Author Archives: Sarah

The Cat

“When I see anyone laughing, I just think, don’t you know? How can you laugh? How can people walk around laughing and carrying on like that?”

“Oh, Richard.”

“Seriously. Think about it. It’s sick.”

“Richard,” she shushed. “You should know better than anyone. None of it will matter. In the end. Right?”

“But, just think of the dolphins. That should keep anyone from laughing. I don’t know what we’re doing here. What were we thinking? This is crazy. The whole world’s so fucked.”

“Richard.”

“They say all the fish in the ocean could be gone in forty years. Just jellyfish! That’s all. That’s all that will be left. And, that’s bad. That’s really bad. But when I think of the starving dolphins. Washing up on shore? Can you imagine? My god. And the whales. That just gets to me. The dolphins and the whales. That really gets to me.”

“You should know better than anyone.” She sat on his lap. “Tell me again.”

“What?”

“Tell me. About the one thing you know for sure.”

“What. Oh, that? Jesus, Kirsten. You have heard it so many times, you might as well tell it to me.”

“But I love to hear you tell it.” She ran her finger down the bridge of his nose. “I love to watch you remember.”

He groaned.

“Tell me.”

“Jesus.” Her anticipation weakened him. “Okay. So. Imagine a black room.”

“Yeah?”

“The blackest black.”

“Yeah.”

“Black ceiling. Black walls. No windows.”

She nodded.

“Black floor. Imagine the darkest black you’ve ever seen.”

“Got it.”

“Now, imagine, in the black room, you close your eyes. Blacker still.”

Her eyes closed.

“Then you cover your closed eyes. Nothing blacker. Right?”

“Right.”

“It was darker than that.”

She opened her eyes. 

“I don’t know how else to say it. It was darker than the darkest black I can even imagine.”

“But not scary.”

“Not scary in the least.”

“That’s nice.”

“It was nice.” He leaned back into the chair.

“And then you heard the voice?”

“Not right away, but I didn’t hear a voice, because I didn’t have ears. I knew I didn’t have a body. But that was later. The voice.”

“First, you struggled.”

“Yes. For a long time. I felt like I was suffocating. And I was fighting. I thought I was fighting, like, I was trying to swim, but then it dawned on me, I wasn’t under water. I wasn’t even moving. But I was struggling to breathe anyway, but just, in my mind. And, eventually…damn.” He grimaced. “That was so awful. I hate remembering that part.”

“Move it along then.”

“Well. Yeah. Anyway, at some point it just dawned on me that I wasn’t suffocating, because it had been too long and I should have passed out by then. Right?”

She nodded.

“And then it just stopped. The struggle. Then I felt like I was floating, but I couldn’t really feel anything, like how we can feel things. I mean, I couldn’t feel my skin, but not like I was numb. I couldn’t feel anything, physically. Not cold. Not hot. Nothing. No physical sensations. Then I kind of sensed; this is not earthly. You know? Then I was thinking, I don’t know, like, curious, like, what’s this?”

“But you weren’t afraid?”

“Not once I gave up struggling. Once I gave up struggling it felt great. And once I realized I had no body, it was even better. You would think that you would miss your body. But I didn’t. I was totally there, my whole being, who I am, and I didn’t need my body. It was freeing. So weird. You wouldn’t think it would be like that. But that’s how I felt. Free.” 

“Free’s good. I like freedom.”

“Then there was this flood of feeling. Like relief times ten. Or something. It was better than anything I can really describe.”

“Love. You said love before.”

“Well, that’s what I’ve said. It’s the closest word to it, but way more than the word we use here.”

“The word we use here. Funny. You were, what do you think? Floating in the universe?”

“No. There weren’t any stars or anything. It’s really impossible to describe.” He squirmed a little. She patted his chest. “It wasn’t here anywhere. I can’t explain it.”

“Yes you can. Go on. Tell me.”

“I was floating and I was remembering people. And, the one that shocked me was this woman…”

“From the grocery line!”

