Two Season Sycamores

by Joan Leotta

Sycamore trees lined my street,

planted so long before my time that their roots

were already making a crazy quilt

out of the city laid cement sidewalks,

adding several degrees of difficulty

to my roller skating.

I loved their mottled bark,

saving strips, like sacred scrolls,

storing them where my mother

would not find them,

coloring on them with

watercolor brushes

pretending they were messages

from tribes who fished the

lake that once filled the block

where my house now reigned.

In summer, leaves were thick,

shading the mailman as he removed

packs of letters from the brown storage

box. I imagined that there was power

in the key dangling from his long chain,

power to find magic letters in the box

that would open doors between lands,

carry me off from my doorstep

to a place where neighbor children

did not tie new girls to trees and leave

them on while they went inside for lunch.

Winter’s bareness suited my sycamores.

Ice and snow jacketing each branch,

all the way to the tender twigs

stretched out to scratch the sky,

providing temporary resting places for local

sparrows, birds too stubborn to go south.

I sketched these from my window,

loving how the open spaces between

branches let the sun into my room.

Spring’s haze of tender green,

autumn’s mottled yellow green

before leaves die and drop—I

squeeze my head but no such images

spring forth. Those things happened…

well, others tell me so.

* * * * *

Joan Leotta is a writer and story performer, expressing her love of words and desire to encourage others on page and on stage. Her work has been published widely as poems, essays, articles, and books. On stage she most often performs folk and personal tales dealing with food, family, nature, and strong women. She has been published in Writing in Woman’s Voice, Silver Birch, The Ekphrastic Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tema, and others. Find out more about her work at www.joanleotta.wordpress.com

Again

by Mary Chandler Philpott 

And the sky is good to me; let me count on nothing but the sky, for it is good to me.

I want to cry and cry out, but what use is that? A waste of good saltwater, my tears. And I am not alone, remember? I have you and you and you; I have my words.

Today I spin, I spun, ‘round and ‘round on a velvet table, my needle creeping ever closer to the center, the origin, the spot that is still, that does not move. And when I reached it — for I reached it — I did not like the silence, and started again.

* * * * *

Mary Chandler Philpott is an MA student at the University of Virginia. She currently lives in Manassas with her fiancé Brandon and their puppy Edward Rochester. 

Fever Dream

by Mary Chandler Philpott 

Maybe it’s that I don’t know what it is that I want anymore; all of me that used to be me is unrolling away and out of sight; and it’s dark, it’s so dark; how did I used to wake up? Now, when I do it, I’m alone; and it is a thing of force and roughness.

* * * * *

Mary Chandler Philpott is an MA student at the University of Virginia. She currently lives in Manassas with her fiancé Brandon and their puppy Edward Rochester. 

. 

An excerpt from

HOPSCOTCH LIFE

by Kris Neri

Prologue

If you’re lost, how to you find your way to where you need to be?

It troubled Plum Tardy that she couldn’t answer that question. Her mom, Crystal’s, life depended on it. Plum scooted her chair closer to her mother’s bedside.

“Come on, Crystal,” she said, her desperation only barely controlled. “Follow my voice back to us.”

Crystal was stretched out, as always, with her closed eyes facing the ceiling. If it weren’t for the apparatus keeping her heart pumping and making air whoosh through her lungs, she looked as she might have in a coffin.

“Listen to my voice. I’ll lead you.”

Crystal’s doctors insisted she never would return, describing her condition as a vegetative state. But Plum considered doctors such alarmists. She thought of it more like a coma. People came back from comas all the time. She clung to that belief with all the tenacity of someone gripping a life preserver in a flood.

Still, the hand Plum clasped felt unnatural. Oh, it was warm enough, alive. The machines made sure oxygenated blood flowed through all of her vessels. What the hand lacked was energy—the boisterous, pulsing, shouting-from-the-rooftops energy that had always defined Crystal.

“We’re all here for you. You need us.” And we need you. I do anyway. “Wake up. I’m begging you, Crystal.”

Plum struggled to remember a computer-related term she’d learned. She wasn’t really computer-literate; she was actually more of a digital disaster. But there was a concept she’d discovered from computer work that pointed to an amazing way to solve most of life’s problems: rebooting. With a reboot, everything simply resets to the original place, like the mistake or tangent never happened.

