Lightly tethered to the earth by Elizabeth Dunford (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Lightly tethered to the earth
by Elizabeth Dunford

My mother dreams of dancing,
has swapped tartan pyjamas
for a taffeta ballgown,
fluffy slippers for silver slingbacks,
and is waltzing with my father,
who in life was heavy-footed,
no sense of rhythm at all.

I dream of walking aids, wheelchairs,
hospital waiting rooms.

My mother dreams of strolling
by a mountain lake in Rajasthan,
on honeymoon with my father
— so handsome in his white suit —
Dad, who in the wedding photograph
is pale, bespectacled, losing his hair.

I dream of the step, kerb, rug
that might trip, break a bird-frail bone.

My mother dreams of floating
upwards through azure air
hand in hand with Dad,
like lovers in a Chagall painting,
and when she wakes,
looks through the window,
smiles in recognition: a sky
of cloudless cornflower blue.

PAINTING: Lovers Over Saint Paul by Marc Chagall (1970).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My mother is 94 and tells me that she often takes a while, on waking, to disentangle dreams from reality. It is certainly true that her memories of the distant past are much more vivid than what happened yesterday. She recalls student balls in Dublin in the late 1940s and her marriage in Bombay in 1955 in colourful detail. My father died a few years ago, but to her he is still very present. I’ve written quite a few poems about them both in the past few years, probably in an attempt to process my own feelings about loss.

PHOTO: The author (left) and her mother (October 2023).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Dunford has been published in The Cannon’s Mouth, Snakeskin, Silver Birch Press, Green Ink, and My Happy Place (Nottingham Writers Studio). Her articles and book reviews have been published in Lapidus Journal and in NAWE’s Writing in Education. She won second place in the Carers UK poetry competition. Interested in the relationship between writing and well-being, she holds an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes from the Metanoia Institute. She was born in India, grew up in Northern Ireland, and has lived in Nottingham, England, for over 30 years.

A Phone Call by Anne Born (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

A Phone Call
by Anne Born

I remember the hushed phone call.
My study-abroad daughter calling me in New York
From Gallery 12 at the Prado Museum in Madrid.

Mom. There’s a tour guide here.
He’s very proud.
He’s telling people that this painting here
Is the greatest painting in the world,
By the greatest artist in the world.
Is it?

And that this museum is
The greatest museum on the world.
Is it?

I thought for a moment.
Yes.
That painting, Velázquez’s Las Meninas.
It is absolutely the greatest painting in the world.

What about the museum?
Am I in the greatest museum in the world?

I thought for a moment.
Yes.

I have been to the Louvre, the Met, the Art Institute,
All of the Smithsonian, the British Museum, the Uffizi.
Yes.
It is the greatest museum in the world.

Thanks, mom.
I love you.
I love you too.

My sweet girl had picked up and gone
To an art museum,
And she was standing in front of the greatest painting by the greatest artist in the greatest museum in the world
And she thought to call me.
That’s what I remember.

PAINTING:  Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez (1656), Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

 NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes it’s the small details you think about and not the event itself. You should think about the time you went to Paris or Rome and saw cathedrals and cafes and galleries, but all you think about is that you ran out of toothpaste, got on the wrong train, or brought the wrong shoes. Here, the call did force me to assess what I knew about museums and paintings and artists, but the real story to me was that, in the moment, she wanted to know what I thought too. It’s a marvelous thing when your children experience the places you love.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: I took this photo at the Prado — when the guard wasn’t looking. I love watching people take in the art. (Gallery 12, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Photo credit: Anne Born, August 17, 2022.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Born is an award-winning author and photographer based in Michigan. A published poet, essayist, and travel writer, she is currently collaborating on a short documentary film about her book on one of the great cathedrals in Spain, If You Stand Here: A Pilgrim’s Tour of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Her photographs of the Camino de Santiago and views of New York are available on Redbubble (@nilesite), and her books can be ordered from Amazon, or your favorite independent bookseller.

