Cliffhanger

July 2022 | poetry

Vincent Thomas Bridge, San Pedro Harbor, CA

 

The green bridge is a weighty suspension

of disbelief,

its angle of ascent firing my muscles,

a forced march in country

shadowing my climb up its short suspenders.

Hands heavy on the rotund rail,

its pitted touch flashes a pier railing,

my father demonstrating baiting a hook,

the wriggling body dangling over the side.

Night pulls up its blanket

veiling the wind-stropped containers

stacked like toy blocks below

while nestled in the standing army of alien cranes

a decommissioned battleship sleeps.

The watery bay beckons.

Below a siren wails to climb the rail.

Roger Camp

Roger Camp lives in Seal Beach, CA where he tends his orchids, walks the pier, plays blues piano and spends afternoons with his pal, Harry, over drinks at Saint & 2nd. When he’s not at home, he’s traveling in the Old World. His work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, North American Review, Gulf Coast, Southern Poetry Review and Nimrod.

Puzzle

July 2022 | poetry

Even during class, my sister

strummed chords, fingers

caressing frets or stretching

strings bleeding the blues.

Sometimes she’d pick

a country tune, wailing for lost

beers and pickup trucks,

mourning every orphan.

Now her fingers pluck

bibs and diapers

from laundry, her kids

a Greek chorus of woes

and triumphs. The guitar resonates

during birthdays

or under a beer tent.

My brother-in-law puzzles

at her frustrations. After beers

one night, he confessed

she hums in her sleep,

and taps her finger.

It’s weird, he tells me: sometimes

her hand finds a rhythm, as if

stroking our last dog’s head.

John Cullen

John Cullen graduated from SUNY Geneseo and worked in the entertainment business booking rock bands, a clown troupe, and an R-rated magician. Currently he teaches at Ferris State University and has had work published in American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, Harpur Palate, North Dakota Quarterly and other journals. His chapbook, TOWN CRAZY, is available from Slipstream Press.

Birdwatcher in Kyiv

July 2022 | poetry

They know before we do,

the birds. In the yard,

feeders swing on their chains.

If you think we don’t bury

our cash in the thaw

of the dark dicey frostbite,

you’re wrong. Trust God

or no one, I urge my husband.

Do not answer the door.

I pour vodka down his throat,

call through the cracks

to bring back the warblers.

Bird bird bird, where is your,

when will it, why why why.

What jumps faster

than blood from a vein?

If you think we don’t practice

the dash to the bunker,

you’re wrong. We’ve run out

of drugs and honey,

but we cannot run far,

railcars packed with

no more time. Before

the siren glass shatter,

we walked fine,

and the mistle thrush

spilled operettas

over the sunflowers.

The neighbors are hiding

their children in attics.

The absence of silvery

wings. Do it now,

begs my husband, break

the thermometer, inject me

with mercury, hollow

my bones before lark

and nightingale swallow

each other’s songs.

Jenny Hubbard

A former high-school English teacher, Jenny Hubbard writes full-time in her hometown of Salisbury, NC. Her work has been published over the years in various journals, including Hunger Mountain, Crab Orchard Review, Tar River Poetry, Nine Mile, Maryland Literary Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology. Both of Jenny’s novels, And We Stay and Paper Covers Rock, have earned major awards from the American Library Association. Represented by Jonathan Lyons of Curtis Brown, Ltd., Jenny is currently under contract with Penguin Random House.

Yasmin Nadiyah Phillip

July 2022 | visual art

Tending the Garden

Yasmin Nadiyah Phillip

Yasmin Nadiyah Phillip is a writer, musician, and freelance artist currently based in Virginia. Her most recent work appeared in Barren magazine. Ever searching for stories to tell, she enjoys crafting images that weave together her introverted sensibilities and love for landscapes.

Spring Resurrects

July 2022 | nonfiction

Strawberry shoots, signs of life, play peek-a-boo in the leaves I spread before the snow fell. Last time I saw Mom, she was tethered to an oxygen converter. A few days later, she was in hospital, hooked up to monitors and a morphine drip. I prefer to think of her here, greening-up from within the strawberry plants she gave me years ago. She always loved arithmetic—adding up her tidy rows of numbers, carrying remainders. Perfect calculations. There is comfort in knowing that each spring I’ll find Mom multiplying and dividing her strawberry plants across the garden, multiplying and dividing.

*

When I walk past a mirror or quickly sift through old photographs, I assume it’s me I see. But sometimes it’s my mother. Always the trickster jumping out, scaring the bejeezus out of us—whoopee cushions on the kitchen chair, a giant plastic spider beneath the pillow. This tendency towards mischief we share showed up in my son early on—ketchup packets under the toilet seats, my handwriting impeccably forged (ice cream, poop wafers) on the grocery list, flour on the keyboard to decode a password. Harmless disruptions of the mundane.

Mom always kept us well fed. She still surprises me when I flip through my favourite recipes and see her treats in her slanted cursive—tangy rhubarb crisp, zucchini bread, Grandma Thibault’s apple pudding. I was her shadow in the cramped orange kitchen of my childhood. I stood on the stool as she showed me how to make mustard beans, pickled beets, stewed tomatoes. Thanks to Mom, my pantry brims. Eventually, she will feed her great-grandchildren and theirs.

I dig up two strawberry plants for my little brother so he’ll always find Mom in his garden when he needs her. Plus, strawberries are his favourite. Mom loved to give gifts that, like here, keep giving and giving. A twinge of sorrow tugs at my heart, but the pull of joy is stronger. Mom will never abandon us. She’s in the shape of my hands and muscular calves. In my cousin’s smile, and the way she holds her cigarette. If I search hard enough, I can find Mom in everyone I love.

*

Soon, Mom’s earthly body will leave us, but I’ll find her multiplying and dividing in the strawberry patch each spring. She’ll remind me that she never actually left by multiplying ruses, divvying up signs that prove she’ll always remain. Disguised as a crow’s cackle moments after I stumble and hope nobody saw, she’ll keep me humble. A decade from now, her laughter will echo in my grandchildren’s as they snort and slap their knees. In my late fifties, I’ll see her more and more in my reflection—jowls beginning to sag, doughy folds draping my cheeks. I won’t even be surprised when she replaces me. I’ll open wide my mouth, expose every tooth and let loose the laugh she could never contain.

Rachel Laverdiere

Rachel Laverdiere writes, pots and teaches in her little house on the Canadian prairies. She is CNF editor at Atticus Review and the creator of Hone & Polish Your Writing. Find Rachel’s most recent publications in Bending Genres, Five South, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Grain and other fine literary journals. In 2020, her CNF made The Wigleaf Top 50 and was nominated for Best of the Net. For more, visit www.rachellaverdiere.com.