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The House Was Full of Surprises

By Mary Blas

Twas the third week of “lockdown” when all through the house,
Surprises abounded—thank God, not a mouse!

Julia sat wondering where the day went
Mentally calculating if time’d been well spent.

The U.S.A. jigsaw she’d found in a cupboard
Lay halfway completed—‘cept for those states more inward.

The cleared linen closet revealed massive treasure—
Soap gifts of yore for her new bathing pleasure.

Ice packs and toothpaste, and shampoo—all new!
Paper towels, toilet paper—she found quite a few.

More soap and wet wipes, alcohol, braces,
A grabber for reaching stuff stowed in high places.

Her earlier trips to the new Trader Joe’s
Paid off in spades—with boxes in rows of

Basmati, linguini, ramen and coffee,
Flour and sugar, and sweet caramel toffee.

Sauces in cans, bottles and boxes
Mixes and mixers (even two missing soxes).

Julia breathed deeply—and sighed long and soft.
All those years of her shopping had finally paid off!

 

Spring Ahead!

Spring had come to the South Bronx in 1950! The school day over, we shed our outerwear as soon as we hit the pavement outside St. Peter & Paul elementary school. Liberated from our rigid desks and the grind of the multiplication table and the Baltimore Catechism, we flung schoolbags and jackets at our waiting moms and dashed up the block ahead of them. The first warm rays of sun promised an extended afternoon of fun and our mothers wisely let us run. Wheeling well-worn baby carriages, they turned to each other to gossip and enjoy this respite from housework and shopping. Soon enough they’d be home preparing supper—for now they strolled at leisure—one eye on their racing children, the other on their companions.

Spring brought a season of ritual—both secular and religious. St. Patrick’s Day, Holy Week, Palm Sunday, and Easter were spring events. But May was a special month–the month devoted to Mary. The Sunday after the second graders made their First Communion was followed by the May procession in honor of the Blessed Mother. Each child in the school brought a white flower to the 9:00 AM Children’s Mass to adorn the statue of the Blessed Mother. One special child would place a crown of flowers on Mary’s head. Mass concluded with a procession of all the schoolchildren—led by the second grade girls in their white First Communion dresses—a vision of tiny brides in white veils! The scent of gladiola, carnations, and roses filled the air as we filed out of church singing “Bring flowers of the rarest, bring flowers of the fairest, from garland and woodland, and hillside and dale…….”

It’s 2021 and spring is here again! Like my younger self, yearning to run from a repressive schoolroom—I long to leave the pandemic prison of the past year. The warm days are coming. My mahjongg-turned-walking group is anxious to resume the weekly mahjongg game. My writing group longs to write at the same table, up close and personal! My family hope to spend time together in the country. We’ll celebrate Passover and Easter plus three spring birthdays! But, unlike my seven-year old self, I will not race ahead this spring. I’ll be listening to the doctors for the go-ahead. And then, I hope to race into life—fully and finally!

The Red Bath

by Maureen Johnson-Laird

When my mother worked as a house cleaner, she was often given the keys to apartments. She went to one of her regular jobs one dreary Monday morning and let herself in through the front door. The couple who owned the apartment were usually both out at work so she was surprised when, she heard a loud gurgling noise coming from the bathroom.
___“Anyone at home?” she called out. No reply.
___She put her ear close to the bathroom door. Yes, there was a definite gurgling sound.
___She rapped on the door loudly.
___“It’s me, Sully,” she shouted. Still no-one answered. She got out her cleaning materials to start work, but after a few minutes she decided to check the bathroom again.
___She opened the door cautiously and then took two steps back. A naked man, his eyes closed, was lying slouched in the tub and the bath water was bright red. She recoiled in shock, and tried to regain her composure. She risked a quick glance to see if he had slashed his wrists, but his hands were under water. She was nervous to touch the man’s body, so she stared at him for a long time, wondering what to do.
___Eventually, she lifted one of his arms and peered at his chest to look for any sign of a wound.
___The body stirred. The man awoke with a terrific start.
___“What are you doing, Sully? Can’t you see I’m in the bath?” he said.
___“Sorry, Sir. I thought you were dead.”
___“I must have fallen asleep while I was reading,” he said.
___“Why is the water red?” she said.
___“Maybe it’s because I was reading a red book,” he said. He started feeling around in the water with his hands. He held up a slim tome with a red binding that was dripping with soapy water.
___“Is it a thriller?” Sully said.
___“I borrowed it from the library. It’s a novel about a hemophiliac.”

