Author’s Note: “As an archeologist I often think about what becomes an artifact. One morning I was walking along a cove on the Chesapeake Bay. I was by myself, yet realized I am never truly alone. My family and friends come easily into my mind, often when I see something in nature or art that reminds me of them. I wrote this while trying to capture how a physical object can connect you to a person.”

low tide

Boots at the high-tide mark,
bare feet on sand and shell-wreck.
Pick up an iridescent shell, think, her.
Pick up a smooth flat stone and think, him.
Find a tiny spiral fossil, think, her.
Fill the pocket, feel it weigh and start to drag, wish for more
pockets. Wish to want less. Walk and gather. 

Waves a steady hush unnoticed until the crab boat chugs by,
drowning out the sound of stone-shell steps. The waves
transform, they rush and gambol like children
hurrying to be first. Tumble and crash. 

Small mountain shapes, the waves’ leavings
undulate and measure how far the water has receded.
I think of my grandfather as I always do.

I am so often not lonely, yet yearn to be understood, heard.
I carry them all with me, weighted in my pocket, or hiding in folds
of memory. I’ve returned to my boots. My hands remember
just how to hold these heavy, unwieldy things.
There are easier ways. I know them. Today, I do not wish
to be else. 

⧫

 

Lara Payne lives in Maryland. She is a former archeologist and now teaches writing to children and, on the college level, to veterans. Her poem “Corn Stand, 10 ears for two dollars” was a winner of the Moving Words Competition and placed on buses in Arlington, Virginia. Her poems explore the environment and the hidden work of women. In addition to the Delmarva Review, they have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Mom Egg Review.

 

“low tide” is from the fifteenth annual Delmarva Review, an independent, nonprofit literary journal that selects the most compelling new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from thousands of submissions annually. It is designed by its founders to encourage the most outstanding new writing for publication. The journal is available worldwide 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: “The germ for this story came to me one night when I drove past a woman working all alone in a largely glass booth. After thinking about how awful the job must be, it occurred to me that a literal and symbolic separation from the world might be exactly what some people desire.”

Booth

ANISE WATCHES THE WORLD through bulletproof glass. For nearly four years, five nights a week, she has been the lone sentry in an illuminated booth with acres of empty cars lined up behind her. Anise loves her booth. There is no time of the day, no place in her world, in which she feels more protected or more at peace. She knows every inch of the interior, finds comfort in each small dent in the metal countertop and each tiny scratch in the glass that she imagines only she notices. She doesn’t mind that there is barely enough room for one person. Not having to work with other people is the best part of the job. 

An SUV pulls up to the booth. Unseasonably warm air greets Anise as she slides her window open. The driver keeps his eyes on the electronic device in his hand while shoving his ticket and credit card in her direction. A stream of cold air escapes his air-conditioned vehicle. 

“Forty-eight dollars.” The price for a car to sit in long-term airport parking for four days. The man grabs his receipt, raises the window to reseal himself inside the car and is gone. 

It’s a slow evening, and Anise turns her stool toward Tyler Avenue and extends her legs under the counter. Panels of glass across the upper half of the booth provide views in three directions. To her left, rows of cars sit in amber circles of light under evenly spaced lamps; to her right, just beyond a column of cypress trees, cars quietly make their way up the on-ramp and onto the freeway. Directly in front of her, thirty feet of asphalt separates her booth from the street, and beyond that, a row of small businesses. From left to right, there’s the taqueria, a Quik-Stop, the 24-hour Laundromat, and Bernie’s Liquor. The neon signs that line the windows are so familiar that she notices when a light is out, like the pink and blue Coors Light sign at Bernie’s that tonight says “Coo ight.” 

A young couple leaves the Laundromat laughing so hard the woman has to set her armful of folded clothes onto the hood of their car before she can catch her breath. The man, barefoot on this warm autumn night, pulls one of her bras from a plastic laundry basket and acts as if he is trying it on. They burst into another round of laughter. It’s like watching television with the sound off. 

It is a perfect evening, safe and silent, when Anise feels a blast of hot air. Before she can react, a man has entered her booth. “Don’t move. I mean it.” He shuts the door behind him. His arm, damp with perspiration, brushes against hers as he ducks under the counter.

It takes Anise a moment to comprehend what has just happened. Desperate efforts to refute her senses—this is not what it seems—are quickly vanquished by the undeniable presence of a man crouching under the counter directly in front of her. She has a vague awareness that she is supposed to do something, but her ability to focus is battered by waves of panic. A dizzying minute passes before a lesson from her training somehow surfaces. 

“I have less than a hundred dollars in cash.” Just saying the words helps. “The rest I can’t get to.” 

The man lifts his head just enough to peek over the counter. He fixes his eyes on the stores across the street. “I’ll be gone soon enough.” The voice is raspy. “I don’t want to spend any more time with you than you do with me.” 

