Editor’s Note: The author writes from Palestine. The title comprises the first two lines of the poem.

Author’s Note: “I’m interested in youthful speakers who, aware of it or not, deconstruct the adult idealisms (such as religion) into which they’ve been–well, “indoctrinated” may be too strong a word (so perhaps simply “reared”). I get some humor out of this approach, and some seriousness (though what’s more serious than humor?) as I try to present a ten-year-old or so intent on making sense of his community and its values.”

Sometimes you’re dead
When you’re still alive I

tell my Sunday School teacher after class
this morning but she drops her pencil and
beats me to bending for it but kicks it
a few feet across the linoleum
of our trailer-classroom and I wonder
how many cubits from the Bible that
is and I’m ready to ask her but it
looks about the same length as Moses’s staff
and likewise a snake, I’ve seen the movie
five times, that’s once for every finger
not including the thumb, the thumb isn’t
truly a finger but it plays one on
my hand and by the time she picks it up
and looks at me I’ve let her people go.

⧫

Gale Acuff has taught university English in the United States, China, and Palestine, where he currently teaches at Arab American University. He holds a PhD in English/Creative Writing from Texas Tech University and has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.

Acuff’s poetry is from the Delmarva Review’s fifteenth annual edition. Headquartered on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the literary journal has published the best new writing of 550 authors worldwide. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. It is available in paperback and digital from online booksellers and regional specialty bookstores. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author’s Note: “Watching my mother’s life move toward its vanishing point, some part of me was drawn to that unknowable place. Language was difficult for her; I tried to supply the necessary and the loving words. Nothing was happening in that sick room, everything was happening. Although much communication was of the silent kind, but I understood that she was traveling back into her own childhood. She offered up a few words. I translated what I could.”

 

Traveling 

Let me go with her, portage some lighter questions
along the staged waterways.
Talk-house birds flit among reticulated pines
over debris left behind by mowers. Smoke figures rise. 

Fields were long ago segmented
into canvases splashed by dusty streams of traffic.
In speech, I mean when there is speech,
wires lattice the blown roses. 

Or the syllables are pale, cool marbles
settling at the bottom of a cup.
One arm curves away from her body
while her head tries the neck’s fine stem. 

A composition that suffers little change—
white blinds drawn, heart machine quiet. The loss lingering.
Only my restlessness moves shadows,
and the orderly with his mop. How to simply hold. 

With each fragment, she knocks upon
a grooved post. The tea is cold
with a skin of ersatz, I drink a bit guiltily
but cannot taste what’s beyond the saline fear.

If there is nothing to be done, why am I here.
Because the doing, the being, makes food for the un-tongued,
because here I forget the other textures, odors,
latching on for the watery blue milk. 

Imagine an artificial moon
easing across silk, wind ballooning
a cutout tree’s canopy. Or let me trespass upon sleep
that erases all background with its remote urgencies— 

I am parentheses to her shallow breaths,
and the alphabet of stars that shines unread.
Accident by which verbs and cells collide,
map the sparse archipelago, toward a vanishing point. 

⧫

Carol Alexander’s most recent poetry collection is Fever and Bone. Her individual poems have appeared in About Place Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, The Common, Denver Quarterly, One, Ruminate, Southern Humanities Review, Terrain.org, and Third Wednesday. Forthcoming publications include Free State Review, Matter, Potomac  Review, Verdad, and The Westchester Review. Alexander co-edited Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022). 

Her poem in the Delmarva Review is from the fifteenth annual edition. The literary review, based in Talbot County, Maryland, has featured the new poetry and prose of 550 authors worldwide. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. 

The sixteenth edition will be published later this month in paperback and digital editions. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

 

Author’s Note: “Looking Too Hard at a Flame” is excerpted from my unpublished novel “Cynthia” about a 13-year-old’s magical thinking in her attempts to deal with complex emotions. It was inspired by memories of the turbulent ‘60s when I was a young adolescent and used symbolic rituals to cope with things beyond my control.

Looking Too Hard at a Flame

1

DOWNSTAIRS THEY TALK OF DEAD PEOPLE. Upstairs I’m drawing a spidery hand with long fingernails inside my favorite book. The hand is the only thing I can draw. I learned it from a book called Learn to Draw, and when I got to where I could draw it without thinking, I threw the book away, because I hate books that tell people how to do things. My favorite book is old, with “FEB” in faded pen on the flyleaf. It’s about a girl who slept in a closet and wrote her thoughts down, by candlelight, in the margins of the Bible. So I’m writing my own thoughts in the margins of Wuthering Heights, which is the name of the book.

