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.

Moving at Age 75 from the Serene Woods to the Hectic City

Judith Waller Carroll 

 

 
Judy and her husband, Jerry after their move to Oregon celebrating Christmas with their twin grandkids, Tova (l) and Jack(r) and baby Reid, in Judy’s arms. Two-year-old Sawyer was camera shy.  

By Judith Waller Carroll

In 2019, my husband and I sold our home in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, a retirement community nestled in the Ouachita Mountains, and moved to Portland, Oregon, where our son and his family live and a day's drive from San Francisco, where our daughter and her family live. These poems capture some of the angst of leaving a home we loved, the adjustment to urban life after over a decade of living near the woods and the excitement and joy of living close to—and eventually with—our son and his family.

 
Appraisal
 
Tomorrow a man from the buyer’s bank
will tally improvements and subtract shortcomings,
like the chipped paint in the kitchen
and a dishwasher that’s seen better days.
 
The meadow look we so love
may be the first strike against us
as he walks past vines of mint,
ornamental grass with flowering feathers
 
to the front porch we built three years ago
to replace the deck we rarely used
that didn’t go with the line of the house.
How do you explain to a bean counter
 
the hours of thumbing through design books,
the long conversations with a local carpenter
who hand-sanded the cedar pillars
for a timeless, craftsman look.
 
“This is such a pretty house,” everyone tells us,
but a numbers man may not be charmed
by bookcases that wrap around windows
or French doors that let in the morning light.
 
He may prefer ceiling fans
with a plain globe in the middle
to handcrafted chrome and milk glass
sent away for from an artisan in Maine.
 
But we’ll scour the sink, polish the doorknobs,
wash the sunroom windows that look out on the garden
with the stone bench where sometimes a fox naps
before ambling back to the woods.
 
Perhaps the gladiolas on the mantle,
the last of the season, will go unnoticed,
but they make a home look cheerful.
If it weren’t still in the 90s, I’d coax you to lay a fire. 
All this work to sell a house we’d rather stay in
a sale we almost hope falls through.
 

The White Pelicans of Oregon
 
Some days it rains and rains
in this new place I mostly like,
where white pelicans
with enormous yellow bills
glide above the water
with their necks withdrawn.
 
During the breeding season,
the tops of their heads
become dusted with black
and a horn grows to deflect injury
from their delicate pouches.
 
I’ve read that at a distance, migrating flocks
have been mistaken for UFOs.

 
Sometimes I feel such conflict.
 
One moment I yearn to soar
back to the last place I left,
the next, I am content to watch
as the birds rise without me.

 
Sweet Consolation
 
Gold-tinged oak leaves drift to the sidewalk,
a robin hops ahead, a squirrel scrambles up a tree.
 
On the wooded trails I used to walk,
there would be wheeling hawks,
a fox ambling back to his den.
 
But I have come to appreciate
the subtlety of nature in the city:
a tree frog outside my window,
the honk of geese as they fly somewhere else.
 
Some evenings, the streetlight on the corner
tricks me into believing it’s the moon,
round, white globe floating through branches of maple,
soft shadows of darkness
turning the lamppost into a lodgepole pine.
 
Zee
 
The geese from the nature preserve
fly past our house, their piping
a cross between hounds after a fox
and boisterous boys that taunt and tease.
 
Our grandson, barely a year
and right on the edge of speech,
points at the window and says, Zee,
his word for everything—the kitchen lights,
 
the spider plant, and these geese
forming a V as they gain height,
their cries now drowned out
by the roar and rattle of the garbage truck
 
as it lifts our recycle bin up in an arc
then returns it to the curb with a thump,
earning an excited Zee! from the highchair,
from this lovely boy, the son of our son,
 
his eyes wide at this world
he doesn’t yet have the words to describe.

 
Full Circle
 
Our mini fridge arrives today and we must find room
in this postage-stamp space we call the kitchen:
our old dining room table crammed with tea kettle
and toaster beside a squat cupboard that wobbles.
 
A space not that much smaller than the tiny bungalow
we were elated to find when we were first married,
three rooms with a view of the harbor.
 
We furnished it with your roll top desk, floor pillows,
and a wine barrel table we placed by the window.
 