“Yeah. The woman in the grocery line. That had happened years earlier. I had forgotten about her. Just a stranger in line. But, there she was.”

“She was kind to you. At the store.”

“Yeah. I was scrounging up change, and the cashier got indignant. And I looked back at her; embarrassed.”

“And she smiled at you.”

“Yeah. The way she smiled. It was so genuine.”

Kirsten smiled. He smiled.

“And then you heard the voice.”

“Yeah, but…”

“You didn’t hear it. You had no ears.”

“Right. It was, like, in my head.”

“But, you didn’t have a head.”

“Right, but, I don’t know how else, anyway, it was like a thought, but not my thought. Not from inside my head. It was like, an implanted thought. It was someone else. I don’t know. I’ve thought about this, to try to describe it better, but the feeling was like…”

“Was it God?”

“No. Definitely not God. I don’t know, it was like, it seemed like, a guide of some sort.” He shifted in his seat. “That sounds corny.”

“No, it doesn’t. I think it sounds lovely.”

“That’s the closest I can get.”

“What did it say, or convey, or whatever. Implant.”

“It said, nothing bad you did ever mattered.”

“That’s good news.”

“And I have never been so utterly convinced that something was true. It took a second to digest it. But…it just felt…so true. And once I fully accepted that, I mean, fully, fully knew that was true, and accepted that, and leaned back into that knowledge, and relaxed, and things settled, it said…nothing good you did ever mattered.”

“That’s so cool. Like, no one’s keeping score.”

“Yeah, but even better. I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Hmmm.”

“Oh. I know. Total acceptance. I mean total, complete, no bullshit acceptance.”

“I almost can’t wait.”

He squeezed her. “You’re not leaving me.” She kissed his forehead. He looked down at her growing middle, placed his hand on her belly. He looked away. “That’s when I started moving. It was a G-force. But I couldn’t feel it in my body. I had no body. There was no wind, sound. Nothing. But I felt it anyway.”

“Where were you going?”

“No idea.” He laughed out loud. “No earthly idea.”

“Ha!”

“It was just getting better and better and I loved it. Total acceptance. No troubles. No bills. No boss. No nothing. I was moving so fast, faster than anything I’ve ever experienced. Into something. A sense. A feeling. This enveloping sense of support. That I was utterly loved and supported by everything. Every thing. Everything. All around me. In me. Everywhere. Love.”

“Then?”

“Then I remembered my cat.”

“Stuck in your apartment.”

“Yeah.”

“Poor kitty.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. So. Then?”

“Then, everything stopped. Full stop.”

“Aww.”

“Yeah.”

“And then?”

“Then the voice said, well, not said.”

“I know. Implanted.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. It implanted…do you want to go back?”

“And you went back?”

“No. I mean, I took a second to think about it. I was torn. I mean, damn, it felt so good. I didn’t want to go back. But then I saw his little orange face, and I was like, shit, I should go back. And then I thought, yeah. And the second, and I mean the very exact second, millisecond, that I had the thought…I was back.”

“Damn.”

“I sat up on the gurney and took this huge breath and then just passed out again.”

“The doctor told you that?”

“No. I mean, yeah. He confirmed it. When I talked to him about it the next day, he confirmed it. He said I was dead for a minute and seventeen seconds. Well, he didn’t say dead, of course. He said that my heart stopped and I stopped breathing, and they didn’t do anything to bring me back, because, well, they didn’t think I would be able to survive the brain injury, but yeah, he confirmed that I sat up and took in this big breath.”

“I’m glad about that cat. It worked out for me.”

He looked down and smiled, sheepish. “That cat went missing six months after that.”

“Well, I’m glad he didn’t go missing six months before that.” She put her face on his. “And, you don’t have to worry about the dolphins.”

“I guess not.”

“They’ll be okay. Either way. Right?”

“Once they give up the struggle.”

“Yes. Once they give up the struggle.”

