Convalescence on Returning to Cape Cod
Convalescence on Returning to Cape Cod
by Dana Sonnenschein
For L.M.J.
Every spring something makes you
lower your head to keep walking at all—
torn ligaments, sciatica, arthritis, grief—
but I still want to go to the beach.
The sun’s so bright everything shimmers.
In the marsh, egrets burn white,
their breeding plumes flickering in the wind
as they hunch and stretch, fishing.
An osprey searches for a current of air,
leans in, scans shallows and depths.
Cormorants labor to keep solid bones aloft
and dry their wings before diving again.
There a least tern plummets into a splash
only to circle back where silversides run.
Turnstones poke at the tideline, flipping rocks
and half-shells, working their way down-shore.
Persistence. What I’ve always admired in the world,
I see in you, trudging ahead through sand
despite today’s cough and fever aura,
the foot that drags when you’re tired.
The scent of magenta roses drifts over the dunes.
Past your shoulder, the ospreys nest.
Sit with me. If we talk quietly, if we’re here
long enough, the birds will come to us.
Even the pale piping plover, one or two
where once there were thousands.
Coming back every year. Birds the color of sand
and so light they don’t leave a track.
Ago
'Ago'
by Glen Armstrong
A few years ago.
I tried to grow tomatoes.
In buckets.
Even as I potted the soil.
I had the feeling that I would fail.
A few decades before that.
I ate paste and trembled.
When stray dogs approached.
Or coaches raised their voices.
A few centuries ago.
William Blake saw angels.
In the trees.
A few seconds ago I was thinking.
About William Blake.
Something broken.
That I drag behind me.
Started rattling again.
Something that we’d left unspoken.
Slipped from this world.
And demanded my attention.
They Brought Flowers
They Brought Flowers
by T. Allen Culpepper
“Scientists discover Neanderthal skeleton that hints at flower burial”
—The Guardian, 18 February 2020
At first—for a long time, actually—
they brought flowers, talked to me
from my graveside, said they missed
me and all of that, and they were
sincere, I think, but then one day
I noticed that their visits had stopped.
Why, I don’t know, the view from here
being rather limited. Maybe some
cataclysm wiped them out at once,
all the Neanderthals, though we never
thought of ourselves that way, of course;
we were just people like everyone else.
Or maybe some ferocious predators
devoured our village, or maybe it was
a slower phenomenon, gradually
dying out from natural causes
until no one who knew me was left—
it’s so hard to gauge the time. Perhaps
they just evolved and lost interest,
or maybe a long cold spell killed
off the flowers so that there was
nothing to bring and no point in coming.
It did get lonely after a while, though,
what with never going out and never
having visitors, and the options are
limited for eternal souls separated
from their bodies before they had
religions to misdirect them. Anyway,
another day, another eternity, it doesn’t
really matter, or at least it didn’t until
I heard the scrape of tools, steel ones,
modern, not the old-school implements
I used when I walked above ground.
Have my people returned, better equipped,
I wonder, or have curious strangers
come to pay their awkward respects?
Either way, I hope they’ve brought
flowers, because I have missed the flowers.
Green Card Soldier
Green Card Soldier
by Carl Palmer
seasonal migrant worker
unwed mother in Arizona
temporary work visa expires
sent back across the border
unwed mother in Arizona
allows her teen-aged son
sent back across the border
the chance to have a better life
allows her teen-aged son
now after his first eighteen years
the chance to have a better life
by staying and joining the US Army
now after his first eighteen years
he fights to become an American
by staying and joining the US Army
by becoming an American fighting man
he fights to become an American
offers his life for this country
by becoming an American fighting man
becomes an American citizen, posthumously
Pygmalion
Pygmalion
by Jane Rosenberg LaForge
When stones crack along
the denser axis,
no amount of lotion
can heal them, bring
them back into a single
formation. My father,
ex post facto, was always
complaining that my
mother let herself go,
as if she were a statue
and had begun to settle
like dust in a whirlwind,
or teeth worked down
in their wooden substitutes.
There’s no palliative
for what is natural,
a matter of years
and balance against
pulleys and grooves.
My mother did not believe
in hokum like rose hips and
serums, commercial
tales of rebirth and renewal,
so she split at the heels,
along the spine and
temples, and was never
forgiven for living her decline
in sight of bullies and fools.
Different River, Different Rock
Different River, Different Rock
by Joey Brown
I step into water running southerly, easterly,
water that, were I not so stubborn, would carry me from home.
I walk against a current that turns me, turns me,
and I am half a mile from camp before I think of directions again.
