Boquen, Brittany

April 2021 | poetry

She rambles around Plénée-Jugon,
seeking signs, leftovers of her younger self –

life tending kitchen gardens, a commune,
her home at L’abbaye de Boquen. She took a vow,
to return. Determined, she makes her oath good now.

Besret’s Cistercian monks have long gone
and she found years ago, she cannot believe
in God. The oak-timbred door creaks open
and within whitewashed walls, sparse
furnishings, hard pews, scents
of chalky musk
press her back
in time:

guitar riffs, folk songs, radical liturgies
and always people holding hands,
spiritual and temporal
kissing, uniting.

Once inside
her worn out hippy soul
lights a tapered prayer
for peace –

disbelief snuffed out
for seconds.

 

Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon

Ceinwen lives near Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and writes short stories and poetry. She is widely published in online magazines and in print anthologies. Her first chapbook was published in July 2019: ‘Cerddi Bach’ [Little Poems], Hedgehog Press. Her first pamphlet is due to be published in 2021. She is a Pushcart Prize (2019 & 2020) and Forward Prize (2019) nominee and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, UK (2017). She believes everyone’s voice counts.

Featured Author: Michelle Cacho-Negrete

April 2021 | Best of Net nominee, nonfiction

Grace in Four Parts

 

I

My mother enrolled me in a tap-dance class when I was five; I hated it. The little outfits hung awkwardly on me, the sequins always falling off.  The shoes hurt my feet. My steps were uncoordinated and always three beats behind everyone else’s.  I couldn’t twirl without stumbling.  Everyone else got that lovely tap sound as they danced across the floor. “She’s very pretty with those blonde curls,” the teacher told my mother.  “But she has no grace.”

 

II

Grace was my only friend in sixth grade. I was hers. We sat alone at our lunch table. We laughed together. If one of us had money we bought a candy bar to share. We exchanged books. One day I invited her home after school.  My mother bought cookies. Her parents didn’t want her to go, but she came anyway. We were happy walking home as I told her about my games and chemistry set, but when we got to our apartment my mother sent Grace home. I didn’t understand. My mother said, “I’m sure she is a lovely girl, but she’s colored. She belongs with her own kind.”  “She is my kind: we read the same books, laugh at the same things, like the same cookies,” I insisted, but my mother walked away.. Grace’s mother told her that she couldn’t have anything to do with me. The rest of the year I sat alone at lunch; no Grace.

 

III

My grace period for paying my student loan was up.  The credit mafia made threatening calls, sent threatening letters, even knocked at my door. “But I pay everything I can at the end of the month. I’m supporting two kids,” I told the man on the phone. “Sometimes I give you ten dollars, sometimes twenty-five but I always pay” The man scoffed; “Your money problems aren’t ours.” A friend who was a lawyer worked out a credit plan with them, but I was broke halfway through every month and lost any line of credit for seven years.

“Grace period is over,” they repeated to my lawyer.  “No grace left.”

 

IV

“Forgiveness is an act of grace,” My husband told me when he broke my jaw after a disagreement about nothing important, something I can’t even remember.  “Just let it go. I’ll never do it again,” he insisted.  Then he repeated, “Forgiveness is an act of grace.”

I laughed and told him, “Everyone knows I have no grace.”

 

Michelle Cacho-Negrete

Michelle Cacho-Negrete is a retired social worker who lives in Portland Maine. She is the author of Stealing: Life in America. She has 80+ publications, 4 of which are among the most notable, 5 in anthologies, 1 won Best of The Net and another won the Hope Award.

Connor Doyle

April 2021 | visual art

still lives, holy sites

 

Connor Doyle

Connor Doyle is a photographer and filmmaker based in the Chicagoland area. Graduating from Hampshire College’s Film/Photo program in 2016, Doyle’s work focuses on the idiosyncratic details of daily life in Northern Illinois, specifically his native Wheaton, IL. Though often trivial, his subjects capture the formal beauty and potency of these everyday sites, urging his viewers to reflect on the significance of their lived experiences. Connor’s work has been published in the Prairie Light Review, the Hole In The Head Review, the Burningword Literary Journal, and the Parliament Literary Journal. You can visit his website at https://connordoylephotographyfilmmaker.cargo.site

Carter Ayles

April 2021 | visual art

Neighborhood Detail 4

Carter Ayles

Carter Ayles is a photographer based in Savannah GA. He is currently finishing his BFA in Documentary photography at Savannah College of Art and Design. His work centers around the cyclical relationship between self and space and how our world is affected by human life. To see more of his work check out his instagram @c.ayles.art.

 

Fonly

April 2021 | nonfiction

—which shouldn’t need translation—this button (faded, pale green with white lettering) dates back to the ‘80s, when I was a student at San Diego State University, and Aesop’s Tables, in the corner of a strip mall just off campus, was where an assortment of left-wing literati and hangers-on gathered over glasses of Retsina and plates of hummus, pita, and olives until the restaurant got booted to make way for new construction, and the owners had these buttons made up so we could commiserate and rail at social injustice.
—the seminar leader passed out small gray buttons with white lettering, all caps, no apostrophe, to stress the futility of wishful thinking in lieu of action or acceptance—“fonly I’d married Bert instead of Bart, fonly I’d started saving when I was 20—her topic was fundraising (fonly someone would donate a million dollars) and she also handed out toe tags to remind people to look alive, and though I don’t remember anything she said, the button is a talisman.

—I don’t recall the origin of this one with the universal no (non/nyet/nein) symbol, a circle with a diagonal red line through it, and though I’m not inclined toward whining and wailing, this is one of just three buttons I’ve kept out of hundreds—a collection from decades of progressive activism: Bread Not Roses, Draft beer not boys, This is what a feminist looks like, Voice for Choice, U.S. Out of Nicaragua, Jane Wyman was Right—and now I find a timeless thread running through these residual relics: shit happens, we can’t wish it away, and there’s no use grumbling.

Alice Lowe

Alice Lowe is proud to have her third published piece in Burningword. Her flash prose has also appeared this past year in Hobart, JMWW, Door Is a Jar, Sleet, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Headlight Review. She’s had citations in Best American Essays and nominations for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. Alice writes about life and literature, food and family in San Diego, California and at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.