 Ranney Campbell earned BS and MFA degrees from the University of Missouri at St. Louis and lives in Southern California. Her poetry has been published by Misfit Magazine and Shark Reef, among others, and is forthcoming in Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. Her chapbook, “Pimp,” is published by Arroyo Seco Press.

What Dinosaurs Know
 
From the soft gray nest
of his bed, my son shines
a flashlight into 
snowflakes whirling
outside. Galaxies of 
glow-in-the dark stars gather
above him. As he presses
his face into velvet
folds of a stuffed 
brontosaur, he waits
for me to dim 
the hallway lights,
to kiss him good-night. 
As he nods off to sleep, 
my son asks if 
dinosaurs saw
the streaking comet,
if they knew that
they were dying. I imagine
peering into shrouds
of smoke and soot,
an ancient beast craning
towards the bleary
stars. Darkness 
presses down
on propped pillows,
slopes of comforters.
I reach to caress 
the gentle wave
of my son’s brow,
my leaning body suspended 
in the hallway light’s
amber glow. 
 

Sayuri Ayers explores everyday spiritual experiences in her poetry and prose. A Pushcart and Best of Net Nominee, her work is forthcoming in SWWIM Every Day and Parentheses Journal. Please visit her at sayuriayers.com.  

Although this ward is not a holy city
I realize I’m attending Sunday mass.
To my surprise, I do not find self-pity,
Delusions, or what woes may come to pass.
My clouds are lifting; what is this, a tear?
Shed for Black Jesus in a comic book,
And what is this? My mind begins to clear
As staff returns the clothing they had took.
While dressed in gowns, they had me looking rough,
Dressed as I’m now, I’m relatively sane,
There is a ways to go, but sane enough
A fellow patient chooses to exclaim,
Because my changing proves her point of view:
“O Lord have mercy, look what church can do!”

Robert Donohue’s poetry has appeared in Grand Little Things, Better Than Starbucks, The Raintown Review, The Ekphrastic Review, among others. He lives on Long Island, NY.

When the Evening Comes

When the evening comes for me,
let me reach for blankets
lavender, pink, and peach
while laughing on a wind-swept night
pines swaying with me
whispering their hush
blowing needles in rich dirt
 
when the evening comes
let me laugh
one long laugh, unabashedly loud
at The Big Lebowski and pissed-on rugs and drifters
while I pronounce the Dude’s creed
abide, abide
The Dude abides
 
and when the evening comes
let the hatred of car horns, sighing at slow speeds
camo, bumper stickers, and people who flaunt double-negatives
let me shed all of that and place it in a box
when the evening comes 
let me try to speak an I-love-you
loud enough to be heard
 
and when the evening comes
let me proclaim myself ready
ready, ready like a child
while I remove my skin with haste
and don a translucent nightgown
sinking into slumber
 
upon a bright and rising moon
 

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program. His stories, “Soon,”  “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and “Tales From A Communion Line,” were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work  has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.

Separation
 
Their darting eyes may be searching for hope. More likely they’re on the run, and lonely fingers join the race, clicking and tapping, knocking on doors that swing wide, happy for the visit, see - engagements build platforms and traffic digs graves, selling anesthetic at the cost of fulfillment.
 
I understand how this happens when you barricade your soul against a hundred year storm. We wait, but wonder, what if it never ends? That feels like drowning, so they paddle, paddle, paddle, frantically away. If I saw someone sinking as I walked down the row, I’d put hand on shoulder and look into eyes. I’d speak, or whisper, and smile. Comfort would come from my presence, not words, and how can I send that through Zoom?
 
If only we could pray.

