The Planting

by Karen McAferty Morris

I wanted to say that it hurt to watch the daffodil bulbs
we were planting disappear into the cold Alabama clay
even though I know they need the dark months to prepare
for bursting out into the spring like soft yellow banners
proclaiming another season of leaf, blossom, and fruit.
And I have seen them washing down mountain hillsides
when icy March winds kept me watching from the car.
Why today’s burial should bother me more than seed
planted in warmth, I can’t explain. So I said nothing
except how splendid they would look on our rocky ledge
and how glad they would be to awaken in the sun.


* * * * *

Karen McAferty Morris loves poetry for its ability to lift both the heart and mind to discoveries, connections and, ultimately, comfort. She is Poetry Editor of the National League of American Pen Women’s magazine The Pen Woman. Her chapbook Elemental was published in April 2018, followed by Confluence in May 2020. She lives in the Florida panhandle and north Alabama.

 

 

Sijo

by Karen McAferty Morris


 Life is full of dancing.
    Swallowtails, sunlit water, the aspen.
I have seen it. Now in this little room
    I watch only shadows.
But they sway and glide on the wall,
    graceful partners to the end. 


* * * * *

Karen McAferty Morris loves poetry for its ability to lift both the heart and mind to discoveries, connections and, ultimately, comfort. She is Poetry Editor of the National League of American Pen Women’s magazine The Pen Woman. Her chapbook Elemental was published in April 2018, followed by Confluence in May 2020. She lives in the Florida panhandle and north Alabama.

This month yields another Moon Prize, the sixty-ninth, and it goes to Carolyn Martin's poem "Innkeeper's wife irate over loss."


Innkeeper’s wife irate over loss

by Carolyn Martin


I could spit! I shouted in his face.
Turning paying guests away!
He brushed that couple off without
so much as, Maybe we could find … .

When will he learn? The Census earns
five years of room and board,
but lugging wood and curing hay,
learning isn’t on his mind.

Of course I’d carve a plan. I’d hearth
an extra rug to keep her bundle warm.
He and that soft-eyed man would share
a bed. And when it came her time, 

we’d march those smelly shepherds far
beyond the barn and hush those wings
and aggravating songs. Enough to drive
dreamers from their restless sleep.

And, the publicity we’d glean!
A destination site, at least.
Not every day do morning stars
and cameled Kings ruckus through

our town. We’d be well-mapped,
well-known for hospitality, 
not the butt of half-lame jokes.
We lost the chance. I’m furious!

Know what’s worse? That dotty neighbor
with the rotting manger molding hay
lets strangers muck across his barn,
dropping coins to say they’ve been.

Now he roams his days across the hills,

singing sounds like tidings, peace,
and human hearts. Who talks like that?
I’d like to know. Who talks like that? 


* * * * *

"Innkeeper’s wife irate over loss" was previously published in Mistletoe Madness, 2015.

 

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her poems have appeared in more than 125 journals and anthologie  throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. Her fifth collection, The Catalog of Small Contentments will be released in 2021. Currently, she is the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation.

 

This month's Moon Prize, the sixty-eighth, goes to Sophia Stid's poem "Daphne Pursued by Apollo."

DAPHNE PURSUED BY APOLLO

by Sophia Stid


A story told this many times becomes the forest.
No beginning, no end, no longer a narrative but the air
we breathe. For centuries, a woman with a name
rises from her sleep—becomes a tree—rains back down
again into her rest. One myth for how poetry began:
a man, reaching. Violence. Myth: Apollo finds the tree
inside of a woman. Apollo translates fingers into leaves,
hears a voice and calls it wind. I am not interested in Apollo.
I am interested in the father-god who could not stop
the rape but could turn his daughter into a tree—

what kind of power is that, and how does it still river through
our world? Why does nobody ask these questions? I carry more
keys than I need. Walking home from the library late, I thread
silver teeth through my fist. I am not a tree, and I am asking.

 

* * * * *

"Daphne Pursued by Apollo" was first published in Four Way Review and was also featured in Poetry Daily (December 6, 2020).

Sophia Stid is a writer from California. She is the Ecotone Postgraduate Fellow at UNC Wilmington and a recent graduate of the MFA program at Vanderbilt University, where she studied poetry and theology. She has received fellowships from the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Collegeville Institute, and is the winner of the 2019 Witness Literary Award in Poetry. Recent poems and essays can be found in Best New Poets 2020, Image, The Cincinnati Review, Rattle, and Pleiades, among others.

 

I can't say goodbye today

by Elva K. Österreich


I can't say goodbye today.
You are my hero and my light
my way to raise children and my nymph in the field.
You are my muse, my flower, my daisy chain;

Your smile resides in my laughter, your strong eyes
reflect in Estonian pools
Where your mother still sings
Your hair swings down my back every day and your heart bashes
up against mine wherever you are.

You are my mother, my aunt, my honor and my truth,
Chugging at my lines and holding my everything in your lips
with your loves who are my loves
your history which is my history
your past, which is my past.

I can't say goodbye today,
Can't look at your face and face you
I hold tight-so-tight to your beauty
I want to absorb everything you and put it in my cubby box
Where you will be safe, no departing, no more loss

I can't say goodbye tomorrow either
just forget it.


* * * * *

Elva K.  Österreich is a southern New Mexico journalist, poet, author and adventurer. She is editor of “the biggest little paper in the southwest,” Desert Exposure. Her first book, The Manhatten Project Trinity Test: Witnessing the Bomb in New Mexico, just came out in November. She serves on the New Mexico Humanities Council and is a member of the New Mexico Women Press Women. Elva’s poetry blog can be found at elvasworld.blogspot.com.