My name is Cynthia Burns. I’m thirteen and live with my aunt, Deirdre. I like cold black tea, strange books, and fire. I don’t like old photographs. I also am invisible a lot of the time. That’s all true, especially the last sentence about being invisible. It’s because of how they look at me, like I’m someone else.

Pictures in a box by the fireplace show them like they were long ago: Deirdre, my aunt, was beautiful, and in one snapshot rides a horse, her long hair flying. Toby, her brother, was once tall and strong. Now he weighs three hundred pounds and drives a chartreuse station wagon with fins. Suzanne, his wife, still wears her hair in that braid. The stranger appears in just one picture, where he stands on a rock with clouds behind him.

When he knocked on our door, it was night, and it was raining. I didn’t recognize him from the picture, even though he was handsome in a sad, pale way. He was no real age. He wore a long black coat and looked very clean. When Deirdre saw him, she gasped and said, “It can’t really be you.”

“Can I come in?” he said. “If not, I understand.”

Rain sizzled on the sidewalk while she made him come in. There was no other sound.

“This is Edward,” she said after closing the door. She told him I was Cynthia, and he said, “Hello, Cynthia,” but I felt my face fading out anyway.

They sat on the red couch. I sat in the beige armchair. She asked him where he’d been for so many years, and he said picking apples, fighting fires, and trying to run away from many things. He looked at me again.

“You hardly look any different than you did on your twenty- first birthday,” he said. But he was talking to Deirdre.

“I was never twenty-one,” she said.

“You were. I tried to light the candles with your cigarette lighter, but the wind kept blowing them out.”

I’d heard people talk about the coconut cake and the candles and the mescal when Deirdre turned twenty-one, but not since I believed in the tooth fairy.

“That was probably the last time I had any fun,” she said, and lines appeared in her face.

“Even though the truck was full of cacti,” he said, “which made it dangerous to sit in for everyone but that store mannequin. The one Faith brought along.”

Deirdre burst out laughing. He laughed too, and that was the first mention of dead people. Namely Faith, who used to sketch store mannequins in the desert.

Faith was Deirdre and Toby’s sister. She also gave birth to me one night and then died two months later. She never introduced my father to the family.
“Cynthia looks like her.”

I’d been waiting for that. But not looking forward to it. And I knew Deirdre would say yes, it’s eerie because of Cynthia’s expressions.

My hand, holding my cup of tea, looked like someone else’s hand. Still, I finished the tea. And while I drank it, they discussed the beauty, wit, and quaintness of the dead.

If they’d only talked about how witty and beautiful dead people once were, I wouldn’t have minded him being there. The problem was that they started talking about the day that the dead had died. When that happens, I feel like I’m trapped inside the picture of Faith where she stands in front of my grandfather’s house with bare feet and one arm around a mannequin. Once I dreamt I was inside it, the glass pressing on my chest.

“It’s burned into my memory,” Deirdre said. By then, he’d spent the night on the couch. “I was about to walk out the door when the phone rang. I was going to pick up the shoes she was going to wear in the wedding.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

“Yes, it was. It was my life Faith thought she was ruining. She wrote me this beautiful letter about it.”

“How is that your fault?”

“I don’t think I ever picked up those shoes.” She laughed hysterically after saying that. “I’d gotten them dyed.”

“It was my fault,” he whispered. “I betrayed you both.”

2

CASSANDRA, Toby’s daughter, is my age. We’ve read all of each other’s books and are both related to people in the box by the fireplace. We talked in her backyard, next to a row of abalone shells.

“My father thinks we should all hate Edward,” she said. “Because of how he drove Faith to suicide. Edward was in love with her, you know.”
I sort of figured that. “Was he in love with Deirdre, too?”

“Of course. He was Deirdre’s boyfriend. I thought you knew.”

Cassandra said her parents argued about Edward for hours when they heard he was back. Then Suzanne brushed her hair, and Cass watched her, asking questions.

“My mother says Deirdre and Edward went out together for years. They were young and crazy and stayed up late singing folk ballads. And drinking wine. People expected them to get married after they graduated from college. But Edward decided to marry Faith instead. She was there for the folk ballads. And the wine. Your book of Wuthering Heights was hers.”

“I know all that. But why did Edward decide to marry Faith instead of Deirdre?”