“Reboot, Crystal. We need a reboot.”

We? Wasn’t this all about Crystal?

After an unspoken silence, Plum admitted that maybe it wasn’t. Well, sure it’s also about me, she admitted to herself. Everyone needs a mom. The admission, and how lost it made her feel, stunned Plum.

It couldn’t be about her now. Crystal was the one trapped somewhere. Even if Crystal had never been enough of a mother for her, a rare admission from Plum, somehow Plum had to be all the daughter Crystal needed now.

But when you’re lost, how do you find your way to where you need to be?

Plum wasn’t sure anymore which of them she was asking for.

Chapter One

The rain bucketed down in drops as big as quarters, thousands and thousands of them. A rarity in sunny Southern California, where traffic now snarled in every direction.

Plum stared through a rain-soaked windshield, which the wipers couldn’t begin to clear, at a line of cars jammed up before her. “Move, dammit!” she cried. Nobody budged. Within the sultry confines of Plum’s aging Jeep Wrangler, she sighed, not a sound of frustration, but of confusion and loss.

“It never rains unless it stalls,” Plum muttered aloud. That was one of the many proverbs Crystal often quoted. Crystal had an adage for every occasion, although others never seemed to find the wisdom in them that Plum did.

Is that what’s wrong with me? Is my life just stalled?

It had been two days since Plum had tried in vain to awaken Crystal. Two days in which she’d remained brittle, seemingly without cause.

Plum knew her reaction to today’s conditions was excessive. Rain wasn’t an everyday occurrence in Southern California, but when Pacific storms did hit, they were usually heavy. And traffic was always ever-present. This wasn’t much worse than usual.

But she’d faced some tough truths during her time with Crystal. She hadn’t uttered a word since about her needs and Crystal’s inadequacy, but she feared those revelations still cried out inside of her, in some emotional language she didn’t want to translate.

Plum suddenly gave her head a shake, as though snapping out of it. Why was she making so much of this? Finding meaning where there was none. She was just overworked and under-appreciated. Plum had a great life. She did! Well, she would if she could wrestle Crystal’s house into shape. And fix the problems at work. And maybe squirrel away some time alone with her fiancé, Noah.

Besides, Plum almost never became angry. If anything, she was the type to take it on the chin and say nothing about it.

Only…Plum wasn’t sure she was willing to keep silent anymore.

Grasping for something that would boost her sinking morale, she reached into the bulky tote bag filling the passenger seat for her cell phone. She skipped using the earpiece in her glove box, and just put it on speaker, resting the phone on her thigh. She punched in her fiancé’s office number. It went straight to voicemail.

“You’ve reached Noah Rowle, of Westside Homes and Offices,” his voice proclaimed in a tone of boundless enthusiasm. “If you’re calling to sell land that will allow you to become part of Budget-Mart’s most aggressive expansion in decades, press one. If you’re an existing client….”

“How about if I’m a fiancée, in need of a verbal hug?” Plum muttered, while the menu rattled on. Finally, after the beep, she said in a too-bright tone, “It’s me. I hope your meeting later today goes well.” Actually, she hoped it would end early. That way Noah might be there when she stopped home before work. “See you tonight…. Hey…I miss you,” she blurted, immediately regretting that she sounded so needy. She clicked the call off before she could say anything to further humiliate herself.

At thirty-six years old, it was past time she figured out how to hold a relationship together. Still, no matter what she did to try to stop it, she knew that she and Noah were drifting apart. “You’re like ships passing on the Nile,” Crystal had once observed, which Plum recalled now with uneasy desperation.

The line of cars finally began inching forward. At a crowded intersection, Plum glanced to the side. The pelting rain and the low cloud cover made the small houses lining the road—the little Spanish or seaside bungalows, punctuated by the occasional modern home—appear as murky as a dream. The ocean off to the right, which should have been visible, wasn’t today. Yet in her mind’s-eye, Plum could see the rising charcoal waves, topped by angry whitecaps, twisting and swirling in a furious show of might. After a lifetime there, she knew the ocean’s every mood. Maybe too well….

