Magnets and Ladders
Active Voices of Writers with Disabilities
Spring/Summer 2025

Editorial and Technical Staff

• Coordinating Editor: Mary-Jo Lord
• Fiction: Kate Chamberlin, Abbie Johnson Taylor, Winslow Parker, Marilyn Brandt Smith, and Carol Farnsworth
• Nonfiction: Kate Chamberlin, Marilyn Brandt Smith, Lisa Busch, Brad Corallo, and John Cronin
• Poetry: Abbie Johnson Taylor, Leonard Tuchyner, Brad Corallo, Sally Rosenthal, and Sandra Streeter
• Technical Assistants: Jayson Smith

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Submission Guidelines

Writers with disabilities may submit up to three selections per issue. Deadlines are February 15 for the Spring/Summer issue, and August 15 for the Fall/winter issue. Writers must disclose their disability in their biography or in their work. Biographies may be up to 100 words in length, and should be written in third-person.

Do not submit until your piece is ready to be considered for publication. Rewrites, additions, deletions, or corrections are part of the editorial process, and will be suggested or initiated by the editor.

Poetry maximum length is 50 lines. Memoir, fiction, and nonfiction maximum length is 2500 words. In all instances, our preference is for shorter lengths than the maximum allowed. Please single-space all submissions, and use a blank line to separate paragraphs and stanzas. It is important to spell check and proofread all entries. Previously published material and simultaneous submissions are permitted provided you own the copyright to the work. Please cite previous publisher and/or notify if work is accepted elsewhere.

We do not feature advocacy, activist, “how-to,” or “what’s new” articles regarding disabilities. Innovative techniques for better writing as well as publication success stories are welcome. Content will include many genres, with limited attention to the disability theme. Announcements of writing contests with deadlines beyond April 1 and October 1 respectively are welcome.

All work submitted must be original. We do not accept work written by an AI or any form of plagiarism.

Have You Published a book? If you would like to have an excerpt of your book published in an issue of Magnets and Ladders, please submit a chapter or section of your book to submissions@magnetsandladders.org. The word count for fiction and nonfiction book excerpt submissions should not exceed twenty-five hundred words. Poetry book excerpts should be limited to five poems. Please include information about where your book is available in an accessible format, either an eBook or audio format. We will publish up to one book excerpt per issue.

Authors under age 18: Please include a statement from a parent or guardian that indicates awareness of your submission of literary work to Magnets and Ladders.

Do you have a skill, service, or product valued by writers? For a minimum contribution of $25.00 we will announce it in the next two issues of “Magnets and Ladders”. All verifications of products or services provided are the responsibility of our readers. Book cover design? Copyediting? Critiques? Formatting for publication? Internet access or web design? Marketing assistance? Special equipment? Make your donation through PayPal (see magnetsandladders.org) or by check by March/September 1. 100-word promotional information is due by February/August 15. Not sure about something? Email submissions@magnetsandladders.org. All donations support Magnets and Ladders.

Please email all submissions to submissions@magnetsandladders.org. Paste your submission and bio into the body of your email or attach in Microsoft Word format. If submitting Word documents, please put your name and the name of your piece at or near the top of the document. When possible, please send your submissions as a Word or txt attachment as many email programs have been reformatting poetry and putting unwanted line breaks in stories and essays. Submissions will be acknowledged within two weeks. You will be notified if your piece is selected
for publication.

Final author approval and review is necessary if changes are needed beyond punctuation, grammar, and sentence or paragraph structure. We will not change titles, beginnings, endings, dialog, poetic lines, the writer’s voice, or the general tone without writer collaboration. If your work is selected for inclusion in a future “Behind Our Eyes” project, you will be notified; your approval and final review will be required. To insure we can contact you regarding future projects, please keep us updated if your Email address changes.

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Audio Versions of Some Past Issues are Available for Your Listening Pleasure

The Perkins Library for the Blind has been recording issues of Magnets and Ladders for several years. In 2017, these recordings became available on cartridge to patrons of The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. For many of our readers, the Perkins recording of each edition of Magnets and Ladders is their only access to the magazine. Other readers may enjoy the pleasure of hearing the stories and poems performed by the Perkins narrators after reading the magazine online. In the fall of 2022, we were given permission, by Perkins, to upload mp3 files of magazine recordings. Back issues starting with the Spring/Summer 2019 edition of Magnets and Ladders are available now at https://www.magnetsandladders.org/mp3. Please check back often, as we anticipate adding more back issues soon.

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Behind Our Eyes announces our third anthology

Text of cover image courtesy of Be My AI: The image is the cover of a book titled Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst. The subtitle reads, “The Third Literary Anthology of Stories, Poems and Essays by Writers with Disabilities.” The book is edited by Mary-Jo Lord. The background of the cover is gray, and the text is in yellow. Below the text, there is an image of a bright, fiery sunburst, showing intense solar activity with vivid orange and yellow colors.

Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst is available from Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and soon coming to Amazon.

From the back cover:
In Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst, the third anthology of its kind, six sections comprised of memoirs, fiction, and poetry share slices of life from the perspectives of those living with disabilities. Most works first appeared in Magnets and Ladders, an online literary journal in which novice and experienced writers with disabilities showcase their work. While unique challenges are incorporated into some of the works, this compilation speaks to universal themes and common experiences, involving loss and grief, adversity and fear, love and passion. Subjects such as life-changing illness and the death of a pet are shared with sensitivity and compassion; some works reminding us that a rainbow is possible only in the aftermath of a storm. Heartbreaking, as well as heartwarming, memoirs recount experiences belonging to military veterans, children of immigrants, and parents in the trenches of child rearing. Witty fiction introduces us to cosmic bowling with aliens, and asks us to envision a sky with two moons. Reflective poems describe braille as “ticklish filigree lace on cardboard paper” and fingerspelling that “performs magic in a cacophony of the palms.” In other verse, lyrical imagery paints enchanting portraits of the natural world. To unexpected delight, tantalizing recipes accompany several works; such as those for edible salad bowls, lemon herb bread, cinnamon rolls, and even frozen yogurt pops for golden retrievers named Sammy who “sing the blues.” As a part of the community myself, I am reminded that the only thing a deaf woman cannot do is hear, and the only thing a blind man cannot do is see. This engaging collection promises three enriching opportunities: readers are challenged to question outdated notions of disability; invited to appreciate perspectives that differentiate us from one another; and encouraged to embrace the threads that make up the fabric of our collective human experience. Readers, disabled and not, will be inspired to hold up a mirror to their own experiences, and recognize that, reassuringly, we are all in this together.
Kelly Sargent, Creative Nonfiction Editor, The Bookends Review and author of Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion

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About Behind Our Eyes

Behind Our Eyes, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization enhancing the opportunities for writers with disabilities. Our anthology published in 2007, “Behind Our Eyes: Stories, Poems, and Essays by Writers with Disabilities”, is available at Amazon and from other booksellers. It is available in recorded and Braille format from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

“Behind Our Eyes, a Second Look” is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers, and in E-book format on Amazon Kindle. It is also available in recorded format from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. See our book trailer on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk0uIaQTr24&feature=youtu.be.

Several members of our group meet by moderated teleconference twice monthly to hear speakers; share work for critique; or receive tips on accessibility, publication, and suggested areas of interest.

Our mailing list is a low-traffic congenial place to share work in progress; learn about submission requests; and to ask and answer writing questions. If you would like to join our group and receive access to our phone conferences and mailing list, please complete our quick and easy membership form at http://www.behindoureyes.org/mform/form.php.

If you would like to learn more about Behind Our Eyes, or if you would like to make a donation, please visit our website at http://www.behindoureyes.org.

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Contents

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Editors’ Welcome

Hello:

Spring is in the air, and The Spring/Summer edition of Magnets and Ladders is filled with poems, stories, articles, and essays highlighting many of our longtime favorite authors alongside some new voices.

Once again, Ona Gritz was our guest judge of the poetry finalists for the Spring/Summer 2025 Magnets and Ladders poetry contest. Ona has an extensive background in poetry and in interacting with people with disabilities.

Ona Gritz’s new memoir, Everywhere I Look, won the Readers’ Choice Gold Award for Best Adult Book, the Independent Author Award in New Nonfiction, the Independent Author Award in True Crime, and is an Independent Book Review 2024 Must-Read.

Her poems and essays have appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, Ploughshares, Brevity, Bellevue Literary Review, One Art, and River Teeth. Among her recent honors are two Notable mentions in The Best American Essays, a Best Life Story in Salon, and a winning entry in the Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020 Project*.

The Space You Left Behind, Ona’s first young adult novel, written in verse, has just been released from West 44 Books and featured in The Children’s Book Council’s Hot Off the Press roundup of anticipated best sellers.

Visit her website at: https://www.onagritz.com

I would like to give a big thanks to all of the committee members, Ona Gritz, Marilyn Brandt Smith, and Jason Smith for your hard work and support throughout the production process.

We had contests with cash prizes in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Below are the Magnets and Ladders contest winners.

Fiction:

• First Place: “The Forester” by Mitchell Austin
• Second Place: “At a Tender Age” by Donna Gum
• Honorable Mention: “Tree Story” by Douglas G. Campbell
• Honorable Mention: “A First Nations Allegory” by John Cronin

Nonfiction:

• First Place: “Iron Girl: Tomboy, Tradeswoman, Tetraplegic: a memoir,”
  book excerpt by Cassandra Brandt
• Second Place: “Setting Limits” by Barbara Bates
• Honorable Mention: “The Dog Who Loved His Pa,” by Abbie Johnson Taylor
• Honorable Mention: “The July Disappearance: a Memoir” by Marilyn Brandt Smith

Poetry:

• First Place: “Prize from the Potter’s Wheel” by Alice Jane-Marie Massa
• Second Place: “Nobody Warns You About Cleaning Up” by Nashrah Tanvir
• Honorable Mention: “Primavera: When Spring Break is Over” by Lynda McKinney Lambert
• Honorable Mention: “One By One” by Sally Rosenthal

Congratulations to all of the contest winners.

The Magnets and Ladders staff wishes you a safe and fun filled summer.

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Part I. Slices of Life

Prize from the Potter’s Wheel, poetry First Place
by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

At the Tri-County Arts-and-Crafts Festival,
I pause at a booth
where a gray-bearded man
with thin, long, piano hands
is sitting at his potter’s wheel
to mold the clay into art
while my hands fancy upon
a magenta vase with two handles
between the flared opening and the casually curved base.

I picture the magenta vase
taking center spot on my ebony table,
covered by the antique cream-colored lace tablecloth
crocheted by my paternal grandmother;
then, I imagine pink peonies in the magenta vase.

Reality strikes as I dare to check the price tag.
As soon as I read the numbers,
I catch the eye of the artisan
who grants me a tired, but hopeful smile.

As I make my decision,
raindrops dare to fall
on the artists and their art,
on the Crafters and their creations,
on the potter’s wheel,
and on the smiling purchaser of the prize.
“Prize from the Potter’s Wheel” was previously published on Alice’s WORDWALK blog.

Bio: Holder of poetry pom-poms, author of THE CHRISTMAS CARRIAGE AND OTHER WRITINGS OF THE HOLIDAY SEASON, creator of the poster “A Guide Dog’s Prayer to Saint Francis of Assisi,” retired (full-time) college instructor of English, weekly blogger since 2013, advocate for National Poetry Month, avid container gardener, believer in preserving family history, a Hoosier-at-heart who has resided in Wisconsin since 1991, thirty-five-year handler of four magnificent Leader Dogs-all of these shape the petals of the blossoming, poetic life of Alice Jane-Marie Massa. To read more of Alice’s writings, visit her blog and author’s web page: https://alice13wordwalk.wordpress.com https://www.dldbooks.com/alicemassa/

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Village Life, Pantoum, poetry
by Kate Chamberlin

It’s the village life for me.
Several small shops along the sidewalk.
Good neighbors that know my family.
On the village green, grows a stately oak.

Several small shops along the sidewalk.
Bookstore, Flower Shop, and American Legion Hall.
On the village green, grows a stately oak.
My children can grow up healthy and tall.

Bookstore, Flower Shop, and American Legion Hall.
Close knit community with love.
My children can grow up healthy and tall.
Local library, recreation with bat and glove.

Close knit community with love.
Good neighbors that know my family.
Local library, recreation with bat and glove.
It’s the village life for me.

Bio: Kathryn G. (Kate) Chamberlin, B.S., M.A., and her husband have lived and raised three children plus two grandchildren atop the drumlin in Walworth, NY, since 1972.

With the assistance of computer screen reader software, this former Elementary teacher, developed a Study Buddy Tutoring Service, presented her Feely Cans and Sniffy Jars Workshop, became the published author of three children’s books, edited a literary anthology featuring 65 writers with disabilities, andis a free-lance writer.

As empty nesters, Kate and her husband enjoy having lunch out, country walks, and mall cruising or walking on their side-by-side treadmills during inclement weather.

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Dancing with My Guide Dog, nonfiction
by Marcia J. Wick

Ziggity-zag, jiggity-jog. Like a professional dancer, my guide dog leads me with confidence on our daily walks through the neighborhood.

Full speed ahead, we waltz with the garbage bins, do-si-do with the fire hydrants, and prance past children playing Frisbee in the park. We thread the needle along crowded sidewalks while neighbors and strangers holler “hello.”

We swoop, swish, and slip past overgrown bushes, low-hanging tree branches, and protruding mail boxes. We disco across driveways and hop over potholes along our way. Crunching leaves on the trail, careful on the ice, padding through puddles, venturing out early to beat the heat – we walk up to three miles a day every day no matter the weather.

He alerts me to obstacles and tripping hazards. He avoids oncoming cyclists, runners, and fellow dog-walkers. He stops on a dime so I won’t stumble over an abandoned E-scooter. He moved me backwards if a car turns right on red without clearing the intersection for pedestrians. He points with his nose at sign posts, fences, utility boxes, and parked cars that I might encounter with a hand or elbow. What I don’t see won’t hurt me.

He intuits what I need. He seems to have eyes in the back of his head. He hears what is coming long before I do. With my guide dog in the lead, I’m not afraid to venture out.

Each time my guide dog alerts me to a hazard, I pause and praise him. “Atta-boy,” “good job,” or “nice work” followed by a treat. When possible, I tap the obstruction with my toe or the back of my hand and express my appreciation with exaggerated glee. “tree-hee-hee.” “b-b- big bush.” “quack-quack-quack” when we encounter a troublesome crack. I exclaim, “bumpity-bump” where tree roots have raised the concrete. I punctuate “dippity-do” with an “I love you,” and I follow “nice on the ice” with an extra kibble or two.

For every find, my guide dog gets paid – one kibble at a time, with one exception. When he ignores my “forward” command demonstrating “intelligent disobedience,” he hits the jackpot. One, two, three, four, five, six kibble in a row along with a heaping helping of praise if he prevents me from crossing the street in front of a moving car, dropping off the edge of an unguarded retaining wall, or falling into an open manhole, It doesn’t get any better than that.

By the end of a typical hour-long route, my guide will have earned a cup of kibble. No need to worry that he’ll get fat; every kibble is part of his daily ration. Thanking my precious guide by keeping him at a healthy weight is my job.

Wish I had a dollar for every time a passer-by has commented that I’m indulging my guide dog with Scoobie-Do treats. Better yet, would that I had five dollars for every unsolicited compliment my partner receives. “That’s a good looking dog.” “He’s gorgeous.” “His coat is so shiny.” “What a handsome boy.”

“That’s what everyone says,” I glow with pride.

Dancing with my guide dog is the best part of my zippity-do-da-day.

Bio: Marcia J. Wick is a blind, grey-haired grandmother retired from a professional writing career. She write freelance if it pays, for fun if not. Her work
has appeared in the Motherwell blog, Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Bark, Guide Dogs for the Blind Alumni News, and Magnets and Ladders. Her personal
essays reflect on parenting, caregiving, living with a disability, and adventures with her guide dog. When not reading or writing, Marcia volunteers with
Guide Dogs for the blind, advocates for public transit, and enjoys the outdoors with family and friends. Contact her at marciajwick@gmail.com.

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The July Disappearance: a Memoir, nonfiction Honorable Mention
by Marilyn Brandt Smith

Every year through 2024 I spent two weeks or more by myself in our Louisville, Kentucky home while my husband and son, Roger and Jay, vacationed with family in southern Kentucky. My family talked with me usually several times a day by phone or through smart speakers from 130 miles away. This story opens on a fourth of July in 2022 when they couldn’t find me. I wouldn’t answer their repeated pages or calls, and no one had spoken with me since dawn on the third.

By dawn on the fourth, Jay was aware that he should have heard from me or been able to reach me because I always wanted to be updated on the ACB convention calendars. I stayed at home in order to make sure none of us were in each other’s way while I enjoyed the American Council of the Blind convention and the competition from the Barbershop Harmony Society’s international convention. My husband and son were getting desperate enough to believe they should reach out to a friend and former employee of ours, and perhaps such services as EMS and the Metro Louisville Police department. Why wouldn’t I respond to those pages that would wake me up, and could be heard in any room in our home?

Now let’s backtrack a bit. On July 2, the opening session of the American Council convention ran late. Going into the wee hours of the third, I decided to pull an all-nighter. It’s true I’d been up since the previous morning, but I wanted to listen to a breakfast program on the third hosted by the guide dog school which had provided six retrievers for my husband’s use over the past forty-eight years. By the time that was over, of course, it was time for the first general session, so I decided I could stay up a while longer. During the last presentation of that morning, I gave up. It was time, I thought, to go upstairs, take my usual nighttime meds, and plan on catching the afternoon convention shows from a later broadcast or podcast.

The weather was very hot on the fourth, hovering around the 95-degree mark in the daytime all weekend. Although I knew that fact in theory, it apparently did not register. The next thing I knew after going upstairs to go to bed on the third was that a man was rousing me to my feet, calling me by my name, and offering me a blanket. He was concerned about my length of time in the sunny shady spot I had chosen. It took me a moment to realize that I was not upstairs in bed, but instead, was in my back yard, in the weeds, without any clothes on. Someone sent my friend/employee upstairs to get a robe from my bedroom to make me a little more comfortable.

What apparently took place is that Roger and Jay roused the troops, and fire, police, ambulance and our friend gathered to find me. Roger changed the security code to let them in, but somehow they wanted the fire department to break the window in our pantry so they could access the house in that manner. The kitchen door with access to the back yard was wide open, and I had apparently disarmed the alarm when I came outside. The hot tub cover was open, and my cover-up was on the fence, but nobody mentioned digging around in the hot tub to find out if I was there. Go figure. When I told them I thought I had been sleeping upstairs, that of course made no sense to them.

The EMS person put me through the questions about current date, who is president, count backward from 100 by sevens, etc. She took all my vitals, and asked me about my plans for the upcoming week. She didn’t specifically ask me why I was in the yard, and seemed to know I really couldn’t explain. I chose not to go to the hospital since nothing appeared to be life-threatening or even suspiciously wrong. I did promise that if something else came up later, I would give it my attention.

Trying to figure it all out became the puzzle of the week for my family and me. I had been in the hot tub, but I didn’t remember any of that until a few months later. I was not missing any of my medications, so I hadn’t taken an incorrect dosage. For three or four days afterward, my thinking was a shade off-kilter in terms of keeping my directions of both activity and thought straight. Finding some words was a challenge, still my vitals remained normal. I was glad for a long, comfortable sleep upstairs in my bed after we got over the shock and surprise of my discovery. Fleetingly I had some recollections of being in a half-awakened state and realizing I was hearing walkie talkie kinds of sounds, but not being able to adequately ask for any help. I went back to both virtual conventions with interest, but with a tad more humility and appreciation than I might have had before that disappearance I experienced.

Three years later, I still look at this episode with mystery. Although I’ll never be able to explain why I went out in 95-degree weather to get in the hot tub, I have to think it had something to do with denying myself sleep for over thirty hours unnecessarily. I also believe that while I was in the hot tub, I probably had a mild heatstroke that compromised my thinking and decision making. I more or less went to sleep for the twenty-four-hour period from about 1:00 PM on Sunday the third until I was found at about noon on the fourth.

My husband wants to believe it was sleeping medication related, but my doctor did not want to change my prescription. My family had even determined before they found me how to have me transported to our vacation home in southern Kentucky for burial. It is still an incident I’d rather forget, and which I hope to never repeat. I think I was fortunate to escape what could have been a very dangerous circumstance out in the midday Kentucky heat.

My takeaway relates to underestimating the need for sleep and overdriving my body, either to prove to myself I could or out of sheer negligence. I hope you have or had a safe fourth of July this year. Let me assure you, if someone calls long enough, I will answer. Don’t look for me either out in the hot tub or pulling weeds in my birthday suit in 95-degree weather.

Bio: Marilyn Brandt Smith worked as a teacher, psychologist, and rehabilitation professional. She has edited magazines and newsletters since 1976, and was the first blind Peace Corps volunteer. She lives with her family in rural Kentucky. Her first book, Chasing the Green Sun, published in 2012, is available from Amazon and other bookstores and in audio form. She loves writing flash fiction stories, and was the primary editor for the first Behind Our Eyes anthology, as well as Magnets and Ladders from 2011 through 2013. She enjoys college basketball, barbershop harmony, and adventure books. Visit her website: http://www.marilynspages.com.

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Emergency dilemma, fiction
by Kate Chamberlin

When the doorbell rang, I answered it.

Through the screen door, an unfamiliar young man’s voice said, “Ma’am, your husband has been in an accident. Dispatch has sent me to pick you up.”

I knew my husband was working alone on a rental renovation in Seneca Falls. He might have fallen off the ladder or down the old, steep wooden stairs. No one would have been able to phone me as our internet and phone had been out of service for two days.

“Oh really,” I said, discreetly locking the screen door. “What is your name?”

It was not any of the policemen’s names I recognized, and I thought: You young whipper snapper. How many times have the elderly been told to be on the alert for scammers?

It reminded me of the little girl, who was told her mother asked him to pick her up after school to take her to the mother. Hah, I wasn’t born yesterday. Although, I couldn’t immediately figure out what this man would want with this 80-year-old blind woman, but you can never tell one pervert’s fetish from another these days.

“If you are legit,” I said, “Go to my neighbor next door and ask her to come over here with you.

I closed the front door and locked it. I went upstairs to my computer to write down my daughter’s phone number.

When the doorbell rang again and I open the door, I recognized my neighbor’s voice as she said, “Kate, this police officer has come to take you to Dave.”

“Please call my daughter for me. I’d prefer to have her informed what is happening and drive me to the hospital.”

The officer told us which hospital and that he’d wait in his marked patrol car until she arrived to provide us an escort.

After I talked with my daughter on the neighbor’s cell phone, she said she would wait with me and began to chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” I asked her.

She told me that the officer walked away, mumbling and shaking his head.

I felt quite foolish about not believing him, but I’d rather be safe than sorry, even if this was just a flight of dark fantasy as I was marooned at home with neither internet nor phone service on Friday, the 13th.

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Rails across the Wilderness, memoir
by Shawn Jacobson

I look down the tracks, tracks that will take us from the East end of Australia to the West. We dropped off our bags for the journey and are carrying our backpacks for the three nights that we will be onboard the train. We eat a lunch of finger sandwiches provided for us in the station restaurant as we wait for our chance to board the Indian Pacific train that will take us to Perth.

Soon it’s time to board. We will be in car K, a coach with gold-class compartments that will be our home for the next four days.

Our compartment, one of eight in the car, is a master work in the use of limited space. Three seats face the front of the train. At night, these will become the lower of two bunks. Moving from the window to the door, the seats face a closet with a small safe for valuables. A fold-out table comes out from under the window. Next is a mirror that sits atop racks for water bottles. Closest to the door is a bathroom where a shower, toilet, and sink fit into an area the size of a walk-in shower. Cup holders are found above the sink, one of which becomes the holder of my contact case. We are surprised to find that the compartment door does not lock; this turns out not to be a problem.

Once we familiarize ourselves with our compartment, we walk to the lounge that is one car forward. There are chairs and couches along either side of the car. Behind the seats, large windows give a view of our surroundings. Small tables flank the aisle through which we walk. Later, we will visit the dining car that is one car further forward. For now, I walk to the bar that is in the front left corner of the lounge and order my first beer. One would think that an open bar on a moving train would be a recipe for trouble, but this does not turn out to be the case.

Soon, the train starts moving. As is the way with trains, this motion starts slowly and builds as the train picks up speed. We look out the windows and see a series of stations for commuter trains as we leave Sidney. After what seems a long time, we leave the city and head into the Blue Mountains. This range provides the most scenic part of our trip, though the tracks seem to follow the lower way through the range with few scenic views.

We are most of the way through the Blue Mountains when it is our turn to eat supper. The dining car features tables for four, so we get to share our meals with other couples. The meals themselves are very good though the portions are on the small side. The fair is also varied. We will eat kangaroo multiple times. We will also eat camel, curried over Afghan rice, on the second full day of our trip.

After dinner and another drink in the lounge, we return to our compartment to find that it has been converted to sleeping mode. I get the top bunk, so I look, with trepidation, at the ladder that leans against the window. As bedtime approaches, I climb the ladder and pull down the sheets so that I can slide into bed. The next day will have an early start, so I try to fall asleep quickly.

The process of getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom is an interesting one. First, I turn on the nightlight so that my wife can see what is happening should I crash to the floor. Then, I move to the head of the bed where the ladder can be found; I take care not to bang my head on the ceiling as I scrunch along. Then, I lower the guard rail and lean out of bed to find the top of the ladder. Once this is done, I find the third rung of the ladder with my left foot. Then, I can put my right foot on the ladder’s second rung and commence my descent. Once I use the bathroom, I scramble back up the ladder and back into bed.

The next day begins before dawn. I climb down the ladder and get my shower. I pull the shower curtain around me to keep the toilet and sink dry. Once I begin, I find that the shower works well with good water pressure. I then get dressed, working around my wife in the limited space. Once we are both showered and dressed, we head to the lounge for coffee before our first excursion.

Before we disembark, we celebrate ANZAC day; this is the Australian version of Veteran’s Day. Once the staff gets the passengers to quiet down, we have a moment of silence and patriotic reading. We then hear “The Last Post,” the Australian version of taps. We eat ANZAC biscuits—cookies made with rolled oats and coconut—with our coffee and proceed to leave the train.

Our excursion is a tour of the town of Broken Hill led by a drag queen. This is appropriate because the movie “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert “was set in Broken Hill and featured drag queens.

Broken Hill was a mining town which has partially transitioned to become a tourist destination. Our tour starts in the old trade union hall. This is a beautiful ornate building with a museum on the second floor. From here, the tour takes us on a mile and a half walk past old mining equipment, old pubs, and various other businesses. We saw the Paradise Hotel where scenes from the famous movie were set. After walking for about an hour, we reboard the train and depart for Adelaide.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon is spent traveling through flat country to our next destination. On several occasions, we see mobs of kangaroos and emus through the train windows. We are entertained by a folk singer who sings requests; Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond are favorites from the audience.

In the middle of the afternoon, we reach the station in Adelaide and embark on another excursion. We have chosen a tour that takes us into the mountainous countryside to the east of the city. After visiting a scenic overlook, we travel to a German community. We have a cheese tasting and an authentic German dinner with entertainment. Along with German sausages, I have a generous stein of good beer. As a result, I am up and down the ladder often that night.

The next day starts at dawn. We have breakfast in the dining car as we roll through empty country. This day features flat land that makes me appreciate the secret scenic beauty of the great plains. I believe that there is more scenery in Kansas than you see between Adelaide and Perth.

Especially featureless is the Nullarbor plain. This stretch of desert includes the straightest track in the world, a 300-mile—about the length of Iowa—stretch of track with no turns at all. We look out the windows at immense stretches of salt grass and dirt. Any rock larger than gravel receives notice from the passengers. “Rock,” one of the passengers will say pointing out the windows and we all look.

The train stops twice on this day. The first stop is at Cook, a town built for workers building the track. This once thriving community now has a population of two people who service the train. We go out to investigate the town, but the view is not worth putting up with the black flies that assail us. We returned to the train.

The other stop is at the largest cattle station in Australia. In the warmer months, the passengers are treated to a cookout and a stargazing talk. However, we have come this way in a colder month. Thus, we eat supper on the train and have a drink with music from our folk singer on the siding.

Most of the day is taken up with folk music, a trivia contest in the lounge, and several games of cribbage in our compartment. To my amazement, we win the trivia contest by drawing on our knowledge of world-wide facts. We also take the time to talk with our fellow passengers, most of which are from Australia and New Zealand. We find that we are the only Americans on our part of the train. This makes us objects of curiosity to our fellow passengers. One thing that sparks their curiosity is our Nation’s state of politics. Another is how much of Australia and New Zealand we have seen and what we thought were the best parts of these nations. Having spent a month down under, we have many stories, and opinions, to share. After an enjoyable evening of conversation, we retired to our compartment for the night.

The last day, we awake in the Australian wheat belt. This land of farms and small towns is still flat, but it offers the diversions of houses, farms, and other works of man. Several times, we stopped on sidings to allow other trains to pass.

By early afternoon, we entered the larger urban areas around Perth. And then we arrive at the station. I bid farewell to the train, collected our bags on the platform, and queued up for a cab.

As we ride to our hotel, I remember the trip across Australia. Even if parts of it were disappointing, and parts moderately uncomfortable, I found the adventure of it amazing. I am glad we took this trip.
However, I am also glad that I won’t have to descend a ladder to get out of bed tonight.

Bio: Shawn Jacobson was born totally blind, but, due to several eye operations, he has partial eyesight. He grew up in Iowa, but moved to the Washington DC area to work for the Federal Government. After 36 years of government work, Shawn retired and spends a lot of time traveling. He lives with his wife, son, sister-in-law, and an ever changing pack of dogs. His daughter lives in Baltimore.

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Null Arbor, poetry
by Shawn Jacobson

Rails across the void,
this is what we came to see,
land empty as space.
In the lounge car, we play cribbage.
A folk singer does Johny Cash
as we drink beer and hard cider.
Outside, space-empty land rolls by
dust and salt grass, gravel and flies.
A passenger yells “rock!” and we turn
to see emptiness turned scenic through
the wonderous magic of strangeness.
And would this be like voyaging in space
the emptiness of vacuum going by
and in the darkness someone might yell “rock”
and we would see an asteroid fly by.
Would we sing songs and play games fit for space
and celebrate with a spaceman’s libation
to the great black void made scenic
through the strange magic of wonder.
How much this train is like a spaceship
for we now seem a planet of our own
Perth, Sidney, Adelaide, all of human kind
separated from us by the gulf we journey through.
This gulf as empty as some wide galactic void
as devoid of features as the deep vacuum of space.
And like the endless dark between the stars
this is the grand emptiness we’ve come to see.
Land like outer space,
land that we have come to see
on void crossing rails.

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Dungarven Road (Let it Please Die), fiction
by Colm O’Shea

“What’s up with mam?” Fiona asked.

“Cancer.” her sister Mary said. “Mr Burns rang me the other day because he couldn’t get through to you. Said she doesn’t have much time left.”

Fiona laid a hand on the pendant around her neck, She clenched it, the chains trembling slightly as a result of her increased grip.

If it weren’t for who she was talking with, she would have hung the phone up immediately. Her kids needed help with homework. But Mary was one of the few people who saw her mother for what she was.

