Category Archives: Uncategorized

Flutter of a Wing

“Hi, Becky. I’ve got a pair of silver tiebacks that were carried back from China in the 30s. I want some knotting done on them. Can you recommend someone?”

“Sure can. Stephanie. She’s the new girl in town. Seems to be able to do most anything.”

Stephanie spoke smartly.  “Sure, I’d like to do the job. Sounds interesting. I can be there in twenty minutes.” 

When she pulled up at the curb, I went out to meet her. She was as colorfully dressed as her van. Hmm. Hippie. Wonder why she emigrated from San Francisco to our quiet little town in Southern California.

“Hi, I’m Stephy,” she said, pushing back the sliding door of the van. “Want to see my invention? It’s for disabled people. We need to do everything we can for those who need help.”  I stared at the contraption of cobbled wood, metal, and foam, crammed behind the driver’s seat. Her passionate flow of words failed to help me understand how this Rube Goldberg machine was going to help anyone.

I was relieved to go inside where we pored over knotting books from the library. When I had thumbed through them, I had been fascinated by the evolution of the practical sailor’s knot into exquisite art forms.

As if by osmosis, Stephy understood what I wanted and sketched out an intricate design that complemented the silver work.

“I’ll buy the cording tomorrow,” I said. “When would be a good time for me to drop it off?”

“Call me as soon as you have it.” 

 I parked in front of the hulking barn and slipped through an open door. Large sheets of fabric, appliqued with abstract shapes, hung on the walls of the workshop that was dominated by a commercial sewing machine. Hey Jude filtered through the swaths of cloth. 

“Hi, Stephy. You look busy.”

“I’m working on these panels that will be used as a backdrop for the Ramona Hillside Players’ next performance. Got my pedal to the metal.”

“I thought you just moved here. You sure don’t waste time.”

“Nope, got too much to do. Love that teal cording and giant tassels you have in your hands. Let’s go upstairs.  I’ll show you my place, and we can have some tea.”

We went outside, moved around the end of the barn, and hiked up long stairs that seemed none too sturdy. “Got to get these rickety stairs fixed. Been busy with lots of appointments.”

We weaved our way through a beaded curtain into a generous space.  My eyes were drawn from one interesting pocket to another, before they were pulled to her bed – queen of the room. The canopy, made of lovely twisted branches, was draped with diaphanous slices of pale blue chiffon. In the back, I spotted a 50s dinette table, surrounded by tree stumps. Quaint, though not my idea of comfortable seating.

“Why don’t you settle in, while I make tea?” 

I sat in one of the huge arm chairs Stephy had covered with a purple and red flame stitch pattern. Much as I loved that restless design, there was way too much of it for me to feel at ease.

She swept her arm toward the shelves behind me and said, “My object d’art collection. Really, objet trouvé, found art. I can enjoy these odd bits that I fancy or create pieces of art from them. You know, like Duchamp and Cornell.”  Wow, she knows some things. I hope she knows how to knot.            

Stephy placed funky mugs, with coiling snake handles, on a low table in front of the chairs. We drank wild sage tea made from leaves she had gathered in the field behind the barn. 

I headed for the door, shot a look over my shoulders at the jade fibers, and questioned whether she would be able to pull off this piece of art. 

I got my answer a few days later. Stephy phoned to tell me she was on her way. I nearly gagged when I saw what she had done. How could she have possibly thought I would like this gaudy stuff.  I didn’t let her down easily. “Stephy, this isn’t the design we agreed on, and I really don’t care for all the brightly colored beads you tucked in. All this busyness detracts from the simple beauty of the tiebacks. What happened to the sketch you made?”

“Sketch? I forgot about it. Sorry. Got lots on my mind. I’ll go home and redo it.”

The next time around, she had the knotting just right. She had added a simple silver bead that delighted me. “You hit the nail on the head,” I said, as I handed her a check.

“Thanks. I enjoyed creating these pieces for you. I’m glad Becky suggested you call me. Before I go, I want to give you a gift. I’ll get it from the van.”