She rises from her stool, waiting for the right moment to bolt. She glances at the door and notices that it is not quite shut. How many times has she complained about that latch? Her manager promised to get it fixed weeks ago. And now look what has happened. She takes a deep breath. But just as she is about to make a break for the door, the man turns her way and grabs her leg. 

“Sit down.” His fingers dig into her thigh through the thin cloth of her uniform pants. “You’re not going anywhere.” 

He releases the leg and motions for her to get back in her seat. She settles onto the stool as far back as the booth will allow but still only inches from the intruder. 

He turns his attention back to the row of stores, and several quiet minutes follow. Slowly her breathing returns to normal; her mind stops spinning. The arrangement allows each of them to see the other person’s face reflected in the glass. Although he appears to be her age—early twenties—Anise can’t help but think of him as a boy. The harsh fluorescent bulbs that light the booth exaggerate the redness of his acne. His tee shirt is stained around the collar and too small for him, and the way his dirty hair falls in uneven lengths across his damp neck tells her that he cuts it himself. 

A police car pulls up to Bernie’s Liquor and parks across three spaces directly in front of the store. Two officers rush inside. 

“You robbed the liquor store?” The words are out of her mouth before she realizes it. She braces for his reaction, raises her arms into a defensive pose. 

“I tried to rob the liquor store.” He says this in a whisper and with a hint of regret, as if he were talking to himself. Nothing like the menacing response she was expecting. 

The police officers return to the parking lot and stare out at the night. The clerk, a thin man in a light blue vest, stands next to them waving his arms and pointing in several directions. 

“He had a bat.” He seems to be inviting her into a conversation. “A baseball bat. Under the counter.” 

“And what did you have?” She says the words cautiously. Who knows what might provoke him? 

“Nothing.” “No gun?” 

“I wanted him to think I had a gun.” 

It takes a few seconds to fully process his answer. No gun. Obviously, no weapon of any kind. He’s not a dangerous criminal. He’s just a stupid boy whose half-baked idea to rob a liquor store has blown up in his face. This changes everything. He’s the one hiding from the police, the one with everything to lose. She will not surrender her booth to this intruder. One of them has to go, and it won’t be her. 

“You need to leave.” She is encouraged by the strength she hears in her voice. “This is my booth, and it’s made for one person.” 

“I’ll be out of here soon.” 

A weak response, his words laced with uncertainty.

A car pulls up to the window. The boy crouches beneath the counter and rotates his body until he is facing her. They make eye contact for the first time. 

“Be smart,” he says. “I could hurt you.”

She does not believe him.

Anise slides the window open. Car exhaust and the din of the evening spill into the booth. She thinks about making some sort of gesture—raising her eyebrows or lifting a finger. Something to indicate that things are amiss. But the woman behind the wheel doesn’t look at her. Anise clears her throat to draw attention, but the driver only pushes her ticket toward Anise in a dismissive manner. 

“Thirty-six dollars.” 

She makes change from a fifty-dollar bill, puts the money away, and hands the woman her receipt. Silence returns as she slides the window closed. 

The boy turns his attention back to the scene unfolding in front of the liquor store. His presence fills the booth. He smells like damp leather and rotting leaves, and she can hear each raspy breath. A pulse of anger rises inside her. He has no right to do this to her. 

“Time for you to go,” she says. “Where’s your car?” 

“I don’t have a car.” 

“You thought you could just walk away from a robbery? What kind of plan was that?” 

“If I could afford a car, I wouldn’t be here.” 

“What about a partner? You got a partner, or did you think this up all by yourself?” 

He doesn’t answer. 

“Don’t tell me,” she says. “You have no partner because you have no friends.” 

“Fuck you.” 

“Now there’s a snappy comeback. Imagine a witty guy like you without friends.” 

“Fuck you.”

“You said that already. Why don’t you just leave?”

The police search the area around the liquor store with flashlights large enough to serve as weapons. One officer disappears into the alley behind the store. The other peers into a dumpster on the side of the building. 

“The cops will be here pretty soon,” she says. “This booth is an obvious place to hide.” 

“Just a few more minutes, and I’m out of here.” 

“On your way to jail.”

“I’m not going to jail.”

“You wish.” 

The police officers get back into their car and ease their way out of the parking lot. A searchlight on the side of the vehicle moves from target to target—a pickup parked on the street, cartons stacked on the side of the laundromat. 

“Definitely not jail,” he says.

“You been in jail before?”

He pauses several seconds before replying. “Not exactly.” 

A plane takes off on a nearby runway. Anise can feel the powerful engines—a deep vibration rumbling through the booth. But from where she sits, she cannot see the plane.

