Super-Sized Series

 Surprise!

 
 

The BIG Box By Joan Leotta

By age eight, I already had learned one of life’s hard truths. Christmas gifts for little brothers come in BIG boxes. Big sisters receive only medium and small boxes whether from Santa or Mom and Dad. To be honest, I never really suffered in the gift category. There was abundance and well, I loved the puppets, crayons, cooking sets, books, and mountains of stuffed animals that I received. I had no interest in the fire engines, ride-on toys and forts revealed when my little brother’s BIG boxes were opened. 
I admit that silly though it may seem, when I spied the HUGE boxes under the tree for my brother was the nagging suspicion that a bigger box equaled more love. The old maxim that good things come in small packages. did not ring true for me.

I thought about putting a new bicycle on my list, just so I could qualify for a big box, despite the fact that my bike was just fine. I was the same height I had been the year before—almost. I didn't. 
Despite staying up very late on Christmas Eve, I awakened before dawn, put on slippers and robe and crept downstairs. The Christmas tree lights were on and under it were our stockings and boxes, "from Santa."  There were many, many boxes, some big, some small—and one GREAT BIG ENORMOUS Box. I sighed.

Quietly, I perused the pile for items with my name attached. I piled my gifts by my stocking and sat down next to them to wait for my parents and Grandma to come downstairs. I took a candy cane cookie from a plate by the tree, arranged my gaily wrapped boxes spread around me, and began to munch on a cookie and read my new book, a gift from a cousin, while I waited. As I read, I heard my brother, Mom, Dad, Grandma and my baby brother come down the stairs. Mom helped my brother open his boxes. I exclaimed happily over my Magic Baking oven and diary. Santa had been good to me.

Grandma and Mom began to clean up the wrapping paper. Then Mom noticed—the BIGGEST box was still wrapped.

"Whose is this?" she asked.

I looked up. "Mom, you’d better help little brother open that one too."

Mom stood up, read the tag and looked at me. "It’s for you.”

I walked over to the box. It was as high as I was tall, definitely the BIGGEST box under the tree this year and possible, ever! And my name was clearly printed on the tag: "Joanie." Santa and all of his helpers clearly had recognized my need for a BIG BOX. The box was a present in and of itself.

My hands were trembling as I ripped paper and then tugged at the box flaps. I reached in and tossed out the shredded paper “fill” in fistfuls. Deep down lay a large toy lion—silky and soft-- with a golden mane. The imprisoned lion was not huge. The box was and filling were about three times his size. I released him from this cardboard incarceration and hugged him tight. A moment later, I christened this amazing creature, "Goldie" and he promptly became the king of my stuffed animal jungle.

It's been a long time since the biggest box under the tree was the one I wanted. After all, jewelry comes in small boxes. But I've never forgotten the real gift that Christmas, learning that often when we think no one notices us, that no one is aware of our inner desires for a BIG box or whatever else, someone often does. As a parent, I've tried to always put this lesson into practice, carefully observing my dear daughter and son  so Santa could fulfill even their “hidden” wishes.

Previously Published in Sassee

Gifting by Luanne Castle, Arizona

Emily flopped onto the ratty playroom couch to glance through the photographs she had taken for art class. One of her in-the-future fantasies was to have her photographs on the cover of National Geographic. Poogie might spend all his time glued to his games, but his sister was going to be somebody. She reached for her camera behind the throw pillow, but nothing was back there. Emily pulled out the back cushions and the bottom cushions, thinking the camera had fallen between them. But she found nothing.

Prickles nipped at her consciousness. Poogie didn’t wear jackets in winter because they would disappear, but she wasn’t used to losing things. She thought of her beaded bustier from dance class and how she was sure she left it hanging on the door hook in her room. She hadn’t seen it in weeks. Or her new SKKN by Kim eye shadow palette. Was Poogie messing with her? Not likely since he mostly ignored real life.

Emily flipped through her older photos on the computer, seeing where she had made little mistakes she could now recognize. Then she came upon a series she had done of the murder of crows that frequented the neighborhood. In one image, a crow pinched a penny in its beak as it lifted off the porch. Emily’s teacher had explained that the crow didn’t view the act as stealing because it would leave the coin elsewhere as a thank you for food or help received. Emily didn’t believe that could be true and googled it during computer class, finding crow gifting to be shockingly true.

Mrs. Carroll poked her head in. “Didn’t you hear the phone ring?” Emily stared, still contemplating the pattern of crows stealing and gifting. “That was Mrs. Martinez. She asked if we knew anything about a teapot-shaped serving tray. Our dear Misty is a thief!”

Every Friday Misty, her greasy hair drooping, arrived in her rusted Kia Rio, bringing gifts. A teapot-shaped serving tray. A teak trinket box. Mrs. Carroll accepted each offering with hugs and left Misty with her skinny legs and big feet to the vacuum and scrubbing cleanser.