A Subway Story

by Elizabeth Haak

It was the tail end of the morning rush. The No. 6 uptown subway car was full. Close to the pole stood a thin woman with bleach blonde, stringy hair that hung down to her shoulders. She wore fire-engine red lipstick and a pensive smile. Her guitar was strapped across her flat chest.  An empty coffee cup protruded from the pocket of her denim jacket. We all thought we knew what was coming. But we were unprepared for the screechy off-key sound that issued when she opened her mouth. It quivered in the stuffy air in search of a melody. Half-awake riders straightened up. Readers lowered their folded newspapers and raised their eyebrows. Straphangers craned their necks toward the source of something that sounded more like a cat fight than a Broadway love song, or a rock ’n roll hit.
___A deep voice from the other end of the car boomed, “Miss, I will pay you not to sing!”
___All up and down the car, heads nodded in a consensus unusual among strangers. A woman with a Metropolitan opera tote bag on her lap said, “I’ll chip in.”
___A man in a black fedora who’d been startled awake began to rummage in the inside pockets of his camel hair coat and said, “Me too.”
___She stopped in mid-screech and looked disappointed. Perhaps she thought she had a gift to share and now she was deprived of giving. But then folded bills were passed down the aisle to her. She brightened. She probably collected more money by not singing than she had hoped to get when she started out.
___The subway screeched to a halt at 42nd Street. As passengers rushed out, she murmured, “Thanks. God bless.”
___I forgot about that ride until a year or two later. At the corner of 14th Street and First Avenue, I thought I saw her again. It was hard to tell with the blue mask covering half her face. She sat on the sidewalk, strumming “This Land is Your Land.” I stopped to listen. She played riffs and variations on the tune with practiced ease. She made no attempt to sing—didn’t even hum. I dropped a fiver into her cup. She looked up and said, “Thanks. God bless,” without missing a beat.
___Where are all those subway serenaders now? The brothers who sang “This Little Gospel Light of Mine” a cappella? The blind guitarists, the hip hop rappers and blues artists? Not singing in the subway anymore.

Dumb Luck

by Roberta Curley

There is God
Aka ‘coincidence’ to some
There is blood family
There are ancillary helpers
Friends, strangers
There are beasts of magic
Dogs and cats

Loving bliss commingles
In this checkered mix
Luck perches in the wings,
Taking long naps, then zing!
It awakens bollixed up in its
Own marionette strings

 

Nature on Mute

New Yorkers are tough.

We need to be.

We’re battened down for battle.

Covid stalks our every gasp.

Suspect vapors penetrate NYC breezes.

In the film “Hiroshima,”

Charred faces and seared spirits reign.

Covid carries invisible armaments.

Silently marching forth,

The virus blitzes us.

It hammers sick and old,

Begs young and robust join the fold.

Nature’s gone berserk.

Alert the mothership…

Or head for the Catskills.

 

Spill the Beans

I always fantasized becoming a screen-queen.
My name is Francine McQueen which rhymes with
Corrine and Nadine.

I imagined legally changing my full name to:
Francine Corrine Nadine.
Ironic that they all rhyme with screen-queen.

I envisioned moving to tranquil Aberdeen and
Living in a thatched cottage with a lawn chockfull
Of everything green.

In my happy hovel, I’d hoped to hoard baggies
Of glassine — filled with multi-colored
Lentil beans. How keen!

Those undervalued beans would help comprise
My research team. I’m actually a quite mad
Scientist – and a drag queen.

My beans were too multitudinous for my
Ivory marble tureen, too precious for my
Undependable latrine

No clogging Aberdeen’s sewerage machines,
But an experiment: a novel mixture of lentils
And hot sauce – topped with a squirt of Listerine.

Some declare my concoction obscene, yet
Chefs tout its satiety value AND
It polishes one’s teeth clean!

