Do You Have an Accent?

April 2023 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

This town has a rusted roof gas station,
a store shelf where you would find
charm and shame sitting side-by-side,
as inseparable as lovebugs,
buy-one-get-one for the last 50 years.

You can still buy a scratcher ticket – or twelve,
and sit, welcomed, on the sidewalk
with your dreams of a less-debted life,
or watch as barefoot beauties walk west to work,
carrying babies bulging with
Dollar General budget-nutrition.

Don’t forget your manners if you’re just visitin’,
one proper and polite nod to say,
“just like my daddy did,”
to all those with their collars blue
just like the sky-paint on the gulf.

“Poor, rural, and southern”,
is meant by most
to sound scary and scabbed
just like the shallow intimidation
of pitbull pups scratching and slobbering
against their chain-link boundary lines.
But to me it sure looks a lot like
lovin’ and learnin’ that the things
worth having take the most time,
saturating slowly like sun tea
brewin’ in the porch-pitcher.

I spent a decade patting makeup
onto the warm red tones of my neck
to conceal a crime of culture,
instead of questioning
why moving up
had to mean moving away.

These memories had a lesson for me,
like a neighbor pulling my ear
back to my mother for new wisdom,
chastising me for talking to strangers,
forgetting my manners,
and not listening to my father.

These memories are like mangrove mud,
hugging my ankles until I am stalled,
anchoring me to mindfulness of a moment
tinged with something sour,
like that sulfuric smell across the marshes,
that is hard to romanticize – yet still cues a smile,
when its rotten earthiness tells me that I am home.

It is only in this pause,
the stillness before a shifting tide,
when I can clearly recall and recite
the scripture –
the allegory of me,
and where it was written.

It was composed here;

In the nimble thank you wave,
at a neighbor kind or neglectful enough
to turn an eye as I swiped citrus slices
from yard overhangs,
to rub into my vulgar mouth,
with dirty hands.

On the sweet-wind steeped from
magnolia blooms and orange blossoms,
the perfect perfume to compliment
a blushing heat-sick face.

It was spoken over the rumble of thunder,
during the can’t-miss primetime storm watch,
hurricane season 2004,
sung with the intoxicating breaths
of the gulf stream,
scented with pheromonic petrichor.

They say that one man’s white trash
is another’s treasured upbringing,
and through the catharsis of return,
a lowbrow renaissance,
I know both to be true.

My only infallible faith is in the
beauty visible from the gutter,
and I will celebrate each day
in the midst of a perennial
impoverished holiday,
like the Christmas lights draped
on fences, roofs, and trailer tops,
hanging on with staple-gun hugs,
all year ‘round.

Elizabeth Curley

Elizabeth Curley lives a dual life as both a poet and a social work researcher. Elizabeth received a Silver Medal from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in 2012 and is still writing a decade later. Elizabeth’s time is spent consuming, collecting, carrying, crafting, and quantifying the human experience.

Cathy Hollister

October 2022 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

The Local

oak and leather corner pub

warm glow of Guinness

tensions softly fold to sighs

beyond these walls

irrelevance

Speakers

Eyes

That widen in surprise

Tear in sympathy

Smile

Pen

That writes of playful things

Whose ink spills out in flourishes

Drawing pictures in words

Laptop

That clicks with musical beat

Whose letters speak to screen

In engineered friendship

Screen

That explodes, whispers, cries

a tale I don’t want to hear

but I can’t turn off

Hands

That speak of love

With the softest caress

on the cheek

Voice

Muffled by mask

That can’t hide the smile

In the eyes

Ode to Candle Stub

Wax almost spent, wick bent and blackened

dripping life blood of self in service

sleeping old soldier

bivouacked in the back of the drawer

Ignored

found when pawing for pen or twist tie

always ready, willing to accept

the sweet kiss of fire, illumine

the great pool of dark as strong as

younger, taller, more fortified

tapering heights

Service to the end of life

Service to the depths of self

Service highly valued

to the stubby end

Cathy Hollister

Cathy Hollister is an older writer whose poetry often explores the treasures embedded in age, isolation, and continual readjustments. When not writing you might find her on the dance floor enjoying the company of friends or deep in the woods basking in the peace of solitude. Her work has been in Silent Spark Press, Humans of the World Blog, Open Door Magazine, Beyond Words Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Poet’s Choiceanthologies, and others. She lives in middle Tennessee.

Miss You and the Blue Jean Hat

October 2022 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

Would love to bake chocolate chip cookies again with you.  Do not

care if we ate all the dough and had no cookies to eat.  Miss you.

Come as you are.  Do not care if there’s bones, skin, or nothing.  As long

as it’s you.  I will know you by your laugh or simply your touch.  Miss

you.  We never did get to run that half marathon together.

Was run in your honor.  A full too.  When you come please bring that

cheesy pepperoni bread.  Soooo delicious.  Have not been

able to duplicate it.  The cheese melts into the dough and it’s terrible

re-heated.  Think it’s the wrong kind of dough.  You would know.

Miss you.  Heartbreaking life experiences shatter.  I’m sorry.

I am sorry I failed you.  Would love to hug you.  Hard.  Kiss your check.

Your forehead.  Hug you again.  To many unsaid goodbyes.  I know

you said goodbye before you left forever.  Knew it.  Felt it.

Here.  Inside.  Look for you in my dreams … into that wide darkness … can’t

find you.  Will forever Miss You.  Riding brought you so much joy … exuberance.

You wanted to go faster and faster … as fast as the horse’s hooves would

run … which now pound my heart … my head.  It’s almost spring.

Daffodils sprouting and covered in snow.  You loved their yellow happiness.

I remember you telling me how pissed you were with your mom for making

you pick the ones in the field.  Planting time.  Dogs running through the

garden … playfully trampling all your plants.  We are all dog hoarders now.  Miss you.

The sea is calling.  We can walk on the beach.  Looking for sand dollars, shells,

and starfish.  Let me know where to meet.  We’ll both show up.  Bring that

blue jean hat we all loved.  The one where your white blond uncontrollable curls

tumble out.  We have so much to catch up on.  I want to hear all about

Heaven … how you’re doing.  I’ll bring the cheesy pepperoni bread and flowers.

Daffodils or Sunflowers?  The new dog will be on a leash.  You’ll love him.

He’s a foodie too.  Any time.  Any place.  Or just the dining room table.

That’s fine too.  Just come.

MD Bier

MD Bier is a binge reader and you’ll always find a book with her. Her writing reflects her passion for social change and social issues. Being part of the Project Write Now Community is where she writes and studies poetry. She has been published in the Write Launch, Humans of the World, New Brunswick Poetry Anthology, and the New Brunswick Windows on the World. MD Bier lives in NJ with her family and dog.