Not that the Carrolls needed another serving tray or trinket box, but it’s the thought that counts, Mr. and Mrs. Carroll told each other. Poogie and Emily, their teens, crossed their eyes and drew air circles near their ears whenever they discovered a new gift from Misty. Except, of course, when she brought a new video game that Poogie didn’t own. Emily raised her eyebrows, but her brother’s smug smile shut her down.

Now Emily didn’t like the angry look on her mother’s face. She flinched at Mrs. Carroll’s next words. “The jig is up. No wonder Misty is always bringing us gifts. She steals them from other employers.”

Emily thought of Misty’s thin, intense face, her beaked profile. “Don’t think of it as stealing, Mom. Misty’s just very grateful.”

Four 50-word stories by Shoshauna Shy, Wisconsin

CRUSHED AGAIN
Victory! An empty chair by the table of my latest coffeehouse crush this quiet morning—and no wedding band either!
Unload book bag, coat, stir my latte. Look his way, smile, ask for the sugar canister.
Oh, no...a waft of fabric softener envelops me as he obliges.
Married already.  
 previously published by 50-Word Stories

DATING
Finally—a date! New dress: velour, hip-hugging, swale at the breast. Locket he gave me on our anniversary. Hair frosted, his favorite style. He will watch me take my seat with newfound admiration, compelled to cry, "Don't leave! I love you!"
Our first date all year—our court date.

previously published by 50 Give or Take

BINGO            
All he had left to do was book a one-way flight to Portland, then shave his head at the airport. He folded the winning lottery ticket into his pocket.
“Cleveland conference again?” asked his wife when she saw the suitcase.
He grabbed it and kissed her. "What a good guess."

previously published by 50 Give or Take

I DON’T WANT KIDS,
SHE TOLD ME

Took me three winters to finally get over you.
And there you are—in line at 40 Flavors Lickity-Split. I’d know that red braid anywhere.
Someone shifts their weight, and a cherub comes into view. He’s riding your hip.
I’m a cardboard bucket, my insides scraped out with a spoon.

previously published by 50-Word Stories

 

LITTLE SURPRISES by Lori Levy, California

Today I see red flowers dancing by the dusty roadside,
a brown bird hopping on a garbage can lid—
just as joyful as the one in the tree.  Funny,
because on the same path yesterday,
I saw only the dust, the garbage, and the fog.

 

Twin Delight by Abha Das Sarma, India

When asked what I want
as is the common practice in India,
'twin girls' was my favorite reply-
an improbable fantasy
with no family history and
no medication to enhance the possibility.

Imagine my surprise
at doctor's growing suspicion
with my belly size-
heartbeats on both the sides!

Those years with no scan,
it continued to be a fantasy
until the eight month-
a special x-ray and
the technician's confirming,
'you are going to have twins'.

To date, no other words
have brought me a bigger surprise-
no girls though but identical boys!

In the hospital, one carried a thread
who was the first to see the world
by five minutes. Pranks grew with them,
exchanging clothes and fooling the friends.
None got it ever right to my immense delight.

At schools professors erred
who was in the class and who wandered-
the embassies interchanged the visas,
the ultimate yet to come with one married
and the certificate in other's hand.

The surprises continue to this date
when the memories of childhood begin to fade.

First published in a slightly different form in Ekphrastic Review


The Gift by Alarie Tennille, Kansas

 No one would deny
the Tiny Tot stapler was cute,
the ideal size for tucking 
in a purse or tote,
useful for a teacher grading papers.
But the look on Mom’s face,
when she opened 
the jewelry-sized box 
and hurled the stapler at Dad
was what held that Christmas 
fast in family memory.

First published in Alarie’s poetry collection, Running Counterclockwise from Kelsay Books

On Mindfulness by Ethan Goffman, Maryland

I’m never present in the present
though to do so would be pleasant.
My mind’s meandering in the past
or in the future trav’ling fast.

When I should be here, I’m there,
My thoughts are flashing everywhere.
I’m of no mind to be mindful,
My mind’s merely a mad minefield.

Voices from the past will taunt me,
nightmare future always haunt me.
I can’t be present in the present,
Would it really be so pleasant?


nightfall? daybreak? by Wilda Morris, Illinois
“The sun is downing.”  Lucas Fernandez, age 3
 
day falls
in silver streaks
from silky sky
gift of light
 
night breaks
through the horizon
chasing light
downing the sun
gift of darkness
 

Extra Large 200th Birthday by Joe Cottonwood, California

Let’s gather my children, 
their partners, their offspring— 
shades of hair, skin, eyes, a palette of DNA 
mixing cultures and continents.

Let’s celebrate first by repairing the deck, 
a carpenter’s holiday
prying, cutting, screwing until suddenly 
I trip on the crowbar and 
I’m falling in front of everybody 
fortunately sideways onto soft grass. 
Thunk. 
I’m fine, slightly bruised, 
dug a divot in the lawn and
everyone now reminded that 70 is old age,
judgement possibly addled. 
They say I took fetal position on the way down, 
good instinct, a carpenter’s regression. 