Fiona took in a brief breath for comfort.

“You want me to go see her, is that it?”

Well I can’t just travel from Peru to Dublin in less than a week. She’ll probably be worm food and compost by the time I get there.

When the call eventually ended, Fiona stood in the kitchen by herself.

For more than forty years, there was one memory that existed tax free in her head. As a 7-year-old, yanked up to her front garden by the goliath hands of her mother. Fiona’s polka dot dress torn off of her, as her hands were tied around her back, until she was presented bare like a replacement for a scarecrow. She couldn’t remember the reason why it happened, just wild selections in her head, like a scattered album of polaroids, and the feel of the early spring breeze brushing against her thighs.

Mercifully, Fiona’s mother and only legal guardian must have changed her tune. As soon as the neighbours to their right whispered about the confrontation amongst themselves, Fiona was quickly brought inside and told to never under any circumstances mention it to anyone, ever.

Life continued on. And for a child that young, the memory stuck out all the more when it’s with someone she shared breakfast, lunch, and dinner with for the following decade of her existence.

The moment Fiona turned eighteen, she took her younger sister and ran out of home. They lived in a hostel community, sharing toilets with drug addicts and struggling fathers. All of them knew who Fiona was, thanks to numerous posters across town, but none of them reported her whereabouts. But in spite of that, and the conflicted relationship she and Mary shared, Fiona had known that she would never go home again. She never dared to look back, knowing the petrifying glare her caregiver would give her.

And for forty short years, she never did. Until the past came up to her.

That night after dinner, Fiona mused the idea in her head. Her usual work at the creche was off thanks to the easter bank holiday, which did give her time to visit. But why would she?

When she met her husband for the first time, joined together under a solar eclipse on a balcony in Turin, she told herself to be vulnerable just for him. As they shared a brief kiss under the twilight, she felt a kind of warmth she was denied for most of her life.

And now the source of that pain was nearing its end.

Regardless of the many colourful words she’d use to describe her mom, Fiona knew that it was customary to see it off.

In the morning after breakfast, Fiona went into her oldest son’s bedroom, telling him she’ll be gone for few hours to see their grandmother. But he should look after his little brother in case she was away longer.

The words said, she reluctantly got into her family seater ford and drove off.

It was almost scary how well she knew the way home, even after all that time. A quick drive past Dundrum shopping centre, then a 15-minute stretch until she got to the M50, provided the bank holiday traffic didn’t hold her up.

As she sdrove by the cars beside her, she pondered the direction many of them were going. Some passengers were dressed in suits and ties like any other dull Monday, others were families with many bright t-shirts and polo vests like a clown threw paint at them. How many of them were going to face something they detested? Or was it something they did every day, a punishment or consequence for something they could never be forgiven?

Soon enough, the exit towards Dungarven Road came up on her left. She steered her car towards it, passing by the various pine trees on both sides and the worn out, rusted brown town sign on her right.

As she drove into the closed off area, a rotting feeling developed in her stomach, not from the town itself, but from the images associated with it.

The town was One single road, five houses per each side, with a weathered white church to her left and a glass green painted groceries on the right, a sign out front that read “Winner of Best Small Shop from News of the World, 2009”. Fiona drove quietly through the tarmac. Both for the kids nearby and the experiences being recalled in her head. Nearly twenty years were spent on this one single stretch of tarmac that was paved by her grandparents. Something Fiona’s dad was always proud of, up until his disappearance when she was 5. And there was only one reason why he was never seen again.

Reputation meant everything in the small town that was Dungarven Road. For if something particularly out there, from a marriage scandal to an abusive parent was overheard or noticed by someone, the entire rumour, true or not would spread through the town quicker than grease ants to a corpse. And if you couldn’t deal with it or the neighbours were just a bit too knowledgeable of your life, past or present, there was usually a suggestion of where to go. To be fair, this is no different to what people online do nowadays. They find out something incriminating you did on Twitter or the like and then they proceed to publicly shame you until you can barely afford to buy a knife to stab yourself with. But in a place like Dungarven Road, the effect was much, much worse. These people didn’t just know where you lived. They knew who your friends were, what time you went to the local market and every dirty little secret you had. If you were interested in writing a biography, forget it. Your neighbours could write one in their sleep.

Fiona felt a chill as she reached the house at the end of the lane, directly facing the road. Just as she saw a man with an old, creased out face and stubbly grey Chris Hadfield moustache, with a stained coffee mug in one hand and another placed comfortably in a pocket in his burgundy dressing gown. Mr. Burns. His real name was actually Mr. Kilvar, a former news reporter turned stay at home dad, but Fiona had always referred to him as Mr. Burns, thanks to another decrepit, smug old man she hated on an afternoon show. She partly blamed the other kids during classes at the parish for talking about the funny yellow people on TV.

As Fiona got out of her car, the old man watched her with a thin smug expression.

“That car’s a bit big for a single girl like you.” his tone was somewhere between observant and sny. Fiona shrugged it off.

“It’s for my kids’ football practice.” Fiona said, mirroring his voice, “But I guess that doesn’t matter much to you.”

“No less than your feelings on the woman who raised you.” He nodded his head towards the house on his left. “There’s a nurse on standby near College Dublin University, but I’m the only one helping her out.”

“You’re wondering why that is?”

“Well it isn’t for the reason you think.” he explained. “She’s in a rough spot alright. The least we can do is make her comfortable for now. You’re here to visit?”

“Once you’ve finished blabbering.” Fiona muttered, heading towards the estate. Burns laughed to himself.

“Careful with your words girlie.” he said walking back towards his porch. “Or are you forgetting who helped change your diapers.”

Fiona wanted to say, “I bet you just helped make the coffee.” but she noticed he had already gone inside. She turned back towards her old home, with chipped beige paint around the exterior, and grass so thick and overgrown it looked like it was made from sheep wool.

As Fiona went inside, she waved a cloud of dust off her face, as her eyes adjusted to the scene. In the hallway, she could recount in front of her, the kitchen to the back right of the main floor, where many a rant between parent and child were held near the table and chairs. Then to the washed-out living room on the door to her left, where Mary used to hide from said arguments.

Fiona went up the stairwell near the living room, across the landing, stopping briefly as she heard a raspy, heaving sound, Resembling a hoover bag before it explodes. Between her old bedroom at the end of the level and the bathroom right next to the stairs, there was only one other room that could house the groaning sound.

Fiona walked towards the door and inched it open, revealing A bed in the room’s centre, bathed in sunlight from the window across the floor.

Swallowing her pride, Fiona walked towards the bed and stopped by its railings. The groaning sound was matched by the smell of old wet socks coming from the person in it. Her mother, under the sheets, arms crossed weakly together like a newborn. Fiona immediately thought of when her children were brought into her life, barely bigger than her palm and so very fragile.

It was funny. Even at her age, deep down, Fiona felt like that frightened naked girl once again, even seeing the cause of her nightmares in a state with one foot in her coffin, to be buried and forgotten beyond the large pine trees and radio tower next to them that stretched towards the starry sun. All of them silent witnesses to what she wanted to do at that moment.

Fiona took the pendent around her neck off, and placed it near a bedside locker. She noticed and took up a velvet pillow on a chair beside her. It would be so easy wouldn’t it, to simply press the cushion onto her mother’s face. To hold and to keep holding as the old woman struggled pointlessly to resist. Maybe not as poetic as it should be, but enough that she already had the pillow in her hand before the full image came into her head. And that’s when she hesitated.

This didn’t feel right. Regardless of what her mother did to her, ending the source of that pain would bring no peace to her feelings towards the events. As she thought this, Fiona shifted once more through the mental film reels in her skull, trying to find something else about her mother.

There was… one at least. Back when Fiona was barely a toddler, looking up from her navy pram towards the blue, blue Dun Laoghaire sky. Her mother, wearing a pendant that Fiona would inherit, gazed down at her, smiling warmer than the colours in the sky. White brimmed hat on her head, a 99 ice cream in her hand as she could hear a barber shop quartet relay Beach Boys classics.

Back in the bedroom, the now mature infant began to feel a strange sense of pity towards the woman under the sheets. Not as a woman, not even as her mother, but as a helpless, aged fish in a sea of thousands. One of many lost to circumstances beyond her. With her pillow still in hand, Fiona sat down beside her mother, watching as the sky went from grey to magenta to moon glow, as she waited and waited and waited.

By the time she finally left, it was void black outside. She was Barely able to retrace her steps back to her car.

Mr. Burns was still out front, not even the chill from a early spring night deterring him from his usual owl-like business.

“How is she now?” he asked.

Fiona said nothing. She got into her car and pulled out.

As she strapped her seatbelt in, Burns looked at her front window as if he was about to repeat his question. Then his eyebrows widened, like he heard a sniper bullet barely miss his left cheek. He nearly slammed his mug down on the pavement and dashed with all his might towards the house.

Fiona pulled out and left the estate, Remembering she left her pendant behind with the other things that deserved to be.

Bio: Colm O’Shea is a autistic writer from Dublin, Ireland. He recently finished a English with Creative Writing degree at University College Dublin, now finishing a Masters degree in Film and Creative Writing at Dublin Business School. Currently he is also the host of his radio show, “Metropobliss”, with Dublin South FM. His short story “Time and Place” was included in the Fall/Winter 2023 edition of Magnets and Ladders, with other works featured in the Listowel Writers Week, as well as publications from New Word Order and Library Cats Publishing. He hopes to publish a novel.

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A Fight for Family, flash fiction
by Abbie Johnson Taylor

“I’d like to propose a toast,” Dad slurred. His hand shook, as he raised his Scotch. “My son, Mean Sixteen, happy birthday!”

My own hand was shaking, as I raised my milk glass and touched it to his drink the way he showed me when I was younger. It was always Mom he abused, not me. Why was he calling me Mean Sixteen? I turned to Mom, and she gave me a sympathetic look.

Dad put his glass down with a loud clunk, and some of the liquid sloshed onto the table. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything bad by that. Being Mean Sixteen means you’re good at everything, your schoolwork, sports, everything. I was never good at anything when I was your age, and I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Now, your mom, on the other hand…” He glared across the dinner table at her.

Mom shrank, and I braced myself for another one of Dad’s physical assaults.

To my relief, he said, “Don’t worry, son. I’m not gonna spoil your sixteenth birthday by hitting your mom.”

The next day, when I told the guys on the team what Dad called me, they decided to call me Lean, Mean Sixteen, and Coach said that was a great name for me. But if anyone was mean, it was Dad.

He wasn’t always that way. When I was younger, he didn’t drink much. He showed me how to play football, basketball, and baseball, and we went to a lot of games. He let me help with some of his woodworking and taught me a lot about that.

Maybe Mom not being able to have more kids after I was born made him drink more after I started middle school. As he drifted from one job to another, losing most of them after only a few days, Mom found work to supplement his income, but money was still tight.

Dad was now usually drunk by dinnertime and often got physical with Mom because he didn’t like what she cooked. Mom rarely defended herself and got plenty of bruises.

A week after my sixteenth birthday, as we sat down to dinner, Dad, drunk as usual, sniffing the stew Mom made from leftovers, said, “This is garbage!”

Something in me snapped. I jumped to my feet and ran around to his side of the table before he could get up and attack Mom again. “You think I’m Mean Sixteen, huh? Well, you’re mean… How old are you?”

The next thing I knew, we were both on the floor, pummeling each other while Mom begged us to stop. I’d never fought in my life, but Dad was no match for Lean, Mean Sixteen. Though we each got our share of bruises, when it was over, Dad was out cold.

When I got to school the next morning, I went straight to Coach’s office. He was the kind of guy we could talk to about our troubles. I stood in the doorway as he sat behind his desk, doing paperwork.

Finally, he looked up and saw me, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Wow! What happened to you, buddy?”

I stepped inside, closed the door, turned to him, and said, “My family needs help.”

another version of “A Fight for Family” was selected as a winner of Wyoming Writers biweekly flash fiction contest and will be published in a future issue of
their newsletter.

Bio: Abbie Johnson Taylor has published three novels, two poetry collections, and a memoir. Besides Magnets and Ladders, her work has appeared in The Weekly Avocet and other publications.

She is visually impaired and lives in Sheridan, Wyoming, where she worked as a registered music therapist with nursing home residents and in other facilities. She also cared for her late husband, who was totally blind and suffered two paralyzing strokes after they were married. This is the subject of her memoir and many of her poems. Please visit her website at: https://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

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Emergence, poetry
by Sally Rosenthal

Middle aged and newlywed, he and I
had happy years before sickness
stole the light, trapping us
in a cocoon of gray until dark death
entered quickly, shutting the door firmly as he left.
Exhausted and cold, I clung to the false safety
of those ever closing walls
and stayed far past the time of eclosion,
a prisoner of grief and, later, routine.
Five years on, in the dead of winter,
you cracked open the chrysalis and drew me,
an unlikely butterfly, into the warmth of love,
a salvation born of mutual need.

Bio: A poet and book reviewer, Sally Rosenthal is the author of Peonies In Winter: A Journey Through Loss, Grief And Healing.

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Morning Routine: A Haiku Sequence, poetry
by Sally Rosenthal

slow awakening
not yet fully in the world
surfacing to now

opening cat food
urged on by insistent mews
breakfast is offered

strong coffee brewing
phone call to faraway love
his voice warms my heart

naming gratitudes
thanks to God for all blessings
new day beginning

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Part II. Reactions and consequences

The Forester, fiction First Place
by Mitchell Austin

-Vandalia High School, Vandalia, Illinois-

I was a forester. Growing up on the dusty planes of southern Illinois in the fifties, I don’t know what inspired me to this career. Maybe it was my family’s occasional visit to Missouri and my Aunt and Uncle’s house nestled in the Ozarks. It might have been the endless hours I spent flipping through the glossy pages of “Boys’ Life.” My inspiration didn’t matter; they couldn’t change the stark reality of Dad’s bank book. He couldn’t afford another kid in college. My older brother and sisters had wiped him out. The old days when a forester only needed to be good with an ax and saw were long gone. The modern forester had become part scientist, part manager, and even a bit of a politician. It wasn’t just about harvesting trees anymore; it was also about designing recreational parks, managing wildlife, dealing with soils, and, yes, growing lumber. I needed a degree, maybe two, and Dad’s pockets were empty.

“A forester? Where’d you get that idea?” My school counselor asked with raised eyebrows, pursed lips, and a whiskered waddle, adding to my stress. His voice was a curious mix of amusement and exasperation. All I could muster was a shrug and a mumbled “I don’t know.”

“Well, let me see,” he began shuffling through stacks of brochures and letters that filled his hopelessly cluttered desk. I saw the expression on his face change from one of skepticism to one that sparked interest when he found a catalog that triggered a memory.

“I think I saw something at Mizzou. Yes, yes, here it is. They have a degree in forestry and even a graduate program. I think they are about it for forestry in the Mid-West.”

University of Missouri, Columbia. Columbia, Missouri, that will be perfect, I thought. My aunt and uncle lived near there, and they would be delighted to board me for a few years. But tuition, that was going to be a problem.

“That would be out-of-state tuition. How much would that cost?” I asked, then mumbled. “Not that it matters unless it’s free; there’s no way I can afford it.”

“That, I can help with,” my counselor said while extracting a brochure from one of the piles of paper on his desk. Its cover, with sharp and promising colors, was dominated by the emblem of the US Air Force and emblazoned with the words: US Airforce ROTC.

“Enlist? I don’t want to join the Army. I want to go to college.” I protested, my mind already racing with the fear of military life.

“No. No, you got it wrong. This isn’t enlisting like a foot soldier—it’s officer school, not the Army, but the Air Force. It’s genuine college, the real deal. They’ll pay your tuition and pay you to go to school. It’s called ROTC-Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. I don’t know if they’ll like your idea of forestry, but they will like your grades and leadership here at Vandalia High. I think you have a good shot at being accepted.”

Some anxious phone calls, stress-filled interviews, and a mountain of paperwork yielded a letter sent to my home, hand-delivered to me by my mom, welcoming me to the US Air Force. They had plenty of money available to educate smart young men like me with an interest in forestry. It turns out they were experimenting with new methods: spraying defoliants to clear dense jungle cover in a bold strategy to flush out enemy hideouts, wipe out their crops, and display American might. Using forest science to topple adversaries by reshaping nature itself, though that epic vision was hardly the kind of tale a high school senior worried about. Operation Ranch Hand, they called it. Defeating the Red Menace in Southeast Asia. At least, that was the official storyline.

The recruiter didn’t tell this story when I signed the papers. Not that it would have mattered; what does a high schooler care about global politics anyway? They did talk about managing trees near runways and keeping flight paths clear. Working around airplanes and with the forest? Yes, I could do that for four years, then start a life with the US Forest Service. How bad could Vietnam be? Such a tiny, third-rate country would be no trouble for a giant like the USA. Besides, it would be fascinating to experience jungle forestry, I naively thought.

So, I finished my bachelor’s degree and started grad school when I got deployed. It was time to start paying on my debt. As soon as I landed in Vietnam, I was introduced to Operation Ranch Hand. I had to really learn the chemistry of defoliating agents; textbook knowledge didn’t count for much in the jungle. Rainbow herbicides, they called them. They had names that were too hard to say, like n-butyl ester 2,4,5-T. So we called them by the color of their labels-green, pink, purple, blue, white, and orange. We favored Orange, Agent Orange. It ruthlessly stripped the jungle canopy, but nature, resilient and persistent, quickly pushed new growth in the wake of its destruction.

-Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam-

“Sir, sector three is reporting another vegetation surge,” I said, handing my captain a requisition form. My fingers trembled slightly with nervous anticipation. This request exceeded the approved spray plan, requiring a higher officer’s signature. It was up to me to advocate for an extra spray.

He took the form from my shaking hand, apparently accustomed to nervous, green officers. He furrowed his brow as he read the form.

“Didn’t we just spray that sector?” he asked, his eyes narrowing over the document, making me think he was speaking more to the form than to me.

“Yes, Sir. The jungle has grown back. The Army confirms it’s as dense as ever.”

He tapped his finger on his desk thoughtfully, then set the form down.

“Hmm. Alright, we’ll hit it again. This time, double the concentration. You’re using orange, right?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, looking at the requisition and remembering the mix instructions I had memorized. “Double, sir?”

His tone shifted from inquiry to flat-out command, tinged with anger.

“Is there a problem, mister,” he stated, not asked, but stated

Of course, there was a problem. I knew the plant cells would absorb only so much chemical, and the rest would just wash off in the next rain. But I was a kid, a fresh graduate from a land-grant college. He was a career man and, for all I knew, a military academy grad. There was no room for my objections.

“No sir,” the only possible answer.

I calculated the mix instructions as ordered. With paperwork in hand, I ordered the line crew to mix a thousand gallons of Agent Orange, at double the recommended strength, and pump it into one of the C-123 aircraft modified for this job.

The next day, that thousand gallons of ‘Orange’ rained on the jungle. Half of it working to kill foliage, the other half laying in the mud after the afternoon rains did their work. A few weeks later, the story repeated.

“Sir, is your order for double the last time?” I had to ask after we repeated our prior discussion. “Four times the label?”

“Did you botch the mix last time?” he chided, shaking his head and raising his hands as if appealing to Heaven to take away this incompetent underling.

“No, Sir. Here’s my order,” I replied, handing over my clipboard with my order clamped under the orange label instructions.

He didn’t miss my not-so-subtle message and scowled. Then, somewhere deep in his brain, a warning flag appeared. He read the label. His brow furrowed, this time in deep contemplation instead of anger. Finally, he pulled the orange label off, handed my clipboard back, and stared at the label for a full minute-perhaps two-studying every aside of the instructions as if they were coded messages from the enemy.

“What do a bunch of lab rats in New Jersey know about jungle warfare,” he finally muttered, crumpling the label and tossing it in the circular file. “Mix it 5X this time. Dismissed.”

I saluted sharply and withdrew, fully aware that pointing out this batch came from West Virginia would be futile. I made my calculations, wrote up my orders, and watched the C-123 take off with another thousand gallons of ‘Orange.’ I knew it would turn into five thousand gallons in the mud during that afternoon’s daily downpour.

A few weeks later, the story repeated. After spraying at ten times the concentration, my captain gave up his ‘more is better’ strategy, but did not let me return the mix to the recommended concentration. Later, I heard a fellow officer say his captain didn’t give up until they were spraying twenty times the standard concentration. This fellow was an ROTC grad like me, only with a degree in biology. He was convinced that Operation Ranch Hand was really chemical warfare, and that these concentrations of defoliant were intended to kill the Vietcong directly. Maybe he was right. I don’t know. Eventually, the jungle succumbed to our spray.

-Dow Chemical Midland, Michigan-

“Upstairs wants to ship that order this month; they need the revenue for quarter end.”

“Sorry, boss, we’re not yielding enough for the whole order. Will they take a partial?”

“Partial shipment means partial revenue, and don’t suggest booking the whole thing and catching up later. That suggestion nearly got us both fired last quarter. I need sixty thousand gallons of that shit before the end of the month, and it’s your job to make it happen!”

The GM slammed his phone down, leaving his plant manager with a dead receiver stuck to the side of his head.

Maybe I could dilute it. Nah, the Quartermaster would be all over that when the leaves stopped falling. Hmm. I wonder what would happen if I goosed up the heat.

“Sure, boss, we could run it at the high limit. That would speed things up, but I don’t know if that will be enough to hit the number.”

“What if we run past the limit, say, halfway to the safety threshold?”

“Hold on a sec, let me see… Yeah, that would do it. There’s risk. We might screw up the catalyzer or make some weird contaminant.”

“But we would hit our number, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“OK. That’s great. Make it happen.”

“Yes, sir.”

-Vandalia Lake, Vandalia, Illinois-

It took decades. Decades to piece together a life fractured by those few years fighting the jungles of Vietnam. Decades wrestling with haunting images and relentless dreams. Decades before I found myself stumbling, my hands betraying me as I constantly dropped things, my body and my mind losing control—decades of paying a debt I never signed up for.

Initially, the VA brushed it off as the latest flu going around. Then they said I must have had a stroke, followed by a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Eventually, they changed their minds and called it ALS, but I didn’t die like I was supposed to. I knew it wasn’t ALS. It was Dioxin poisoning. The VA tacitly agreed when they started paying me restitution—restitution for overpayment of my debt.

I’m a forester bound to a wheelchair.

Questioning my life. Questioning what I did so long ago.

Longing for my final payment.

Bio: Mitch retired from a technology career to pursue writing fiction and fight MS and CLL health problems. He writes from his wheelchair and has published three novels:
The Last Ornament, A story of a father who makes ornaments from Christmas tree cuttings.
He Tripped Me, A fictionalization of Mitch’s journey with Leukemia and MS.
Lessons from Larry, A story of a 95-year-old man who offers seven life lessons to a weary business traveler.

The short story “Forester” tells of one man’s battle with the choices he made and the price he is paying for poisoning jungles in Vietnam.

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FIRE IN THE DARKNESS, flash FICTION
by Abbie Johnson Taylor

After wandering in the woods for hours, I finally had to admit I was lost. The sun was almost down. Why didn’t I bring a flashlight? Why was I always in the habit of taking hikes without telling my wife where I was planning to go?

The wind shifted and grew stronger. Spotting lights in the distance, maybe a campfire, I made my way forward, stepping over rocks and fallen tree branches. The wind blew harder, and smoke filled the air.

I was soon in a clearing. In front of me was no campfire. Yelling a stream of invectives, I jumped back. But flames rushed at me. Screaming, I realized I had a bigger problem than being lost.

A hand shook my shoulder. “Honey, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

It was my wife. I was lying in bed next to her, not standing in the midst of a forest fire. Shaking with relief, I turned to her. “I’m sorry.”

We embraced, and I drifted off to sleep, my head resting on her shoulder.

The next morning, as we were finishing breakfast, she sighed. “I suppose you don’t know where you’re planning to hike today.”

“Actually, I’ll drive up Red Grade and head along the East Fork of Goose Creek. I should be back early this evening. Oh, that reminds me. I’d better find a flashlight.”

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Tenderness, fiction
by Nicole Massey

I ignore my husband’s grunts while I work on the huge cut of meat he provided me. It’s fresh-caught, so I have to skin it before I can do anything else with it. I keep my knives sharp – the most dangerous thing in any kitchen is a dull knife. The meat is bloody, and a bit fatty too, so that has to go.

He never talks to me, his grunts and grumbles the breadth and scope of his vocabulary when I’m involved in a conversation. Why did I marry him? I ask myself that all the time, but what’s done is done.

I talk out loud as I work, because the silence gets old after a year or four. “This is a lot of work. It may take me a while. You know, it’s such a shame about Tori Johnson, I guess the best tactic when messing with things that belong to someone else is to avoid getting caught. Too bad she wasn’t smart enough to do that.”

I tackle a long strip of skin over the ribs, him grunting in the background. Why do I put up with this? It’s clear he has no respect for me at all, and it’s reciprocal – the old saying is that a marriage should involve lovers, best friends, and business partners, the business of running a family and providing for any children. We have no children – he decided things for that when he got a vasectomy out of spite; he knew I always wanted kids. Making decisions for others is the way he operates; I know that now.

Why don’t I divorce him? To be blunt, I like my home. I like the way our incomes make us comfortable. Face it, our society has incentives for people to marry and continue the species, not that he can do that. Affairs? They’re always messy, and risky too.

That side done, I switch to the other side of the cut of meat, again removing the skin and trimming fat, wiping down blood. The leakage isn’t too bad, so I don’t have to spend too much time dealing with seepage. I say while I work, “I wonder if Artie Franklin is doing okay. Losing Tori must be bothersome to him in some ways, though it’s clear they had a loveless marriage. I’m glad she’s no longer causing problems for him; and her superior attitude, I guess that comes with being a spoiled little rich girl. I think I should call and check up on him.”

I look at my work – it’s excellent, of course, because my pride as a butcher wouldn’t allow anything less. My customers demand steaks, chops, roasts, rib racks, shoulders, and the other various cuts to be as they expect, and I’ve got a professional incentive to give them what they want. I get a few more grumbles from my husband. Nothing he says is going to affect me anymore, I’m done caring about the incoherent sounds that come out of his mouth. A clean, dark red, well-trimmed cut of meat is there in front of me, typical of good husbandry and butchering skill.

My husband mumbles something, and I say, “Give me a minute, I’m finishing up here. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m done with this.”

It’s that time, seasoning. I thrust a large scoop into my bucket of salt, the soft whisper of the fine grains sounding like a cross between the late spring wind and someone shushing someone. I lift out the scoop, approach the meat, and drop small handfuls of the salt on the flesh, rubbing it in. The table lurches, and a harsh agonized scream cuts the quiet. Okay, the drugs wore off, which is what I figured would happen. I say, “Tory, nobody’s going to hear you, we’re in a meat locker and every other business close to here closed down hours ago. I’ve checked, there’s nobody around. Feel the agony, maybe it’ll show you what you inflicted on so many others in your lifetime. I hope there’s an afterlife so you can reflect on what you did and how you made yourself unnecessary.” I continue rubbing the salt into her stripped muscle – she has fine meat on her bones, probably all that time she spent at the gym tempting other women’s men. That done, I check to make sure the bucket is where it should be, and I pick another knife. “Relax, Tori, it’s all over now. I’d normally say farewell, but in this case, I’ll say fare ill.” With a fast slice I cut her throat from side to side, that demon smile that severs arteries and windpipe in a smooth motion. I’ve done it hundreds of times to cows, pigs, sheep, and a few other things when required. This is no different.

Clean and sharp blades are a must, so I take care of my tools before continuing. Ian grunts again, and I say, “Husband, it’s your turn, you adulterer.” I look at him trussed up on the other table – I’m going to be sore and tired tonight. It’s the life of a butcher beloved by meat eaters across sixteen counties. But I’ll sleep well – after all, I know how to deal with the bones.

Bio: Nicole Massey is a writer, composer, and songwriter, a lifelong Dallasite, and sixth generation Texan. Her degree in music was earned from the University of Texas system. She lost her sight in 2003; if you find it, she’d like to have it back. Nicole doesn’t drink coffee or wear t-shirts and sweats. This may make her an atypical writer and musician.

She can be reached at creations@nicolemassey.com. She’s not on Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter, but her website https://www.nicolemassey.com has occasional updates and writing on it. The real finds there are the subscription buttons for her newsletter and mailing list.

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If Not for Twists of Fate, fiction
by Brad Corallo

As he had lived alone for the last fifteen years, the solitary confinement cell meant nothing to him. For the millionth time he said to himself: “no one can ever understand!”

His appeals were used up. It was a matter of days, before it was his time to ride the needle. Intellectually he understood why he received such a sentence. It bothered him though that many referred to him as a heartless monster. “Heartless monster” he thought bitterly. More like “huge hearted, lifelong, misunderstood loser” he thought, not for the first time.

His name was Rocco Dudolini before the state got technical about it and he became prisoner 57469281J-E. Roc had grown up in the town of Baldwin on Long Island in Nassau County. He was born with a neurological condition which left him with a peculiar, lurching gait and right-side facial tics which appeared when he became nervous, stressed, or scared. His experience in the public school system was mostly a horror show of abuse. His understandable shyness, his visible disability related physical oddities and his six-syllable uncommon Italian name all resulted in his being dubbed “Cocca Doodle” at age eight. He was never able to fully shake it. Even when he was a high school student, eventually some mean-spirited shit would call out to him “where ya shufflin’ off to Cocca Doodle?” Though Roc’s parents loved him and tried to be supportive, they had no idea how deeply tormented he was inside.

Roc was not the sharpest knife in the drawer but in one of his few moments of good fortune, he was sponsored by the state vocational rehabilitation system for training in a school where he became a capable HVAC technician. He began working for an oil heating company as a repairman fixing people’s home furnaces. After a couple of other brief but successful positions, he landed an out of state job as the chief HVAC tech for a five building business office complex where he earned a good salary and benefits. He had one regret about having to move from New York State.

His social life was not so successful. He had one close friend, with whom he had developed a bond since elementary school. Zak was a fat, uncoordinated nearsighted kid who move to the district from Maine when he was nine-years-old. Of course, the kids made fun of him and never tired of imitating his pronounced Maine accent. They naturally gravitated to one another as they were both the last to be picked for any games or gym activities. As it turned out, they found out that they had several common interests including chess and most importantly, all the permutations of the Star Trek TV series.

Though they kept in regular touch, there were times when he missed Zak and his easy-going company terribly. He did make some acquaintances at work with whom he bowled and drank in local bars on occasion.

Women never gave Roc the time of day. He and Zak use to sometimes amuse themselves by singing an old blues song together in a rather off-key fashion, which made the whole thing even funnier. It was that one that goes “nobody loves me; accept my mama and she could be jivin’ too!” He had one disastrous date in high school which he preferred never to think about. He thought there might be a little something developing between one of the many Latina cleaning ladies and himself before his crime deposited him in the swamp of the legal system. When they met, they passed the time with pleasant small talk and work-related tidbits that all staff were familiar with. They even shared an outdoor bench one time, talking and eating their purchased deli lunches together. However, Roc, was hesitant to get his hopes “higher than the curb” he would say to himself. “Just as well” he thought, considering what happened.

