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Virgil Suarez Tallahassee (LD)
The Cotton Ball Queen In 1970, Havana, Cuba, my mother took it upon herself to inject B12 on the butt cheeks of as many neighbors as brought her doses and paid for her service. My mother wanted to be a nurse but was not a nurse, but the house filled with women waiting for their shots and I, at eight, watched them lower one side of their pants or shorts or pull up a dress to expose their flesh to the needle. The needle disappeared into the flesh. My mother swabbed their skin with a cotton ball drenched in alcohol after each shot and threw it in a bucket by the kitchen door. When she was not looking I reached for a handful and went outside to look at how the blood darkened. I wrapped my toy soldiers in the used cotton. They were wounded. Cuba was sending military personnel to Viet Nam. My mother shot up more people, “patients,” as she called them. When my father came home there was no trace of anyone ever been over. My mother expected me to keep her secrets. On the mud fort I had built in the patio all my soldiers lay wounded, bloodied and dying. At night I dreamt of the house filling with mother’s pillow cases full of cotton balls. In the United States, my mother worked in a factory, sewing zippers at 10 cents a piece. 25 years. She never looked up from her machine. Her fingers became arthritic . . . Every time I cut myself shaving, I reach for a cotton ball to soak up the blood. Blood is a cardinal taking flight against the darkening of the sky. Chloe Rodriguez Tallahassee (Virgil Suarez) Abuelo’s Dreams The wives and women gathered in the kitchen, the island full of foods from home, a night of nostalgia. Fricase de pollo, arroz, platanitos, But Cuba was decades away no matter the distance, and the men’s cigar smoke lingered in the kitchen, caressing the food with flirtatious touch, although the smoke played dominoes with the men in starched guayaberas on the veranda, it snuck through the small gaps in windowsills or through the opening and closing of the doors, as the wives checked in on their husbands incessantly. My job was to bring Abuelos’s cafecito y croquetas to our company but I knew better, I was an arbiter between two worlds, many moons, and waves away from one another. Where the kitchen was talk of life in Los Estados, where my Abuelita and the wives gossiped about who wore what to church. While outside the men spoke in loud voices about La Revolucion and plotting the ways Castro might die, how the regime may one day end, when they could return to the white beaches of Varadero or to their medical practices left to the government or desolate in Habana. I walked slowly with a large silver platter adorned with small coffee cups painted with horrible yellow polka dots and dark blue lining, a tray of croquetas and sliced limes. The cigar smoke mixing with the aroma of my innocence, Agua de Violetas that I was spritzed in after every bath, like every Cuban child I had met, another reminder of home that followed us without consent. The platter fell from my small, slippery hands inches from the table. Café crashing, tazas in smithereens, the food birds in short flights down to the terracotta tile. My lips wavered, face and ears grew hot, and the salt began to flow from my eyes. My grandfather pulled me onto his lap, his arthritic fingers bent this way and that. He smiled, chuckled almost at the scene. He looked me in the eye: Life is but an empty dream and then you die. A saying he believed he learned from Longfellow, misusing and mispronouncing often but this was his attempt to merge the worlds together; to bring the world in the veranda and stitch it to that of the kitchen, with his broken English. I was scolded by my grandmother, in her perfect dress, her hair curled in all the right directions, she lectured me: how I had to be a lady, that things must be done with grace and tact; how I had grown fat since just this morning. My abuelo looked up and said, Dale suave, Mimi. She glared at him, reminded him Yo soy la que mando aqui. That night, Cuba didn’t seem so many decades, or stars, or waves away. Hayden Nielander (Chloe Rodriguez) Show Me Swine Racers I’m going to fly so far under the radar that I scrape the sidewalk, slow into a saunter, jab my hands into my pockets to make sure they’re empty, drink somebody’s tear like it’s rain, do 28 in a 30, set my soft thoughts free to fly south, whatever is turning my gums red can keep right on, the night I disappear into is a sunny two in the afternoon and I haven’t left my porch, the blues —come get me, debt—come get me, I’ll ride in your van down to the crater in the woods where they dig for fossils and we can settle all this can’t get any lower business. There used to be a Hayden with holes in his roof so he could see the snowy stars in the eyes of a possum. His shirt was made of rain and there were gobs of air in his smile, trousers glassing in the cottonbeams of mothlight. No, there was no such Hayden. I’m thinking of a boy I knew in the parking lot of the grocery store we worked at with park-blue surgery eyes, balancing a future on a switchblade, he flipped it into his hand, where it’s stayed. That pharmacy used to be a jail, now they’ve set jail loose into the air like a stringless balloon and from the top of the Ferris wheel I can see the toddlers riding on the backs of hogs, holding onto the ears and this little corner of town in