Family tradition: a pie not a cake. 
Gift of a sweater vest, size Extra Large.
I’m a man of medium build, but always 
in their eyes Extra Large.

One candle, only one
because 70 would melt the pie 
and counting physical body years 
misses the point. We are spirit 
expanding as ripples in a pond 
beyond the flesh. Add up our ages. 
My years plus children plus grandchildren
total exactly 200 years old this day.
I’m spreading, not dying.
Happy birthday to us.

First appeared in Poetry Breakfast

 
Unexpected Gifts by Elaine Sorrentino, Massachusetts

Compassion in the eyes of the medical 
receptionist as she relinquishes 
my envelope of ticking time bombs, 
wishing me good luck in my journey; 

my husband's vow to keep the house clean, 
no need to worry when visitors 
come calling after surgery ... 
as if dust bunnies were my real worry; 

a thank-you call from my oncologist 
grateful for the letter disclosing 
non-medical components of my life 
to explain my decision-making; 

the library patron who volunteered 
to drive me to infusions; 
purple polka-dotted we love you 
PajamaGram from cousins; 

delight at being rejected for chemo 
so I could watch my 74-year-old mother 
fawn like a teenager over Josh Groban 
at Boston Garden; 

Barbara, the dancing chemo nurse 
who shushed me mid-shimmy, finger 
to her lips, warning 
Don’t reveal my secret; 

co-workers demanding 
an occupation to help in the healing, 
not understanding their daily check-ins 
were all the salve I needed. 

first appeared in MacQueen's Quinterly


The Gift of Radio Silence, Roxbury, MA by Marianne Szlyk, Massachusetts

Brittle oak leaves, my thoughts
scatter in the east wind.
Shards of now-old songs play.
I cannot turn this radio off.

I walk down this steep hill,
skirt ice patches, wonder
who has lived on this street,
have I been here before.

Here you are not. Here you
will never be. I think
of people I knew
at the home near here
where I once worked.

I picture them as children
running as snow falls,
as stores close, as sweet horns
and laughter gush out
from their papas’s taverns.

I picture you as a child
running as snow falls,
as stores close, as sweet horns
and TV laughter flood

the apartments above
other stores, other streets
in New York City, not here.

And then I will pray
for the gift of
radio silence.


A Gift by Gary Grossman, Georgia

They home, like salmon to their
natal stream, seeking the comfort 
of the only nest they’ve known. 
Childhood neurons triggered by
beef bourguignon, baked ziti, 
and bedrooms that remain undenned.

At 70 resentment still can 
brush my cheeks red. Nerves quick to fire
with one more many-petaled request.
Even from one’s own muscled genes. 
Even when it’s all years past.

But, what a gift it is when children 
return home to snuggle in bed 
despite their thirty-something years 
and job tenure. 

Soon enough we’ll be cold ashes in an urn.

Verse Virtual

 
 

Encore Presentation

 Marilyn L. Taylor

 

Marilyn L. Taylor Ph.D., former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin and of the city of Milwaukee, is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently Outside the Frame - New and Selected Poems, published by Kelsay Books. 

Her poems and essays have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Able Muse, Measure, Light, Rhino, Aesthetica, Mezzo Cammin, and the Potcake Chapbook poetry series. She has been awarded First Place in a number of national and international poetry contests, including the Margaret Reid Award for verse in forms from Winning Writers. Her own widely-read “Poet to Poet” column on craft appeared bi-monthly for five years in The Writer magazine. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for Third Wednesday and Verse-Virtual poetry journals.


To My Neighbor John, Who Is Completely Happy

That moonlit warble in the summer dark
is you, John, singing your way home
from the Rehab Center where you work
evenings— one out-of-kilter chromosome
has never slowed you down. Your nightly whoop
floods the neighborhood with so much bliss
that my Dalmatian springs from sleep
and opens up her throat to harmonize
with you— along with every other canine
in a one-mile radius. Soon the air
is vibrating for blocks with strains
of an unearthly sweetness— prayers
rising from the bottom of the brain,
an ode to joy, with tabernacle choir.

First published in Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry


For Max at Five Months

Hey, little handful,
beamish baby, super-napper,
better hold on to that smile—
there’s a toddler hiding right behind you,
and only a moon or two away, a boy
with a book and a bike.

Can you guess
where they’re headed?  
Just around the corner, where
a young man stretched out on the grass
is contemplating a blue sky
filled with sailing ships.

As soon as you have learned
how to stand on your own
two feet you’ll set off after them,
and one by one they will take
you in.  You will grow more
and more invisible.

You won’t even remember
being here, grinning at us
in pure, oblivious bliss—
where nothing interrupts
the present, or foreshadows
the great events to come.

First published in Verse-Virtual

                        
The Seventy-Somethings in the Workshop

Breathless in their quilted overcoats,
the silver-haired contingent now arrives
shouldering their zippered canvas totes
stuffed with recent cuttings from their lives.

