LARCENY: A Story In Eleven Parts

In Which 18 Year Olds Victoria and Debi Flee Los Angeles In Debi’s Blue Toyota Camry, and Take the Pacific Coast Highway North With Only a Smattering of Stars to Light Their Way…

by Alexis Rhone Fancher 

Into The Dark
The night highway crawls with creatures. Moths headfirst into the windshield, lizards, mice,
besotted by headlights, crush flat beneath their tires. Sheltered. Stupid, the girls pick up a stranger. Thinking this is his lucky day, longhaired Davy tumbles into the back seat.

Back Story
When Victoria moved in with Debi’s family, junior year, her mom never realized she was missing. Now Victoria surveys her flawless skin, full lips, and thick blond hair in the rearview mirror; sees instead her mother’s eyes, her dead daddy’s smile.

Just Outside Of Pismo Beach: An Adventure!
Their route mirrors the shoreline. They speed to outdistance the past. Victoria tallies roadkill. It makes her think of her dad. When she tosses their purses in the back seat with Davy, he recalls
the first time he snapped a cat’s neck, but stops short of telling.

Luck Of The Draw
Debi’s fingers run through her kinky black curls. She’s ironed her hair into submission, endured the dryer, hair rolled large in rinsed, frozen orange juice cans. Jagger struts out of the radio. Debi hums off-key.

Choices
If he has a choice, Davy’d go for the brunette. The blonde is hotter, but she looks like trouble. Somehow, trouble always finds him. Where you headed? Victoria asks. Davy looks from one girl to the other. Hell in a handbasket, he grins.

The Low Down
Debi wants Victoria’s beauty. Victoria wants Debi’s mom. Each dances in the other’s castoff, each glows in the dark. Davy susses their singular affection. He’s a good observer, an only child. Davy wants only their wallets.

Night Swim
The Lorelei moon lures the trio off-course. Tempted, they exit the highway, strip down to their skivvies, hurl themselves into the sea. Davy revels in the half-naked beauties, cavorting just for him in the moonlight. Out of their depth, Debi’s fingers accidentally brush Victoria’s left breast. As they come together, breathless, past the breakers, the peace is almost unbearable.

Truth or Dare
Midnight confessions. Davy never finished high school. Victoria’s afraid of men. Debi takes the dare. Climbs the retaining wall and howls like a lunatic. Better this than her secrets spilled. When the big wave washes over her, Debi stands her ground. When Davy grabs her, anyway, she licks his face.

On The Road Again
Debi tends to dwell. Night driving clears her head. She chews a strand of her hair, sips vodka out of an Evian bottle. She misses Freddy’s thick cock. Wonders why she ever left him. Approaching Morgan Hill, Debi finds a motel, reckons Davy owes her and Victoria for the ride.

Karma: The Condensed Version
It’s the best day of Davy’s life. In slumber, he looks like baby Jesus, Victoria sighs. Debi rescues their wallets from Davy’s backpack. His, too. The North Star beckons. They’ll make San Francisco by morning. The motel air conditioner’s rattle masks their departure.

The Last Leg
Victoria drives while Debi counts Davy’s money. The Toyota eats up the highway, a rocket to their nascent future. She’ll buy souvenirs in the city, maybe a gift for her mom. When Debi sticks her head out the window, even Victoria’s chatter can’t drown out the sound the wind makes.


* * * * *

©Alexis Rhone Fancher. "Larceny: A Story in Eleven Parts was first published in Café Reader, New Zealand (2015), and is part of Alexis Rhone Fancher's 2021 poetry collection Erotic: New and Collected (New York Quarterly Books).

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), The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019), and EROTIC: New & Selected (New York Quarterly Books, 2021). Another, full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, will be published in 2021. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

SUBTERRANEAN LOVESICK CLUES

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


1.
I remember listening
to Bob Dylan in Donna Melville’s attic
bedroom, 3 a.m. We were
drinking her daddy’s bourbon, playing    
Subterranean Homesick Blues over and over,
memorizing it word by mumbled word.
Johnny’s in the basement,
mixing up the medicine, I’m on the pavement, thinkin’ ‘bout  
the government... Donna passed me the bottle. The bourbon made me sick but I took a swig anyway. I didn’t want her to think I was a lightweight. The word might get  
around.

Maggie comes fleet foot, face full of black soot...