the carnival shine looks evil as Texas neon. The gun in me at least puts everything so plainly, The convenience store called Hayden won’t get robbed tonight. The IHOP cash register called Hayden is going to keep its tens and twenties. The dark corner called Hayden doesn’t need a streetlamp, just enough black powder to fill the palm of a hand. David Kirby Tallahassee (LD) Taking It Home to Jerome In Baton Rouge, there was a DJ on the soul station who was always urging his listeners to "take it on home to Jerome." No one knew who Jerome was. And nobody cared. So it didn't matter. I was, what, ten, twelve? I didn’t have anything to take home to anyone. Parents and teachers told us that all we needed to do in this world were three things: be happy, do good, and find work that fulfills you. But I also wanted to learn that trick where you grab your left ankle in your right hand and then jump through with your other leg. Everything else was to come, everything about love: the sadness of it, knowing it can’t last, that all lives must end, all hearts are broken. Sometimes when I'm writing a poem, I feel as though I'm operating that crusher that turns a full-size car into a metal cube the size of a suitcase. At other times, I'm just a secretary: the world has so much to say, and I’m writing it down. This great tenderness. Landis Grenville Tallahassee (David Kirby) 45 Union Line to Presidio When the child was a child, It didn’t know it was a child. Sometimes the sky can be this close, dawn weighing across roofs and in the net of trolley lines, a city asleep under the table of the world, but for this slight of hand as night’s linens strip to blue. And I have given up on being a saved woman. I want this city and its lively ossuary. Just the worship of a bus on time and in the right direction. Heading along into the accident of my life as it arrives and retreats along the fine thread of the hour. And looking out, why here and not there? One purple flower outside the window. Two aspirin for the headache I’ve had all night. Sometimes the world confiding itself behind the blare of the sun is too much to hear all at once! It says, turn away, and I do. And why not? Earth is still a beautiful place to die. Once, my mother sewed white feathers to cardboard and dressed us in the gauze of flight and the smack of pearls as we landed. It is true I do not want to die. Though nor do I want to be an orchard governed, paradise remedied of the ordinary I. Odd to say the world is as old as man though the dirt is older. In the scalpeled breeze of the bus departing, I stumble through the park already crowded by the plectra of voices. This simple stage—grass and asphalt, a child’s pink giraffe-- all arriving out of nothing. Teenagers interrupt the field, huddling in the grass to sip from a single gas station cup. The nannies on the benches, lit in morning, slip into small laughter. Alone, I press into the stillness of a concrete wall edging along the grass. The light ardent through my eyes shut. No one is noticing the baby boy, down on his knees in the center of the playground, his eyes pinning that fugitive sky. Grace is the body arriving in present tense. I am only saying, not yet, not yet. Zoraida “Ziggy” Pastor Miami (LD) Be Like Mary Oliver In the early morning, before the ibis shakes herself from her sleep in the trees, before the sun wakes up. You can see her: Square jaw, thick glasses, nicotine-stained skin, walking this forest, always with a pencil in hand, a cigarette on her lips, her notebook abuzz with her words. Her coat tattered by branches of so many trees. She follows a snail then climbs a tree. She sees two hummingbirds talking to each other, listening to each other’s song. One flies away. The tree shudders alive with its colors. She climbs down, heads to the marsh, to find mussels sleeping on the side of a barnacle. She thanks the mussel for its life, that she now has breakfast. She returns home. Cleans and prepares the mussels. She eats and begins to type. Her white page waiting all morning. Ismael Santos Miami (Ziggy Pastor) I used to dream about Love I used to dream about Love. I sighed, like Percy Bysshe Shelley, Brooding on snowy mountaintops, ever the Romantic I pined and pined and prayed and cried, Waiting for someone, for Love to come and recognize me, me, me. That did not work. It never does. I wrote poems, texts, letters, and sent them off, like ravens Flying through the Gothic night, like carrier pigeons with little letters Tied to their feet. It did not lead me anywhere, except for the ability To write about such things. Went on dates, and didn’t say a word/ Didn’t get dates and pondered what was I missing out on/ Years passed, Still, I dreamed, and wrote, and wanted to express my own insatiable soul. I threw all I had into what I thought you were, Love. The dream of Love Was soon replaced by Reality. I tried to live and accept it, But the Old Ways are deeply rooted, and hard to let go of. SO, I myself drifted apart, finding myself disconnected, detached, and wholly alone. I didn’t want Love. Imagining the days of more dates, of more Tinder swipes, of more random bar, and life, connections. Hopping from one hope to the next. And knowing the end result. the end result: Sleep, bathroom, repeat. The days passed. I forgot about Love. Love seemed like a squatter in a condemned building, doomed to be gone Any moment, any second. Like a distant memory of a trip, like a day spent with