They claim they can’t recall a single line
of poetry—but soon they’re reeling off
entire chunks of Frost and Gertrude Stein,
Millay, MacLeish, Penn Warren, Nemerov—

and finally, from three-ring binders, lift
their own bespattered pages, creased and smudged
with fierce self-edits— like a sacred gift
to lay before the others, to be judged—

while Pound and Parker, Bishop and Jarrell
smile down upon them, wink, and wish them well.

First published in Verse-Virtual


One Last Favor

Why yes,
there is something
you can do for us
before you die.
You can please quit
grieving. Stop

leaking out all over us
the horror and the
dread. It’s hard
for us to watch,
we don’t like it,

we would so much rather
have you smiling like
a picture of Saint Jude,
stroking our hands and
telling us There there,

this was to be expected.
But with your whole spine
gone bent like that and
your head shaking back
and forth, your eyelids

stiff with fear and every
wasted muscle straining
to deny, deny — just where
are we supposed to turn
for comfort now? 

First published in Verse-Virtual
                     

Toast to the Also-Rans
                                    
We’re the ones who don’t know how to play
a jingle-bell, much less a French bassoon—
and yes, we’ve heard too many people say
we’re not so hot at carrying a tune—
but we salute the proud mezzo-sopranos,
violists (doomed to playing second-fiddle),
pumpers of abandoned player-pianos,
drummers drumming one more paradiddle—
Garage bands with Carnegie Hall intentions,
opera’s unsung supernumeraries—
all runners-up, and honorable-mentions, 
stand-ins, sidekicks, rookies, temporaries:
with horns, kazoos and raspy vocal cords--
Bravo! From us, your grateful sounding-boards!

First Published in The Lyric, a quarterly magazine dedicated to traditional rhyming poetry.

What They Don’t Know

They are thirteen, all flying elbows
and thinbone knees, wrapping their tongues
around words like pimp and bare-ass
and hard-on. They are astounded
by girls, the bodies of girls, the onrush
of lips and hair, and they talk about
what it would be like to touch one of those
flashy breasts, to look it in the eye.

They are thirteen, and they don’t know
about the Buick they might be riding in
a year of two from now, packed in hip-to-hip
chanting a frenzied go  go  go  go
until the pavement starts to bulge
and crest, lifting them, sending them up
into some kind of heartstop heaven.

They don’t know that the tree might be an elm
that the car will wrap itself around
in lascivious embrace, or that afterwards
a thin, watery sigh Open the door
could be the first sound and the last
before sirens take up the threnody.

For now, though, they lean lightly
on their slender bikes, polishing
a new language: horny, piss-off, kiss my ass.
Expertly they palm their cigarettes,
the thick smoke streaming 
from their mouths and noses.

First published in The American Scholar


Genesis

Just beyond the window casement
while I puttered in the basement,
twenty-seven muddy nodes
were morphing into baby toads.

Wow, I shrieked in exaltation—
I am witness to Creation!
Astonishing, without a doubt!
But even so, it grossed me out.

First published in Able Muse


The Coming of Age

Last summer, I grew old.  It was gradual
and damned implausible, I thought. Why mention
something so subjective—and so fragile?            
Why give it any serious attention?
Just a quaver of the brain, I thought.
A gathering of neurons that were sick
and tired of catering to an overwrought
mob of memories on a pogo stick.
I’m talking arms and legs here. And sensations
sometimes called reflections. Dreams. Desires.
Know what I mean?  No useless speculations,
flimsy euphemisms, qualifiers.
But I’m not worried!  Just a bit perplexed
about what’s pretty likely coming next.

First published in The Orchards Poetry Journal

Super-Sized Series

 Happy Third Birthday Storyteller 

 

 

 

In honor of Storyteller’s third birthday, March 18, 
I am publishing poems about birthdays and gifts. 
Since the storytellers come from all over the world. 
I am listing their state or country.


Birthdays by Rose Mary Boehm from Peru
 
The lift opens to the hall of the flat and what seems
hundreds of balloons hugging the cream-coloured
ceiling, their strings an instrument or curtain. A child
slides on socks along the marble floor. The one whose
birthday it is receives her parcel wrapped in pink
and silver, only another jacket from trendy ‘peek-a-boo’.
Nannies and maids busy making the hot chocolates
and triangular sandwiches, crusts cut off. Mothers
and grandmothers chat about the friend of the cousin
of the son of the ex-minister, and where to buy
those retro-design boots, inspired by John Wayne.
Cariño, te voy a llevar. I’ll take you.
Outside the chauffeurs are waiting near the SUVs.
 
As I watch and listen, I remember a small brown hand
holding a frayed rope on the other end of which
a llama trots with ill-concealed bad feelings,
brown shiny cheeks painted a blue-red
by the extreme cold on the Altiplano. Sandals
made from rubber tires, snow on the pebbled path.
The poncho gives some warmth, the multicoloured cap
knitted by Granny with love and intricate patterns
covers his ears down to his chin. He’s taking the animal
to the adobe house where his mother cooks for the tourists
who may just leave a dollar or two. I buy a couple
of earthenware bulls, small enough to fit into my rucksack
and powerful enough to protect me from evil.


