OF SNAKES AND STONE

by Olivia Fortier

 

“Self-portrait in the style of Medusa” by Andrea Mantegna c. 1474 Uffizi Gallery. 
Photo via Web Gallery of Art

 

Though afraid of the water, 

my mother hand-scooped the lake 

to wet my skin before she blew up 

water wings, and slid them to the tops

of my arms. 

 

I floated on the surface of a calm lake, 

the flotsam of a failed marriage;

my father had sided with the man 

who’d raped my mother, when he, 

the rapist, denied any wrongdoing, 

as rapists often do, and it was then 

my mother lost her head.

 

From the water, I watched my mother 

walk the beach in search of driftwood 

for garden ornaments. An hour later, 

her pile was small, her harvest thin, 

so I swam back to shore to help her, 

my skin burned from the sun’s reflection 

on the lake’s mirror top. Seeing her error, 

my mother glossed me with sunscreen. 

Then, stony-faced, as single mothers 

must be at times, doing everything alone, 

she removed my wings, deflated them, 

and withdrew into herself.

 

When it comes to driftwood, 

gnarls and knots are lovely decorative 

features. Dead tree roots are rare finds; 

initially disturbing to look at, yes, but 

given a couple coats of shellac to bring 

out their natural beauty, they transform 

into octopi, or staghorn coral. Or, as 

my mother explained to me as I grew,

the rape survivor Medusa’s head of snakes—

 

snakes being her punishment for Poseidon's

assault against her body with his venomous 

viper; the rape turned any future hopes she had 

for normalcy to stone, which is to say, as Medusa

lied under his shadow, Poseidon projected himself 

onto her—a terrifying appearance, a petrifying gaze.

Then she was called monster while he continued 

to reign freely. Any man who slayed Medusa 

with his long, sharp blade would be called hero, 

and brave; her severed head and deadened mind, 

a trophy. But until then, she was forced to withdraw 

from society and live alone in a cave,

 

for shame. Before Mother died, she told me nothing 

has changed for women, and that I am Medusa’s daughter, 

and that statistically speaking, I will also become

Medusa.

 

I am Medusa.

Olivia Fortier’s work has appeared in multiple literary journals. She is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate.

SHE SAYS IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE

by Margaret Rozga

She was once her daughter’s age and that inscrutable. I was

once her age but already a widow. In Kyiv mothers

are brought near to tears, but who can cry, who can

anticipate having a daughter the age she now is?

Who has any room in her thoughts for anything more

than the backpack, the train station, the fear

of being separated, the maybe at the other side

of the border?

So fear takes a hiding place deep

in the chest but not as deep as the dream of a calm

and secure old age. Or deeper.

 

Here the three-year-old cries for a biscuit, begs

her to play. She sends the older brother to play

with the younger. Her daughter, my granddaughter

stays in the kitchen to listen

for the sound of dreams rising above worries

about prices. There is no war here,

no fear of bombs hitting this neighborhood. The war is

not that close to us. Not yet. The war weighs

on her mind even as she serves us fried fish and denies

biscuits. She worries about money in her non-war.

She cannot imagine. She can imagine.

This is how ghosts are born.

 

The succulent fish warms our bellies, relaxes

our conversation, shrinks the ghosts, makes room

for imagining a future for her family, my family,

hope for the Kyiv mother. Mothers.

Hope is what I, you, she

cling to when good is being bombed.

 

 

Margaret Rozga’s fifth book is Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press, 2021). As 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate, she co-edited the anthology Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems (Art Night Books, 2020) and the chapbook anthology On the Front Lines / Behind the Lines (pitymilkpress, 2021). Twitter: WIPoet @RozgaMargaret

MANDATE

by Laura Rodley

My eyes see the road but my hands

steer the wheel, car ahead,

snow banks to my right,

more snow falling. It feels 

like a hundred years

now and still I have not

heard from you my daughter.

The daughter that was just a wish,

a dream, an incessant urge,

a tug to the infinite

and so I reached my hands

up and pulled you down

from clouds full of precipitation,

the month was November that

you were born, the isle of snow,

but conceived in February

on Valentine’s Day, my hands

full of the eyes of your father,

the sky filled with snowflakes.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and just off the press, As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

COUNTERFACTUAL WISHING

by Sarah Dickenson Snyder





Pleated in every human minute
is the second of someone’s death—
the way a mother and daughter leap
from a warm wooden dock
into the Maine coast sea
and the mother is taken
in the sharpness of a second—
the shark’s desire to clench
what looked like seal skin. What if
she had not worn the wet suit, what if
they had decided to eat lunch before
the swim—sandwiches
& iced tea on the deck, what if
clouds obscured the sun & they hadn’t
needed relief from heat, what if
we knew the second of our leaving,
could stop ourselves
from diving in.

Sarah Dickenson Snyder has written poetry since she knew there was a form with conscious line breaks. She has three poetry collections: The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera (2019). Recently, poems appeared in Rattle, The Sewanee Review, and RHINO.