Blake Kilgore spent most of his first three decades in Texas and Oklahoma. Now, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and four sons, where he’s beginning his twenty-third year teaching history to junior high students. That’s how his love for story began – recounting the (mostly) true stories from olden times. Eventually, he wanted to tell stories of his own, and you can find some of these in Barely South Review, Deep South Magazine, The Sandy River Review, and other fine journals. New work is forthcoming in Crack the Spine and Coe Review. To learn more, go to blakekilgore.com  

In St Andrew's Church, Borrowdale 
 
 I miss it, yes, the gatheredness,
 the quiet of stone, the play of light,
 the human truths spelled out quite plain,
 some words that enter deeply,
 and hanging textures choirs weave             
 resonant through centuries.
 
 It's strange to think how many years
 I steeped in those strong tinctures.
 The high example, high demand,
 the easy yoke that took me down,
 judgment's grip much closer felt
 than unearned mercy's offer. 
 
 But still I search. And what remains? 
 The heart-leap hope of Love's last say? 
 The great rewrite of tragedy?
 
 I reach and take the careful pen,
 open the book at its ribboned page. 
 Hand unsteady, I add your name –
 for other folk with firmer hold 
 to speak it out in praying.   
 

Denise Steele lives in Glasgow and writes when the muse cooperates. Her work has been published online, in Obsessed with Pipework poetry magazine, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Wigtown Festival Poetry Prize.

Eclipse

In the slow dripping of
rainmakers and begetters,
fog rises,
wet drifting,
sifting 
into rounded contours.

The renegade jaguar abandons
his cardinal corner of the world,
bounces 
from shadow cloud to shadow cloud,
wreaking havoc amongst startled stars.

The edges of the world tremble,
slender tree trunks shed
festive skins
and stand pale and huddled
as the earth tilts.

Anabell Donovan (Anna Eusthacia) is a psychologist and educator dedicated to student success. She is driven by her love of words, their sound, weight, origin, and meaning and wants to “start where language ends.”

The Cold

The old woman woke to the bite of the cold. The wind had come up and found its way through her defenses, through her blankets and plastic, through her tattered jacket and her baggy sweater and, worst of all, through the hole in the sole of her left shoe. 

The sun had begun to rise, but it made a half-hearted show of it, like a child forced out of bed and hurried off to school. The old woman understood the sun’s hesitancy, she understood the way he seemed to wrap himself up in the grey clouds as if they were warm blankets. She would have liked to close her eyes and welcome the darkness just as the lackluster sun would have liked to leave the day’s work to the moon. But neither of them had a choice. The moon, which had shone so beautifully throughout the night- it seemed she always looked more beautiful in the cold, her friends the stars always shone brighter then, too- had slipped off to parts unknown and the sun would have to do his work, though probably he could knock off early, the shortest day of the year was fast approaching, and the old woman would have to do her work, too, already the joggers in their tights had begun to run by, soon the dogs would drag their people here, later there would be the children whose parents or nannies would send them off to play on the frozen monkey bars while they drank their hot coffee and screamed into their phones. The children would huddle close together, petrified by the cold, and pray for play time to end. And it would make the old woman sad to see them like that. She liked to watch them run and scream and climb. She liked that, sometimes, they smiled at her. But she didn’t like to sit too close to the playground. When she did, often, a toddler would waddle up to her and say hi, or would tug at her sleeve, or would point at her red hat and proudly name it, pointing to her own head as she said the word. The old woman loved the children, but she did not like the fear on their parents’ or nannies’ faces when they were spotted standing so close to her, then those adults would hang up their phones and they would come running over and they would roughly drag the child away. Soon, the child would know better, would know that the old woman was one of those people you aren’t supposed to look at and you’re certainly never to touch. 

The old woman sat up slowly, fearful of the monstrous back spasms that always lurked nearby, waiting to strike. She sat still for a moment, huddled up in her blankets and plastic, then gave a great sigh and began to unswaddle herself. She folded her dirty blankets and the life-saving plastic neatly and slipped them carefully into her bulging pack. The wind slapped against her face and reddened her cheeks. She stood and shouldered her bag, then began walking across the frozen grass, away from the rising sun, toward the roaring street. 

