Communion: WHEN I WAS ON CHEMO by Andrea Jones Walker (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Communion
When I Was on Chemo
by Andrea Jones Walker

She called my name
as she let herself in the back door.
Sluggish, I sat up in bed
pulled a knit cap onto my cold head
went into the kitchen.
How are you feeling, she asked.
From her bag, she unpacked
three little iron skillets
turned on my oven
chattered as I watched from
my seat at the table.
Tired?
She poured oil in the skillets
set them in the oven to heat
mixed cornmeal, flour, milk, eggs.
The oil sizzled when
she poured in the batter.
We sipped coffee
while the bread baked
filling the kitchen with warmth, aroma
she set out small plates and the butter dish
took the bread out when it was done.
slathered on thick pats of butter
we watched melt into the hot bread.
So long ago, that communion,
I wonder if it really happened.

Photo by Mypointofview. 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Although this event happened in 2005, the sanctity of those moments has remained with me over the years. I penned the first draft during the pandemic. It took about six months of sitting with it, mulling over it, and revising to reach a point as near to satisfaction as it may ever get.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Andrea Jones Walker is a retired English teacher and longtime member of Emerald Coast Writers who thrills to the occasional adventure of parasailing and polar bear plunging. Her work has been published in the Emerald Coast Review, Pensacola News Journal, Pen Women Magazine, Of Poets and Poetry, and Oddball Magazine. She co-edits Panoply, which can be found at panoplyzine.com. A member of the National League of American Pen Women, she was appointed poet laureate for the Pensacola Branch in 2022, an honor that took her by surprise. Her books are available on Amazon.

The Bondage of Self, poem by Kevin Ridgeway (My Meta-morphosis Series)

The Bondage of Self
by Kevin Ridgeway

the flies are screwing in the open air,
and the roaches scream “help me”
from split concrete devastated by a
miniaturized apocalyptic world;
I’m twenty-one days sober with
brain damage twirling behind my
forehead of worry lines that whisper
moans from Sisyphus with a prolonged
grimace, tremulous fingers that want
to fall in a graveyard of dead leaves.
This slow-burn transformation is
crushing the parasite I became in
those last months of my failed
self-annihilation, my face peeling
away the visage of my junky father
to a stranger I have never met in
the past thirty-two years of life on
earth that I am slowly getting to know
after a living burial of fear, isolation
and blind rage. I put out my cigarette
and step over a cockroach whose life
I spare with the hope that it someday
grows back into the humanity I’ve
barely come to discover in the healing
waves of this season of blessed renewal.

IMAGE: “Study of Beetles” by Shi Tao (1656).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I am in early recovery after years spent grappling with active addiction. This poem expresses my slow climb from total demoralization and into a metamorphosis based upon fearless change. It addresses my need to let go of an agonized self that was trapped in existential futility, and the beginning of a growth toward learning to live this life we all share through all of its beauty and ugliness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Long Beach, California. Recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Chiron Review, Re)verb, Nerve Cowboy, San Pedro River Review, Lummox, Right Hand Pointing, Misfit Magazine, and The Mas Tequila Review. He is the author of six chapbooks of poetry, the most recent two being On the Burning Shore (Arroyo Seco Press) and Riding Off Into That Strange Technicolor Sunset: Dallas-FT. Worth Poems (The Weekly Weird Monthly).

PHOTO: The author in Long Beach, CA (2015).

12/1/13: Final Free Day for Kindle Download of Phoenix by Philippa Mayall

The Silver Birch Press release Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall, is available as a free Kindle download — a savings of $7.99 — through Sunday, 12/1/13, at this link.

This is a memorable book — beautifully and even lyrically written…exuberant with the sense of a life lived determined to survive.” 

JOHN RECHY, author of CITY OF NIGHT and THE MIRACULOUS DAY OF AMALIA GOMEZ

NOTE: If you don’t own a Kindle, you can download Kindle read apps — for free — at Amazon.com

Free Kindle Version of Phoenix by Philippa Mayall through Sun. 12/1/13

The Silver Birch Press release Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall, is available as a free Kindle download — a savings of $7.99 — through Sunday, 12/1/13, at this link.

This is a memorable book — beautifully and even lyrically written…exuberant with the sense of a life lived determined to survive.” 

JOHN RECHY, author of CITY OF NIGHT and THE MIRACULOUS DAY OF AMALIA GOMEZ

NOTE: If you don’t own a Kindle, you can download Kindle read apps — for free — at Amazon.com

Free Kindle Version of Phoenix by Philippa Mayall through Sun., 12/1/13

The Silver Birch Press release Phoenix: A Memoir by Philippa Mayall is #2 on the Amazon Kindle list for free biographies and memoirs of women.  Download your free copy through Sunday, 12/1/13 at at this link.