insomnia. I did not, would not, could not believe in it, anymore. But, time passes, as it always does, and something strange happened: Love, you came back. But just a little differently. Instead of the man screaming love and waving around flowers to any and all who would ever look upon him, the Love became the man scattering the flowers around him, and saying hi to the bees, their pollination another cycle of the life. Now, love seemed like a familiar neighbor. I am unafraid to say that I, too, feel love, and love, in return. The Brooding Romantic on the Snowy Cliffs of Dover Resides more in these words. The days go by quickly and fuller, somehow. Love is just love to me, now. No more madness/And yet, I still wonder. Yael Valencia Aldana (Pompano Beach) (LD) To Watch Her Face Fall I I am wounded my washi thin skin darkens with blood frayed open flesh ragged at the edges. I don’t want to tell her, to show her-- but she will ask. I can bear it alone, the weight of this upset, knit the lesion back before I see her, continue the interlacing of fascia after I see her, conceal the bruise the sliced skin-- but she will ask. I harrow then sear watching her face crest and fall watching her shining shadow. If only for a few minutes till her face brightens, till her mouth dances to distract from my harm. Our love is this silent chaffing. II Bodily harm becomes invisible shadowing barely darkened imperfections, a closing over that will smooth-- return to unblemished perfection to all eyes but ours, only us aware of the slight scar lightly covered in hair. Smoothing over her face that fell. She cannot forgive because it was me I cannot forgive because it was her-- her face that fell. She wants to go back. Soothe with words as slim as apple chips. Soothe with her rhythmic voice that rises and falls in waves. Our faces slick over, leaving only slight sharpening in the corners of the shields in our eyes squinting, glinting black metal. She will say it’s alright and not mean it I will agree and not mean it. We will put our glossy heads together, draft new plans for unnamed streets. She will hold my hand tighter which is the only good bit. Until I am ready to leave the hearth of her protection sheathed in armor we will temper anew. Originally published in Superstition Review Clayre Benzadón Coconut Grove (Yael Valencia Aldana) Moon as Salted Lemon tonight I wedge the moon into bottom of glass con cada luna llena watch it erupt leak teal cuando llega el atardecer I can’t squeeze Julieta Venegas’ “Limon Y Sal” out of my head only Clase Azul finger- tip swirling salt around the rim of a shotglass Evening brings out the bluest part almost half of this lemonmilk body is salted by silicon dioxide glass created by meteoroids hitting it Originally published in SWWIM |
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Richard Ryal Plantation (LD)
Lola Begins I drift through my dark, a hull without rudder, to follow a bell only I hear. I can’t tell you the truth, I can only mutter. I want to pray but I barely can stutter. Certain I’m guided, still I can’t steer, adrift through my dark, a hull without rudder. My heart tests its sails, it races and flutters. My mouth wants to howl, give wind to this fear But I can’t tell you the truth, I can only mutter. My faith is too weak. Like a new calf at udder I take it all in, then stumble back, veer and drift through my dark, a hull without rudder. A honey thick current bears me into utter ruin. In my small mirror, new faces appear. I can’t tell you their truth, I can only mutter. Then this terrible grace gives me one last shudder and passes, familiar pains return with their sear. I drift through my dark, a hull without rudder. I can’t tell you the truth, I can only mutter. Originally published in Notre Dame Review Issue No. 55, Summer/Winter 2023 Laura McDermott Matheric Coconut Creek (Richard Ryal) Half February
St. Valentine’s Day clouds lumbered across my sky, culled and dispersed. Behind me, like clear weather, the window gave out: a dab of red, a dab of gray, white apertures. Huddled under a desk with students, I concentrated on something close, something small. I breathed the breath of eagles, their spirits one with blessings. I rose and fell in time with the slow river of the Everglades as it flowed west of my classroom. Its Sawgrass, the oldest known plant, a three-dimensional v-shaped stalk with upward-pointing teeth. To Seminoles and Miccosukee, survival food when food was scarce. How could we have known that grace was not scarce and would eventually fall upon us? Atrocities in sixteen minutes tucked beneath a desk. Three deceased in my classroom begin to sing within my meditation. The landscape, like God, a circle whose center is everywhere, whose circumference cannot be defined. I recall an organ chord, a soft hymnal during midday cries – the smell of cordite, acrid and sour. Apollo Astronauts once described the moon’s aroma like gun powder. In the stillness of my classroom, the small space that pulls me inside, I am out of orbit, childless by three. I want to pour myself into the veins of the invisible. crystalline. Sleep-shaped and sharp, memory is all mixed up with metaphors. You can’t see the same thing twice. You cannot unsee what you saw. A student said he’s not sure if the splatter on him was his or his friend’s. My classroom now a cemetery, three cypress trees sprouting in the middle of this grassy water prairie. Sixteen minutes chiseled