She walked until she came to the cafe where they didn’t throw her out. She went inside and sat in the fluffy red chair in the corner. All around her, the morning rush streamed by. Inside, the baristas took orders and made drinks and called names, the customers placed orders and watched drinks be made and didn’t listen for their names then scolded the baristas for taking so long. Outside, the people walked quickly, their shoulders brushing, their bags colliding, blending together like water, moving faster where the sidewalk grew thin like a stream forced through a dam. She sat for a long while in the fluffy red chair, stupefied by the warmth after the cold of the night, by the safety after the danger of the dark. One woman glared at her for a moment then huffed away to sit on a stool. Perhaps she would’ve liked to have the fluffy red chair. One man handed her a small black coffee with a grunt that might have been words. She thanked him and smiled. He was careful not to brush her fingers with his as he handed it over. 

The old woman pulled herself with some difficulty from the fluffy red chair and stepped out into the cold. The wind howled spitefully through the buildings, scattering trash, ripping words out of mouths, roaring through every chink in the old woman’s winter armor. She crossed her arms and bowed her head and walked as quickly as her sore feet would carry her.

When she got to the church, there was a line that snaked out of the great double doors, down the steep stone steps, and past the nativity scene. The old woman took her place behind Tony, who had lost his left leg in Vietnam and his home in Michigan, and beside the third wise man, who had shown up to a baby shower with embalming fluid. That had always struck the old woman as odd, but the statue of Mary was smiling sedately and seemed to be content with the gifts. 

Standing still was even worse than walking. The cold brought tears to the old woman’s eyes and fire to her ears. The line moved maddeningly, foot-shufflingly slowly, but, finally, she was safely inside the heavy double doors. The warmth wrapped her in its arms and held her tight. She didn’t mind the waiting much then, but she was growing terribly hungry. When she got to the front of the line, the priest and the old women who volunteered to work with him and who always looked at him like they were a little bit in love, gave her a plate filled with potatoes and green beans and a little turkey and a brown bag filled with sandwiches, chips, and apples. 

“It’s gonna be a real nasty one tonight,” the priest said, “I suggest you head on down to the mission as soon as you’ve eaten. I don’t want anyone caught out in this cold.”

The old woman suppressed a groan as she found a seat at a table. She hated the mission. They slept on beds like army cots, so close together she could stretch her arms out straight and touch someone on both sides, and always there was someone coughing fit to die, someone screaming fit to wake the dead, someone crying fit to break her heart. But the priest was usually right about these things. He’d warned her of the blizzard years ago that had blanketed the whole city in three feet of snow. So she’d go to the mission. 

The woman beside her, Claudia, gave a toothless grin. She smiled back. In a past life, Claudia had conquered most of her demons, or at least managed to keep them at bay. She had lived with her sister who had given her the love and the medication she needed. She had been adored by the neighbor children whom she liked to bake cookies for and she had won employee of the month twice in a row at the grocery store where she stocked shelves. And then her sister had died and Claudia had fallen headlong until she crashed into the street.

When she had eaten, the old woman lingered for a bit, trying to store up the warmth of the place like a solar battery. But, as soon as she stepped outside, the warmth fled, the cold conquered. She shivered and shook, her teeth clattering together so intensely that her jaw began to ache. Her back felt like it was being contorted into unnatural shapes and her feet hurt terribly then, worse still, grew numb.

The lazy winter sun had already begun to slip beneath the horizon when the old woman reached the mission. A red-faced man stormed past her as she walked up the steps to the front door. She soon knew the reason for his anger. The mission was full. The doors were locked. There was no room at the inn.

The old woman limped slowly down the steps. The darkness had come on quickly and the stars seemed terribly far away. Hot tears warmed her cold cheeks. She sat for a moment on the bottom step, exhausted and afraid, but the cold of the concrete stabbed through her jeans and she pulled herself to her feet. She knew a place, a grate that would keep her warm. She didn’t like to sleep there, always felt herself awfully exposed to passersby, but it would keep the worst of the cold at bay.