Donna took the bottle to her lips, her moon face flushed,
beautiful. She was my first Catholic and I was in  
awe of the certainty of her faith, couldn’t take my eyes off
the lucky gold crucifix that dangled between her breasts.

“What do you think Freewheelin’ means?”
We were on the bed, pretending to study
the album cover, Dylan and some blond on
a New York street, looking happy. “I think it means fuck the
consequences, just do what you want,” I said.
Drunk, reckless, soon I’m ready to do what I want -
let my hand slip from the
album jacket to Donna’s left breast. Her sharp intake of breath. My tom-tom heart.

Look out kid, it’s somethin’ you did God knows when but you’re doin’ it again...

These were the moments I lived for at 13: the hot, disheveled solace
of Donna’s attic room, her clueless family asleep below,
Dylan’s growl on the stereo,
Donna in my arms, her lips on mine, her tongue down my throat,
Fingers fumbling with my zipper.

2.
Get dressed get blessed try to be a success...

3.
Donna hits the Confessional.
“Father, forgive me for I have sinned.”

I am that sin. I listen in.

“I kissed a girl,” says my girl.
“You’ll go to hell,” says the desiccated
man in the box.

4.
light yourself a candle...
you can’t afford the scandals...

5.
The Gospel According To St. Donna:

She is the innocent,
I am the sin.
I am the bad girl
That let the sin in.

6.
I remember listening
to Bob Dylan in Donna Melville’s attic
bedroom, 3 a.m., the last time I drank
her daddy’s bourbon, the last time we ever touched.
This was the moment I dreaded at 14: Afraid of
the spark, afraid of her own ignition -
Donna changed the rules.
Jesus had entered the bedroom.

“See ya,” Donna said as she walked me
out of her life.
“Soon?” I asked. (A girl can dream, right?)
“Sure,” she said.

7.
She didn’t call.
I didn’t call back.

You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows...


* * * * *

"Subterranean Lovesick Clues" was first published in Cultural Weekly and is part of Alexis Rhone Fancher's 2021 poetry collection Erotic: New and Collected (New York Quarterly Books).

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), The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019), and EROTIC: New & Selected (New York Quarterly Books, 2021). Another, full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, will be published in 2021. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Daily. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

 

This month's, there is an additional Moon Prize, the 77th, and it goes to Leonore Hildebrandt's prose poem "The Younger Brother."


The Younger Brother

by Leonore Hildebrandt


My mother loved her younger brother, but I feared him. His rules. His threats. Even though I never witnessed it, I believed in the power of his “green stick” to instill order. The children had to finish their plates of unsweetened porridge. They were expected not to speak at the table. Once––on a whim––he told me to repeat in front of people a phrase in a foreign language. He tried and tried, but he could not make me do it. And I could not hold in my tears. No one intervened. Later I would have words for his affliction. 

My mother loved her younger brother. On visits, they’d smoke together––she cigarettes, he cigars. She praised his sense of humor. His success. His generosity. He had me join his large family in places my parents could not afford. I’d be put on a train along with instructions: behave and be grateful. As a child, he had been sent to a boarding school far away. He would write to my mother, homesick and sad. Both of them knew that sons were expected to expand their father’s lifework. 

My mother loved her younger brother even when he was demented and feeble. They put him into a modest nursing home right in the small town he had come from. His children, who had moved far away by then, set up his large mahogany desk in the room. It still had all its trappings. He would shuffle around with a walker carrying his executive’s briefcase. To prevent injuries, the nurse put a helmet on him.

My mother loved her younger brother. She felt guilty in her old age when she could not travel to see him. One day in winter she asked me to drive her up. There he was––crestfallen, talking nonsense––and I thought I could forgive him. His mind and body were too small to house my hurt. He seemed to recognize me, so I smiled. My mother and I sang children’s songs, and he remembered some of the words.

Once he had me waiting for what seemed like a very long time. I stood in the snow in a small Alpine town. People were passing by. Can children learn to be left on their own? When he swooped in––finally––he was in a great mood, pleased with himself, hungry for admiration. He used to quote Goethe’s Faust: “In the beginning was the deed!” My mother would object, saying that Dr. Faust was deliberately mistranslating “logos” which means “reasoned discourse” or “living word.” Still, she loved her younger brother. But his son, the sweet little boy who grew up to inherit their childhood home, was quick to chop down the grand trees in the yard. 