Unbidden, for the hundred thousandth time, his thoughts brought him back to that bizarre evening that had flushed his life irrevocably down the crapper. It was Veteran’s Day about five years ago. Roc was not a veteran. He had tried to join the navy after his high school graduation. They took one look at him, asked him a few questions, and sent him on his way. Two weeks later, he received an official letter, thanking him for his interest in the navy and his desire to serve his country but he unfortunately was determined unsuitable due to “multiple limitations.” Roc wasn’t surprised. He kind of expected some such rejection.

As they had the day off, He and Al, an acquaintance from work, went out to bowl a few rounds. Roc’s performance was as dismal as it had ever been. As a result, Al and he repaired to the “Ballbuster” a local bar and pool joint. Even Roc’s pool shooting, which was generally pretty good was less than poor that day. Perhaps this was why, he rather uncharacteristically, hit the cheap bar-scotch pretty hard. Al eventually had to leave and offered Roc a ride, but Roc decided to stay and cap off his drinking session with a Bud Lite. Al shook his head, slapped Roc on the back and left.

After his beer, Roc felt that the best thing he could do was to return home on foot and walk off some of the alcohol. Though he was far from wasted, he began to dwell on negative points in his life and his temper was beginning to simmer. “A good, long walk, out in the bracing cold air is just the thing” he thought. He picked up his heavy bowling bag and exited the bar.

At first, he felt good about his walk. He breathed deeply and tried to deflect the angry thoughts that had been running through his brane like an overloaded freight train.

When he was about halfway home, he realized that he needed to urinate. He looked about but didn’t see any public establishments he could utilize. In a very uncharacteristic move, he turned into an alley between two brick buildings that held multiple garbage receptacles. As he passed the last dumpster, his attention was caught by the sound of a young child piteously weeping. Partially screened by the dumpster, he turned. Two burley teenage boys were terrorizing a younger boy who appeared to have Down Syndrome. His eyeglasses lay broken on the ground and they had pulled down his striped shorts. He heard one of the two boys jeering at his victim “now you stupid, little freakazoid, next the under pants come off.” The weeping boy began to beg the bully to “please stop!”

For a second or two, all went black in Roc’s head. Without thought, he flew down the alley and swung his bowling bag with its fifteen-pound ball which connected with the right side of the bully’s head. Roc hit him so hard that his skull and cheekbone shattered, and he fell to the ground, blood and brane matter oozing from his smashed head. His sidekick turned toward Roc in horror. Before Roc could do or say anything, the second bully pulled out a ten-inch switchblade and thumbed it open. Again, Roc did not pause to think. He kicked the knife wielder in the groin and smashed his bowling bag repeatedly into the back of the doubled over boy’s head.

The Down’s kid had gotten his pants back on. He looked at the two battered bullies and ran from the alley as if he had wings on his sneakers.

Rock stood there for what seemed like a long time. He couldn’t process what he had done. Shuffling like a defective robot, he urinated by the dumpster and left the alley. His gait was more exaggerated than usual and he was in shock. He eventually was stopped by a concerned police officer and the rest was history.

He was jarred out of his revery by the sound of a key in the lock of his cell.

The guard said “hey Dudolini, the prison chaplain is here. Would you like to speak with him?” Roc shrugged and the chaplain entered the cell. “Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you” the guard told the chaplain.

“I know and am not afraid,” he replied. “So, my son, your days on Earth are nearing their end. Would you like to pray with me? The Lord is very forgiving.”

“No thanks Father” Roc said. “I really don’t believe in all that stuff. I kind of feel, that if I got to the pearly gates, Old Peter would just look up and say “sorry Roc, once again and for the last time, you didn’t quite make the grade!”

Bio: Brad Corallo, a writer in multiple genres, is a Long Island native. His work has been published in 21 previous issues of Magnets & Ladders, in The William B. Joslin Outstanding Program Awards Journal “NYSID Preferred Source Solutions”, The Red Wolf Coalition, L.I. Able News, several additions of Avocet and in Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst. He has been a life-long student of fine wine, food, music, books, space exploration, several professional sports and relationships of all kinds. Brad is now happily retired after thirty eight years of employment in the human service field. Due to LCA (a very rare genetic retinal condition) Brad has experienced impaired and worsening vision throughout his lifetime

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Saving Face, fiction
by Melissa L. White

“Who was that?”

“A patient.” Charmayne hung up the phone.

Donnie’s eyes narrowed. The veins in his forearms bulged against rigid muscles as he pounded the counter between them. He stuck his head through the receptionist window, leaning over Charmayne’s desk.

“Liar!”

“For Crissakes. I’m at work!” She glanced over her shoulder.

Donnie reached down, grabbed the phone, and punched the redial button. After two rings, a female voice said, “All State Insurance. This is Betty.”

Donnie hesitated. He stared at Charmayne, and she crossed her arms, shaking her head in disgust.

“Hello?” Are you there?” asked Betty on the phone.

Donnie hung up.

“Betty’s glasses are ready.” Charmayne held up her list, pointing to Betty’s name. “You satisfied now?”

“Baby, I’m sorry,” he whispered. He opened the door and entered the receptionist area from the waiting room.

“Donnie! You can’t come in here.”

“Why not? Everyone’s at lunch.”

“They’ll be back any minute.”

“I can’t help myself. You’re just so beautiful. I know lots of guys want to date you.”

“Really? Who?” asked Charmayne.

He grabbed her and pulled her close, kissing her roughly on the lips.

“Never mind who,” he said.

She pushed him away and wiped her mouth. “You’ve got to leave. If you’re here when Dr. Bloom gets back, I’m fired.”

Donnie grabbed the gold chain around her neck. “Where’d you get this?” He lifted it up.

With both hands, Charmayne tried to pull his thick wrist away. She could feel his sinewy muscles tighten as he twisted the chain around his forefinger. He continued twisting, until it started choking her.

“It’s my mom’s. I borrowed it.”

“Yeah right.” He jerked the chain, breaking the clasp and ripped it from her throat.

“Great! Mom’s gonna kill me!”

Charmayne rubbed her neck. Donnie held up the chain, examining it closely.

“It’s a man’s chain,” he said.

She stared at him, incredulous; then she walked away.

He lunged after her, slashing her across the back several times with the chain. She screamed, reaching up between her shoulder blades to the searing pain. Tears flowed down her cheeks, and she felt the welts rising already.

“Get out,” she whispered.

Throwing the chain down, he reached for her. “I’m sorry baby. Don’t make me look bad.”

“You always say that.”

“I’m just stressed about the draft.”

She shook her head.

“Look. If I make pro now, we’ll get married. Forget about college.”

Charmayne stiffened. Tired of giving in to him, she clenched her fists. No matter how sorry she felt for him, nor how much she wanted to help him, this was the last straw. Hell. I’m just seventeen. I don’t need this shit.

Looking up, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind the display shelf. Surrounded by designer eyewear on the walls before her, she realized how myopic she had become. How will he treat me tomorrow? Or twenty years from now? She felt trapped. Framed. Just like all these prescription lenses on the wall before her.

She reached out and touched the mirror. How did this happen? She wasn’t masochistic; far from it. His abusiveness was so gradual, by the time she realized how dangerous he was, he wouldn’t leave her alone. He’d been suspended for slapping his last girlfriend at school. His reputation had tanked. Why had she thought she could help him?

Staring at her reflection, she saw a miserable girl, in a situation bigger than herself. Tears rimmed her eyes. This can’t continue.

What did he expect? Help saving face? Not anymore, dammit. She smiled at herself.. Saving my life is more like it. She summoned her courage and turned to face him.

Unable to meet her eyes, Donnie reached down and retrieved the broken chain from the floor. This was her chance. She ran to the back room, locked the door, and called 911.

When the police arrived, Donnie quickly left the office, and she filed a restraining order against him.

Because she was under 18, the police wanted to contact Charmayne’s parents. She hesitated, unwilling at first to bring her parents into this. It would crush them, but after she thought it over, she acquiesced. The nice policewoman interviewing her made an appointment for a Detective Francis to come to her home tonight and meet with her and her parents. When the policewoman left, Charmayne went back to her desk and lay her head down on the counter and cried.

That night, Detective Francis interviewed Charmayne and her parents. When he left, Charmayne’s parents hugged her, repeatedly assuring her that she had done the right thing in seeking help.

“I was afraid something like this would happen with Donnie.” Her mom looked worried. “He’s too immature.”

“Yes, ma’am. I agree.” Charmayne hung her head.

Her father took her hand in his and kissed it. “If that kid comes near you again, I’ll personally see to it that he goes to jail!”

Charmayne glanced up at her father, his eyes narrowing with anger, just thinking about Donnie harassing his baby girl at her summer job at Dr. Bloom’s office.

“He’ll be gone, soon,” she sighed. “Either with the MLB Draft, or his college scholarship.”

“Well, the sooner the better.” Her father stood there, grinding his teeth.

“I’m tired.” Charmayne’s hands trembled. “May I go to bed early? I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Sure, sweetie. I’ll check on you later.” Her mom hugged her, and Charmayne didn’t have the heart to tell her she felt like crawling into a cave and dying.

The next morning, Charmayne got a text from Donnie with a press release attached, reporting his DRAFT to the Seattle Mariners. Donnie had added below it, “I’ll be out of your life 4 good. Over 2K miles away. You’ll regret this someday.”

She turned off her phone, feeling complete and utter relief. After a year of trying to help him, she was free at last. No more protecting him anymore. And no more saving face.

Ever.

Bio: Melissa L. White is a screenwriter, novelist, and essayist. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best American Essays Award. Her screenplay
about Georgia O’Keeffe placed as a FINALIST in the Stage32 Female Driven Screenplay Contest July 2024. It won the GRAND PRIZE – BEST FEATURE SCREENPLAY
at the Silicon Beach Film Festival in Sept. 2023, and it was also named a Finalist for BEST SCREENPLAY in the Catalina Film Festival 2023. Her essay, “Can
AI Learn How it Feels to Cry?” won 2nd Prize in the Writer’s Digest Essay Contest in August 2023. Melissa has Bi-Polar Disorder.

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Traditions, fiction
by DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

Rafe Williams gave his sister Kirsten an apologetic glance and frowned down at his five-year-old son. Toby had thrown himself down in the aisle of The grocery store in front of the candy rack screaming and kicking his feet. Kirsten giggled.

“You could try mom’s method to handle a tantrum. I dare you!” she said.

Her green eyes twinkled up to meet his gray ones.

Rafe carefully lowered his six foot four inch frame to the floor a few feet from his firstborn son. He took a deep breath and began to wail and kick his feet. An elderly woman, about to turn her cart down their aisle, reversed course and scurried away.

When his shocked child stopped yelling and gazed in open mouthed horror, Rafe met Toby’s
astonished blue eyes.

“I can yell louder than you can any day bucko,” Rafe stated firmly.” I said no candy and I meant it. Now get up and let’s say
we are sorry to your aunt Kirsty for making such a scene.”

Kirsten leaned down to lend her big brother a hand in climbing to his feet. He lifted Toby to stand at his side. Together they made their apologies to Kirsten. The grocery store lighting glinted copper off the curly hair of the three members of the Williams clan.

“I didn’t think you would do it here in public. When Mom did it to me, we were all sitting down to dinner and I wanted Fruit Loops instead of liver and onions!”

“Why wouldn’t I use the Williams family tried and true tantrum cure?” Rafe laughed. “Mom said kids hate it when their parents embarrass them and it is payback for all of the times the children embarrass their parents.”

Bio: DeAnna Quietwater Noriega is half Apache and a quarter Ojibwa. She learned to read at three, at her great grandfather’s knee. She says what she writes is the result of a mind that is always busy. DeAnna writes poetry, essays and creative fiction. She considers herself a daughter of mother earth., her sense of justice and concern for children, the elderly, animals and her world have forced her to be an activist, despite a natural shyness. She has raised three children, been married since college and lived a rich fulfilling life despite becoming totally blind at the age of eight.

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Part III. Looking Back

Setting Limits, nonfiction Second Place
by Barbara Bates

One of life’s hardest occupations is being a parent. An even harder one is being a blind parent.

Becoming blind before the birth of both of my children, I vowed to try to provide them with as “normal” an upbringing as I possibly could. Sometimes I needed to do some creative thinking to solve a situation.

An important part of raising children is setting limits to keep them safe and healthy. But as a blind parent, I ran into situations that weren’t covered in any of the parenting books I read.

Take for instance, what happened after I began teaching my daughter to catch. I’d bought a “beep” ball. This beep ball had a thin, hard plastic rod sticking out of a nerf ball. The Nerf ball had a hard plastic center containing batteries and an electronic beeper. When the rod was removed, the ball would beep, letting me know where it was. When the rod was reinserted, the ball went silent. Bigger than a baseball but smaller than a basketball, I used it to teach both children to catch.

My son, three years older than my daughter, caught on fast. My daughter, not to be outdone by a boy, followed suit.

After a couple of sessions with the beep ball, my daughter began bouncing the foam ball off furniture, walls, and once, even the cat. The more precocious and sneakier of the two, I paid more attention to her, just to make sure she wasn’t doing something she wasn’t supposed to. Didn’t want her to get hurt.

One day, she asked if we could use something else to play catch with.

I told her, “No, we need to use something that I can hear where it was.”

Later that day, while I washed dishes in the kitchen, she came into the room. After the sound of a kitchen chair being pulled out, she said, ”Mommy, play catch?”.

“Wait ‘til I’m done with the dishes. Then, we’ll go into the parlor and play.” The parlor had a bigger open space, less appliances and other things to knock over.

She made a “meh” sound, her favorite answer to everything. “Want to play here.”

Sighing, I finished the dishes and turned around to face her. I held out my hands, preparing to catch the ball. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Move closer.”

Visions of her throwing the ball so it hit the ceiling, or went over my head and into the sink behind me, briefly skipped through my thoughts. But I moved closer to her.

Then I realized from where her voice came from, she stood on the kitchen chair. Before I could figure out why, and why I heard no beeping from the beep ball, she clapped her hands.

“Catch!” She jumped toward me.

Her body slammed into me. In a reflexive action, I wrapped my arms around her, so she wouldn’t fall to the floor.

She’d jumped from the kitchen chair and into my arms. Without telling me what she’d planned. At two, she had no conception of what “blindness” entailed.

My heartbeat accelerated, and I couldn’t breathe. As I staggered back a step, I must have had a strange expression on my face.

She giggled and patted my face. “Funny Mommy.”

I realized my expression must have shown shock, disbelief, or utter terror.

She pushed away from my body and slid down to the floor. Her footsteps faded as she entered the parlor.

I stood there, unable to move. Unable to believe what had just happened. Leaning against the sink, I realized I needed to do something. Now. This couldn’t continue. But what?

Later, as I cleaned the counters, I heard her climb back on the chair.

“Again, Mommy, catch.”

Now that I knew what to expect, I stepped toward her and waved my hands in front of me. “Wait. This is a new game, so we need some new rules.” I had to think fast. What rules would allow her to play her new game and still keep her safe? And stop me from having a heart attack? Or a nervous breakdown?

I took a deep breath and calmed myself. We’ll set up the rules for your new game. Okay?”

I stepped forward and placed my hand on the top of her head. No matter how many times I told her she had to speak, she continued to nod and shake her head as her response. Using my hand was the fastest way to get an answer.

I felt her head nodding and took a deep breath. “First, you have to get my attention by saying, ‘Play catch, Mommy’. Then you have to wait until I say, ‘ready’. Then you say ‘Catch’.”

“Then jump”?” she asked.

How could two innocent sounding words hold so much terror for me? I swallowed and managed. “Then jump.”

When my husband came home that evening, I told him what had happened with the new game.

My daughter came in and grabbed my hand. “Show Daddy. Play catch, Mommy.”

I let her drag me back into the kitchen. My husband followed.

She climbed onto the chair. “Play catch, Mommy.”

I turned to face her and tried to keep the distance between us short.

She didn’t want me so close. “Move back, Mommy.”

I shuffled back two small steps. “Ready.”

“Catch.” She jumped into my arms, laughing.

“Maybe Daddy would like to play with you?” I tried to have him be the catcher. He could see.

“No. Mommy catch.” She stomped out of the kitchen.

“What do I do?” I asked my husband, and told him the rules I’d set.

“I think you’ve got it covered. Make sure you keep close enough so you can catch her. After all, she’s telling you where she is when she says, ‘Catch’.

“Just like the Beep ball.” He chuckled.

“She’s not the beep ball. What if I miss?” my hands started to tremble.

“You won’t miss, nor drop her. Just keep within her jump range.”

“Her what?” He was supposed to support me. He needed to provide a solution that wouldn’t leave me a nervous wreck.

“She’ll grow out of it. Remember her soft clay animals? First, she put them all over the house. Now, there’s one on the kitchen table, and two on the bench in the dining room.”

She had loved to make soft clay animals. For a while, they’d appear all over the house. Until my guide dog ate a couple and then she scooped them all up, placing them higher than the dog’s nose.

This situation didn’t seem as humorous. I sighed, then nodded, dreading the next few days.

But, despite my dread, I caught her every time. And when I was doing something that needed my attention, she waited, standing on her chair, for me to finish and say, ‘Ready’.

And like so many things children do, she did finally tire of playing her game of ‘Catch’. But, I still remember several days where I agonized over not being able to hold onto her once I’d caught her, or not catching her at all.

She always remembered the limits I’d set. After climbing onto her chair, she’d ask to “Play catch”. Then she’d wait for me to position myself and tell her I was ready. And, I caught her. Every time.

Bio: Barbara Bates writes primarily in the speculative fiction field, though threads of romance, crime, and mystery often sneak into her stories. She recently added poetry to her repertoire.

An engineering degree taught her to use the physical world as a springboard, but her creativity often lets fantastical aspects appear. Her becoming blind as an adult allows her to add a degree of both acceptance and separateness into her fiction, heightening the conflict.

She lives in Southeastern New England with her husband.

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Scene of the Unseen in the Kitchen, poetry
by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

Having spent much of my growing-up time at my aunt’s restaurant,
I, even at age ten,
knew well each area of the Italian restaurant,
the actions and workings of the place.
The routines of the restaurant were routines to me.
My stalwart, almost never flustered Aunt Zita
ran her restaurant with quiet grace and ease.

Then, one Saturday night during the summer of 1960,
I, with the unthinking exuberance of a child,
bounced happily down the two large steps
from the residence to the restaurant
at the exact moment
when my cousin turned from one of the stoves
to take a pan of boiling water to the largest oven in the first kitchen.
We collided.
Fortunately-yes, I say, fortunately–
the extremely hot water splashed against my stomach area.

“Is there a doctor in the house?”
Yes, a doctor was dining at the restaurant
and was able to give me immediate care,
including an injection.

Due to my being in shock,
I have no memory of the initial pain.
The most pain came the next morning
when I went to the ER for additional treatment.
Later, the biggest pain was
not being able to swim for the remainder of the summer.

Periodically, I am reminded
of that kitchen scene;
but most of all, I am reminded
of how lucky I was
that the burns were primarily first- and second-degree–
with only spots of third-degree burns.
I am reminded of how fortunate I was
that the boiling water did not land on my face
nor my hands
that would later read braille.

As I grew, over a number of years,
the scars mostly faded away.
Nevertheless, I will always know
that on that hot August night in 1960,
I was one of the luckiest little girls in the world.
Thank you, Angels of the Kitchen
of Binole’s Restaurant.

“Scene of the Unseen” was previously published on Alice’s WORDWALK blog.

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The Dog Who Loved His Pa, memoir, nonfiction Honorable Mention
by Abbie Johnson Taylor

Clancy, an Irish setter, came to us in the spring of 1977 when I was a high school freshman in Sheridan, Wyoming. One evening, I went with Mother to look at some puppies a woman wanted to either sell or give away.

Despite my limited vision, I could see them, in a box, all red. Most were squirming and whining, but not Clancy.

Mother lifted and held him, and I gazed at his red body with the floppy ears, wagging tail, and distinct nose. “Oh, how cute!” I cried, stroking his head.

He didn’t whine or move. “This is the one,” I said.

“I think you’re right,” Mother answered.

A week later, she and my brother Andy, seven years younger, brought him home. By then, he was no longer the sweet little guy Mother held the week before. Rambunctious, he wouldn’t sit, stand, or be held for long.

Dad wanted the dog’s full name to be Chem Shenanigan Clancy Leroy. In Irish, Chem and Shenanigan mean Jim and mischief respectively. Leroy, my paternal grandfather’s name, means king. This was Dad’s reasoning. Since Andy liked the name Clancy and wanted the dog to be his, that was what we called him.

The woman we got him from told Mother about an obedience class for puppies that would take place in the park near our house that summer. We tried this but soon discovered that obedience was not Clancy’s forte. The gathering with other puppies was more of a playtime for him. Dad managed to teach him to sit at intersections when we took him for walks, but that was it.

Despite Andy’s attempts to bond with Clancy, the dog eventually became Dad’s companion, accompanying him daily to the shop where he sold and serviced coin-operated machines. On the rare occasion Dad couldn’t take him, as he walked out the door, he said, “Not you.” Clancy stayed back, and I could imagine the sorrowful look in his eyes.

To get to the high school, I needed to cross a busy intersection and walk through the park and up the hill. When the weather was nice, Dad and Clancy often walked me to school. In those days, dogs weren’t always required to be on leashes. Once we cleared the intersection and entered the park, Dad let Clancy off the leash, and I loved watching him scamper ahead of us, then turn around and run back to be sure we were coming.

After school and on weekends, we frequently walked Clancy along the creek, where he swam, then climbed out and shook himself, splattering us with water. Many times, Mother, Andy, and I drove Clancy to the cemetery and walked him there.

In the winter, Dad and Clancy often drove me to school. Because the road that led up the hill from the park was not kept clear of snow and thus unsafe to drive, Dad took a different route. But once we got closer to the school and in an area with less traffic, Dad let Clancy out of the car, and the dog ran alongside us.

Clancy loved smelly things like rotten fish heads and cow droppings. Once he got into any of that stuff, getting the smell off him was a chore. Occasionally, Andy hosed him off in the back yard. Most of the time, Dad gave Clancy a shower in the upstairs bathtub, causing water to go everywhere, much to Mother’s consternation.

In summer, my family frequently attended band concerts in the park on Tuesday evenings. Of course, Clancy came along. Afterward, we walked to a nearby ice cream stand for dessert. Dad got Clancy a scoop of vanilla ice cream. After telling the dog to sit, he fed him the treat, one spoonful at a time, much to everyone’s amusement.

One summer while I was still in high school, I tried running. I could see the high school track well enough and knew where to go. Many times, Dad and Clancy drove me there early in the evenings when it was cooler and ran with me. But although I loved watching Clancy dashing next to me, his floppy ears and tail waving, I found this form of exercise exhausting and eventually gave up.

After we got Clancy, Mother wanted him neuter, but Dad wouldn’t hear of it. “It’ll ruin his personality,” he said. What could we say to that?

But in the spring of 1985, while I was home from college, Clancy somehow broke through a neighbor’s basement door to get to a female dog in heat.

“That’s it,” Mother said, after paying for the damage. “I’m getting him neutered.”

Dad didn’t argue. But he called the vet to ask how the procedure would affect the dog and was assured Clancy wouldn’t change as a result. Dad seemed more at ease about the whole thing.

We kept Clancy in the house most of the time until he had the operation. He wandered aimlessly, whining, and there wasn’t much any of us could do to comfort him. But after the procedure, he was his usual rambunctious self.

In the summer of 1985, Dad suffered a heart attack. While he was in the hospital, Clancy seemed lost without him, following Mother around and whining when he got tired of following her. Andy and I took turns walking and playing with him, but that didn’t seem to fill the void. When Dad finally walked in the front door, Clancy barked, wagging his tail, running in circles around him, and jumping on him once or twice.

By the summer of 1988, when Clancy was eleven years old, my parents were amicably divorced. Dad and Clancy moved into a smaller house across town. We still got together as a family: the four of us plus my paternal grandmother, who also lived in town and whom we often visited with Clancy.

That summer, while I was home from college, with Mother’s help, I got Dad two Father’s Day cards: one from Clancy and one from me. The card from Clancy had a picture of a dog and said, “I love my pa.” Dad never saw that card.

It was an unseasonably warm June. Dad’s house had no air conditioning and neither did ours.

The night before Father’s Day, Dad let Clancy out, so the dog could cool off. Clancy never returned. Dad finally wandered around the neighborhood but couldn’t find him.

I learned all this the next morning when Mother told me. Dad had phoned her to explain the situation. He then called the police to report the dog missing.

That afternoon, Dad came by and told us the bad news. The police had found Clancy dead by one of his favorite spots, the creek.

Dad speculated on what happened. Irish setters aren’t known for their intelligence, but Clancy was smart. He knew how to get from Dad’s house clear across town to Grandma’s house. He also knew Grandma’s house was cooler.

After Dad let Clancy out, the dog walked to Grandma’s house and scratched at both the front and back doors, whining in an attempt to be noticed and let into the house. Grandma, fast asleep upstairs with the window air conditioner on, didn’t know Clancy was there. When he couldn’t get into the house, he wandered to the nearby creek and was found there the next day. He may have gone into the water to cool off, but since there was no evidence of foul play, we could only assume he died of heat exhaustion.

Andy was off somewhere that summer. So, it was just Dad, Mother, and me, sitting around the dining room table, crying and passing around a picture of the dog Dad recently took. Finally, Mother said, “He had a lot of good years.”

“He could have had a lot more,” Dad countered. What could anyone say to that?

Needless to say, I didn’t give Dad the Father’s Day card from Clancy. The one from me, with a picture of a bottle of Scotch on a bed of rocks, said, “Here’s a gift for my dad who loves Scotch on the rocks.”

Since Dad enjoyed this beverage, it was fitting. He laughed when he saw it. But my family will never forget the dog who loved his pa.

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No Big Deal, poetry
by Leonard Tuchyner

In early April when life was blooming,
behind our house, salty blood was flowing.
A snow-white rooster, its throat sliced wide open,
tied by one leg, its head dangling down,
flapped in forlorn futile desperation.
His crimson-stained and gory-white breast heaved.
The frantic drumming of battered wings
was the single sound this tortured bird could make.

It is difficult to recall
how I, in my innocent fives,
experienced this tragedy.
There was something strangely disturbing.
No whys or wherefores of its presence.
My grownups seemed not to notice.
I don’t remember any queries.
Lesson learned, I guess, no big deal.

Bio: Leonard Tuchyner lives in Central Virginia with his wife and one cat. His chief hobby is gardening, after a long history of martial arts and bicycling. He also enjoys playing the harmonica with his pianist wife.

When he joined the Senior Center about twenty years ago, he started writing in earnest. Leonard is active in his writing community, having developed a Writing for Healing and Growth group which he has facilitated at the Senior Center for eighteen years. He leads three small critique groups for Behind Our Eyes. Leonard writes in multiple genres and has published four books.

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Playing Train, memoir
by Tara Arlene Innmon

“Follow me,” says our mother to Mikey and me. Picking our way through the stickers, holding Mikey’s hand, I concentrated on her as she pointed to the railroad tracks next to our yard, her jaw tight as she bent down to look into our faces, something she never did before. I figured I better listen. She said, “Don’t you ever go near those tracks. The trains can’t stop and they’ll squash anybody who is on them.”

I clutched her dress, squinting at sun glinting on rails.

She went on, “I’ve seen a cow get hit by a train and dragged along until it was in pieces.”

Her warning was effective; we stayed away from those railroad tracks until we were older.
That didn’t change our excitement of the trains coming by. In In the summer when we heard the low rumble, we dashed out, staying near the house. As we grew older, we gradually moved closer until we were next to the barbed wire fence. Kenny joined us when he was old enough. We waved madly at the striped “Casey Jones” uniformed engineer, sitting by his window in front, and at the caboose man at his little window or out on his porch guarding the rear of the train. We yelled, “Hi! Hi! Over the roar. When either one of them waved or when the engineer tooted his horn at us, we were thrilled, jumping up and down and yelling, “He waved! We were noticed by these exotic people that raced by our back yard to far away places all over the country. The Bigger World seemed a friendly place.

In the 1950s hobos frequently walked down the tracks. They fascinated me, representing freedom romanticized in storybooks and on TV. Sometimes they came into the yard and asked if they could have some water from the hose. My mother gladly let them use the hose or brought out a glass of water for them.

When I was four, she let a hobo come inside and have a sandwich. As she set out a card table for him near the front door, I peeked at him from the hallway. He was handsome, with curly black hair, a black beard, and lovely brown eyes. His skin was deeply tanned and grimy. I crawled over to the card table and dived under it. I peeked up at him from around the edge of the table, and he saw me and smiled, his brown eyes made my heart pound. Someday I hoped to be a hobo like him and see the world.

We slept, watched TV and played, in rhythm with the trains. That rhythm was as close to us as our own heartbeat. It roared through our bloodstream, it trembled through our bones, clocking our own slow-motion lives. It was when company came over, in the summer, that we realize we lived in a different world than most people do.

********************

Gladys and Don and Ronnie are here to celebrate the Fourth of July. The windows are open. A long freight train ta thump, ta thumps its way down the tracks. The glasses rattle in the kitchen cupboard and Mommy’s candy dish goes plinksa plinksa against a silver pitcher on the dresser. Daddy gets up to turn the volume up on the baseball game. Like the rest of us, he does this automatically without registering why he is turning it up, until Gladys yells over the din, “How the heck can you live with that racket? They don’t come through at night, do they?”

At first, we look at her blankly until it dawns on us that a train is going by. Daddy is staring at the baseball game. He has learned to tune out Gladys and, really, everybody else, but especially Gladys. Mommy yells, “Oh, that; I don’t even hear them anymore, at night they help me sleep.”

********************

The trains at night were comforting, reassuring me that the world is still going on. The steady clip-clack could put me right out. It meant that I was safe at home in my bed. It was hard to sleep someplace else without hearing that steady rhythm before falling into a deep sleep.

We played train, lining up 3 chairs in the middle of the living room. I was the engineer because I was the oldest, Mikey was the boxcars, and Kenny was the caboose. We went chug ga, chug ga, faster and faster. I pulled a pretend whistle and yelled, “Toot, toot!” Mommy yelled at us for putting all the chairs out. When we were older, we waited to play train until our parents went to the grocery store.

We also play trains in the bathtub. We had a septic tank that couldn’t hold much, so at first, we took our Saturday night bath with our dad. When we were bigger and it got too crowded, we took the bath alone and could play train. We sat in the same order as with the living room train game. My feet were planted on the side of the tub next to the faucets, my knees bent so I could wiggle my butt close to the front of the tub for a longer ride. Mikey wrapped his arms around my waist and Kenny around Mikey’s. I turned the knobs to add either hot or cold water and to start the train. Toot! Toot! We were off as I pushed off. – We slid and Kenny’s back hits the back of the tub. Whoosh! All the water that rode with us went flying over our heads and down while we screamed and laughed. We did it over and over again.

Mommy didn’t like it when we play train. She came running in yelling, “Have you washed yourself yet? What is this! Why is there all this water on the floor?”

We shrugged our shoulders. The train game was over for this bath. She got on her hands and knees, wiping up the water on the floor and scolding us, while we ignored her, squealing and giggling as we fished for the slippery bar in the water under the tangle of legs.

Another train game we played was pretending that we had to stand on top of something before the train reached the edge of our yard or it would run us over.