NOTE: If you don’t own a Kindle, you can download Kindle read apps — for free — at Amazon.com

For her outstanding writing, Silver Birch Press is nominating Philippa Mayall for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

Free Kindle Version of Phoenix by Philippa Mayall (Wed., 11/27 – Sun. 12/1/13)

The Silver Birch Press release Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall, is available as a free Kindle download — a savings of $7.99 — from Wednesday, 11/27, through Sunday, 12/1/13, at this link.

This is a memorable book — beautifully and even lyrically written…exuberant with the sense of a life lived determined to survive.” 

JOHN RECHY, author of CITY OF NIGHT and THE MIRACULOUS DAY OF AMALIA GOMEZ

For her outstanding writing, Silver Birch Press is nominating Philippa Mayall for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

Free Kindle Version of Phoenix by Philippa Mayall (Wed., 11/27 – Sun. 12/1/13)

From Wednesday, Nov. 27th through Sunday, December 1st, the Silver Birch Press release Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall, will be available as a free Kindle download — a savings of $7.99 — at this link.

“This is no simple recovery story. Phoenix has the lust, the furor and passion of Norman Mailer…of Pynchon, of Kerouac…With this fierce memoir, Phoenix, Philippa Mayall comes roaring into the literary world; her sharp and angry Manchester, England, voice barges into the pale and tidy tea room of L.A. literature like a Harley with Drone power.”

JILL ROBINSON, Huffington Post

Free Kindle Version of PHOENIX by Philippa Mayall Hits #1

Thank you to everyone who downloaded a Kindle version of PHOENIX by Philippa Mayall during our free Kindle days on 7/30 and 7/31. The book achieved #1 status on Amazon’s Free Kindle list for “Drug Dependency.”

In her memoir, author Philippa Mayall takes us from her childhood in England, where family members perished in a house fire ignited by an alcoholic stepfather to Los Angeles and her struggle with drug dependency and homelessness.

To give you an overview of the book, here is text from the back cover:

“This powerful memoir immediately establishes itself as the work of a highly talented young writer. In a voice that is strong, unsparing, never judgmental, Mayall traces her years-long journey as a young woman to find escape out of the entrapping mean streets of Los Angeles, a separated world invisible to all but its denizens. She does this with unflinching honesty and authenticity. She knows what it’s like to wake up into the harsh sunlight in a Venice Beach parking lot, cramped in an old car with other outcasts. She conveys the urgency for chemical surcease that leads her into dangerous streets, dark alleys; surcease no matter if bought by a sordid paid encounter. A punishing dawn at times finds her still searching for that illusive escape.

Through all this, Mayall is able to find poignancy and humor. She finds it in the drug recovery meetings she haunts in search of vagrant camaraderie. She finds it—and introduces the reader to a cast of memorable fellow exiles–in a rigidly ruled rehabilitation institution.

This is a memorable book–beautifully and even lyrically written. At times it is melancholy, at times hopeful, at times shocking, but it is always moving. At times it is even exuberant with the sense of a life lived determined to survive.”

JOHN RECHY, author of City of Night

Stay tuned for future Kindle giveaways of PHOENIX! Again, thank you to everyone who downloaded a free Kindle version of the book. We are trying to get the word out about Mayall’s compelling memoir — so please help us spread the word by reblogging, posting on Facebook, or emailing to friends.

Free 7/31: Kindle Version of Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall

The Silver Birch Press release Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall, is available as a free Kindle download — a savings of $7.99 — on Wednesday, 7/31, at this link.

“This is no simple recovery story. Phoenix has the lust, the furor and passion of Norman Mailer…of Pynchon, of Kerouac…With this fierce memoir, Phoenix, Philippa Mayall comes roaring into the literary world; her sharp and angry Manchester, England, voice barges into the pale and tidy tea room of L.A. literature like a Harley with Drone power.”

JILL ROBINSON, Huffington Post

Free Kindle on 7/30 and 7/31: Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall

The Silver Birch Press release Phoenix, a memoir by Philippa Mayall is available as a free Kindle download — a savings of $7.99 — on Tuesday, 7/30, and Wednesday, 7/31, at this link.

“This is a memorable book — beautifully and even lyrically written…exuberant with the sense of a life lived determined to survive.” JOHN RECHY, author of CITY OF NIGHT and THE MIRACULOUS DAY OF AMALIA GOMEZ