Her legs, tucked under the seat of her stool all this time, begin to cramp. She rotates her chair until she is facing the freeway and allows her legs to dangle freely. The onset of darkness has turned the cars into pairs of headlights that sparkle and disappear as they make their way up the on-ramp. She used to pass the time creating stories about who might be in the cars and where they might be headed. Always stories about escape. A teenage girl escaping the taunts and the teasing, the cruel comments and vulgar insults they knew she could hear. Escaping to a place where unattractive girls simply blend into the background, unseen and unreachable. A place where you can start over. Where no one sends hateful emails or pretends to find you attractive just to set you up for humiliation. A place with no one to disappoint. A place without evaluation. Without failure. 

She spins her chair back toward Tyler Avenue and finds the boy has adjusted his position on the floor and is gazing up at her. She has the sense that he has been watching her for a long time. 

“What are you looking at?” she says.

He stares another long moment before responding.

“I think you and me are a lot alike,” he says.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“You probably think no one gets you, but you’re wrong.” 

“I think no one cares what you think.”

“You just let them win.”

“What do you know about anything?”

“I know I wouldn’t want this job.”

“Or any job, apparently.”

The boy steals another lengthy gaze before turning his attention back to the scene across the street. A man in a tattered olive jacket, bent at the waist and possibly homeless, drags his right foot as he approaches the liquor store. The clerk, who has remained in the doorway, blocks the man’s entrance. Their conversation is animated. The clerk glances around while he speaks, as if the thief might be within sight. 

“Tell me this isn’t a shitty job,” the boy says. 

“Maybe for some people.” 

“It’s dangerous, too, isn’t it? You sitting out here by yourself?” 

“No,” Anise says. “Actually, it’s safe. When the door latch works, it’s very safe.” 

“You ever get scared?”

“Not when I’m in here.”

The clerk steps inside the liquor store, leaving his visitor standing in the doorway. He returns a minute later with a brown paper bag. No money changes hands. The raggedly dressed man wraps his fist around the top of the bag and leaves. The clerk goes back inside. Except for the “Coo ight” sign, it’s almost as if everything outside the booth is back the way it’s supposed to be. 

“When did it first hit you that they had been lying?” the boy asks. 

“That who was lying?” 

“I was ten,” he says. “My mom told her boyfriend that I wanted to be a rock star. He looks at me for a minute, not saying anything. It’s like he’s trying to imagine me on stage or driving a fancy car or something. Then he says, for that to happen, I would need either talent or good looks. And that he’s heard me sing. So he says, from what he could tell, I was oh-for-two. Oh-for-two. He says it a couple of times, then busts out laughing. And all my mom does is slap at him playfully. Like he said something he shouldn’t have. Not that he was wrong, but that he shouldn’t have said it in front of me like that.” 

“Is this where I cry?” she asks. “You didn’t get all the love you needed as a child, and now look at you. A life of crime.” 

“I’m just saying. I learned something.” 

“So, what’s the moral of the story? That the world owes you?” 

“Just the opposite. I learned that the world doesn’t owe me shit. So don’t expect anything.” 

“Poor baby,” she says. “Maybe people get what they deserve. You ever think of that?” 

“Is this what you deserve? Hiding in this booth?”

“I’m not hiding. I’m working.”

“If you say so.”

She considers the boy’s reflection in the glass. His face is flat, his eyes a little too far apart. It’s the kind of face that is easy to ignore or, if you notice it at all, to dislike. 

“How long?” he asks.

“How long what?”

“How long are you going to stay here? In this job. In this booth. I mean, after a while, what have you got?”

“Don’t talk to me anymore,” she says. “There’s nothing about me you need to know, and there is nothing about you I want to know.” 

“Look what they’ve done to you,” he says. “Look at what you’re letting them do.” 

“The cops are gone,” she says. “This would be a good time for you to leave.” 

“Sure, I’ll leave.” The boy rotates toward her and adjusts his body into a position as close to sitting as the space will allow. “On one condition. I’ll leave right now, right this minute. If you’ll do one thing for me.” 

“You’ve got to be kidding.” She sighs loudly to indicate what a fool she takes him to be. “God, I should have known.” 

“Nothing like that,” he says. “What the hell is the matter with you?” 

“All right then, what? What is the one thing you want me to do that will finally get you out of my booth?” 

“Tell me that you’ll leave, too.” 

“Are you insane?” she says. “You want me to leave with you? And then what? Help you with your next attempt at armed—or I should say, pretend-to-be-armed-robbery?” 

“I don’t want you to leave with me. That’s not what I’m asking.” 

“What then? What are you asking?” 

“I just want to hear you say it,” he says. “I want to hear you say that someday, in the near future, you’re going to walk away from this job. Instead of hiding from the world, you’re going to get out there and face it. You’re going to tell them, ‘Here I am, and if you don’t like it, tough shit.’” 

“You are absolutely out of your mind,” she says. “Not to mention that you are hardly in a position to negotiate anything. So please. Just go and leave me in peace.” 

“Say it. Say it, and I’m gone. Tell me you’re going to walk out of here someday and not look back.” 