She handed me a sorry looking rag doll, much too large and too ugly to be at home in a child’s arms. The once white figure, now a dingy grey, had elongated proportions, especially the flat head, outlined in metal knobs, and the flouncy pantaloons, all of which made it look like a caricature. Around the waist was a string of miniature objects: a beehive of twined rope, a wooden birdhouse, a metal watering can, and a round something with a dangly wire that defied description. When I looked closer, I noticed that the objects hung from a wire binding the doll’s wrists. A long stick, with a sign that read “HERBS,” was tucked inside one arm. The pièce de résistance were metal wings attached to her back. No doubt: the gift was created from Stephy’s found objects.

A flood of déjà vu washed over me: another godawful creation. I hid my feelings this time and said, “Thanks, Stephy. Let’s hang it on the patio.” She beamed at her child dangling from a hook.

A few weeks later, Becky called. “Hi, I’ve got some bad news. Stephy died while waiting for a liver transplant.”

“What? She never said a word.”

“Not to me, either. Or, her mom.”

“I’m blown away. 

“Me, too. The funeral is over, and her mom asked me to come and help clear out her belongings.” 

“Thanks for letting me know, Becky. I’m too upset to talk right now. Call you later.”

I sank into the couch, my eyes drawn to the beautiful silver tiebacks, enhanced by Stephy’s stunning design. Why should I be so shaken?  I hardly knew her, didn’t think of us as friends. 

When I moved from California to New York, I surprised myself by packing the gangly doll—even more so by hanging her on my deck.  How had I allowed her to entwine herself into my life, why was she still clinging to me as if for dear life? 

A few years later, on a brisk fall day, I was sweeping leaves and my many-colored-broom snagged something. I looked down and saw Stephy’s doll crumpled in a heap. After twelve years, she had finally bit the dust. Time for this clangy pile to make its transition to the garbage can. 

I lifted the lid, ready to release the droopy tangle. My hand froze and inexplicably reached for scissors to clip the threads that held the wings to the doll’s back. Light caught the curlicues that danced around the edge of the metal, revealing etched words. 

The letters were traced in gold—gold as pure as the knowledge in Stephy’s heart that life can change in the flutter of a wing. “My wish is that we could have done more things together. But that can’t happen. I just wish you a great life every day as best you can be happy.” In the center was her signature: “Angel Stephy.”

I sucked in my breath. “Thank you, Stephy,” I whispered, as my hands folded over my heart. 

Fay L. Loomis lives a particularly quiet life in the woods in upstate New York. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers, her poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in The Closed Eye Open, Love Me, Love My Belly, Rat’s Ass Review, Ruminate Magazine, HerStry, Sanctuary Magazine, and Burrow.

Where I am
 
There is no religion here.
The way the earth bends in this light,
stretches out from here
and rises to form mountain tops
is more or less gradual.
From here,
you can see for miles.
Everything is connected –
rock and tree and sky.
The wind pulls waves across these fields
in an ever-changing, almost rhythmic pattern.
I am here.
This is what I came for.

Sarah Rehfeldt lives with her family in western Washington where she is a writer, artist, and photographer.  Her poems have appeared in Presence; Blueline, Appalachia; and Weber – The Contemporary West.  She finds inspiration in the close-up world of macro nature photography.  Favorite subjects include her garden; the forest; cloudscapes; and the ever-plentiful raindrops of western Washington.  You can view her photography web pages at:  www.pbase.com/candanceski

Waiting for Hurricanes


For most of my adult life, 
I’ve been waiting for hurricanes.
Sometimes, while watching the news
from a hotel far away, but usually,
in my house, surrounded by lanterns
and water bottles, a mobile phone,
a bin of batteries, and my anxious thoughts.
The bird feeders, nest bottles and wind chimes
have been hauled to the garage, 
the potted plants shoved against the back wall.

I fill the bathtub, arrange the bucket. 
The lanterns are all LED now, 
and they reveal my delusion 
of keeping a clean house. 
The sky has a greenish cast, 
and I can smell the hurricane 
as it approaches. The power goes out, 
and I wait for the sound of limbs
hitting my roof. After the storm, 
I will haul limbs all over my yard;
maybe I will wait for the roofer 
and the tree removal crew.

The power will come back on, and then it will go 
out again. Next week, I may do it all again.
Waiting for hurricanes is a way of life
that suits me more than I care to admit.
For as long as I can remember,
I’ve lived in the Cone of Uncertainty,
wondering which part of my patched-together
existence may collapse—knowing 
that when part of it does collapse,
the world doesn’t stop. My shelter is flimsy,
even when I think it can withstand a storm.
Some things can be replaced; some cannot.