One Saturday night when I was 6, I experienced how dangerous the trains were. Back then the only warning of a railroad crossing on Osborne Road was a sign with two boards painted in black and white stripes, nailed into the shape of an X. That night it rained. Just before we were going to get ready for bed, we heard crunching metal and shattering glass as a train crossed Osborne Road. We ran to a window to see what happened. I couldn’t see anything because it was too dark for me. Our father’s face was tight as he put on his jacket, got the flashlight, and told us kids to stay inside. When he came back in, he was shaking and called the police. He said a car had been run over by a train and there was the body of a man in the ditch with his head decapitated.

I peered through the barbed wire with my brothers the next day, looking and pointing to flattened grass we were sure was where the body had lain and had soaked up his blood. I didn’t go into that ditch for at least five years, in case a ghost was still there.

Soon after, semaphores with blinking red lights and black and white stripes came down across the road when a train was approaching. A loud manic bell wouldn’t shut up until the train was long gone. We called them “Dingers” because of the loud ding, ding, ding the bell made when a train was coming. Often impatient drivers, guessing it was a freight train stopped somewhere, would drive around the arms and cross the tracks. It scared me. The train could come before they could get around the next bars.

I never walked on the tracks until I was ten. First, we walked in the ditch next to them. When we were braver, we walked on the tracks making sure to turn back to check for trains. We sometimes walked on the rail and sometimes on the ties. I repeated a jingle as we walked, “Ooey Gooey was a worm. A mighty worm was he. He sat upon the railroad tracks, the train he did not see, Ooey gooey…“

When I was in 5th grade, a boy my age, who lived across East River Road from us and wrote the same school bus, walked on a trestle over Rice Creek with neighborhood brothers. From behind them a train was rushing towards them. The brothers tried to run and beat the train to the other end of the trestle, but they didn’t make it and were run over. The newspaper said the boy my age survived because he was small and laid between the rails. the other boys were a year younger. Their parents blamed their death on the kid my age because they thought he should have known better than to endanger their children. I didn’t think that was fair. Now that I’ve had my own children, I can’t imagine the parent’s pain or the guilt the boy who survived must still carry with him.

At a high school reunion, I asked him about the incident. He told me the paper had the story wrong; he had hung from the ties, not laid between the rails.

After this tragedy my brothers and I walked along the dirt road next to the tracks, to the creek and the trestle. Staring up at those deadly tracks gave me a shiver. We didn’t climb up there.
When I was 14, the game of jumping up on something to not get run over by the train came back to me one night. I noticed the house was quiet – my mother and brothers had gone to bed and my father was still at work. It occurred to me that if I didn’t get to bed the train would get me. I scrambled to get undressed and put on pajamas before a train came by. Every night after that for a few years I was in this predicament. The rules of what I needed to do to be safe from the trains became more elaborate. First, I needed to keep my feet off the floor when a train came by or it would run me over. Then I couldn’t let the train catch me naked. It was especially dangerous to take a bath. If I were caught naked and not in the bathtub something terrible would happen. Then I couldn’t let a train see me at all and had to pull the covers over me and sleep in hot stale air. My heart thumped. I knew it was silly but still I couldn’t stop doing these rituals.

I now think that this have to do with my fear of sex. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Trains, like developing hormones as I grew up, were powerful and wouldn’t stop from running through my body and changing me for the rest of my life.

In the summer I liked looking into the lighted dining cars of a train at dusk. It seemed adventurous and romantic and something out of old movies, especially when a couple gazed into each other’s eyes as they sat across a table from each other. Would he ask her to marry him? I played in my mind that I was her, looking courageously into his eyes without fear.

When a long freight train stopped to take on a load at Barry Blowers, I loved to peer into the open box cars, checking if a hobo might be lurking inside. I wondered if I would be brave enough to ride the rails and be free. I fantasized about it, not realizing that it would have been too dangerous for me because I was so short and didn’t have any depth perception.

When Mike was twenty-one, he did just that. A couple of his friends dared him to jump in a freight car with them. He didn’t want to, but he gave in.

At the railroad yards on the north side of Minneapolis, they found a freight train with empty box cars slowly rolling out. Running alongside an empty car, they jumped on one going north. They got out when the train stopped at Staples Minnesota, 130 miles Northwest. After eating at a restaurant, they discussed how to get home. Mike had brought money to take the Greyhound but his friends wanted to hitchhike home.

Soon a young couple stopped and picked them up. The man drank a bottle of beer and offered them some. Mike wondered if this was going to be just as dangerous as riding on the rails. The guy offered to take them all the way to Fridley and drop them off on Central Avenue. Mike convinced him to turn onto Osborne Road and leave them at his house. He drove his friend’s home in his old Chevy.

When a train stopped, I like the rumbling and banging, as cars were yanked forward one at a time, as the train started up. It caused a shiver from my head to my toes, a satisfying shiver, that made me feel as long as a train and as wide open as the sky is over the fields. The clippity-clack would gradually get faster as the train picked up speed. The sound echoed in the empty cars, and on a warm summer day, it belonged with the call of meadow larks, with the tall electric poles along the tracks, or with the katydids at the end of summer, and the crickets when evening came.

Bio: As a young person Tara Arlene Innmon loved writing almost as much as she loved drawing. She kept an extensive diary. When she started going blind she asked herself, “What will I do when I can’t draw anymore?” The answer came down like a bolt of lightning. “You will write.” In 2000 she was a finalist in the SASE Jerome Foundation Fellowship grant. She went to Hamline University, graduating with an MFA in creative Writing in 2008. She published around thirty-five poetry and short prose pieces in numerous literary journals, including Verve and River Image. She is writing a childhood memoir.

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Out of Africa, fiction
by John Cronin

It was early in the history of humanity, on a clear crisp morning, about one million eight hundred thousand years ago, that Homo Erectus stared east, over the ocean from what would be later known as the Horn of Africa. The matriarch, her son and daughter, their spouses and offspring gathered around her on the beach. Gazing over the narrow strip of water, separating them from the virgin land, piqued their curiosity. A land never trod by homo. Who knew what wonders awaited them.

Being hunter gatherers, the family group were constantly on the move. They only remained in an area until the local food resources became depleted. The group matriarch spent her childhood in an area that later became known as the Hadar region of Ethiopia. Archeologists found the three-million-year-old fossilized bones of the Australopithecus Lucey here in 1974.

Why were they looking with longing across the water? Did the cooling climate make resources harder to find? Was the grass greener on the other side of the hill? Maybe our early ancestors developed to the point where the only reason was simple curiosity. Curiosity is a powerful urge. Could that be what drove the early humans to explore.

The tilt and wobble of the earth, and volcanic eruptions caused large fluctuations in the climate. This process created new habitats for early Homo Erectus to explore. New environments meant new challenges that stimulated the brain. They developed tear drop shaped hand tools in what became known as the Acheulian style. They made scrapers, hand axes, and knapped sharp-edged flints for slicing and cutting.

Let us rejoin the matriarch and her group of hunter gatherers. Unable to use speech, the elder signed for the members to search for log sized pieces of wood and vines. Previously, in her travels, the elder had seen logs lashed together with vines and beings like herself riding on them. Maybe if they found enough wood they could build a raft to take them to the new land. They needed new sources of fresh water. The springs and streams were drying up. With fewer water holes game became harder to scavenge. That is why the land across the salt water cried out to them.

Building the raft did not go quickly. They could only scavenge for wood after bringing enough food and water to the camp site. They also needed provisions to tide them over, while they search for resources in the new land. After weeks of work, they finally completed the three-meter square raft.

Pushing and pulling the adults finally man handled the raft to the ocean. It was a tight squeeze. Five adults, four children, the paunches of three animals filled with fresh water, and reed baskets filled with tubers. Before long the swift current caught the raft, whisking it and the explorers toward the wide-open ocean.

Franticly the voyagers began to sign and make grunting noises. Fear consumed them. Maintaining her aplomb, the matriarch dumped the tubers on the raft, and began using the reed basket as a paddle. Would it work? Would the basket last long enough to get them to the promised land? It worked! Slowly the raft began to creep closer to the shore. They would make it.

Thrilled about reaching the new land, the three older children ignored their younger sibling. They began jumping up and down with excitement. They did not notice as the youngest child slipped off the back of the raft. It all happened within spitting distance of the new land

Upon landing, and ascertaining that the child fell off the raft, a terrible wailing arose from the females. A clan member died. They all felt the loss, but the mother felt it the most. They held no ceremony or death ritual. It was too early in humanities history.

The little group could not loiter long. They lost some food on the trip, but they really needed fresh water. Once again, the matriarch signed, sending the four adults searching for water, while she took care of the young. In a short time one of the males returned running and gesticulating. Was their danger? Immediately the matriarch was alert, looking for a possible predator. No! Good luck at last. He found a nearby water hole, with some carrion left by a hunting cat. Our group of early humans would eat and slake their thirst.

Generation after generation, homo erectus spread east and south, into an empty land. Travelling thirty or forty kilometers with each generation, they reached Java, New Guinea and Australia in ten or twenty thousand years. In Java, archeologists found a 108,000-year-old homo erectus skeleton. That meant homo erectus survived for roughly two million years before becoming extinct. Can homo sapiens sapiens last as long? The way we burn fossil fuel it is questionable.

On another morning, a hundred thousand years in the past, as weather cooled, and forests gave way to savannah another exodus from Africa was taking place. This time, a new species of Homo, homo sapiens, spread east, and north-east into a new land not trod by their species before. However, this time they departed Africa near the sea of reeds, where Mose’s crossed.

Staring over the grass lands from a stand of birch trees, our hunter observed a saber tooth tiger ripping open the throat of a rhinoceros. He knew the family would eat that night.

Slipping through the dwindling forest, our hunter returned to the family camp site. Using primitive speech and hand gestures, the hunter informed the group sitting around the camp fire of his find. The members were ecstatic. The adults embraced the hunter, while the children cavorted around the adults’ legs, hollering with joy. Food and water!

In the heat of the day, when predators are resting in the shade, our family of seven adults, and five children crept to the rhinoceros’s carcass, near the water hole. Cutting the remains into manageable pieces, the men transported the meat and bones to the campsite. At the same time the women filled animal paunches with water to take to the camp. Children carried anything they could hold. They did not want to be around the water hole in the evening when prey and predators arrive.

Back at the hearth, the women proceeded to process the carcass. Using obsidian shards as blades, the women quickly flensed the meat from the bones. Next, they heated the bones, making them easier to crack and extract the marrow. Marrow was the most nutritious part of the animal. To preserve the meat, it was smoke dried.

The group did not carry out the work in silence. The women chanted, as they stripped the meat from the bones. Children cracked bones, sucking out the marrow. At times the youngsters danced around, waving the bones, pretending they are great hunters. Men gathered green wood to smoke the uneaten meat. As they worked, they ate. At first the chunks of meat were under cooked, while later they were lightly charred. Along with the meat roasting in the fire, some tubers from unknown plants also baked near the heat. It made no difference. The meat and tubers filled Bellies.

Sated after the food, the men built up the fire, as evening approached. Fire kept predators at bay, provided warmth, but most of all it provided a cheery atmosphere for early humans to tell tales, and play around. It is at these moments that we see homo sapiens becoming more like modern humans. They are gaining what we call humanity. This is the beginning of culture.

Waving his arms toward the east, the hunter drew three deer in the dirt, grunting out primitive words. It was obvious he discovered some deer sign further east. Grabbing a spear with a sharp, fire hardened tip, he began to dance around the fire, mimicking a hunter driving a spear into a deer’s lung. The entire group became ecstatic, joining in the dance. If the hunters were successful, the group would be free from want for weeks.

After the excitement died down, the adults decided to move east the next morning. Before settling down for the night, the men ensured an adequate supply of wood was available to keep the fire blazing until early morning.

Early the next morning, after filling their stomachs with meat and tubers from the previous night’s feast, our band of hunter gatherers collected their provisions, paunches of water, and commenced to trek east. Everyone that walked carried something, even the children. They moved into an empty land. No more than a couple hundred thousand people existed in sub-Saharan Africa when our band moved into Asia.

Travelling east the hunters began to pick up deer sign. The scat was fresh. The reindeer herd was not far. Forging forward, the hunters moved quickly leaving the women and children to catch up. By the time the sun traveled well past the zenith, the band of women and children reached a Coppice of birch, and berry brambles. Here they met one of the hunters. He remained behind, guarding the baggage left behind by the others, while waiting for the families to arrive.

Using signs and a few words, he conveyed to the group that the hunters had the reindeer herd partly surrounded. If a couple of women would accompany him, they could complete the surround. Moving stealthily toward the mixed forest of birch and oak the hunter signaled the women to move to the left. That would complete the surround. Upon receiving a signal, the women commenced hollering and waiving branches. This spooked the reindeer, driving them toward the spear carrying men.

Stepping to the left, the hunter braced the spear against his thigh, thrust forward, allowing the deer’s momentum to force the spear deep into the lung. With blood pouring from the lung, the buck twisted his head to the right, tearing the hunter’s chest, face and neck. However, these were only superficial injuries. It was the hard kick to the guts, from the reindeer’s hoof, that caused the killing injuries. Seeing what happened, the hunters quickly surrounded their injured comrade, setting up a wailing lament. Hearing the anguished cries, those left behind at the birch grove, rushed to see what befell the hunters. The hunter’s death was a blow to the community. However, life went on. The reindeer carcass needed processing.

After peeling the hide from the carcass, the women washed the blood from the hunter’s face, wrapping him in the deer skin. Using stone scrapers and the scapular from a bison, the men dug a pit to lay their dead companion in. After lowering their comrade into the pit, the women placed the reindeer’s head beside him. They also placed some of the meat and a paunch of the precious water in the pit. After filling in the pit, the clan looked skyward. This was the beginning of a spiritual life, giving homo sapiens humanity.

Bio: At sixty- nine, John spends most of his time reading, writing and visiting with friends. In his childhood, he contracted polio, leaving him a paraplegic. Later he attended the University of Waterloo where he obtained a B.A. in philosophy and political science, and an M.A. in philosophy. While working on his PhD John’s vision finally deteriorated to where he was legally blind due to retinitis pigmentosa. Unable to continue his studies, John decided to travel. He resided in Texas, later living in Jamaica. While in Jamaica, he met and married Gillian White. They now reside on an acre in rural Ontario, not far from Lake Huron.

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Rider on a White Horse, poetry
by Winslow Parker

He rides, at ease,
Shrouded in white linen, face cowled.
astride a golden palomino,
polished bright by sun and rain, snow and hail,
Cream white mane and tail,
soften the gold of back and haunch and wither.;
casting neither sunshadow nor moonshadow

His journey meanders from track to path,
highway to byway,
freeway to dusty country lane
town to village to city and back again.
Plucking here a head of ripe wheat,
there a crisp autumn apple,
black, blue and purple berries,
a cluster of Concord grapes
an autumn leaf, burnished crimson or gold by early winter frost.

Each, gathered, he examines and lays next to his heart,
sheltering and saving as if for a feast.
His store house neither overflows nor betrays added treasure.

On occasion, he thrusts a hand into his tunic,
withdrawing one then another of his jewels,
smiling as he examines color, contour and contrast.
Replacing each in turn, he travels on,
selecting, plucking, placing each new treasure into his protective pouch.

No destination dictates.
His task is only to pick and pluck and store for some hazy future event,

The reaper of the world.

Bio: Winslow is retired and lives with his wife of over half a century in Portland Oregon. Together, they have two adult children and three grandchildren. He has, during his work years, been a hospital chaplain, schoolteacher, associate pastor, Mental-health tech, social worker and finally an adaptive technology instructor. He did not begin to write seriously until 2007. He wrote his first poem “tears,” in 2019. He delights in word manipulation and loves to sharpen his quill alongside other authors. He has self-published two books of short stories and he has several poems and stories in Magnets and Ladders and Avocet.

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At Market: Scotland, 1600, poetry
by Marilyn Brandt Smith

How comes this lass to market this fine day,
Her burnished curls and sparkling eyes entrance,
Campbell land is not a stranger’s friend,
What colours wears she ‘neath her cloak perchance?

She bears a basket filled with herbs and leaves,
Be they meant for healers or cooks to share?
Evil lies disguised in many plants,
Old Agnes would know their value were she here.

His Lordship trades three horses, prepares to leave,
Then turns my way, suspicion in his eyes;
Should I forego my purpose, slip away?
He points, his question clear will brook no lies.

I part my cloak at neckline, hold my breath,
“McGregor,” he snarls at me, but does not shout,
He tears the laden basket from my hands,
“Aye, sir,” I whisper, “‘Tis so, pray, hear me out.”

“I come to trade for tatties, ours were lost.
“‘Tis said your crop was ample, some in store.
“My clansmen ne’er would a favor ask
“Though our young and old and sickly cry for more.

“These herbs this morn I gathered with my hands
“For I am a healer longing best to serve;
“‘Tis true our clans have battled, scarred our lands,
“I beg thee, choose what measure I may deserve.”

“Ye know I dare not aid McGregors’ call,
“No word must pass, we warriors have our pride;
“Be quick, meet me in yonder grove,
“We’ve tatties to spare, but your tartan you must hide.”

Thus sparked an ember no one could foretell,
Forbidden though it was by oaths and word;
In time King James for the throne was England bound,
Mayhap accompanied by a healer and a lord.

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A First Nations Allegory, fiction Honorable Mention
by John Cronin

Once upon a time, long ago, when the rivers flowed clear and the trees grew tall, a First Nation hunter clad in deerskins and furs sat on a windblown oak tree quietly fishing. Jigging the bone hook on the hemp line, the man softly hummed a prayer to the Creator, hoping to lure a fish to the hook.

Coming to full alert, the spirits started speaking in the hunter’s head. “What kind of a creature could make all that noise? It crashes through the bush like a moose, but I do not smell moose.”

Turning toward the sounds of crashing and thrashing, the hunter’s mouth fell open in utter amazement at what he saw. If it were not for his stoic training, the hunter would have fled faster than a deer fleeing a wolf pack.

“What is this horribly, ugly creature staggering toward me? By The way it moves, and its pale skin, it appears to be sick. Could it be a WINDIGO? No, they only come to eat man flesh in the hungry times. It walks on two legs, like a man of the people, but ugly yellow fur covers its face and head.”

To the hunter’s complete astonishment, sounds spewed from the creature’s mouth, while it attempted to make signs. Finally, the hunter ascertained that the bedraggled traveler wanted a perch on his log. Being an amiable soul, the hunter signed the weary traveler to take his rest on the end of the oak log. Unsatisfied with his precarious perch, it was not long before the stranger started to edge closer to the hunter.

By now, the hunter had a small fire going and the cleaned trout sizzling over the coals. With signs and a primitive native patwa, the famished stranger indicated that he was in need of sustenance. Once more, the properly raised hunter shared his food with the stranger. “The Great Spirit gives food to all man. If I behave selfishly, the Great Spirit will take away all my blessings.”

Handing the stranger a fish on a plate of birch bark, the hunter and the stranger proceeded to lick the bark clean.

By now, the stranger had mastered a few simple phrases of the hunter’s language. “Sir, could I share your fire?”

With a grunt and a nod, the hunter gave his ascent.

Moving closer to the hunter, the stranger held his hands out to the fire. “The fire warms my hands, but my body is cold. Could I beg some of your warm furs, chief?”

Saddened by the stranger’s distress, the hunter draped a soft brown moose robe around his shoulders.

Although the stranger’s belly was full, and a beautifully beaded moose robe kept the cold at bay, the stranger was not satisfied. Slowly, he commenced sliding along the log toward the hunter. To prevent the creature from crowding him, the hunter needed to constantly move.

Even though the stranger controlled the hunter’s fire, the stranger continued to press the hunter. Again, and again, the stranger forced the hunter to move, until he reached the edge of the log. Firmly ensconced in front of the fire, and controlling all but a smidgen of the log, the stranger was content, for now.

Our First Nation hunter was not faring so well. He no longer received heat from the fire. The tainted water ruined the fishing. He was more off the perch than upon it.

“White face, move over. This is a big log; I just need enough to place my ass in comfort. Give me some space to live.”

“Sorry. I now own the log.”

“But I shared my log with you; fed you when you were starving; warmed you at the fire and gave you a moose robe. Man does not own the land, trees or the animals. The Great Spirit gives them to us to use, but we must thank Him and never take too much.”

“Sorry, but that is not the way it is. You received trinkets, put your mark on the paper and now the log is mine.” Pointing behind him the stranger said, “See the stump back there. That is your new home, Injun. Stay there!”

As time passed, the once pristine river became a foul, shallow stream. The majestic oaks, elms and maples no longer spread their boughs over the water. The white faces turned them into lumber, or just burned them to clear the land.

“As it is, the stream is useless and all the timber is gone. I will build a dam down river. This will give me enough power to run my new mill. However, this entire area will be under water. That is of no concern. There is no timber remaining, and the land is too boggy for farming.” The only problem is the Injun.

Turning around, pointing at the hunter on the stump, the Whiteman ordered, “You better clear out of here Injun. In a few months, your home will be under fifty feet of water.”

“But where can I go?”

“I don’t give a damn. Just git. There is some scrubland a hundred miles north. That will be your new home until I find a use for it.”

So ends my allegory, but it is not the end of the First Nations People.

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My Connection with Music, memoir
by Leonard Tuchyner

My first musical experience, as far as I can remember, was Peter and the Wolf. I recall jumping up and down on the bed, overcome with the French horns, as they created the image of the wolf caught by the tail as Peter slowly lowered the loop of the rope and snared him. My body was full of the exhilaration of the anger of such confinement, as he thrashed about. I couldn’t have been more than 3 years old, but my feelings of exuberant anger filled me. It’s a good thing that I wasn’t any bigger because the bed springs wouldn’t have survived. I remember my Dad laughing as I went through my antics.

That couldn’t have been the first experience I had with music. I always had a lullaby rolling around in my head. There were no words, just a soft, sad and comforting sound. If there were words, they would be “I-lululu.” I often sang hummed this tune to myself. I don’t know when that began. Even today, I find myself comforting on the minor key sound of the lullaby. Where that came from, I have no idea. My mother, I guess. Where else?

I’d sit on the floor by the grand radio consul, on which a record player sat, and listen to all sorts of music. My parents had a collection of records. I don’t remember them ever playing them, but I played them. They were mostly ethnic Jewish songs done on ‘78’ records. In those days records were made of shellac and had one song on each side. The needles on the record player had to be continually replaced.

When I went to kindergarten, we were brought regularly into a large room, where we walked around the periphery of the enclosure, walking in time to the music played by a phonograph. I remember really getting into it. The martial sounds to music made me pick up my feet and swing my arms. My whole body was dedicated to the movement of marching. The way I was taken over by the martial music reminds me of those first encounters with Peter and the Wolf’.

As a young boy, I had a strong desire to learn to play an instrument. For some reason, the clarinet attracted me, but my parents couldn’t find a teacher of that instrument, so I settled for trumpet. I said I was interested in playing an instrument, but that didn’t mean I was willing to practice one. After managing to eke out a sound on the trumpet, I was pronounced a prodigy by my instructor, Mr. Camp, and I was enrolled in his studio, which was a single small room built into a music shop. Actually, I think he was desperate for students. If I was a prodigy, I had an easy task hiding it. Although my parents eventually bought me my own trumpet and I took lessons for several years, I never showed any talent for playing it. I did manage to make the school band and orchestra, but never showed any real talent. Perhaps my lack of prowess with the horn was actually a product of trying hard not to practice. In fact, I hated it. At least once, I threw the damned thing against the wall.

On the other hand, I did love to sing. As I approached my Bar mitzvah, Cantor Fyre saw potential in me. I joined the synagogue choir. Fyre was an opera basso, and his cantorial renditions totally enthralled me.

For the first half of my life, I was constantly singing. Mostly for myself and family, but I did manage to get into a synagogue musical production. I think I was talented. I had the lungs, but not the drive, to succeed as a performer. Plus, I never learned to read music for singing, even though I knew how to read music for my instrument.

Part of the problem was that I was taught to read notes. I know that sounds ridiculous. But reading notes is not the way to learn music. My lack of achievement in that area might have been different if I’d learned by a more wholistic method. It was like learning to dance step by step, instead of by units of movement that flow together. I really have no idea what I’m talking about, but it seems right to me. So, by the time I reached college, I never touched my horn.

However, I became a fanatic in music listening and singing. This was before stereo was the thing. I would lie down with my head between two speakers to get some experience of the music being in three dimensions. Then lose myself in the sound. I had to do this after others had gone to sleep. Anything that happened to disrupt my concentration would throw me into despair and anger.

When I came here to Virginia, I met my second wife, Diane. Among other things, she was a piano player. She played for a number of churches and groups. She’d been a musician since she was a child. Newly divorced, she fit her grand piano into her one-bedroom apartment. It is also interesting that she was doing the same work as a vocational evaluator that I was doing in Florida, where I had lived for about 20 years. With those things in common, I married her, of course.

Diane would play the piano while I sang. I was almost 40 at the time. She moved from the apartment to an A-frame, which was not built for a grand piano. So, she bought short upright and moved the Chickering grand to a restaurant, where she played it for customers.

Gradually, my voice deteriorated and I sang less and less. But all those in-between years, I played around with a harmonica. I never was very good at it, but I was squeezing out tunes. I was doing it by ear, as I could not read music anymore. I couldn’t see the written music. I was too blind for that. But I persisted, and eventually I had an epiphany. I found out that I could play the instrument if I had the right mindset. I can’t explain how that happened, but it took a long time before I became proficient in accompanying Diane when she played the keys. I went from hating practice, to loving it. Being self-taught, I discovered many things about the harmonica that I doubt could be taught.

Now at 84, I can accompany her without effort. In fact, I can play things with her that I’d never heard before, and could do that while playing the piece. In other words, I can anticipate what to do before I hear the tune. I can’t do that if playing alone. It’s weird. We play about 45 minutes almost every day.

As I sit here and write this memoir, I am dumbfounded at the part music has played in my life. For a few years, Guided Imagery and Music was a mainstay in my psychotherapy practice. I’m sure I’ve left out many details. I can’t explain why or how music has managed to infiltrate my life. But it has, and I feel blessed.

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One By One, poetry Honorable Mention
by Sally Rosenthal

One by one, they are leaving,
these friends of my youth and later years.
By my choice, they are family.
Our bond is love-crafted,
born not of blood or ancestry.
For decades, we danced in celebration,
rocked one another in grief,
and shared life’s ordinary times.
Taken slowly by cancer or dementia
or felled suddenly by stroke or caprice,
their bodies no longer walk this earth,
but I gently carry my dear hearts’ memories
until I join them on the other side of now.

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What will your legacy be? Remembering Mimi, Creative Nonfiction
by Kate Chamberlin

“Let’s go up in great-grandma’s attic and go exploring.” Adrian said.

“You, nutsy,” Briella scoffed. “Great-grandma’s old house doesn’t even have an attic.”

“C’mon,” Adrian retorted. “Dad said she kept everything. Where did she keep it all?”

“Down in the basement,” Briella whispered. “Are you brave enough to go where even great-granddad dared not to go?”

Of course, the challenge was accepted and the two sleuths went into the basement.

“Wow. Look at all of these canning jars and the ancient pressure cooker, craft supplies, and a wooden baby’s cradle with cracked rubber tires,”

Briella said. “Where’s the good stuff?”

“There are a lot of creepy tools on this wooden workbench,” Adrian said. “Look at that old-fashioned toaster. It only has two-slots.”

I’ve found stacks of Rubbermaid bins,” Briella said. “This orange one had Halloween stuff in it. I’ll bet the red one has Christmas decorations in it. Let’s look in the clear bins.”

“Wow! Look at all the old board games,” Adrian said. “Scrabble, Clue, Parcheesi, Shoots and Ladders, and even a pop-a-lot.”

“I bet her grand-father made this crazy jig-saw puzzle,” Briella said, spilling puzzle pieces all over the bin as she pawed through the disintegrating cardboard boxes.

“This bin is full of books. Look at the cover of this book. Isn’t that Uncle Connor on the front cover?” Adrian asked.

“I remember Grandma Marion read to us from this book, but I didn’t know that Great-grandma wrote it!” Briella said grabbing the book.

“It’s called Hey! You Got Eyeballs In There? Four Journeys in a Challenged life by Kate Chamberlin.” Briella said. “It has the names of our Dad, uncles, and the rest of the family in it, too.”

“Man, she wrote a lot of different books,” Adrian said. “Look. Here is a scrapbook of all her newspaper columns. In this bin, there’s an awful lot of articles and memorabilia on the C.A.R., Children of the American Revolution and National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, whatever they are.”

“It’s a group of women who can trace their family back to the American Revolution. Grandma Marion has a frame with a lot of jeweled pins on special ribbons and other souvenirs.”

“Grandma Marion said they called her Mimi and she was an educated, professional woman who lived in Spain and had traveled the world and chose to live in our United States of America.”

“Yeah,” Adrian said. “Dad said she used to make them put the American flag on the house and salute as they said the Pledge of Allegiance. I guess our old, blind Mimi really bought into the ‘God, Home, and Country’ patriotism.”

“Look at this poster!” Briella said. “Awe, her guide dogs were all so cute…and their middle names were Grace, just like mine! I think it would be hard to trust your life to a dog, even a well-trained dog.”

“I’ll dare you to close your eyes and find where the basement stairs are,” Adrian challenged his sister.

“I double dare you, Briella taunted and the challenge was afoot.

Later while everyone sat around the big dining room table sharing a loaded pizza from Mark’s, Briella, who knew her Dad and Uncle had been adopted as babies by Mimi before their Mother could take care of them, asked her Dad and his brothers, “what do you remember about your Mimi.”

“After Mama and Dada divorced, Granddad often pick me up from school, the bus or the summer program and take me to their home,” Uncle Connor said. “Mimi would let me play with her Hess truck collection and run them on her treadmill. On rainy days, she let me play on her original WII play station.”

“She had a freakin’ white chair in the garage,” their Dad said. “She sat there in the open garage, holding a police scanner to listen for any delays in the school bus’s arrival. Every freakin’ day, she waited in that old, white, chair for us to come home from school.”

Uncle John quietly said, “She never gave up on us. Mimi was always there for us with unconditional love.”

Author’s NOTE: The children and adults are real; the basement and things in the basement are real; and the boys have already told me what they remember from their time with me. The creative part is, of course, that I’m not dead yet.

To listen to the book launch of Hey! You Got Eyeballs In There? go to https://www.behindoureyes.org/booklaunch/BBL-2024-10-11-Kate-Chamberlin-Audio.mp3

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Sacred Ground, poetry
by Wesley D. Sims

A Saturday afternoon in May, decoration day
at the little country church, after the service,
after lunch and the visiting. Most people
departed. The crisp air feels invigorating,
a slight breeze seems to be whispering
something I can’t quite decipher.
I stroll the cemetery, visit the graves
of my parents, decades after they returned
to the soil. Walk by graves of my sisters,
grandparents and other relatives. Ponder the fact
five generations of my kin interred here.
Many others I knew whose funerals I witnessed,
and the many dear saints I only read about, including
the one whose name I borrowed. The faithful who
served in ministry here, those who served
in other ways and the many who simply took
their seats in the pews here. I stand beside the white
marble gravestones of my great-great grandfather
and his wife and mother. I’m overcome with the stories
I know, and the grand sweep of time, how the years
march on and new generations appear to take their
turn on this stage of earthly life, then exit and pass
the torch to the next group. I think of Moses
at the burning bush and God’s instruction-
take off your shoes, you’re standing on holy ground.
I’m humbled beyond words to be standing on this,
my sacred land, my museum of stone-marked memories.