“He’d fallen in love with her, of course. And he was sorry for her because she’d gone and gotten pregnant from that man she never introduced to the family. My mom says Faith was ‘grateful’ to Edward for wanting to marry her. But it rather hurt Deirdre. Edward being her boyfriend and all. She only forgave him because they were folk music types. In fact, she helped Edward talk Faith into marrying him. Then she took Faith out and bought her a wedding dress. It was sky blue.”

It had stopped raining by then. Vaporous clouds floated like giant tufts of very white cotton. Usually, I would have liked the roots of the trees, which were gnarled and twisty. And the way the clouds looked reflected in a piece of broken glass. But I felt something pressing on my chest, because Deirdre has always made me wear sky blue.

“The night before the wedding, Faith hung her wedding dress on the door of her closet. And afterward she wrote a letter to Deirdre saying she was very sorry, but she just could not marry Edward. She turned on the heater so gas would leak out, and they found her the next morning, lying there in her nightgown.”

We sat for a long time, watching the shadows of the trees on the grass.

“The dress hung there for about a week,” Cass went on. “Because of everyone being in shock. And then Deirdre gave it to the Salvation Army.”

“He ran off. I guess when you’re into folk music, and you’re in love with someone, you do things like driving them to suicide.” “If it weren’t for you, I’d never know anything,” I said. Then I told her about the shoes. “Deirdre had them dyed,” I said. “But never picked them up.”

Cassandra’s eyes widened.

“Deirdre did too pick up those shoes. She put Faith’s letter in the box with them after reading it. My mother says Deirdre still has the note and the box and the shoes in your attic.”

3

EDWARD moved his small, old traveling bag into Deirdre’s room. He put his boots by the wall and laid his Edwardian coat over the bed. Then they sat on the couch, her legs over his lap while he gazed into her eyes. He played with the ends of her hair.

“Have you hated me all these years?” he said. And she said, “I could never hate you.” They made out. And when they noticed me watching, they looked at me that way.

Faith was obviously taking over my body. Or maybe my mind. Or at least hiding in the closet, watching me through the mirror. So, I went upstairs and lit a candle I have stuck to a china dish.

The flame got bigger and smaller as it flickered in a draft, and finally, only the bit of fire seemed true, like a burning fingerprint against the dark. Because I had no blue eyes to look like hers anymore. But Deirdre came in to say good night. And she said, “You remind me of my sister, doing that.”

4

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” he said the next day. “I told you why I came. I needed to see your face again.”

She was leaning her back against the kitchen sink.

“You said you wanted to see me.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “But who’ve we been talking about since you’ve been here?”
“We all loved her.”

“Especially you,” she said. “But before that, it was me you loved. You loved me first.”

He was sitting at the table.

Deirdre went on about how he disappeared after the funeral, which made her too upset to pick up the shoes. After that she cried, and he left. From my room, I could see him on the boardwalk, hanging around a streetlamp.

5

HE CAME BACK in the morning.

“I should have hated you,” she said, with her back against the sink again. “Why haven’t I? Instead, I’ve cherished my memories. Of both you and her. I kept them pressed in the pages of my thoughts like dried flowers. Then you had to come back and crunch them to powder.”

Edward mumbled, “How have I crunched your memories?” However, Deirdre just went on.

“Tell me the truth,” she said. “Why did you come? Were you hoping to get absolution?”

“I was hitchhiking through a desert town, wind blowing dirt in my eyes, and remembered how we used to sing ballads at three in the morning. And I had to see your face.”

“Did you remember the ballad about the knight? Riding along his way? Thinking about his wedding?”

I expected Edward to answer, but he never did.

“Come to think of it, it was the fairy queen that wrecked his wedding,” Deirdre said. “According to the song. She put some kind of spell on him.”

“The fairies in those songs aren’t exactly Tinker Bell.” He kind of muttered it, like he was talking to himself. “They’re powerful. And not benign.”

“I can’t cherish those songs anymore,” Deirdre said. “She wrecks everything.”

“I shouldn’t have run off,” Edward said. “It kept us from resolving anything, and now it’s too late.”

“How would we have resolved anything, even then? We’d have had to hear what she had to say. And she was gone.”

“Didn’t she leave a note?”

My back was turned, making tea, but I heard the “click” of Deirdre’s lighter.

“There’s no point in reading it now.”

“You still have it?”

“Of course I kept it. But I don’t remember where it is.” “I’ll bet you only read it once. And you’re still running from whatever she said.”