Joy by Neil Creighton from Australia

At seventeen I met Joy Bevan,
her voice so soft and low,
her mind entirely beautiful.
her gentle inner glow.
At seventeen she was my guide
through the realms of gold.
With a kindly, skillful, gentle hand
she let those realms unfold.
At seventeen she showed me treasure
beyond all place and time,
deep, powerful, beautiful and sad,
a complex journey of the mind.
At seventeen she helped me love
a landscape littered with jewels,
said the journey and not its end
should be your lifelong rule.
At seventeen I gave poor thanks
for her gifts and dedication.
Now, decades later, I sing her praise
In sad, posthumous recognition.


James by Lynn White from Wales

It was still his favourite toy,
that robot with the flashing eyes,
a birthday present when he was only five.
He called it James,
he couldn’t say why.
He didn’t know a James
so he was pleased to be original.
There was a lever called a joystick
because it brought him joy
and gave him perfect control.
Back and forth, round in circles,
blinking and winking away.
He called all the shots.

Now he’s grown up,
almost nine
and James is feeling his age
(yes, of course he can feel)
so his movements are slower
and his lights less bright and sparkly.
Age has undermined his splendour,
it happens,
he knew it would.
The joystick is a bit wonky
so control is imperfect
but it doesn’t matter,
the joy is the same.
James is still James
and will be forever.

The Gift of the Crow by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca from Canada

If the cawing of a crow does not bring a visitor
Let it at least bring the gift of a poem.

The crows have cawed for three days,
If my belief in local Indian folklore 
is fact not superstition 
the cawing of a crow should bring a visitor.
Mathematically, several crows should bring several visitors,
If three large ravens sitting on the backyard fence
Count as crows, by the same token
I should have many more visitors and poems!
I will be brave and open the door
though no doorbell rings.

The poem waits on the threshold
‘You don’t need an appointment,’ I say reassuringly
 I welcome it in French, English and Spanish 
‘Mi casa es su casa’  
 Welcome it in all the Indian languages I know
The poem should now feel at home.

I offer it the best of Indian hospitality
Ginger tea, samosas with tamarind chutney
I carry it over the threshold as for a newly-married bride
Anxious to see if it’s a love poem or about birds.

The gift of a poem would be a miracle visitor
Coming from a crow at Christmas
That would be a double miracle.

First published in ‘The Gift,’ anthology by Steve Carr

Searching for Gold by Laurie Kuntz from Florida

Bracing the wind, Laura, in a red sock hat,
reads the instruction booklet of this holiday gift,
the metal detector you’ve wanted since you were a child,
growing up in rural places, where treasures were part of the lore.
Now, on an urban beach in January,
you search and dig, sand blowing in your aging face.
You yell against the rising tide, hoping Laura can hear,
It is more the hunt than the treasure that I love,
because you can see clearly,
that the treasure is standing next to you,
reading the instruction booklet.

First appeared in One Art


The Package by Mary Ellen Talley from Washington

I tear dun paper 
from the Texas postmark package
to reveal a repurposed pearlized 
Granny Smith apple green 
plasticized trench coat 
with matching lining
and a tag on the side seam instructing,
“Wipe clean only.”

Someone wore this once. 
Does my sister think it looks like me?    
It fits. 
Darn! The tattooed redhead
who works with me 
would wear this retro outer garb
but she’s a medium. 
I know that you, my dear retired big sister,
with your shopping volunteering
at St. Vinnie’s, found this bargain 
due to persistence you inherited from our mother.
You ask directly.  Well, I say,
it’s not what I usually wear.
You say to ask my daughter.
No thanks, Mom.
You say you won’t be offended.
Take it to a consignment shop.
Yes, the coat is in prime shape.
Surely it will fit the bill for someone—
else.


The Gifts he Gives me by Sharon Waller Knutson from Arizona

Grinning he slaps me
on my behind as I stand
in line at the convenience
store. I ignore him.

In a concerned voice.
the clerk asks: “Do you
 know him?” I answer:
“He is my husband.”

In the local café, he strums
the bass guitar and sings,
Conway Twitty’s “Crazy in Love”
to me as the crowd cheers.

We two step, salsa and swing
on the Stardust dance floor 
after dining on lobster, crab
and filet mignon. I smile

as I remember sunsets on sandstone 
in Sedonia, sliding in the snow
in Flagstaff and buying turquoise
jewelry in Santa Fe with my soulmate.

We climb the Grand Canyon,
watch gun fights on the street
and dance hall girls in the saloon
and ride a camel with the grandkids.

He drives me to the hospital
after my mother’s mini stroke.
I feed his father and mother ice chips 
while he pushes their wheelchairs.