Bio: Wesley D. Sims has published three chapbooks of poetry: When Night Comes, 2013; Taste of Change, 2019; and A Pocketful of Little Poems, 2020.

He has had poems nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Artemis Journal, Connecticut Review, G.W. Review, Liquid Imagination, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Plum Tree Tavern, Novelty Magazine, Poem, Poetry Quarterly, Time of Singing, Bewildering Stories, and others.
He lost hearing completely in one ear and has severe hearing loss in the other.

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Songs I Remember: A Memoir
by Elizabeth Fiorite

My mother was not the singer in the family, but she was a hummer. I would come home from school and find her humming in the kitchen, little beads of sweat forming on her forehead as she stirred the spaghetti into the boiling water. Her humming was sporadic: hum, pause, hum, longer pause, hum again. “Catchy tune, Mom”, I would say. “Do you know the second verse?”

“Wash your hands and set the table,” was the usual response.

My Dad, on the other hand, was the extrovert, singing and dancing, telling jokes and poking fun, not only at others, but at himself as well.

As a child, my brother and my cousins and I wound up the Victrola (Are you too young to know what a Victrola was?) in the basement and played records. When it was wound too tightly, the song came out in a fast, falsetto voice. When it wore down, it droned to a low, dragged-out tone. We had fun listening and dancing to “Barney Google: and “Jimmy Valentine”.

I do remember many songs and rounds we sang at Girl Scout meetings, which proved useful years later when I taught third grade. Some of these include “Can You do the Seven Steps”, “My Hat It Has Three Corners”, and “Make New Friends”.

In my high school years, I enjoyed going to parties, dating and dancing. The popular singers were Judy Garland, (“Somewhere Over the Rainbow,”) Mel Torme, “The Velvet Fog” (“I’ve Got You Under My Skin”), Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, Vic Damone, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, and, of course, Frank Sinatra.

Later, came the Beatles, Johnny Cash, John Denver, Bette Midler, Dionne Warwick Michael Jackson, and a host of others.

From early school days to the present, the songs we sang in church have also confirmed my beliefs and brought me joy and comfort, even the Latin ones we sang, not knowing what the words meant.

I enjoy the religious songs of Christmas; the Frosty and Rudolph genre not so much. Some favorites are “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” “Go Tell It on the Mountain”, “The Cherry Tree Carol”., I rarely understand the lyrics of today’s popular songs, nor do I find the tunes memorable.

I have begun thinking of the songs I would like to be sung at my funeral. One favorite is “Be Not Afraid”, and I try not to rationalize about my choices.

If I am dead, what is there to be afraid of now?

I also like “How Can I Keep from Singing?” and “The Magnificat” in Latin. The recessional could be “When the Saints Go Marching In”. I won’t be too fussy about the songs played at my wake and funeral, as long as they are not somber. (I hope to be listening to the heavenly choir in another realm.) I would prefer songs that celebrate life and express gratitude for a long and happy life spent in service to the people of God.

Bio: Elizabeth Fiorite has been a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, for over sixty years. Her first career was devoted to Catholic elementary education. After vision loss due to retinitis pigmentosa, her second career began as a social services counselor for the adult blind in Jacksonville, Florida. Since retiring in 2013, she has enjoyed participating in church projects, Justice and Peace activities, facilitating peer support groups, and “Women of Vision.”. Her art work has been displayed in the Cummer Museum, and her articles have appeared in Behind Our Eyes, Behind Our Eyes: A Second Look,Behind Our Eyes 3: A Literary Sunburst, The Braille Forum, and in the National Catholic Reporter.

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A Season On Moolooloo, memoir
by Steve Adams

Departing from Halls Creek in the early morning, we embarked on the last leg of the journey and arrived at the station in mid-afternoon.

I said to Brad, “That was one hell of a road trip.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong!”

On pulling into the Northern Territories, Victoria River Downs outstation, Moolooloo, I thought, I’m on a cattle station, awesome! It had been a childhood dream of mine. “Centre Camp” was the central part of the three million acre spread. Being too much land to work from one point, it was broken up into outstations, Moolooloo, Pigeon Hole, and Mount Sanford.

We drove up to what appeared to be the single man’s quarters. A blonde fella walked out to greet us. He introduced himself as Prickles, and by his short haircut, I could see why. He pointed us in the direction of our accommodations.

My digs were a single wooden room with a single bed and one cupboard adorning the wall. Besides the bed there was a shower and sink, but no window. I unloaded my gear and went to see the manager.

Ian Rush was a big, dark-haired, serious-looking man. He took our details, so we could be paid at the end of the job and told us to go to the store.

As I Walked into the rustic building, it felt good to be among the leather goods and station paraphernalia. I picked out a sandy coloured Bobby Akubra hat, a dark-brown leather hat band, some riding boots, a pocketknife, a sewing kit, and a pair of pants. I also grabbed a good supply of tins of Capstan tobacco, fine cut Tally Ho rolling papers, and a couple of lighters. These would be deducted later from my pay, and the storeman signed it all off.

I made my way to the laundry to bash my hat. You soak the hat in water, bend it into the shape you want, and leave it to dry. I flattened the sides and bent the front down. I sewed the hat band in a few places, so it wouldn’t come off. When it was dry, I put it on. I was looking good.

For the first few days, I was fencing with a bloke named Tim Hare and a half-cast aboriginal bloke, or yella fella. On the third day, a helicopter drove our horses in, and we put them into the round yard.

When I was a kid, I had read several books about Australian cattle stations. There was one thing that stuck in my mind. “If the boss asks if you can ride a horse, you say no, whether you can, or not.”

Ian asked me the question, “Can you ride a horse?”

Looking him straight in the eyes, I thought, I can ride well, but say no. Say no.

“I can stay on.”

I knew straight away by his expression and response I’d given the wrong answer.

Good! “You can have Bulldozer.”

At three the next morning, I was rudely awoken by the loud clanging of the breakfast bell. While sitting on the edge of my bed and putting on my boots, I heard footsteps on the veranda. Ian, with a cool gaze, stepped into my room to check if I was up. He held in his right hand an electric cattle prod he had apparently intended to use on me if I wasn’t awake.

In the kitchen, there was a large, sturdy wooden table for the seven of us to sit. The cook served up steak, eggs, and hot coffee, but we had to wash our own dishes. There wasn’t time to sit for long because a 4WD, its motor running, with Rushy behind the wheel, was already waiting for us outside.

Five of us climbed onto the back, while two hopped in the front with Ian, and in the darkness, we were off to the yards. We arrived at first light. We took our turn at catching and saddling our mounts to ride them around inside the yard. When it was my turn, I caught Bulldozer and put on the bridle. After I positioned the saddle, I expected to see a buckle at the end of the girth strap. Instead, there were two leather straps about a centimetre and a half wide and about ten centimetres long hanging down. Having never seen it before, I asked Bobby how they did up. He showed me they pulled tight and tied in Half Hitch knots.

I saw a couple of the boys take their cameras out, as I prepared to mount, and I said under my breath, “Here we go.”

Pulling the right rein firm, so Bulldozer couldn’t turn his head to bite me, I faced slightly towards his rear and put my left foot into the left stirrup, my knee into his shoulder, and swung myself into the saddle. As soon as my backside hit the seat, he went off. Within a few seconds, I crashed headfirst into the dusty ground. I hopped up, caught him again, and remounted. I reckoned Bulldozer thought it was fun watching me sail through the air because he threw me off again, twice. On my fourth attempt, I managed to stick with him as he bucked across the yard. We came to a concrete pad at one end of the enclosure. When Bulldozer’s hooves struck the hard surface, his legs slipped straight out from under him, and he fell over. When he landed on his side, my feet remained in the stirrups. I was standing with a foot each side of him, and when he stood up, I was in the saddle. He never tried to buck me off again.

The helicopters mustered the cattle from the huge paddocks, and once they were in a herd, we took over. All day we drove them by horse until we reached the yards where we could do what needed to be done. While we were riding, I looked over at Ian. I admired him. He wore a black hat and sat with the most erect back I’d ever seen on a human being. Everything about him exemplified the image of the Australian Stockman. I could see he was a hard man.

Sometimes, we ran out of daylight, therefore, the cattle had to be held in smaller yards overnight until we could carry on the journey the next day.

Because the ground was so rough, V.R.D. used helicopters to muster from a fleet of helicopters in a hangar at Centre Camp called “Helli muster.” One morning Ian instructed a young pilot to hover in front of them to prevent them from running off when we released them, but the airman had misunderstood.

We had just fed a herd some hay to settle them. When their bellies were full, we opened the gate, and they began to steadily march out. To everyone’s disbelief, the pilot flew the helicopter low and behind them. They took off, scattering all over the place. We couldn’t chase them because the ground was too rocky.

Infuriated, Ian shook his fist and yelled abuse at the pilot. Realizing his mistake, the pilot took off. The chopper grew smaller and smaller until it vanished over the horizon. The scene of a fleeing chopper, being chased by a much slower Toyota, with the attached horse float bouncing around wildly on the rocks, and a 30.30 calibre rifle poking out the window was hilarious.

A dry riverbed ran through one of the paddocks where a cunning old bull had found refuge. He was hiding under some trees, so the helicopter was unable to move him. Ian sent me out with a cowboy named Dolly to try and bring in the bull. Dolly was a good-looking bloke whose face looked just like it was painted on, hence the nickname.

We rode along the riverbed until we found the cantankerous bull, but he didn’t want to come with us. Dolly was an experienced stockman, but this old bull would not be swayed. We walked our horse’s right up to him. We yelled and whistled, but he just stared at us as if he were stone deaf. Dolly backed his horse up to it and gave the horse a signal with his knees, and the mare kicked it with both hooves. This too had no effect. He then tried to move it along by charging his horse into it. The massive bull put his hornless head under the horse’s belly and lifted it about forty-centimetres off the ground.

When it put them down, the unshaken cowboy ordered, “Pass me that stick Steve,” pointing at a solid piece of wood on the ground.

I Dismounted, and while holding the reins in my right hand, bent down to pick it up. Bulldozer had obviously been belted with a stick in the past. When I lifted it, his eyes flared in fear, and he reared up so far on his hind legs he fell over backwards.

Dolly yelled, “Dive on his head, Steve!”

When a horse is on the ground, if you smother its head, it will stay still. Never having done that before, I was too slow. My horse rolled over, stood up, and took off. I was suddenly standing face-to-face with a massive, wild Brahman bull. I kept an eye on a close by tree in case I needed to climb it. Dolly charged his horse at the bull again, shunting into its side. Once again, the bull put his head under the horse and lifted it off the ground. When he lowered them, the bull looked at me, glared at Dolly, turned around, and casually, ambled into the bush. There was no point in trying to move the bull, so we forgot about it. I retrieved my horse, and we rode back.

Some of the yard work we did was “bang tailing.” This requires chopping off half the long hair at the end of the cattle’s tail to prevent their dung from sticking to it. Once the cattle were in the race, we reached through the bars, grabbed a tail, wrapped the hair tightly around a knife, and while holding the tail with one hand, yanked the knife hard, and cut it off.

The other work was dehorning, making the cattle safer to work with. Keeping their horns short also stopped their heads from getting caught in gaps in the trailers when it came time to ship them to market.

When we had the first mob of cattle in the race, Ian passed me the dehorners and told me to cut off their horns. I got to work. The first one was caught by the neck in the crush. A crush is two gates which come together on each side of the cow’s neck with a gap still between them when they closed. There’s enough room for the cow’s neck to be in it comfortably, but not enough room for their head or body to go through. This stops them from jumping around. Because the crush can’t stop them from going up and down, we put pincers in their nostrils. A light rope was attached to the pincers, and pulling the rope tight, we tied it to a rail on the race to keep their head still.

I slid the dehorners over a horn, and chop. They were tough, so after about fifteen-minutes, I had blisters on my hands, but I continued cutting. Cow after cow, steer after steer, blister after blister, and with the blisters popping, my hands began to bleed, and hurt. I didn’t complain. With dust kicked up everywhere on the hot day, and the cattle all mooing loudly, horn after horn fell on the ground. Finally, those ones were finished.

Testing for TB, tuberculosis, was another task. This was done by filling a race with cattle before a vet arrived. He injected a solution into the top of their tails and leaving them in the race overnight, came back to check them the next morning. If there was a lump in the spot where the needle went in, the animal was infected and had to be put down. When he found a lump in one of their tails, he walked to his Toyota, and retrieved a wooden box. As he opened the lid, I saw it was lined with a beautiful, deep blue velvet, and sitting in its mould, a sparkling, silver pistol. He gently took it out of the box, loaded it with a large bullet, walked casually over to the infected cow, and… BOOM! He then calmly walked back to the box, wiped the gun with a rag, and packed it away. He jumped in his 4-WD and left. I saw him do this twice. To dispose of the dead cow, we tied a rope around its head, and towed it into the paddock with a 4WD, leaving its disposal to nature.

Once all the cattle were seen to, and the work was done for the year, V.R.D. put on a “cut out.” This was a big party for everyone with live music and free beer.

Ian and I were standing together at the bar.

“You’re good, will you come back?”

I replied honestly, “Yeah, I will.”

But when I said it, I had a strong feeling, “I don’t know why, but for some reason, I knew I would be unable to return.”

With the season over, I collected my pay, purchases from the store deducted, and left a couple of days later on a Greyhound. Brad stayed on, and I never ran into him again.

Bio: Steve Adams and his family live in Western Australia. Following a serious vehicle accident which left him totally blind, he began writing. He is currently working on his book titled, Journey Through The Mirror.

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Primavera: When Spring Break is Over, Poetry Honorable Mention
by Lynda McKinney Lambert

Caribbean mornings
earthy paradise drinks
dark island coffee with hot cream
tiny homegrown yellow plátanos
early sunrise breeze with honey rolls
rental cars spiral up the mountain
we view abandoned plantations
hacienda tourists in a group
I wear my new green hat for the photo
afternoon rum factory tours by boat
sandy beaches never closed
coconut drinks every day
coral reefs and rusty piers
sun burned skin
soothed with aloe vera lotion
we hike steep mountain paths
cross over bridges with wooden planks
immerse our bodies in mountain streams
scream with pleasures under torrid sun
moan under a throbbing cold waterfall
Caribbean nights under the stars
dancing in the streets with strangers
two mountain top dreamers in darkness
Tony sings Puerto Rican songs to me
whispers phrases in my ear
(always in Spanish.)

If a volcano erupts
there may be delays
flights are never on time
things are often unpredictable
when spring break is over.

Primavera: When Spring Break is Over was previously published in the following:
Best Poets of 2015, Eber and Wein Publishing Co.
Nature Writing, May 8, 2018.
The Avocet, print edition, Summer 2018
Lambert, Lynda McKinney. Star Signs, 2019
Lambert, Lynda McKinney. Songs for the Pilgrimage, 2021.

Bio: Lynda McKinney Lambert is a retired college professor of fine art and humanities. She writes and creates art at her River Road Studio, established in 1976. She explores themes of landscape, pilgrimage, passage of time, fine arts and poetry. She loves walking through a meadow of wild flowers; pale heliotrope skies in the evening; solitary days with her 7 cats and 1 dog; and eggplant parmesan. She has six books published and are available on Amazon.

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Part IV. The Writers’ Climb

Iron Girl: Tomboy, Tradeswoman, Tetraplegic: a memoir, book excerpt, nonfiction First Place
by Cassandra Brandt

The trajectory of my life was derailed in an instant when I broke my neck in a car accident at age 32. I went from an independent, active lifestyle to a life of dependence, paralyzed from the chest down.

You don’t know who you are until you are stripped of all that you thought defined you. For me, it was keeping up with the guys as an ironworker and welder and being an independent single mom. It was night classes online and dreams of being a writer.

During my life I have been no stranger to change and challenge. I have gone from a smalltown teen mom to a successful traveling tradeswoman, from fundamentalist religion to philosophy and humanism.

When my life on the road, on the iron and on my feet was cut short I was faced with my biggest challenge yet. I turned to the lessons I learned on that road and in my studies, and to the words of the wise to adapt to living with my disability and let go with grace.

With much help from my loyal brother and beloved daughter, just 13 when my injury took place, I must claim my place in the world again, finding the strength to cope with no longer being strong, but building mental strength instead.

My story speaks to the struggle and strength of the disabled, to the fight of the feminist, and to a mother’s undying love. It resonates with tender love for my Arizona home, the iron I left behind, and the people in my life I hold dear.

********************

My eyes sweep across the long rec room and with sorrow I realize that mine is the least able body present, a fact that sinks hard to the bottom of my stomach. There are several people sitting around a table with puzzles and crafts, working on fine motor skills, I assume. A therapist walks backward slowly, holding a walker ready for the patient walking toward her. A therapist is doing range-of-motion exercises with a patient on a raised mat. Another man and his therapist seem to be playing some type of virtual reality game.

I would give anything to be any one of them, I think. If only I were here to practice walking again, instead of learning to use a power-chair! I would be any of them, absolutely any one of them no matter what they or their life was like, if only not to be totally paralyzed, I think in agony.

In the manual wheelchair it is hard to hold up my upper body. I try to pay attention to the physical therapist and the power-chair sales rep. There are three common types of high-quality power-chairs which can be used by individuals with a high level injury, he explains. People that can’t use their hands. I try to calm my racing brain and listen, if only to focus on not crying.

One power-chair is equipped with a head array, another a chin toggle, and a third employs a sip-and-puff device controlled by breathing into a straw. I stare at the crazy expensive looking, heavy power-chairs with all their cords and buttons. I swallow my tears. I feel a perplexing wave of shame; I will be ashamed to roll around in a chair like this. My pride cringes and it is hard to pay attention to talk about front wheel drive, shock absorbers, and the benefits of pneumatic or polyurethane tires.

I began my stay at Banner with high hopes exactly two months after the car accident. I am going to work hard, even if it hurts, I tell my brother. I have no idea what to expect. When the nursing assistant settles me into my room she fills out information on a dry erase board.

“And what are your goals for your time here in rehab?” The young CNA asks. My answer slips out before I can catch it.

“To get movement”.

Seeing it there in blue dry-erase marker I feel stupid. No amount of therapy is going to fix this, fix me. It might as well read: “Do cartwheels”. I can’t wiggle a toe. I always did expect a bit much out of life.

Now in the rec room downstairs they transfer me out of the manual wheelchair and into the power-chair with the chin toggle. When I start controlling the power-chair I feel so much better instantly. I am shocked at the relief I feel and tears spring to my eyes again. I am moving on my own.

Getting movement.

For the first time since the accident I can go where I want to go, turn where I want to turn, without any help. The power-chair is a part of me instantly. The chin toggle reminds me of using forklift toggles at work, although of course, not with my chin. I catch on quickly, maneuvering the power-chair through a short maze of bright orange cones Penny sets up. I can feel myself calming a little as I embrace the autonomy that the power-chair offers.

Driving is exhausting and painful. Maneuvering the power-chair is much more of a workout than it must look like. All the tension is in my neck, which I nearly broke, yet that is the only part of my body that works, so work it I do.

Trista has me try using a mouth-stick to turn magazine pages and pluck at a desktop computer in the rec room. It’s like a big long stylus pen with a little plastic U-shape you close your teeth around.

I am left in the rec room at a table of people with my magazine and mouth-stick. I pick a National Geographic with apes on the cover. I fight to turn the pages of the magazine propped on a sort of easel in front of me. The print is too small to read and the book keeps closing. I imagine actual books are no longer an option. But I love books. These hands have turned a billion pages! The latest Barbara Kingsolver novel is still waiting for me in a backpack; I had scooped it up at Barnes & Noble in Oregon. Will I ever open it? I try to tell myself there’s audiobooks I can listen to, but oh my heart aches. My brother searches for a magazine that might be less difficult to flip through. Rolling Stone is easier; it stays open but the pages are still hard to turn. I rest my exhausted neck and stare blankly at the smiling people in an ad for shampoo.

So this is what there is now. This is one of the things I can do.

There are books online. Online should be a place I can navigate freely with no legs. How am I going to do it? I pluck at the keyboard of one of the rec room’s desktop computers with my mouth-stick. I clench hard with my teeth until my jaw hurts. I poke out three keys: p . . . u . . . g . . . into the Google images bar. It is a slow process requiring much effort. I look blankly at the cute pug images.
This is what there is now. This is one of the things I can do.

I am so angry that I can’t at least have my hands.

My brother opens the door to an enclosed balcony on the fifth floor of the hospital. With a little effort I navigate the bulky power wheelchair through it. The heat is like a blanket falling at once over me. I can see downtown Phoenix where I had erected steel many times over the last decade. When I close my eyes I am back on that iron.
The jobsite was loud with life and brightly lit against the black sky. I loved working nights. The tower crane was floating steel way up to the connectors. I was running bent plate around the perimeter, four or five floors up. Far down below, college kids milled about walking to and from downtown bars, and this group of co-eds shouted delightedly that I was a girl. I flipped up my welding hood and flashed the rock-n-roll hand and one of them pulled out a phone and took a picture of me. My co-worker Bert laughed at me.

“How come no one takes pictures of me?” he teased.

“I just look better than you, doing the same shit,” I had retorted, laughing.

I turn away from the window now, heart aching.

My brother really imagines me writing again, and traveling and having a career and a social life. I tell him he’s crazy.

I am not ready to abdicate these legs and that autonomy. I am not ready to throw in the towel and accept becoming a quadriplegic.

Quadriplegic.

You can also refer to it as tetraplegia, which is becoming more popular. Quad comes from the Latin for four, but plegia comes from the Greek for ‘the inability to move’. Tetra also is from the Greek, referencing the four paralyzed limbs. Tetra, quad, four. Any way you say it, there are no appendages left.

My bubbly young occupational therapist, Trista, decides to take me on an outing, which they sometimes do with rehabilitating patients who will soon be out in the world again. It is Trista’s idea to take me to get my nails done, as my acrylic French tips are all grown out. Trista is an attentive, ardent and positive therapist. Since my arrival at Banner she has diligently persisted at convincing me I can still have a life. She takes me to explore the hospital while I get used to my power-chair, and to being around people. We go into a coffee shop where I order a fruit smoothie, but my voice is still too faint to be heard in the busy cafe. I look to Trista and ask if she can just order for me, but she casually refuses.

“You can do it.”

So I do, throwing my little voice out there, and my order is caught. Trista doesn’t help extensively with turning around and getting out of the door either. She holds the door open with her foot, a cappuccino in one hand and a smoothie in the other. Every minute is practice, therapy. That social anxiety I have felt my whole life has intensified with the addition of my power wheels. Trista sees it on my face.

“Let’s go to the Healing Garden.”

I recognize the rooftop courtyard from the time I had been hospitalized here with that blood clot while I was pregnant with Haley, although it wasn’t the same hospital where she had been born, later.

I remember tracing the colorful motifs on the wide columns, feeling my fingers bump along over the blunt edges of broken ceramic, tiny sea shells and colored glass in the shape of hearts and rainbows. I recall reading the poetry there, slowly circling the column so I could read the whole thing. Trista reads some to me, tracing her own finger along the painted cursive.

I roll my wheel chair past the fountain and alongside an artificial stream that flows along a rocky bed. Raised garden beds hold shrubs and flowers indigenous to the Southwest and I recall them from the hills of my youth.

During the bumpy ride to the salon my power-chair is strapped and hooked in. It is a strange way to travel down the road. We pass Jeeps that look like the one I had just bought and girls with their car windows down, long hair blowing. How did I take for granted my limitless freedom before my injury? I force the tears back and try to catch Trista’s positive attitude. It hits me, that the therapists likely do these outings to make sure patients can still function in society without freaking out.

My eyes struggle to adjust to the bright Valley summer sun as I hesitantly roll the power-chair from the safety and shade of the rehabilitation center’s van onto the wheelchair lift. I hunch over to prevent my head from accidentally bumping the head array controls and driving off the lift. Once the lift hits the asphalt I straighten and peer around me.

I have forgotten how big and busy the world is out here. I see all the people milling around the strip mall parking lot on their legs all moving like they are in slow motion. They lift their knees again and again and put their feet back down over and over, crossing space. They all ignore me entirely, much too busy with their important lives to glance over with pity at a person without one, thankfully. I am invisible. It gives me the strength to keep from wheeling right back to the van and begging to go back to the rehab. I can only imagine what I look like bumping across the parking lot in this obnoxious power-chair.

The old me would come tearing into the parking lot, hop out of my vehicle and strut over to the salon, purse over my shoulder, phone in my hand. That Walking Girl would have a deep late-summer tan, long, glossy blond hair, half a dozen bracelets, blue jean cut-offs, and strappy sandal heels. She didn’t leave the house without mascara. I imagine my Brandt blues are now round and wild with fright and I am this wreck, a shadow of myself. I am this limp body in a chair, with crudely cut hair, and a pasty, pale face. My Superman T-shirt hangs on my body awkwardly. My therapists are grinning at my progress but to me I look wretched. My legs roll open obscenely and the operation of the chair forces me to move my head clumsily and I probably look like I have a mental disability too.

Inside I scream for these vain, shallow, aesthetic thoughts to cease. At least my hands will look pretty again.

Trista opens the door to the salon and with some difficulty I make it through the entrance.
The nail tech begins by soaking off my old acrylics. She talks little and kindly in a Vietnamese accent. It is strange to be getting a manicure when I can’t move or feel my hands. I imagine that her careful little hands are warm, think how much I am going to miss just normal human touch. After the removal of my acrylic nails, I marvel at how long my real nails are. I have always been a nail-biter, but having lost the ability to raise them to my mouth and bite them, there is no need for acrylics anymore. Instead I have my natural nails trimmed, filed, and painted a bright shade of pink that Trista calls “fun”.

The only other visitors to the salon at this time happen to be another pair of therapists from another hospital, and they have brought an elderly patient in to get her nails painted. Her ancient husband has come along. I find myself staring at the older woman’s hands. They are pale with veins showing through and I imagine her skin is thin as paper, smooth like silk. She waves one of them in the air, drying her glossy coat, but I cannot mimic the motion. I watch the nail tech gently place my immobile hands under the ultraviolet dryer. I try not to think that my condition is unfair, given my youthfulness. That’s just ridiculous: Life isn’t fair.

I exit the salon’s narrow doorway and roll down the sidewalk, flanked by my therapists. I try not to watch the busy, shopping, driving, walking people. I try to focus on returning to the safety of the vehicle. On the way back my heart just skips and my stomach flops. This is it, the outside world. For nearly three months I have not been in it. It is the same as always but I am forever changed. I don’t fit into it the way that I used to.

But this is what there is now.

Iron Girl: Tomboy, Tradeswoman, Tetraplegic: a memoir is available in print and Kindle format from Amazon at: https://a.co/d/dwEV1ok

Bio: Cassandra Brandt was born and raised in Globe, Arizona. She was a Structural steelworker until a car accident caused a spinal cord injury at age 32. Cassandra persevered, and finished grad school. She writes for numerous publications, and became involved in advocacy for marginalized people.

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The 2024 Creativity Check-In, nonfiction
by Ann Chiappetta

“Rejected pieces aren’t failures; unwritten pieces are.”
– Greg Daugherty.

2023 was a year of pushing forward with my writing goals. I’d increased submitting my work, mostly poems. The ‘R’ dominated the accepted/rejected submissions column on my spreadsheet.

It was a pivotal point in my writing life. I pouted, my husband remarked I sounded cranky. I asked a few trusted friends what they thought of my poems. In general, they said my poems were understandable, made them feel something and the imagery and metaphor wasn’t confusing or trite. A good response. But I wanted my poems to be better. I wanted to learn how to craft poetry with memorable themes, with a message, once read, would not be easy to forget. Based on the number of rejections from editors I was not reaching those goals, at least not yet. I did not want my work to be “nice”, or “good” I wanted my work to be “Wow”.

I was recovering from a string of serious grief provoking circumstances. The loss of my job in 2019 and the death of my first guide dog in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. Add to it the loss of my second guide dog following retirement and relocating.

The spark of creativity fueled by the last four years of my personal journey was rich in potential themes. It wasn’t writer’s block, it felt like I’d taken a wrong turn and couldn’t exit the traffic circle. How to plumb those depths became my focus. I trolled the interwebs, found poets and writers who felt equally as stuck or expressed their grief through prose and poetry.

Thankfully asking others what they might do if faced with a similar creative conundrum, through personal conversations and the interwebs, I formed a plan.

Theoretically I could submit to as many publishing calls as I fancied but I first had to write the quality poems editors and journals sought. The next thing was to find poetry writing workshops and focused critique groups with good mentorship and instruction. A few weren’t the right fit. One instructor, however, offered a structured critique group and it checked all my boxes. The groups did not exceed six poets, it was conducted over Zoom, including written commentary and suggestions for each poem submitted and the sessions were recorded.

During the first session of a series of workshops in 2023 I shared I felt lost creatively and I wanted to unplug the emotions using poetry. The kind and caring attitude of not only the facilitator, john, but also the other poets, lent me the confidence to focus on capturing the emotions and crafting the imagery and metaphoric language. Being open to constructive and kind feedback from the other poets and providing my own feedback to their poems encouraged me to become more confident and adjust my assumptions regarding the messages poets mean to convey in their quest of expression within their work. What became clear to me was I could address my grief and the losses I bore using poetic devices I’d previously did not feel practiced enough to employ. Releasing emotions, experimenting with and validating and recording them on a document healed me from within.

By the end of 2023 I’d completed a few workshops and my writing friends commented positively regarding the shift in style and power of the messages expressed in my work. A second opportunity developed for a second more intimate critique group. Two other poets and I began meeting weekly for a generative fellowship. I loved reading their work. Thanks to their fellowship, I practiced how to offer kind and concise constructive feedback. A spark of hopefulness morphed into energetic motivation. I began crafting, improving and sculpting poems evident by the feedback received by both my critique group and those outside it. I was finally getting somewhere.

It’s the beginning of 2025 and I am happy to share the acceptance rate of my poetry submissions is much improved. The quality of my poems has also improved and my friends and colleagues have noticed. The best part of my development is I feel more in control of my creative effort and it is conveyed in my work with a confidence and flair I willingly share with both poets and those who love reading and benefitting from reading poetry. I discovered other people cared about me, my grief journey and my creative efforts.

Bio: Ann’s award-winning poems, creative nonfiction, and essays have appeared internationally in literary journals, popular online blogs, and print anthologies. Her poems have been featured in The Avocet, The Pangolin Review, Plum Tree Tavern, Magnets and Ladders, Oprelle, Western PA Poetry Review 2024, Breath and Shadow, and others. Ann’s short story, “The Misty Torrent” appeared in The Artificial Divide anthology published by Renaissance Press (2021).

Ann is the recipient of the 2019 GDUI Excellence in Writing award and the WDOMI 2016 Spirit of Independence award.

Independently published since 2016, the author’s six volume collection includes poetry, creative nonfiction essays, short stories and contemporary fiction.

