The Bath by Mary Camarillo (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

The Bath
by Mary Camarillo

My mother weighs her age,
ninety-five pounds. She lets me
wash between her breasts,
her voice soft and southern.
She never nursed me—another
place to lay the blame—a mother’s
fault how children turn out.

She lifts arthritic fingers,
drips water down my blouse,
silk-screened with Frida’s face.
She doesn’t understand
the attraction. I don’t ask
who she means. She believes
my husband is Spanish,
because of his aristocratic nose.

He painted our garden walls
cobalt blue, number 6965.
Just like Frida, I can’t have children
and never pluck my eyebrows.
I wonder if I could lie in bed
with a fractured spine and illustrate
the exact depth and width of pain.

Don’t be so rough, my mother says
her skin bruises. I rinse her hair
and wish she’d had another daughter.
Her hand trembles as she traces
circles in my palm, digging in deeper,
opening my skin, reclaiming her blood.

PAINTING: Self-Portrait with Necklace of Thorns by Frida Kahlo (1940).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was written when I was a struggling caregiver for my mother, who died almost five years ago. I wish I’d asked her more questions.

PHOTO: The author as a child with her mother (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1950s).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Camarillo is the author of the award-winning novels Those People Behind Us and The Lockhart Women. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in publications such as Inlandia, 166 Palms, Sonora Review, and The Ear. She lives in Huntington Beach, California, with her husband, who plays ukulele, and their terrorist cat Riley, who makes frequent appearances on Instagram.  For more information, please visit MaryCamarillo.com and sign up for her newsletter. You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.

Hope’s Kitchen by Sheila Sondik (SPICES & SEASONINGS Series)

Hope’s Kitchen
by Sheila Sondik

The poet titled her book
Winter Recipes from the Collective.
Was she slyly pledging allegiance
to our well-thumbed and bespattered
bibles of vegetarian cookery?

A college friend tells me
she stayed with us for a week
50-odd years ago and remembers
our making delicious veggie meals:
Spinach Rice Pot, Garbanzo Bake
and others we’ve all forgotten.

Now, in our seventies, we’ve
resurrected some of these recipes.
They’re still “surprisingly good,”
which was our jokey comment upon
tasting Noodle Surprise for the first time.

We still joke a lot. But who now
shares the optimism of our youth?
Still, we silently, surreptitiously hope
for something just a bit more surprising
than sunflower seeds in a casserole.

Please join us tonight for dinner.
We’re cooking Lentils, Monastery Style.

PHOTO: Diet for a Small Planet by by Frances Moore Lappé (50th Anniversary Edition, 2021).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The title of Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück inspired my reflections about the impact books like Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé had on us in our twenties and ever since. I enjoyed revisiting those times by writing this poem.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sheila Sondik, poet and printmaker, lives in Bellingham, Washington. Her poetry has appeared in CALYX, Bracken, Raven Chronicles, Pontoon Poetry, frogpond, and many other journals and anthologies, including I Sing the Salmon Home, edited by Rena Priest, published by Empty Bowl. Egress Studio Press published her first chapbook, Fishing a Familiar Pond: Found Poetry from The Yearling, in 2013. A chapbook of Golden Shovel is forthcoming from The Poetry Box in 2024. Her artwork and links to her poetry are available at sheilasondik.com.

Readings by Geetha Ravichandran (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Readings
by Geetha Ravichandran

One summer
we managed to finish
a book together,
the boys and I—
The Jungle Book.

I practiced an ethereal patience
to hold them down
to words and sketches,
and wean them away
from their exploding world
of pixelated screens.

They lay on their stomachs
peered over my arm
interrupted often,
asked randomly after crows,
and held me to my promise
to let them go in half an hour.

For even school vacations
were crammed—Pokemon, cricket matches,
holiday homework,
TV shows, wrestling games…

But we carved that little time
to fall in love
with the jungle
and it’s creatures,
meet unlikely friends,
watch out for implacable foes.

Now, the memory of
that summer adventure survives,
in their loaded bookshelves…
“the bare necessities of life.”

IMAGE: Cover of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Puffin Classics).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is about the memory of raising two boys, to share with them the stories I loved, including that of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Their world had too many distractions, but it’s heartening that they have also grown up to love books. To quote (out of context) Baloo- the bear, a character in the story, the love of books is one of the “simple bare necessities of life!”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Geetha Ravichandran lives in Mumbai, India. She holds a full-time job and writes poetry on the go. Her recent work has been published in online journals including Borderless, Lothlorien Poetr,y and Verse Virtual and also included in several anthologies. Her first book of poems, Arjavam, was recently published by Red River. It is available on Amazon.

Essential Words by Joan Leotta (PRIME MOVERS Series)

Essential Words
by Joan Leotta

When the pandemic closed this county’s library buildings, our librarians still went to work to keep the internet “fires burning” so that those in our area without service could access signals from the parking lot—a literal beacon in Covid’s storm. Essential workers with no contact allowed. No checking out books permitted—at first.