So many meals around that little table, candles lit,
Schubert on the stereo, a habit we took with us
to the Victorian house we bought after our daughter
was born. the mini-ranch in Montana, the gated
retirement village in the South,
 
even here, in this two-family house, squeezing
things in, making it home.
 
“Appraisal,” “The White Pelicans of Oregon,” and “Zee” are from Ordinary Splendor (MoonPath Press, 2022)
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Grandchildren are Precious Diamonds

 Martha Ellen

 

By Martha Ellen

I've collected four poems about my grandchildren. Joyful hours with them like diamonds. They are all grown up now.  [Hidden from view are the traumas. These poems look the other way from later events when a New Age guru crashed into my family and stole away all of them with, of course, the lies he told and then cloaked in "love" and "beauty" and "righteousness" ..... and there are days when I think they may walk through my front gate again and we will recapture the joys of those early years.]


After My Heart Failed I Didn’t Want the Children to Be Frightened

I visited my grandchildren for the 
first time after my heart failed. 
When I arrived six-year-old Caitie 
was sitting in the curve of their black 
leather sectional I had named the
Black Mamba. When she saw me 
she jumped up, "Gramma!" 

Clairey was just a tiny baby. 
We all got into a tent four-year-old 
Liam had set up in Clairey's room. 
I made his doll "Minty Fresh”
fly all around the tent which 
for some reason they found hilarious. 

Then I couldn't breathe 
and had to get some air. 
All the way home. “Breathe. 
Go slow. You’ll make it.” 
Unlocked my front door.
Alone I entered into a 
long and dangerous sleep.

 

Sleepover

I arrive for a sleepover 
with the grandkids.
An overnight bag and vanity case
all stuffed with goodies.

Fairy wings, a Barbie princess 
gown, black Converse hightops
flames flaring on the sides.
The digging begins. 

“I don’t know why I
just like looking though 
suitcases.”  Cait said.
She’s six. Her brother helps. 

They run to me with a glass 
prism found hidden inside.
By magic it breaks daylight 
into gorgeous rainbows.

Caitie says, “Grammy I know 
why you take so many pills.”
“Oh, why do you think?”
“Because you’re soooo old.”

Liam drags a chair down
the block. I will be comfortable 
admiring him as he rides
back and forth on his new bike.

Clairey offers to apply 
makeup. I needed some
dolling up. Lipstick. Eye shadow 
goes on the upper lid, though.

Time to get ready for bed.
I tell them I’ve perfected
the ability to throw my pajamas 
into the air and jump up. 

When I land my pajamas are on.
Behind closed doors. 
Too bad they can’t watch.
[I’ll be bare-naked.]

“I better hear two thumps,”
Cait said. And Liam: “You’ll
need wires from the ceiling
[His dad is an engineer.]

And from behind the 
closed bathroom door
I hear three-year-old
Clairey. “I can’t, Grammy.”

“Practice makes perfect.”


Smooches

Sad and puzzled Clairey came to me 
as soon as I arrived. “Grammy, Liam 
never lets me kiss him.” She was five; 
her big brother was nine.

“Do you remember the day you 
both were at the pool?” I ask. She 
remembered. “Liam saw a man 
walking away holding a little girl 
with long brown hair like yours. 
Thinking you were in grave danger, 
Liam set aside fear. He ran after him
yelling, Stop! Stop! That’s my sister!”

Liam arrived with his buddies. They’d
been skateboarding. Independent. 
Big boys. Nearly grown. They had no
time for any smoochy little sister. 
Barely noticed her fly by in her silly 
fairy wings old Grandmother brought.

When I was packing my suitcase, 
readying for the long trip home, she
came to me. “Grammy, Liam loves me.”  
“Yes, he does even without smooching.”
We wave goodbye, throwing kisses 
to each other. Liam and his skateboard
friends sail past us without looking.


Bad Grammy

It’s all my fault.
I pampered her.
My beautiful baby girl.
Let her get away 
with everything.

So there was no one 
to blame except me
when she dropped 
a pound of frozen solid
hamburger on the counter.