Diagnosed in 1993 with a rare form of progressive retinal disease, Ann accepts vision loss as part of her life but doesn’t let it define her as a whole person.

Contact Ann by visiting her website: https://www.annchiappetta.com. Subscribe to Ann’s blog: https://www.thought-wheel.com. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/verona.chiappetta/

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As a freelance writer and motivational speaker, through her book Enlightenment: Looking Back To Move Forward, she reveals how to gain insight about negative character traits that consistently hinder success. Through Enlightenment’s main character, Taffnee Johnson, Debra helps you find meaning and purpose through introspection, examination and humor while also sharing how to escape the path of frustration and find the path to a happier life. As you reflect back over seemingly insignificant events from your past you may not be able to pull all the pieces together right away, because understanding each lesson takes time to absorb. However, once you begin your enlightenment journey you will discover how your past and your present fully connect to your future.

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Words On a Page, poetry
by Valerie Moreno

Tell the story
true, false, somewhere in between.
Doors are open, windows shut,
answers given, hidden,
you must divide,
decide to take the risk.

Will you trust writer’s integrity
or dismiss it without a try?
It is your prerogative,
the writer’s initiative
to say just enough
to charm or make you cry.

Bio: Valerie Moreno has been writing fiction and poems since age 12. Her inspiration is music, life experience and prayer. Her work has appeared in anthologies, magazines and fan fiction. She is totally blind.

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Desert Blackmail, book excerpt
by Richard DeSteno

Lester Van Carlton is a top executive at the Blissful Hotel and Casino Corporation, one of the major entertainment corporations in Las Vegas. He has an excellent reputation as a successful businessman and a dedicated community leader. One morning, he receives an anonymous email, which threatens to reveal his dark, personal secrets. It rocks his world and plunges him into a nightmare of panic and fear. Shortly thereafter, the brutal murder of a former Blissful employee presents Detective Sergeant Lucius Bunk with a homicide investigation fraught with unexpected and complex challenges. Information provided to Bunk by Keith Wilkins, a blind friend of the murder victim, reveals one of Van Carlton’s secrets and casts a shadow of suspicion on Van Carlton regarding the murder. The information proves to be critical in the successful investigation of several major crimes.

Chapter 1

Lester Van Carlton sat in his lavish and spacious office at the Blissful Hotel and Casino Corporation building, high above the Las Vegas Strip. He was a tall, thin man in his mid-forties, the Chief Financial Officer of Blissful Incorporated, one of the largest hotel and gaming corporations in Nevada. It was a little after 9 a.m. on a bright and sunny Monday and he just arrived to face another busy day. He started his daily routine. He rose from his desk and walked over to the door to his office. He locked the door and returned to his desk. He unlocked the top right drawer of his desk and carefully removed a small towel, a rolled-up one-hundred-dollar bill, and an eight-inch-square wooden box with the Blissful logo printed on the top. He spread out the towel and placed the box on it. He carefully opened the box revealing the contents of fine white powder. He took the rolled-up bill, slowly lifted it to his nose, and snorted up as much of the powder as he could in several deep inhalations. Yes, it was his daily morning pick-me-up, high-grade cocaine that he purchased on a regular basis from his long-term dealer. He knew that in a short time, he would feel the exhilarating high and focused alertness from the drug and be ready to face the day. He would need a refresher dose later, but at least he would be good for now. He returned his stash and paraphernalia to the drawer and locked it up. Before long, he felt the euphoria wash over him and he was ready to face the day. Mere coffee was not enough for him anymore. He walked over to the door and unlocked it.

A few minutes later, Lester’s secretary, Amy, came into his office carrying some papers.

“Good morning, Lester,” she said. “I have a file with your speech and related materials for tonight’s event. Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Good morning, Amy. Great, you can leave them on the table there. I’ll get to them shortly.”

“I know that this is a big night for you,” Amy said. “Good luck. I just want to say how wonderful I think it is for you to devote your personal time to such a fantastic cause. I really admire you. You’re a great role model to everyone, adults and children. All law-abiding people in this city look up to you. I’m sure you will do a great job tonight,” Amy said.

“Wow, thanks for those kind words, Amy. I really appreciate that. Yes, I am a bit nervous about tonight, but I think I’ll do okay,” Lester said.

In addition to being the CFO of Blissful, Lester was the president of Concerned Residents Against Nevada Crime, known as CRANC. It was a non-profit organization of residents of Nevada who worked in the community to come up with ideas and programs to combat and prevent crime. Its annual dinner was that night, and Lester, as president, was to give the keynote speech and receive CRANC’s annual Crimefighter of the Year Award in recognition of his work for the organization.

Lester walked over to the table, grabbed the file of papers, and returned to his desk to review them. A smile came to his face as he read the text of his speech. He had worked on it for weeks and was pleased with its forcefulness and motivational fervor.

That night, a sumptuous meal was served at the event, after which Lester received his award, presented by the Mayor of Las Vegas. It was a large bronze trophy depicting a figure holding the scales of justice.

“It is my great pleasure,” the Mayor said, “to present this coveted award to a man who has made the greatest contribution to CRANC’s mission this year, Lester Van Carlton. Lester, I’m sure I speak for millions of residents in this city when I express my deepest gratitude to you for your generous and dedicated service to our cause.”

The large room erupted in resounding applause and whistles as numerous attendees stood up and lifted their phones to photograph the moment. Lester’s wife, Laura, and his teenage son, Arthur, stood up at the head table and clapped loudly and enthusiastically cheering with the crowd.

Lester stepped up to the podium.

“My fellow warriors against crime, thank you so much for being here tonight to support our righteous cause to bring and preserve safety and security to our community. We all know that totally eliminating crime is a goal that may be beyond our grasp, but we also know that we, as a group, are fully committed to pursuing that goal, and are ready, willing, and able to do whatever we are capable of doing to put an end to the scourge of crime. Every day we hear about crime taking place in our city and state. No place is immune from it. We all must be vigilant and be willing to fight back. We must assist law enforcement when we see or learn of illegal activity. The rampant drug abuse, the proliferation of guns, the outright violence present in our country today must be reined in and gotten under control. By being involved with CRANC and by being here tonight, you demonstrate your commitment to this war against crime. Don’t ever lose that commitment. Stay strong and resolute. The negative forces in our society are no match for good and moral people like you. Thank you.”

Once again, the crowd erupted into an explosion of applause, whistles, and cheers.

Lester continued and spoke for about twenty minutes. By the time he was finished, the crowd was worked up into a frenzy of adulation, celebration, and even some tears of joy. Lester left the podium and joined the crowd, shaking hands and basking in the glory of the compliments and congratulations that were showered upon him.

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Lester Van Carlton was born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts. His parents were affluent and sent him to private schools throughout his education. Lester was an excellent student and eventually earned an MBA degree from the Harvard Business School. After holding a few jobs in the finance departments of a few small corporations, Lester was offered the high-paying and prestigious position of Chief Financial Officer of the Blissful Hotel and Casino Corporation in Las Vegas, Nevada. He eagerly accepted the offer and moved his family to Vegas. He was considered to be an excellent CFO at Blissful and was credited with being a major factor in the corporation’s great financial success. He was now a westerner, but he still had his strong Boston accent. He was an avid Red Sox fan and proudly displayed action photos of Red Sox greats Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski on the walls of his office.

After several years on the job, Lester sought something that would keep his body and mind going, and heighten his alertness and energy-level when he began to fatigue and lose focus.

After doing much research and asking questions online of various sources, he decided that cocaine was worth a try. Yes, it was illegal, but he would be careful, and using it in moderation would not hurt anyone. He was put in contact with a dealer by some business associates outside the company, and thus commenced his life of cocaine dependence.

Desert Blackmail, is available in eBook format on many retail book sites, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, and Kobo.
The audio version is available on Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Spotify, Audiobooks.com, Hoopla and other sites. Availability on Amazon/Audible and others
is pending review.

Bio: Richard DeSteno is a retired attorney and judge residing in Nevada, USA. He is blind. He has self-published two crime, mystery novels, Stepping in Blood and Desert Blackmail. Each book includes a major blind character. Both books are available on many online book sites in both eBook and audio formats. Stepping in Blood is available from NLS/BARD for eligible individuals.

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CONTEST ALERT

We will be holding contests in the areas of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for the Fall/Winter edition of Magnets and Ladders. All submissions will be entered into the contest. Cash prizes of $30 and $20 will be awarded to the first and second place winners.

Please note: Funds for contest prizes are provided by Behind Our Eyes. Checks for prize winning entries not cashed within 6 months of the issue date are void and considered a donation back to Behind Our Eyes. No additional payments will be made to replace the uncashed check. If you intend your prize winnings to be a donation, please let us know upon winning so we can send you a donation receipt letter.

Remember, the deadline for submissions is August 15, so be sure to get your entries in on time.

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Saturday Morning Trawling, nonfiction
by Lynda McKinney Lambert

My plans today just changed. It’s Saturday morning. Normally, I go fishing on Saturdays. My husband, the tea man, planned to drive about thirty miles away to a different town, to donate a carload of items to the Goodwill Store. You see, we have been cleaning out our attics and purging our closets for the past month. And all of this is just the start of what will be a long project to de-clutter our home and garage of the stuff we accumulated in all the nooks and crannies. We moved here fifty years ago. Yes, I agree, we have entered the danger zone. The sign in our yard warns, “NO FISHING.” Shortly after I got up and did some writing today, we were going to take a trip to drop off the packed boxes and totes we have in our car. But now, it’s raining! Secretly, I say under my breath, “Perfect!” I asked my husband, “Do you want to wait and do it on Monday afternoon after we have lunch?” It’s settled. He does not like to drive in a rainstorm. I can nose about in my favorite fishing site like I do almost every Saturday.

On Saturdays you can usually find me baiting my hooks and casting my lines or angling along the banks of the Connoquenessing Creek. My favorite fishing holes are right behind my back yard. No matter the weather or season, I prepare for a day of searching and probing for my best probabilities. But, I’ll admit, I’m not really in the rural creek behind my house today. I’m not even in a boat on the warm and pleasant Caribbean Sea. Oh, no, I’ll do my fishing indoors. Rainy and dreary days are perfect for my favorite indoor sport. You can find me right here in my office, scanning over a wide expanse of deep waters that come as opportunities for submissions to literary magazines, journals or other publications. Marketing and promoting my creative products are a fishing adventure. Who cares if it’s raining out there? Not me! I can just put on my CDs of Puerto Rico music and drift away on the tropical turquoise waves of my Bose sound system. No need for sun blockers and I can remain in my pajamas if I like. With a nice bump of energy from my morning cup of strong Puerto Rico coffee and the steady beat of Latin music, I’m all set for my explorations and marathon deep-sea diving into exotic fishing adventures. Today, I’ll enter my “5 little poems” in the 8th Annual Peter K. Hixson Award contest. I wrote this “Personal Statement” and now I selected 5 unpublished poems. First, I wrote a traditional “personal statement”, but I’ve decided to send a non-traditional one instead. Editors must get so tired of reading those monotonous and bland bio statements. But who knows? I try to stay in sync with this writing life I choose to live. I’ll keep casting my bread upon the living waters as I dream of getting something published. A rainy Saturday in the springtime is perfect for trawling.

An earlier version of “Saturday Morning Trawling” was published on Lynda’s blog at: https://www.llyndalambert.com

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The Artist’s Mirror, poetry
by Brad Corallo

The tapestry of your life
supplies the thread from which your art is woven.

The tapestry is fashioned from the threads
of all your decisions, circumstance and luck.

Perhaps if you could see the beauty of the tapestry
you might well be relieved, surprised and amazed.

Seeing the big picture
might provide greater clarity of understanding.

But, there’s the paradox.
The only one who can’t view the entire tapestry is you!

Unless, you catch a distant glimpse over your shoulder
while you form, shape and contemplate your art.

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Our guest judge for poetry, Ona Gritz’s book, Everywhere I Look: A Memoir Is available as an audio book from Audible, narrated by Janet Aldrich

In 1982, twenty-five-year-old Angie Boggs, pregnant with her second child, was brutally murdered, along with her husband and infant son. Ill equipped for the horror of that violence and the enormity of her loss, Angie’s sister Ona, a college sophomore, felt numb. She also felt deeply ashamed of her inability to grieve.

But shame, like her sister’s absence, was something Ona knew well. For as long as she could remember, she’d felt ashamed of being their parents’ blatantly favored child. The disabled daughter they’d coddled and protected while they alternately punished and neglected Angie and finally sent her away.

It wasn’t until thirty years after the murders, both their parents gone and Ona nearly twice the age Angie was allowed to reach, that she developed the courage and a detective’s compulsion to learn all she could about her sister’s turbulent life and unthinkable death. The result is Everywhere I Look, a beautifully rendered memoir of sisterhood, longing, true crime, and family secrets. A profoundly moving reckoning and love letter.

©2024 Ona Gritz (P)2024 Ona Gritz

To read more about Everywhere I Look: A Memoir and to get your copy go to: https://a.co/d/6RQXJBL

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The benefits of Writing prompts, poetry
by Nancy Scott

The Behind Our Eyes writing group offers many opportunities to write using prompts. In April, national poetry month, new prompts are offered to the group daily. Several times throughout the year, prompts are posted to the list before critique sessions which are available for all members to attend.

Here are two poems written from prompts provided by the Behind our Eyes list.

********************

Un-Usual

This poem was written in response to a prompt for the letter U.

Underground, the earth shakes.
Unexpected, you wonder what causes such vibrations.
Unaware, you blame wind or a large truck.
Unruly minute, but foundations hold.
Unnerved, you turn on the news.
Unavoidable not to note your first earthquake’s history.
Unclear if you feel or imagine aftershocks.
Undeniable cosmic lesson.
Understanding that another mystic event will
Uncolor the sky next Monday.

Unconnected, or not?
Unwelcome that this might be your last eclipse.
United States won’t see totality for twenty years.
Unfiltered awe while wearing glasses.
Unfolding theories and science.

Unique week of what is beyond you.

********************

This End Up

This poem is in response to the poetry prompt, If your table could talk.

I am not easily moved.
I fit where I am needed.
I am a nook
or a drawerless desk
rescued from a storage unit.
I display the astronaut pen-holder,
the polished standing quartz,
the flat rock with its painted angel
and the Braille writer in the middle.
My grain and missing bits
serve as reminders of missteps
and practical architecture’s weave.
My three sides are high enough
to contain things and I stand
on their stability.
I am built for every edit-
the thousand-word article,
the curious acrostic,
the unbalanced checkbook,
the cleared-off need for eating
when quarantined.
I can withstand pounding.
I can hold mail and files.
I can be leaned on and relied upon.
My new history is polished, cherished
and never boring.

Bio: Nancy Scott’s over 950 essays and poems have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and as audio commentaries. Her latest chapbook The Almost Abecedarian, appears on Amazon. She won First Prize in the 2009 International Onkyo Braille Essay Contest. Her recent work appears in 82 Review,Black Fox Literary Magazine, Braille Forum, Chrysanthemum, Kaleidoscope, One Sentence Poems, Shark Reef, Wordgathering,and The Mightywhich regularly publishes to Yahoo News.

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Hand-Me-Downs: Generational Trauma Memoir in Poetry, book excerpt
by Mona Mehas

A stunning and hard hitting book of poetry detailing a fraught family life and the love, strife, and lasting connections that go along with it. The author delves deep into her past and dredges up memories both delightful and painful, all with the sparkling poetic skill which we’ve come to expect from such an accomplished writer.

CONTENT WARNING: This book deals with some serious issues such as abuse and neglect and some readers may find this content disturbing.

********************

Julia

My mother Julia hailed from Tennessee
hills were dark, food was lean, her mother cried
Daddy’s prettiest girl, how can that be?
He’s gone so much then he sent her away,
she came home for a visit, that’s when he died.

Many tears were shed that September day,
my mother Julia hailed from Tennessee
Hoosiers then, brothers witnessed suicide
shocked, unmarked grave, suicides had to be
sadness, depression, engulfed in the tide.

Recovery weary, months passed in blur
her brothers married, turned their backs on her
My mother Julia hailed from Tennessee.
She wedded chaos, life refused the calm
gambling, drinking, fighting, and daughters three.

Girl number three, late-life baby, that’s me,
divorced, sisters grown, I’m small, Mom plays
Poverty, poetry. nomad life now
My mother Julia hailed from Tennessee
recovery slowly, healing somehow.

Nature walks with Mom, learned to love the Earth
reading, writing, every day, our rebirth
Trees, birds, poetry, Mom needed to pay
to soothe both our souls for neglecting me.
My mother Julia hailed from Tennessee.

********************

My First Language

My first language was twin-speak. For a slice of time, we nestled in our mother’s womb hiding in the heatwave behind her heart. But our gurgles traveling through her blood created dissonance. My other half disintegrated before Mama was aware of their existence. I was left alone, devastated, searching for my twin. On the day I emerged from my warm confines, the doctor cut me out; I didn’t want to surface. The thought of leaving my twin behind haunted me; the shame I carried overwhelmed me. Convinced I’d find my sibling, I used our words for years, calling out, editing in the moment, my emotions raw. I didn’t fit in or understand the rules I should follow. I was a wild girl facing challenges unknown to others. Long hair covered my face, hid my scars, until I learned an acceptable language. To survive in the world, I replaced the intimacy of twin-speak with a reasonable approximation of truth. A chunk of me still missing, I will always grieve my twin’s absence.

********************

In 1920

The census over one hundred million
Our nation adopted the one-drop rule
Eighteenth Amendment brought prohibition
The League of Women’s Voters was founded
Negro baseball played in Indiana
In 1920, my mother was born.

A law against sending kids parcel post
Two national forests were established
Civil Liberties Union established
Three black men were lynched in Minnesota
In 1920, my mother was born
When coal was low in late January.

Tornadoes, earthquakes, ravaged our land
First female president of the US
Edith Wilson protected her husband
In 1920, my mother was born
Fifth of seven, her siblings all hungry
She grew up fast, the only way she could.

Wilson awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Though against suffrage and integration
In 1920, my mother was born
Her eldest and youngest siblings passed on
Her father rode the rails, was rarely home
Mom loved to sing to her brother’s guitar.

Whites killed blacks trying to vote in Ocee
In 1920, my mother was born
She loved to play baseball and dance with friends
She picked greens with her mom, cleaned and cooked them
Mom never dreamed of better things in life
Then she met him, the man she later wed.

In 1920, my mother was born
To a poor white family in the South
She met a man of a different religion
Her dad sent her to a girl’s reform school
On weekends, Mom met the man in secret
Her dad shot himself in ‘37.

The young couple married and had three girls
But heartache and violence filled their household
Grandpa suspected my dad’s potential
Had he been around, he may have stopped it
In 1998, my mother died
Heart attack, her life had been one long war.
But I Digress
One branch of ancestors came from Egypt
Were they royalty?
Family stories told of travelers
wagons crossed the open landscape
fiddlers plucked and sang
women danced
skirts swinging

But I digress…

One branch of ancestors is from Europe
Some left for religious freedom
others sent away for crimes
English, Scottish
became slaveholders
amassed wealth
from skin not their own

But I digress…

My mother was from Tennessee
my dad, Indiana
not sure where I belong
My skin pale as porcelain
the blues raging in my soul
I need to dance when I hear banjo
the one string that ties it together

I’m tired of digressing.

Bring me spicy rice with fried okra
piled high with shrimp and white fish
add collard greens and onions
pass the hot sauce please
Mother never knew
or didn’t care
but I’ve done the research

I won’t mask my identity.

********************

What is Home?

Is home the giving,
filling pockets with family wealth or secrets,
pushing what we have onto others
even if uninvited?

Is home overflowing
with love and abundance; true joyfulness,
the wine sweet on our tongues
but the words struggle?

Is home the space between
this world and the next, connections
made to set aside differences,
find where they meet?

Home is all that and more,
a cascade of hope for learning our lessons
sharing with those around us,
we live in the overlap.

Hand-Me-Downs: Generational Trauma Memoir in Poetry, published by LJMcD Communications is available in print and Kindle formats at: https://www.amazon.com/Hand-Me-Downs-Generational-Trauma-Memoir-Poetry/dp/B0D9FMS65T/ref=sr_1_2

Bio: Mona Mehas (she/her) writes poetry and prose from the perspective of a retired disabled teacher in Indiana USA. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has
appeared in over 70 journals, anthologies, and online museums including Paddler Press Trip Log and IHRAM Literary magazine. Her poetry chapbooks, Questions I Didn’t Know I’d Asked and Hand-Me-Downs are available on Amazon. Mona is Editor-in-Chief of Cicada Song Press and 2nd VP for Poetry Society of Indiana.
She is searching for a home for her first novel and working on a novel in verse. Visit her website at: https://linktr.ee/monai

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Donation Request

Do you enjoy reading Magnets and Ladders? Consider making a donation to Behind Our Eyes, a 501C3 nonprofit organization of writers with disabilities. Behind Our Eyes provides funding to support all Magnets and Ladders activities and all Magnets and Ladders editorial and technical staff members are Behind Our Eyes Members.

You may make a contribution using the PayPal button on our website https://www.behindoureyes.org.

An April Half-abet Poem for Writers, poetry
by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

April, April-mystical muse of this poetic season-
bestow on all my poet-friends
crystals of creativity,
dedication to the craft and artistry of poetry,
enough eloquent words for drafting elastic lines of poems,
fresh ideas to wax poetic for one full month of verse,
gauntlets to protect the writing hands,
havens or other peaceful places for writing without interruption,
inspiring content that will touch the souls and sod of readers,
joy while being on the Cloud 9 of Creation,
kindness in accepting both critiques and compliments,
loyalty in more fully understanding fellow poets and their poems,
magnolia blossoms to crown our Poets-of-the-Day until the month of May.
“An April Half-abet Poem for Writers” was previously published on Alice’s WORDWALK blog.

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Part V. Magic Intervention and a Touch of whimsy

At a Tender Age, Fiction Second Place
by Donna Gum

“You’ve always got your nose stuck in a book! Try going for a walk,” said John.

It was true, Bethany knew. She raced through books almost non-stop. The books of Bethany’s childhood came to mind.

She felt silly, but she drove to the small bookstore, Home Again, with its creaking floorboards and storefront windows. Bethany found the book Little Women and enjoyed renewing her friendships with Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth. She could have been pals with temperamental Jo.

Bethany finished the book in two evenings and craved another comforting book. The next morning, she wore bright blue shorts, a striped top, and sneakers. Drinking hot chocolate instead of her usual coffee, she hurried to the dusty bookstore. Bethany tried not to get her hopes up for a book about a burro she read in the third grade several times.

To her excitement, Bethany found the old favorite, Brighty and the Grand Canyon. The pages had the pleasant smell that she remembered. The elderly man at Home Again rang her purchase and smiled like a co-conspirator. Bethany clutched the book like a child and left the store. As Bethany read the true story of Brighty, she again wished she could have stroked the old burro’s bristly coat and spent time as his friend. When Bethany completed the book, she hungered for more.

Recalling the Little House on the Prairie series. Bethany remembered thinking she’d read them all and squealed when she found a new book in the series in the grade school library. The children stared at her, making her cheeks go red.

Bethany pulled her hair into a ponytail and chose a yellow gingham blouse and shorts with her sneakers. She would meet her daughter, and they would stop at Home Again. She climbed into her daughter’s car.

“Mom, you look great. You look younger,” said Chelsea.

Bethany giggled. “I feel like a kid.”

Bethany couldn’t wait to see if Home Again had the Little House on the Prairie books, so they stopped there first. Probably not.

They stepped in and Chelsea went her own way. She didn’t see her mother gasp. On the front table, waiting for her, sat the Little House on the Prairie series. The price was two dollars.
That can’t be right. It’s a sixty-dollar collection.

Bethany found the elderly owner setting books on shelves. “Excuse me, could you tell me the price for the Little House on the Prairie set?”

“Two dollars,” said the shop owner. “Will you be taking them today?”

“Oh, yes!” said Bethany.

On the way home, Bethany yearned for her favorite snacks she liked to eat while reading as a child.

“Chelsea, could we stop at Red Rooster Grocers? I want to pick up the cheese and cracker snacks with the little red sticks. I used to eat them while I read when I was little.”

Chelsea said, “Sure,” and swung into the parking lot.

Bethany ran into the store hoping she could find the treats. She scooped them off the shelf and, while she was at it, bought chocolate milk too.

John laughed the next morning when he saw her eating the breakfast she’d eaten every morning as a youngster. Bethany still loved toast with peanut butter and chocolate milk.

It’d taken a week and a half, but Bethany snuggled through listening to Pa’s violin in the evenings and traveling west by covered wagon with Laura, Mary, and their dog, Jack. She relished the cheese and crackers and would’ve shared with them if she could have.

Bethany thought of other childhood books she’d loved and dragged John to the bookstore. As she looked through the bookshelves, she saw him bringing a book.

“The Secret Garden! How did you know I loved that story?”

“You talk about it all the time,” John said.

“I do?” Bethany purchased the book, and they went home.

After she read about Dickon’s animals and cheered when Mary encouraged Colin to walk again in the rose garden, Bethany recalled another favorite book: Frederick the Mouse. She remembered the enticing cover where a mouse slept while dreaming of primary colors.

A day later, playing with her hair as she searched the shelves, Bethany saw the owner stop at her aisle and smile. He wordlessly ran his hand over books at the far end and walked on. Curious, she moved to those books. To Bethany’s amazement, there on the shelf was Frederick the Mouse, the first book her mother gave her.

She took the book and purchased it. To Bethany’s surprise, the old man bid her goodbye. Her heart froze, and she twirled her hair faster. He hadn’t said goodbye before. Bethany felt as though she may not see him again.

“Um, are you closing Home Again?” Bethany asked.

He looked at her with sad, knowing eyes.

“No,” he said.

Bethany drove home and dressed for bed in a flannel nightgown like she wore when a little girl. Taking the book to bed, she opened it and enjoyed reading about Frederick and the bright colors he described to the other mice during winter which helped keep them warm.

Bethany didn’t see John find her snuggled in their bed. She didn’t watch as he gently slid the book from under her stiff hands and read the title with tears stinging his eyes. Nor did Bethany know John recalled the book was about a mouse burrowing in for his long winter nap.

Bio: Donna Gum wrote non-fiction with several published articles and ghost-writing. Unable to resist the call of fiction, she enjoys writing flash fiction in
the Appalachian Mountains. Her most recent fiction was published by Borderline Tales, CafeLit, and Flash Phantom. Donna is a member of the Deaf and Hard
of Hearing community with a severe profound hearing impairment.

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Elephant Sheets: A Return to Childhood Wonder, fiction
by Winslow Parker

Me and Mommy went shopping today. She bought new sheets for my bed. She said the old ones are see-throughy. I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I put the sheet over my head and tried to look through it. I think she was right. I could almost see her and my bed and my dresser and my stuffed Panda bear and my shoes that I forgot to pick up last night. Mommy reminded me to pick them up before we left for the store. Now I’m lying all comfy on top of the bottom sheet and under the top sheet. That’s kind of funny, don’t you think? Under the top and on top of the bottom. I forgot to tell you what pictures are on the sheets. There are hundreds of elephants all over the sheets. Great big elephants, probably daddy elephants with long tusks and big ears. There are elephants with shorter tusks. I think they are mommy elephants and there are lots of baby elephants playing around their mommy and daddy’s legs. They look like they’re having fun. I was just going to sleep under and on top of my new sheets. They are crinkly and stiff, but they feel nice against my face and fingers. All of a sudden, I felt something wiggly and squiggly on my back, then on my front then on my arms and even my face. My toes too. It scared me. I thought there were monsters in my bed, so I hopped out of bed, off the bottom sheet and out from under the top sheet and turned on the bedroom light. I know Mommy won’t believe me when I tell her, but all those elephants were running all over my bed. Some climbed onto my blankets, some jumped down to the floor, some just ran in circles. I could hear a tiny squealing sound. I put my ear down to the elephants and it was really them making a really huge sound, almost like a lion roaring, but very tiny because they were very tiny. I picked one up. It was a baby and brought it close to my eye. It waved its trunk and pulled on my eyelashes. It tickled. I laughed. He ran his trunk over my nose. I thought he might be wondering why it was so short. Maybe he wondered how I ate grass. I put my hand flat on the sheet and ten of them began a circle dance on it. One grabbed the tail of the next. It tickles my hand. I laughed again. Then, quick as a wink, they all jumped back into their places on my top and bottom sheets, oh, on my pillowcase too. I climbed back into bed. In the morning, I told mommy. Just as I thought, she didn’t believe me. But then I showed her the baby elephant on my sheet holding something very thin. She got a piece of glass which made things look bigger. She said it looked like it was holding an eyelash.

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The Test of Silence, fiction
by Shawn Jacobson

Prem awoke in silence; this was wrong. He’d become so used to the background, the chatter of academy’s systems, the omnipresent drone of humanity’s news, the wayfinding signals that guided his steps, that hearing nothing verged on the terrifying.

Prem checked all the brainbox input streams, nothing, even the box itself seemed dead, though how that could be he did not know. Prem flopped back on the bed feeling consternation. How was he going to do his classes without the brainbox feeding him the information he required.

For that matter, how was he going to find his classes without the way-finding tools on which he’d come to depend. Well, he thought, there was the cane, though he’d have to grope and rummage to find the thing. He’d always been told that he needed the skill of it, that tech could, and often did, malfunction when you least expected, when tech was most needed. Well, he was learning now.

After groping around the room, he chanced upon his stick. It clattered to the floor making the first useful sound Prem’d heard all morning. Prem stooped to pick up his cane and felt his way to the door.

Beyond his room, Prem stood in the hallway trying to remember the way to the mess. He didn’t remember the twists and turns to get there. As he racked his brains for the appropriate memory, a voice called out “can I help you?”

“My tech is down and I’m trying to get to breakfast,” Prem replied.

“You can read,” the voice replied, “can’t you?”

“Yes,” Prem replied remembering that the hallways came with signs.

“OK,” the voice said. “You can feel the hall for signage.” Then the voice took mercy and said, “just this once I’ll help you. Turn left and tap along the right wall till you get to the fourth corridor. Then, turn right and tap till you get to the part of the wall that has tapestries. Then, it will be the next door on your left.”

“Thanks,” said Prem.

“Or” the voice continued, “you can follow your nose, if you dare.”

Prem thanked the voice again and headed for food.

********************

“Did the commandant’s dog just die,” a voice to Prem’s right asked.

“Huh,” Prem said.

“Well,” the voice replied, “the tofu sausage tastes funny this morning. I was wondering if they put some extra ingredients in the mix.”

“Not so I’ve heard,” Prem said. The academy food was, by tradition, vegetarian. Prem was used to this, but the cadets who were still meat eaters needed time to get used to the Qua’sean. Prem was sure that all the food tasted funny to carnivores.

“I keep hoping they’ll serve poutine, kind of a taste of home,” The person, a female, continued, “but then, I’m afraid of what it would taste like. I know they’d find some way to ruin it.”

“You from Canada then,” Prem asked remembering his childhood in greater Vancouver.

“Yes,” she said. “In Big Prairie, a bit north of Edmonton.”

“That’s some serious ways north,” Prem said as his Canadian geography came back to him.

“Yes,” she said. Then, “By the way, “my name is Andrea.”

“I’m Prem, glad to meet you.”