* * * * *

Hopscotch Life, Kris Neri’s first women’s fiction title, was recently published by Cherokee McGhee Publishing. A multi-award-nominated and winning author, Kris also writes the Tracy Eaton mysteries, featuring the daughter of eccentric Hollywood stars, and the Samantha Brennan and Annabelle Haggerty magical series, which features a questionable psychic who teams up with a modern goddess-FBI agent. She makes her home in Silver City, NM.

When Angels Were Devoured

by Roberta Tabanelli

A silk kiss was circumcised, with surgical precision,
when I offered my head on what I believed was a silver plate

- rust, instead.

Sandpaper, I invoke, to peel the ghost
that’s hunting my lips - diverted
licking the pungency of a rotten apple
mistaken for a ripe orange.

Squeezing the juice - not from a woman’s pleasure:
grounded limbs of amputated desires
in a tangled web of wet kindling
- use for no fire.

* * * * *

Roberta Tabanelli teaches film and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Missouri. She grows native flowers and Mediterranean herbs, bakes sourdough bread, and travels as much as she can. Her poetic focuses on the power of language to convey meaning through wordplay, sounds, and fragments. She writes in both English and Italian.

Missing Me  

by Lainie Belcastro

“Ping!” OMG it’s that familiar sound that turns my heart around.

It’s him, texting after months of ghosting me.

“My thoughts are wandering. I’ve missed you,” he writes.

Really? I wonder what it is that he misses after so many silent nights.

He knows nothing about the real me. If he did, he would know this is not where I want to be,

caught on a screen between our sensual, sexting moments and settling for a touch of intimacy,

hoping with each sent text, his next one will be real

and he will feel what I feel for him.

But he’s lured me in again, to his dim, dark hotel room,

with his laptop in place that will capture my shadowed face and body with visions

that he will place somewhere in his mind,

filed away for another time when he disappears into his safe, secluded space without me.

Like well-rehearsed actors, we repeat our lines, perform our scenes, until the closing comes.

He’s happy with this ending. I hear it in his voice and then he whispers,

“God, I really miss you!”

And I just mouth the words without him hearing, “Me too…”

* * * * *

Lainie Belcastro is a published author and poet in many genres. Her poems have appeared in the inspirational blog Writing In A Woman’s Voice and Guardian Angel Kids Online Magazine. Her worldwide children’s book, Harriet’s Heartbroken Heart, released by Guardian Angel Publishing and co-authored by her daughter, Nika, is a healing book for children experiencing grief. Another children’s book is contracted for a future release. Her uplifting stories can be found in many of the motivational Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Lainie is co-creator of the trademarked Mrs. Terra Cotta Pots & Twig and the Patching Hearts wellness programs for children. As a guest speaker, she encourages her wide audiences to "see something beautiful every day!" She holds many titles in the arts, but her most treasured title is mom! Visit her at www.lainiebelcastro.com

My Mother Remembers Her Mother Praying

by Mary Rohrer-Dann

Once, she followed her mother out to the barn

found her kneeling in prickly straw, forehead

pressed against the cow’s coarse hide, voice

muffled in the space between rib and flank.

Her mother’s words a private litany of petition,

praise—and something else—something dangerous.

By then, her older brothers were taken

for Hitler’s madness. Her older sisters scavenged

cratered fields for radishes, turnips, potatoes.

With her younger brother, who would soon to be sent

to the Russian front, she searched the ravaged henhouse

for eggs missed by starving soldiers who picked

the orchard bare, then burned it to stumps.

One afternoon, her father stood blindfolded
between the stone barn and black mouths of rifles.

Inexplicably, the rifles were lowered.

She remembers her mother in the barn, dust

motes haloing her in light. She remembers

the thick smell of manure, milk, animal heat,

the pulse of her mother holding her God to account.

* * * * *

Mary Rohrer-Dann is a writer, painter, and educator in central PA. Recent work has appeared in Literary Yard, Evening Street Press, The Drabble, Vita Brevis, Flashes of Brilliance, Literary Heist, San Antonia Review (forthcoming) and Biscuit Root Drive (forthcoming). Two poem projects, La Scaffetta: Poems from the Foundling Drawer, and Accidents of Being, were staged and  produced by Tempest Productions, Inc.