 

From the Gutter

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge


Everyone’s dead now, so why don’t I
spill it: in high school my boyfriend
got some other girl pregnant.  I wasn’t
as surprised as I was upset, picturing
the inciting act like meat marinating
in something fake, maybe liquid smoke,
or having griller lines painted on it
for a menu, to suggest the rustic. 
Her teeth were huge, crooked, and
blemished, by her lip gloss, maybe
not enough milk, as if they were pieces
of dry ice, lifted from their fog,
the corporeal equivalent of moth balls,
fuming at the back of a forbidden closet.
We’d go in there when we were kids,
my sister and I, at our grandmother’s,
to run our hands through her minks
and leopards. They were at least as
satisfying as the plunge our feet took
into the gutter as we walked home,
having forgot our sandals. Our toes
had to curl to a certain degree, against
the slimy bottom, so we wouldn’t slip
and have to breathe in the concrete. I imagined
her toes had to do the same, atop a
bare mattress or the stirrups’ sanitary
plastic coverlets. You don’t ever want
any limb to grow cold, any appendage.
Because then you can’t run away, 
when you were caught walking through
the gray water, and your father is
handing down the punishments.  


* * * * *

Jane Rosenberg LaForge writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays in New York. Her third full-length poetry collection is Medusa's Daughter from Animal Heart Press in February 2021. Her second novel is Sisterhood of the Infamous New Meridian Arts, also in February 2021. Her first novel, The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing), was a finalist in two categories in the 2019 Eric Hoffer Awards. Her poetry has recently or will appear in 8Poems, Thorn literary magazine, Feral, Cease, Cows, and Fevers of the Mind.  

 

Statistics

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge


Courtesy of the institute 
that wouldn’t take my call

about the one dead woman
from a procedure half a century

earlier because she was an aunt
to no one. History registers only

in terabytes, in epiphanies
and readily identifiable wallops, 

how the number of women seeking
to end pregnancies was small,

even manageable, so long as it
was only for the life of the mother.

This is what my mother meant 
when she cried out, “Don’t be

a statistic, Janey,” because
studies show it is better

to break a surface directly,
rather than to poke blindly;

a push is more organic
than a vacuum or a pump;

a pile of dead skin is preferable
to a pitted face, or uterus.

Now, on to the scars.


* * * * *

Jane Rosenberg LaForge writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays in New York. Her third full-length poetry collection is Medusa's Daughter from Animal Heart Press in February 2021. Her second novel is Sisterhood of the Infamous New Meridian Arts, also in February 2021. Her first novel, The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing), was a finalist in two categories in the 2019 Eric Hoffer Awards. Her poetry has recently or will appear in 8Poems, Thorn literary magazine, Feral, Cease, Cows, and Fevers of the Mind.  

Snowfall

by Elise Stuart


Snow, powerful in its silence,
falls lightly on the ground.
It covers all traces of mankind's ills,
greed, anger, violence,
the hunger to force one’s will upon another.

Could the purity of snow,
like a dream,
wash away the cruel past?
It will take more than that―
It will take small acts,
that take us out of our way,
to stand up for truth.
And innumerable acts of kindness.

Boot tracks
of a child out early,
making the first marks
on top of clean white drifts.
They lead the way,
showing us it is possible
to start over.


* * * * *

Elise Stuart is a writer of poetry and short stories. She’s facilitated numerous poetry workshops for students in Silver City schools, feeling how important it is to give voice to youth. Her first poetry book, and then her memoir, My Mother and I, We Talk Cat were both published in 2017. She lives in Silver City, New Mexico with four cats, a sweet rascal of a pup, and her piano.

 

LITTLE SHELL/BIG OCEAN: The Awakening

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


1.Inside the shell: the girl. Almost 15, still submerged. She dreams ocean and desire
until a boy swims out of her.

2. She’s a bundle of suspense, her mother thinks. A handful. But the boy sees
the girl, all her hunger. She has no mirror, does not yet know she is a siren.

3. Inside the shell: the girl. Her inner Mussorgsky. Her red bikini. Her demeanor
a mediterranean pink, the color of her sex, libido - a jitterbug of stars - thrown against her sky.

She plots her escape. Tests the latches. Her mother tests them, too.

4. The family astrologer charts the girl’s course. Venus in Scorpio. Her Leo moon.
The foreseeable future? Mars in the 6th house and invasion.

5. The little shell drifts. Treads water. Her mother wants to keep the girl safe.
But she is exhausted & works full time.

6. Outside the shell: the boy. He’s in over his head. His Circe is calling. The lure.
The slosh and toss.

He buys a waterproof camera, infrared film to capture her.

7. The boy knows they are fated. Hard not to imagine jimmying the lock,
their bodies colliding in the crashing waves, starlight, her briny coast glittering.


* * * * *

"LITTLE SHELL/BIG OCEAN: The Awakening" was first Published in Rag Queen Periodical (2017)

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Cleaver, Diode, Duende, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetry East, Pedestal Magazine and elsewhere. She’s authored five poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, from New York Quarterly, and another, full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, will both be published in 2021. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

 

After The Restraining Order Expires, M. Begs Me To Meet Him For Lunch

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


Says he ‘killed it’ in anger management class,
that everything’s under control. Bygones.

I drink my unrequited malice.
Wonder how soon he’ll turn deadly.

You’re a sip, he says, barely a swallow.
He laps up my resistance,

leans over, nuzzles my neck,
wraps his arm around my indecision.

Remind me again why we broke up?
He was always a fine interrogator.

I watch his shirt ride up above his belly,
where I’d lay my head to suck him off.

The desperation of his stark, white skin,
the crude exposure.

I’d pull his shirt back down,
but it would be too much like tenderness.


* * * * *

"After The Restraining Order Expires, M. Begs Me To Meet Him For Lunch" was first published in Willawaw Journal (2018).

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Cleaver, Diode, Duende, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetry East, Pedestal Magazine and elsewhere. She’s authored five poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, from New York Quarterly, and another, full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, will both be published in 2021. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

THE WAIT

by Lorraine Caputo


Shutting up, shutting down...waiting...What lies in the future, what does the future hold?

Wait…
patience…wait… for answers to come….

I haven’t written...I haven’t gathered...I haven’t walked, exploring the world around me…..

Too much working over, trying to finish tasks, waiting, waiting for word….

Sun already edging the western horizon, too late to do tai chi on Ratonera….

Sit by the edge of the sea, watch the tide come, the tide go & come once more…. again….