“She’s gone,” Deidre said. “Everything passes. We’re just creatures that live and mate and die. Like bats that use cacti to get pollen all over themselves so flowers can reproduce.”

“Bats don’t drink mescal and stay up all night making fools of themselves.”

I was about to leave the kitchen when I heard my name. I’d forgotten they knew it.

“How about Cynthia?” he said. “Don’t you want her to read Faith’s letter?”

But she said, “I think we should separate.”

There was a long silence while I poured hot water over the tea bag in my cup. Then he said, “Are you throwing me out?”

“Yes,” Deirdre said. “I never got the chance to do it back then.”

After a while, he came downstairs with his traveling bag. His eyes were wet when he walked out the door.

6

FOR THREE DAYS she stayed in her room, and I took the bus to school and ate boiled hot dogs for dinner. When I boiled the hot dogs, I asked her if she wanted any, and she said no. On the third day, when I came home, she was walking through the living room in her red robe.

“There you are,” she said. “I knew you were here.” Her eyes shone, and I thought maybe I wasn’t invisible anymore. But then she said, “Where’s Cynthia?”

“What do you mean, ‘where’s Cynthia?’” I said. “I am Cynthia.”

“Where are my cigarettes?” She turned around, looking for them. Her red, filmy robe twirled and billowed, and I thought of flames for some reason. Then she caught sight of the mirror above the mantel. “Do you really think you’re Cynthia? Just look at yourself.” She pointed. “Next you’ll say you’re a mannequin. Like the ones you used for models.” I must say I felt confused.

I could see, just by looking in the mirror, that I was Faith. It’s true that the mirror needs re-silvering and warps your face in interesting ways, but that had nothing to do with it.

“Cynthia’s only thirteen,” Deirdre said with a mean smile.

I looked around for Cynthia. I saw nothing but the red couch and beige armchair.

“You killed yourself,” Deirdre said. “But it did you absolutely no good.”

The mantel mirror stretched my face upward like a flame, and I remembered hanging my sky-blue wedding dress on a closet door.
“I remember that,” I said.

“Of course you remember it. You know who you are.” She got that mean smile again and said, “Do you honestly think I could confuse you with Cynthia?”

“I AM Cynthia.” I thought maybe I was, after all.

“Why aren’t you wearing sky blue?”

“I am wearing sky blue.”

“You’re not,” Deirdre said. “That is a black dress.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Is too.”

“Is not. And besides,” I said, “Cynthia has other clothes.”

“Cynthia,” she said, all disgusted. “What do you know about Cynthia?”

I couldn’t think of any answer.

“She’ll be home any time now. If I were you, I’d be ashamed to show my face.” She found her cigarettes and lit one. “I’m the one raising her.” She walked toward the kitchen carrying her ashtray. “You’ve never finished anything in your life.”

I sank onto the red couch, my hands in my lap. They were Faith’s hands. And that’s when I did remember finishing something. A drawing of the hand.
“I have, too, finished things.”

By then, Deirdre had disappeared through the kitchen door. I followed her, seeing myself in the mirror on the way. And I could see that I was Cynthia because I had on a necklace Cassandra gave me for my birthday.

And then I figured I should call Toby, my uncle, and tell him Deirdre was going crazy. Unfortunately, that meant I had to follow her into the kitchen where the phone was. I didn’t want to be in the same room with her, but I did it anyway.

“So you’re following me now?” she said. “Before, you were trying to get away. This is fun. Like when we used to play hide- and-seek.”

I dialed my uncle’s number, but it rang with no answer. Deirdre just sat at the table, smoking.

“It’s too late,” she said. “You should have tried calling for help before. Now you’re already dead.”

I ran up the stairs, and there were no thoughts in my head at all, just a very dark place.

In my room, I saw the candle on the china dish and remembered how I’d stared into the flame until my face disappeared, and Deirdre saying, “You remind me of my sister with that look on your face.”

Then I realized it was Deirdre. I mean, Deirdre made me invisible. She was really the fairy queen. Not Faith. Deirdre had been turning me into Faith all these years.

7

IN OUR ATTIC, a mannequin stands against old wallpaper with a pattern of Grecian urns. There are boxes. Also, a guitar and a steamer trunk. I found the shoe box inside the trunk wrapped in a scarf. Deirdre had sealed the whole thing with masking tape long ago. She’d wound it round and round several times.

I felt wrong undoing the tape. It wasn’t my trunk, and they weren’t my shoes—plus the mannequin stared at my hands while I was doing it. Inside was a pair of high heels, blue and slim. They looked new, and under them was the note. My heart started to beat very fast.