Winning at Solitaire by Elaine Mintzer (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

Winning at Solitaire
by Elaine Mintzer

At the motel, I laid the four kids
sideways in a bed like wooden matchsticks.
the oldest with her feet sticking over the edge.

I warned her to lie still so as not to disturb her brother
who matched her arm to arm, knee to knee,
next to their sister who thrashed in her sleep,

stirring the covers, finding her own order over their limbs.
And the baby on the end, curled into himself,
lips sucking a dream breast.

I propped a pillow at the foot of the bed
to keep them from falling,
from meeting the stained carpet,

the cracked foundation,
the dust and spiders
that spin in the dark.

I am still waiting for passers-by to pass by,
for the strobes in the parking lot
to roll down the street.

When the night quiets and the kids settle,
I pick up a deck of blue bicycle cards,
soft at the edges, and shuffle.

I hear the breath of their intersections,
the soft slap as I lay them
on the wobbly table in rows, in piles,

aligning each new one with the last.
In the palm of my left hand,
the remainder of the deck

turned by threes.
Turn after turn.
Game after game.

PAINTING: Motel, Route 66 by John Register (1991).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I remember my grandmother playing solitaire, in the rare moments she was not working.  My mother, too. These days, my mom plays on her iPad.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elaine Mintzer lives in Los Angeles.  Her work has been published in journals and anthologies, including Gryroscope Review, Last Call, Chinaski, Beloit Poetry Review, Panoplyzine, Slipstream Press, Perspectives, Borders and Boundaries, Mom Egg Review, Subprimal Poetry Art, Lummox, Lucid Moose Lit’s Like a Girl anthology, The Ekphrastic Review, Cultural Weekly, Rattle, The Lindenwood Review, and 13 Los Angeles Poets. Elaine’s collection, Natural Selections was published by Bombshelter Press. Visit her at mintzer.org.

You’re Saying by Ranney Campbell (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

You’re Saying
by Ranney Campbell

nothing

of Sophia Stid
of all that she stated

of fear disguised as indifference

of Haight
of Still the Waiting

of future

of drive away, be driven
of never say never, never say go
because . . . it is
                                   as it once was

of I guess I’ll have to move to L.A.

of four posed questions
or, just the first two, if their answers, no,
                                        and yes

there is nothing you’re saying
there is nothing, you’re saying

yet,

I am still waiting
because there is nothing other to do

work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep
in one year, in that June, five years

the best things are those awaited
or, was it meant, the awaiting

or, was it meant,
we have all the time in the world 

IMAGE: Eclipsed Time, sculpture by Maya Lin (1989-1995).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The reference of Sophia Stid was in regard to her work, “I Am Tired of the Movie About Sentimentalized Male Failure.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ranney Campbell earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Missouri at St. Louis and her poetry has been published by Misfit Magazine, Shark Reef, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and others. Her chapbook, Pimp, is published by Arroyo Seco Press.

Pique by Joanie HF Zosike (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

Pique
by Joanie HF Zosike

Forget it-No, I can’t-
sit still-any longer
Still is too static-
and stasis, death
Frame—Take 2021-
and—Action!-No-
longer can sit on-
m’duff-Kick myself-
out of bed, get up!
Get an Irish coffee-
at Vesuvius-Write-
lyrical poems, scribe-
brittle prose-This-
species is moving-
too slowly-How can-
it be-I am still wait-
ing, waiting stuck-
waiting How long-
will it take until-
human beings can-
be something better-
than we are now
Ferlinghetti was one-
illuminati, now gone
Pulse of his vision-
lives on, piled onto a-
palette, he messages
Massages our secret-
hearts alive-Scribes-
are what we need to-
describe the antidote
What are we waiting
for? Why a gap?
Mind that gap-Let’s-
boogie along with-
stylin’ verve inspirin’
One more time, revive-
the Renaissance with-
color streamers, music,-
tambourines shaking-
us out of our lassitude