Loss occurs every moment, but we do not notice
because the eye of the hurricane is over us,
lulling us into our false beliefs. But those of us 
who know hurricanes, those who have lived 
with them for decades, are not fooled. 
We know that the most beautiful, 
the most established, the most cherished
structures can be wiped away 
with one strong wind, one eight-foot surge,
one accident, one divorce, one election.
And so we wait—with our water bottles,
our lanterns, our batteries—hoping 
for the best, but knowing 
that we are not in control,
and that we never have been.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbook, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books); she has two other chapbooks forthcoming. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

The Sleeping Tune

                         After Gordon Duncan

More than one adrift in silence,
More than nowhere in breaking light,
Within the sound of keen foresight,
We dance for day’s continuance.

Tease out a soul of excellence,
We see it step in soft eyebright,
More than one adrift in silence.

Relax the taut pull, the distance,
To praise again the good, goodnight
In which we curve, a satellite
That pulses with bedtime cadence,
More than one adrift in silence.

Dennis Daly has previously published seven books of poetry. He writes reviews regularly for the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene, the Somerville Times, and Wilderness House Literary Review, and on occasion for Ibbetson Street, the Notre Dame Review and Boston College’s Religion and the Arts. Please visit his blog at dennisfdaly.blogspot.com.

What Happens When a Woman Says ‘Yes’ to God? 

In a grocery store 
in Mississippi
waiting for the steaks
and strawberries 
to inch forward,
a black conveyor belt,
a flimsy book rack 
catches my eye,
paperbacks 
for Christians
strategically placed 
for the impulse buy.

One title, in particular,
rivets:
“What Happens When Women Say ‘Yes’ to God.” 
(There are no books telling us what happens to the men.)
I wonder about this.
Exactly what does happen 
when a woman says “Yes” to God?
Is this something spiritual?
Or something else?
Zeus disguises himself
as a white bull,
a beating of feathers,
a rain of gold.

Eve is stripped of her clothes.
She promises not to eat apples.

Isis chokes
on the flesh of her brother.
The Virgin Mary
defends her swollen belly.
Guan Yin loses her children.

Somewhere in Venice
a courtesan is made
to dance on water.

Whispering Aramaic
a prostitute washes
men’s feet
with her hair.

I tell myself that this book
exists only because
there is a grocery store
here in Mississippi
where the checkout girl
was forced to go to church
from an early age,
a simpler place
where we can all rest assured
she’s been taught
all she needs to know 
about Eve’s problem with fruit
where she learns
to pass the meat
and the strawberries
back to the sack boy.

In just a few days
I will return to my own home
in one of the largest cities
in the United States.
I will have tickets waiting 
for my favorite ballet.
But even there, nightly,
in the grandest of theatres,
God-like, the great sorcerer,
Rothbart,
beats his grackle wings 
over a pitch black lake.
The audience, breathless,
has paid to see 
a white swan
turned
into a woman
against her will.
The next day
Spring.
White jasmine scales the fence
and Notre Dame de Paris
bursts into flame.
                       

Gabrielle Langley released her first book of poetry, Azaleas on Fire, in March of 2019. She has received the Lorene Pouncey Award, Houston Poetry Fest’s Jury Prize, the Vivian Nellis Memorial Prize, and three Pushcart prize nominations. With poetry appearing in a variety of literary journals, Ms. Langley was also a spearhead and co-editor for the anthology Red Sky: Poetry on the global epidemic of violence against women (Sable Books – 2016). Additional information about this poet can be found at www.gabriellelangley.com.

Early Lesson

I was disappointed to find the Comfort Stations
advertised along the highway were toilets. 
Sometimes you wanted a toilet, sometimes comfort 
and for the former there was always the woods.

I tried to imagine over miles of highway 
what a real Comfort Station would be, 
who would be there, if you stopped by 
needing something, a book, a touch, a prayer,

and I wanted to be one of the Comfort 
Station employees, though I thought 
you might have to be a nun. Maybe it was just 
you had a uniform, everyone knew

to recognize it, it was on the signpost.
I went so far as to wonder where the comfort 
came from, but never what it was.
They shook it out of boxes, it was white
 
or maybe blue, softer than a quilt
with pockets filled with all those things you missed 
that day, and everyone's was different.
You took a little nap, afterwards the nun

folded it up again, and you felt good,
ready to leave, get back to where you were going.
And since we were human, of course, 
in the back of the room there'd be toilets.