Sit in the darkness of night, watch the moon wax & wane & wax

Hide away in the worlds proffered by others, in books, poems, tales…..

& await word…

....
      ....
            ....


* * * * *

Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose poetry appear in over 200 journals on six continents, and 14 chapbooks – including Caribbean Nights (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Notes from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, 2017) and On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. In 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada honored her verse. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures at www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or http://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com. 

DAPHNE PURSUED BY APOLLO

by Sophia Stid


A story told this many times becomes the forest.
No beginning, no end, no longer a narrative but the air
we breathe. For centuries, a woman with a name
rises from her sleep—becomes a tree—rains back down
again into her rest. One myth for how poetry began:
a man, reaching. Violence. Myth: Apollo finds the tree
inside of a woman. Apollo translates fingers into leaves,
hears a voice and calls it wind. I am not interested in Apollo.
I am interested in the father-god who could not stop
the rape but could turn his daughter into a tree—

what kind of power is that, and how does it still river through
our world? Why does nobody ask these questions? I carry more
keys than I need. Walking home from the library late, I thread
silver teeth through my fist. I am not a tree, and I am asking.

* * * * *

"Daphne Pursued by Apollo" was first published in Four Way Review and was also featured in Poetry Daily (December 6, 2020).

Sophia Stid is a writer from California. She is the Ecotone Postgraduate Fellow at UNC Wilmington and a recent graduate of the MFA program at Vanderbilt University, where she studied poetry and theology. She has received fellowships from the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Collegeville Institute, and is the winner of the 2019 Witness Literary Award in Poetry. Recent poems and essays can be found in Best New Poets 2020, Image, The Cincinnati Review, Rattle, and Pleiades, among others.

 

The Fire Beside the Road

by Anita Kestin

            They had been driving for a while on back roads after leaving the main highway when they came upon the fire.

            "Stop," she said as he continued on. "Stop. Stop. We need to do something." 

            He stopped but they were already a thousand feet beyond the curve in the road where they had spotted the fire.

            "You aren't thinking," he said. "We have only one water bottle in the car and the fire is too big to stamp out. Now what? What's your grand plan?"

            He had a point. Her cell phone had lost reception a few miles back. There was one small water bottle in the car. He had removed the blanket from the car before they left on their trip. Perhaps they should push on and call when the cell phone reception picked up. Maybe there was nothing more to be done.

            The road was dark. Had they passed a house recently?

            She looked for information about fires on her phone but there was no service at all. 

            Up ahead, a pine tree leaned to the side just before the road curved again.

            "Go back."

            He was very cross with her now. She saw his hands tap the steering wheel and his face tighten as it always did before he hit her.

            "Go back!" she said, the words coming from a part of her brain she had forgotten existed.

            He turned the car around. His face no longer bore that tight look but he was unmistakably angry.

            She saw the fire, burning a bit brighter and higher than before, leaping to the side of the road where the brush and trees began. It now ran along a dry tree limb that led into the forest. She followed the branch with her eyes until she could see it no more. Sparks darted off the narrow shard of wood. The darkness parted as the fire streamed forward and engulfed the branch.

            "Happy?" he said. "Pour the water on it and lets go. Getting late."

            She poured the water on the fire, but, as he had predicted, nothing much changed. In the firelight, she could see the familiar way he set his jaw and the way his eyes turned in her direction. "Let's go. Get in the car right now or I will leave without you!"

            She braced herself against his anger.

            Out of the same place in her brain that she had forgotten existed, she heard herself say: "Go on, then. I will think of something."

            She saw him walk down the road. In his walk, she saw fury. In the way he bent his back, she also saw sadness.

            She heard her suitcase smash on the road and then the car engine. She stood as still as she had ever stood watching the car accelerate towards the curve in the road and the leaning tree and then turned to see the fire.

            Everything around her reverberated and cracked in the flames as she said to herself: Go on, then. I will think of something.


* * * * *

Anita Kestin, MD, MPH, has worked in academics, nursing homes, hospices, and locked wards of a psychiatric facility. She is a daughter (of immigrants fleeing the Holocaust), wife, mother, grandmother, progressive activist. She has been writing for years but just started submitting her non-scientific work during the Pandemic when she was in her sixties. She is delighted that several stories (fiction and creative non-fiction) and one poem have now been accepted for publication/published.

Island Song

by Elisabeth Weiss


What happened on that island among the Kills feels like the end of a long sail when you come back to land and your legs can’t hold your weight or like the end of a meal that continues with cognac on the porch swing and no one wants to leave.


Don’t both depend on faith, that you will righten yourself, become closer to the elemental light? Wasn’t the point of being here to leave a glistening?


I used to hate the island, lost in cellars in games of blindman’s bluff, always looking for a way out. I used to speak in terms of islands: salt water, bridges. tugs, ferries, fog horns.
I’d write something like, There’s a kind of island inside me, a place no one can reach.  


And I collected bits like this in notebooks and felt my fame would come from words like “sadness” and “palatable” when that was merely language I learned in school as I sounded out syllables and crouched under my desk with my head covered with my hands because we had to. I felt it in my throat until the twilight fell dark like a lanyard around my neck. I lived in an ugly world and all I wanted was beauty but I always worried about death and the branches scratching at my window. So I tried to touch beautiful things—bright and plastic toys, handspun sugar, tiny things you could peer inside of and see whole worlds.


My earliest memory of the island is the mimosa tree in our backyard. Its cotton candy blossoms opened like a Chinese poem. Below it our sandbox, crudely nailed benches, provided a place for the bees to harbor and bloom and the wind to carry me into ripeness.

One evening, I swatted at the bees who were intruding on our outdoor meal and instead of helping my father, I stepped on a bee. I was barefoot. Its stinger went deep into me. I cried, falling onto the slate patio, holding my foot in the air. My father, who was tall, lifted me up the stairs shouting to the others, Get mud. It will help the swelling. And he put me in the bathtub and packed mud around my foot until it stopped throbbing and I calmed and waited until the stinger under my skin worked its way out.