8

Deirdre,

Promised you I’d someday tell, so I will. Must write fast, as it’s getting hard to think.

When I knew about Cynthia, I wrote him but got no answer.

So I went to his mother’s house to tell her. She showed me a letter he’d written her from Korea. He’d married a woman there whose house had gone up in flames. His mother was sorry for me, and for Cynthia, and for the other girl. What else is there to say?

The night we met, he’d offered to read my palm. He showed me the Mount of the Moon. He said I would have just one child and showed me the little cobweb line. After that he kept holding my hand. I tried to withdraw it, but he pulled me toward him.

As my marriage to Edward has approached, I’ve looked at my lifeline daily. It’s short and ends in a forked strand, like the rest has been chewed off.
As we stood on the porch tonight, he asked me what was wrong. It interrupted my thoughts, just as I was picturing my wedding—the real one—in a white dress. I tried to pull away, but he held onto my hand, and I almost slapped him. By then I’d already decided to do what I’m doing now. Which gives me a wonderful sense of lightness and relief.

much love, FEB

9

AFTER READING THE LETTER, I stood there for a long time, knowing the soldier who married the other girl was my father. He had driven Faith mad as well. Edward had tried to help but didn’t understand that my father was the one Faith wanted to marry. I knew I had to go downstairs, then, and give the letter to Deirdre, so she could remember that, and maybe understand it. But when I got to the kitchen, I could hear her before I walked in. I felt afraid because I remembered that she was crazy now.

“God knows where he slept last night,” she was saying.

“Don’t worry about Edward,” Suzanne’s voice said. “He spent the night on our couch.” My aunt Suzanne’s voice makes me think of soft yellow things, like spun gold and sunflower petals.

“I’ve been talking to Faith for days,” Deirdre said. “I wish I could stop.”

“Deirdre, keep talking to her. It will help you get yourself back. Your young self. The one that went into deep freeze when she died.”

“Edward did that to me,” Deirdre said. “When he ran off.”

“Faith did that to you,” Suzanne spoke sharply.

“You never liked Faith,” Deirdre said.

“I didn’t care for some of the choices she made.” When I heard it, there was a tingling in the letter where my fingers held it.

They were at the kitchen table, Deirdre disheveled in her red robe, Suzanne drinking tea. When they saw me, they looked startled, like I was a ghost.

10

THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT IT ALL NOW—Deirdre, Edward, Suzanne, and Toby—as I sit in my room, drawing the hand inside Wuthering Heights.

Deirdre is almost sane again, and I’m becoming visible. A little. For example, my lifeline is nothing like Faith’s. It’s very long and grows down, like a root, to my wrist. Still, out of the corner of my eye, I see the hem of a sky- blue wedding dress. It’s been flitting around since I read the letter, appearing and disappearing, fading into the heat. Once I saw it on the staircase landing. That time it left an imprint, like the spot of light I see sometimes after looking too hard at a flame.

⧫

Mary Gayle Newton is a writer and retired teacher whose work usually involves women’s issues. She holds a BA in creative writing from UCLA and an MA in English literature from San Francisco State University. Her short stories have been published in The MacGuffin, Evening Street Review, is acoustic, Potato Soup Journal, Borrowed Solace, Atherton Review and October Hill. She lives in Ohio.

Her story is from the Delmarva Review’s fifteenth annual edition. The literary journal, based in Talbot County, Maryland, has featured the new writing of over 500 authors worldwide. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region.

The new, sixteenth edition will be published later this month. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other major booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author’s Note:  “The inspiration for this poem came from a photo taken on graduation day of Miguel, an English language learner/valedictorian and myself. It was my last official duty as principal. Both of us intersecting with the past and the coming future. Both of us joyful, filled with excitement and a touch of sorrow.”

Last Photograph: Miguel with the Bronx Principal

I lean towards
his eleven-year-old frame, 

in the old auditorium
with its worn stage curtains. So many 

decades sewn into their seams.
Balloons filled with helium and pastel

ribbons wave from the ceiling.
Graduation Day— 

The last day for both of us.
Miguel, valedictorian will go on to middle school. 

Me, into retirement. Uncertainty,
a hyphen between us. His dark eyes like rockets 

aim for the world outside, fly
toward the Milky Way. I wear the ring 

from my staff. It vibrates, a whole planet
full of stones: blue topaz, amethyst, garnet, 

citrine and peridot. I will never take it off.
In the photo, I haven’t handed him 

his plaque. He hasn’t read his speech,
yet. But we are both ready. 