My own bookshelf provided solace in a broad range of offerings for rereading—meetings with old friends that took me to Italy, to the West, to the past—on wings of words, trips not even Covid could cancel.

I began to read and borrow books online, in spite of eye difficulties with computer reading. At last, drive-up service came. We can now roll up to the door, call inside, and Kim or Christie or another librarian, pops out, books in hand. These angels with book carts know us, and often add items to our requests—things we might enjoy, things we may have found if we had browsed or talked with them.

The hallowed halls of my branch where shelves of books take the place of treasured frescoes are made holy by the ministrations of our librarians. The books themselves are secondary. Book clubs can continue by zoom, but the librarians are the beating heart of what makes the library my happy place. Books are important, but it’s the encouraging words (and actions) of our librarians that have been, are, and will be essential during and after the pandemic.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: This photo is of the two librarians (Kim WIlson, left, and Christi Iffergan) that I interact with most at the SW Branch of the Brunswick Library system here in Brunswick County, North Carolina.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is more of an homage than prose poem or vignette—a cheer for the librarians who have kept up the sense of community here in rural Brunswick County with their unfailing attention to individuals—expressed as best they could (in emails, in calls) even when the library was closed, and as it opened, like a flowering bud, provided more and more of the aroma of kindness that is essential to all human life. Our librarians are great!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: When she is not playing with words on page or stage, Joan Leotta loves nothing more than sitting at table or walking the beach, laughing and talking with family. She spins poems, articles, essays, short stories, and performance pieces most often around her core interests—food, family, nature, travel, and strong women. Her poetry books include  Languid Lusciousness with Lemon (Finishing Line Press), Nature’s Gifts from Stanzaic Stylings (free online), and a mini-book from origami poems (free, but also printable). Another short collection will be released by Origami in 2020. Visit her at joanleotta.wordpress.com and on Facebook.

June 24, 2017 — The fifth anniversary of the Silver Birch Press blog!

We started the Silver Birch Press blog on June 24, 2012 — and today celebrate our fifth anniversary. Thank you to our community of contributors, readers, and nearly 10,000 followers for making the Silver Birch Press blog part of your daily routine.  Cheers!

For a trip down memory lane, below is a replay of our first post (June 24, 2012).

To me, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the quintessential summer book. It chronicles the hot months of 1922, when the Great War was over and the Great Depression was yet to come. The 1920s were a blissful time when possibilities seemed limitless — and everyone seemed to be having fun (despite, or perhaps because of, Prohibition). These were the years when the cocktail was borne (to make the booze go farther), when women bobbed their hair and danced with abandon. It was The Jazz Age, as Fitzgerald called it — a name that stuck.

Every time I pick up The Great Gatsby — and I’ve read the book perhaps a dozen times — I am drawn in and enraptured by the book’s poetry and romance. To quote the song Kiplinger plays: In the morning, In the evening, ain’t we got fun. Yes, Gatsby is great fun — even with its sad ending. The story seems fresh and real, even though it took place 90 years ago.

I believe, though, that required high school reading of Gatsby is ill advised. Teens are too young to appreciate the longing and loss portrayed in the book — which is much better read after you’ve suffered some major hard knocks out in the big, bad world.

We all have a Gatsby in us — a hopeless romantic, an impossible dreamer who tries to hang onto the inner spark that makes life worth living. So pour yourself a lemonade (or something stronger), plop yourself in a lawn chaise, and dive into the greatest novel of all time. Happy Summer!

Walking in the shadows of knowledge, poem by Mathias Jansson (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

Walking in the shadows of knowledge
by Mathias Jansson

The smell of old dust
ageing paper
and endless rows
of silence

Small paper cards
in wooden boxes
yellow by light
all the letters
in the alphabet
neatly written in typewriting

A summer in the shadows
of knowledge
three weeks filled with dreams
adventures and stories
caught between
the covers
of library books.

IMAGE: “Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass with a Book,” by Vincent van Gogh (1888).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: As a teenager I worked one summer in a public library. I can still remember the smell and the special atmosphere of the library.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mathias Jansson is a Swedish art critic and poet. He has contributed with poetry to different magazines and anthologies as Maintenant 8, 10, and 11: A Journal of Contemporary Dada. He has contributed to anthologies from Silver Birch Press and other publishers. Visit his Homepage and Amazon author page.

Free Literary Event! LitFest Pasadena: 100+ authors! Weekend of May 20/21, 2017

Sam Silvas, author of the short story collection Stanton, California, will appear along with more than 100 authors at LitFest Pasadena, which will take place in Pasadena, California, on May 20 & 21, 2017. For a complete schedule of authors and events, visit litfestpasadena.org.

Marginalia, story by Courtney Watson (LOST AND FOUND Poetry and Prose Series)

Marginalia
by Courtney Watson

It was the first estate sale of the year, an event of note in my sleepy corner of Virginia. The house was unremarkable except for the master bedroom, which had been converted into a library. The former owners, deceased, had been history buffs, and resting at eye level was a copy of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — a book described as an account of the nightmare empire built by Hitler. When I opened the front cover, I discovered a Christmas tag taped over a map of Axis-occupied territories with yellowed Santa Claus stickers. Written in blue over the Atlantic Ocean, a sweep of ink brushing against the golden Reichsadler, was merrily inscribed “To Auddy With Love, Mabel 12-25-60.”