“Grammy will make lunch.”
She was off to a Spa Day
leaving me with three
hungry grandchildren 
to feed. It was 11:30 a.m.
I would figure it out.

I lifted the block of meat
and dropped it several 
times. Clunk. Clunk.
“This isn’t lunch.
This is a rock.”

They watched my every 
move knowing full well
what may happen next.
It would be something iffy,
probably naughty.

“This belongs with
the other rocks.”
They followed close
behind as I walked
out the door, onto the
rock path in the garden.

“Grammy hucked the
meat in the yard!”
We piled into my 
car and drove to
their favorite restaurant
where they ordered 
whatever they wanted. 

The Transition of my Beloved

 Peggy Trojan

 

  
David and Peggy Trojan

By Peggy Trojan

These poems convey the transition of my late husband 
and myself from his diagnosis of Lewy Body dementia
to his eventual death in 2020. 

Death Do Us Part

When we were young and eager
we promised to stay together until death.
We could not imagine a disease
called Lewy Body dementia would
over years destroy everything.

First forgetting facts, dates,
names, where you were going,
movies, books, conversation,
how to play the piano, then flying,
driving.

And now the devastating loss
of balance. You fall
over and over, inside,
outside, even holding the deck rail.
You say, “I feel lost.”
I answer, “Me, too.”


First Night

I leave you at Memory Care.
Trust a bevy of staffers
in their twenties
to cope with your waking,
your walking, your falling,
your dreaming.
Tonight we sleep alone.
I miss your hand
reaching for me in the dark.


Together

We transfer you
into the small apartment
I had rented on the river,
filled with furniture
and art from home.
Every item familiar.
Daughter Mary moves in.

You nap on the couch,
your head on my shoulder.
We are happy, hold hands
like young lovers.
Presence heals us.
When I kiss you,
we smile.


Simple Joys

On the balcony
with sun and birds,
you are more talkative.
“This is a new heaven.”
Your sense of humor is back,
you thank us for our efforts.
“Mary, you’re a peach.”
We watch Packers, Brewers,
fishing, Planet Earth.
“I saw this one before.”
Listen to Brahms and Beethoven.
Share daily photos with family.

We wheel you
on downtown river walks.
You wave at kayakers
from the bridge,
greet dogs we pass,
eat takeout in the park.
Find our way to Olson’s for a cone.
“Strawberry, of course.”

One day from across the living room
you announce,
“Peggy, I’m still nuts about you!”
Four months,
every day a gift.


Destination

You died as you lived.
No complaints, no demands.
Quietly at home
with Mary and me,
whispering my name.
Kids phoned goodbye,
We held hands.
Focused, ready for adventure,
eyes open to see
where you are going.


River
 For David

Stay on the river now,
it will lead you to the sea.
Someday, I will meet you there
with all those we have loved.

 Listen, can you hear?
 The river is singing.

All poems published in River, 2020.

My “Real” Dad

 Wilda Morris

 

 
Orville Leroy Kessler 1944

By Wilda Morris

My mother was divorced when I was two. All relationship was cut off between my birth parents. Mother and my sister Dorinda lived together with my grandparents in Iowa City. When Dorinda was in kindergarten, Mother was asked to go to New York to help out with the children of one of my aunts while she was expecting. That is where the first story takes place. My birth father returned, probably just wanting to see us, but his ill-advised way of doing it made it feel like a kidnap attempt. 

Meanwhile, Orville Leroy Kessler, was recruited into the army. He could have become a conscious objector, but a recruiter convinced him to become a non-combatant instead. As US soldiers fought their way from North Africa to the northern boarder of Italy, he cooked, aided the medics and performed other tasks important to the war effort. By the time I was in Junior High, he was a widower, moved back to Iowa, and joined our church. The rest, as they say, is history. He and Mother were married and (many years later) he adopted Dorinda and me. We never used the language of step-dad or step-daughter. Mother and Dad gave us a brother and two sisters. The language of half-siblings was never used - we were all just family. Eventually, we sealed it in court - Dad adopted us. We could not have wished for a better father!

The only one previously published is "Because Dad had Parkinson's." 
Encore: Prize Poems 2021 (National Federation of State Poetry Societies, 2021).