⧫

Roxanne Cardona is a former elementary school teacher and principal in the South Bronx, New York. Her poems have been published in One Art, Pine Hills Review, Mason Street, Constellations, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Poetic Medicine, and others. She has a BA/MS degree from Hunter College and MS from College of New Rochelle. She and now lives in Teaneck, New Jersey with her husband. 

Cardona’s poem is from Delmarva Review’s fifteenth annual edition. The literary journal, based on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, has featured the best new writing of more than 500 authors worldwide. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other major online booksellers and specialty regional bookstores. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author’s Note: “Creating music is an act of vulnerability laying bare the soul. In The Gig, an aging jazz singer moves through the winter of his life. The intertwined relationship of the band, the audience and the music offers him a moment of transcendence, even though he knows every gig might be his last.”

The Gig

I FEEL THE CROWD…you know? Close. Breathing. Talking. Ice tinkling in glasses. Drummer tapping a rim with his stick. The mic, cold in my aching hand. Fucking arthritis. Through squinty eyes, I try to make out a face under these stage lights. Damn cataracts. It’s a golden yellow blur of dark movement. Jax has my chart. His fingers already shadowing the keys. The song’s about death. My own, I guess. Wrote it on the train, biding my time, riding to…I don’t know. Just wanna make the next stop. 

Small talk fills the club. Nervous energy before something begins. Then Jax moves into the song, crystal notes breaking through darkness. A string bass sends low vibrations through the crowd, Dom—dom—da da dom—dom—a rhythm forming. Tish—tish—bada tish—tish—brushes sweeping a snare, the drummer takin’ up the cause. Music moves through me, resonates in my gut, my head, my heart. I gaze up, lifting the mic to my lips. A jagged tone slips out… 

My little girl used to smile late at night when I sang to her, eyes seeing more than I could ever be. Now her gaze haunts me when the cold creeps up with choking memories. Yeah, used to be I had a damn good voice. Killer. No shit. Weed and whiskey and suckin’ city fumes day in and day out left the edges in tatters. The bottom and top, long since a memory, I’m left with a mid-range and gravel. I suppose it sounds like life. Least I’ve been told so by a friend, hand on my shoulder, searching for words, eyes afraid I’ll read her mind. I’m thinking, ragged edges and full of potholes. She’s thinking, Jesus, you sound like shit. 

We’re in the groove now, riffing off each other, wrapping ourselves in harmony and beat. I still can’t see the crowd through the lights, but energy vibrates all around like I’m on one of those thousand-finger vibrating beds getting my quarter’s worth. The talk has slowed, and it’s as if we’re all floating a wave on the sea together. We rise and we fall, and we rise again. Inevitable. Eyes closed, I reach inside. Let me get away, please let me get away tonight. An exhale pushes the ache out my throat, the note fraying. I turn to Jax, and the band takes over, me to the side. They’re on it tonight. Damn. Even the drummer has it going on, which is unusual since he’s mostly cranked full of shit and half out of his mind. Don’t know how he keeps getting these gigs. It’s like the beat lives in his bones. Deep, deep in his bones. 

I join my voice with the rising band, tones weaving together, intertwined like lovers, enveloped in the heat of it, the swinging beat of it. My chest tears open, ribs separating to a deeper place, a hidden space behind my soul. The dark corners exposed, the sound echoing off my life as the aching bleeds out. I wrap myself in the harmonious rapture of solitude, separate and apart from everything and everyone. No crowd, no light, only sound. In the darkness, emptied out, I inhale life, the band breaking through, a hand reaching out to me, coaxing me away from my abyss. Claiming me. Together we spiral up, one sound, the clatter and chatter of the club in the background. 

Eyes opening through a dazzling prism of light, the amorphous crowd resolves into individual faces, line and shadow mapping each unique life with painjoynumbfuckingdruggedshitlaughingsorrow. Yeah. We’re all riding the train now. Applause rolls over me, a shout here and there, then dies away like a wave reaching fingers onto the beach and slipping back to sea. A soft murmur of voices flares up to meet the void. I turn to Jax, mic shaking in my hand. Our eyes meet, and for a flash, it all makes sense, then implodes, a glass house shattering into a million shards. I lift my eyes to the crowd. 

I feel them…you know? 

Close.

Breathing. 