“And what would that do for you? Why should anything I say make any difference to you?” 

“It’ll make me feel better, all right?” he says. “Let’s just say I like to help people, OK?” 

“Let me get this straight,” she says. “You’re the one hiding from the cops, and I’m the one who needs help?” 

“It’s the first step. You won’t be saying it to me. You’ll be saying it to yourself.” 

She forces a laugh. “The first step toward what?”

“The first step toward living a real life.”

“A real life?” she asks. “You mean a life like yours? No, thanks.”

“I get that my life’s not so great,” he says. “In fact, lately, it pretty much sucks. But it’s my life, you know? And I do what I want.” 

“What does that mean? Are you actually stupid enough to try another robbery? The next guy is likely to have a gun under the counter.” 

“That’s possible.”

“Is that what you want? To die?”

“On the contrary. I want to live. And so should you.”

She can feel another plane taking off. She notices for the first time that her booth seems to rattle ever so slightly with the vibration. 

“I’m going to say this one last time,” she says. “You need to leave.” 

“Look, I know how it is,” he says.

“Just stop talking. Can you do that? Stop talking and go?” 

“You think you’ve got it all worked out, but you don’t.”

“I said stop.”

“You don’t have to stay here.”

“Would you please shut up?”

“Honestly,” he says. “It hurts me to see you like this.”

Now he has gone too far.

“And just who the hell do you think you are?” She is so furious she wants to slap his face. “I’ll tell you who. You’re the guy in high school who sat by himself at lunch, who couldn’t get a date for the prom. The prom? Hell, any date. No dates and no friends. Who would even want to be seen with the likes of you? You’re a stigma. Social poison. Worse than worthless. How am I doing?” 

His eyes widen, but instead of the anger she anticipates, she finds a quiet resignation. 

“You left some things out,” he says.

“Such as?”

He lifts his left hand above his head and slowly turns his arm until his inner wrist is facing her. She sees two scars traversing the width of the wrist, severe red lines intensified by the harsh light and his pale skin, jagged as if inflicted in desperation and leaving little doubt about the intent. 

“Looks like you were serious,” she says. 

“Senior year of high school.” He lowers his arm. “I was their favorite target. I’d avoid the corridors, walk around the outside of the buildings. Hide between classes. Hide after school. Ditch school. But they find you.” 

Now it’s her turn to stare. The buffoon who couldn’t even pull off a liquor store robbery is gone. In his place she sees a frail, down-and-out figure. Someone who has spent his entire life coming up short. The least favorite child, although no one would ever say so. Pummeled by social isolation and years of unrelenting banality. 

“It was pills, wasn’t it?” he says. “For you, I bet it was pills. It usually is with girls. Not as effective, but not nearly as messy. I guess they found you in time.” 

She responds with a slow nod. 

“The problem is,” he says, “once you start running away, it’s hard to stop. You can shut them out, build your walls, hide when you see them coming. But you’re just giving them what they want. I’m through with that. And you could be, too.” 

“Do what you have to do,” she says. “But leave me out of it.” 

“Come on,” he says. “Just say the words. You’ll be surprised at how they make you feel.” 

“Sorry. I can’t.”

“You owe it to yourself.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“I said no.”

“Please.”

The boy holds out an open palm. When she fails to respond, he gradually extends his arm, the hand moving ever so slowly in her direction. The sides of the booth seem to compress, and she has the sensation of being squeezed into a smaller and smaller space. Soon she is aware of nothing but the hand gliding toward her until it comes to rest on top of her own. She does not pull away. She stares at the rough knuckles, the stubby fingers, the cracked and dirty fingernails. On any other night, she would find this hand disgusting and repulsive. But at this moment, she is aware only of the way warmth transfers from his hand to hers. 

“You can do it,” he whispers. “You really can.” 

And for the first time, she allows herself to think that perhaps he is right. For the first time in a long time, she can feel the tug of possibilities, the stirrings of a long-abandoned hope that, in time, something good might emerge from all the shards and shrapnel. And she thinks, maybe. Just maybe. 

The police car pulls up to the entrance of the parking lot. 

“Damn,” she says.

The boy jerks his hand away and ducks below the window line.

The car’s searchlight runs across the base of the chain-link fence. Then the booth fills with an explosion of bright light. Anise squints curiously in the direction of the police. That would be her natural reaction, wouldn’t it? But she can’t help holding her breath. 

The car moves on.

“They’re gone,” she says.

“Now it really is time to go.”

The boy pushes himself off the floor. For the first time since he entered the booth, he is standing, which somehow makes him more real. A sense of urgency rises inside her. 

“You’re just going to walk right out onto Tyler Avenue?” she says. “Where the cops are?” 

“Better to be out there than in here if they come back.” He slides around her on his way to the door. 