* * * * *

"The Younger Brother" was first published by Wordrunner eChapbooks, April 2021, http://www.echapbook.com/anthology/2021/younger-brother.html

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of the poetry collections Where You Happen to Be, The Work at Hand, and The Next Unknown. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, RHINO, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. Wordrunner eChapbooks published two of her poems in its 2017 Pushing Boundaries anthology. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Germany, Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine, and spends the winter in Silver City, New Mexico. LeonoreHildebrandt.com

 

 

This month's Moon Prize, the 76th, goes to Nina Heiser's poem "What is rape? I asked my mother the summer when I was nine."


What is rape? I asked my mother
the summer when I was nine

by Nina Heiser


Rape, she said, is
what men do to women.
Her answer was vague enough that
rape remained not so threatening until three
years later when the neighbors’ son, a youth leader
in the local church, took me into their house to punish me,
because I was the oldest of the kids playing on the porch swing
that broke and he could call the police or he could mete out the punishment.
Make a sound and I will kill you, he told me, when there came a knock on the door
and I made no sound. I was silent when he took me across his knee, tore my underpants off and shoved his fingers up me with one hand while striking
my bare ass with his other hand until he’d had enough pleasure and
threw me onto his parents’ bed. If you tell, he said, I will rape
you. Do you know what that means? I nodded dumbly.
And then I will kill you, he said, quietly enough
to be his church voice, and I will rape you
again. And he pulled me down the
stairs, out the backdoor toward
the car but I got loose and
ran, faster than I ever
ran since, and I did
tell what he had
done but we,
we never
spoke
of it,
my mother and I,
and he became every
dark-haired young man I saw
until my sixteenth birthday when
his face covered the front page because
he had raped and murdered a  young woman.

Did you know there is no synonym for rape?


* * * * *

"What is rape? I asked my mother the summer when I was nine" first appeared in Gargoyle Magazine (2021).

Nina Heiser is a poet, writer and retired journalist currently living in central Florida and New York. Her work has appeared in Tuck Magazine; Cadence, the Florida State Poets Association Anthology; Vociferous Press anthology Screaming from the Silence; Embark Literary Journal; and Gargoyle Magazine. Her poetry and photographs have been featured in Pendemics Journal, and Of Poets & Poetry.

Writing In A Woman's Voice is on solstice sabbatical until June 27, 2021, on which date this month's Moon Prize will be announced belatedly. Happy solstice to all! 

Hollow

by Carolyn Martin


A mother never loses loss:
my mantra since our baby died.
My husband cannot hear the screams
I bury in the basement walls
or divine what my half-smiles mean.
Four years ... he’s numb to my despair.
I despise the peace he has become.

We take our boy’s ashes everywhere –
his sisters are convinced he wants to go.
They travel-sticker every inch of cherry wood
and entertain with how they rescued turtle eggs
hatching in Los Cabos sun and cheered the ape
rocking her newborn in San Diego’s zoo.
How they giggled at male elk bugling for mates
across a Rocky Mountain field and fed
fistfuls of hay to nudging goats at 4-H.
Seven and three, they talk to him as much as they talk to me.

Two girls, one boy, I always say.
When strangers – like the woman on the plane
or the couple moving in next door – seem confused
seeing only two, I seize the opening:
Two years old. In our arms. In our bed.
If curiosity invites, I explain his rare disease
and how we prayed to keep him warm.
What I won’t admit: I lock my bedroom door
and trace his outline on our sheets
a dozen times a day.


* * * * *

"Hollow" is part of Carolyn Martin's forthcoming collection The Catalog of Small Contentments (Portland, OR: The Poetry Box, 2021)

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 anthologies 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.

Poem from an Angel

by Sandy Rochelle

 
I move forward through the apathy that has become
My life.
A rock falls, I do not move.
I rely on strangers for my daily bread.
Held down by mists and storms, I bide my time.
Waiting to walk on clouds with angels.
I could you know.
I fall asleep; an angel comes to me and takes my hand.
Lose all judgement.
I have lived a lifetime of contrition.
The angel whispers slowly in my ear.
'I am your salvation as you are mine.'
These are the lessons to be learned.
I lift my mask once more.
The angel says.
''Without you I am surely lost.
But, without me your masks are ever on.
Your trumpets will not be heard.
And divinity is forever beyond your reach.''