The Soldier

A young soldier in dress uniform 
walked down a street in Schenectady
in 1944. I suspect he was anticipating 
a date with his fiancé. He was handsome 
and he smiled when I waved at him. 
I don’t want to remember how I grabbed his arm
and dragged him to the door of my aunt’s house 
where we were visiting, but I do.
I clung so hard he couldn’t shake me off. 
My mother wants a soldier, I insisted.
I can’t forget my mother’s face,
startled and scarlet, as she said,
I’m so sorry. I don’t want to remember
the scolding I got when he was gone.
I imagine he laughed when he told
his girlfriend about the goofy
five-year-old down the block.
For years I imagined that if 
he hadn’t been engaged,
he would have fallen in love 
with mother and I would have had
a handsome soldier father.


Pieces

A piece of me still
wonders why Sis and I
let the neighbor boy
entice us to the corner
with the promise of a surprise.

I remember that man
luring us to come closer
and closer to his car
and told us he was our dad.
Sis took off toward home
like a startled rabbit,
leaving me a statue 
glued to the ground.

A piece of me does not
believe I was on her heels
as we flew through
the front door into Mother’s arms,
though that’s what 
I’ve been told over the years.

What I do know is this:
A piece of me still stands
at the corner of 8th and H Streets.
When the sun is setting
and the street light blinks on
you can see me there,
my face white, a wild look
in my eyes, my feet cemented
to the curb, my lips as mute
as they were that night
when I was eight.

 
Wilda’s parents on their 50th wedding anniversary


Because Dad Has Parkinson’s
With two lines from “Two Kinds of People”
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Because he has to get out of the car
to see the doctor, I get out of the back seat,
open his door, say, Here we are, Dad, 
in my cheeriest voice.

Because he smiles but doesn’t move,
I say, Dad, can you turn this way? 
I watch his slow pirouette, 
if I can use that word for a man 
in the passenger seat of a Toyota
turning his upper body more slowly
than a sloth, his knees barely bending
toward the door, his feet refusing to follow.

Because Dad can’t seem to lift his legs,
I ask if I can help move them. The master
of serving reluctantly agrees, lets me
lift what feels like trunks of ash trees.
My sister, the driver, appears with a walker 
as Dad’s feet fall to the pavement. 
It takes another six minutes 
to get Dad standing, another fifteen
to get to the office door.

Because over the years Dad gave rides to friends 
and cash to needy strangers, helped Aunt Grace
climb stairs, lifted children from his car 
to wheelchairs so they could attend Sunday School,
delivered casseroles and home-baked cookies,
carried my suitcases into the house
when I went home to visit, baked pies for Uncle Laird
and Aunt Ersel, stirred oatmeal, popped corn 
for a house full of offspring and friends, 
mopped floors at home and church, 
I suddenly recall two lines of the old poem 
Grandmother used to recite:
. . . the two kinds of people on earth I mean,
Are the people who lift and the people who lean,
and know Dad has earned the right to lean.


Losing Dad

The day my father died I tripped upon
a phone cord, smashed my head against the wall.
My sister dropped the phone and lost the call.
My brother, not content to just look on,
summoned a nurse to Mother’s room, face drawn,
expressed concern for me because my fall
was hard. It was not half the pain to sprawl
head bashed, as lose our father who was gone,
I thought, forever. Now I find each day
my dad shows up to give me good advice.
His shadow spreads across the greening yard;
his footprints firm still guide me on my way.
I see him in my brother’s smiling eyes.
Somehow I know he’s always standing guard.

Watermelons, Cats and Photographs

 Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca



 

By Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca

The poems tell stories of incidents ranging from our cat needing emergency surgery, my reaction  the mandatory staff picture we had to take in one of the schools I was teaching in, and the way watermelons were sold in Bombay by bullock cart when I was growing up. Fruit and vegetable vendors are a common sight in Bombay, many display their wares for sale on open carts, calling out loudly as the housewives emerge from their homes to purchase what they need.

This poem describes an unusual incident outside my home, a rare occurrence in the streets of Bombay.

Watermelons
 
Watermelons sound like a pretty
innocuous theme for a poem,
The watermelons of my Bombay days
are no ordinary watermelons
They deserve a poem.
 