“What about the guy in the liquor store?” she says. “Don’t you think he’s looking out the window every ten seconds? He’d be on the phone before you made it five feet. Or maybe he’d just come after you with his baseball bat.” 

“So, what then?” 

“Across the lot.” She points toward a flickering red light in the distance. “The employee’s entrance. It exits to Howard Street.” 

He grabs the door handle and pauses. “One last chance. Will you say it? Before I go?” 

She feels another plane take off. This one is more intense than the others. More powerful. For the first time, a little frightening. 

“I can’t,” she says.

“Sure you can. Just say it. Not for me. For yourself.” 

“I’m not ready.”

“Of course you are.”

“Not tonight.” 

“You can do it. Believe me, you can.”

“No.”

“Please. Say it. Say it now. We’re running out of time.”

“I can’t.” But she can feel her resistance starting to wane, distant traces of courage beginning to rise. And she wants him to ask one more time. Just once more, to see what will happen. 

And then he is gone. 

Anise stares at the closed door for a long minute before turning back to the familiar images on Tyler Avenue. The scene in front of her flutters like stuttering frames of film in a movie projector; the neon lights blur like melted crayons. After some amount of time passes, she is aware of nothing but her own reflection in the glass. 

Years later, when she thinks about this night, she will remember the boy as taller and older than he was. She will replace his odd features with a face that resembles a young George Clooney, a face she thinks she sees from time to time and one she may never stop looking for. Over the years, she will have reworked and replayed the conversation so many times that even she will recognize that most of the words are her own. But every once in a while, without warning, the feeling returns to her with absolute clarity. Like standing on a ridge and knowing that if she took a step forward, there was a good chance that, although she might not soar, she just might not fall. 

⧫

Jerry Burger’s short stories have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Harpur Palate, Briar Cliff Review, Delmarva Review, and in Best American Mystery Stories 2020. His novel, The Shadows of 1915 (Golden Antelope Press, 2019), explores the generational effects of the Armenian Genocide. 

This short story is published in the current Delmarva Review, a nonprofit literary journal that selects the most compelling new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry  from thousands of submissions annually. It is designed by its founders to encourage outstanding new writing for readers. The journal is available worldwide 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: “Coming on the heels of two heritage surprises, derecho damage to our little farmstead, a parental death, a pandemic and husband’s resultant job loss, then two imminent major surgeries, his news of taking a job 1000 miles away was not welcome news. I was tired. But in the end, as in the end of any recent major upheaval, after the ranting and tears and anxiety, a small light of settling always appears.”

Editor’s Note: Through writing, authors give us the opportunity to connect and learn from each other’s experiences. The short essay concentrates emotions and thought.

An Essay, Probably on Aging

I ARRIVED IN GEORGIA LAST NIGHT, two 10-hour days of driving, gas stations, and cruddy restrooms. It’s different. Warmer. And something else, but I’m not sure what. 

That gardening shed out back, he tells me, can be used for a writing studio. I’m sixty-five, I want to say; I needed that when I was thirty-five. But I simply nod and smile. It was an impetus to get me here, the shed with the promise of seclusion; this I know, this and the dishes he said he would wash and the food he said he would cook, his own laundry, no demands. It worked. 

On Facebook, I tend to “love” far more than I “like,” and I’m not sure why. I’m outspoken about precious heart truths gruelingly learned over ages, but I also want to make sure people know I care. Maybe it’s a great failing, this loving and ranting in the same breath, but isn’t that what’s meant by Dylan Thomas’s “rage” at this endless progression? I don’t know that either, but it sure makes sense, and maybe someone, one person, will listen and be saved in some way, somehow. 

What I know for sure is that my DNA has been linked to a tall man I never met, a man who didn’t raise me, a man who provided the building blocks for my existence but who didn’t want to know this person he found out about in 2018. I’m tall, like him. My hair is dark, like his. Our face shape is similar. In full emotional battle dress, I cried when the news came: “He doesn’t want anything to do with you.” I laid my sharpened sword aside, and my bow and arrows were put away while I wept, but only for a while. And then he died a few short days ago, and my mind is a mess. 

So, in these first full hours in a state halfway across the continent, I organize, I minimize, I shop and help out the man in line in front of me at Walmart whose credit card isn’t working. I leave the store and text my sister about it via voice dictation, only to later discover the text didn’t go through. So, I drive to the strange place I now call home and tell my spouse about it. “I’m proud of you,” he says. “I would have done the same thing.” What I didn’t tell him was that I understated the amount paid. Would he have been okay with me dishing out double what I confessed? I don’t know. Maybe. I just know that I’m doing what I can for now, hoping it all matters someday, in the end, in this end so furiously peeking over my moments. 

We have the sirens of the city here, something we seldom heard back home. There it was the chugging of tractors and the endless moos. I strangely feel as if my time here is limited though. I have more questions than the proverbial youth-inspired pat answers. I don’t always know what I should or want to know. But I’m learning that it’s okay. It’s all okay. 