What’s very clear in memory is my father swooping, raising me high in the air. I felt I could fly. Most of my dreams then were of flying or of driving his grey Chevy down the steep hill from our house.


Always listening to my own surge of power.


I find no evidence in my sixty-two years of living that my father was fearless. In fact, he was often frightened and once, as a little boy, even ate the brim of his hat during a horror movie. He rarely took risks. He said he wouldn’t have survived as a foot soldier past October of ’44. I thought of this in the local park when I hid beneath the bleachers, looking for treasures while the Seahawks huddled in the field. I was always convinced there was more than what meets the eye. I once took apart a 3D postcard of a barrel on a dock because I wanted to see what was behind the barrel.


Again, always at the water’s edge, always barefoot in summer.


Who can say how this related to my bee sting?  All my life I have been searching for a way to believe that forgiveness exists as I wind my way past the sleepwalkers. Bees are disappearing. My father disappeared. I think of him best at home on the island out back with binoculars around his neck. Some fathers tease you and some fathers swat you as if you were a bee, some fathers step on you and crush you. He did all of these things. But I couldn’t have ever found my way off the island without him.


* * * * *

Author's note: I based this piece on an essay by Carl Phillips, Among the Trees,  in Emergence magazine: https://emergencemagazine.org/story/among-the-trees/

Elisabeth Weiss is an English professor who has published poems in London’s Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, the Birmingham Poetry Review, the Paterson Literary Review and many other journals. Lis won the Talking Writing Hybrid Poetry Prize for 2016 and was a runner up in the 2013 Boston Review poetry contest and a chapbook, The Caretaker’s Lament, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016.

Pop Quiz: Comprehension, Brain Food

by Jen Schneider


I knew the intersection well. Marked daily by the corner where a gentleman - about forty - sat. Soiled khakis. Frayed knees. Broad back against the narrow streetlight pole. Also soiled. Heavy down jackets a top a mix of flannels and T’s. A cardboard sign, handwritten, perched on angled legs. Stacks of dogeared paperbacks. A small pail and a pair of brown leather loafers. 


Question 1.

Does forty refer to an age or a quantity?


Question 2. 

Which of the belongings are least like the others?

      A. Down jackets
      B. Flannels
      C. Cardboard Sign
      D. Paperbacks


Question 3.

The sign included one question and one statement. What do they say? 


Question 4.

One word on the sign reads as follows: “ANYTHNG”

Is the missing “I” intentional?


Question 5.

The corner’s streetlights were set to 30-second timers. Why?


Question 6.

Which of the following is proper etiquette on the part of passersby?

      A. Toss coins
      B. Fold bills into paper airlines. Attempt flight.
      C. Nod
      D. Nothing


Question 7.

Define Etiquette.


Question 8.

A passerby feels regret for not stopping at the corner.

Define Regret.


Question 9.

Which of the following words is least like the others?

      A. Regret
      B. Forget
      C. Budget
      D. Target


Question 10.

Which of the following words most likely describes the gentleman?

      A. Regret
      B. Forget
      C. Budget
      D. Target


* * * * *

"Pop Quiz: Comprehension, Brain Food" was first published by The Utopia Project (https://utoprozine.com/terms-and-conditions/)

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Recent work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Toho Journal, The New Verse News, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals. 

Running / In Circles

by Jen Schneider


Hurry. Now. Run.

We giggled as we ran. The air smelled sweet. A mix of fresh florals, meats on a grill, and honeysuckle. Then, the sirens. Their pace quickened. I couldn’t keep up. Legs in pairs ran past. I counted – four, six, eight. Some in faded denim. Knobby kneecaps poked through frayed threads. Back pockets embroidered with brand names. Spandex, too. Shiny fibers squeezed as muscles pulse. Some bare. Like mine. I lost count. I thought of my shower razor. A cheap, drug-store brand. Fused of curved letters in hot pink fonts. It snapped. Tossed three days prior. Tiny canisters of rose, cherry, and salmon hues she gifted me on my last birthday, too.

Her eyes narrow and her lips – inked in deep maroon the flavor of sour berries - purse.

“Can’t you do anything right? Your unshaven legs. Unruly hair.”

I’m on a merry-go-round. The horses are tired. Chipped paint and blank eyes.

Spinning. I lose focus and slip. My head hurts and my knees buckle. The carousel fades. My bare legs – spools of spiny muscle and rough skin – regroup. Fingers tie laces. Tight. I run.

She grabs my right shoulder. I’m in the chair, a high back metal with no seat cushion. Tucked in a corner of her wall-papered kitchen. Tacky blends of metallic gold and glossy black geometric squares. I’m dizzy. The radio plays favorites. Hers. My eyes close, free grief in salty drops – one, two, three - then focus on the window. “No time to play,” she says. “Need to tame this mess”.

Run. Now. Hurry.

The heat of the blow dryer’s highest setting burns my scalp. My arm rises. Falls. My fingers stretch. Curl. Quickly. I slide two of her pills into my front pocket.

I flee. The cheap screened-door flaps. My legs conquer the porch stairs in one leap. I’m on a dirt path. It’s circular and wraps around a pool. I scan for the others. Children play in the water. Only there’s a fence. A metal chain and paddle lock wrapped tightly around the swinging gate door. I cannot enter. Her orders.

A puddle comes into view – beside a narrow patch of grass, on the far back right side of the pool. I slide down, join a snake and a toad, and say “Hello”. Others join. I drink the sweat of those to my right and left. I sweat, too. Tears falls. Dampen my hair.

She’ll be angry. Again.


* * * * *

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Recent work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Toho Journal, The New Verse News, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals. 

Pack Horse Librarians

by Kari Gunter-Seymour


I mean no disrespect when I say,
during the Great Depression
Eastern Kentucky was a sundered area.
Surrounded by mountains and waterways,
no easy access in or out, nor any proper
education, until the WPA employed
our grandmothers to packsaddle
literacy to the underserved.

This would be the only good thing
coal would do for Kentucky,
coal and the Presbyterians,
donating books and endowment,
twenty-eight dollars a month to any woman
with a horse or mule, and the spunk
to stand up for progress, brave the weather,
backwaters and hollers, to deliver emancipation
by means of bound dissertation.