We Three

by Danielle Boursiquot

They vibrate between my vocal chords, but I never let them pass my lips.
I don’t write them down, for fear of losing the last thin thread of hope to some soul snatching ether.
My cloak of secrecy weighs on these clandestine visits to memory. I imagine my last steps thundering across a flaming threshold when it finally comes time to call their names. But it does not happen this way.

 

Heart Pierced by A Sword (The Girl)

I thought after everything, I needed a mark
Adornment from the thing earned or the thing survived
The embrace of silk, slipping
The weight of a crown, falling
But ink on skin
a declaration,
a confession,
a prayer
all rolled into one
A wordless thing to say to you:
You were named for the one carrying both the scar and the sword.

 

Iron (The Boy)

At the turning of the tide I paused for a sign.
I stood in the quiet space
away from roaring water, trembling earth,
The hungry blaze growing with every desperate gulp of air
I closed my eyes for the vision, but it remained black, blank, then fluorescent white.
I listened for the heartbeat, craning to decipher a message in the rhythm:
It faded more the harder I listened
And the lines deepened in my empty hands.
You were named for the one forged in flames.

 

Unidentified, Unsober, Fall Spirit (Gender Unknown)

I fell hard while climbing my way to you
I swallowed sound and coughed up the primary colors of what you could become
I took backward steps while reaching to our future, trembling before our fate
The soles of my feet bled from the barefoot miles walked on someone else’s back
I rode in the shadows of my conviction, silent, hoping that I would be seen by someone recognizing me as yours
You were named for the dance between the light and the dark.

 

“We have names
that she dares not breathe.
We live in an orb of silence.
Joining hands, we signal her.
She knows who we are”

A Night Terror for Nick

by Desiree Browne

Now I lay me down to sleep,
And dream of the of the boy I couldn’t keep.
His lips forever gone from mine
But he gon’ hear all about himself this time.

Standing tall and strong, I’ve tears no more.
I’m telling him the reasons it shoulda been me
Showing his pasty ass the door.

Outside our circle of light there’s a flash,
Now I hold a cigarette with a long, long ash.
I press the cig into his skin,
His eyes beg me not to do it again.
I go to make just one more burn
But snap awake, and my stomach does a turn.

Was that inside my heart all along?
I’m scared of me
But I don’t know for sure
That dream girl was wrong.

 

And This Is How You Love Me

I knew he liked me because he shared his music with me, and I knew I really liked him when I
realized he loved music deep and wide the way I do. His mix CDs brought me Black Starr; we
swapped our favorite recordings of the standards we learned in jazz class; I explained how
Rachmaninoff lulled me to sleep some nights and that Prince woke up something inside me that
was ferocious and unafraid. We sat down, opened our CD books and played our hearts for each
other.

A heady adolescent summer mellowed to occasional check-ins as adults, even after he got
married. Still, when I think of what I love most about being in love it’s just that—love. The
frenzied pace of swapping mix CDs and download links for the music that feels so intensely
yours, played with the speakers turned all the way up and the car windows rolled all the way
down. As an adult, I long for the electricity of teenage infatuation tempered by hard-earned
wisdom. I want to watch my baby’s eyes light up when talking about the book that changed
everything. I want to see you hug parents, childhood friends, the dog you grew up with. Have
you gotten so lost in the work that feeds you, you didn’t call when you said you would? I can be
mad for a minute, but then I’ll want to hear what you were working on, how far you got. Does it
feel good? Are you proud of yourself?

And I want you to know that if I open my kitchen to you, I’m letting you sample of a little bit of
what’s closest to my own heart, like the love of my grandma who got up at 7 am on Sundays to
cut open coconuts for their milk because canned wasn’t good enough for her family. The look of
wonder on my mom’s face as she bookmarked new recipes from Bon Appetite and then
presented them to her friends at the wine club meetings she modeled after her mother’s bridge
club. Of my father who can’t cook much but always cut my peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches—always on toast—into quarters for me. The love I have learned to carefully
prepare for myself: a Sunday dinner for one, soundtracked by an album on vinyl I think you’d
really like.