Andrea looked at her watch. “Martian spuds!” she swore. “I’d better start eating or I’ll miss me vault space navigation course.”

The two commenced eating.

********************

“If you needed help,” Andrea said, “all you needed to do was ask.”

“Sorry,” Prem said. “My tech went down this morning, and I thought that tagging along with you would work given we’re in the same class.”

“Tech down,” Andrea asked, “what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Prem said. “I woke up this morning and everything was dead; silence.”

“Well,” Andrea said, “Its no sin to have problems with your technology. “Just ask for help when you need it. By the way,” she continued, “How did you expect to take notes without your brainbox, let alone read the system charts?”

“Honestly,” Prem admitted, “I’m still figuring it out. I really didn’t plan for this to happen.”

Prem now wished he had a plan, the study of vault space, which humanity used to vault between the stars without the constraint of the light speed barrier, was hard, and often counter-intuitive. Normal space had its reflection in vault space, but this reflection was, to put it mildly, strange. Learning to navigate by this reflection required intricate and detailed knowledge, knowledge that Prem just couldn’t keep in his head without the tech of his brainbox.

“No one expects a brainbox failure,” Andrea said, “but they happen anyway. Did you bring braille writing equipment for when you needed to write something down?”

“No,” Prem said. He remembered that he had a slate, which was required, but he was out of practice using it. He’d have to dig in his duffle to find the required equipment.

“Well,” Andrea said, “I can give you my notes after class and you can copy them, but you need to find your stuff before your next class. What is it?”

“Essentials of Asteroid exploration,” Prem said.

“I won’t be able to help you,” Andrea said. “I have Earth Literature; I get to read tales of the Saramagu plague and the blind guides who taught us all how to live without sight.”

“Sounds fun,” Prem said; “I didn’t know they taught literature here.”

“Our teacher says it gives us models on how to behave,” Andrea said, “He claims us space heads need to learn how to be human, and literature teaches us that.”

“Human,” Prem muttered. “That’s interesting.”

“When you get to your class,” Andrea said returning to the problem at hand, “you’d better ask the teacher for help. You won’t be able to access three-dimensional system charts without your tech.”

After class, Prem hurried back to his cabin with braille pages full of notes and raised line drawings of two-dimensional representations of vault space. These weren’t as good as a three-dimensional chart would have been, but he hoped to learn from them. Reaching his cabin, he went for his duffle to look for a braille slate.

With his precious slate in hand, Prem headed for his next class. He wished he was taking the literature class even if the age of sight seemed more legend than history to Prem. In that class, he could get by with general information which did not require the focus of energy that detailed asteroid analysis required. Working with his slate, relearning the skills of braille writing, was going to be hard enough.

“You’re late,” the professor said. “Please see me in my office after class.”

“Sure,” Prem said. “What was your office number? I lost…”

“You lost your tech,” the professor said, “I’ve already heard about that from your vault space instructor. “My office is number 419 of this building; follow the signs.”

Prem settled in for a hard grind. He was able to follow the professor, but he was not sure that the effort he put into note taking was worth the attention taken from the actual lecture.

The lecture was a data dump of the characteristics that distinguished between asteroids that were rock and asteroids that were ice balls. The lecture emphasized ways to distinguish them from a distance. Then came discussions of the uses and dangers inherent in the various types of rocks and ice balls.

Prem was sure that loads of supplemental material, material he would be responsible for learning, were being downloaded into everyone’s brainbox; everyone’s but his.

After class, Prem endured a scolding from the professor.

“Great bloody sandworms,” the professor swore, “why didn’t you call me ahead of time when you knew you were having trouble? Are you really that stupid not to think that machines break, and that we have plans for such things. You really need to learn enough humility to ask for help when you need it.

The professor went on in that vein for a seeming eternity. Finally, he asked, “what is your next class?”

Rocketry,” Prem said.

“Well, you’d better get to it,” the professor relented letting Prem go. Prem was glad that the rocketry was next. He dearly wanted to go and blast something.

In rocketry class, Prem would be assigned a buddy; this was required for any class where you got up close and personal with vacuum and needed the gear to survive the absence of atmosphere. For the current class, Prem’s buddy was Chris.

“I understand your tech is down,” Chris said. “I guess you’ll have to check out my suit the old-fashioned way.”

As Chris dawned their spacesuit, Prem ran his hands over the various seals and gaskets used to ensure the air-tight conditions needed for egress. Under normal circumstances, Prem would have regretted that Chris did not consider themselves female, taking the joy of touching out of the equation, but he was not feeling normal at the time; so, he worked through the procedures with a clinical detachment alien for him.

“Tell you what,” Chris said, “I’ll guide, and you get to press the firing button.” Before Prem could object, Chris continued, “you’re in no shape to guide anything right now.”

“Sure,” Prem acquiesced. “Guide away.”

Rocketry class was about hitting things in space with rockets. This was less about war than about self-defense. You never knew when you might have to blast some space rock that was headed your way. Thus, the ability to hit rocks with missiles was good for anyone traveling through space. This class was meant to teach that skill.

Chris and Prem were assigned a rocket launcher at the end of the artillery range. “Rock coming,” Chris said picking up the information from her headset.
“Aim for 8 O’clock, good, right 30 degrees, OK hold, now fire,” Chris said as the firing stud buzzed. Prem fired. “Direct hit,” Chris exclaimed as her brainbox received telemetry.

Prem didn’t know he’d hit the target. Since sound didn’t traverse the deep empty of space, the resulting explosion was silent to anyone without the tech to know what had happened. The most entertaining part of rocketry class was when someone missed, and the rocket spent its explosive load on the surface creating a boom that you could feel through your moon boots.

Due to the combined accuracy of Prem and Chris, the next several shots failed to provide that sort of entertainment. The last shot was a different matter.

“OK,” said Chris, “a big rock coming at us. Point to 11 O’clock, now right, right, no, your other right, up a little,” at this, the radio cut out. Then, “No! You hit the firing stud too soon.” Prem realized that he’d not made sure that the system was buzzing. Anyway, he could tell from Chris’s voice that the big boom was coming, and he was to blame.

“Casualties coming in,” a voice called out over Prem’s intercom, and he realized that his tech had returned. “Can anyone render aid?”

“Here,” said Prem. Then, remembering his struggles with moving heavy objects, Prem continued, “but I’m going to need help.”

********************

“Do you realize why we turned your tech off this morning?” the Commandant asked Prem.

“I’m not sure,” Prem said. “But I can make guesses.”

“Tech goes wrong in the field,” the Commandant replied. “We need for people to function even when their machines don’t work. The ancient skills of blindness allow some functionality, even if it is harder than relying on computers and communication systems. Out in space, we need everyone to be as functional as possible.”

“Understood,” said Prem. He delt with buggy machines back home. Part of his reason for going into engineering was to help his father in the family business.

“But there’s another reason,” the Commandant continued, “one that is less obvious.”

“And that would be,” Prem asked.

“We need people to work together out here; we need crews that are communities, not collections of individuals. Besides being one of the ancient skills of blindness, the ability and willingness to ask for help is one of the ways we create community.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way before,” Prem said.

“In fact, we’d thought that your test was going to be a failure,” the Commandant said. “We had to end it when your rocket hit the unauthorized space buggy that got onto the range. The fact that you asked for help, that you realized the need, made your performance successful.

“That’s good,” Prem said. “I didn’t want to fail.”

“No one does,” the Commandant said. “Anyone here at the academy is here because they are very good at the skills we need. Many are used to working on their own because they don’t have experience with working with their peers, students with their high level of aptitude. Thus, they do not have experience with asking for, or needing, help. The test of silence you just completed is meant to provide that experience. Now about your note taking,” the Commandant continued changing the subject to the familiar ground of course work and performance.

********************

The rest of the day was the sort of hard that Prem found familiar. He caught up on the brainbox feeds from his classes and made as much headway on his studies as he could. There was one more unusual interruption, an all-hands meeting in which the officer in charge of the motor pool explained the rules for checking out rovers for practice.

“Practice is just that,” the officer said, “practice. It is not joyriding and is confined to certain areas of the academy. These grounds explicitly exclude the artillery range.”

After everyone assented that they understood, the meeting ended, and regular life resumed.

At the end of this eventful day, Prem retired to his cabin hoping for rest. He wanted the next day to contain more noise, and less adventure than he’d had on this most silent of days.

---

A New Look for the Count, fiction
by Leonard Tuchyner

“Ah, Tralaine, it’s a beautiful night. Don’t you agree?” Count Equis exclaimed.

“It certainly is,” his steed replied. “I’m happy you could get away from your mistress this evening.”

Equis sighed, “Yes. It’s not easy to be a great lover, you know.”

“If you say so. But I think Embalmelise is attracted to your Batman outfit.”

“For shame, Tralaine. You’re just jealous of my vampire cape.”

“It’s true,” his mount said softly.

“Ah, you have nothing to worry about. You are my favorite girl. Don’t you know that by now?”

“Prove it,” said Tralaine.

Equis bent over and punctured the neck of his steed. Drew out some blood. Tralaine quivered with pleasure.

“Do you feel better now?” the Count asked.

“Yes. Thank you. That’s what I wanted. Besides, I’m not really worried about your affection for that embalmed ghoul.”

The moon was full as they galloped through the countryside. Finally, they came to another town.

“How about if we stop at a restaurant? I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” Count Equis exclaimed.

Tralaine looked back at the Count suspiciously.

“Oh, don’t worry. That’s only an expression,” Equis reassured the horse.

“I’ve seen you eat a horse.”

“But I wouldn’t eat you, Tralaine. How would I find another brave horse like you? No, I think I love you more than anything else in the world.”

Tralaine gave him a smug look. “You’re in the mood for regular food tonight?”

“Famished,” the Count proclaimed.

“How about we stop at the first restaurant we come to that has grass I can munch on?” said Tralaine.

“Deal,” the count agreed.

They came to a small eatery located on a large plot that had an ample amount of grass for Tralaine’s appetite.

“This will do fine,” Tralaine remarked.

The Count dismounted and proceeded into the establishment, not stopping to read the sign or to ask for a menu. The waiter approached him with a smile. He was a balding man with somewhat of a pouch.

“May I help you? My name is Igor. I’m the proprietor of Ignores Self Help Restaurant.” Igor looked expectantly at Equis. After a pause, Igor asked “Did you read the introduction to this restaurant posted on the sign outside?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” he stated with a flip of his wrist, for he had not read it at all.

“Then you know what is on the menu better than I,” Igor said. “What is it?”

“Oh, I don’t care. I’m just very, very hungry. So hungry I could eat a horse.”

“Ah yes. I saw your horse on my grounds.”

“Yes. Well just put the food on my table, wherever that is. Serve up your special. I don’t care what the price is. Just so it is quick.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently.

“Very well. I’ll take you to your table now.”

The Count waited for an indeterminable amount of time, until finally the food arrived. It was in a huge oval platter, covered by a bell-shaped lid.

“Oh my, what do you have in there? It is big enough to carry a horse’s head.”

“Yes, it certainly is. Open it a see if it’s prepared the way you like.”

Count Equis followed the suggestions and stared. The lid fell from his hands, which quickly covered his mouth.

“Are you pleased?” asked the proprietor.

His hands flew from his face, showing a startled and gradually red-turning visage. “What is the meaning of this?” he whispered. “That’s my horse’s head. My horses’ head!” he now screamed, his shock turning to anger.

The waiter stared at him in confusion. “But isn’t that what you brought for dinner?”

“Of course not, you idiot. I loved that horse. Why would I want to eat him?”

A look of understanding slowly filled the waiter’s face. “Did you read the marquee?”

“What marquee? I was too famished to read anything, idiot!” he spluttered, saliva beginning to fill the air between them.

“Well, all I can say is I misunderstood,” the waiter said, his voice beginning to show his own anger. “I asked if you read the sign, and you said you had. The horse was the only thing I could imagine you brought. So, I boiled his head. Let me show you the marquee again.”

The proprietor took out a written edition from his pocket and placed it on the table for the Count to read. With unbelieving eyes, he read it silently.

“This restaurant is special. Instead of our having a menu, we allow you to bring the food you like best. Our excellent chefs will prepare it in any fashion you please. You will be surprised at the wonderful tastes you experience.”

The Count, who was a vampire, after all, was beginning to show his fangs. Igor turned and ran for something on the wall. When he reached it, he grabbed it and turned around.

The Count, who was about to strike, stopped dead in his tracks. “Gaahh!” he gagged. “Garlic!” He threw up his hands in a warding-off gesture and shrank back. “That’s disgusting. How can you stand it?”

“I’m Italian. I like it. Garlic is good for the health. But not for vampires,” Igor proclaimed, a smile on his lips.

Equis stepped back in surrender as he sat down. “Isn’t there something you can do? You know, like reverse the process, or cast a spell. Something! Please.”

“There is a spell, but there is also a price,” Igor said. There was sympathy now in his voice.

“What’s the price?”

“A head for a head. I can restore your horse’s head to its original condition on his body. However, it will cost you another head – your head.”

“There is no other solution?” the Count asked imploringly.

“I’m afraid not. Those are the rules of this kind of magic,” Igor said sympathetically.

“What will you do with my head, and how will it affect the rest of me?” the Count asked.

“Since you are a vampire, it will have no other effects. Your intelligence and functioning will continue as is. Your head will also continue to function normally, except it will not be on your body. So, you’ll be able to talk with it. But you won’t be able to wear it,” Igor informed him with the mixed news.

“Will I be able to continue to enjoy a good meal of human fare and vampire blood drinking?”

“Yes, you will.”

“But how will the food get digested in my body? For that matter, how will the food be transported to my body?”

“That may be a problem. You’ll have to balance your head on your shoulders. You’ll get used to that. But I’m afraid you won’t be able to wear it in many everyday affairs, like horseback riding. It will bounce off.”

“All right, I’ll do it. How in the world are you going to get my head off my shoulders, to begin with?”

“I recommend a guillotine. It is the fastest and most painless way. You can get the most accurate cut with that method. We have one in the kitchen. We use it all the time. Of course, I will have to perform some magic rituals before we behead you, or it will just kind of kill you.”

“How will Tralaine’s head be transferred in its original condition to him?” the Count inquired.

“It will happen automatically as a result of the magic rituals I will perform.”

“Let’s get to it then.”

The kitchen indeed had a guillotine. It was greasy and well used. Equis turned his nose up when he encountered the humble instrument. But he steeled himself and submitted to the shopworn beheader. The incantations were done, and he put his head in the proper place, being careful to keep it in the right position so that the cut would be true and straight. The lever was pulled, and the blade descended. He felt an electric shock and watched the floor make him dizzy, as his head bounced along its path until coming to a stop. Since there was nothing restricting his body from moving, he stood up. Without his head with him, it was a very unusual experience. He was aware of everything as though he was seeing it with his eyes. But when he turned his focus on his head, he was seeing with his eyes. At the moment, he was staring at a blob of fat near his opened eyes. He quickly closed them and used his new-found sensations to encounter the world. Quickly, he proceeded to his head, picked it up, and put it under his arm.

“May I see Tralaine now?” he asked.

“Oh yes. He is glad to have his head back in one piece – sitting on his shoulders. Shall I direct you to him?” Igor asked.

“No thank you, I can do it myself. Just don’t let the garlic get in my way.”

Without further words he departed, a combination of chagrin and haughtiness on the head he carried under his arms.

“Did you sate your hunger, Equis?” the mount asked.

“I’ve lost my appetite. Did you notice I was carrying my head rather than wearing it?”

Tralaine sighed, “Yes. But, I think it’s a look that becomes you.”

“Thank you.”

The Count procured the services of a master seamstress. She fashioned a collar and some clamping devices that enabled the Count to wear his head, even when riding his horse. All in all, it was a well- ending adventure. Now, no matter how famished he is, he always reads the small print before making a purchase.

---

A Watchful Eye, poetry
by Debra A. K. Thompson

A friendly little rabbit sits in my yard.
visiting everyday like he has a job.
a special spot where he sits all day.
looking around the neighborhood, but has nothing to say.
fuzzy and black, a veritable sight.
only moving away when day changes to night.

He never bothers the plants, flowers or trees.
I don’t know what he eats, but there’s nothing from me.
studying the people as they pass by.
not afraid to hear little children cry.
not afraid of barking dogs trying to scare him away.
he’s a cute little bunny, diligently working all day.

Why is the rabbit here, I’ve pondered in my mind.
maybe it was his home before it was mine.
my husband and I built a home here you see;
my husband passed on; that left only me.
maybe he was sent to watch over me
it’s still a puzzle and a mystery.
a guardian angel fastened to one spot
firmly holding his place when the weather is hot.

This rabbit must be heaven sent.
a gentle creature of God’s testament.
listening ears, quiet stare and all.
keeping a watchful eye no matter who comes to call.
I know I’m not alone when he assumes his place.
my guardian angel full of love, mercy and God’s grace.
winter, spring, summer or fall
he’s always there no matter who comes to call.

Ms. Debra A. K. Thompson lives in Riverview, Florida.

She is the author of 5 books:
Dollars With Sense, October 2023
Baby Sue Learns To Count, March 2023
Pennies Make Dollars, June 2022
Enlightenment II Building Self-Esteem Through Poems & Positive Affirmations, January 2020
Enlightenment Looking Back to Move Forward*, September 2017

You can contact her by Email at debrathewriter55@gmail.com or visit her website at https://www.debrathewriter.com

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I Celebrate Me, poetry
by Fay L. Loomis

soon to be 87
limited by stroke
cold tugging me down

honey calms ragged cough
long for soak in bath
shampoo

surprise myself by getting dressed
rather than fresh pajamas
even slip on shoes

settle into a soft chair
start another novel

I Celebrate Me was previously published in World Insane.

Bio: Fay L. Loomis, handicapped by a stroke, leads a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. She is a member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and the Rat’s Ass Review Workshop. Her poetry and prose appear in numerous publications. Fay’s poems are included in five anthologies. Her first poetry collection, Sunlit Wildness, published by Origami Poems Project, may be printed and folded into a micro-chapbook.

---

Extraction, fiction
by Lorie McCloud

I thought it was a little odd when the driver of my paratransit ride home from work told me to get in front with my guide dog. I noticed that it was a car. If my ride was a car instead of a van or a bus, we usually got in back. This time as directed, I pulled the passenger door open commanding my dog to sit while I climbed in and then gave a gentle tug on her leash. She scrambled in on top of my feet.

“Why?” I asked as I tucked my dog’s tail in and pulled the door shut. My thought was that there were probably several passengers already in the back. “Full car?”

“I don’t want you sitting back there with him.” The driver mumbled nervously. It might not be prudent to ask any more questions but boy was I curious! Was there some kind of mess back there? Was somebody sprawled out on the seat? “He’s violent,” whispered the driver. “His arms are tied.”

“What?” I barely kept it from coming out of my mouth. Riding by himself bound like a prisoner? If he were truly violent would he even be allowed on paratransit? It must be self harm we were talking about here.

“I told you not to do that!” I could tell the young guy behind me wasn’t addressing either one of us. Whoever he was talking to was in his head. Then, “Shut up! Shut up!” The driver sped up a little. “I’m gonna smack you across the room.” I wondered how much time we had before we got to the guy’s house. My heart began to beat a little faster as I felt the urge, no, the command. It wasn’t absolute. I could refuse but it would be hard. I turned slowly in my seat reaching out with my right hand, willing the driver to concentrate on the road. “Don’t touch me!” The guy yelled suddenly.

“I’m going to,” I answered quietly. “But I won’t hurt you.” He made a strangled inarticulate sound as my hand came gently into contact with his right shoulder. I patted it before placing my palm squarely in the center of his chest. He started to scream and twist convulsively. This would be so much easier if I was in the back seat with him.

“Stop!” the driver exploded in abject panic as he slammed on the brakes. “Stop!” He started to grab my left arm but thought better of it as my dog was now on high alert.

“We are all one,” I intoned in a calm steady voice. “When one is harmed all are harmed. When one is helped, all are helped. Therefore in the name of who I am: and I am one with all that is, I declare that only the highest good for all involved shall happen here.” The driver had found a place to pull over. He flung his door open and vaulted out of the car.

“Leave us alone!” commanded a deep hollow voice from within the guy. I took off my safety belt and got on my knees on the seat, turning to face him.

“I will not. You are coming out now.” Since their attempt to frighten me had failed, the entities controlling this guy began to beg and wheedle.

“We’re not doing any harm. We’ve been here for so long and we don’t have anywhere else to go. Just leave us alone.” I didn’t know if the driver had run away or was still close by but he wasn’t using the radio. He could be using his phone though. I’d better get this job done before somebody came and hauled us off somewhere. What next? Oh yeah. Mentally I called to the angels of exorcism for help as I spoke to the entities.

“You won’t be harmed. There will be a net of light wrapped around you and you will be taken to the place where you belong.” They continued to threaten and plead by turns until they were in the net. It was amazing what they could do with the guy’s voice. It was scary too. I had to keep reminding myself of my prior experience in the group I worked with. Then I felt a familiar presence close to me.

“We’ve got them now. We know where their home is. We rounded up a bunch of their relatives a couple weeks ago.” It wasn’t a voice, just thoughts in my head but the communication was real enough.

“Thanks,” I replied telepathically. I was shaking all over. I turned around and sat back down. My dog hadn’t moved. The guy was stone still and silent for a moment or two and then he started to cry. It sounded like his head had dropped to his chest. I wanted to put an arm around him but since I couldn’t I began to sing. As I sang wordlessly I thought about what to do next. I didn’t know where we were or where the driver was and I wasn’t sure if calling for help on my phone would lead to anything good.

And then the driver leapt back into the car, slammed the door and stepped on the accelerator. “We’re not far from his house,” he said shortly. I gasped in surprise. The second we pulled into their driveway somebody was yanking open the backdoor of the car.

“Untie him,” I instructed. Untie him. I think he’ll be all right now.” The guy said something in a different language (maybe Arabic) to whoever was there. He sounded coherent to me though.

“What? What?” And then a couple of sentences in that same language.

“I’ll give you my phone number. You can call me and I’ll explain but I have to go now. Can you write it down?” Accepting this without question, the other man slammed the car door and we were on our way.

“Thanks,” I said to the driver after a few minutes. His only response was a grunt. “I know you could have me dropped from the ride service for this and I hope you don’t but it’s a chance I had to take.”

“I was going to,” he said finally. “You have no idea how bad you scared me. I was already scared. I didn’t think I should have to transport people like that. I didn’t think that guy should be on paratransit at all. But when I saw his father’s face… It was like seeing the sun come out in a place that had been dark for years. I don’t even know what happened and I’m not sure if I want to, at least not right now but I can’t get you in trouble for doing that. Here we are now.” He said this last as he pulled up in front of my building.

“Thank you so much sir,” I said as my dog and I got out of the car. “Many blessings to you.” My dog and I hurried upstairs. I could hear my phone ringing as I let myself into my apartment.

Bio: Lorie McCloud has been totally blind since birth. She resides in Fort Worth Texas. Her interests include hiking or walking, swimming, and reading. She enjoys conversing about psychology and metaphysics. Lorie is a volunteer with The Universal Spiritual Brother&sisterhood. She is a singer/song writer as well as an author. Her youtube channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/LorieMccloud?feature=mhsn. You can listen to her latest music at: https://www.soundcloud.com/lorie-mccloud/

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Washing it all Away, fiction
by Nicole Massey

I met my twin sister’s eyes, those eyes that had no wrinkles around them in a face that looked like she was in her late teens. The way she walked and moved I was sure the rest of her body had no marks of the seventy-plus years we lived either. I stopped asking how she managed to keep so young a long time ago, but I wanted to know, more and more every damned day.

“Why is this so important?” I asked.

“Closure. Face it, she hates you and that’s nothing new. You can’t stand her, and she makes you miserable.” Even her voice sounded young, as she said aloud what I couldn’t.

“We have history. You don’t throw a fifty-year marriage into a dumpster on a whim.”

She chuckled. “I’ll remind you of this when we finish what we have to do. Write it.”

“Whatever.” I picked up the pen, my hand shaking with age, and scrawled a short one-word note – “Done.” I dropped the pen.

She said, “Okay, got everything you want from here?”

“Yeah, but I can’t carry it.”

“Leave it to me, I’m not as frail as you’ve gotten. I blame her for some of that too.” She hoisted my two duffel bags up like they were feathers.

In the car I said, “So, where is this magical place we’re going?”

“You’ll see.”

“Why all the mystery, Sis?”

She stunned me with her answer. “Because you asked me not to tell you.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Of course, you wanted to forget for a while.” She stomped the gas pedal of her sports car to the floor. I tried to thrill to the fast curves and straightaways, but my old body wasn’t up for it. I was about to ask her to slow down a bit when she let off the gas, the car losing speed until it stopped on the shoulder. She crept up the road until she reached some point with nothing in it.

She said, “Now we wait.”

“For?”

“Our ride.”

“You are, hands down, the most mysterious and infuriating person on the planet.”

“Honoring your wishes. Ah, here he comes.”

A young-looking guy pulled in behind us in an old light green Dodge Dart. My sister got out, gave him a hug, and said, “Let’s help get my sibling out – advanced age makes getting in and out of a low-slung car so much harder.”

He came over to the door on my side and opened it. “Long time no see. Let’s get you out of here and moving so you can put all of this behind you.”

I looked at my sister. “There’s another one of you.”

She said, “Yeah, about a hundred and fifty-three.”

Something about how she dropped a specific number like that bothered me, and something deep in my memory responded to that, but it didn’t rise above surface thoughts to reveal itself.

They got me situated in the rusted-out Dodge. She handed her keys to him and got in. He drove off and I realized something – “My stuff is in your trunk!”

“It’ll be waiting for you. Let’s go.”

The drive was quiet and hot – the car didn’t have air conditioning. We neared the Florida coast. She navigated through the traffic and entered the highway that ran down to Key West. She pushed the old heap as fast as she dared and said, “Relax. Take deep breaths and it’ll go a lot faster. Try to let your thoughts go.”

“What?”

She didn’t respond – she didn’t have time to. A twist of the wheel took us off the bridge between the islands; there was a feeling of flying that felt odd to me for some reason, and a crash followed it.

I panicked, but she held my seat belt in place.

“What are you doing?!”

“Freeing you. Relax, I’ve got this.”

I struggled as the water rose on the windows, the surface near the top. She said, “Remember what I told you, relax, let go, and breathe deep.”

“I had no idea you were suicidal.”

She chuckled again. “Far from it. Come on, relax, it’s all good.”

I heard a thunk from under the car and we stopped moving. She said, “Ready?”

She reached for the window handle, put a hand on the glass, and turned the crank. Water rushed in, soaking both of us. Her clothes wet, my suspicions were confirmed – she had the body of a late teen too. She said, “It’ll be done soon. Try to let the last fifty-five years wash away.”

I kept struggling, the water up to my chin. She held the seatbelt again, but she ducked her head under. A huge bubble of air formed at her mouth and rose to burst at the climbing surface. I looked down at her face; she looked relaxed, calm, in control. She opened her mouth and I swear she inhaled. She looked at me, shook her head, and pushed on my chest. I fought to hold my breath, but the water was in my eyes. Something odd washed into my mind – the water wasn’t salty, it seemed pure, and a bit sweet. She shrugged, let go of the seatbelt control, and spun around so her feet were braced on the dash. She reached for me, and I felt a mixture of fear and something growing in my mind. She met my eyes and pushed on my chest.

Pain fired as my breath leaked out of my worn-out mouth. I lost the air; here it was, the time I was done.

Instinct took over, and I inhaled. Tingling washed over my body. I exhaled the water and breathed in some more. My sister nodded, giving me a thumbs up. Something in my mind wanted to get out, but it wasn’t ready yet. I had no other choice, I inhaled again, my lungs filling with water a second time. I remembered what she told me – relax and breathe deep. I fought down the panic as I pulled in as deep a breath as I could. The tingling intensified; I looked down at my hands, blinked, and then gasped, watching my hands lose their wrinkles and grow smooth and soft again. I squeezed my hands together, and strength I hadn’t known for thirty years flowed back into me. I pushed this back in my mind, trying to relax like she told me. I focused on that part of my mind that acted like a sealed chest. I visualized it, grabbed the hasp, and pulled it open.

Memories flew into my brain. I wasn’t in my late seventies, I was far older than that, over twenty-five hundred years old. The water was life, and I pulled it into my body. My sister smiled at me, took my hand, and led me through the open window.

We surfaced and swam to the nearest island, where we waited. My clothes were soaked of course, but they fit better than they had when I went under. I said, my voice clear and strong, “Whose Dodge?”

“We find them for this purpose. How you feeling?”

“So much better. Thanks for keeping my secret from me.”

“No problem, you did it for me once, it was the least I could do. How’s your memory?”

“Great. What happens now?”

“We get picked up, you get your stuff, we go to a storage warehouse and get you outfitted. Then we’ll work out where we want to go.”

“Do I look as good as you?”

“Well, you know the answer to that, I always look better than you.”

That wasn’t her rubbing my nose in it, like I thought for so long, it was her playing. I was happy to have my playful sister back, but I was even more happy to have my playful self back. We were sometimes called The Children of Atlantis. And it felt so good to let the waters renew me, like they always did.

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The Conquering Frogs, fiction
by Louise Osborn

It was a hilly bit of land, with six apartment buildings on it. Waterways, subterranean and surface, mingled with grassy lands and many large trees. Two small lakes came alive with frog-song in the spring as the amphibians multiplied to their hearts’ content, sometimes creating quite a cacophony late at night.

On the other side of the area, a patch of forest had been cut down, and two new buildings were in their two-year process of establishment.

Temperatures had risen in the past few years, but sometimes, because of the proximity of so much underground and surface natural water, there was increased humidity around the frog spawning locations. Thus, the frogs had turned out larger than usual, and larger and larger. Then it happened.

One year a torrent of frogs erupted from extensive underground and unknown waterways. Frogs by the thousands burst up where the largest lake drained away under a road and met a more ancient bog two hundred metres away. Some of the frogs weighed a hundred pounds. They invaded the development. No longer green and cool but red and brown and shielded from the increase in sunlight, They roamed the quiet circular driveways and penetrated apartments on the main floors first. This was easy enough with most having a window or door wide open. Some frogs crawled up the buildings and got in by the balconies and open doors on the second, third and fourth floors. Screams could be heard here and there like alarming wind chimes throughout the peaceable community. Some people fainted and were eaten. Frogs of adequate size remained in the suites, instinctively turning on all water faucets and damaging foundations and walls etc. Some were electrocuted, but that didn’t stop them. It caused one to develop an extra head, but two heads are better than one!

The buildings gradually crumbled and were overtaken by mosses and algae. The frogs always knew when to evacuate for a new collapse of wood and building materials. In a couple of years each building was just another hill in the landscape. The sound of the much larger frogs in springtime mating season would
have been deafening to human ears, but there was no one to hear them.

Bio: Louise Osborn lives in Nanaimo, BC, Canada under the keen-eyed management of a feline housemate. She does live near a vast number of frogs and some pretty scary insects. She enjoys stories by Steven King, Jann Arden, and Debbie Travis. Louise is 59 and has a visual impairment.