⧫

Richard Hacker lives and writes in Seattle, Washington. His work has won best novel in the SFF category at the Texas Writers’ League and has been a finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writers’ League. Of his six published novels, the last three, Die Back, The Vengeance of Grimbaldand, and The Bifurcation of Dungsten Crease, have been published by Del Sol Press. Website: www.richardhacker.com 

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new short stories, poetry, and nonfiction  from thousands of submissions annually. Based in Talbot County, Maryland, the literary journal has  featured the new writing of more than 500 authors worldwide during its 15-year history. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

 

 

Author’s note: “Few literary characters have achieved the infamy of Helen of Troy; she is a character we’re all familiar with, even if she gets relatively short shrift in the stories. She both is and isn’t a villain, a victim, or pawn. The form of a cleave poem allows her to be all at once and say what she means to say—and possibly even something she didn’t.”

 

Everett Roberts is a poet, technical writer, editor, and former UN Sanctions Violations Investigator living in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in The Write Launch, Beyond Words, and Oberon poetry magazine, where he won the 2021 Herbert Poetry Prize for his poem “John the Baptist.”

This poem is from the Delmarva Review’s fifteenth annual edition. The literary journal, based in Talbot County, Maryland, has featured the new writing of more than 500 authors worldwide. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other major booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author’s Note: “I was sitting by the dining room window when a little wren landed on it, not a foot away from me. The moment was beautiful and I felt as though I could commune with it.  But the wren also got me to thinking about how human interactions with nature have become more disastrous as climate change impacts the Earth. We are all responsible for making the planet more and more uninhabitable, not just for ourselves, but for the creatures who also live here who have no control over what humans ruin.  Our selfishness has privileged human life over animal life, and this poem acknowledges, at least to one bird, that one human is aware of her culpability.”

Anthropocene

A speckled wren alights on the window frame edge.
It pecks at the glass, cocks its head in query.

aaaaaaaI think it asks, as it cocks its head in query,
aaaaaaaWhy do you spoil the Earth,

why do you kill? How we have despoiled the Earth:
polar ice slices like cake off glaciers into the ocean. 

aaaaaaaGlaciers shrink and hurricanes churn the oceans,
aaaaaaaturn flood plains into floods. Coral bleaches. 

Water so warm, whales can’t reproduce. Coral bleaching,
pelicans smeared with oil, dead fish floating, 

algal blooms. Yes, I want to say, we are floating
death against you, little one, against all of you— 

aaaaaaaBecause of us, the world is against you, all of you—
aaaaaaaeven this speckled wren on the window frame edge.

⧫

When she’s not writing, JC Reilly crochets or practices her Italian, and serves as the managing editor of the Atlanta Review. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Santa Clara Review, Rougarou, Barely South, Pine Row, and others. Her southern gothic novel-in-verse, “What Magick May Not Alter,” was published by Madville Publishing (2020). Her blog: jcreilly.com

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new poetry, short stories, and nonfiction prose from thousands of submissions annually. Based in Talbot County, Maryland, the literary journal has  featured the new writing of more than 500 authors worldwide during its 15-year history. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author’s Note: “Sweet gum” celebrates the remarkable sweet gum tree; it also praises—well, praise, which it sees as another face of rage and mourning; it sees rage as also a kind of praise, praise of what could be and isn’t.  Some literature seems to suggest that to celebrate anything is to wallow in privilege and ignore all the world’s appalling misery, that misery and evil are inherently more real than joy.  This poem doesn’t agree.

Sweet Gum

       Liquidambar styraciflua

On the sandy track, a smashed squirrel boils
up fresh maggots when stirred with a hand,
refuse of the same old haste and waste,
while the bright October wind sifts down
sweet gum leaves over gray fur and crushed
flesh, reminding the springing squirrel-
mind that black gum leaves turn red, and sweet-
gum leaves—hanging among their caltrop-
seeds—turn purply-black; but that’s naming
for you in a life where we learn late
or not at all, and at least sweet gum
smells sweet, amber-sap native of a new
world which was always the same old world:
bite the sandy stem of a fallen
star-shaped leaf and you’ll catch myrrh-resin,
breathe up incense, even as you feel
its grit grate in your teeth and must spit
and spit. The same old world’s awash
in those telling the same old story:
the one where meat sliding into maws
of ivory worms is always more
real than the life that carried it here
on five-clawed feet, death never less than
appalling, the grit always harsher
than the sassafras-tang of the sap
is bright; where joy is so bourgeois
that they’re ashamed to own the fine
of these few minutes standing on sand
beside the dead, to gnaw the gritty
stem of a leaf whose life has sunk back
into its tree. But today, strangely,
you remember that in this sudden
second, you can pause, you don’t always
have to collude while that same old
story eats all the other stories;
that this wringing place has many names;
that another face of all the rage
and grief is praise. As these maggots praise,
curling like ecstatic toes in their first
first feast, refusing to waste anything.
As this gum tree praises, releasing
deep-purple five-pointed stars into
the shining morning, alligator-
barked being whose first name is sweet. 

