Usual Sister Stuff by Anne Anthony

Image | Sam Divita

Usual Sister Stuff

 

—She’s so angry at me. I want her to…to like me.

—Usual sister stuff? The two of you haven’t been around each other for years. You’re restoring a lost relationship, Mary.

My sister’s therapist whispers, but walls are thin. He’s mistaken. Not lost, never was.

~

My parents named my sister after the Holy Virgin. Twelve years before her birth, Karl Landsteiner identified Rh, a blood factor antigen. If an Rh-negative mother becomes pregnant with an Rh-positive fetus, she develops antibodies to fight the fetus like an invading virus. The first pregnancy produces few anti-bodies and continues full term, but each subsequent pregnancy produces more which destroy the fetus’ red blood cells. The physicians took forty-eight hours to identify and treat my sister’s condition but the damage was done—partial hearing loss, cerebral palsy, and a predisposition for auto-immune diseases. My mother’s doctor cautioned her that if she had more children, they’d likely be ‘vegetables.’ My sister was second born in a family of six. I am fourth.

~

—I prayed for you. To be born. 

—Mary, I hate when you say that. Like I owe you something.

—I never knew that.

—I never thought to tell you.

~

My sister knelt before a portrait of Jesus Christ and prayed for a baby sister. Every year on my birthday until his death, my father retold the story of my birth swearing that the Angelus rang in the nearby church tower, a sign, he said, of a call to prayer: That we may be made worthy of the promises.

Soon after my birth, seven years after my sister’s, my parents enrolled her in an all-girls. Catholic boarding academy. Every Sunday, she wept before the hour-long ride, clutched the hand of her baby sister before climbing into the station wagon’s backseat. Along the way, Dad stopped at the ice cream store to indulge her sweet-tooth with a hot fudge sundae. Those journeys lasted two years. She cried still when she couldn’t return to her friends at school.

When I left for college, she was working as a housekeeper at a nursing school where she laughed with girls her own age when they returned from class. Her girlish dimples reappeared after she dropped the weight which burdened her teens. With training, she advanced to work as a home health aide. Her life moved forward until a car swerved around the corner, caught her off guard, and she fell, injuring her back which set the course for decades of back surgeries and incomplete recoveries. In her fifties, rheumatoid arthritis invaded her body, damaging her shoulders, her neck, her hips. She fell. She fell again and again. She was sixty-three when she required a wheelchair. A year later, she developed a platelet disorder which caused hemorrhaging if held too tightly.

~

—You can’t grab her by the arms. She’ll bruise. Don’t you have a chair that lowers?

—No. Most people have no problem.

—My sister’s not most people.

~

The dentist and his assistant attempted to transfer Mary into the dental chair to clean her teeth; when she scooted back she fell forward screaming in pain. The dentist attempted to use a Hoya—a contraption to lift her from one place to the next. While they slipped the wrap beneath her, she fell sideways and smashed her shoulder. Call Transport, I hissed, supporting her back with my hands. I felt the crunch of her shoulder bones beneath her skin when she twitched from her cerebral palsy. Bone against bone. 

~

—Why is god punishing me?

—I don’t know. What did you do? 

—Nothing.

—Sure about that?

~

I ran through the Ten Commandments. I exaggerated a few — ‘Did you kill someone? You did, didn’t you, Mary??’ which got her laughing and stopped her tears. We concluded she hadn’t broken one. God’s actions were whimsical and random, not punishing.

 ~

—I feel joy sucked out of my body.

—She can be unlikeable. Who do you want to be to her? 

Today, my therapist explains about being fair to myself first so I may be fair to others. Growing up with a sister with so much need overshadowed mine, she says, and suggests perhaps I became the hero in my sister’s life, not my own. I argue.

~

—Not a hero or angel, or a saint as my four brothers keep saying.

—Well, then, who do you want to be?

—I want to be someone who shows up.

My therapist gets the look: the waiting parent at the bottom of the sliding board, knowing to catch me as I fall into a self-revelation.

— But first, I need to show up for myself, don’t I?

© Anne Anthony

Anne Anthony credits her steady diet of comic books for her ardent belief in superpowers. She has most recently been published in Flash Boulevard, Flash Fiction Magazine, Levitate Magazine, and elsewhere. Her micro-fiction, It’s a Mother Thing, was nominated for Best Microfiction 2024 by Cleaver Magazine. Find more here: https://linktr.ee/anchalastudio.

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Holy Black by Kushal Poddar

Image | Pixabay

Holy Black

 

The worm of forgiveness works

hard so the rot will decompose fast,

faster than the night of anger you 

desire to forget. 

I have been in that

forest with you; you won't remember 

me though; I have seen the confetti 

of fire minutes after you light up a bush.

It feels easy to imagine the dark and ash

after the cinders, flame, flicker, lighter.

With ease we imagine the quality of dark.

This part isn't so; try hard,

and imagine white, broad blank and 

imagine it so the black may form the figure 

or the word you want the last thing to remember.

© Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar has authored ten books, the latest being A White Can For The Blind Lane, and his works have been translated into twelve languages. He is a co-editor for Outlook Magazine and the editor of Words Surfacing. He does illustrations and sketches for various magazines.

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Cloud Haiku by Joshua St. Claire

 

Image | Johannes Plenio

Cloud Haiku 

 

my neighbor’s grill fire

cumulus congestus stealing

the remaining blue

 

cirrostratus dawn deepening the crow’s caw

 

reflected

in the deep grey

an absence of face

 

stratus sun

the almost-gone

of carrot flowers

 

the weight

of cloud on meadow

my debts 

 

empty highway from horizon to horizon altocumulus dawn

 

stratocumulus wind

the red pines

throwing their heads back 

 

mackerel clouds

                             all that remains unsaid

 

crackle of crow

clouds deepening

into steel 

© Joshua St. Claire

Joshua St. Claire

Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from a small town in Pennsylvania who works as a financial director for a non-profit. His haiku and related poetry have been published broadly, including in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Mayfly.