I am here because I went on the road, on a tear,
the way I go for state lines and highways,
historical markers as if they mean something.
This time I drove with one arm out the window,
wind sharp enough to cut skin.
A black catfish walks the water with me.
His size suggests he is old, and the way he weaves ahead of me,
then drifts back to me when the basin makes my going slow,
shows his comfort with travelers in his river.
I stop to watch him, and he stops, too.
His whiskers sting my legs.
I imagine he lingers in thoughts of waywardness,
but really it is the warm stirring of the water he misses.
I reach down to touch his head.
Before my fingers break the surface, he is gone.
I come up with a wafer of black shale,
a hundred years of puréed sand pressed into its layers.
Two fathers and two sons unload gear and a yellow dog,
push their canoes into my stream of consciousness.
I finger the broken tip of the shale, its one rough edge,
and wonder how long I have stood thinking about all I do not hold.
We Still Live in the Cave!
We Still Live in the Cave!
by Amirah Wassif
we live in the cave,
me, my people and some funny creatures appear on the TV screen.
My family doesn't have any screens,
but our neighbors have one.
They saw these creatures through it,
they laugh every night,
they laugh every breaking news.
When we hear their laughter,
we laugh too as polite followers
who don't want to make their leaders disappointed.
We live in the cave,
nursing our mother nature milk, perfectly like a greedy newborn.
We have no idea
If we love our cave or not?
We have no food, no water
but, our neighbors have.
We hear the movement of their mouth every day, every night.
We absorb their voices while watering their body
and then, we feel like "we did it, we ate, we drank, also we had our shower."
We live in the cave, watching the shadows of ourselves here and there
and if you ask me
"did you ever feel bored?"
I will automatically answer you
I have no idea
but, if my neighbors felt bored before
my answer would be "yes"
because as you know I and my people are their followers.
We live in the cave,
trying to figure out our way
throughout our neighbor's eye.
They talk to us behind the ancient walls every year
every year, they come and stop close to our cave
and order us to shut up our mouths
'cause that doesn't fit the modern civilization age.
We are such polite followers to our leaders
so, we did it, we shut up.
We live in the cave,
with no clothes, we all here are naked as the day that we were born
but, that doesn't matter
because our neighbors have clothes.
They have many,
and they promised us that they will donate to us.
It is a grand prize for me and my people, isn't it?
We live in the cave with no information
keeping our blinders on our eyes
trying our best to catch the news from our neighbor's station
and they still laugh every night,
every breaking news
we also laugh too
and when they laugh louder,
we follow our leaders
and when they laugh louder,
we follow our neighbors
but finally, after a while of laughing,
we started to cry!
Full
Full
by Andi Brown
Here is how you eat boiled shrimp when you are twelve years old at a family reunion in Gulfport, Mississippi: First, the aunties will boil the shrimp in giant pots, pounds and pounds of the stuff. Next, they will chill it on ice. Then they will pour the shrimp onto the tables covered in wax paper, ringed with bowls of cocktail sauce.
My aunties’ cocktail sauce is tangy, because Whelan women prefer a double portion of lemon juice. It is not spicy. The uncles make the crawdads, and they are spicy. I don’t know if this is by man’s intention or God’s design, but crawdads are spicy and shrimp are not.
The shrimp are boiled just long enough to separate the meat of the shrimp’s back from the shell, but not long enough to make the shell or legs soggy. Here is how you make the most of the meat: Grab the legs of the shrimp, pinch them together, and peel off the shell. Pull the head of the shrimp off slowly. What’s left behind is grey and yellow paste, brain and spinal cord; it looks funny and smells like rotten eggs but doesn’t hurt to eat. Peel the tail carefully, not to disturb the tendrils of muscle that run almost all of the way to the end.
Good shrimp is pink and firm and made by my aunties on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The room we eat in has no air conditioning, just fans that lazily circulate the hot, wet air. Metal chairs shriek as they are moved in and out from the tables, each time a family member is identified and hugs are had.
I’m quiet, fastidiously pulling off the head and tails, prying off shells, making my private shrimp graveyard. My fingers are sticky with shrimp brains and cocktail sauce. It runs down my fingers and onto my wrists.
A
cousin younger than me plops down and begins eating. Unceremoniously ripping
off the shell, missing parts of the meat. I hate him for the waste, but there
are mounds of shrimp, an abundance. We can afford to be sloppy.
A woman near me tells me her name is Sarah May, and that she is a cousin of my mother. I take her word for it. My mother has fifty cousins scattered across the South and in other parts of the US. She knows all of their names, what they all do, where they live, and where their children live.