You need to understand, this was Appalachia,
just before the war to end all wars.
Only women of disrepute were considered
working women by the church.
Christian women labored in the kitchen and fields,
birthed, prayed, died in them, albeit
many Christian women were taught to read,
if for no other reason than the Lord’s word
could be used to hold her back.

But this was the New Deal and all bets were off.
Imagine my grandmother, top of her head
barely level with the saddle’s front rigging dee,
flaming red hair, a brand of sass all her own.
Packing up at the Pine Mountain Settlement School,
Harlan County, creek beds as roads,
on foot, single file, across crag and clifftop,
sleeping in barns or lean-tos against the cold.
Deliberate as any lineman or mail carrier,
every treatise she carried, a nugget
of gold inside her saddlebags.


* * * * *

"Pack Horse Librarians" is part of A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020)

Kari Gunter-Seymour’s poetry collections include A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020) and Serving (Crisis Chronicles Press 2018/2020-Expanded Edition). Her work is firmly attached to her home soil and is an examination of the long-lasting effects of stereotype and false narratives surrounding Appalachians. Her poems appear in numerous journals and publications including Verse Daily, Rattle, Still, The NY Times and on her website: www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. She is the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year and Poet Laureate of Ohio.

Daughter-In-Law Mine, Once Removed

by Kari Gunter-Seymour


There is a wall on the US/Mexico border
made of surplus steel and wire mesh.
A thousand miles worth,
back yards and alleys in Chula Vista,
as far up as Temecula.
Children stand on our side,
poke tiny fingers against those
hardly even holes for the slightest brush
of their grandmother’s fingers,
pressed inward from the Tijuana side.
I saw it in Time magazine and cried,
my own fingers urgent, the iciness
of your Colorado stand-off, rigid
as anything man-made.

Surely you remember this rich Ohio soil,
ripe to bursting, water pure, pastures plush.
A woman can make her way here.
I don’t care about the details, who was right,
who should have gotten what, but didn’t.
I don’t mind that you will never
love again, and hell’s to pay.

I care my body has gone to wrinkle
and the world to concrete and convenience.
Tractors traded for fracking augers,
though this parcel will never fall,
long as I can steady a shotgun.
With no partner but a wall to cling to,
what’s balled up can only bounce back.
Raised without old ways, a granddaughter
might never make out why
her body aches for seed and trowel.

Riffling National Geographic, it came to me
to send this telescope, highly
recommended for its ability to reflect.
Along with the moon and stars,
help her please to look south of Lake Erie,
by way of the Appalachians,
then east-by-southeast.
Tell her that’s her grandmother,
top of Beck’s Knob, waving a white hankie.


* * * * *

"Daughter-In-Law Mine, Once Removed" was first published in Still: The Journal and is part of A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020)

Kari Gunter-Seymour’s poetry collections include A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020) and Serving (Crisis Chronicles Press 2018/2020-Expanded Edition). Her work is firmly attached to her home soil and is an examination of the long-lasting effects of stereotype and false narratives surrounding Appalachians. Her poems appear in numerous journals and publications including Verse Daily, Rattle, Still, The NY Times and on her website: www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. She is the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year and Poet Laureate of Ohio.

Peanut Butter and Ritz Cracker Sandwiches

by Sand Pilarski


We rode in the back of the red pickup truck
Huddled against the cab.
We slowly turned on hairpin curves
To reach a trail that stretched for miles.
Through jack pines and past granite piles
Away across the top of the long mountain.

In bright sunlight over newly frozen ground
Scarlet sugar maples
Shed their leaves, unlike modest oak
Who cover nakedness and hold
Throughout the winter's icy cold
Their leaves high above the mountain's two-track road.

There we were freed to run as fast as we could
And as far as we could.
Shouting, screeching, waving our arms,
Stopping to look at hardy moss,
At teaberry we came across.
At ground pine and the pockets of skifted snow.

Peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches
And fresh-dipped spring water
Awaited us when we were done.
In gratitude we praised the fare
Delicious as we lingered there
Where cooped-up children could stretch their autumn legs.

Innkeeper’s wife irate over loss

by Carolyn Martin


I could spit! I shouted in his face.
Turning paying guests away!
He brushed that couple off without
so much as, Maybe we could find … .

When will he learn? The Census earns
five years of room and board,
but lugging wood and curing hay,
learning isn’t on his mind.

Of course I’d carve a plan. I’d hearth
an extra rug to keep her bundle warm.
He and that soft-eyed man would share
a bed. And when it came her time, 

we’d march those smelly shepherds far
beyond the barn and hush those wings
and aggravating songs. Enough to drive
dreamers from their restless sleep.

And, the publicity we’d glean!
A destination site, at least.
Not every day do morning stars
and cameled Kings ruckus through

our town. We’d be well-mapped,
well-known for hospitality, 
not the butt of half-lame jokes.
We lost the chance. I’m furious!

Know what’s worse? That dotty neighbor
with the rotting manger molding hay
lets strangers muck across his barn,
dropping coins to say they’ve been.

Now he roams his days across the hills,
singing sounds like tidings, peace,
and human hearts. Who talks like that?
I’d like to know. Who talks like that? 

* * * * *

"Innkeeper’s wife irate over loss" was previously published in Mistletoe Madness, 2015.

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her poems have appeared in more than 125 journals and anthologie  throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. Her fifth collection, The Catalog of Small Contentments will be released in 2021. Currently, she is the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation.

Light-catcher

by Jill Crainshaw


“The stars are falling–”
was she asking or announcing? 
“a sign of the times.”

A rocking, smiling moon 
slid beneath the stars–
to catch them, perhaps,
as they tumble
through turbulent times
to a light-hungry earth? 

“She will hold the pieces,” I said
and smiled back at the hopeful moon–
bent on cradling the aching light
until she is full–
one more time.