The 1200+ page book was well-read, with sentences underlined in green and purple. There was urgency in the arrows and questions and comments in the margins, with special attention paid to Karl Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Holocaust. Auddy commented on every mention of Eichmann, and such was his obsession that he left a bit of treasure for me to find 50 years later. Taped to the final page of the book was a fat yellowed envelope adhered with cracking brown tape labeled “Adolf Eichmann’s Death” in capital letters. In it was the end of the story, a folded page of newspaper detailing Eichmann’s capture in Argentina and subsequent execution on the gallows of Tel Aviv’s Ramleh prison, the first in Israeli history. I like to imagine that Mabel read the article before Auddy, and saved it for him.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I love stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves and learning about who people are—who they truly are—through their possessions. I’m deeply interested in marginalia and the story it tells, which is why I’m always on the lookout for books wherein the reader has visibly interacted with a piece of text; there is something fascinating, to me, about that conversation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Courtney Watson is a writer and college professor in Roanoke, Virginia, where she directs the Humanities & Social Sciences program at Jefferson College of Health Sciences. Her writing has been published in Long Story, Short, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Boston Literary Magazine, 100 Word Story, and more. She is co-founder and co-editor of Rum Punch Press.

The Story of When I Lost Ping, poem by Tricia Marcella Cimera (LOST AND FOUND Poetry and Prose Series)

The Story of When I Lost Ping
by Tricia Marcella Cimera

In the book, Ping the Chinese duck
gets lost on the Yangtze River.
In my life, I lost The Story About Ping book.
We were both scared of getting our
tail feathers spanked, Ping and I.
But Ping found his way back to his
boat eventually and I found the book,
dew-soaked in the wet garden grass.
We shook the water off our backs
and sailed on, me and Ping the duck.

IMAGE: Cover of The Story About Ping (1933),

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: When I was six, I lost The Story About Ping. It was the first book I ever lost but wouldn’t be the last. I felt terrible when I realized Ping was nowhere to be found because taking good care of my belongings was strongly impressed upon me by my parents. Thus was born my guilt complex. Even after finding the book, my complex lived on (and on).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern poet with a worldview. Look for her work in these diverse places (some forthcoming): Anti-Heroin Chic, Buddhist Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Failed Haiku, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Silver Birch Press, The Bees are Dead, Wild Plum and elsewhere. She has two micro collections, THE SEA AND A RIVER and BOXBOROUGH POEMS, on the Origami Poems Project website. Tricia believes there’s no place like her own backyard and has traveled the world (including Graceland). She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois / in a town called St. Charles / by a river named Fox and keeps a Poetry Box in her front yard.

The Lost Bright-Yellow, poem by Marion Deutsche Cohen (LOST AND FOUND Poetry and Prose Series)

The Lost Bright-Yellow
by Marion Deutsche Cohen

She has fallen asleep reading. When she wakes up the book is no longer
there.
Has it dropped through the mattress? Did she leave it in her dream?
It’s bright yellow, as bright as a light bulb.
It literally can’t be missed.

It’s not in the washer
Not in the dryer
Not in the sink
Not in the bookcase.

She can order another copy.
But she can’t order another Intermediate Value Theorem
The one that says an object can’t get from one place to another
without going in between.

What did she do in her sleep? Take it outside the house? Leave it on
somebody’s doorstep? Throw it in a public trash can?
It’s too big for her purse.
Too big for her jewelry case.
Too big for the medicine cabinet.

She guesses she’ll have to get used to the new rules.
There just might be a god.
And there just might be no science.

Her husband remembers that she fell asleep reading.
And he’s getting worried, too.

SOURCE: “Lost Bright-Yellow”  appeared in the author’s chapbook, Sizes Only Slightly Distinct (Green Fuse Press).

IMAGE : “Woman Reading,” sculpture by Pablo Picasso (1953).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The “she” is actually me. I altered it because I wanted to include it in the chapbook, “Sizes Only Slightly Distinct”, which consisted of what I call “poetic parables without morals”. Other than that, that poem is totally true. (I found the book two days later, fallen to the foot of the bed.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marion Deutsche Cohen’s latest poetry books are Truth and Beauty (WordTech Editions – about the interaction among students and teacher in her course, Mathematics in Literature, which she developed at Arcadia University) and  Closer to Dying (WordTech Editions).  and What I’m Wearing Today (dancing girl press – about thrift-shopping!). Her books total 27, including two memoirs about spousal chronic illness and including Crossing the Equal Sign (Plain View Press – about the experience of mathematics). She teaches math and writing at Arcadia University.  She was recently featured in an interview at renpowell.com, and at svjlit.com. Her website is marioncohen.net.