⧫

Chila Woychik is originally from “the beautiful land of Bavaria.” In addition to the Delmarva Review, she has been published in Cimarron, Passages North, among others, and has an essay collection, Singing the Land: A Rural Chronology (Shanti Arts, 2020). She won Storm Cellar’s 2019 Flash Majeure Contest and Emry’s 2016 Linda Julian Creative Nonfiction Award. She edits the Eastern Iowa Review. Website: www.chilawoychik.com

This essay is from Delmarva Review’s 15th edition, a nonprofit literary journal that selects the most compelling new nonfiction, fiction, and poetry  from thousands of submissions annually. It is designed by its founders to encourage outstanding new writing for readers. The journal is available worldwide 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. 

 

 

Editor’s Note: Ukrainian poet, Vyacheslav (“Slava“) Konoval, from Kyiv, submitted this poem to the Delmarva Review for publication consideration. He has given permission to have it published online by Spy. The timing feels appropriate.

A patriot in a bulletproof vest

Asian tigress

and a brave Kazakh kitty,

purrs quietly sneak up,

meanwhile fear of enemies

as the holiday approaches.

Body Armor factory

fragile girl built

national glory and honor

You, Madina, deserve it.

Volunteer veterans

A battalion is born

from former police officers,

wear a chevron

take the patch and medallion.

Training ahead

blood, sweat, and loss,

shame, I’m in a warm bed.

As small children, we played war

Wooden bow, arrows, and gun

the knife is near a belt,

once, our childhood was full of fun.

We ran through the fields

with a village’s neighbor

taking a sword, a painted shield

without adult worries and labor.

Time has passed

harsh life befell our fate,

Russian missile strikes are mass,

the heart cherishes pain, I hate…

⧫

Vyacheslav (Slava) Konoval writes that his poetry is devoted to the most pressing social problems of our time, including poverty, ecology, and relations between the people–the government–and war. His poems have appeared in numerous European literary magazines and have been translated into Spanish, French, Scottish, and Polish languages. He has participated in public readings of his work in Europe. Slava, from Kyiv, is a member of the Geer Poetry Group (in Wales) and the Federation of Scottish Writers.

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction from thousands of submissions annually. It is available in print and electronic  editions  worldwide from Amazon.com and other major online bookstores. The review is designed to encourage outstanding new writing from authors everywhere, regardless of borders. 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: “Sharing a favorite book with family and friends is one of the great joys of my life. Reading aloud together, especially with children and grandchildren, seems to alter the progression of time and merge the generations. The hours loop back on themselves as children come to a greater understanding of literature, and adults recall their childhoods. Reading Charlotte’s Web with my children and grandchildren inspired this poem. E.B. White’s classic tale raises the eternal question as to whether to try to protect children from life’s hurts and challenges or teach them to smile through tears. No answer, but our spoken cadences spin gossamer filaments between us. I’ll keep rereading my cherished books. Who I was when I first read the stories may be waiting within the pages.”

Reading Charlotte’s Web with Rebecca

You don’t realize the first time through
the spider dies
You are quite young and say
Charlotte must have gone away
and when you crawl into my lap
and ask me to read the book again
I hesitate but go ahead.
Then your tears fall,
and you beg to be in a story with a different end.

I don’t know how to comfort you
or teach the lesson
I’m still trying to learn
about befriending the lonely
and caring for the needy
and spinning art not just for fame
but for people and pigs and its own saving grace
even if we die unrecognized
leave children orphaned
and weather into wayward fairy dust.

You sit beside me now, two years
hence, and we open the book once more.
Your vocabulary much improved
You recite the words slowly to me
and to the little brother who has arrived
to join us in the telling of the story
where we see it’s possible to be
delicate and strong
kind and bloodthirsty
all at once in “this lovely world, these precious days.”

⧫

Ellen Sazzman has been published in Another Chicago, Poetry South, PANK, Ekphrastic Review, WSQ, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, Beltway Quarterly, and CALYX, among others. She received an honorable mention in the 2019 Allen Ginsberg contest, was shortlisted for the 2018 O’Donoghue Prize, and won first place in Poetica Magazine’s 2016 Rosenberg competition. She was also a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her collection The Shomer (Finishing Line Press) was a finalist for the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize and a semifinalist for the Elixir Antivenom Award and the Codhill Press Award. 

Delmarva Review is a nonprofit literary journal publishing the most compelling original new poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction from thousands of submissions during the year. It is available worldwide from Amazon.com and other online bookstores. The review is designed to encourage outstanding new writing from authors everywhere. 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: “ ‘Will You Marry Me?’ tells the story of a young Irish girl who receives a proposal of marriage from a drunken old man on a village Sunday morning. Thus begins her misguided search for power. Everywhere around her, the failing native language, the harsh unforgiving landscape, the hardened critical people, all reek of power lost. An historically colonized lot now warped into some terrible shadow. In such a hostile setting, any weakness laid bare could mark you for life. Nicknames the most lethal of sentences. Your fate reduced to an epithet. No escape.”