She stumbled through another long walk on numb feet. The dark of the night was oppressive. The moon seemed to be goofing off behind clouds while the far-off stars shone only at half-brightness. The cast-iron street lights were woefully outmatched by the dark like so many birthday candles in a miners’ pit. 

When she reached the grate the old woman found it covered with a sheet of metal, firmly locked in place. The city had paid someone to go around and lock up the grates so that freezing people wouldn’t gather around them. “Bastards,” the old woman yelled, kicking the padlock. She struck her toe hard against the metal and gave a pained yelp. A man in a thick greatcoat and a red scarf gave her a troubled look. She walked away from the grate as quickly as she could, stumbled as if drunk through the dark and the cold until she came to a little park. In the park there was a bench. It wasn’t her park and it wasn’t her bench, but it would do for the night.

The old woman wrapped herself in her blankets then wrapped the sheet of plastic around them, pulled her hat down low and her scarf up high and lay on the bench, gazing up at the shivering stars. 

The cold bit her again and again. She curled into a tight little ball and squeezed her eyes shut tight, but still the cold circled around her, still it slapped against her flimsy coverings, still it snuck through the hole in her left shoe. She shook with the cold and with her fear of the cold. She prayed for the sun to rise, for the night to end.

A soft snow began to fall. The old woman was a little girl riding a radio flyer down a snow-covered hill. A soft snow fell and made the earth new and beautiful. Icicles glistened in the light of the winter sun. Then she was inside, standing before a roaring fire and sipping from a blue mug of hot chocolate. The old woman smiled softly. She had begun to feel so nice and warm. 

Megan Neary is a writer and teacher living in Columbus, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Rejection Letters, Near Window, and Flyover Country, which she edits.

Lilies
 
The wind brushes through 
the leaves on the trees
manipulating them to wave
naked bodies dancing
against the grey canvas.
 
The rain tumbles down
getting lost in the rush of air
cold from the mountain
a sigh that never
runs out of breath.
 
The windows are pimpled
with uneven, translucent drops
nature’s avant-garde painting
as if a child has pushed away 
a splattered spoonful of medicine.
 
I see myself in those drops
the gentle curve of my lashes
marble eyes staring back
the long sweep of my nose
the dip where my lip meets chin.
 
I am so small in it
the drop that lingers on the glass
gently falling to the edge
like lilies wilted 
near the end of a funeral.
 
 

Jennifer Novotney holds an M.A. in English from Northern Arizona University. Her work is forthcoming in Buddhist Poetry Review and has appeared in English Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Unbroken Journal, and The Vignette Review, the latter for which she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2014, she won the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for her debut novel, Winter in the Soul. She grew up in Los Angeles, CA and lives in North East Pennsylvania with her family where she teaches English and creative writing.

Plainsong
 
                           Bonum est diffusivum sui
                          (The good pours itself out)
                         - St Thomas Aquinas
 
 
Mid-summer sky, hallelujah bright,
Waves rising in exultation, gulls tilt
For ballast and slowly rise like a 
Devotion in gusts of salt-glazed air. 
Wooden grids of cottage windows 
Are filling up with candle light, 
And the rush of incense seeping 
From hedges of sea roses, sherbet-
Pink, consecrates the air or the 
Makings of this day when heaven 
Seems closest to us and would 
Willingly lift, fold and cast all 
Burdens sea-wards leaving for us 
This shoreline’s indelible shining, 
The benediction of milk-blue water and 
Tinseled filaments of whispering light.

A life-long resident of Connecticut, John Muro is a graduate of Trinity College, Wesleyan University and the University of Connecticut. His professional career has been dedicated to conservation and environmental stewardship, and he has held several volunteer and executive positions in those fields. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published last fall by Antrim House, and it is available on Amazon. John’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Moria, Euphony, Third Wednesday, Clementine Unbound, River Heron, Amethyst Review and several other literary journals.