* * * * * 

Sandy Rochelle lives in Englewood, New Jersey with her son, David. She is a widely published poet, actress and filmmaker. Her publications include Wild Word, Ekphrastic Review, Dissident Voice, Flashfictionnorth, Spillwords  Press, Every Day Poet, Amethyst Review, Formidable Woman, Impspired Magazine, Finishing Line Press, and others. http://sandyrochelle.com

 

Thinking of the Soul

by Sandy Rochelle

 
Do not look for your soul 
In things you do not know.
Do not look for your soul in things you know.
Do not look inside yourself or out.
Do not worry about what you lose in death.
If you cannot name it in life.
We are what we cannot name.
Come with me on such a day and live,
Unnamed forever.

 
* * * * * 

Sandy Rochelle lives in Englewood, New Jersey with her son, David. She is a widely published poet, actress and filmmaker. Her publications include Wild Word, Ekphrastic Review, Dissident Voice, Flashfictionnorth, Spillwords Press, Every Day Poet, Amethyst Review, Formidable Woman, Impspired Magazine, Finishing Line Press, and others. http://sandyrochelle.com

 

Tender Rescue

by Karen Friedland


Today, a woman was wrenched awake by crows at sunrise
after six slender hours of sleep.

She listened to trees being murdered
for much of the morning
while working sludge-ily on the computer
as loud street trucks rolled by.

Her gut was punched over and over
by the aftereffects of ill-advised surgery
10 years hence
that will live inside her forever.

At day’s end,
she downed a Scotch
and too many sugary snacks

and slumped into early-sunset oblivion
with two tender rescue dogs
slumbering at her feet,
and birds chirping in the dark evening trees,

and the sheer murderousness of this world
was once again somehow forgiven.


* * * * *

A grant writer by day, Karen Friedland has poems published in The Lily Poetry Review, Constellations, Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Vox Populi and others. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and another was displayed on the walls of Boston’s City Hall. Her books are Tales from the Teacup Palace (Červená Barva Press) and Places That Are Gone (Nixes Mate Books). She lives in West Roxbury, MA.

 

House-keeping

by Karen Friedland


Men exist invisibly in houses,
while women scour kitchen chair arms
and other surprising places
a film of filth might rest.

Men come and go,
while we scrub inside,
under and around toilets—
a secret skill imparted by osmosis by our mothers.

During quiet mornings, a woman might be found dusting,
or watering a small forest of houseplants
she herself created—

she might be seen straightening the crooked picture frames
of artwork she picked out long ago
to represent a singular vision of beauty.

Stealthily, we work to right what’s been wronged
by this crooked old world.


* * * * *

A grant writer by day, Karen Friedland has poems published in The Lily Poetry Review, Constellations, Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Vox Populi and others. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and another was displayed on the walls of Boston’s City Hall. Her books are Tales from the Teacup Palace (Červená Barva Press) and Places That Are Gone (Nixes Mate Books). She lives in West Roxbury, MA.

 

Theory of Teleportation

by Moira Kuo


My daughter wants to know
the definition of the word
relevant.  Related to, I say.
What?  Connected to.  We’re 

in the car.  My daughter 
wants to know if scientists
are inspired by fiction.  How 

does Albert Einstein come up
with his ideas?  Focus and
imagination, I say.

The road’s blocked.
We might be late.  She needs
to go to school… She says,

I don’t get it.  Did Einstein read
science fiction?  I need to 
make this turn.  Probably.  


That’s how I came up with 
my theory of teleportation. Do you 
want to hear it?  
             I hear it.  

her mind slides past
these very tiny lines
and I hate to break them.

What’s your
theory of teleportation? Do 
you have one, Mom?

I say I don’t.  Here.  She’s 
unbuckled, out of the car, I’m 
waving.  Gone.  How  


did she go that fast?


* * * * *

Moira Kuo is a writer in the Philadelphia area.  She has previously published in BOMBFIRE, Flyway, The Front Porch Review, The Monongahela Review, and others. She has an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark, and she lives with her husband and two great kids.

An Ordinary Sunday

by Laura Foley

 
On Sunday, I sing in a church choir, not believing
in God, but holding a space for something—
 
some might call it spirit, an opening,
a candle illuminating a cave.
 