Words sway on the page
like the bullock cart
ambling down the road
by my childhood house,
bringing the luscious fruit
Home to us, carefully piled high.
The bullocks are tired
tails patiently swishing flies
the jingling of bells around their necks
The watermelons don’t have an opinion
I wonder what they would say
If they could speak!
 
The rush of housewives
Sarees flapping in the summer breeze
like washing on a clothesline,
the high-pitched bargaining voices
that greet bullock cart and fruit
might frighten the beasts
The road flavored by the promise of watermelon juice
Will play truant.
 
I watch in fear of the bullocks.
They are so tall, I am so small
I want to be part of the scene.
They shake their horns from side to side
The crowd gasps, the children step back
Then move forward again bravely
Watermelons on their minds.
 
My mother had a theory
she usually did for most things.
The greener the melon
on the outside, the sweeter the fruit
on the inside.
So with characteristic determination
she points to the melon
at the bottom of the pile
(Can’t do that at the Supermarket here!)
she will have no other.
I plead with her to be reasonable
The bullock cart driver remains unfazed
Smiles, obligingly pulls out the one she wants,
I turn red as the watermelon, from embarrassment.
Secretly, I wished he had refused
The one at the top would have done as well.
 
The mountain of watermelons crumble,
they scatter down the street
The urchins help to retrieve the runaways
They seem to appear magically in rain or shine.
My mother is satisfied,
She predicts the fruit will be sweet!
 
We children eat
In humble silence.
We’re not allowed to slurp
(Bad manners, she says),
the dripping juice
slides down the side of our mouths
wondering how all her theories
about relationships between color and sweetness
had a ring of truth to them.
 
Whenever I buy watermelons
eat it sliced or diced
with splashes of lemon, sprinkles of sugar
Indian chat masala or Mexican Tajin,
the bullocks and mother appear
permanently etched into each slice
Sweetening the memory and the fruit.

(first published in Yugen Quest Review 2022)

 

 
Cat at the vets Photo by Alan Mendonca

For the Love of Cats
 
The tabby needs emergency surgery
a discussion ensues about costs
it doesn’t last very long.
My spouse lifts him in his arms like a baby
places him in his box and he’s off
to the animal hospital far from our home.
It’s after midnight and the doctor calls
with an update on the tabby.
We’re sleepy but grateful it went well.
 
After two days, the cat returns home
a cone around his head and a significant loss of weight
The little black and white cat eyes him warily
stays upstairs and sleeps close beside me at night
His brother now a stranger to him.
It’s 3:46 am and my husband calls to me
“I’m sleeping beside Timber on the couch downstairs
“He needs reassurance and comfort.”
 
I feel the empty space in the bed
My thoughts turn to the children
when they were little and needed reassurance
how when they were teething
He rocked them in his arms walking up and down
on the school campus grounds.
 
My gratitude to my spouse continues to grow
I had made promises in the words of the song
at the start of our relationship
”Anything you can do I can do better.”
I am considering singing a different song
as the years go by.
 
Last night he placed a small mattress
in the living room.
This morning, I found him sleeping
The cat curled peacefully beside him.
 
First published in Verse-Virtual)


School Staff Picture Day 
 
Pictures never do me justice
I do better in real life!
I can’t avoid picture day at school
the day is promised to us as teachers.
I love my colleagues yet dread the copy
that inevitably appears in my mailbox
a few days later.
 
It’s the usual positions
tall teachers on the high risers
short ones like me must stand in the front row
height is a determiner of so much in life!
The same photographer each year
the photographer’s wife helps him
they are a kind couple
make us relaxed and comfortable.
He follows the same pattern
asks my permission to tuck a stray curl
into my ponytail.
‘Do you mind,’ he says
Of course I don’t mind,
‘Perfect,’ he says, smiling widely.
I’ve been teaching here for almost a decade
professional attire dominates my closet
so dress poses no problem
perhaps the sheen in my eyes a little dimmer.
My smile takes longer to emerge when he says ‘money’
I was expecting the customary ‘cheese.’
 