Sarah May says, “I was in the Zeus Parade with your mother when we were in tenth grade. Did she tell you about that?”
I
say, “I don’t think so.”
“Well, every year, the prettiest girls rode in a parade through Hattiesburg. All the Whelan girls were on the float, of course. Your mother was never on the Zeus Court, but her sister Angie was the Queen of the Zeus parade one year. I can’t believe she didn’t tell you!”
I
ask for more details—it seems like the thing to do—and Sarah May happily
obliges.
“Your mother wore the most beautiful ice blue dress with chiffon sleeves and silver stitching right along here.” She gestures to the column of her neck. “I wore a green dress with a ribbon threaded from up here down to the bodice.”
My mother comes over and sits beside me. She’s skinny in a way that looks intentional. Her hand rubs up and down my back, the touch a strange thing in and of itself. She greets Mary Lou, and they trade secrets about what cousin lives where and who is struggling, bless their heart.
My mother takes her own pile of shrimp, pulling the heads and tails off as haphazardly as my little cousin, not conserving the meat. This is not how we do things at home. At home she ignores my brothers and sisters while we squabble over food, picking every piece of meat off the bone. At home, I sneak into the kitchen at night and steal food because I am so hungry I can't sleep.
She
says nothing to me, hand returning to idle on the back of my chair
intermittently until she excuses herself and makes it clear that I, too, am
full.
Blank Lines
Blank Lines
by Jocelyn Whitney
Blank lines, then columns checked with tally marks: M, F, 50, B. Line after line they face me, challenging me for answers my ancestors would not give them. A hole in my heart confirms what was long suspected. When your English/European family has been in America for over 10 generations, chances are you are a descendent of great evil and torment (and hopefully some good to offset some of such sin). Migration upheaves the peace, and the people follow precedent, zeal, money, and they survive, they bear children. I find walls created by my ancestors themselves, but most of mine are scalable, unlike that great wall created by those blank lines. What, then, can I offer the other descendants of those who survived what should never have been? What of those who were bound and sold, listed just before the oak sideboard and oxen team in the estate records? I can learn truth. I can search for preciously sparse information. I can cry to the world, “You were there, in Maury County Tennessee. At least three generations of people named Briggs worked you, enslaved.” I can find your names, call your names. Men there in 1831: George, Lone Sam, Dick; women: Nancy, Dolly, Malinda, Clarisa; girls: Sally, Margaret, Catherine; boys: William, Andrew, Samson; little girls: Mariana, Jane, Angelina. I will remember your names, filling in those blank lines. I will remember them along with my great-great-great-grandparents; we share this history.
Soul Sketches
Soul Sketches
by N. T. McQueen
My
youngest daughter gives me drawings every day.
At five, she has mastered writing and spelling her name as well as a handful of random CVC words. She draws princesses, our family, tropical sunrises, kittens and carrot people. Just not all in one picture. Her favorite compositions involve us holding hands, surrounded by her name, ‘BAT,’ ‘BUG,’ ‘DUG,’ ‘MOMM’ or a new word added to her lexicon. Sometimes she hands me the picture, a toothy smile anticipating my reaction, where I tell her how beautiful it is and place it by my bedside or on the refrigerator among the gallery of her sister’s artwork. But, on occasion, I find a crudely misshapen, handmade envelope stuffed with a lone piece of paper resting on my pillow after I’ve kissed them goodnight and shut the door.
This situation does not isolate itself with my youngest. My two older daughters are their own Frida Kahlos, Mary Cassatts, or Georgia O’Keefes. Post-its or college ruled paper transform by their imaginations into a still life, landscape or portrait. The medium is a matter of proximity or availability. They show up under my pillow. On my night stand. Directly hand delivered. Accidentally discovered while sifting through the wasteland that is a child’s room. These moments on paper exist as fragments of themselves. A window into what they value and find beauty in.
To be honest, sometimes I get the impression the oldest and the youngest give us pictures out of indifference. A piece of artwork they invested some time into but, in all honesty, just don’t want to throw away. Much like first drafts or rough sketches where the spark or essence or shape formed but fails to capture precision of the idea, and revision seems too unbearable to engage in. I’m sure they get that from me.
On occasion, they hand over a piece of artwork I can clearly tell they put little effort, thought or time into. It’s junk, really, much like commercialized Top 40 hits or Michael Bay films. Mass produced for a momentary pleasure which, in this case, is a ‘thank you’ and a ‘good job.’ After they turn and walk back to their room, I instinctively lift the plastic lid to the kitchen trash. Yet, I still pause.
