Part II
Photo by Alena Darmel (pexels.com)
Catherine Strisik
The Katerίna Passages
vein
if he left by foot
( ) or donkey ( ) or cart and donkey ( ) or cart and horse from his hometown in 1913 the second Balkan War having started in June in central Macedonia ( ) did he carry in his pocket soil from Trapezítsa did he carry in his bag slung over his shoulder or in his other pocket or wrapped in fabric cut from his mother’s hem paximathia so that he’d have wheat and olive oil for the journey ( ) at 16 years old ( ) this being the last time he’d see his mother and he was a handsome sweet son and I know because he was a handsome sweet grandfather and ( ) how did his mother know of America from the village of 65 people ( ) how did she tell her second son to save his life he must go during the raisin and drought crisis during fragmentation of a culture and arrive at 17 to the rest of his life ( ) maybe because he held my hand the way his mother held his with affectionate fondling as though reaching through the dermis to the fascia the muscle to the vein where I am the rest of his story.
* * *
Centuries Old Kako Mati
The old gypsy chooses me - stands three inches from my face inside the Thessaloniki Bus Terminal where I drink bottled water eyes my turquoise beads - eyes me right into my eyes and then eyes my skirt with its many colors - speaks not nice I hear the tone not nice too close in a dialect I’ve never heard yet recognize from stories I’d been told - perhaps her limp the ankle-length skirt and the hem frayed though there are no sheep no hillsides steep and rocky no not here at the terminal no not here where there are no rays today in any direction leading out of this city - no dismembering of the sacrificial animals the goat the lamb certainly there are no cherries in late April - a tone not nice not nice too fast for me not by any means beautiful but my feet touch the sea - because something she’s said - with her eyes faded indigo in a gypsy Greek tongue that’s strange to my ear - and now the pain in my gut horizontal and I dazed by her malicious gaze and where is the toilet as though her hands sun-toughened pull out of me a cry and cramping - what her spell wants for me as her voice pickaxes the morning light - to scathe not my innocence after all I am on the edge of a greater age - is to throw off my poise her eye steady and practiced and because of the sudden pull - because I’ve forgotten astonished by her curses - to hold up my hands between us as a shield to spit spit spit into my armpit where is my crucifix where is my beaded eye oh mother oh god my grandmother nowhere to be found to wash my body with mud to break the viscosity - without protection my flora unmistakably altered.
-U-
Catherine Strisik is an award-winning poet; writing coach for poets and essayists; editor of Taos Journal of Poetry; Taos, New Mexico’s Poet Laureate 2020-2021; author of poetry collections: The Mistress; Thousand-Cricket Song; chapbook Insectum Gravitis; and forthcoming: Goat, Goddess, Moon; with over 30 years of publications with poetry translated into Greek, Persian, and Bulgarian. See more at www.cathystrisik.com.
Joanna Wolfarth
A Universe in My Hands
He asks me why bats sleep upside down as I once again notice those three rice krispies stuck to the chair leg. Across the table, the cat licks at a milky handprint, which is leeching into an electoral registration form, the deadline for which has long since passed. As I usher him from the kitchen, I see a near-empty compost bag rise triumphantly from the lawn, where it languished for two weeks. Fingers pull at my belt loop and the staircase is covered in flakes of dried mud. When did I last clean the sink? I tune back into his voice, as he tells me he doesn't want to grow up anymore because it takes a long time to make a person. Floored, I think about Buddhist theories of anatta and notice we need to reseal the upstairs windows. I peel the t-shirt off his wriggling body. The cotton is stained with yoghurt, paint, and grass, each a tiny message to me about how he filled his day after I left him at the nursery gates. I close the curtains and see the blossom has blown from the trees. There are still over twenty unread student emails in my inbox. On my way to the bathroom I hit my hip on the door jamb and two small arms circle my thighs while I silently curse my clumsiness and, for the briefest of moments, think it would be nice not to exist for a minute. To have a moment of peace from being me but, as I think this, I notice the shape of his feet on the tile floor. He loves erupting volcanoes, dinosaurs, and unicorns. He wanted rainbows painted on his walls. I wonder what time the DIY shop closes and how long it would take to mark out the arcs and wash the brushes. Snuggled down under a space rocket duvet, I force myself to slow my breathing, to calm my body as it becomes a pillow for his head, even as a hundred more thoughts kaleidoscope their way throughout my brain. As I read, he secretly sprinkles boogers in my hair but I don't tell him I know this. As I read, I recall the monotone mumble of the woman from the community mental health team earlier today. It’s not her fault the services are so stretched. But I still resent the lack of care she gave to enunciation. The absence of cadence. If nothing else, give me a sweet song in your voice. Now nose to nose, his sweet breath on my skin. I can’t read the news anymore, it’s a horrorshow conveyor belt moving too fast and headlines from ten years ago crawl into my consciousness as he asks me if I can open and close one eye at a time. He tells me he can do it — it’s his knack. I am trying so hard not to miss these moments, even as they come with a constant, discordant soundtrack from deep inside my head. He places his big-small hands over my open eyes. 'You can see the universe?' he asks, 'you can see the universe in my hands?'. I tell him yes, because it is true. I softly ask him where he got this idea from, but he says nothing, letting me look quietly into the boundless space between my eye and his flesh.
