Our Orchid Tree is Dying

October 2022 | nonfiction

That’s what the man says. He says, It’s toast. You can get another opinion if you want, but I can tell you for sure, like ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure, it’s toast.

This tree, a Hong Kong orchid tree (or more properly, Bauhinia × blakeana) is the showpiece of our small yard here in Florida. A willowy head of lime-green tendrils that explode each “winter” in fuchsia flowers as big as my hand. Planted by the previous owner, but tended fiercely by me for three years. So unlike anything in our yard in Oakland, all summer dry flax, firepoker, rosemary, sage.

Another tree man says, You never want to say never, but…

Of course I see what they see. The wound on the trunk. How the smooth gray bark has peeled away. How some of the tree’s insides are now outside. How ants teem. I also see the lip of bark callousing the wound’s circumference to shrink the exposure as weeks go by.

A third “expert” chimes in. Says, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’ll have to remove it. He suggests a few trees he says are better suited for the small space: a dwarf powder puff, a desert cassia, a golden dewdrop. All lovely, I’m sure, but we love this tree.

He adds as an afterthought, I’m guessing you won’t miss it though, they’re so terribly messy. He is right. It is terribly messy. But he’s wrong to think we won’t miss it because he doesn’t know about the tiny birds. How they came for those fuchsia flowers that first December, day after day, buzzing, hovering, lingering to drink more, sparkling green and black, tiny ruby flashes. How they reminded us of home, of the ones that buzzed the Mexican sage and nested in the crook of the plum tree outside our kitchen window.

Two years now since the experts’ pronouncements. The tree leans heavily, half its crown missing. I’ve splinted the lowermost trunk, propped the weight of the lean with a two-by-four wedged atop the patio. A brick-colored fungus stacks small shelves on one upper branch. But the tree still sprouts tender green leaves from stems reaching for the sun. I tell myself, it wants to live!

It’s August now, the crepe myrtles blooming, big and pink and crepe-papery. These blossoms will be smooth green berries by September and the cardinal pair will come to nibble them. Then two more months, maybe three, depending on the rains, and the orchid tree will put on its show again. We have been here long enough now to know the routine. We fell in love with the tree that first December and again each year after and now? Now I feel responsible for it. I feel responsible for the little birds.

We see the tree is, in fact, dying. Of course the experts were right. But as we watch it each day and August moves toward September, we say to each other, Just one more year.

Deborah Sherman

Deborah Sherman is a writer, photographer, bird nerd, and cat servant from Oakland, California. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College where she served as Editor of the graduate English Department’s literary journal, 580 Split. Her essay “Tale of the Bufo” appears in Hippocampus Magazine’s March/April 2022 issue, and her micro love story “The Fling” was included in the 2018 anthology Short on Sugar, High on Honey published by Flash: The International Short Short Story Press. She currently lives in Delray Beach, Florida, with her husband and two cats, and is working on a collection of essays about place, impermanence, and possibilities. You can find more of her work at deborahsherman.com.

Carella Keil

October 2022 | visual art

Rainbows End

Carella Keil

Carella is a poet and digital artist who splits her time between the ethereal world of dreams, and Toronto, Canada, depending on the weather. Her work involves themes of mental health, nature and sexuality, often in a surrealist tone. Carella is the recipient of the Stanley Fefferman Prize in Creative Writing (2006) and 2nd place winner in the Open Minds Quarterly BrainStorm Poetry Contest (2017). Recently, she has been published in Margins Magazine, Wrongdoing Magazine, Shuf Poetry, Myth & Lore and Solstice Literary Magazine. Forthcoming publications include Paddler Press, Fragmented Voices, Querencia Press, Stripes Literary Magazine, Door is a Jar, Deep Overstock, Writeresque and Free Verse Revolution.

Here They Kill the Mustard by May

October 2022 | fiction

While her husband drove, Margaret kept her eyes closed, trying to identify each roll to the right, each jostle to the left along West Road. She had guessed the first curve was the bend around the Tudor house. The one being gutted behind a green privacy fence. “Privacy? Everyone knows what they’re doing,” she had laughed. Moments later a sharp bank had shunted her frail frame into the padded door panel, and she thought they might be at the place with the goats. Her uncertainty, though, had surprised her.

Six long years had passed since they had moved to the hills and found themselves quickly labeled “the kids from the flatlands” after the septic tank overflowed and raccoons tore through the chicken wire. Nearly every day since they had navigated this route, eyes alert to “all” potential threats. Margaret chuckled again, then promptly regretted the expended energy. In the momentary quiet she sensed her husband was staring so that the familiar pang of guilt struck. Six long summers ago she had asked him to trust her as they tracked the petite flags and glossy plastic signs along snaky one lane roads to the Open House. Six long autumns ago they had moved into their “forever” home. She tried to find it funny.