⧫

Catherine Carter, raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, now lives with her husband in Cullowhee, NC, near Western Carolina University, where she is a  professor in the English education program. Her most recent full-length collection is Larvae of the Nearest Stars (LSU Press, 2019). In addition to the Delmarva Review, her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2009, Orion, Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, Ashville Poetry Review, and Ploughshares, among others. On a good day, she says she can re-queen a hive of honeybees and roll a whitewater kayak. On less good days, she collects stings, rockburn, and multiple contusions. Website: https://catherinecarterpoetry.com 

Over its 15-year history, Delmarva Review has published new literary poetry and prose by over 500 authors from 42 states, the District of Columbia, and 16 foreign countries. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Both print and digital editions are available from Amazon and other major online booksellers. The print edition is also available from regional specialty bookstores. Website: https://delmarvareview.org/

Author’s Note: “During the first year of the pandemic, with its horrifying death toll, life became local and confined. Yet my sense of the world and its accents had never been sharper. With borders closing and distrust mounting, language felt increasingly significant, a means of maintaining our humanity. All the words that have come to us from elsewhere were like pebbles found on the beach, solid and resonant, the mind, as always, left to sort and array them.”

Second Language

Harder to net foreign words, those slippery verbs
lacy adjectives, mulish nouns. Cognate to the old
but more porous, the child busily acquiring. Yet
we easily recall Arno, Danube, Limpopo, Yangtze.
Passport safe in a drawer, pandemic borders closed.
When my daughter asked how I lived with my fears
I couldn’t answer her. Unglamorous angst—
in any tongue so burdensome. Each day brings more
so that rain isn’t a mere slick of wetness on the cheek
but flooded bridges, farms; it is corpse and tod.
After all, here’s a syntax, a web, declarative system
by which we point and name. On the beach
lies a welter awaiting some coherence of the mind
or not waiting, in fact, the sea’s breathy vowels
opening, closing, a nudibranch pocketing its own gills.
Voices spill from tour boats to the pebbled shore
and the waves translate: copper, haze, restless tide.

⧫

In addition to the Delmarva Review, Carol Alexander’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, About Place Journal, The Common, Denver Quarterly, One, Ruminate, Southern Humanities Review, Terrain.org, Third Wednesday, Free State Review, Matter, Potomac Review, Verdad, and TheWestchester Review. Her most recent collection is Fever and Bone. She co-edited Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022). Alexander lives in New York.

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new poetry, short stories, and nonfiction prose selected from thousands of submissions annually. Located in St. Michaels, MD, the literary journal has featured the new writing of more than 500 authors worldwide during its 15-year history. About half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org

Author’s Note: “It can be nice to travel, or just to think about being somewhere else. But some days where we already live approaches perfection. It was a September day after a period of oppressive weather that spurred “A Letter from Here,” a poem that celebrates what is instead of what might be.“ 

A Letter from Here

The weather cleared today, although
it wasn’t expected, and now the sky
is a soft blue, a light breeze 

rocking the locust leaves, and it is
comfortably warm, not oppressively hot
as before. Days like this

it seems there is no better place to be
than here. Imagine, if I were elsewhere
I would not experience this, if

I were elsewhere, it might be raining,
or too hot or too humid, or both. If I were
elsewhere I could not write a letter from here.

⧫

Matthew J. Spireng won the 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize for his book Good Work (Evening Street Press). An 11-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of two other full-length poetry books, What Focus Is and Out of Body (winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award,) and five chapbooks. His poems have also appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Louisiana Journal, and Poet Lore. Spireng lives in New York. Website: matthewjspireng.com 

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new poetry, short stories, and nonfiction prose selected from thousands of submissions annually. Publishing from St. Michaels, Maryland, the literary journal has featured the new writing of more than 500 authors worldwide during  its 15-year history. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. The journal is available in paperback and digital editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers. Support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org