PAINTING: The Painter by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1989).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I recently wrote a poem that will be included in “Light on the Walls of Life,” coming this summer from Jambu Press (studiosaraswati.com). The book, originally envisioned to honor Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 100th birthday, sadly will now serves also as a memorial. My contribution was a take on his poem “I Am Waiting,” and now Silver Birch Press, one of my favorite publications, is visiting the fecund field of waiting. In writing my take for Silver Birch, I came up against my own resistance to waiting—perhaps due to the endless isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic—but that aside, just the notion of waiting in general when there is so much to do and so little time, both personally and cosmologically.

PHOTO: Joanie HF Zosike (aka Joanie Fritz) in her solo work, Soph and the Ain Soph Auer at NY Theatre Asylum, NYC, circa 1984. ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joanie HF Zosike is the The Writers Hotel 2019 Sara Patton poetry awardee and was featured in The New Guard’s BANG! (August 2020). She teaches the Pandemic Poetry Workshop in New York City. Her work appears in 11/9: The Fall of American Democracy and Silver Birch Press’s Ides: An Anthology of Chapbooks. Her poem “I Am Also Waiting” is forthcoming in the Lawrence Ferlinghetti Tribute Anthology (Jambu Press). Other forays in print include Alien Buddha, Heresies, Home Planet News, Jewish Forward, Levure Literraire, Maintenant, PIM, and Syndic. Author of seven plays and four solo works, she received an Albee Foundation residence to complete her play Inside (produced at ATA in NYC) and a Foundation for Jewish Culture grant for …and Then the Heavens Closed (performed at The Jewish Museum, NYC). Joanie, a member of The Living Theatre for 35 years, directs the dada/surrealist company DADANewYork and is co-director of Action Racket Theatre.

PHOTO: Joanie HF Zosike, London, 2012.

How to Fly by Lisa Alletson (HOW TO Series)

How to Fly
by Lisa Alletson

Love the cliff face first.

Measure and weigh
the hands that shackle your ankles
holding you back.

Test the troposphere
with a snowdrop
sprung from your glow.

Leave out a bowl
of black holes
to consume gravity.

Inhale the sweetness
of the wet blade of grass
between you and freedom.

Build a pair of wings
out of tendons and memories
with your naked fingers.

The wings will stick
to your body at first —
low and frightened.

Towel them down
with your childhood blanket
to soak up burdens.

Don’t forget
to take your children —
past and future.

(They will know if you leave without them.)

Don’t forget your strength.
Never forget your strength.

Let go.

IMAGE: Les Oiseaux (The Birds), silkscreen by Henri Matisse (1947).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lisa Alletson writes poetry using stark imagery inspired by the political, geographic, and cultural features from her three childhood continents. Born in South Africa’s Cape and raised during apartheid, Alletson’s writing often includes elements of water and darkness in her exploration of grief, mental health, inequality, special needs parenting, and relationships. Her writing has been published in the Globe and Mail, the Bangalore Review, Dreamers, Blank Spaces, Fresh Voices, and Dodging the Rain. Her poems “A Passing Oryx” and “Spectrum” were selected by the League of Canadian Poets as Poem-of-the-Day for Poetry Pause. She writes daily on Twitter at @lotustongue.

How to Clean Out Your Closet by Allison B. Kelly (HOW TO Series)

How to Clean Out Your Closet
by Allison B. Kelly

First, empty everything out.
Even (especially) the dust bunnies
scurrying in dark corners behind the dusty heels of those slingbacks
you just had to have.
Gently wipe down all surfaces.
Let her breathe.

Now, try everything on. Leave no item of clothing uninterrogated.
Ask, “What do you represent?”

Choose what to let go:

Slouchy suede boots that slump by mid-afternoon like your posture.
So what if they were expensive?
Give them away.
Give them the opportunity to be someone else’s treasure.