into limestone, the mythic history of Western civilization, pinpricked through the zodiac. And these three children rise in the wind with the other fourteen eagles gliding over Everglades. And like these blades of grass, we survivors have to stand sharp through drought and storm. Nothing to dull our teeth. No one to silence our songs. Ellen Nielsen Ormand Beach Cherry Tomatoes We used to grow them every year. They began as flat seeds, smaller than a baby’s fingernail. After they sprouted, the clasped hands of their first leaves were held together by their split seed coats. Then their green fingers began to spread. Their stems grew hairs as they pushed toward the light. We tapped their root balls out of their pots and planted them deep into moist black soil laced with compost and goat manure. We watered them every day and covered them on cold nights. They blossomed spinning out sprays of yellow spiders. They sprawled in the sun. Their juice exploded in our mouths. we thought we’d never get tired of them. When it rained for three days, skins cracked lower leaves shriveled, brown and papery. One diamond night, wind blew from the north. In the morning, frozen stalks, jade marbles scattered on the ground, fruit that would never ripen. Llewellyn McKernan Daytona Beach (Ellen Nielsen) An Unknown Angel spikes the dice to even the odds, changes the face of the woodland fog, dictates the shape of absence, the shadow at noon, if there were one. She’s the seven white waves that give way to the sea, the speed that breaks the sound barrier, the muscles that flex the chaos of your dreams, your face most like hers when you turn the lonely crowd of your past into a present your mother unwraps for Christmas. Her wings bloom from one nudge, a thousand red feathers filling earth and sky with a bright language, one written in air, on leaf, between every grain the earthworm turns, but most of all in what you grasp when you stumble and fall, slipping down the steps of a fault into the dark of the underworld: here angel-shine shrinks to one glowing thread you pull through the needle of desire, sewing up the cold, wet, richly torqued inscrutable depths. You grow light, inscribing on black walls with invisible chalk the meaning of your life. Turning three times—once for faith, once for hope, once for love itself—you walk in your own shoes as you climb back up through a stone crevice, your breath a bellow pumping the red-hot valves of your heart, its alphabet of blood. Patricia Whiting West Palm Beach (Stacie M. Kiner) A Time to Weep All day a haze obscured the sun. The moon rose with saffron luminosity. Ghost trains rolled through the towns of suburbia, past stations where unclaimed cars remained all day and night and the following days and nights. . . Let the noon whistle blow in the towns of America. Let the hurdy-gurdy man awaken from his slumber. Bid him come and bring his playful monkey. Let calliope bands whistle quavery melodies. Set the starry carousel atwirl. Mount the prancing filly. Reach out and seize the brass ring– never mind it isn’t gold. Put the bits of colored glass back in the kaleidoscope. Later came the rains– in torrents, in sheets, drumming the land for days without cease, as if to wash away the sins of the world. Stacie M. Kiner Hypoluxo (Patricia Whiting) Bethesda Cicadas are genetically programmed to emerge from hibernation every 17 years. Newsweek Has it been 17 years since we sat on the deck of a restaurant in Bethesda, eating Maryland blue crabs and drinking beer? We spoke the language of wind - palm and banana leaves, thinking that made a difference; but even wind needs a place to stay. I remember how long ago it was because of the cicadas’ return. There were so many of them - trillions emerge in a synchronous way... a strong survival strategy. When we tried to outrun them, The Metro to Dupont Circle - they made a home in your hair. Was that our strategy - running up steps emerging into something we could never outrun? Telling ourselves we can move on from loss is rain held in a gray sky that never falls. Now, we’re the town with no name, no post office – a commemorative plaque on a scenic highway, where a photograph hangs on a rusting hook on a porch with one lamp left on. Yaddyra Peralta Miami (Jennifer Litt) Even at the Masonic Temple Near the Miami River, I Think of Hialeah It grazes the clouds, but not like a skyscraper high above a city. This pavilion's crowd is invisible. Voices long dead whisper past the Doric columns, elephantine and marvelous. They scuttle about the vaulted hallways to find a cleft through which to rise up toward the roof, ziggurat—topped by a cupola resembling an ancient priest's temple-- fortified as if to protect against enemies, high-placed as if to avoid rising waters. What danger from this River then, so short and peripheral? Sometimes I am just a girl, still in Hialeah, whose name means pretty prairie or high prairie depending on who you ask. That jury-rigged city, strip malls and molding houses canal-side. The waters near there meander, carry our hum like overladen cargo. In Miami, we are all little girls from Hialeah, excavating potholed pavement for the past, so recent, and so bewildering. If the temple lifts our old song of limestone, marl, and muck, speaks our new tongue of steel and glass, then our disembodied din aims high for sky-bound transmission to the near-atmosphere, older than Miami, as everything but the future is. |