-U-
Joanna Wolfarth is an art historian and writer. Previously Lecturer in Southeast Asian Arts at SOAS, University of London, she now teaches Global Art History at The Open University. Her first book, MILK (W&N, 2023) explores the poetics and politics of breast milk.
Courtney Mason
Hail Mary Full of It
Photo by Jesus Toledo (pexels.com)
Hail Mary, Lady of domestic servitude. Our Lady of career progression and childfree motherhood. Our Lady of can-have-it-all. Our Lady of botox feminism. Holy Mother of immaculate hair. Holy Lady of contouring perfection. Our Lady with a capsule wardrobe and three online orders on the way. Our Blessed Lady of 1200 calories/day. Our Lady with a thigh gap. Oh! How I wish I had your thigh gap. Haily Mary, Our Silk-Smooth-Lady with no body hair and hidden spanx. My Lady Mother Mary of symmetrical features. Her gold golden ratio. Mother Mary of morning routines. Our Lady of green smoothies. Green, green Wheatgrass. Our Lady, Queen of sobriety drinks only wheatgrass. Our Lady of diversity and equity quotas. Our Lady illuminating glass ceilings with her holy light. Mother Mary, Holy Maternal Mother of healing generational trauma. Our Lady who doesn’t speak up/back/much. Our Lady of “she was asking for it”. Was she asking for it? She was asking for it. Our Lady of false accusations. Our Queen of Heaven is always wet. Our Lady has no sense of humour. Our Lady is running low on Grace. Our Lady is ineligible for maternity leave — paternity must be proven. Our Lady needs poolside daiquiri. Free childcare. A massage. Our Lady is so, so tired. Hail Mary. Mother Mary, pray not for the sinners — but for yourself first.
-U-
Courtney Mason is a writer, artist, and civil engineer living on Kaurna land in South Australia. Her work has been published by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), Jacaranda Journal, and InDaily. She is currently working on her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the 2023 South Australian Literary Award. See more at www.courtney-mason.com.
Lisa Bellamy
Bee Frequency
When I crave relief from human ugliness, I walk to my favorite valley, search for bush-blossom hollows, pray to hear bee frequency, i.e., 20,000-plus bumblebees — big-buzz, surround-sound, harmonium drone. Bee-torso muscles vibrate, pincers grab flowers' anthers — bee-bang creation; perfect, persuasive pitch for pollen release — O shakedown, O pirate's treasure, O booty. Yes, I may be stung unto Death, but I want to tiptoe near and nearer to thee, dear bees. I want to be a tuning fork, shimmy to pure Middle C — O frequency: release me, twirl me, scatter my dread thoughts — I want to shake, shake, shake it, like a bee; slow-rock my hips, shout Jehoshaphat — if I catch Death's eye, so be it. I want to laugh, despite myself. I want to tremble, until I stop, and am still; until I know I am god.
-U-
Lisa Bellamy is the author of The Northway (Terrapin Books, 2018) and the chapbook, Nectar. She has received two Pushcart Prizes and The U.N. Network on Migration featured her poem “Yoho” in its 2022 exhibition. See more at www.lisabellamypoet.com.
Maya Benattar
Really From
They see an exotic face in a rural place and they always ask: "Where's home for you? No, no. Where are you really from?" So I wonder… is home an unknown stoop in Cologne, captured in the one photo that somehow made it out of 1930s Europe? Home might be somewhere deep in Russia, no idea where. Or is a home a dusty, small Moroccan village? Head west, head east, I don’t know. Or maybe home is in Casablanca where the wide sidewalks led to a window selling fresh fried sfenj. Or a tiny apartment in a gritty Paris suburb, where the tea was poured so perfectly. Maybe home was my grandparents’ house in Yonkers. All plastic covered furniture and held-in stories, just up the hill from Central Avenue, and the Italian bakery in the Pathmark plaza with my favorite seeded cookies, lightly browned just the way I like them. Maybe home is the first home I remember — round the north end of the lake, make two lefts and then a left into the driveway. Put on your signal, says my dad — even if only for the squirrels. But I can’t go back there. Most of home is made of memories that aren't even mine, though I can taste the fresh powdered sugar and feel the pebbly front path under my callused, dirty summer feet.