 Soon enough, her contrition morphed into something warm as they descended a long, gentle slope. She knew they had reached the huge empty lot where the wild mustard grows. Where tall stalks burst out of compressed cracked earth with spectacular speed, growing taller than her in spots, revealing a radiant splendor seemingly overnight: intense yellow flowers arranged in delicate x’s atop sturdy hairy stems, their billowy ballet summoning dainty white butterflies. Margaret’s mother said that in the parable mustard represents faith. Well, here they chop it all down by May. In early spring, weed abatement notices start arriving. “Dried mustard plants? Highly combustible! Be safe and clear it out!” She chuckled for the last time. “Nothing that invasive is gone forever,” she thought. “After a fire destroys this place, the mustard will be the first thing to come back.” In her life before treatment, Margaret had jogged through the field each night, had stood rigid to hear what swaying sounds like, had heard the crunching beneath her shoes. She understood that well before the trucks and chainsaws rumble up to pull life out by the roots, wild mustard plants have already dropped much of their seed. She opened her drained eyes onto her husband. Oh, how she wished now that they had done the same.

Elizabeth Allison

Elizabeth Allison spent many joyful years in alternative and high school education before leaving the classroom to spend more time with her children and on her own writing. Her work has since appeared on sites such as The Huffington Post and Intrepid Times.

Quincy Gray McMichael: Featured Author

October 2022 | poetry

Stolen Gum

She has so much gum.

I have none.

Pained by my lack,

I count thirteen sticks

in that pink

Extra pack:

shiny foil tips make my

fingers twitch. I

skirt temptation, chasing

through the kitchen, trailing

tutus—to outside,

seeking freedom:

Spear Stream,

trampoline,

garden packed with crisp

green beans. But I dash

back, snatch that fat

pack. One touch

and I taste relief. Above,

the Elvis clock waggles

his hips. The King

feels my need. And only he

sees me slip:

just one silver stick.

Silly girl,

you think you’re hiding

your hand, hiding

that gum, running

to the bathroom, first,

then feigning

thirst. You return

from my kitchen,

 refreshed. But when

you roll close to me

 on the trampoline,

your whispers smell

sweet:

not the yellow-egg sulphur

 of my water,

 no bold whiff of our

 garlicky lunch. Nor can

crabapple season,

 weeks away, account

 for that cloying

bubblegum scent

on your breath.

Two decades on, as I drag

myself up

to Step Nine,

into the blinding shine

of Rigorous Honesty,

I see Caitlin’s

pink-cheeked face,

that stolen gum,

first. Why this small thing,

before uglier indiscretions:

lying through my teeth

driving only while drinking

selling coke to children

selling my soul for love

from coast to coast?

Perhaps Elvis, in his eternal

temporal wisdom, hinted

at what was to come:

me, holding drink, pipe, life

in my shaking hand,

already tasting the burn

in my throat?

 

Fire in the Hole

I hear the Jeep before I smell it.

I smell exhaust before I see it.

Before he sees me—before I know it—

I’m horizontal, ducking low

down below the windshield sight line,

one knee on the seat, the other

leg outstretched, just hidden

behind the unfurled wing of driver door.

I can almost taste the scratched leather on my gearshift

before the rising tide of fear catches in my throat,

creeps up my windpipe,

tugs at my tonsils,

trauma souring taste buds on the back of my tongue.

Even the tang of fresh-cut grass is no match

for this metallic panic the sound

of an old engine unfurls in me—

and only in this place. My mother’s house.

Her lawn. Her gardens.

Her perfect front porch

with its worn boards, grooved from years of zealous sweeping.

Where neither the eternal pack of dogs,

nor my mother’s love,

nor my own malignant bravado

could keep me safe.

Quincy Gray McMichael

When not at her writing desk, Quincy Gray McMichael stewards her farm, Vernal Vibe Rise, on Moneton ancestral land. Her writing—both creative nonfiction and poetry—has been published in Yes! Magazine, The Dewdrop, Open: A Journal of Arts and Letters, Greenbrier Valley Quarterly, and is forthcoming from Appalachian Review and Assay, among other publications. Quincy holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. She is a Contributing Editor at Good River Review and is completing a hybrid memoir that explores obsession and overwork through a blend of poetry and prose.

Christopher Paul Brown

October 2022 | visual art

Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 15 (1974), Dilapidated Railroad Bridge, Carpentersville, IL, 2020, 08-11-2019HE

Christopher Paul Brown

Christopher Paul Brown is known for his exploration of the unconscious through his use of improvisation and his cultivation of serendipity and synchronicity via alchemy.  His first photography sale was to the collection of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, and his video You Define Single File was nominated for the Golden Gate Award at the 47th San Francisco International Film Festival in 2004. Over the past four years his art was exhibited twice in Rome, Italy, in Belgrade, Serbia, and his series of ten photographs, titled Obscure Reveal, were exhibited at a Florida museum in 2017.  His work is in two hardcover books released by Manifest Gallery and in Tusis, Manipulated Images, a Dek Unu book from 2019. Brown earned a BA in Film from Columbia College Chicago in 1980. He was born in Dubuque, Iowa and now resides in North Carolina, USA.