After three decades, I find him dead
after serving me egg whites
stuffed with avocado for breakfast 
and fruit salad and mayo for lunch.

Our oldest and youngest sons
jump in their trucks to take
care of their traumatized mom
making sure I am not alone over the holidays.

The oldest gives me socks
and a new mattress for Christmas.
The youngest shows up Dec. 23
with a pickup load of wood.

“Thank you for my Christmas gift,”
I say. “I am your Christmas gift,”
he says. I reply, “It’s the best
gift I could ever ask for.”

Searching for Gold by Laurie Kuntz from Florida

Bracing the wind, Laura, in a red sock hat,
reads the instruction booklet of this holiday gift,
the metal detector you’ve wanted since you were a child,
growing up in rural places, where treasures were part of the lore.
Now, on an urban beach in January,
you search and dig, sand blowing in your aging face.
You yell against the rising tide, hoping Laura can hear,
It is more the hunt than the treasure that I love,
because you can see clearly,
that the treasure is standing next to you,
reading the instruction booklet.

First appeared in One Art

First published in Gyroscope Journal

 

The Gift of a Blue Alabaster Jar by Joan Leotta from Virginia

We argued before I left for Spain. 
Lonely, some months later, 
I bought my mother 
a blue alabaster vanity jar
in my favorite store 
on Madrid’s Gran Via.
The shop girl assured me,
it would arrive on time. 
Indeed it did.
Mom called to thank me.
We spoke briefly.
However, unbeknownst to me,
when my mother 
opened the package 
she found only alabaster shards
rattling about on the bottom
of an unpadded box. 
Then, for several days,
hour after hour Mom
matched piece to piece.
to reassemble her blue jar, 
and the apology
it represented.
When I finally 
returned from Spain, 
I looked at the jar and spoke:
"I don't remember all those
extra lines in the alabaster." 
Mom recounted her repairs.
I hugged her tightly
realizing her love for me
had never wavered,
that she always believed we 
were of one piece.

Mom is gone now
but I have the vase and 
the lines that show 
her constant 
unbroken love in a time
I thought it was in ruins.


My father's Birthday by Rachael Ikins from New York

Tarnishing sky leads darkness.
White daylight fragments,
flits through naked
branches. Rotting crabapples
stuck on their stems. 

A flock, thousands
surround me, sparrows of silence, 
inadvertent video. For a second,
snow scatters.

Wind whispers two syllable
secrets. Mysteries,
camera blinks, 
back to balancing numbers
checkbook. Memory, the math.
My father, his pickup truck, 
rumpled, Saturday jacket,
stomped-off bootsong, snowmelt
doorbell.
As if I’d never seen snow before, 
tears steam the window 
brief as video. I lean.

body strains-
footsteps,
rattling tool bucket, 
hot coffee and repairs. 
Body believes, through 32 years’
tuneless, march away...
Today 
is his birthday.


On Mother’s Birthday by Tamara Madison from California

I don’t feel her 
as acutely as before;
she’s not in the air 
that I breathe, she is more

like the humus 
from which I grow
toward my own decline. 
Still I keep on thinking

I should call her
and then remember
there is no way to call her
and no one to call.

Encore

  Rachael Ikins

 
By Rachael Ikins 

For a decade in my life the 1990s I was unable to write poetry. I remember standing in front of the file cabinet with all my collected poems. Wondering how long before someone found out I couldn’t do it any more.

Then I got off of all the psychiatric medications I was being given and rid of the therapist. After a tumultuous year with permanent neurological damage, a bankruptcy and moving, about a year after the last pill was swallowed, I felt it, the sensation of a wanting poem in my solar plexus. I ran up the field and blasted into the house to get to a pen and paper. After that I carried a small pad and pen in my back pocket and often gathered poems on my daily walks in the woods.

I did two things back then. I wrote when inspiration touched me but I also started to force myself to write to prompts. Like homework. I wanted to ensure I never lost that ability again.
Now my iPhone is always nearby ready to receive more poetry. Even in the bath tub.

During the years when poetry was mute, I wrote prose stories. Fairytales and fantasies, regular short fiction as well, which created a safe place for me and my mind to go as my world fell apart around me. Years later I found those stories in a file cabinet in another house and some became the book “Totems” (Log Cabin Books 2017.)

I didn’t go to school for writing just did it since I was 7. Like many in our group I had a gifted 8th grade English teacher who also was an author-poetry and prose. Any time I did take an English course I always showed my poems to whoever the professor was, and in one case got a grade for them in lieu of the literature class I missed due to illness.

By now I have written 15 books, poetry, young reader books, a new one is coming out in 2025. I wrote a novella or novel—publisher tells me the word count it could be a novel. That took ten years. I like Stephen King and so decided to write my own scary story. Title is “Haven” and cautions the reader “be very careful what you plant in your garden.”

In between I have written essays, short stories, articles and social media posts.