On Sunday, I climb the hill behind our house,
as the long winter thaws, and my dogs dig in wet loam.
 
I wait for worries to relax their hold, for my mind
to become one with the clouds’ calm drifting,
 
the trilling of a stream rushing somewhere unseen.
We need, I think, to let ourselves soften around hurt,
 
before we melt, like spring snow, into fields—
so, I let Dad in, decades past his death,
 
find a few good memories, like stones just soft enough
for polishing—him filling the green glass vaporizer nightly,
 
so I wouldn’t get sick, in the hot, dry air of my childhood winters;
Dad donning an apron to cook for his skinny teen.
 
I breathe in the care and nourishment he offered then,
and I receive today, on an ordinary Sunday.


* * * * *

"An Ordinary Sunday" was first published in Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review, was among their top poetry books of 2019, and won an Eric Hoffer Award. Her collection It's This is forthcoming from Salmon Press. Her poems have won numerous awards, and national recognition—read by Garrison Keillor on Writers Almanac; appearing in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Laura lives with her wife among Vermont hills. www.lauradaviesfoley.com

Conversations with my brother

by Emily House


What is actually said:

me: Do you remember that time when...?

him: No.

What I wish I could say:

That he doesn't have the power to hold onto all of those memories
Those awful, awful memories
While I do.
Although
Maybe it is more powerful to be able to forget
Maybe I am the weak one for the memories on loop
The wide-awake nightmares where
I can hear myself scream NO
While the blows fall
And the words draw blood

Maybe it takes as much fortitude
To forget
As it does 
To remember.
To relive and learn how to be safe 
In my 
Own 
Skin

I cannot blame him for his quick and concise judgments of me then
Or now
It is how we were raised

In this house we
Criticize Emily
We
Dump our unexpressed emotions onto her
And devour their forced release
At whipping time

I did it, too
When the blows stopped
When 18 arrived
I stopped eating
I took all of my emotions that were too big
Finally, I knew they were too big
I learned it, Daddy! I see it now!
I took
All of my fears about the future
The unplanned future
This problem child can't have much of a future
And punished them
By 
Punishing
Me.

In this house we
Hurt Emily
We
Break her body and
Drink her tears
But

WAIT  

This isn't working anymore
And dying on the floor
Finally reaching that
Pit of despair
Losing my hair
And my mind
Is next

It's worth saving.

It's worth saving.

I'm worth saving.

What if I'm not 
Just a pile of rot
What if I wasn't a manipulative mastermind at the
Age of three
Using tears and fears
To control my parents' behavior
What if I wasn't a spoiled brat at the
Age of twelve
Wanting answers to questions like why
Are you talking about others like that
Why are you talking to me like that
When your job is to preach about Jesus why
Can't you be more like 
Jesus?

Jesus.

Why were the people in the psych ward softer
Kinder
More 
Understanding
Than the people in the pews
And the pulpit?
Why did I think they weren't people? 
When clearly this IS where I belong?

Why are we all being treated as less than for trying to heal what is both more and less broken than society will allow?

In this house we
Heal Emily
We 
honor emotions and her
Ability to hold them and her 
Ability to feel them with us, too

Jordan, 
I'm here. 
I'm still here. 


* * * * *

"Conversations with my brother" was first published in Fictionaut.

Emily House is a writer and high school English teacher. She lives in Iowa with her family, whom she loves. When she isn't guiding young minds, her life revolves around words and emotions. She views poetry as a natural consequence of this and hopes her works bring healing and insight to all readers. 

Summer 1958

by June Crawford Sanders

 
when portable roller rinks appeared like magic
in grassy lots in Southwest Arkansas like tent
revivals with colored lights and skates to rent,
boys in white tees and tight Levis holding hands
with awkward girls all skinny arms and legs in circle
skirts over layers of crinoline petticoats transformed
into pure grace gliding in endless circles in perfect
rhythm to the rock & roll music echoing thru sweltry
Saturday dark. And holding hands was everything.


* * * * *

June Crawford Sanders lives on the side of a mountain in the Sierra Nevadas.  Favorite pastimes include writing, photographing bobcats, bears, and birds that come to the backyard water fountain, playing piano, and camping. Her poems have been published in several small press publications, including What the Elephant Said to the Peacock by Dempsey and Windle, UK, Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology, and Eureka, a tiny Poems-For-All book published by Robert Hansen, San Diego.