Reconciliation of Mother & Daughter

by Danielle Oaldon

You had this laugh-cry that would shatter my late night dreams. Your laugh sounded like
a cry. Your cry sounded like a laugh. Hard for a child to decipher. Sometimes
your laugh-cry would be a joyful laugh from the pit of your soul. A laugh you
shared with him deep into the night. Oh the joy and the love you shared in
those dark hours tainted with cigarettes and beer. It was as if you and him
were the only two under the roof. As if we didn’t exist. Those were the nights
when your laugh-cry was all laugh no cry. That joy would dance its way out of
your gut and fill our old, dilapidated house with so much promise. It was the
duct tape that held that rickety house on Barr Street together. He became the man of the house
located on the streets of that small town ghetto. His presence was his sole contribution. His
presence gained him admission to our party. Treated like a King because Kings are supposed
to take care of their pride. You treated him like a King because like a true King you dreamed he
would stay. When the snow melts, the flowers bloom, and the ghetto streets open up and come
alive you hoped he would stay. That he would choose you and us over the beat of the streets
whose rhythm constantly pulled him. Our home would be more than a hibernation spot. More
than a place to hide when the concrete got cold. More than a place to eat and store his fat in
order to prepare himself for the jungle. He was your love, your reason for being. The love you
gave was unconditional. The love you gave meant he got his plate served before your kids. The
love you gave excused the bruises and beatings from weeks past. The love you gave meant
you
ignored his drug addiction. The love you gave put him before we and we after
he. The love you gave made you a dreamer. The love you gave had you believing
you were his only that you would be his bride. It was that good, hood type of love that
no man could separate. It was everything. He was everything. Until he wasn’t.

Mommy, what about the times when your laugh-cry was a cry? From the pit of your soul. That
soul of yours carried so much. It carried love, pain, shame, and dreams on
loan. When that laugh-cry turned into cries he was no longer your reason for
being. He was your grand reaper. In one night he could turn from your lover to
your beater. In one night the love turned into black eyes and butterfly
stitches. In one night a laugh turned into a cry and a cry into pain. Love
shattered. Dreams taken back. Your soul once filled with joy now conjuring
pain. That pain was mighty and strong. It held the strength of a woman torn,
scorn, and defeated. Your cry would fight its way through your throat and nose
and ears and release a pain that would seep through the walls and bury itself into
my soul. My young, innocent, unknowing soul was learning to hold darkness
before it knew happiness. My soul learned false love over real love. My soul
learned in order to receive joy you must first be burned. To laugh you must
endure pain first. It learned that being a child of a Black woman is the
opposite of easy. The path of a Black mother is hard with hidden demons and
thorns. It’s a labyrinth that lacks sunlight. The journey of a Black mother is
endless and she carries on her shoulders the pain of our foremothers. All she
wants is to swim in a pool of joy and laughter. Instead she finds herself in
the ebb and flow of cries and laughter while her daughter lurks in the
background absorbing her pain.

An excerpt from The Motions

by CMKtheWriter

On a typical day, I do not look like a stray. My hair is usually flowing in its rightful place. My clothes coveted by the women in my social circles. I drove my car off the lot brand new with the sunroof back and the stereo blasting Beyoncé with no attention to any cares in the world. I have always looked like I belong to somebody. I have always looked like I was on my way to or coming from somewhere important. New York has a way of humbling you though. One off day and you may as well be just another peasant in the crowd. Today, I didn’t mind it. I preferred it actually. New York is the best place for a Black woman to feel invisible, especially with a tear-stained face. People do the culturally polite thing and tend to their own business. Sometimes, you’ll catch a smile given out of pitiful solidarity. I typically try not to venture into the rat-infested underbelly of this city but I have just emptied my account purchasing a last minute plane ticket and Net 30 is an unfamiliar concept to clients. It becomes too hard to hold myself together on the over complicated train ride to the airport so I get off at the next stop and opt to use my credit card to call a Lyft.

On Goddess

by Najah

They say don’t make homes out of human beings
But you were my first home
The heartbeat I hear when I close my eyes is yours
Or is it your mother’s?
Or her mother before yours?
In the quiet
I hear that
The circle remains unbroken
Around
And Around
As my daughter came to me in the same way
was birthed from the egg that was formed in your womb
Birthed into the light
to the sound of the drum beat
And blues guitar
through the salt tears of pain and tenderness
this is how I know
when I hold her hand
The future is a vision
for us to behold
Together
And I will never go looking for god again