abilities.  
What sustained me was knowing I was doing what Tolly wanted.  

“Grief hit hardest when I returned home to restart life.  
You know how that transition is, Sharon.  
And I could no longer share things with Tolly, 
we could no longer do things together, 
bounce things off each other, discuss each other's work.  
 
“Writing to my grief started after I got back.  You know how 
it helps you see things in new ways, find things you took for granted. 
 Also—though I didn’t realize the benefit at the time—
I started digitizing old photos into my computer.  
It helped me recall the best of our life together. 
 
“Grief is a room added to your house.  Its door is always ajar.  
Sometimes we need to spend a little time there, 
but it's not where we live.  Over time we visit it less often, 
but it’s always there for us.  
 
“By now I’m sure you suspect grief never goes away; 
it changes, though.  I think about Tolly every day.  
I miss us.  I still say ”we."  Sometimes I'll hear a noise 
in the house and turn toward her.  I’ll bet you do that, too.  

“Over time I'm finding that grief—like the guilt 
that comes with it—finds its place in daily living.  
The best parts of our life together have risen to the top. “ 
 
When I tell him my sons dropped everything 
and jumped into their trucks
and drove from Idaho and Washington
to Arizona to take care of me 
when I couldn’t get out of bed
after their father’s death and later when I fell
twice in one day, he writes: “That’s pure love.”

We continue emailing back and forth consoling
each other as we struggle to survive alone
in the houses we shared with our soulmates. 
I never hear from him after I write: “My goal
is to stay healthy and out of hospitals.”
Then I read a message from Megan
on John’s Facebook page: “My father passed away
of complications from a hospital stay April 19.” 
Now I mourn the man who helped me grieve.


Seven short poems by John Hicks 

Distances

Hear that?  There it is again. That’s a dove. 
It’s saying, “I’m here.  Where are you?”  
And down there, across the creek bed:  
Hear the response?  

Your mom called this morning. 
You were asleep.  Told her 
you’re doing OK. 

Sometimes wonder if the Pueblo folks 
used to come up here for the wild horses.  
Did you see the hoofprints back there?  
Easy to spot when sun’s this low.  

She didn’t like it here.  Said 
nothing ever happened.  Wanted
to be back in Chicago.  

Cities give some folks a major high.  But
you’ve got to stay there for it.  Get away a bit—
get it out of your face—you can find 
your spirit’s own pace.  It’s always there.  

Those clouds out there beyond the Rio Grande—
like cotton balls spilled out on a glass table? 
Distance isn’t the same when you see so much. 
I like how they bring the sky down.  It’s like 
you can touch it.  

That big juniper by your bedroom window? 
Come October you should see it.  
Flickers and robins go crazy
riding up and down on the branch tips 
going for its berries.  Can you remember 
planting it?  You were three.  
Left not long after.  
I think about you when I look at it.  

Your mom said you’ve a full summer lined up.  

Call, won’t you?


Breakfast with Grandpa 

Started with rustle of ground sausage in the iron pan. 
and, “How do you want your eggs?” as he rapped one 
on the metal edge of the countertop, opening it 
one-handed, and tossing the shell into the trash bag.  
Louder hissing as they dropped into the grease 
until the sigh when he hovered pan above plates 
of toast and butter, dividing the contents 
with the steel spatula.  

At home it was poached eggs, or scrambled 
in a double-boiler, or soft-boiled in a little cup.  
Grease was manly.  We ate in silence.  He saw me
eyeing the grape jelly, pushed it toward me, 
his knife clinking against the side.  
We wiped up yolks and grease with our toast, 
swirling it into the center of the plate. 
“Less to clean up,” he winked.

I knew little about him before he picked me up 
to spend Saturday night on the boat—only that 
he’d grown up in Arkansas on a farm.  Last night 
he told me his father had given each son an acre 
to raise a crop for their own money.  

A farm hand, a former slave, told him to plant peanuts.  
His older brothers laughed at that and put in cotton.  
And while they watched theirs grow, the hand had him 
hoeing, carrying water, and at harvest, pulling up roots 
and rolling them in a barrel to knock off the dirt.  
And how he laughed when he made more money 
than both of them, and how the next year, they all
put in peanuts.  

At ten years old, I had no story to offer in return.  
But then, men don’t need to talk.  
  

Burning Privacy

Saturdays you took a Blue Diamond 
from your apron pocket, 
struck it on the rust-crusted wire basket 
in the garden’s bald spot, 
and burned bills and receipts 
down to last Saturday.  