The Younger Brother

by Leonore Hildebrandt


My mother loved her younger brother, but I feared him. His rules. His threats. Even though I never witnessed it, I believed in the power of his “green stick” to instill order. The children had to finish their plates of unsweetened porridge. They were expected not to speak at the table. Once––on a whim––he told me to repeat in front of people a phrase in a foreign language. He tried and tried, but he could not make me do it. And I could not hold in my tears. No one intervened. Later I would have words for his affliction. 

My mother loved her younger brother. On visits, they’d smoke together––she cigarettes, he cigars. She praised his sense of humor. His success. His generosity. He had me join his large family in places my parents could not afford. I’d be put on a train along with instructions: behave and be grateful. As a child, he had been sent to a boarding school far away. He would write to my mother, homesick and sad. Both of them knew that sons were expected to expand their father’s lifework. 

My mother loved her younger brother even when he was demented and feeble. They put him into a modest nursing home right in the small town he had come from. His children, who had moved far away by then, set up his large mahogany desk in the room. It still had all its trappings. He would shuffle around with a walker carrying his executive’s briefcase. To prevent injuries, the nurse put a helmet on him.

My mother loved her younger brother. She felt guilty in her old age when she could not travel to see him. One day in winter she asked me to drive her up. There he was––crestfallen, talking nonsense––and I thought I could forgive him. His mind and body were too small to house my hurt. He seemed to recognize me, so I smiled. My mother and I sang children’s songs, and he remembered some of the words.

Once he had me waiting for what seemed like a very long time. I stood in the snow in a small Alpine town. People were passing by. Can children learn to be left on their own? When he swooped in––finally––he was in a great mood, pleased with himself, hungry for admiration. He used to quote Goethe’s Faust: “In the beginning was the deed!” My mother would object, saying that Dr. Faust was deliberately mistranslating “logos” which means “reasoned discourse” or “living word.” Still, she loved her younger brother. But his son, the sweet little boy who grew up to inherit their childhood home, was quick to chop down the grand trees in the yard. 


* * * * *

"The Younger Brother" was first published by Wordrunner eChapbooks, April 2021, http://www.echapbook.com/anthology/2021/younger-brother.html

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of the poetry collections Where You Happen to Be, The Work at Hand, and The Next Unknown. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, RHINO, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. Wordrunner cChapbooks published two of her poems in its 2017 Pushing Boundaries anthology. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Germany, Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine, and spends the winter in Silver City, New Mexico. LeonoreHildebrandt.com

What Amount?

by Michelle Fulkerson


The smell of cremated bones
wafting over perfume and lily,
the air is stale and sharp.
I need to compose myself
need to get a grip
shake this death from my bones
uncoil this aching grief from my soul.
I wear a dress of mascara and tears.
If I receive one more casserole I’ll snap.

10,500 dollars to say goodbye 
goodbye to what? 
A corpse? 
He’s no longer my father
or her husband
or his friend.
10,500 dollars to say goodbye
to a man no longer a man. 


* * * * *

Editor's note: Following Michelle’s death, her mother and editor, Julie Fulkerson, discovered that Michelle had begun compiling her poems into a book, which she titled, “Through Adversity to the Stars.”  She completed the book Michelle started, searching through her journals and her google drive for additional poems, reflections, and short stories. She hopes to one day publish Michelle’s book.

Michelle Fulkerson fought her way into the world at just 23 weeks gestation. Against the odds, she survived and thrived. Michelle loved reading, writing and music. She began writing poetry and short stories at age 12. Around that same time, Michelle began struggling with anorexia, anxiety, and depression. She kept a journal where she wrote with poignant honesty regarding her mental health struggles. Michelle wrote up until her death, just 4 months shy of her 18^th birthday.

Rain

by Michelle Fulkerson


I need to hide to drown my sorrow
to not feel obligated to stay a secret in the darkness
to blanket my self-inflicted pain in the thunder 
and stifle my screams in the lightning that is to set me on fire
I need it to rain…

I need to scream to cry to shout to rage in the thunder
I need not to feel this overpowering weight on my shoulders
I need to release this heavy heart and to feel the rain pierce my skin
I need it to rain…

I yearn to skip with a light heart in the raindrops
and frolic in the puddles 
and dance in the dew 
I yearn to splash and squeal with a light heart 
instead of a heavy one
I need it to rain…

I long to feel the rain on my skin
to calm me from my attacks
wash away my fears 
and whisk away my sadness
I need it to rain...