Will You Marry Me ?

WHEN I WAS NINE, a man asked me to marry him.

An old man from our village—in reality, no more than mid-fifties—who wobbled past me on his way home from Sunday pub. It was early May, a summer freshness in the air that made all things seem possible.

Perched like a cat, I sat on a neighbor’s sill, soaking in some
rare sun.

The old man startled when he saw me, my legs stretched the short width of the window ledge, my back to its narrow indent. From a distance, I blended with the wall’s facade. Some trick picked up from hours of hide-and-seek. How I reveled when my younger brother jogged past a cottage doorway, or a hole in a turf reek, and I watched as though a sod, a stone, a doorjamb.

The old man cocked his head to one side, then the other, as though to retrieve a hard spelling. Even at a distance, he reeked of old-man pong: stout, sweat, staleness, fag-smoke. Sometimes, Mamma gave a lift to old men thumbing home from town in a downpour. They sat into the back seat with their litany of Thank you, Mrs., thank you, and that sickening whiff. Some manky jumper left on a cowshed peg too long and pulled on without washing.

Right where the old man stood, the sun spliced the lane to half-shadow, half-light.

Behind him, an old shop that hadn’t seen paint since the forties shaded him in its two-story decrepitude. Once, in the decades after Irish Independence, it had been the center of commerce, so clean you could eat off the floors. Or so Dadda told us. Now, rats trapped flies and bluebottles in the shop’s filthy window. Behind them, stacks upon stacks of unopened merchandise, clogged walls and floor space. Fresh meat, delivered weekly in shanks of pink and marbled white, swung from hooks in the ceiling.

Business as usual, each carcass boasted, just like the bachelor owner.

Rumor had it he’d been a genius. Could have done anything with his private schooling. Instead, his mother had coaxed him home till she died, and between her love of scrubbing, broadly known, and his big ambitions, barely known, the decades since had left only one clean thing—his jerseys—a new one every month or so. Bright pinks and daffodil yellows in a sea of tweed and gray.

As a child, I watched from the shop corner as old men and women shuffled in for their week’s messages, pointed to bread and milk and eggs, sitting uncovered in the bold open. As though all anyone could still see was what had once been true. No one dared take their business elsewhere lest they too get trapped in the profit and loss of reputation, traded and sold in the grocer’s nightly kitchen.

There the drunk man stood, one foot in the shadows of the old shop, the other in the sunlight. Even at half past two in the afternoon, any fool could see he was dole-night-drunk.

This Sunday routine was not at all uncommon. Every Sunday, at half past eleven, the priest said the Irish Mass. Men of all ages, in blazers and slacks, lined the church walls. Huddled beneath the sparse dryness of the overhang, they murmured and smoked. Just inside the porch doors, more men thronged next to collection tables and pamphlets. They never came into the church proper, not even to the men’s side.

Instead, just as communion began, I often listened for that exact moment of their exit, that hushed air-leak of evaporated pretense as the men, one by one, held the heavy door for the next and slipped out from the grip of Sunday’s obligation.

Noon had struck, and the pub door had opened.

Even as they left, the atmosphere within the church began to lighten, some sour layer removed from its devotion. Joviality spilled in from the patter of stud-tops across the tarmac as men’s voices lifted in anticipation, their call and response its own kind of sacrament.

From noon till two, frothy pints flew across that bar-top, fag-smoke thick as a clogged chimney’s puff-down spilled through the small windows, the men in their flat caps and damp overcoats arguing hounds and heifers and fair-day prices in singsong accents, loud and lively and lost of all translation to any outside ear.

When the pub door closed from two to four, bikes and cars dribbled from the single street to catch up with wives or children who had long since left for the one o’clock dinner. Lone men— of the many bachelors—traipsed the short length of the footpath to the old road, itself a narrow lane that led out to the marshy hinterland.

On this particular Sunday, I wore a dress I liked. There weren’t many garments among my hand-me-downs of which I was proud. Most outfits, my mother rummaged from the hot- press on a Saturday night, each allotment of woolen vest, knickers, socks or tights, dress or pants, tossed to each waiting child with the warning that this was it of clean clothes for the week.

The old man mumbled something.

Lovely dress.

I preened. Rolled my knee-length socks to my ankles to better tan my winter-white skin. At that hour, the slanted sun struck my neighbor’s gable in such a way that every patch of its glass and concrete twinkled. I knew this. Knew without a compass the exact moment that pebble dash would bask in gold, its slated rooftop, its well-nailed drainpipes, its black window trim, all seized by God’s stage light, roasted for hours like our Sunday gammon.

This sunspot was one of the many simple things I knew.

