April 2016 | nonfiction
It has been millennia since I last ate you. How did I dare, today, breaking the spell?
Your stem neatly detached by a twist of my fingers, your thick flesh with its sparkly aftertaste exploding on tongue, your pit so very small that for lack of practice I’m scared of swallowing it… I have missed a fruit in my mouth, especially a fruit like you.
Almost for a lifetime I’ve shied away, fearing a secret threat you concealed under gracious smoothness, under naïve alegria. Innocent, are you?
You came in brown bags, paper satchels. You came timely, on season, and we waited for you: late May, early June. After the roses bloomed for the Virgin Mary, you wrapped up the sensuality of spring in a bloody sap, precursor of luscious summer, of apricot, peach and plum prodigality.
You appeared: velvety, dense – a queen dressed up for a court dance, but your size made you childish. Cheerful ballerina: hand in hand with rosy-cheeked playmates twirling in brazen tutus. Caroling, playing hide and seek in a maze of dark leaves.
Ladder pushed against the trunk, basket hanging across a branch, neck bent backward I gazed up, my eyes lost in a crimson orgy. Happiness was too large for my shrinking heart: cherries, I’ve left you behind, just where I left myself.
I don’t know who kept going after the split. Who lived in my name.
But it wasn’t me.
Toti O’Brien
Toti O’Brien’s work has appeared in Synesthesia, Wilderness House, The Harpoon Review and Litro NY, among other journals and anthologies.
January 2016 | nonfiction
I saw you today. You’d been left behind. Caught in the act of unzipping your old skin. There among the husks of your siblings, you gripped the maple tree, your body the color of new leaves unfurling. I saw your convulsive twitch, your jointed limbs. I witnessed your struggle to be born. That moment of leaving your armor.
We are not strangers. I know you from your song, August’s soundtrack, that vibrating sine wave. Your evening crescendo rises in the ears of joggers, gardeners, children at play on browning lawns. We shout to be heard from under the trees—or fall silent altogether.
I know you from your shell, torment of my childhood. Yesterday I lifted your kinsman’s carapace from a raspberry. My fingers shivered to do it. Recalling crackly monsters my brother left on my bookshelf, my pillow, my light switch.
I know you from your jittering bounce on the ground, a curiosity for the dog, an opportunity for the cat.
Once you appeared at my back door after I wrote a poem in which you starred. You looked up at me as if to say, You rang?
But I’ve never seen you like this, freeze-framed in the act of vaulting into your new shape.
Does it hurt, this slow-mo backflip into freedom? It looks like it would hurt.
Maybe it hurts like a foot gone to sleep, the flow of blood returning. Maybe you sense that soon, very soon, your new wings will dry.
Do you look back at your exoskeleton once you’ve juddered free? That hull too small to contain you?
I look into your unblinking eyes, and I think not. Perhaps it’s more like this: You climb, you rest, you open your wings.
The buzzing symphony pulls you to the treetops. You ready your instrument.
by Shawndra Miller
Mennonite by birth, mystic by nature, Shawndra Miller is a writer and community organizer who lives in Indianapolis. She is coauthor of Sudden Spirit: A Book of Holy Moments and is currently working on a nonfiction book about community resilience. Her work has appeared in Edible Indy, Indiana Living Green, Farm Indiana, and Acres USA, as well as Boiler Journal and Lavender Review.
January 2016 | nonfiction
His biceps strain and relax beneath working hands, transferring bright flowers and plants into moist soil. Sweat silks his skin in the summer warmth, digging, planting, wiping his brow. I stand at a window in the Financial Aid hallway, sipping my coffee. Professor what’s-his-name listed off parts of The Allegory of the Cave today, all the while this man had begun transforming the dusty, rectangular void of a courtyard into a lively space where the sun shines in at ten o’clock. It’s beautiful, with its fresh sod and artisan benches. I shake off the stench of body odor and marker fumes that couldn’t reach the window in our classroom. I sip my coffee. I stare.
I don’t know how, but I know that much more can be learned by watching this man work with the earth than sitting in a philosophy lecture. I wonder if this landscaper is internally complaining. Does he like working for the company whose logo spreads on his t-shirt? If not, his body tells a different story. He makes it look so effortless. Like when your Dad showed you how to paint a wall or wash a car when you were young and you wondered how he could move so swiftly. His movements fit him like a glove, as I stand and watch in awe. A beautiful human man. Natural. Vibrant. Respectable. Nothing on that campus was ever more beautiful.
…You won’t be able to smoke out there.
by Erica Jacquemin
Erica Jacquemin is an American woman traveling the world and writing about it, as seems that pieces of her being are scattered across the globe for her to find. Her afflatus comes from the immense beauty of this planet, the languages and cultures she wanders into, romantic relationships, and the Italian language. She is from the Northeast of The United States but calls Italy home.
October 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
“The Marrow of Zen,” one of the sutras of Shunryu Suzuki’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, relates zen practitioners to four horses, with the fourth horse responding only after the pain of the whip penetrates to the marrow of its bones. If alcoholics need to hit rock bottom, I have some sense of what that means. I read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind thirty years ago, yet it took the onset of chronic neurological pain in order to commit to something I had only dabbled in for decades.
When looking out became impossible, and I could reflect but not imagine, I retreated within. At times, breathing was the only thing I could manage. What I found looking within was a life thrown out of balance, like a load having shifted in the back of a pick up with nothing securing it to the bed. Having seen myself for so long as a good guy, it was unsettling to realize how vain, shallow and self-indulgent I could be. Meditation became the ropes to re-anchor the load.