* * * * *

Jill Crainshaw is a poet, preacher, and teacher. Through her writing and teaching, she celebrates life’s seasons and seasonings. She and her two dogs, Bella and Penny, look for poems each day in their back yard. Sometimes Jill writes them down. Check out Jill’s most recent book, Thrive: How professionals 55 and over can get unstuck and renew their lives on her website, jillcrainshaw.com.

Old School Dream

by Claire Massey


Covid 19 rages like a fifties era
tyrannical stepfather who buzz cuts his hair,
embraces wrath of God doctrine,
grounds you for the slightest infraction,
juke joint dancing, wine on your breath,
a seconds late curfew violation.

Last night I dreamed I was retro living
in the Age of Aquarius,
the water bearer’s constellation brimming,
spilling overhead.
My boyfriend kissed me
in the commons garden.
Mogen David flowed.
Gently stoned friends smiled,
blessing unguarded union,
him in his surplus bell bottoms,
me with my waterfall hair,
so abundant.


* * * * *

Claire Massey is the Poet Laureate for the Pensacola, Florida branch of National Pen Women. She was a selection editor for the 2019 print edition of The Emerald Coast Review. Among other publications, her work appears or is forthcoming in Persimmon Tree, Panoply, Wilderness House Literary Review, Flights 2020 Magazine and Saw Palm: Journal of Florida Art and Literature. 

 

 

Mother

by Sharmila Pokharel


If I go home
I will find my mother
doing the household chores,
tears rolling down her cheeks

With the dream of earning more
I am rushing on and on
towards success
counting each second and each minute

While she cleans the same dishes,
prepares one meal after another,
cleans again and counts the days again

As the mornings, afternoons, and evenings pass by,
her body stoops a little more
her eyes get blurred a little more.


* * * * *

"Mother" was previously published in Somnio: The Way We See It, a collaborative book project of three poets and an artist including the author

Sharmila Pokharel is a bilingual poet from the Himalayan country Nepal. Her third book is a bilingual poetry collection, My Country in a Foreign Land, co-translated by Alice Major. She is a co-author of Somnio: The Way We See It, a poetry and art book published in 2015.

 

Ever Aftermath: the Marriage

by Carol Clark Williams


When mother was dead, father finally asked my sister,
“Why didn’t you tell me she was beating you?”

My sister responded:
“How could you not know?”

The king was in the counting house, doing his accounting.
The king was buying his new Chrysler.
The king was drinking with his buddies,

fishing in his motorboat,
away on business, playing honky-tonk guitar
with his brothers in the den.

Taking his children, the mother fled into the forest
where a house made of gingerbread—
Wait. No. Those children were alone.

Taking the children she fled into a room where
a spinning wheel with a tainted spindle—
No, that can’t be right.

Taking her children she fled into religion,
where she could pass them through a hole in god’s stomach
and drop them in the fire.

Taking the children she fled into a fury,
beat them with a belt, seized them by the ears,
banged their heads against a window pane.

The king said he did not realize
his wife was a witch who cast end spells
on his darling children

while he was busy looking the other way,
as, according to tradition, most men do.


* * * * *

"Ever Aftermath" first appeared in Reclaiming Our Voices, published by Community Arts, Ink.

Carol Clark Williams is poet laureate emerita of York, Pennsylvania and a Pushcart nominee. Her work has won state, local and national awards, and she is widely published online and in print. Her favorite occupation is teaching poetry workshops.

Comfort Care

by Louella Lester

Precisely spaced on the low table by her bed:

a dog-eared novel, beyond her comprehension for weeks, bookmarked fifteen pages in.

an address book, names and numbers she’s no longer able to decipher, beside a landline telephone.

a pen, reminder of her once perfect penmanship, on top of two scribbled squares of paper.

a box of tissue, difficult to reach with her sore arm, next to a cup of water.

As I try to explain the changes signed this morning into her final care plan, I don’t realize my fingers are fluttering about the table, like the wings of a trapped moth, altering her own plan. She cries out and will only settle when I apologize and move each item back to its exact place.


* * * * *

Louella Lester is a writer and amateur photographer in Winnipeg, Canada. Her work has appeared in New Flash Fiction, Spelk, Reflex Fiction, Vallum, Prairie Fire, Gush: menstrual manifestos for our times (Frontenac House anthology, 2018),  A Girl’s Guide to Fly Fishing: Reflex Fiction Volume Three (Reflex Press anthology, 2020), and Wrong Way Go Back  (Pure Slush -Volume 19 anthology, 2020). Her Flash-CNF book, Glass Bricks (At Bay Press, April 2021) is upcoming. Her blog, Through Camera & Pen, can be found at louellalester.blog.

Knock Knock

by Angela Costi


My grandmother spoke
about her time with war,
never opening the door despite
her hearth crying for company,
“Even if the voice in the dark
sounds like your neighbour’s,
it could be the demon tricking
your mind into unlocking,
it could be the neighbour
who has become the enemy
while you have slept,” here
the sound of welcome becomes
the sound of fear, here I stand,
one side of the locked door,
noticing how my heart
is racing to open the latch
while my head is pounding
leave me alone, the knock
turns into the shrill ring into
the spill of door light’s growing
spread of familiar foreign
demanding entrance, “Who’s there?”
The reply is a cage of jokes
buried by ancestral warning.
The shadow grows smaller
retreats into the shape
of a shawl-covered woman,
softly hunched
opening the gate to leave
with no answer for the knock
of the world
demanding to greet
the body.


* * * * *

Angela Costi is an Australian-based poet and essayist of Cypriot-Greek heritage. 
She is the author of four poetry collections including Honey and Salt (Five Islands Press, 2007) and Lost in Mid-Verse (Owl Publishing, 2014). 
An award from the National Languages Board in 1995 enabled her to study Ancient Greek drama in Greece. 

Going Home

by Claire Keogh


The brilliant light and the soft waves came
caressing me
crashing down upon me.

I saw the sunlight coming over me
and then the angels came
washing over me.

and the moonlight shone
right above me
they went without me.

It was not my time, not my time at all
so next time baby,
I’ll be ready.

Have my phone charged
and my backpack
heaven bound.

so that I can leave behind
all that’s important
in this mortal world.