Sweaters with pills clinging like unwanted hitchhikers,
Sweaters with three-quarter length sleeves.
If the temperature demands a sweater, your arms deserve warmth too.

Those heels that pinch? That cocktail party dress?
Anything too tight.
“But if I just lost five pounds…”
No.
Life is too short for constricting relationships.

The shirt you “keep meaning to” iron.
Actually, anything containing the phrase “keep meaning to.”

Let go of the sensible pumps. No one’s life goal is to be sensible.

The dry clean only blouse accidentally thrown in the wash.
Let it go.
Let go of mistakes.

Clothes that symbolize ambition and anxiety
don’t fit you anymore.

Choose what to keep:

That navy blue turtleneck looks good with everything.
Choose wardrobe pieces that play well with others.

Keep the pants, their deep cabernet color rich with capaciousness and imagination.
Keep the black and white loafers whose syncopated footsteps sound like dancing.

And the sweater with whimsical threads hanging carefree who asks, “What’s possible?”

Keep the fringed jean jacket
(even if it’s impractical and you rarely wear it)
because the sound of your swishing sleeves
gives you the confidence of a cowgirl.

Edit your wardrobe the way you edit the narrative of your life.
Find the things that are important to keep.

IMAGE: Coat Hanger II by Jasper Johns (lithograph, 1960).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Writing is one of my creative outlets. For me, the fun is not just telling a story but considering how our stories might be connected. In the beginning, it starts with an idea. Or maybe several scraps of ideas scribbled on sticky notes on my otherwise organized desk. The paper is a place for my rambling, scattered thoughts. They roll around on the page where I can see them. Gradually ideas take shape, growing and developing. I choose my words carefully — pretty ones, sweet ones, feeling the words on my tongue before they touch the page. That one is bitter. This one tastes like childhood. Soon I have lost track of time, giddy with excitement as my thoughts come together like a puzzle, until finally I lock the last piece into place. When I share my writing, I share a part of myself. Maybe something I wrote made you think or laugh out loud. Maybe you learned something new or found we have something in common.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Allison B. Kelly is the author of the memoir-in-essays There’s Spaghetti on My Ceiling: And Other Confessions of a Reformed Perfectionist and blogs at Pretending I’m Retired. She is an elementary school teacher with a master’s degree in education and endorsements in gifted education and ESL. She’s an early riser and list maker who survived raising two teenagers while keeping sane by running, traveling, and cleaning out her closets. Allison lives in Virginia with her family.

PHOTO: The author at Waterman’s Way, a public art installation of oversized boots celebrating the footwear worn by seafood workers in Chesapeake Bay. In the art installation, each sculpture was personalized by a local artist, drawing from themes that reflect the lives of the people who work the water, harvesting crabs, oysters, and fish from the Bay, rivers, and creek. Pictured is Crabber’s Paradise by David Witbeck. The exhibit ran from July 2017-August 2018.

Pharmacist by Joan McNerney (PRIME MOVERS Series)

Pharmacist
by Joan McNerney

She thought of herself as a
modern alchemist. Fluent
in an arcane language
about the composition of so
many minute capsules.

The rest of the store could
be in a gas station or bargain
store. Filled with candies,
lipsticks, other frivolous items.

If you simply had a cough, syrup
could be found on aisle three.
Her area was sacred to patients,
those with serious ailments.

Filling prescriptions navigating
insurance companies, seeking
authorizations. Always aware of
side effects, multiple drug reactions,
possible allergic problems.

Austere yet approachable,
she dispensed heroic potions
from her prized domain
as chemical priestess.

IMAGE: University of Vienna ceiling paintings (Medicine), detail showing Hygeia, goddess of health, by Gustav Klimt (c. 1900-1907).