Journals publishing Janet McCann’s work include Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou’Wester, America,  The Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, New York Quarterly, Tendril, and others. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she taught at Texas A & M University from 1969-2016, is now Professor Emerita. Most recent poetry collection: The Crone at the Casino (Lamar University Press,  2014). 

Kyrie, Eléison



A prize-winning organ player, young
and going deaf,
clicks a “borrowed” key
in the cathedral’s side-door lock.

She takes a breath.

It hums out through the silver pipes
peeping through their cabinet jail.

She finds the organ bench and sits.
Adjusts.
She lifts her feet and hands above the instrument,
then throws herself at sound,
a bird flying at a window.

Meanwhile, the pretty-colored saints
stuck piece by piece in glass
turn up their eyes and palms to heaven
and pray for real,
for once.

Come thou, animating breath of God;
empower us to raise our arms
to cover and protect our ears!

But their tongueless prayers
will not be heard tonight.

The organ player, young
and losing faith,
has tears now flying freely out.
She knows how bad she plays—can feel

the thunder of her notes colliding
in her chest, can hear
though faintly, and plays
harder,

and harder and harder and harder,
the angry drunk of her song
swinging wildly at the air.

J.V. Sumpter recently earned her BFA from the University of Evansville. She is an assistant editor for Kelsay Books, Thera Books, and freelance clients. She received 2020 Virginia Grabill Awards in Poetry and Nonfiction, and her most recent publications are in Leading Edge Magazine, Not Deer Magazine, and New Welsh Review. Visit her on Twitter @JVSReads.

Works of Love


One’s whole, two’s dual, but after three
We’re faced with multiplicity – 
But now we will dismiss this sum,
We only know two comes from one.
It’s one we know when on our own,
But if we think we’re all alone
However single we appear
Just speak your name: who’s there to hear?
This conversation implies two
We both believe as being you,
So let us say one is the lesser
And speaking first, is our transgressor.
The second listens, and forgives,
He knows a sin for what it is,
As for a third, we care, at most,
About him as for any ghost.

Robert Donohue‘s poetry has been published in Better Than Starbucks, Grand Little Things and Neologism, among others. He Lives on Long Island, NY.

Sometimes Angels Wear Kilts



and play bagpipes
outside the Tower of London

for lost souls
like me

whose friends left
for Borough Market,

whose phones are at 12%
and dropping fast,

whose paper map was confiscated
by Loki in ravenskin.

And sometimes angels will point you
to Algate station

and you’ll promise God you’ll be kind
to strangers,

help the next lost daughter of Eve, but
when you go up

the steps in Euston Square
and the woman squatting there

calls out to someone,
to you,

you make an exception
because you are alone

and selfishly, you want
to see your twentieth birthday

on Tuesday.
You know your angel understands.

J.V. Sumpter recently earned her BFA from the University of Evansville. She is an assistant editor for Kelsay Books, Thera Books, and freelance clients. She received 2020 Virginia Grabill Awards in Poetry and Nonfiction, and her most recent publications are in Leading Edge Magazine, Not Deer Magazine,and New Welsh Review. Visit her on Twitter @JVSReads.

Burning Bush



Turn
aside.  Just turn aside
engage with the wonder and mystery
grapple with the strangeness of it.
Turn aside, feel flames kiss your cheeks
as the flames in your heart leap.
Gulp it down, that old foe fear –
all you are doing is looking.
The bush was ablaze before you ever came near.
Turning aside is not much
just pagan curiosity, a lump in the throat
dogged willingness, roughshod.
Turn aside.  Just
turn aside
a little moment, short breath-span
lean in to hear
perhaps just the wild beating of your heart
crackle of fire
or else the burning whisper, call of your name.

Rachel Grandey, originally from North-East England, studied literature, linguistics and anthropology before moving to South-East Asia to teach English. She enjoys sea-gazing, bird-watching, tea-drinking and early morning forest-exploring. Her proudest literary achievement to date is winning a signed Manchester United football in a poetry competition at the age of fourteen. Her poetry has been published in Vita Poetica.