* * * * *

Claire Keogh MA is an Irish writer and poet living in Dublin and currently studying Philosophy at University in Brussels. In the 1990s, she lived and studied in the United States. Claire has published work in print in both in the US and Europe, and online, and she has several books on Amazon.com, including a poetry collection 24 Poems in 24 Hours: A Journey and a novella A Tale of Three Weddings. 

Whose Boy?

by Karen Friedland


Whose lanky boy is that,
walking awkwardly, endearingly, down the street?
He is our lanky boy.

Whose towering maple is that,
Half-dead, half majestically alive?
Again—ours, our streets.

Whose are these sauntering cats,
these aggrievedly-barking dogs, this late-summer,
almost-fall afternoon
that tastes like honey?

They belong to all of us—
this whole, wondrous slice of existence,

So lush,
the scene should be rendered in oil
on a vast canvas
as a testament to living.


* * * * *

"Whose Boy" is part of Karen Friedland's chapbook Tales from the Teacup Palace (Červená Barva Press, October 2020)

A nonprofit grant writer by day, Karen Friedland’s poems have been published in Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, the Lily Poetry Review, Vox Populi and others. Her book of poems, Places That Are Gone, was published in 2019 by Nixes Mate Books, her chapbook Tales from the Teacup Palace was published in October 2020 by Červená Barva Press. She lives in Boston with her husband, two cats and two dogs.

Eros and the Arts

by Karen Friedland


Lying here, with my dogs,
I am day-dreaming about saucy male poets
who still know how to flirt—
a rare pleasure
in this blue, Calvinistic city of ours.

And I am fetched to higher realms,
such as where good poetry takes me—
because eros and the arts
are my main forms of transportation

in this humble little glimpse
of the world we are given. 


* * * * *

"Eros and the Arts" is part of Karen Friedland's chapbook Tales from the Teacup Palace (Červená Barva Press, October 2020)

A nonprofit grant writer by day, Karen Friedland’s poems have been published in Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, the Lily Poetry Review, Vox Populi and others. Her book of poems, Places That Are Gone, was published in 2019 by Nixes Mate Books, her chapbook Tales from the Teacup Palace was published in October 2020 by Červená Barva Press. She lives in Boston with her husband, two cats and two dogs.

 

BEFORE AND AFTER THE BILLBOARD 

By Joanna Friedman


You know those before and after photos? The before with the heavy, unhappy woman, and the after with the smiling skinny one?
Lacey’s before was on a billboard that stood on a hillside above Bellflower. Forever wearing a bikini and frown as she pinches the skin near her hip. Above her head the slogan:  Summer isn’t summer until this is gone. Beneath her feet, a parade of Slim Star diet pills.
Except there wasn’t an inch on her body that needed correcting. She was beautiful and I hated how I felt when I looked at her. But that was before I met her and interviewed her for our school paper.

The highway toward Lacey’s house curved through hills, rolling green ones, with only a farm house every few miles. They’d planted the billboard on the highest and widest hill, so no one would miss her on display. Her waist was flat, perfect, nothing like what I had, and what I had made me want to do a thousand sit ups and eat only salads. At least I had blonde hair, but why did it have to turn out frizzy? God, you could have given me a little bit of what Lacey has.
Past the exit, the road turned to gravel. A pink box of donuts bounced up and down on the passenger seat. The words for the story were already writing themselves, the interview would be the icing: 
SELLING OUT SUMMER
We all have wished for the gorgeous body; flat abs, hips curving–not too much, but only a few lucky women look like that in real life, and computers do the rest. Even the girl in the billboard isn’t happy. Research shows diet products don’t work, and can lead to eating disorders. What does the billboard girl think about that? 
Ms. Lacey Bellflower USA- the truth from your lips will save a lot of girls from a lifetime of body bashing.

Her house was smaller than I’d imagined. A dilapidated chicken coop stood to the right, past it a lily pond, and the noisy highway further down. From behind a screen door her long hair seemed darker than in the photo. An autumn brown kind of hair, flowing down to her waist, the kind I’d always wanted. Her yellow shirt knotted above her left hip. Billboard girl. Diet pill pusher–I reminded myself of that girl–not the one in front of me making me fiddle with the camera strap. Making me wish I was wearing something better than a black jersey dress and tennis shoes. 

Photo 1: Lacey behind a porch screen door, hands pushing against it. Serious hazel eyes. Gray eyeshadow. Perfect lips, coral red. Perfect chin. Perfect hair.

Smiling a perfect half-smile like she was inviting me in, but hoping I wouldn’t ask too many questions.
“Alexa.” I held out my hand. “From the school paper? The billboard story?” Her hand felt warm, and I had to reaffirm my reasons for being here: figuring out how she looked like that. Focus. I handed her the box.
She paused, a hint of frown, as she took the donuts. If she ate them, it would prove that she didn’t believe in diets; that she was a fraud. But it could also mean that the diet products worked. I wish I’d thought the test through a bit more, but she took the box and led me through her home.
Furniture piled with cartons, covered with sheets and all sorts of junk. She moved around it all, tanned, her dark hair bouncing, curled against her back. She turned, “I know you think I’m awful for doing that ad.”
It was awful, but she wasn’t awful. Of all things, I came out with, “It’s just –we have to do better as women, right? Even if we are beautiful – I mean not me.” This blurting of questions wasn’t like me, but here we were. “More like you.”
Lacey paused in the darkened living room, and laughed an awkward snorty, not very beautiful laugh, which I wanted to hear again, right away. I dug my fingers into the spirals of my notebook. Focus Alexa. More professional. Ask better questions.
She continued through to the kitchen. “I have a long way to get to beautiful.”
“See that’s just it. If you have a long-way, then how about the rest of us frizzy-haired girls?” I was trying to keep it light, but the truth was my lumpy figure wasn’t exactly the stuff of romance novels. Anyway, I wasn’t here to write romance, or for beauty tips.
In the kitchen, her mom, heavy set, drank black coffee–and scowled at the donuts. “Sorry, hun. This is a sugar free house.” Took a sip of her coffee. “Killer on the thighs, right, Lace?” 
Somewhere inside the house, “Eat sugar each day, watch your beauty fly away.”
Lacey glanced at me, winked, rested the donuts near the fridge. “I’ll take care of them.” 
Her Mom steadied the coffee against her lips as she spoke. “Are you going to make Lacey look bad?”
“No, Ma’am.” I nodded. The sun glowed on Lacey’s hair as she popped open a diet coke.
Her mom continued, “You need to understand–Lacey’s got a career now. This has got to be all positives. And my Pixie, mention her, alright? She’s just getting started.”
“What are those?” A young girl–about eleven–wearing heels, a crop top and mini skirt, blue eye shadow, hair combed out, pounced on the donuts like I’d brought poison. “No sugar.” She lifted her arms over her head, stretched out her torso, and flicked her hair back. “But you can take my picture.”
Lacey–now blushing- handed me a diet coke. “Can we dial down the attitude, Pix?”
But that only encouraged her more. “Not when the paparazzi’s here.”
I snapped the shot.