Should I throw this into the garbage? I have 68 other variations, but why do I pause? She didn’t even want to keep it, so her childhood shouldn’t be affected. This won’t come up in counseling in 15 years, will it? In the end, after three daughters, I do throw it away. But, deep within me, I experience a tinge of sadness when I release the drawing from my hand and watch it fall into the bin.
I often ask myself what I should do with all these drawings, with all these sketches. Four a day over the course of a week adds up and outgrows the plastic bin where we save the greatest hits of each girl’s creative endeavors. And, in 30 years, do I return them to each child as my mom did to me? I still stumble on a box or folder of my drawings as a child and wonder why I have these, but I fail to toss them. The reason avoids me.
My mom kept nearly every hideous or partially hideous drawing I gave to her until she died a few years ago. Tracings of my hand, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles breaking through a brick wall, X-Men, and so many Tyrannosaurs and Diplodocus and Dilophosaurs that her bedroom would have resembled the Natural History Museum or a Jurassic Park of disproportionate dinosaurs who most likely deserved extinction. She stowed away hundreds and hundreds from every age in manila folders and plastic bins. She even served as editor and transcriber of my copyright infringing comic, Teenage Mutant Ninja Rats.
Starting at nine, she commissioned me to draw her a Santa Claus picture every year for her birthday. She would tell me, “It’s all I want for my birthday” which, as far as I know, was not a lie. The teenage years may have resulted in some missed Santas but, over the course of a decade, I drew her one each year. Mostly out of obligation. Sometimes I ventured outside of the traditional. A redneck Santa in camouflage, a jaded Santa clearly disgruntled at the chimney obligation, a cubist Santa during my first year as an art major. I may have done a meth-head Santa whose teeth had turned black and whose arms were canvassed with ugly tattoos, probably done by an elf on methadone in the alley behind the toy shop. Regardless, she loved each one in its own unique way and ornately framed each to hang at Christmas every year. She often bragged about each portrait when guests came over and defended my artistic failures. After she died, I found the evidence of this art stashed in her garage, bubble wrapped and slipped into plastic bags.
I
remember giving two pictures to my dad.
I must have been seven or eight and tried to think of subjects he would appreciate. So I drew a picture for Father’s Day of a large Sockeye mounted and taxidermized on a wall with a plaque underneath it that read, “King Salmon” followed by a fishing rod, reel and other fishing related images. I remember handing him the picture, framed by mom, while he worked in the office, and how he smiled and exclaimed how nice it looked. In fact, he hung it on the wall of his office, and I would notice it each time I came in. Seeing that drawing still there filled me, even for the briefest of moments, with a sense of pride that he would keep it up there next to his Master’s and Doctoral Degrees and the team shot of his high school girls basketball team. Part of me wants to say that incorrectly labeled salmon hung in his office at the college and then at the tax office in Rancho Cordova. Each time I saw it, nostalgia would sweep me, and then a brief sense of love that this Sockeye-parading-as-a-King Salmon swam from office to prestigious office—before I found it, still framed, in a standard file box, sitting among other discarded books, papers and junk labeled for the landfill after he married his new wife and compiled credit cards and bank loans in my name.
The other drawing’s life took a different turn. Around 10, I drew dad another picture of one of the fastest and grittiest pitchers to ever throw a baseball by copying the image off a Nolan Ryan baseball card. The movement of the photo had Ryan’s front foot landing and his pitching hand cupping the ball for the forward arm motion. A snapshot before the ball turned to fire in his right hand. I gave it to dad, unframed and without the ceremony of a holiday. He said thanks and told me it looked good but, unlike the first picture, Nolan Ryan floated around, unframed. In fact, I’m not sure if it made it to all the other offices or if its ultimate destination was the file box with the salmon.
I wonder why Nolan Ryan didn’t have the same allure. Was it a memory of a failed dream to play in the majors? Did it remind him he sacrificed a life to play for the Phillies AA league to be with my mom and, eventually, my sister and me? He could always catch a salmon off the Mendocino coast, but not a fly ball at the warning track of Veteran’s Stadium.
When a child allows their soul onto the paper, there is a sacredness of this act. A napkin canvas can reveal more than words at times. As a father, I can’t imagine a life where my daughters only gave me two pictures. But, if they did only give me two pictures, there would be no pauses before trash cans or standard file boxes. They would be an extension of my body and the marrow of my bones, a window into the soul, framed and visible at all times as a reminder.