As I watched the soft ticking of flame 
spreading across the papers, 
you said this would prevent gossip.  
You never mentioned the grip 
of your generation’s genetic material: 
the Great Depression.  After the War,

everyone wanted to look middle class.  
But the new prosperity conflicted
with stubborn habits, like thinning with water, 
and hiding wear by reversing cuffs and collars, 
of making do or doing without.  

Discarded bills and receipts told what you paid 
for your new dress and where you bought it, 
the cut of meat you could afford at Safeway, 
that you made long-distance phone calls, 
that you wrote checks instead of paying cash.  
Gossip loves details.  

No one shared the hard times with children.  
In its place, Dad, passed on to me 
how to fix things, like old lamps or broken locks—
instead of buying new—and how to mix cement, 
how replace a sink and solder copper plumbing, 
tar a roof rather than of hiring it done.  

They meant well, hiding those years, and
how some were still struggling.  It’s like the ER nurse 
who lives across the street from us.  In the morning, 
when her shift ends, she comes home and changes, 
then fixes breakfast for her children, 
never speaking of what she saw the night before.


Enclosures

On the edge of the veranda 
in the shadows of the overhang, 
at an angle to the steps, she stands 
with her palm out in the downpour 
as if judging it.  Splashes 
on the floor coat her bare feet, 
and she stares as the water clinging
to her fingertips is followed by more.  
It is cold on her skin.

Monsoon season again.  

She looks up to the face of the jungle, 
its steeping heat surrounding their clearing.  
He no longer tells her to ignore its reek.  

The only road—east to west—ends here.  

To the west, his plantation rubber trees 
drip from his daily attention, 
from slashes in their bark, 
gathering latex, and processing.  East,
over the mountains, the settlement 
is now unreachable.  

Teeth gripping her bottom lip, 
she turns to the open door.  Footprints
and a trail of drops cross the floor.  


Relationship Building – A Seminar

“Before we start today, I want
you all to turn to your neighbor.  
Introduce yourself.  Give name, what 
you do, and a little about yourself.  
Take two minutes.  
Start now.”  

    
“Now that we all know each other, I’d like 
you to look up here.”  She turns toward 
the giant screen and raises her open palm 
theatrically.  “This first slide shows 
what I’ll talk about today.  Questions?       
None?     Good.  Let’s get started.” 
Her touring speaker’s swagger brings her 
to a stance at the front of the platform.  
“Who can give me a definition 
of relationship building?” A hand 
there in the back.  “Yes?”

“Today I am going to show you how to schmooze 
the customer and your partners at work, and how 
to manage your work relationships. Why? 
Because relationships lubricate our success 
in business.  I will challenge existing paradigms, 
and you will learn how to manufacture 
win-win results.”  She stalks toward the screen 
as she reads the next bullet point.  

“It takes two to tango, people.”  
Hands on hips, facing the audience.  
“Remember, unless you live on a desert island, 
you can’t get anything done without 
cooperation from those around you.”  
We nod in agreement.

“For those who are serious about 
building better relationships, my 
book, Ten Points to Win-Win Relationships, 
is on sale at the back table.” 

“The key to successful relationships is 
communication.  It is essential to see things 
from the other person’s point of view.  Encourage 
people to talk about themselves and they 
will trust you.  Remember: 
The person with the questions is the person with the power.  
Your questions will assert what they think about.  
Say it with me now.” 
We chant back, 
“The person with the questions 
  is the person with the power.”    


Il Postino di Vicenza

“Mailman in Italy stashed half-ton of
mail in his garage, postal police say.”
- AP January 29, 2018

Father, I’m going to miss the smell of the fresh pasticcio
Mrs. Toniolo makes, and Mr. Zanella’s homemade wine, 
and Mrs. Rossato’s polenta—she grinds the corn herself, 
you know, Father.  And Mrs. Dalla Vecchia’s daughter, 
the woman whose singing dappled my heart like the sun 
on the Golfo di Napoli.  

I’m going to miss everyone.

I never completed my route on time, Father,
but always I finished with a comfortable stomach 
and a full heart.  The Postmaster: every day
he weighed the mail going out and coming in and
moved our routes around by weight.  The more 
I brought in, the more customers I could lose 
to another carrier.  I would lose my friends.  

Father, they loved me.


Then

“Come on then.  There’s work to do if
we’re to have wood when you’ve gone.  
Bring the crosscut.”  

Weak light through the window; 
too weak for shadows.  The bus 
is hours away.  

My kit’s by the door.  Recruiter 
said bring just toothbrush and razor; 
they’d provide the rest.