-U-
Maya Benattar is a New York-based music psychotherapist and writer. Her client work and writing focus on how forced displacement, intergenerational trauma, and inherited sense of "otherness" shape the way we show up in the world. Her writings can be found at Hey Alma, Five Minutes, and Tension Literary.
Lev Raphael
The Trees Reveal Their Secrets
Who knew that the maple leaves could turn bright scarlet in our pre-war neighborhood? The sassafras leaves would blush like peaches? And the juicy pale green leaves of the giant Gingko in our front yard morph to Empire Yellow, dropping all in one day like velvet snow if it was cold enough the night before? Those days, they lie in heaps like treasure piled up around a barbaric sovereign on his throne. The branches of every tree spread out fierce and wide, no longer coated in softness, and as I walk the car-less streets I have entered the world of an early Braque collage, a world most dominated by grays and tans and browns. No matter the tree, its nudity is mute amid the fallen leaves, mute and sculptural. This beauty — unknown to me before — has power to still my restless mind. That is their true secret: they rule these streets. I wish I had the words to speak to them — but this will have to do.
-U-
Lev Raphael grew up in Manhattan but got over it and came into his own as a writer in Michigan. He's the author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery.
Libré Cory
Fierce Freedom
The Last Road Trip
Your lies ignite a backdraft that sears my heart — now I remember the difference between passion and combustion. I drive a thousand conflicted miles across the wild space of the Great Basin. My heart opens slowly like the alluvial fans spanning the distance from Oregon to Utah. We meet on a warm October night and travel for a month. The Colorado plateau, stone corridors, arches, bridges of air. Hoodoos swirling into the blue distance. So much energy compressed in a whirling dervish of stone. Twenty years ago we would have danced under Orion and again at a tavern — our hearts pressed into each other’s chests lost in the whiskey-sweet fever of together forever. Our kisses formed constellations to guide our hands, our lips. We knew each other’s terrain so well we didn’t need maps. Now I reach for your hand and you reach for the radio. I am willing to let hope drive the car as red rocks color the miles, distract me from looking too hard at what is — and isn’t — between us. Golden cottonwood leaves glitter along the Virgin River blazing a trail of fire and possibility until November. Then you insist on driving back to California and I return to Oregon. It’s only temporary, you say. I am too old to believe your promises, but I do anyway. Now it is the winter solstice and I am listening to the mountain. My heart, my breath are steady. Your absence is a relief. And, as I celebrate my solitude and the return of the light, I do what I should have done many years ago: I let you go.
* * *
Wild Horses
My dreams are wild horses that break furniture and tear the carpet. I can smell their sweet horse sweat, the scent of the high desert tangled in their manes: sage, snow, creosote, rain, tamarisk, sun. The first time I saw a wild horse, I had just climbed Steens Mountain — a 10,000’, mile-long, fault block jutting abruptly out of the Great Basin in eastern Oregon. On that hot afternoon in July, I knelt, guzzling icy water from a spring gushing out of a basalt portal on the mountainside. The sky was turquoise — cloudless. I could see California, Nevada and Idaho from my tiny perch. Then I saw her. She was galloping along the ridge just below me: a wild, white horse. I had never seen such strength, such fierce freedom. A perfect moment. Our hearts beat deeply, in sync. I closed my eyes and brought her home. She was the first. Over the years, I’ve gathered a restless, ragged herd. Now my partner is insisting I confine my horses. They are tired of broken dishes, muddy floors, the loud whinny that disrupts dinner. But I’m afraid my horses will die in captivity. I don’t want to have to choose. Suddenly a whiskery voice tickles my ear: "You haven’t even begun to take all those midnight, bareback rides. You need us."
-U-
Libré Cory is a writer and teacher. She lived in Oregon for many years, but is currently staying in Wyoming. Her poems have previously appeared in Humana Obscura, Snowy Egret, Fireweed, and Dog River Review. Libré holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop.
Amy G. Smith
Paths Not Taken
Once when I was a child I wanted to be an archaeologist, scraping stories from fallen stars, digging through mysteries of stones, my hands touching the hands of my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfathers as they formed a knife from rough rock, or held a broken bowl to lips curved like my grandmother's singing mouth, all these past lives intertwined with mine. Or I thought I might be a horticulturist, cultivating chrysanthemums and cat-mint, carrying on conversations with roots and trees. A detective, a sleuth, master of whodunit, guts and guns and sword fights. A tendency toward chivalry. A doctor, following in my great-great-aunt's shoes. A concert pianist. An artist sculpting form from firmament. A fashion model, dressed for the red carpet, wearing high-heeled shoes that never cause me to stumble. Or a designer playing with shape and color and texture that no one had ever thought to bring into being. Better yet, a biker chick, flying around those back road curves on a beemer fit to my body, nowhere to be, everywhere to go. Maybe this other me is a historian. A story keeper, a child of a forgotten lineage that lies buried in my bones.