TAKING THIS IN

by Jennifer Freed

file photo

My mother sits in her kitchen while I stand
on her patio, our palms pressed
to the sliding glass door
as we speak on our phones.

She must have misplaced her glasses today. I notice
the shape of her cheekbones, how much warmth
in her eyes. She beams
as she did in the hospital, those first dreamy weeks
after her stroke, before
she understood.                                            
Today she is radiant, more radiant than I have seen her
in over a year. Today she is the most beautiful
woman I have ever seen.

We do not go near what hovers around us—
this lesson floating on the air
we don’t dare to share. I don’t know when or whether
I’ll ever touch her again.
But right now, if she has considered how long
these strange days may go on,
she isn’t dwelling on it. She is smiling. We can’t seem to stop
smiling.

I remember how brightly she laughed when she first
tried to stand after her stroke (My legs fell asleep!)
I remember her ease with the nurse
holding her up (We’re slow dancing!)
in front of the commode while a second nurse
cleaned her behind.
Now she says, as she says every day when I call,
that she hasn’t done anything
useful—but today
she’s decided it’s okay, she is lucky
to have help, she’s letting herself
be happy that she can be
queen for a while.
I draw a heart on the glass, kiss it.
She grasps her walker, pushes to stand, kisses back.

My father comes into the room, waves his hello.
She hands him the phone, asks him to tell me
what she’s been struggling to arrange into
words—what they learned on that documentary yesterday.
Wonder and pleasure move over her face
at the ease of his language—ancient Egypt, pharaohs
and deities—but I am not really listening
because she is leaning her head back against his body
as he stands behind her chair, and he
is resting his palm on her arm,
and I watch her drifting
on the rise and fall of his voice. I watch her
gazing out at the sky, at the trees, at me.
She finds my eyes, mouths, I love you,

and I am still
standing outside the glass door, taking all of this in.


Jennifer Freed is staying home with her family in Massachusetts.  Her poetry has appeared/is forthcoming in various journals, including Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, Worcester Review, and Zone 3.

ON HER BEHALF

a found poem
by Mac McClurkan

The sentence handed down in a trial for incest in rural Valley County, Mont., pictured here, has led to a call for the judge in the trial to be impeached. Matthew Brown/AP via NPR, October 20, 2016.

The defendant’s daughter, age 12, did not attend the sentencing hearing. No one testified on her behalf. The presiding judge in Montana cited the lack of direct input from the victim, or an advocate on behalf of the victim. The defendant, who admitted to raping his daughter multiple times, was sentenced to 60 days in jail. Court records show the victim’s mother, who testified he has two sons that still love him and need their father in their lives, walked in on the father raping the child. The victim’s mother’s mother testified the defendant’s children, especially his sons, will be devastated if their dad is no longer a part of their lives. The defendant’s daughter, age 12, did not attend the sentencing hearing. No one testified on her behalf.

Mac McClurkan is a hobby farmer, disc golf enthusiast, and aspiring writer. He lives in rural Michigan with his wife (who is a MUCH better writer), two dogs, and five chickens. 

#PHILANDOCASTILE

by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Diamond Reynolds (right) and her 4-year-old daughter. Both were in the car during Philando Castile's untimely death. Image source: Twitter via Ebony, July 7, 2016.

My granddaughter just turned four,
she holds as many fingers in the air and smiles,
our ancestral gap between her two front teeth,
her pearly face blushed.
She loves to sing and stands beside me
on a chair to help with food prep,
asks surprisingly complex questions
I often struggle to explain to her satisfaction.

I don’t know what to do with the headlines this morning.
I don’t want fear and hatred to win.
What words can I give you, Lavish,
that could possibly serve?

I can’t get out of my head,
your four-year-old girl comforting you,
you in handcuffs, partner dead.
Your courage, the facts, sir, the facts.
I see it. I hear it.
It's in my mouth, my lungs.
I cannot stop hearing her voice.
Four years old.
Four years old.
Four years, old.

A Pushcart nominee, Kari Gunter-Seymour holds a B.F.A. in graphic design and an M.A. in commercial photography. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in publications including Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, Main Street Rag, and The LA Times. She is the founder/curator of the “Women of Appalachia Project,” an arts organization (fine art and spoken word) she created to address discrimination directed at women living in Appalachia.

HILLARY'S HAND

by Davi Walders

As I watch Hillary make her way through the hotel ballroom,
I think of my mother, gone now twenty years. How thrilled

she would have been to be here. Beneath crystal chandeliers,
between tables filled with uneaten finger sandwiches and scones,

I feel my mother’s hand pressing into mine, pushing me to lean
over the stanchions as I wait. Even though guards glare, I reach

out to touch Hillary, to shake her hand as she passes by on
the plush carpet. Smiling in her brilliant red suit, she talks

to each of us as she approaches her daughter already at the podium,
I hear my mother’s voice whisper, ‘Keep going, Hillary,’ (or maybe

it was mine) or one of the other thousand voices as she moves
along the aisle surrounded by ten huge secret service men

with earpieces. Obama won last time; now this time must be
her time. ‘Revved up and rarin’ to go,’ Barbara Mikulski shouts

from a platform box that lifts her tiny figure toward the microphone
as the room goes wild. We have waited lifetimes to see a woman

do this. Seventy years of marching to get the vote, more than another
ninety working towards this moment. It’s Hillary’s turn; it has to be

Hillary’s turn. Not for me alone, but for the joy my mother would
have had holding my hand shaking Hillary’s hand.