We leave the lamp for Ma.  He 
collects the hammer and wedges.  
I take the saw from the shed.  

When I get there, he’s lifted a limb 
of the downed oak onto the sawhorse; stands  
on the other side, breath-clouds before him.   

We work until the sun stands over the barn; 
he takes an armload to the house.   
I return the saw.  

“So that’s it then.”  He stiffens, 
extends his hand.  I know 
she’s watching; her parcel’s

in my left hand.  He turns away.  
I look into my hands; 
then walk out to the road.  


Relationship Building was published in Lincoln Underground. 
Il Postino di Vicenza in Glint
Distances in Santa Fe Literary Review
Then in Sheila-Na-Gig
Breakfast with Grandpa in Backchannels Journal
Burning Privacy in Constellations
Enclosures in Verse-Virtual

Book of the Week

Ask the River to Talk About the Horses (MoonPath Press 2026)

By Judith Waller Carroll

 

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Although Judith Waller Carroll and I grew up in Montana in the same household with the same cowboy/teacher father and homemaker mother, her chapbook, Ask the River to Talk about the Horses, was a delightful surprise to me since being three years younger than me, she had a life I didn’t know about or remember and she saw life in color, while I viewed it in black and white.  Her poems are as powerful as the rivers and horses she describes in great detail, as charming as the characters in the corals and classrooms and as musical as the Hank Williams and Patsy Cline songs blaring from the jukebox at the Honky Tonks.

About the Book

In Ask the River to Talk About the Horses, Judith Waller Carroll writes about her native Montana— the horses, the rivers, the dust, tumbleweeds and silent cowboys who take their whisky straight—with candor, affection and humor. In poems that take the reader through childhood in Montana, adolescence in Idaho and back to Montana for college, Carroll brings back memories of a simpler time where the sultry sax brought the gym lights down to dim and the family drove to the closest big town for school clothes and Christmas presents, then stopped for malted milks after.

About the Author

Judith Waller Carroll is the author of What You Saw and Still Remember, a runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Award, The Consolation of Roses, winner of the 2015 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Prize, and Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, published in numerous journals and anthologies, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. 

Here are a few of my favorite poems:

Ask the River to Talk About the Horses

How their hoof beats scattered the leaves 
that fell from the trees each autumn,
the reflection of their colors 
turning the water to rust and blood. 

Still, the horses drank and sometimes crossed 
where the current was slower, 
their manes flowing like wind
each sigh and nicker echoing across the sky, 
the river witnessing it all. 

All those years you walked 
along its swift waters in restless silence. 
The river could’ve told you
how it feels to be wild. 


Landscape, with Horses

Even from this distance of miles and time 
I can see the slight rise of the hill 
that signaled the turn to the rutted road, 
swirling with tumbleweeds and dust,
where my grandfather steered his jeep 
past the grandstand, the chutes, to the sun-bleached 
corrals where the whinnying horses waited.
I watched from the fence while he filled 
long troughs with water from a spigot. 
In summer, some of these corrals held the broncs 
that tested the toughest cowboys,
but these were local horses boarded year round
and cared for by my grandfather 
who chuckled and cooed as he pitchforked hay, 
the way he talked to Buster, his ten-year-old terrier 
who rode between us as we bucked and bounced 
back to the highway, crossed the covered bridge
over the river that eddied through cattails
and cottonwoods, passed the Bar K campground 
with the old log cabin, and ended up on Main Street 
with its sandstone buildings that housed the bank, 
the post office and the Atlas Bar.
Around the corner and a few blocks over
my mother was humming along to the radio, 
doing the crossword in the morning’s Gazette.
Glad to have a few hours to herself.


The Cowboys I Grew Up With

Didn’t talk much.
Liked their whiskey straight.
Lit their Camels
with a wooden match
struck on the soles of their boots
its flare filling the silence
then turning to smoke.


Nellie
. 
Every summer, my horseman father 
would try to address my fear, coax me
to ride the mild-mannered mare, a hybrid
of Arabian and plow-horse, the one 
all the kids rode first, no heart-stopping 
bucking and raring, as calm and sweet-natured
as her name implied.  I was unyielding 
in my refusal,  though I fed her apples 
from my hand and brushed her daily,
a model of the perfect horsewoman
he wanted me to grow up to be. 

Horse Dancing

Flags on every street corner,
the gazebo in the park festooned 
with red, white and blue. 