Who knew that pain could teach so much? Not me, but I now admit to being a slow learner. Someone might question whether I’m glad for the headaches. Make no mistake, I would like to be free of the symptoms that stifle me and keep me from enjoying all of my days. In fact, my search for a cure continues. Yet, looking back, I don’t think I would have otherwise learned things about my life and I’m glad to have found a teacher who speaks my language. Pain has finally penetrated so that I know in my bones what once I only thought in my mind.
by Charles Varani
Charles lives, writes and teaches in Oregon. He is also a shodan at Open Sky Aikido and rides his bicycle. Like most people in the Willamette Valley, he usually has something fermenting.
July 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
I haven’t said my skin is ash. I hyperpigment where the band of my sports bra rests, where a racer back runs rigid between my blades, where my favorite strand of pearls wants to lay. I sliver tiny shavings of my skin where these polka-dots amass. I fragment, and I flake, but I fold myself in scarves and sweatshirts so nobody sees.
I haven’t said this collects on every person’s skin, just better on mine. It appreciates the four hours every weekday I spend outside, where it can absorb the hot, humid air. It appreciates that I sweat when I work out, that I moisten it, that I quench its thirst. It appreciates that I supply it with neighbors too—like asthma and celiac. Yes, this appreciates me.
I haven’t said my skin is scales. Fine scales. Pale scales. Pink scales. In the shower, when I exercise, after sunlight. My flesh courses itself into rigid plates. On my back, they look like uneven roof tiles arranged in concentric layers. Patches overlap from head toward toe. Between freckles, they sink their uneven edges like teeth into my ribcage. They indent and project and flex and multiply, and multiply, and multiply.
I haven’t said Malassezia furfur. Since this inhabits my skin, it will return. Since this can’t leave, I can only hope the pale pigment patches on my right shoulder and the russet spots on my spine blend with my natural Band-Aid colored tone. Since I can’t seem to shake this species that shadows me, I’ll keep itching.
I haven’t said my skin is rash. I apply lotion, shampoo, cream, foam, soap. I want to control this, to keep it from growing. Over-the-counter, prescription, topical, homeopathic, breathable, non-greasy, hypoallergenic, who cares. This is here to stay.
by Ruth Towne
Ruth Towne is an emerging author from Southern Maine. The Literary Yard recently featured her piece “Four Passages” on their website, and Blotterature published her short “This Is More Than Homesickness” in their Winter 2015 issue. She currently studies Professional Writing and Information Design but loves creative writing. When she is not working, she loves to visit her family’s camp and explore the New England woods.
July 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction, poetry
The Dying Sister
You fell in slo-mo like a mimosa petal caught in a small breeze, sprawling, nearly soundless, on our parents’ speckled linoleum. I, five years younger, didn’t know you held your breath to make yourself faint. I didn’t know you’d whittled yourself down to taut skin over sharp bones by spitting meals into your napkin. I cried because I thought you had the “C” like Aunt Ceil. When you slept until 4:00 p.m. and Mother put a mirror to your parted lips, I never expected breath. Those “slashes” on your wrists, grazes that didn’t need stitches, healed to pearly stripes.
Black widow spider, you wove us all into your worry-web, yet went on to outlive a husband and three live-in men. How old were you when you first fell in love with death?
Somewhere I remember you and me leaping from your twin bed to mine, the bottoms of our nightgowns ballooning, your chestnut hair flying up from your shoulders. You, airborne, born of air. We had to grip your arms to stop you from throwing yourself into Father’s open grave.
When a doctor would tell you to see a psychologist, you’d switch your doctor. I changed my phone number, returned your letters unopened. Then Mother would say, “But she’s your sister.” I would phone, and soon your silky thread would begin to spool itself around me.
Hatching your latest death, you bought a mobile home in a trailer park smack inside a hurricane belt. I startle at loud noises, as if your house had just blown here from Florida and thunked down in my yard.
Last night I dreamed you were laid out in a coffin on palest blue satin, your hair in tendrils on the lace-edged pillow. Dry-eyed, I felt myself take full breaths.
by Rochelle Shapiro
Eating With Ghosts
Here I am, eating with my son, daughter, husband,
reminding myself to chew, to not cup my hand
at the rim of my plate to shelter my food,
as if my dead father could reach for it again.
In Russia, he sucked on bark, even stones.
Here I am, asking everyone about their day,
leaving some food on my plate
to please my mother’s ghost.
“This way you won’t get broad in the beam.”
Her hand pinches the small fleshy roll
at the waistband of her girdle.
At night, when everyone is in bed,
you can find me in the dark kitchen,
bending into the open fridge,
the glow of its cold bulb,
eating leftovers with my fingers,
choking on unchewed food.
Shh, don’t tell.
by Rochelle Shapiro
Rochelle’s novel, Miriam The Medium (Simon & Schuster, 2004), was nominated for the Harold U. Ribelow Award. Her short story collection What I Wish You’d Told Me (Shebooks, 2014) is just out in audio. She’s published essays in NYT (Lives) and Newsweek-My Turn. Her poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary magazines such as The Iowa Review, The Doctor TJ Eckleberg Review, Stone Path Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Stand, Inkwell Magazine, Amarillo Bay, Poet Lore, Crack the Spine, Compass Rose, Controlled Burn, The Griffin, Los Angeles Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, The MacGuffin, Memoir And, Moment, Negative Capability, The Louisville Review, Amoskeag, Pennsylvania English, Rio Grande Review, RiverSedge, Peregrine, Gulf Coast, Existere, Passager, and Willow Review. Her poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and I won the Branden Memorial Literary Award from Negative Capability. Currently, she teaches writing at UCLA Extension.