What inspired me to write these two pieces is “Composition of a Woman” which is from my poetic memoir “The Woman with Three Elbows” (Raw Earth Ink 2023) is those years when I was unable to write poetry stood like a big block in my head. Around 2021 I was taking poetry class with Craig Czury and one of his poems about his family written from the POV of a young child drawing stick figures triggered this piece.

Composition was nominated for both the Pushcart and Best of the Net, once as prose and once as poetry. I’m not exactly sure which it is, but it came out of me in one massive long surge. To heal I had to write my own history as a victor not a victim.

“Collateral Damage” was inspired when Russia invaded Ukraine and Putin’s Chief propaganda minister’s daughter was killed by a car bomb meant for him. I watched video of him crying on the news and thought “What did you expect?” I wrote one version for homework. My teacher and I worked it one-on-one for the voices of not just the father who’d lost his child. We added his wife’s voice, the daughter’s voice and because I had been watching this, we included my own father and my own voice, too. It was really challenging. By braiding and overlapping all the voices together we made it a universal story about the price of war on humans and families. At the time I was reading Carolyn Forche.

Composition of a Woman

A figure drawing class. I use charcoal sticks, draw a young woman crumpled, on her knees, arms outstretched. Teacher leans over my shoulder “Lovely, but you broke her arm.” Yes. I see now two elbows in one arm. I turn my sheet over onto the next, a man, head downcast, slight smile. Later with torn tissue I collage him into a rumpled brown raincoat. I notice he carries a brown paper bag, his lunch I wonder, in one hand. I flip the page, a girl facing away one breast pointed toward the window one arm facing forward. She doesn’t speak. I draw the man again; this time he brings a geranium plant. They never speak. He comes every day.

Flip. An angry alcoholic a woman who swallowed her dream when she married and mothered in the ‘50s. She is thin all sharp angles. Flip. Same woman leaning to one side as if whispering into someone’s ear “don’t tell anyone she sees a psychiatrist.” Flip. I outline a large soft man lounging back in his recliner, glasses, fleshed out in suit and tie he lets the girl with the broken elbows bring house plants to fill his office window.

Flip, flip, figure groupings more challenging. It’s always difficult to be the only one who isn’t drinking in a room full of drunks, blurs the lines.

My fingers blackened to the second knuckle by now, smudges on my lips and cheek, a girl on the floor, no, wait two girls in a bathroom. They’ve broken a lunch plate and try to carve lines into their arms. Later I will paint the one, a mother who lost her baby to crib death. She and her husband will found an advocacy center, but that is in the distant future.

The second was then kicked out of the nuthouse, she had been too much, you see. I used red paint and purples to emphasize this, glue on some torn tissue that looks like seaweed. She snuck off during a field trip, caught a bus home, went to the bank to get some money, caught a bus back – to the downtown bookstore for a certain volume. Hiked up to the hospital. You could tell she is the kind of person who sneaks by the way I draw her shoulders, the can’t of her head, that tumult of thoughts broiling beneath her hair.

I create hair by splitting twine, feathering it a snip of glue dabbed on. Is this putting Humpty Dumpty back together again? That was only the second time. Is it three times and you’re out or charmed?

Here she is running. I use extra strokes around the figure, her legs and arms to emphasize speed. She has stopped on her walk back from therapy to buy a bottle of
OTC sleeping pills then a Diet Coke at Burger King. Locked in the bathroom she pops the pills, chugs the soda. I draw the swan of her throat.
Went to a payphone hospital staff talked her in. No stomach pump for her, she’d saved the bottle, like a magic charm not because she wanted to die or to do a stunt. She just wanted to be done, you see that in her posture as I showed her on her bed that night. She doesn’t sleep something she finds ironic instead whiles away her splitting headache watching neon green. brilliant orange, and hot pink worms wiggling up a picture frame. 

“Am I hallucinating.” she asks the nurse who does 15-minute bad checks. “Yes.” he says.” I know they aren’t real; it was the Benadryl.”

Group Therapy acne scarred Ken of the eternally bouncing knee, his bushy ‘stashe or Sophie the parent of that mother/daughter duo a shake-n-bake evangelist, that mother fond of mouth frothing and spoken tongues. Everyone knew she’d driven the daughter crazy, an axe splitting a skull their future if they got out together.

It wasn’t worth the freezer full of ice cream sandwiches. Here she is drawn riding in a car. She had a pass to see The Exorcist” with her mom, nobody told them she had to be back by the stroke of midnight, or the coach would turn into a pumpkin. She wanted to keep her hospital bed. I draw a young man; he likes her, and she decides at 19 it is time to lose the cherry. This fellow volunteers.

Lectured by shrinks and staff alike, see her reaching to pay for the condoms and foam at the nearby pharmacy, her wrists unscarred and delicate.

His crumpled apartment, some intrusive roommates, the act so insignificant I draw her crouched on the toilet sobbing. She never wants to speak with him again. He threatens to take all of his tranquilizers; she doesn’t care she is studying a new religion. Changes her name, converts but no matter how many times she changes the sheets she still feels sick.