Next year
I’ll need a little more blush
a darker shade of hair dye to cover the grey
more mascara on my eyelashes and higher heels
to avoid the rapidly shrinking frame
I might be one of those teachers
politely asked to sit on the floor.
 
In the classroom I can still
Stand tall behind the desk
No one takes pictures in the classroom.
A child comments on the stray curl though.
He says he wants to see both my eyes
The curl was blocking them.

first published in Verse Virtual 

Black Belt in Feminism Thanks to my Parents

 Alarie Tennille

 

 
WAVE Alice Marie Adams, Alarie’s mother

by Alarie Tennille

Part 1: Feminism and Learning to Stand Up for Myself

I’m a UVA pioneer coed with a BA in English, a Phi Beta Kappa key,
and a black belt in feminism.   

My older brother went to the University of Virginia. I was already in love 
with beautiful places and historic buildings, since Virginia was brimming 
with them. (In case you didn’t know, the university was founded by Thomas 
Jefferson.) I was thirteen when my parents and took me up to UVA to see my 
brother’s dorm room and the lovely Blue Ridge Mountains. It was love at first 
sight for me, but Geoff regularly reminded me, “You can’t come here. 
Only men are allowed.” 

When he graduated in 1969, he wrote to let me know that I could come there
after all. The school took the case to court, asserting that a state institution 
shouldn’t discriminate against the daughters of Virginia who didn’t have the same
privileges allowed to their sons. The school took our case to court. I had no idea 
what trials waited for me. My mail from UVA was always addressed to 
Mr. Alarie Tennille. 

Two years ago, my husband and I went back there to celebrate our 50th college 
reunion, and I was invited to share some of my poems about the experiences 
of being a first coed. Several of my poems appeared in the book: Here to Stay: 
The Story of the Class of Women Who Conducted the University of Virginia. 
I was honored that our book author, Gail Burrell Gerry featured me both 
in the book and in my brief reading during our 50th year anniversary.


She Doesn’t Have to Call Me a Bitch
 
 Everything about her 
shouts it – the red face, bared 
teeth, the way she charges 
like a shrieking hyena. Ignoring 
the older man beside me, she singles 
me out for the kill.  “YOU 
are destroying the family!” 
she screams. Hoisting a sweaty 
baby like a trophy, she sputters, 
“MY daughter is going to be a LADY!”
 
I sit at an outdoor table, spread 
with N.O.W. pamphlets and petitions 
for the Equal Rights Amendment.
I look her in the eye, say nothing, 
become a wall that her words
bounce off. She turns on her heel,
huffs away.
 
The silence sizzles.
 
First published in Gimme Your Lunch Money: Heartland Poets 
Speak out against Bullies

 
Leaving the Coast for a Kansas City Job
 
 Over 1,000 miles away – 
would it be worth the worry, the expense?
Our lists of pros and cons proved
useless ¬– weighing the cotton candy
of dreams against brick and mortar:
our first house, friends, family, 
two paychecks. Unknowns can topple
any column of logic.
 
He took the job. I tried to sell the house. 
Mama died. Daddy got cancer. Six months
later, in February, I left camellias 
and daffodils and flew back to winter. 
At least we had each other. Determined 
to like our new home, we explored 
neighborhoods, shopping, and museums. 
The zoo was fun until I smelled 
salt water at the sea lion exhibit.
I cried.

First published in Waking on the Moon

 

 
Paratrooper Sergeant Paul Tennille, Alarie’s father

Part II: Finding a New Home and Losing my Parents

My future husband and I had a hard time getting decent jobs in the wake of a deep depression.
We moved away from our beloved college town to Tidewater, Virginia to get work and find a house we could afford. I worked as a technical editor (private office overlooking the water!) and Chris taught middle school. We found a house.  Chris decided to accept a job with Hallmark
in Kansas city, and both my parents soon died. My mother had just turned 59, but had cardiac failure. My father had lung cancer and lasted just more than a year longer. I didn’t have any friends (yet) in my new home.

When I did find new friends on the job, an especially dear friend said I should write about my
eccentric parents’ entertaining lives. I decided to do that, not in prose, but in poetry.
My parents had lived through difficult childhoods during the Depression, then joining the war
effort. Mama was a WAVE, Daddy a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne. I loved retelling their
stories.

