Mothers

October 2021 | poetry

Dead twelve years, dusty in a drawer

of my heart, like the leaf insects and giant earwigs

in the basement of a natural history museum.

A tiny figurine, still wearing a tattered terrycloth robe,

still holding a glass, although the ice melted long ago.

My no-idea-how-to-love-a-child mother.

My prefer-a-drink-to-playing-with-my daughter mother.

 

Sometimes late at night I hear her stir, accusing

me of stealing her silver or hiding her sapphire

rings, of not visiting, not calling, not caring,

threatening to beat me with her bristled brush

or toss me out like leftover broccoli and I curl up shaking,

chills shooting my spine, reaching for my stuffed bear

with its bald spots and chewed ear.

 

Sometimes I hear her weeping for the husband

who wasn’t, the infant who didn’t, for the child

she once was, beaten with the belt

of her father, the fists of her mother,

for the little girl wearing wool sweaters

in summer to hide swelling bruises.

If the figure were any larger, it would break my heart.

 

Like five loaves and three fishes feeding

five thousand on the shores of Galilee,

like free-flowing ambrosia, the ethereal food

of the gods feasting in gold and marble palaces,

you can swallow grief forever

and still there will be plenty left

in the dry basement where memories linger.

Claire Scott

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

Christy Lorio

October 2021 | visual art

Sedona

Christy Lorio

Christy Lorio is a writer and photographer based in New Orleans. In this series “Summer Dream,” Christy’s film photography reflects a nostalgia of summers spent in Arizona and the yearning to return, partially as a fulfillment of her father’s dream of hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon before he died of cancer. Now, as a result of her own cancer diagnosis, Christy has spent two summers hiking in Sedona and the Grand Canyon in order to thrive in the face of her stage IV diagnosis. Christy’s photography has been seen in Auburn Art Gallery (Los Angeles), Millepiani Exhibition Space (Rome, Italy) and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans). She was a finalist in New Delta Review’s 2021 Ryan R. Gibbs Photography contest as well as a fellow for Arizona State University’s Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference. Christy holds an MFA in Creative Writing and is currently working on her MFA in Studio Art from UNO.

Round Pond

October 2021 | nonfiction

On fine spring days, my mother and I take the number 52 bus — “a tuppenny and a penny, please” — to the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Today, however, I’m with Father and we have travelled here by taxi. I’m holding my solid, blue sailing-boat which we’ll sail together, like other fathers and sons, although this is not something we have ever done before.

While with my mother, I exercise caution. I place my sailing-boat carefully on the water and — disregarding her encouragement — I set it on a shallow course along the rim of the pond. I know my mother to be a woman who is willing to take risks. This is not a temperament I share.

My sailing-boat is nothing more than a crude wooden hull with a light cotton sail. I know this but to me it’s still precious. I’m at a blessed age when what I have is what I want and — although I greatly admire them — I’m not envious of the older boys with more elaborate craft.

I watch them adjusting the trim, wading a few feet out into the water, holding their sleek ships in position, waiting for the right gust to fill the sails. Away they go across the ocean. All the while I clutch my boat tightly.

Father looks on while I make my timid coastal voyages. I release my boat and run to be there to retrieve it. Run and retrieve. Run and retrieve. Is it boredom that prompts him to suggest, very gently, that we could be more adventurous?

Little by little I pick up courage until at last we decide to launch the boat across the pond to the far shore. The wind holds steady and we’re there to meet it when it makes landfall.

Which of us suggests we should try one final voyage across the pond before we go home? Maybe you’re fearful this will end in disaster? Don’t be. It doesn’t. It’s true there’s a moment when the wind drops and changes direction, but it picks up again and my boat sails safely back to shore. I go home happy, relaxed, relieved.

My mother and I return to the Round Pond as before. It’s an uncertain day of sudden squalls. I won’t risk further voyages across the pond and my mother is content to let me potter by the edge of the water while she reads her library book on a bench.

She isn’t witness to an episode later that afternoon. A boy with his father watch as their boat — becalmed and water-logged — sinks in the middle of the pond. I always knew this is how it might end. The father’s helplessness, the son’s heartbreak. I pick up my boat and walk thoughtfully back to my mother. She closes her book and we catch the 52 bus home.

That summer we move house. Our visits to Kensington Gardens come to an end. My blue sailing-boat is consigned to the bottom of a cupboard where — in time — it’s forgotten.

Nicolas Ridley

Nicolas Ridley lives in London & Bath (UK) where he writes fiction, non-fiction, flash fiction, scripts and stage plays under different names. A prize-winner and twice a Pushcart Prize nominee, his short stories have been widely published in anthologies, literary magazines and journals in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA.