May - what a beautiful month, a Spring hope, a doorway into warmth and sunshine. Biman Roy's "Of Moon and Washing Machine" is an insightful look at the rituals we practice and asks why we practice them, an appropriate question for all of us. Eanlai Cronin has given us a poignant look back and forward again of her Irish upbringing in "Written in Stone." Jesse Holth's 3 poems take you where she sits, puts you there, lets you see the mountains, deserts, and canyons of New Mexico in their visceral reality and allure. And Virginia Boudreau's "Templates" is a memorial to her neighbors in Nova Scotia, a remembrance of those who have touched her life by their mere presence. In fiction, our single selection this month was Emily Mathis' "Pinwheels," a unique, rather surreal Appalachian tale of life, a potbellied pig, and the stars. I noticed a connection with these pieces which spanned cultures and countries; it was a struggle for answers, and a desire to tap into the grounding beauty of place, some meaning arisen from the earth we all share. I hope you enjoy them as much as we've enjoyed sharing them with you. ~ Editor
MAY
NONFICTION & PROSE POETRY
(PROSE POETRY)
OF MOON AND WASHING MACHINE
BIMAN ROY
~
People think if they wash themselves clean, they become sinless. They take dips in the Ganges or swim in the Nile to be pure. The washing machine does not know the difference between the blood of a man killed in sleep or a menstrual overflow. It does not delve into the depth of causality, like death sweeping away life from a sense of permanence. My neighbor, who sells junk from cars to sewing machines, puts an ad on a washing machine--as good as new even in the moon. Late into night I have heard rows of men thrashing white cloths on stones at the riverbanks for men who accompanied the dead onto the burning ghats. Their shiny, bare backs bend the moonlight any way they can.
(LYRIC ESSAY)
WRITTEN IN STONE
EANLAI CRONIN
~
This kip of a village is a testament to resilience.
Nothing changes. Not the farmhouse at the crossroads exposing brickwork through flaking plaster. Not the stone sheds peppering the back fields, housing cattle and pitch-black darkness. Not the reek of fresh stacked sods, slicking rain off rounded edges. Not the chimneys belching turf smoke like signals to the angels.
Continue reading.
(PROSE POEMS)
PIÑON CRACKLES
JESSE HOLTH
~
What a pale river the Milky Way is: a feast of stars, our eyes made to swallow it up. This night, in the unblinking quiet, the hush of desert sighs, we’ll let the piñon crackle: the sweet dark of its smoke, emerging from fire, a deep-scented rise to the rafters. Oh, watch it thick the air, fill the clay & wood beams of our casita. None can find us here, beyond the walls: an island in this cold, silent sand.
Continue reading the other 2 poems.
(LYRIC MEMOIR)
TEMPLATES
VIRGINIA BOUDREAU
~
Hackmatacks heavy with dew hover on the edge of the wood as if a mother's arm, unseen, holds them back from the road. The sodden haze on soft green needles softens edges and the whole thicket is silvered. A bullfrog croaks from a mirror caught in a tangle of alders and the last furred lupine pods. The morning, barely glazed, draws its breath.
Continue reading.
(LYRIC MEMOIR)
TEMPLATES
VIRGINIA BOUDREAU
~
Hackmatacks heavy with dew hover on the edge of the wood as if a mother's arm, unseen, holds them back from the road. The sodden haze on soft green needles softens edges and the whole thicket is silvered. A bullfrog croaks from a mirror caught in a tangle of alders and the last furred lupine pods. The morning, barely glazed, draws its breath.
Continue reading.
MAY
fiction
(WOODS-WESTERN-MOUNTAIN-APPALACHIAN)
PINWHEELS
EMILY MATHIS
~
“I thought Sampson ran away from me the other night, Lily. I couldn’t find him all night. He’s never run off before like that. I don’t know what got into him,” Crow told her early one morning in February. She hadn’t seen him in a week. It was the longest time they’d been apart since this ritual had started. She knew her ’97 Camry couldn’t make it up the dirt road in the snow, but she worried constantly that week that he thought she had abandoned him. She was right, though he’d never say it. The absence of her, the cold, the morning waits for no one, Sampson running off – all of it had taken his mind into a tunnel he couldn’t find his way out of alone.
“Sometimes things just have to wander I suppose,” she told him, walking up to the make-shift wooden shack and blue tarp he lived in. Sampson was a 12-year-old potbelly pig that had been Crow’s loyal companion all these years, but he was still a wild thing at his core, prone to wanderings. Lily thought Crow should understand that.
“Yeah, but I was so sad. And then I started thinking about what if I die? Sampson’s the only one that would know until you came up here with these gravy biscuits.”
Continue reading.
MAY HIGHLIGHTED CONTRIBUTORS:
Virginia Boudreau lives in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where she works as a Learning Disabilities Specialist. She is the mother of two grown children.
Eanlai Cronin's essays and poems have appeared in The Courage to Heal, The Magic of Memoir, String Poet, Sinister Wisdom, and Peregrine. Most recently, her short memoir "Documented" was chosen as a top ten finalist in the Fish Publishing short memoir contest. Currently a student in San Francisco's Writers Studio master class, she is submitting her first completed memoir Girl in Irish to literary agents and has begun work on her second book--another memoir.
Jesse Holth a freelance writer and editor based in the Pacific Northwest. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Marathon Literary Review, Silver Birch Press, Canada Quarterly, Barzakh Magazine, the University of Regina Press, and others. She was a 2017 Pen 2 Paper poetry finalist, and is currently working on two full-length collections.
Emily Mathis grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in western North Carolina. She received her Bachelor's in Journalism and a minor in Creative Writing at New York University and Master's in Educational and Applied Psychology at Columbia University. She currently lives in Hawaii.
Biman Roy has been writing and publishing his work in various literary magazines in United States, Canada, United Kingdom and India, for the past 3 decades or so. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist in New York and lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter.
Virginia Boudreau lives in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where she works as a Learning Disabilities Specialist. She is the mother of two grown children.
Eanlai Cronin's essays and poems have appeared in The Courage to Heal, The Magic of Memoir, String Poet, Sinister Wisdom, and Peregrine. Most recently, her short memoir "Documented" was chosen as a top ten finalist in the Fish Publishing short memoir contest. Currently a student in San Francisco's Writers Studio master class, she is submitting her first completed memoir Girl in Irish to literary agents and has begun work on her second book--another memoir.
Jesse Holth a freelance writer and editor based in the Pacific Northwest. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Marathon Literary Review, Silver Birch Press, Canada Quarterly, Barzakh Magazine, the University of Regina Press, and others. She was a 2017 Pen 2 Paper poetry finalist, and is currently working on two full-length collections.
Emily Mathis grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in western North Carolina. She received her Bachelor's in Journalism and a minor in Creative Writing at New York University and Master's in Educational and Applied Psychology at Columbia University. She currently lives in Hawaii.
Biman Roy has been writing and publishing his work in various literary magazines in United States, Canada, United Kingdom and India, for the past 3 decades or so. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist in New York and lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter.
NEW AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Jiwon (Jenny) Na
Alexandra Ledford
Paula Bernett
Toti O'Brien
Kelly Garriott Waite
Cindy Lamothe
Sandra Marchetti
Daniel L. Link
Luisa Kay Reyes
Andrea Marcusa
Arthur Doweyko
Jiwon (Jenny) Na
Alexandra Ledford
Paula Bernett
Toti O'Brien
Kelly Garriott Waite
Cindy Lamothe
Sandra Marchetti
Daniel L. Link
Luisa Kay Reyes
Andrea Marcusa
Arthur Doweyko