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Part VI. From a different perspective

Nobody Warns You About Cleaning Up, poetry Second Place
by Nashrah Tanvir

First, it’s the cutting board,
Then the potato cube
That won’t leave the nook of your toes,
Then the knives, spoons, and their cousins,
Then some stray garlic peel, the wanderlust tomato seeds, and the Italian seasoning that’s almost in Italy,
Then the glass that you used just to pour water into a burning pan- does it need cleaning, you ask? but you still rinse it,
Then all the tears from rescuing a burning pan,
Then all the friendships you lost over time,
Then all the love from those who loved you and you didn’t love back,
Then all the love from those you loved but didnt love you back,
Then all the love from those you loved and loved you back, but somewhere along forgot how it looked,
Then, the more difficult one, the love from those you loved but never told them so,
Then all the lives you did not live,
Then you mop yourself out the floor,
Then you go to bed, wake up tomorrow,
Live another day
And clean later;
Nobody warns us
About the cleaning up,
But we will still cook,
Eat, rejoice, clean
And hold what is left
As close as we can
Like the sky holds its stars,
Knowing in our hearts
That on days we can’t clean ourselves,
We can gently ask for help,
For what kind of a world we must have to live in
If there has to be any shame in asking
For another day to love.

Bio: Nashrah Tanvir writes poems about mental health, feminism, and Islam. Her poems have appeared in The Hindustan Times, Magic Pot, The Teenagers Today, The Radiant, Gulmohar Quarterly, and AZE Journal. She has performed spoken word poetry with Kommune Delhi NCR, Delhi Poetry Slam, PPoets of Delhi and Speaking Soul. Her works have also appeared online on DisLit Youth Literary Magazine, Poems India, All India Queer Association, and Wingword Poetry Prize.

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For Zoe (369 words), poetry
by Gavin Ross

One (126 words)

people ask-
no, they don’t ask,
they’re too afraid of the answer.
But they wonder, they have to wonder-
what’s it like, then
to watch your daughter dying?
Maybe yes, maybe no

but then
yes, yes maybe dying again.
And the next day, no, maybe not.
When you get better and your speechless songs reach out to me
in shrieks and giggles
and your hands caress my face
and your tiny nails scratch my skin
until you get sick again
and is it the Emergency department or the ICU this time?
And even once you’re stable,
you always tank on day three,

you know you will,
so is it your mother taking you this time
or will I go?
To watch you dying

or maybe not.

Two (216 words)

You’re seventeen now, girl
and your tiny body is too big for your momma to carry.
But I can. I can handle 65 pounds

and 75 for sure.
After that we’ll see- I’ll try to stay strong for you,
my big, big girl,
living out this past year of sweet sixteen-

such an absurd concept.
We never thought you’d make it this far.
No, that’s a lie.
A lie for literary expediency,

for the artistic gut punch, to make it easy-

Ha! Take that!
The truth?
The truth is I cannot accept the concept of ever losing you,
when it enters my brain the pain becomes too much,
too raw for me to take, it gets pushed away in panic.
No, that’s also a lie,

or at least a part lie.
Truth is I can’t handle losing you,
the truth is, incomprehensibly, I know someday I will,
truth is that a cold might kill you,
that my life won’t end when yours does,
that today you are here and that’s as good a promise as I’ll ever get,
that I don’t know what will happen,
that some days I wish you would die
just so I would know how it all ends
and I can stop grieving you everyday
and get on with grieving your death.

Three (28 words)

Today you smiled at me,
an impish grin and a giggle
when I said something I shouldn’t say in front of children.

I thought you might be listening.

Bio: Gavin Ross is a Canadian writer, health care worker, artist and father. He is also a cancer survivor, chronic pain sufferer and a brain injury survivor. His most recent publishing credits include The Chicago Story Press True Stories of Triumph as well as the Fall/Winter 23-24 edition of Magnets and Ladders. After living in Hamilton, Vancouver, Calgary, Philadelphia and Adelaide, Australia he settled in Toronto, seventy-three kilometres (forty-five miles) from where he was born. Life is funny that way. He can be reached at rossgf14@yahoo.ca.

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We are the Weeds, poetry
by Julian Alderman

Too many people seek perfection without understanding the beauty of variety.
I am imperfect, or so I am told, when compared to society’s ideals.
I’m too hyper
too jumpy
too needy of water
too hairy
too loud
too much to handle.

All of these flaws that people see,
they are seen as seeds that can be used to grow noxious weeds.
Those spiny, prickly, stinging, stinking plants that must be pulled, poisoned, eradicated.
All done for the purpose of perfection, sameness, controllability, all to serve society’s bias.

But, my garden is a mess – a place wild and untamed, exciting and free.
And, in truth, we are all imperfect (though some can hide it better than others).
Because they’re White
or men
or straight
or not disabled
or Christian
or in control.
They hold the shovels, the hoes, the plows of our society – they hold the water rights.
But we are hardy plants: Strong, pervasive, profuse in variety, mutating endlessly.
We are not going away (try as the gardeners might to pull us).
Our roots grow far too deep – a perfect response to the wish to keep us underground.

Bio: Julian Alderman Marx is a non-speaking autistic writer who uses a letterboard to communicate. He recently graduated from high school with honors and won an award for advocacy for autistics and other disabled individuals with high support needs. He started community college in the fall of 2024 and will continue to take classes in creative writing, history, and economics. Born in Virginia, he moved to Colorado at the age of ten and has never looked back. He loves to hike, eat delicious food, and travel.

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Weather Aftermath, Poetry
by Sandra Streeter

Like ice unseen while strolling-
Unexpected, slick, requiring caution–
Social paradigms baffle
Autistic neurostructure…
Ice Melt? Shovel? Parka?
Each seems gone …

Only the radio blasting oldies as landmark
To steps, for the nonvisual,
And later, the jazz from boom-box in quiet-
And warm-living space
Deliver needed settling
Aim truer than disordered eating.

No answers yet forthcoming,
But sleep (albeit always interrupted)
Still claims the brain.
What was it Scarlett said:
“Tomorrow is another day.”?

Bio: Sandra Streeter, a blind graduate of the youth ministry program at Gordon College, and of Western Michigan University’s Blind Rehabilitation program, has had a lifelong passion for excellent communication of all kinds. Previously, she has dipped her toe in the “publication pool” through successful submissions to Dialogue, Our Special, and Magnets and Ladders. A self-described “rabid fan of the progressive-rock band Rush,” she is currently embarking on the adventure of writing a chapbook about, and dedicated to, its late drummer/lyricist, Neil Peart. Lighter pursuits include serious crocheting, and conversing in “meow” with her beloved 11-year-old tuxedo girl, Emily, who is pleased as punch that she gets included in some of Sandra’s verse.

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Senryu, poetry
by Valerie Moreno

Pain spills like dark ink
drowning my resiliency,
Your Name brings me hope.

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Fable-bodied, poetry
by Margaret D. Stetz

down went I
until that smacking sound
the sidewalk kissed my arm
which turned into
a frog
in disbelief
I watched its spreading
color
becoming green and bilious
heard its angry croaking
cracking
as it tried to leap away
knee-deep in pain and
swamped
I marveled still
such wondrous transformation
can happen in an instant
for stable-bodied is
unreal
a fairy tale
and everything may
change

Bio: Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae & Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Delaware, USA, as well as a widely published poet. She experienced a life-changing injury in July 2021 and now lives with chronic pain, neuropathy, and impaired functioning of her left arm.

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Walking Upstairs, poetry
by ROCHELLE M. ANDERSON

The play is done, theater still dark
exit sign invites me to go
(Only twenty steps. Will I make it?)

My left foot is fine, right leg almost dead
must stop at each step with both feet
(Left hand please keep me safe)

Other people leave, moving quickly
know I have disability, passing on side
(Please don’t knock me down)

Hand on the railing, leads the way
body following, inching along
(Ask both to work in harmony, just a bit longer)

More audience departs
now they get angry. I am too slow
(One step at a time, left foot, right foot)

Finally. Up to next floor, elevator
I did not fall down
(A good day)

Bio: Rochelle M. Anderson had a severe stroke in 2007 and almost died. She is still disabled with difficulty walking, and because of aphasia struggles with reading and writing. Ms. Anderson loves poodles, creating seed art, her grandchildren and Lake Superior. She started writing poetry in 2020, and that has helped her recovery. Dictation fuels her words.

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Play Time, poetry
by Brett Stuckel

Give a cat something to hunt-
nothing alive by luck
but a squeezeball, kick-roll it
toward the base of the scratchpost tower
where she sleeps on folded old towels of peace,
maybe squeak a hint pan-species from your lips
and teeth and still-drawn breath,
wake the silent stalker of our worries,
pray as she descends without
the diagnosis keeping us awake
and claws the whirling doubt we stumble on
and rocks from side to side atop her back,
no scar or tingle, no chemo skin
or cells or radiation aches,
only fangs sunk into cotton,
the cuts we need to make.

Bio: Brett Stuckel’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Wordgathering, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. He lives with Grade 3 Astrocytoma (brain cancer) and related issues such as aphasia. He is online at https://www.brettstuckel.com and offline in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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Wedding, poetry
by Megan Wildhood

By the time we got back to Colorado,
the trees had started to rust.
I had forgotten that Fall crisps leaves.

High and dry.
I had forgotten, too, that every footfall
sets grasshoppers a-ping.

Colorado is my mental health awareness.
Read: childhood.
Big and blue.

I keep forgetting my baby brother
is grown and can love a woman.
We, my love and I, come to celebrate.

I keep forgetting how to be happy–
another feeling my mom squashed
with her silence.

Too much for her.
So she thought too much for the world.
Thus, the first man I picked

couldn’t stand feelings, either.
Mine, his, his for me (if they existed).
Disintegrated.

But I do remember, when my love
turns his face toward me
and pours his eyes into mine

at the table commemorating
the joining of my brother’s life with his woman’s—
what my love and I will do so soon—

though I have not experienced it
in this lifetime,
what it is to be whole.

Bio: Megan Wildhood is a neurodiverse writer with EDS and dysautonomia who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her at https://meganwildhood.com.

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Wimp, fiction
by Winslow Parker

I’m a wimp; always have been, always will be. Physical strength, political power, of these, I have none. No sword hangs at my waist, no rifle drapes my shoulder. Only quill, aka, keyboard offered any influence. This I wielded, to my detriment. Too late learned, the lesson became real. Charged, tried, convicted, imprisoned in Leavenworth Federal prison-my grandfather’s alma mater-I faced the challenge of my life, literally.

His name was Beau, a strange name for one so ugly, so misshapenly huge. Seven feet if an inch, shoulders so broad it was necessary for him to turn sideway to enter a normal door. His minions, tall in their own right and muscled, seemed grasshoppers beside him. Their small army ruled. Guards and inmates feared him and his. He commanded, everyone obeyed. His, the best seat in the dining room from which he surveyed his fiefdom. The first place in lunch line was his, the choices bits of meat, his. His favor, bought with gifts of cigarettes, sweets and things more potent, all his with only a nod of the head.

Now, he faced me, henchmen at his side and behind me. Not a single guard anywhere, cameras pointed away from the confrontation.

“Whatcha got for me, little boy?” he sneered, glaring at my diminutive form. “Everybody pays.”

“Silver and gold have I none,” I quoted.

“Nobody has any of that here. What do you have? Yer body is too scrawny, Ya don’t have any money in the bank, too small to be a part of my home boys.”

I said nothing, having nothing to offer.

He stepped one step closer, menacing.

“Have you ever wanted to tell your story?” I asked, knowing that everyone did.

“Whatddya mean, ‘tell my story’?”

“Just that. Your life story, told in your own words. I’ll bet you have some pretty interesting tales to tell.”

“Not tales, real stories.”

I knew I had him, then. “OK, real stories, not fake, not fiction.”

“Whaddo I have to do?”

“Very simple. I’m a writer. I write true stories and not-so-true stories. I can teach you. And I can teach your friends too.”

He frowned as if in deep thought. “Just me.”

“OK, however you want to do it.”

“Whaddo I have to do?” he repeated.

“I’ll get permission to use the library. Maybe you can help getting that permission?” I hinted.

“Sure ‘nuff. Can do. Meet me at dinner. Come to my table.”

“Will do. In the meantime, start thinking about your life, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. Readers eat all that up. You know you’re famous or, rather, infamous on the outside.”

“Really? Didn’t know that.” He preened. “You hear that, boys. I’m famous, a celeb like Jason wilde in ‘Dare Heart.’“

So, it began–a manipulation that ended up in deep friendship. Behind his bluster, lurked a wide and deep intelligence. He learned quickly, thoroughly and applied it to his writing. He was a sponge. I introduced him to the grand masters of the pen; good fiction, histories and biographies. He mimicked, then, as he developed his own voice, applied it to his writing. He browsed the dictionary, absorbed the thesaurus and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. He dropped his street slang, his ‘whado’ and ‘whyfers’ and sounded educated.

“You sound like a professor,” one of his hangers-on said one day.

He glared, reaching for the offender, then grinned. Pointing at me, he said. “All his fault.”

After a fifth rewrite, during which he exercised all his writing skills, I made a collect call to my erstwhile agent. He was surprised, a bit cautious, knowing where I was and why.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, a touch of paranoia in his voice.

“You know Beau, right?” I didn’t use his last name over the phone.

“Yes,” again cautious, “heard of him.”

“He’s here with me.”

“He beat you up?” interested now.

“Nah, we’re best buds. Been teaching him to write.”

“To write? Didn’t think that gorilla could think, much less write.”

“So much for appearances. Can you get his manuscript to my publisher? I think you’ll be glad you did.”

“You been doing any writing?”

“No, just helping Beau.”

“Oh,” disappointed. He was a millionaire on the backs of my books.

The rest is history. My agent pitched the book, made it into a bidding war. Now my friend is a wealthy man, though still imprisoned. My agent published the book under my name. Perhaps someday Beau will enjoy the fruits of his labor. In the meantime, he is avoiding the laws against prisoners profiting from their writings.

Beau arranged for his gang to take group classes with me. None were as good as he, but it was wonderful to see them blossom as writers.

Don’t get me wrong. A new heavyweight came to prison, a gang leader from an upstate town. He challenged. Beau met his challenge with deadly force. Ruthless strength is still his underlying personality. Perhaps it is a thin layer, but there is decency resting lightly atop his violence. He will never leave this place, but, I suspect, do not think he minds. Here he is king and will remain so until his death. None will safely challenge him; none depose him.

So it was that I, the scrawny kid, the wimp, overcame these handicaps to rise to some small influence in this brutal world. I lead no gang, exert no influence. I am one of his boys, but one whom he looks to for a different kind of power—the power and the peril of the pen.

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Unwanted, poetry
by Carol Farnsworth

I am so cold and hungry.
The man hasn’t fed me or changed my water.
Now it is raining and I have nowhere to hide.
A car drives slowly by my yard.
I am too cold to care.
It stops.
A woman opens the car door, approaches.
Her voice is soft and inviting.
She offers me her fingers to smell
inhaling the hint of bacon
I move closer to the fence to lick the offered fingers.
The mam opens the back door, I cower.
I hear angry words.
The woman continues to talk softly to me.
The man raises his hands. I ready myself for a blow.
Instead he attaches the leash to my collar,
handing it to the woman.
Confused, I walk beside her.
The car door opens.
I smell food and feel warmth.
I jump in and lay down next to the woman’s feet.
I am offered a biscuit.
I lick up every crumb.
Looking up into the woman’s smiling face, I know that I am wanted.

Bio: As a poet, blogger and family historian, Carol Farnsworth relates stories with a humorous twist. Born with a congenital eye disease that slowly caused her blindness, she strives to see the light side of life. With her daughter Ruth and husband John, She has traveled by bike, car and plane discovering the natural world. Her writings have appeared in on line magazines and publications. Her books include Leaf Memories, a chapbook of nature from a tandem bike. She contributed to Strange Weather Anthology, True Quirks of Nature by Marlene Mesot.
Visit her WordPress blog at https://blindontheliteside.com

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Part VII. Nature’s Wonders

The Sacred Circle of Time and Rebirth, poetry
by Brad Corallo

A Fortnite beyond the great equinox,
Indian Summer unfolds its dazzling plumage.

Cooler warm days,
Kissed by Autumnal breezes.

Stark blue horizons.
Magnificent artisanal light.

Flocks of birds, wheel and dive
Headed south follow ancient, well used song lines.

The bountiful harvest is
Joyfully gathered in.

Overflowing hoppers of ripe wine grapes,
Await their fate, the promising new vintage.

The wheel of the year turns
Moving us toward annual thinning between the worlds.

We move toward Yule,
When light dwindles down to its nadir.

Then, small incremental advances
Culminate at Beltane.

The wheel of the year has turned again,
Bearing rebirth and renewal in its ancient, youthful arms.

Immense gratitude burgeons and ascends
As all hearts revel in Earth’s green awakening.

A new cycle is initiated,
The sacred promise once again fulfilled.

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Jazz in Spring, poetry
by Sandra Streeter

Tree frogs sound welcome,
Like Davis’ superior
Brass-heralding Spring.

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Changes, poetry
by Carol Farnsworth

Here in the upper mid-west,
the longer daylight signals the season changing.
The ground is covered with a chilly blanket of snow.
Water drips, running down
gutters, driveways and roads.
I look outside straining to see any touch of green in the unbroken white.
Last year’s gray green leaves of lenten rose poke through the winter cover to reach the warming sun.
They will soon blossom even before the last of the snow is gone.
I search the areas where tiny cream snowdrops raise blossom heads they dangle on green stems over the slush.
When the white cover has turned to brown, I imagine crocus in white and purple hues circling the truck of a budding maple.
Garlic, rhubarb and asparagus shoots will soon follow.
Before you know it, spring is in full bloom.

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Rose, poetry
by Christian Ward

Its petals swirl in a perfect
replica of the Milky Way.
Perfume to make you dizzy
like a gyroscope. A head
full of flight. Comes in a swatch
of colours to match your mood,
let alone the seasons. Each
stem is a razor wire booby trap
for the gardener — an overprotective
parent asking if you are worthy
to handle the flower. The price
is worth it. Look how it inspires —
a single rose can ignite the mind
with a lifetime’s worth of imagination.

Bio: Christian Ward is a physically disabled UK-based writer (paralyzed from spinal cord compression) with recent work in Southword, Ragaire, and The Madrigal.

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Spring Tide, poetry
by Joan McNerney

Green I wore green
that night when we danced
how we danced at the picnic
during spring lustrous and green.

Rainfall flooded the air
where we danced.
You left whispering
sweet words kissing
my eyes closed.

Sliding under green green
waters slipping sliding over
night hiding in nebulae
turning we dance finding
your hand how we danced
that luminous night.

Bio: Joan McNerney has recited her poetry at the National Arts Club, New York City, State University of New York, Oneonta, McNay Art Institute, San Antonio and the University of Houston, Texas. Published worldwide in over thirty five countries, her work has appeared in numerous literary publications. Four Best of the Net nominations have been awarded to her. Her books, The Muse in Miniature, Love Poems for Michael, and At Work are available on Amazon.com A new release entitled Light & Shadow explores the recent historic COVID pandemic.

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Tree Story, Fiction Honorable Mention
by Douglas G. Campbell

Guardian is my name according to the sign at my base. I have not always been named Guardian, but it is a name that fits me now. And now the other trees in my grove call me by the name Guardian. I have had other names during my long life, 542 years. My names have changed to fit the changes that have taken place in and around me.

But first, you need to know that my story comes to you as I have made it known to Quiet Hat. Quiet Hat is not his real name, but it is how I think of him, so it is the name I will call him. He has come here to my base, where my roots are anchored to earth. He is quiet, unlike most that come. I don’t remember when he first came, but I know that he comes here often. And he comes when no others are here to intrude; he comes when it is cold, or in the early light of morning, or when the rain is heavy. He has come also at night in the darkness, when the moon is hiding. So I have given him my story that others might understand what it is like to be a tree, a very old Douglas Fir.

Like all of the other newly sprouted firs, my first name was Seedling. We poked through the litter and bark of the forest floor. The Solomon’s Plumes and ferns towered above us. I knew nothing of life then or just how fragile it could be. Small ticklers (you call them ants) clamored over and around us then. Larger, furry ticklers (you call them squirrels and chipmunks) brushed their long, soft tails against us as they dug and prodded the earth. Below the surface of the earth, among our fledgling roots were other creatures, the tube creatures (you call them worms). Most feared of those below the surface were the near-sighted diggers (you call them moles) who blundered and pushed. Many seedlings were undermined or uprooted. But I survived these early years.

Along with the other survivors, along with the others named Seedling, I was given a new name, Young One. The canopy of branches above blocked the light so the name Young One stayed with me for decades, until the great earthquake brought the elders, Broken Top, Tall One, the Fat Twins, tumbling down. Many of us Young Ones were crushed. Tower, one of the grandest of the elders almost crushed me. Tower fell within inches of my trunk and splintered many branches from my downhill side. Tower became my nurse log, fed me and I prospered. I grew rapidly in this newly opened flood of light. I stretched upward and outward into the emptiness that earthquake had unfurled around me.

I became Tower’s Son as I fed upon his fallen strength. As Tower’s Son I gained a new perspective as each year I soared upward towards the light. Since sprouting I had felt a pounding of the earth deep down in my roots. But as I grew taller I could sense the mist that hung upon my branches. I could feel the winds pressing against my trunk and branches. I could taste the salt air that lay upon my needles. I began to learn of the ocean down below the slope on which I lived, how it pounded the land. Life was full of sameness and novelty.

Then one morning I felt pressure on my lower trunk. It was Long Braid. That is the name I gave him. Later I learned that others of his kind called him Raven Wing. I was used to sensing the animals that came and went. Among them was the sure-footed quiet one (deer, you call them). Washing paws (or Raccoons) came often to hunt among the stones of rippling waters nearby. The fliers often flitted among my branches, and some pounded my bark in search of ticklers. Some gray fliers built their nest among my branches, and needles hatched their eggs, fed their young, then flew away. But Long Braid’s kind I had not seen before. Long Braid came softly, walking carefully between the others of the grove. Later he would bring Laughing Song. They did not come often, but when they did, smoke often rose up from the earth, and strange aromas surrounded me. Long Braid came for many years, leaving shells and rounded sea stones to decorate the earth between my growing roots. He also brought the lively ones, the children he shared with Laughing Song. After the great fire, he came only one more time, and he came alone.

Crackling fire came into our darkness after long months of dry and parching wind. First came the pain-filled screaming, filling my roots with dread. The presence of burning, falling and horror was passed from tree to tree as the flames rushed nearer. Many of the grove’s smaller ones succumbed to the golden, licking fingers of death that sucked life from them. Flames beat against me, heat roasted air pounded and pummeled my bark. Smoke filled air brought me close to suffocation. I felt my life evaporating from each cell within me. But I did not die; I did not fall to become nurse to future seedlings, though some day I will. This fire continued up the slope and past the ridge top above and behind me. And I was alone.

The remains of Tower, my nurse and sustainer were ashen and black. The grove was gone leaving me alone with my pain and my grief. My grove was gone and I wished that I too had burned. Then Long Braid came after the first rains of autumn. He wept at the scared base of my scabbed and invalid trunk. He said good-bye for the last time, and then he too was gone forever. Pain and loneliness wrapped me in a cocoon of death from which I believed no radiant butterfly could emerge. But soon fireweed and small creatures, those that had hidden deep within the cool earth, emerged. Some fled in search of some distant grove painted with green. Others stayed behind as life rose up from the earth, fed now by mist and rain. My new name became Survivor.

As fireweed flourished and salal began to sprout green shoots from remnants that did not perish, the skeletons of my grove continued to haunt me. Why did I live while all those around me succumbed to those killer flames?Soon, winter winds pushed ashore and rain undermined dead roots. I remember that winter, it still returns to my dreams as the winter of the falling ones. On dark nights, or on brightly lit days, after rainstorms or after the mist turned to ice, they fell, came crashing down around me. My stiff and lifeless brethren: Mist Clinger, Wide Crown, and Wind Cutter came tumbling to the earth, sending shock waves of pain to prod and pierce the cloak of denial that I had wrapped around my fear and anger. Why did my grove have to die; every one except me?

There were times deep in that winter of the falling ones, that I wanted to give in to the winds, let go my grip on soil and stone, to come diving down. There were times when I had given in to despair, but my roots were strong and held in spite of my desire. And my scarred bark began to heal. Crows and gulls came to my branches; bats flung their high-pitched sight into my surrounding night, and butterflies again danced in the sun. As life returned to me, I returned back to life. When spring returned, a carpet of sprouts spread green across the land. I was no longer alone for the grove had been born anew at my base. I had been spared, I came to believe, to pass on the knowledge of the grove to these new ones those small bits of life I now called Seedling. I quickly abandoned my name survivor and became Loving Mother for all the seedlings of my grove.

For the next century as Loving Mother, I nurtured these seedlings, spread my limbs over them as they grew and struggled and prospered. Not all of my seedlings survived. Many were lost to drought or wind or ice. But my grove has been reborn; my slope is covered not just with firs, but also with cedars, and maples and spruce. The waves below pounded out the time through days and weeks and years. And many hundreds of tides have washed in and out, down below my grove, at the base of my slope. I have left my loneliness behind and I have become part of a new grove along with Slender Trunk, Bird Keeper, Gray Bark and others.

But these calm times of growth did not last forever. My flourishing grove was cracked with percussive explosions. Big Antlers, his cows and calves beat the forest floor with their hooves. Next came the barking dogs, overheated and slobbering at the hooves of the youngest calf, a newborn elk. Big Antlers charged the dogs and tossed these barking hounds against my trunk. Then there came more percussive explosions. Red blotches appeared on Big Antlers shoulder. He trumpeted loudly as his family crossed the ridge above, then his legs crumpled and he fell. There he lay, sprawled across my roots, wilted and coughing, exhaling blood. I held him with my roots and sought to soothe him as he slowly died.

Shouting ones were soon upon him; they came to flay this fallen, dying elk. For months afterwards I cradled the bones they left. I became the altar for this bloody sacrifice tossed away without honor by the shouting ones. There was no grace, no reverence; bones were flung aside as flesh was stripped away. For many decades, anger dwelt within my core, and I came to hate the shouting ones. Long Braids had taken the deer with his silent arrows. But before flesh was cut away from bone, Long Braids thanked the deer for its sacrifice, and then Long Braids thanked the earth. Each time Long Braids killed it was with a reverent precision. He filled every move, every gesture of his hands with awe for the life he took.

More shouting ones came cracking the air, sending all those that dwelt below into headlong flight. But, worse than the shouting ones, were the cutters. The cutters sawed and chopped their way through to the edge of my grove. They flattened the earth and brought their machines to slash roads then covered them with ground stones. Then trucks came to haul away the fallen victims. For reasons I do not understand, most of my grove was spared. Even now the screaming blades, the stink of petroleum fumes and the reverberations following each crashing tree brought down to death remain with me, nightmares come to life. These deaths, this pogrom led to new life, but the pain of this cutting I hold in my memory, a scar that has healed but that has not been discarded.

More stench came. Asphalt flowing over ground stones burning and searing the earth’s skin. Nameless moles, worms, shrews, beetles, and ants were crushed unto death. In place of ferns, bracken, moss, lilies, salmon berries, and much more there is this slab of blackness. Cars and trucks groan by shredding the veil of quiet and order that had once been suspended throughout the night. Flashing metallic colors speed past, seldom stopping except to expel cans or bottles or bags of refuse into the shocked silence of our grove. Our peace is in constant jeopardy, unraveled day and night. Fumes burn through the air binding allergies to all our inhalations.

Since then, a black path has snaked upwards between the trunks and come to a halt at my base. People come when there is no rain or snow. The old ones, breathing heavily, rest upon the bench. They tilt back their heads and gaze upon me before they turn and leave. The small ones clamor over my roots and hide among the fluted flanges of my base shouting and giggling. It is only when they look upward that they too become silent, if only for a moment. These small ones grasp my trunk like they do the legs of their parents. I hope that they will not become shouters or cutters. Below me now is a sign that gives me the name Guardian. I have become the Guardian of my grove. My age and my size bring some protection to my grove. I recognize some of the people that come back time after time to visit me-those that bring others to my base to stare at me-they would not suffer me to be cut nor the other of my grove that surround me.

I have given the knowledge of my names and of my life to Quiet Hat, for he is the one who now knows me best. He brings his small ones with him, both of them boys-I call them Dark Hair and Bright Hair. Bright Hair likes to play his imaginary trumpet and twirl, dancing about my trunk. Dark Hair is quieter, he likes to touch me; he likes to search the deep ridges of my trunk. With Quiet Hat, Dark Hair and Bright Hair also comes Quiet Reader. Quiet Reader often brings a book to read in silence upon the bench below me. She reads then thinks, looks up at my branches, and then reads again. It is strange to know that the pages of her book and the pages that you now read are made from the fibers of my own kind.

I talk about Quiet Hat and his family; I talk of Long Braid and others for they have shown me that not all humans are shouters and cutters. They have shown me that not all humans look at me and think of the number of houses that could be built from my body. They do not look at the gentle slopes where I dwell with my grove and think, “what a wonderful place to develop into one-acre home sites, of course most of these old trees would have to go.” I know for as my thoughts enter Quiet Hat his thoughts also enter me. As I have told Quiet Hat my story, he has told me his. I am very old and may have gained some wisdom. My message to Quiet Hat and to you is simple “choose life.”

“Tree Story” was published in Tree Story and Other Poems: Campbell, Douglas G and is available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.

Bio: Douglas G. Campbell lives in Portland, Oregon and is Professor Emeritus of Art at George Fox University where he taught painting, printmaking, drawing and art history courses. He is living with aphasia, a language disorder acquired from a stroke in 2012. He often submits poetry written both before and after his stroke. He is a member of Thursday Night Poets, a poetry group for people with brain injuries, through the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire.

His poetry and artworks have been published in numerous periodicals. You can see Douglas’s artwork at: http://www.douglascampbellart.com

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Homer Alaska, poetry
by Mona Mehas

just a spit from Canada
lined with shops galore
sleepy tugboat in boat graveyard

watch otters play in shallows
eagles nest nearby
just a spit from Canada

halibut the fisher king
whales lurk deep offshore
sleepy tugboat in boat graveyard

look for bears along roadside
never return to where I’m from
just a spit from Canada

my soul soars along the Bay
gulls and lighthouse through the clouds
sleepy tugboat in boat graveyard

just a spit from Canada
sleepy tugboat in boat graveyard

“Homer Alaska” was published in Calling to Shore:Mehas, Mona: Cicada Song Press.

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Crystal Carousel awaits us, poetry
by Lynda McKinney Lambert

Arks of translucent light
beam from opened sky
crystal Carousel awaits us
discover hard-to-find
entry gate to narrow road
florae glow abundantly beside clear waterfall
Grasp this opportunity to watch
hawks circling across overflowing sky
in spacious freedom from gravity
Judah’s Lion beckons, “come higher”
Keep watching the sky
Lamb-shaped silver-white clouds
Move, float, surround crystal carousel
nothing on earth
obscures our calling to dance
past the darkness
quick, like the flight of
ravens flying over River of Life
suspended laws of gravity
transform atmosphere
utters a song of praise
verticality seekers discover
well-hidden ancients foreshadowed
Xavior, our origin, our destiny
Yes, we will dance at the
Zenith of our wedding reception.