April 2014 | back-issues, nonfiction
My father bought rounds of shaving soap wrapped in crinkled pastel paper and stored them in the bathroom drawer. When I was small enough to perch on the counter, I’d watch him wet a caramel-colored brush, swirl the bristles around a mug of soap, and paint his face with the froth. I loved the squelch of the bristles, the hollow ring of the wooden handle against ceramic, the razor’s chilling scrape, the satisfying reveal of soft, pink skin.
Later in the day, I’d sneak into his bathroom and peer into the mug, at the morning’s bubbles fossilized in dried soap scum. I’d press the damp brush to my nose, inhaling the concentrated piney scent, so sharp compared to the faint trace he wore at 5 o’clock.
When he was sick, the nurses used a plastic razor, too-blue shaving gel, and a kidney-shaped bowl of tepid water.
After his death, I wandered around my house, curiously poking in reorganized closets and cabinets. I found his bathroom drawer empty.
“Mom. Where did you put dad’s shaving kit?”
I was hoping she’d reveal a secret room where she stored his ties and shirts, combs, buttons, broken tools, old pictures and books. There I could rub my face in the soft folds of his sweaters, and once again breathe the mingled scents of piney soap and sweat. I could clean the shaving cup, set it on my desk, repurpose it, use it to store pencils or thumbtacks or something.
But we lived in a house of three girls; there was no need for collected masculine accouterments to gather dust.
“His shaving kit? I threw that away…”
Of course she did. She saw bristles stiff with age, a ceramic mug ringed brown from years of soap scum and water.
—Verity Sayles
Verity Sayles is a freelance writer from Massachusetts and enjoys airplane food and the ocean in winter. She graduated from Trinity College (CT) in 2011 and is currently reading all the Pulitzer Prize Fiction winners and writing about them at pushandpulitzer.com.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Morning
The sun spins silk over
gold threaded hills that ebb
and roll and spill back onto themselves
while the morning mist lifts
like a loomed lace mantilla revealing
slivers of ecru, lavender, moss ~
that cast shadows of what
seem like a million horizons.
Cypress meander like drunken crusaders,
grapevines stand steadfast, shackled
in rows. Olive trees bend gnarled in low
genuflection, like women in church
who’ll both gossip and praise.
And on the ledge of a hillside basilica
the birds line up like notes on a staff
and open their throats to trill
morning lauds ~ as the sound
of a clock tower thrums overhead
and trumpets me into a glorious dawn.
The Roseate Scarf
It’s the one you bought
from the milliner just west
of the train station even though
it was August. We had paused
at the storefront to remove sand
from my shoes, a vanilla Coke
and a knish still in hand from the guy
who sold lunch out of a shopping
bag to the strollers and fishermen
on Sheepshead Bay. You threaded
the wool under my hair, wrapped it once
around my nape, drew me in like a cigarette
and exhaled my name upon the wind.
I came across the scarf again a week
or so before you left. It had weathered
sixty summers and countless stares
from others who thought it odd attire
for the time of year. And on your final
day at home I wheeled you down
the length of our sidewalk, seared
my name into your mind burnt black,
and wrapped you lovingly into its soft,
exquisite fringe.
Waltz With the Tempest
Some slammed their shutters
to keep out her fury, I all
but sent an invitation.
I welcomed her rigid ribs
pressed hard against mine,
the steady hum of roots
rocking beneath my feet.
Watched as leaves fell up
like kites toward heavy-lidded clouds
lined with soot, plump with rain.
I nodded to the knowing of
a rage that could shake the last
gasp of autumn between its teeth,
whip limbs like wet hair
across barked shoulders.
She bellowed like a baritone
down the necks of oaks,
their fingers twined and trussed
to frame the ghost-eyed moon.
—Brie Quartin
Brie has been published previously in Freshwater as both a poetry contest winner and general poet and is currently struggling to complete a collection of poems worthy of publishing as a chapbook.
April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Why doesn’t love end when it should?
The man I loved has found someone else. Palm trees lance skies full of low clouds. Sunset breaks like a jellyfish tide. It will rain.
She walks to his door with her wolfhound. I’m shocked seeing how old she is. Black hair, dark eyes, short, thin, not his type. He greets her, hugs her, and the dog, immense, jumps up. She glances in my direction.
What am I doing? Stalking? What is this craziness?
I married him six years ago. We divorced. What am I doing here in a rented car, looking at Jack and this woman? In the cloudy light, her long hair sways; she reaches for his arm. I hear soft rumble of thunder like the dog growling. She’s ordinary, nothing but a dark woman with a huge dog, an eerie look, Jack grinning like a fool at the door.
Don’t let her in.
Don’t don’t don’t don’t let her in.
In Greece, on our honeymoon, Jack found a statue of the goddess Hecate. We laughed, swam, drank too much wine, made love by a sea that hissed against black rocks. I left that small figure among shards and broken shells, dead fish and live gulls on that stony beach. I didn’t like her.
Jack, don’t let her in.
Death walks around these havens where the old come to the humid air, the orange groves, come in their millions, and die, one by one. In a flash he is shadowed, inside, in her arms while a wrongful dark stretches under the palms.
The woman, maiden, mother, crone, whatever she is, reappears, as red sirens rip the distance and some eager ambulance begins begins begins in the dusk-filled street to arrive.
—Janet Shell Anderson
Janet has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for fiction and published by Vestal Review, decomP. FRIGG, The Citron Review, Grey Sparrow, Cease Cows and others.