I need it to rain to drown out
my insecurities
to drown myself in the pain
I need it to rain...


* * * * *

Editor's note: Following Michelle’s death, her mother and editor, Julie Fulkerson, discovered that Michelle had begun compiling her poems into a book, which she titled, “Through Adversity to the Stars.”  She completed the book Michelle started, searching through her journals and her google drive for additional poems, reflections, and short stories. She hopes to one day publish Michelle’s book.

Michelle Fulkerson fought her way into the world at just 23 weeks gestation. Against the odds, she survived and thrived. Michelle loved reading, writing and music. She began writing poetry and short stories at age 12. Around that same time, Michelle began struggling with anorexia, anxiety, and depression. She kept a journal where she wrote with poignant honesty regarding her mental health struggles. Michelle wrote up until her death, just 4 months shy of her 18^th birthday.

On the Train to Vigo    

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso


Spanish children chewing bread and cheese
grandparents taking them somewhere 

sturdy people like short towers
holding the little ones in between

the conductor pats the boy on the head
lends him his clumsy man-sized cap

walks him grandly around the train
gives him an orange cotton scarf

brings him back holding his hand
calls him an excellent little man

the girl grips her grandmother’s arm
five years old already feeling how

to fold envy shrink it small
drop it into her secret well

we wonder if she’ll grow up wild
casting off traditional ways

or will she live in the usual style
favoring the male children

today there's little she can do
sadly jealous stubbornly proud

knowing she’s only a girl who must
wait pretending patience being good.


* * * * *

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker,
Ibbetson Street, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Peacock Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, Southern Women’s Review, etc.  Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Červená Barva Press and a story collection is in the works.

Power’s Out           

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso 
  

Lying in the hospital bed Fernando
gazes nowhere darkly pale when 
he says ‘Can’t croak yet got to wait
until my brother Juan’s back from Paris’
as if time’s train arrives only

after that particular plane lands 
foresworn determinate moment
can’t be adjusted or shoved sideways
invisible schedules must be obeyed
no way to juggle or amend

so it’s useless trying to predict
watching him sleep just keep
wiping saliva dripping down his chin
until I feel a thud of sudden quiet 
an energy drop as if power’s out
 
in that moment I know I know nothing
hold my breath pinch each second
waiting for rhythm of inhalation
has he stopped breathing
maybe I’m wrong but

rescue doesn’t happen only
wide emptiness flat days of failure
family bringing food I can’t eat
friends repeating cliches about peace
about being somewhere invisible

nervous hugs scolding that I’m too thin
offering words of numb blankness
as if to pull me back from his death
and the best I can do even now
is throw words at it.


* * * * *

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker,
Ibbetson Street, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Peacock Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, Southern Women’s Review, etc.  Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Červená Barva Press and a story collection is in the works.

Alongside the Lake

by Tobi Alfier


They were married in Indiana
just before fall. Colors of ash, delicate
gray/white and the hallowed hush
of citrus trees, leaves beginning to curl
for the winter, fruit long gone.

The sky sparkled through windows of a tent
made for bliss—for everyone, not just the two.
Parquet floor for gliding, for a first dance
and many more, until the wee hours.

Breakfast served up for the few who’d stayed:
soft-boiled egg with caviar and baguette,
Veuve Clicquot la Grande Dame with juice,
French Press coffee with chicory, and beignets,
their initials stenciled in powdered sugar.

They had already left, exhausted from
the day. Hand in hand in a village pub
they’ll toast, listen to accents, come home
with gifts, dialects, lace curtains

with daffodils for every room,
maybe plans for a child they’ll name Gemma.
The scent of rose as they unpack their bags
and drift to sleep spooning, nightbirds deep in song.


* * * * *

“Alongside the Lake” was first published in Live Encounters and is part of Tobi Alfier’s new chapbook Grit & Grace.

Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. Symmetry: earth and sky was published by Main Street Rag. Her chapbook Grit & Grace was published by Orchard Street Press (March, 2021). She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

 

Aftertraces

by Tobi Alfier


A pale woman takes her tea alone
in her courtyard, the porcelain cup
as fine as her features. Black hair
with just a whisper of white cascades
down her back like a Gauguin painting.

Her lips, the perfect ballerina pink, are pursed
in thoughts between sips of Earl Grey.
Her bare feet are casual and comfortable
even though the patterned tiles are cold.

Hard winter days are changing into spring.
The odd dust devil kicks its heels up
the unpaved road outside her patio, masks the colors
of early wildflowers we can never praise enough
as they start to peek through mudded earth

in the fields beyond. When she was small,
her father whittled flutes and birds she still has,
though his absence hollows her days. The sound
of the Southern Pacific reminds her he is always watching.

Such begins each day. Aftertraces of the scent
of aftershave lightly on the early breeze bring memories
of a fading spark that blew out too quickly,
and much to silently remember.


* * * * *

“Aftertraces” was first published in Cholla Needles and is part of Tobi Alfier’s new chapbook “Grit & Grace.”

Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. “Symmetry: earth and sky” was published by Main Street Rag. Her chapbook “Grit & Grace” was published by Orchard Street Press (March, 2021). She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).
 

The Honey of Trapped Bees
(Self-Portrait at 15)

by Pauletta Hansel

 
Mostly it’s about the bones—ribcage, clavicle, the small knobs on the outside of my knees, a red thrift store pinafore I wear as a tunic, ribbons tied tight at two rungs of bare spine. Mostly, it is tied up tight—my frizzy hair in a bandana, knot of hunger beneath thin layer of skin I pinch and measure, counting its depth. And it is all about what counts—inches and calories; the men, back seats and borrowed beds, and how much more of me they want than I ever want of myself.


* * * * *
 
“The Honey of Trapped Bees” was originally published in Pauletta’s book of poems, Coal Town Photograph.
 
Pauletta Hansel’s eighth poetry collection is Friend, epistolary poems written in the early days of the pandemic; her writing has been featured in Oxford American, Rattle, Appalachian Journal, Still: The Journal and One (Jacar Press), among others. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate (2016-2018), and is past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the journal of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. https://paulettahansel.wordpress.com/.

 

Story

by Pauletta Hansel

 
My mother said
she never asked again
who her oldest brother’s
father was.
 
Granny didn’t want
to talk about it.
That’s all we needed
to know.
 
So I made stories
in my head
of someone kinder
than my grandpa,
 
his lips not folded thin 
inside a nighttime scruff
of peppered gray.
I wanted that comfort for her,
 
if not in life, in memory
of a silken tangle of flesh
hidden between
tall rows of corn
 
back in Virginia
where her people stayed.
She never went back home,
not even after Grandpa died,
 
and finally she cut off
her waist-length hair, let her
daughter give her a home perm,
soft curls around her neck.
 
Years later,
almost everybody dead,
a cousin told me.
That old story.
 
A widowed father
stumble-drunk,
grizzling himself
into his daughter’s bed.
 
Her name was Etta.
Before I knew her, ten children
had torn through that secret place
her father had claimed.
 

* * * * *

“Story” was published first in Change Seven and is part of Pauletta’s forthcoming collection, Heartbreak Tree.

Pauletta Hansel’s eighth poetry collection is Friend, epistolary poems written in the early days of the pandemic; her writing has been featured in Oxford American, Rattle, Appalachian Journal, Still: The Journal and One (Jacar Press), among others. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate (2016-2018), and is past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the journal of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative.  https://paulettahansel.wordpress.com/.
 

Gently Let This Day

by Marjorie Moorhead


Let this day born in aches and pains
change. Let it stretch and bend,
downward-dogging into an elongated
relaxation where breath brings
renewal and strength, and an ability 
to view all from underneath, upside down, 
and eventually, gently, with a twist, 
skyward. 
Now see how the birds sing together,
perched high on branches in the strong sun.
Black feather bodies catching each ray 
and offering back a rainbow glisten. Watch, 
relax, reflect, listen!



Marjorie Moorhead 2021
after Let This Day, by Annie Lighthart Pax (Fernwood Press 2021)

* * * * *

Marjorie Moorhead writes from the VT/NH border, surrounded by mountains in a river valley, with four season change. Her work addresses environment, survival, noticing the “every day”, and how we treat each other. Marjorie’s poems can be found in many anthologies, websites, and her two chapbooks Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (FLP 2019) and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020).