NOTE: In Greek as well as Roman mythology, Hygeia was one of the Asclepiadae—the sons and daughters of the god of medicine, Asclepius, and his wife Epione. Hygeia was the goddess/personification of health, cleanliness, and hygiene.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Quite a while ago I decided to write about people at work. Particularly during the pandemic, we should be grateful to these essential workers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan McNerney’s poetry is found in many literary magazines, such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Poet Warriors, Blueline, and Halcyon Days, as well as in four Bright Hills Press anthologies, several editions of the  Poppy Road Review, and numerous Spectrum Publications. She has four Best of the Net nominations. Her latest title, The Muse In Miniature, is available on Amazon.com and Cyberwit.net.

Gravity Grateful by Mark Blickley (LANDMARKS Series)

Gravity Grateful
by Mark Blickley

Looking down from high places doesn’t bother me at all but when I have to look up at things, like buildings, it makes me nervous cause it feels like some kind of force like a magnet or something is going to pull me up and lift me off the ground which is a lot worse than falling ’cause if you’re falling down you know you’re falling and that’s that but if you get pulled off the ground and lifted into the air you’re not falling, but you could fall at any moment, and there’s no end because if you fall you have to land, but if you’re lifted up it could go on forever and I hate that.

Photo of Dalí Theatre-Museum (Figueres, Catalonia, Spain) by the author (January 2020).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This past January I visited Barcelona, Spain, with my daughter Deirdre. We rented a car and decided to take a side trip to the Salvador Dalí museum at Figueres, Spain. After viewing the inside of this exquisite museum, I focused on its exterior structure. The photo that appears with my poem is my looking up at a detail of this magnificent building. When we returned to Barcelona, I obsessed over this photo, which resulted in my writing a surreal-tinged prose poem, “Gravity Grateful.”

PHOTO: Dalí Theatre-Museum, Figueres, Spain by Taras Verkhovynets, used by permission.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mark Blickley is a widely published author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His most recent book is his text-based art collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin, Dream Streams.

Masquerade by Barbara Bald (WEARING A MASK Series)

Masquerade
by Barbara Bald

Reams of silken material, cascading to the floor,
encased her young body in black-velvet elegance,
enveloped her in a coat lined with white rabbit fur,
soft and alluring.

I remember how its hood encircled her masked face,
long, curled eyelashes glued to eyeholes,
immovable, but inviting.

Her black gloves, cedar-scented from the attic chest,
flicked a rhinestone-studded cigarette holder,
flashed a fake emerald ring.
With her pinky poised in the air,
her jewels captured porch-light glare
as we trick-or-treated our way through the neighborhood.

I remember her stories about how she’d worn the coat
to nightclub gigs, where,
refusing spiked Shirley Temples,
she had danced in sequined heels,
steeled herself against grabbing hands,
smiled through a different kind of disguise.

This night she was a make-believe lady of the evening.
This night she was the mother who held my tiny hand
and carried a bulging bag of candy.

Looking back, I can forgive her
for unbounded love she could not offer.
Years later, I have come to understand
why she lived behind a mask
she could not remove.

Previously published in the author’s collection Drive-Through Window.

PAINTING: “Madame X” by John Singer Sargent (1884).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: There were many masks worn throughout my childhood — those worn on Halloween, those of the Lone Ranger and Zorro, Ben Casey and Doctor Kildare, those we hid behind as teenagers, even those worn by adults trying to hide something too scary to face. I believe most masks are worn to protect somebody. Unfortunately, sometimes the disguise can rob both parties of a chance for intimacy. My poem strives to convey that possibility.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Bald is a retired teacher, educational consultant, and freelance writer. Her poems have been published in a variety of anthologies and her work has been recognized in both national and local contests. She has two full-length books, Drive-Through Window and Other Voices/Other Lives. Her chapbook is entitled Running on Empty. She has written articles for Heart of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Magazine, and other local publications. She lives in Alton, NH, with her cat Catcher and some very personable goldfish.