Townspeople, ranchers
and folks from neighboring towns 
even smaller than ours
gathered along Main to watch horses,
floats, kids on bikes, baton twirlers 

and the Columbus High Marching Band 
wind their way from the high school, 
past the creamery, down the six blocks of Main.

And at the head of the parade, my father,
holding the American flag 
and sitting astride his white horse, Zephyr,
who looked every inch the regal steed. 

Every block or so, the parade would pause 
while Zephyr danced sideways, strutted 
backwards, reared up, then high-stepped
back to the center and took a bow. 

The flag—nor my father—
never once losing their composure.


Is You Is or Is You Ain’t 

The weather is doing its usual tease,
a glimmer of sky flirting through the clouds 
like a fickle lover on one of those scratchy LPs
Mr. Winchester played for us in sixth grade.

We were used to heartache in songs, but the cowboys 
on the radio drowned theirs in whiskey or beer. 
These scorned lovers took action—told the cad 
to hit the road or whipped out a pistol and shot him.

His point, of course, was not for us to shoot
someone who didn’t love us, 
but to educate our ears to different kinds of music 
—jazz, blues, songs by Fats Waller and Bessie Smith—

plaintive notes and desperate words floating
in the air like chalk dust, Mr. Winchester at his desk, 
scanning the room, blue eyes cool 
behind tortoise-shell rims

and in the back row, dreamy-eyed, I was in love 
with these songs and all that they stood for: 
that it was possible to sink as low as you could go, 
then slowly rise up, better than you were before. 


Shucking Corn

A late-August evening, still warm 
but hinting of fall. A few grasshoppers 
flicked from the cornstalks to the lawn. 

My big sister and I sat on the steps, 
cornsilk sliding through our fingers
into the bushel basket, 

clean ears of corn dropping 
into the pot between us,
our own ears tuned to the porch 

where Mama and Aunt Babs 
hashed over the news from Billings 
about Sue, our 15-year-old cousin,

just a few months older than my sister 
but already going places—
cheerleader, Honors English, 
everybody’s bet for college— 
the example Mama held up 
when our grades slipped to Bs. 

Got her in trouble 
and have to get married 
was all we could pick up 

before Daddy stepped out, newspaper 
in one hand, glasses in the other, 
his deep voice low. Careful. The girls.  

Over by the hollyhocks, a frog 
began to croak. A breeze cut through 
the still air and caused me to shiver. 

Funny how the slightest shift in weather
could jolt us into a new season, 
how swiftly everything could change.


Honkey-Tonk Girl

All those years living so close 
to my grandfather’s bar
taught me two things: whisky 
could take an ordinary moment
and turn it into a dream or a nightmare, 
and music could make you ache
at the beauty of loneliness.
The jukebox would play “Crazy” 
or “Walking after Midnight” 
and the woman I longed to become
would float out of my body
on a voice as pure
as a bird’s first song at day break.  
And always the steel guitar, weeping. 


Ordering information: https://www.moonpathpress.com/JudithWallerCaroll.htm


 

My Life on Picture Postcards

 Joe Cottonwood

I have hundreds of postcards poems which I send by U.S. Mail to friends. 
What I love about postcards is the forced brevity, the chance to be whimsical and playful. They are ekphrastic poems for an audience of one.
Here are a few.
Joe Cottonwood

 
no matter the plumage
our blood began in
the same salty sea

apart we cool 
together we warm

 

We both as naked
as life can be
sharing the bath
the mom the future.

I lower you, son,
with my big thumbs
into warm water.
Yes, I’ll hold on.
And on.



 
trapped by avalanche
on the mountain
we made love
with such heat
the sky burst
into flame
clearing rocks
from roadway
and that, my child
in our van 
is how you began

 


As a giraffe I can peep 
into high windows 
but people drama 
is so boring. 

Give me trees,
a leaf to chew
a sky of colors.

Watch with me 
day’s end, from high 
it lingers longer. 

No two sunsets
ever the same

 

walk with me, friend
summer is ending

the wheat reaches
for a darkening sky

hidden in trees
starlings call
to sing farewell

soon we’ll
go home


 

in turtle school
we practice lockdown
we never fight

we shelter in place
we take the long view
in peace to grow old

 

the manual
for old age
is lengthy
in small print
for spotty eyes

the message is
a rising moth
a floating dove
a falling leaf

the last page
a surprise 


  

In the book of my life
the cover shows a handsome man
who is not me
driving a red convertible
which is not mine
across Africa
where I have never gone.

Resting by a redwood tree
a little man is typing
about the handsome man, car, Africa.
That’s me.
It’s a great story.