Wild Alice
 
Black and white photos
can’t hide the colorful life 
you lived before me. Crimson
lips whispering smoke,
eyes laughing in ways
they’ve forgotten. Night
clubs, dance floors, “When
They Begin the Beguine.”
Dress rehearsals for a show
that didn’t go on.
 
Three fiancés,
just one trip to the altar—
that should have been 
a sign you weren’t cut
out for a supporting role.
But the backdrop 
of war crashed,
leaving a world craving
domestic comedy.
 
You could still command
center stage: holding placards 
in parades, dancing hula
at conventions, promising
to tell the whole truth
in courtroom dramas.
But red taffeta and shimmy
dresses faded to the back
of your closet.
 
Encore! Encore!
Weekdays at 5:00 p.m.
I held a ticket to your late 
matinee. You swept through 
the door, catching me up 
in a waltz or a jitterbug.
“Marry a man who can 
dance,” you’d say. Then,
swirling into the kitchen,
just us girls, you’d take me 
behind the scenes, telling me
the stories that made me
wish I’d been born sooner.
  
First published in Remembering Faces,
chapbook anthology from Palettes and Quills


Daddy and the MPs
 
World War II
 
 Daddy was a flashy dresser –
added a tartan tie and derby
to his drab uniform. 
 
“You’re in trouble this time,”
said Daddy’s buddy Dale 
as the MPs approached. 
Sure enough they got stopped.
 
“Button your pocket,” 
they told Dale before walking on – 
just a nod to Daddy. 
Cigarettes, chocolates, booze,
favorite rations traded with the Brits –
whatever could make war
a little less hell, Master Sergeant
Tennille provided.
 
I laughed every time I heard it.
A paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne
didn’t have many stories 
he could tell his little girl.

 
The same office friend who urged me to write about my parents
saved me from years of nightmares by calling forth the common sense
of this poem.


Switching on the Light
  
I wake in the dark. 
A man stands silhouetted
in the doorway. I try to scream,
find my voice sleep-paralyzed
like my legs.
 
Shhh, it’s only a dream,
whispers my husband, pulling
me close. My moan fades.
My adrenalin soars.
 
I wake in the dark. 
A man stands silhouetted
in the doorway. Repeat,
repeat. Over twenty years
of reruns. 
 
I blame the serial rapist
who haunted college nights.
The one time my roommate
was gone, he climbed 
through the window next door.
How can that other woman
ever sleep again?
 
At work the next day, I explain
to a friend why I’m dragging.
This man in the dream
never speaks or comes
toward you? she asks.
 
Maybe he’s not an intruder.
When you were little,
didn’t your daddy stand
at the door like that to check
on you?
 
First published in Dying Dahlia
The voice of wisdom in this poem was dear Sharon Valleau.

My Struggle with Bi-Polar Disorder

 Mary McCarthy

 

Drawing by Mary McCarthy

By Mary McCarthy

The poems here came out of a long struggle with bipolar disorder that almost took everything I had to survive. In the darkest time I wrote daily, the words becoming a lifeline, a ladder, something that might pull me up and out of the abyss I had fallen into. The drawing of the girl sitting at the cliff's edge, with all the ruins behind her, was the way it felt---no hope, no where to go but down. I was fortunate enough to have the support and determination, the resources, medical, personal, family, and creative, to survive the worst of it and build back my life. In my book I speak not only for and about myself but for and about so many others who suffer without the words that helped me understand and work my way through the pain and confusion of those years.

Outsiders
 
Not everyone can suffer
politely.
Some pain is clumsy
 
ugly as the troll
squatting in cold mud
under a lovely bridge.
 
I can’t blame you
for looking up,
some frogs just can’t be
 
kissed to transformation.
Like tricks that fail to convince
they embarrass
 
by staying what they are,
sad reminders
of how very little
 
magic you command.
Some suffering just makes you itch,
declaring itself like a bad rash,
 
irritating until it does
the only thing you can forgive
and fades away.
 
Not everyone gets over it
beats the odds
has no regrets-
 
some of us just
howl in the wasteland
outside the reach of grace.
 