I draw the therapist.

An angry woman paid less than her male colleagues, a smiling, soft looking woman, body draped over bones made of PVC flowing with leaded water. How thirsty was that girl, parched. I draw her head rolled back, mouth open oblivious to the poisons in that water and then the multitude of pill bottles her husband saved in a room on the shelf in the basement. If that shrink had told her to jump off the overpass of the interstate, so befuddled was she she would have, and she would’ve said she did it for love.

The next few pages use up a whole box of charcoal black, black that rubs on your clothes-black, bad thoughts, darkness.

Well, eventually that shrink died. Here she is penciled in her coffin lips pursed. The undertaker couldn’t make them any other way. She looks like the kind of woman who would tell a person “you’ll never make it as a writer you aren’t good enough” the kind of woman who would cripple a person for greed and then send her away to a downstate hospital a serious-to-death place, disposed of, a human-shaped bag of trash. See, can you tell there is a body inside the way I did the bag?
But the girl, pen in her teeth scrambled out of the landfill. Almost died from all those chemicals. She is not the same as she would’ve been if someone had just sent her to college for English back in the day, let her be who she is. Instead, she had to learn to fight for it.
And she fought. Anger forged a molten blade of a woman. I paint with metallic silver from Golden paint Co. is that her armor. she’s lying in the snow on the side of a night mountain, sure she is having a nervous break down— whatever that means —as if nerves are some sort of car parts. They had treated her brain that marvelous mysterious organ of 100 billion cells like an engine to tinker with, throwing a little of this, a little of that. Too much tinkering under her hood, hearts break for real that way.

I use pale blue tissue for the snow that holds her like an angel and if I listen I can hear her voice over the wind. She says out loud to the woods “have your nervous breakdown nobody gives a damn, go on, then get up, get firewood and take it in for the wood stove those who depend on you wait.” Scents of wood smoke and snow.

She lost three houses, a husband, a father, mother, two cats, countless dogs, and miscarried twins. See her. I paint a woman sitting in front of a fire, a pen in her hand, pad of paper balanced on the dog between her thighs, and later I ink her in in front of an old iPad. cat curls on her shoulder, two heads sometimes better than one. See her fingers dance, you can almost hear the poetry pouring. Now I have to buy more charcoal.

 

Collateral Damage

The sound of the blast sucked all sounds into itself.
Your father, his dinner napkin still in his left hand,
his glasses on top of his head while he sits at the table
spooning borscht into his mouth,
my father, half-glasses on the tip of his nose, napkin on his knee,
legs crossed at the table, salts his canned tomato soup.
Reporters thrust microphones like weapons into your father’s face.
My father grimacing in front of the television.
All those compelling lies.
****
An IED sowed your molecules across the universe,
small canister snuck under the car.
Cell-phone set to blast at a nano beep
****
Anya asks to borrow the keys, she wants to meet a friend at the library.
I’m sneaking out in my mother’s denim jacket to kiss a girl in the June field
behind the barn.
They suspect by the way we’re dressed, perfume, shining hair that the friend might be a boy.
Soldiers die so easily, too-early flowers in a killing frost. Spring.
****
My husband kneads his head between his hands.
My husband kneaded his shoulders against my breasts.
Two crows bobbing their heads in our linden tree,
fabric scraps flutter on branches like feathers,
a third crow swoops to grab something shiny.
Call it a murder
****
A train whistle blows through an intersection every night at 6:00 p.m.
Papa, what did you think would happen?
Those people cramming trains once had no greater concerns than a forgotten phone charger or whose turn it was to take the clothes out of the dryer, lugging dogs, guinea pigs, cats…
Is it warm enough to plant lettuce yet?
****
Anya insisted on her own patch when she was seven,
I gave her a few jonquil bulbs.
A scarecrow stood guard, skeleton of a broom dressed in my plaid shirt
to protect from looters.
The wren house we bought at Home
Depot hung in the poplar where Uri and Farris buried our beloved hamster,
home to new wrens twenty springs later.
****
You could have said, “take the bus,” that you needed the car to go see your mistress.
I would’ve slapped your arm laughing.
****
These thoughts race like mice in a jar winking.
****
Soup splatters my shoes.
Sirens bleat, neighbors cluster in bouquets, white faces above fists-clutched, heads-turned-away. Eyes hurry back into our locked houses.
****
Nothing can stop the millipede that crawls
behind my eyelids—it should have been you.
****
I am upstairs, earbuds in, the teddy bear from when I was tiny
still keeping me safe,
black button eyes and fur worn off from rubbing against my lips.
We will wake up in a flash.
****
Mama smacks my shoulder, “Uri, Wake up, you’re snoring!”
****
Do you hear?
“Привет, papa.”
bursting through Spring,
the clatter of my gym shoes’ dance in the boot tray,
I steal a piece of cheese from your plate,
my breeze through displaces the air.
What is left behind? I am in love
and soon they will be taken for soldiers.