Photo 2: Pixie’s catwalk through the kitchen.

Lacey caught my eye, “Well then, let’s show the paparazzi our back porch.”
On the wooden steps, the donuts between us sat melting in the heat, while Pixie, diet coke in hand, ran off to the lily pond.

Photo 3:  Close up of Lacey. Her hair curled around her ears. Her shirt collar touching her neck. Sipping on a diet soda. Long eye lashes. Smudges of mascara. Her eyes with their flecks of brown and gold, and clouds of sad peeking through.

Pixie took off her shoes and burrowed her feet into the mud at the edge of the pond. Around Lacey’s crossed ankles the thin straps turned a few times, the wedge heels were thick and high. She chewed on her lip and asked. “Alright, how about more questions about how I’m a bad influence.” 
Something about the way she asked seemed familiar. Like she’d spent time beating herself up about it already. The same way we all beat ourselves up about everything. All I’d planned to ask seemed out of order, but I had to see this through. “Only a few lucky women have a body like that– it’s not even your real body, right?” Her eyes fell and I felt terrible for asking. “It’s just it makes the rest of us feel inadequate . . .”
Her gaze drifted to where Pixie’s heels sank into the earth near the pond; the cars speeding on the highway at the bottom of the hill. A few strands of hair loosened against her cheek and brushed against the freckles near her nose, landed right where her shirt ended and her skin began. Finally, Lacey asked, “The diet stuff, doesn’t it at least give us hope?”
“So, you’ve tried those products, and they make you feel better?” My pen hovered, ready, for her response.
She leaned back. “Even if I did, I’d never look natural and beautiful, like you.” Her fingers strayed to my curls, and pulled one down near my chin. “It’s like hair that you have after a long crazy swim. Like memories of a wild summer.” 
Dragonflies dipped onto the lily pads, bouncing on water as warm as the air. Yes, summer hair- not bad to have that. In the margins I doodled translucent wings fluttering just short of landing on leathery green leaves with their cracks and spots of brown and me swimming among them.
She was a much harsher critic when it came to herself. “I hate my natural color. They lightened it with computer graphics for the ad. And my stomach–” She lifted her shirt a little, and exposed her midriff with three beauty marks and curves, soft with layers – not like the image in the billboard.
“What else?” Her dark hair, against the light gray wood of the porch, and the brilliant blue sky just past her shoulder, she leaned back, “You know, for the story?”
Pixie ran over screaming – “Huge toad!”– her toes muddy. She was dramatically panting, her entire body heaving with laughter. “My hair got messed up. And my stomach-” Pixie began poking at her stomach with muddy fingers, leaving spots wherever she pinched herself. “I need to lose at least fifty pounds today.” 
“Stop!” Lacey grabbed her wrist gently. “Alright already. You won’t be able to catch that toad if you don’t keep those muscles.”
Pixie lifted the lid off the donuts. The chocolate had melted. “Those look so gross.” Her fingers had made their way into Lacey’s and now both of their hands were muddy.
“Liar.” Lacey teased her.
“I want to have a billboard too.” 
“Alexa will put you in the paper. You’ll look a hundred times better.” Lacey’s trust made me want to take better pictures, write a better story.

Photo 4: Her head near Pixie’s, some of the mud smudged on Lacey’s cheek. Pixie’s hair wild. Lacey’s arms around her little sister.

I loved how one of her teeth tilted just a little forward when she fully smiled. No one saw that on the billboard. “So, why did you do that ad?”   
“I wondered if I could look beautiful.”
“Did you?” I already knew the answer, but I pushed her. “Feel beautiful?”
She squinted into the sun. Pixie’s mouth opened slightly, listening for Lacey’s next words, but there was only one soft one. “No.”
Exactly. None of us felt beautiful. No matter what we tried.
“Except,” she pulled in Pixie close, smiled at me with that serious smile of hers, “The three of us together, today, look beautiful.”
I pointed the camera at us and snapped the shutter.

Photo 5: Three faces, touching, grinning.

Pixie moved to open the box of donuts – they’d melted and fallen all over each other. “When I get ugly, I’ll go on a diet then.”
“Yeah, and what kind of diet will fix the uglies?” I asked. 
She lifted the soda into a toast. “The Pixie, Lacey and Alexa diet soda and donuts and hang out together all-day diet.” Chocolate smudged on Pixies upper lip, and Lacy and I toasted to that.
Near the pond I took the final photo.

Photo 6: Lacey laying on the shore, her legs in the pond. Small concentric circles created waves out over the glassy surface. The skin falling over the top of her shorts. Tiny hairs on her legs. Shades of stubble under her arm.  The way her mouth opened a little. The bump on her nose. Laughing at her sister racing to catch a toad.

***
Dear Editor,
Here’s the article, “Summer Wasn’t Summer Until I met Lacey.” Photos attached.
Alexa.
Send.

                                                                               The End.

* * * * *

Joanna Friedman's fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of anthologies and online publications. She works as a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay area and lives with her husband, twin girls, and pug. Her writing is inspired by the complexities of relationships. Follow her on twitter, @j_grabarek or her website, https://joannafriedman.wordpress.com/