 Unfit                                                            
(after a Hausa Bird Headdress)

She was an acre of tinder waiting for the match, would set her hair on fire and slap it out fast, a dramatic dare and rescue the wrong side of sane.
Followed by the smell of burning she marked everything she touched with fingerprints of ash.

She walked the alleys for hours. Those years most drinks came in glass bottles and every one she found she swung Hard and threw against a wall to hear it smash.

No one saw or stopped her and she left behind a trail of broken glass.
Trees spoke to her the way they speak to the deaf, in gestures and with the shapes of shadow and light splintering the air.

She knew each one she passed by its secret name, the path sap took from root to leaf, the way fog rested like a scarf around its shoulders, the way each day was a slow step in its long dance, the way they forgave her with new greens after each long winter’s freeze.
She had no guardian angel but a great bird, a shadow falling like an owl, silent and dark, swift and accurate as any raptor,  claw and beak and the hush of air coming down clean as a knife.

Even with that fierce eye, she was more crow than owl or eagle,  no diva but a canny scavenger, polishing her darks in the sun, voice a raw caw, neither the gull’s bold squack nor the long soft grief of the dove, her voice unfit for words in any language but the one she invented to speak to herself.

Arms spread like wings she wore her fury like a crown, a totem, a warning, a bird whose silent scream could turn men's bones to sand, leaving her there at last a Queen, triumphant and alone

Burn
 
When the gate drops
when the storm takes you
so high and far
all your ordinary days
shrink to insignificance
while the stars spin out
of their orbits
and you break free of gravity
rising like a new sun
spinning in the glory
of your own
inexhaustible fires
your heat expanding
until your farthest atoms
brush up against
the rim of the universe
where time and matter
took their first steps
out of the great nothing-
 
and you can only hold on
to your wild exaltation
even though this isn’t
your first time
and like the bull rider
you know the end will find you
thrown to the dust
torn flesh and broken bones
hard payment for that brief
ecstasy
 
Medication
 
Clears my head
damping me down until
all my noisy oppositions
go quiet and meek
and I grow calm
and sober as a gray
November day.
Good, you may think,
now we’ll really
get things done.
 
But I can’t help
remembering
what it was like
before my chemical
reformation
when every day
I wore carnival clothes
and thought
impossible things
going fast fast fast
as a bird’s heartbeat,
as the quiver of an insect’s
wing, as a rocket itching
to take off, as an engine
of desire, ready to win

Bad Medicine
 
What you need
they said
is a good hard knock
upside the head
a clean break
it will leave you
with a lot less
to complain about
 
Afterward I kept still
as a white mouse
on a live wire grid
embarrassed
by rooms where every
thing waited
blank and innocent
knocked clean of meaning
 
And they were right
with so little left
there was not much
to complain of
 
I kept close
in the naked rooms
folding what rags
of memory I had
into smaller and smaller
packages
 
hoping if I hid them
well enough
I could keep them
after the white light
burned out everything
behind my eyelids
and they would be
the only colors left
in a world flat as a negative
where I had no complaints
 
 
Enthralled

  for my sister, who always knew me, and never let me go                  
                                                           
I found myself lost                
black, mechanical,                 
an alien left behind.               
I had razor blades
instead of bones
beneath my skin.
I spoke in colors
words like sequins
breaking light
into smaller and smaller
fractions.
I had to sort you out
between the voices
of the trees, the grass
shouting and singing
sharp and dangerous
as fields of broken glass.
I came naked
feathered and spurred
my tongue baroque
unregulated,
my arms full
of awkward gifts:
apologies like small
black holes
swallowing worlds
blind spots white
as lepers
running fevers and other
sudden lightnings
hard to find room for
in any reasonable space.
But you held fast
through fire season,
keeping track
while I burned and raved,
a speed demon
racing through a thousand
changing shapes.
You held strong
laying claim
against enchantment.
You never blinked,
never saw
any face but mine,
rock steady,
waiting for me
underneath the shadow maze
of strange mutations
where I found myself
lost .  
 
The poems are from my book, How to Become Invisible (Kelsay Books) available on amazon, from Kelsay Books, and from me.