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A Hollow Bell by Mary Ann Honaker

 

Image | Seats Photographix

A HOLLOW BELL

 

It is not yet the season for hoarfrost. 

The trees, the grass, the streets dampness coats, 

 

without shine. The earth is very old, and 

time and space older.  What is it that cuffs 

 

the universe?  Is there an endpoint, the 

edge of being?  The galaxy is playing 

 

out to the last distant note. Full of fields, 

full of feathers, full of gases changing-- a 

 

trick that the trees know-- our fatuous heyday

clangs to its end.  Fields of junked cars, of 

 

toppled tenements, bloody walls glistening. 

It's the season of thanksgiving, and so 

 

food will be jumbled on the counters.  There's 

a way to do it with blinders on-- hope-- 

 

but it's tiring. The legions of ants are in 

their complex of tunnels, together. My 

 

words try to melt and transform in my throat. 

I want to sit in the middle of love, as 

 

fire burns in the earth's molten core.  I 

search my body for where love resides, walk 

 

through fields calling out love's name. Across 

the lake, divers sink in their search, to them

 

not fruitless; one surfaces with Oakleys.  To 

find love, techs scour the internet, the 

 

searches resulting in lust.  The silent woods 

know the pain of its treeless edges, with 

 

sorrow, roots reach for the fallen.  My 

seeking finds a hollow bell in my chest.

 

I am tired of smiling.  I have flung 

the heavy doors to my sanctum open. 

 

No one enters, and hope is spilling 

out.  I am tired of society, its 

 

exact, mysterious rituals.  My coins 

are spent. Day falls into evening; the 

 

exhausted sun doesn't change.  The light 

scours the earth and doesn't find love. So 

 

the white sky wilts. Even in the bright 

noon of humankind, did we love? I 

 

want to bottle it, seal it in a can; 

it is a diamond found in mud.  Hear 

 

the moon wail over the earth.  If it

is full, it screeches.  A little owl in a 

 

pine hides in the needles.  A silver 

light sinks into the earth, then night's bass tone. 

 

The sky lowers, before pulling back like 

a cloud-veil to reveal night's face.  I am a 

 

strange, long-fingered creature, a penny 

finder.  Soon winter, when the wind will whistle. 

This poem is a golden shovel using lines from Maggie Dietz's “North of Boston,” from Perennial Fall.

 

© Mary Ann Honaker

Mary Ann Honaker

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), and Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023).  Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.

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Estranged by Chyrel J. Jackson

 

Image | Pinterest

Estranged

  

The heaviest footfalls my heart
would ever know came from
family members lined up in
anger at my parents’ front

door.
The loud crescendo of rushing
mendacious feet.
Such a dreadful, pitifully sad
day.

Where life becomes frozen in

time.

No strength to say what needs

to be said.

Out of respect for the newly
dead.

Stifling gasping cries.

Saying last goodbyes to everyone
that made me who I am.
Betrayal once seen and felt can’t 

be unseen.

When you were needed most you

did the least.

Robbers’ housebreakers of my

peace.
All these years later those indignant
heavy footsteps that landed on the
front porch, took with them familiar
faces, childhood memories, traditions
and family history my heart wants so
much to forget.

I can hear vividly the betrayal of those

rushing feet.

Wishing I was anywhere else.
Estrangement comes at a heavy and
piteous cost.
This time, I must save myself.

© Chyrel J. Jackson

Chyrel J. Jackson

Chyrel J. Jackson is a literary supernova and ranked #1 best-selling Amazon author. She was reared and raised in the south suburbs outside Chicago. Black literature influences her writing. Chyrel Jackson writes in the spirit of her past great literary ancestors. 

Previously published works: Sisters Roc’N’Rhyme Presents Poems in the Key of Life, Mirrored Images, and Different Sides of the Same Coin. Her writings appear in multiple poetry anthologies, literary Journals, and international magazines.

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The word of the day is…. by Ken Tomaro

Image | Yan Krukao

The word of the day is…

From Ken’s Gratitude Journal

I revisit my childhood as if we are lifelong friends, saying it’s because so many years ago was a simpler time. And it was, but the reality is I revisit the memories so often because I am fond of those times I held an excitement for anything.

 

And there were many things. Christmas morning. The entire month leading up to it. A backyard full of snow. Riding my bike through the neighborhood on a quiet summer day. Going out to eat on a rare occasion after church on Sunday. Homemade pizza on Saturday night. Inviting Mrs. D. from across the street with us to the flea market on a Saturday afternoon. Swimming at Pleasant Valley Lake. Digging holes in the empty flower bed along the patio. Drinking water from a cheap plastic canteen or the garden hose that had been baking in the sun all afternoon.

 

Now I pay bills and taxes. Somewhere I convinced myself that getting drunk on many Friday nights was somehow exciting. I had forgotten what excitement was, and a hangover wasn’t it.

 

I can’t say waking up in the morning brings any form of excitement but it’s still better than the alternative. Feeding the birds on my balcony and making sure the plants don’t die makes me feel something, although I’m not sure it’s excitement. Contentment, maybe. Exhilaration, no. Enthusiasm, no. Elation, thrill, fervor, none of these is the right word but whatever this feeling is, is a start.

© Ken Tomaro

Ken Tomaro

Ken Tomaro is a writer living in Cleveland Ohio whose work reflects everyday life with depression. His poetry has appeared in several online and print journals and explores the common themes we all experience in life. Sometimes blunt, often dark but always grounded in reality.

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