-U-
Amy G. Smith is a poet living and writing in Northern Nevada. She is currently pursuing her MFA degree in poetry through the low-residency program at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.
Hibah Shabkhez
Sing, Siren, Sing
Arnacia set down her loom. With the proceeds of her weaving she bought a small ship, and took on as her crew six women, curious, like herself, to hear the sirens sing. They would sail seven times around the isle, she decided, tied one by one to the mast. But the sirens did not sing for her: they had only ever learnt to sing for men. They turned away from Arnacia, shrugging, jeering to mask admiration under mockery. So Arnacia fled, swearing that their fabled song would fade from memory, and their very name come to mean a repellent blaring.
-U-
Hibah Shabkhez is a writer and photographer from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Penine Platform, Rust and Moth, Think Journal, The Font, The Raven's Muse Magazine, and other literary magazines. See more at Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez.
Frank Modica
The Stillness
Photo by Resarse F (pexels.com)
The Darkness
I huddled alone in a tiny bathroom while tornado sirens rattled the windows of a 2-bedroom apartment. My four children sheltered two miles away with their mother and stepdad as a tornado ripped off random roofs in their neighborhood before demolishing a subdivision three blocks south of me. Another storm surged through a small village fourteen miles down the road. During its brief rampage the twister destroyed 68 homes, 12 businesses, 3 churches, the library, and killed a woman in a semi. After the sirens sounded all clear, I didn’t register fear in the moment at my own near miss, didn’t see or hear anything in the darkness.
* * *
The Weight
I remember flowers and poster boards with photographs at your wake. A cold November afternoon harried my walk from the parking lot to the reception area. The last memory of your face — what I saw during the wake, wasn’t really your face — not the way I remembered your eyes and cheeks and lips and chin when I dropped you off at the hospital with Mom. Before the funeral mass, we lifted your casket from the hearse to the carrier — I never believed the dead weighed so much, but I knew it wasn’t really you, unburdened from pain and sorrow, ecstasy and love. I held the handle, the casket heavy in my hand from hearse to the carrier and back again. And I still carry the weight.
-U-
Frank C. Modica is a retired teacher living in Urbana, Illinois, who taught children with special needs for over 34 years. His first chapbook, What We Harvest, published by Kelsey Books in 2021, was nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award.
Emma Peterson
God Might be the Tickle-Me-Elmo
in the Antique Store on Decatur Street, New Orleans
From the purple house on St. Claude to Cafe Amelie, it is one vanilla latte and a short ride in the back seat of a turtle hunter’s car. From Cafe Amelie to the Historic New Orleans Collection, it is one block, two bars, and a rain storm. From The Historic New Orleans Collection to The Barely Legal Club, it is several more bars, eight women, a trumpet player, and a thirty-six dollar tee shirt with tits on it (size 3XL). From the Barely Legal Club to the trash can outside the Absinthe bar, it is twelve women, four hundred dollars, a payback handed to you but passed to a friend (then passed from your friend's mouth to the trash out front in record time). From the trash can outside the Absinthe bar to sobbing into your mother’s shirt while the Tickle-Me-Elmo in the window of the antique store on Decatur Street watches, it is the nation's supply of jello and vodka bought in tubes from skinny women (also in tubes) who reek of sticky sweet pot, a stumble down the hill to the river, a rendition of Johnny Horton’s “Battle of New Orleans”, as many beignets as feels right for you at the time, a turn down the wrong street, a neon sign advertising psychic readings, you in a big stupid hat bought somewhere near the jello tubes, a woman who will read you and your innermost demons and desires and demon desires dead to rights with a specificity that halts your breath even though you’re too fucking drunk to tell her anything about yourself, a glassy-eyed shuffle into a Chinese bar where a waitress will tell you not to take those things too seriously then hand you a fortune cookie that says the exact thing the psychic just choked you with, a tiny pink pig, a tiny yellow chicken, and a tiny blue dinosaur that you will leave at an altar where you pray for your brother and his children, meander down mourning the loss of your childhood (if you go too far, turn back), and a fated glance into the antique store where you lock eyes with Tickle-Me-Elmo, who is as it turns out: God — and of course you will recognize him, he was your first friend.
-U-
Emma Peterson is currently an English major at California State University Chico. Emma has previously wanted to do many things, but presently, her devotion lies in writing. She has one work of fiction published in The Manzanita at CSU Chico. More of her writing can be found on Substack @egpeterson.