Davi Walders is the author of three poetry books.

A VIEW OF ISIS’S EVOLUTION IN NEW DETAILS OF PARIS ATTACKS

by Mary Leonard

A VIEW OF ISIS’S EVOLUTION IN NEW DETAILS OF PARIS ATTACKS. A wounded man was evacuated at the Bataclan concert hall during the Paris attacks in November. Investigators hope the arrest of Salah Abdeslam will shed new light on the assaults. Photo credit: Yoan Valat/European Pressphoto Agency via NY Times, March 19, 2016

                         While reading the Sunday Times on my daughter's birthday

"He turned and looked at the people,  and with a
 smirk, apologized and blew himself up."

It matters that you notice the bulky layers,
the anorak with fur collar on a warm night.

It matters that you go through security, open
your backpack, the trunk of your car, be

Frisked, attention, TATP, bombs, answer personal questions.
I'll tell you this: notice him, her, everyone

Alone. Do you understand? That one.
Attention must be paid. This one.

"TATP bombs require real training,
a skilled bomb maker," A Start Up

Bomb Factory? something for your
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs?

It matters that you notice, the absence
No phone, the blank stare, nothing

"Forget small scale attacks," a senior
ISIS said, "hit everyone and everything."

You must pay attention. Your life matters.
Your child matters. Her school matters.

Be wary of men in tracksuits with logos
of nearby teams. Be wary what their

Hats say.  Notice if they look so calm
they'd accept ball bearings inside their flesh

Listen to me, this is your mother
speaking. The world is not

safe. The world is not
an oyster here for the taking.

Forget the sound of waves,
the smell of salt, all the sweet flowers

Where? Long time asking . . . 
And I will ask, Where have they gone.

Mary Leonard has published chapbooks at 2River, Pudding House, Antrim House Press, and RedOchreLit. Her poetry has appeared in The Naugatuck Review, Hubbub, Cloudbank, The Chronogram, Blotterature and most recently in Red River, Ilya's Honey, and A Rat's Ass. She lives in an old school house overlooking the Rondout Creek in Kingston, NY.  Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches writing workshops for all ages through the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College

THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE

Editor's Note: We are pleased to repost this poem, originally published in TheNewVerse.News on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. It is one of our 2015 Pushcart Prize nominees.


THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE
by Linda Lerner

                                                     
separate, he asks, as he puts my laundry
on the scale.  Yes, separate, I say
still . . . week after week, tries to make
this American woman understand
what it feels like, no, make me smell
the smoke of mortar & rocket fire politics
keeping him from getting his wife & daughter
everything so carefully arranged, end of
June, his graduation from college, and then . . . puff
do you see?
                what I see is the road
twisting and turning  in his mind
teasing him  now it’s here, now it’s gone
he says of a promised cease fire;

when he speaks of his birth country
of things getting worse
I see frightened people imprisoned
in their homes  being deprived of basic necessities

I see a country being raped…
I do not see his wife and daughter
he will not let me

Internally displaced people bathe and wash clothes in a local river close to the Al-Mazraq IDP camps, Al-Mazraq, Yemen. Source: Daily Mail

Linda Lerner’s latest  collection "Yes, the Ducks Were Real" (NYQ books) and her chapbook "Ding Dong the Bell  Pussy in the Well" (Lummox Press) were published recently. 

THE ROAD BACK TO YEMEN FROM A BROOKLYN LAUNDROMAT GOES UP IN SMOKE

by Linda Lerner

                                                     
separate, he asks, as he puts my laundry
on the scale.  Yes, separate, I say
still . . . week after week, tries to make
this American woman understand
what it feels like, no, make me smell
the smoke of mortar & rocket fire politics
keeping him from getting his wife & daughter
everything so carefully arranged, end of
June, his graduation from college, and then . . . puff
do you see?
                what I see is the road
twisting and turning  in his mind
teasing him  now it’s here, now it’s gone
he says of a promised cease fire;

when he speaks of his birth country
of things getting worse
I see frightened people imprisoned
in their homes  being deprived of basic necessities

I see a country being raped…
I do not see his wife and daughter
he will not let me

Internally displaced people bathe and wash clothes in a local river close to the Al-Mazraq IDP camps, Al-Mazraq, Yemen. Source: Daily Mail

Linda Lerner’s latest  collection "Yes, the Ducks Were Real" (NYQ books) and her chapbook "Ding Dong the Bell  Pussy in the Well" (Lummox Press) were published recently.