Just like I knew the cockerel at the crossroads only needed a hint of dawn to start his racket, as though he had sat watch all night long to not be outsmarted by a lowly robin or thrush. On school mornings, when I heard him, in the pitch black, boast his clouded half-guesses that even I knew were codswallop, I turned over for the catnap that took me to Mamma’s roll call. At seven o’clock, from the bottom of the stairs, I knew she would call to us in order of birth, eldest to youngest, each of our six names a complaint and yet, a proclamation. As though we had already disobeyed her before our eyes had fluttered open, and yet, by virtue of our existence, had proved her maternal mettle.

All these things I knew, just as the sun that Sunday afternoon, on that exact windowsill, caught me in its glare and filled me with sensations for which I had no name.

When the old man stumbled over to greet me, I already knew him. His homeward zigzag was not just a Sunday spectacle, but any weekday, at any open pub hour. The staggering. The dirty pants, fly undone, neck-stained shirt collar, buttons loose. Brogues frayed at the toe-line, no polish to cover their age. Sometimes, twine to hold his overcoat closed.

On that Sunday, something in me lit something in him.

I could see this.

It pleased me.

His lips smiled. But the smile held something else for which
I had no name. It said it didn’t like me, and yet, it did. It said I was a good-for-nothing and yet good-for-everything.

Mostly, I knew he saw something.

And I wanted to be the kind of person that people saw something in.

Something special.

More than anything, I wanted that.

It was hard to be special in our house.

Dadda was special because his heart could stop at any moment. Anyone who could drop dead while you blinked got to be the most important person in any room.

The older boys were special because they were lads and had hard homework like Latin, so they could get good state jobs and take some worry off Dadda’s heart.

The older girls were important too, not in the same way as the lads, but they needed help with their Domestic Science so they could get into the honors classes.

The baby—my younger brother—now five, was the golden calf everyone wanted to pat. Him and his golden curls. The summer before, my curly hair had turned from blond to brown, and my front teeth had come in crooked. No more passing from one lap to the next for me. Now, I had a new nickname, Ruby, that ugly scullery maid from Upstairs Downstairs. Most days, all I could think of was the Stay Blonde shampoo they sold on television. If I could get my hands on that, I might have some chance.

The old man threw his shoulder against the wall to steady himself.

Leaned over and patted my knee.

“Where’s your father?” he asked.

“In the kitchen,” I said. “Will I get him?”

Sometimes, these old men came to the door with council forms. Or land grants or some such. Dadda was the village teacher, so he knew everything. That made him even more special.

Master, the old people called him. Tipped their caps.

“No, no,” the old man said, “don’t get him. And your Mammy, where is she?”

“Cleaning up,” I said.

His stench, now heated by the sun, filled the gap between us. Made it hard to breathe. I wanted to swing my legs to the ground, but one of my shoes rested on the hem of his blazer. I felt embarrassed. Had it been anyone else, I might have said, mind your coat. But nothing about his coat needed minding. It felt odd to have a dirty shoe on his clothes. He didn’t seem to notice.

He rubbed my leg where the sun had started its toasting.

“You’re a nice girl,” he said. “You’d make a fine wife.”

Up close, his cheeks bloomed a nasty shade of purple. His nose, sore-looking at the tip, sniffed at me. My own cheeks scalded, like he dared to even think I smelled. I’d had a fine scrub last night. More than he had.

His eyes had a half-mad look to them, like they didn’t know where to land. They darted down my legs, up to my face, over to the old shop, and back again.

It made me dizzy to watch him.

“Lovely,” he said.

Another squeeze. This time, on my knee.

I blushed.

Something felt grown-up. The thing about being grown-up was that you just never knew when someone would treat you like you were older. Then you had to play along like you deserved to be as old as they thought you were. Otherwise, you went back to being almost nine and useless.

But something else too. The way his hand squeezed my knee. The kind of squeeze another neighbor gave me. A squeeze that meant other things. Things that happened in the locked sacristy when the church was empty. Things that neighbor did with his fly down. Things that made him mutter I love you for a short while and then shove me out the sacristy door like I’d done something terrible to him.

Those squeezes.
But new.
Like this old sod was asking me for something. Not ordering me across the lane with some dog whistle. This was different. I couldn’t quite put it together in my head. Some half-shadow, half-light of new information danced around the edges of my mind.

“What do you want?” I asked.

The old man smiled. A wet, sloppy smile.

“Will you marry me?”

His voice wavered, half pleading, half nervous. Loose teeth clattered when he spoke.

My stomach churned, and yet, I was excited.

He slouched lower, closed the gap between us. At this short distance, his eyes had the look of sour milk and a dirty windshield. My auntie across the road said the white of a person’s eyes could tell you a multitude. All her nursing years in England after the war taught her that. I watched Dadda’s eyes daily: foggy, bloodshot, bright, dim. All such reports, I delivered to Auntie, and in those moments, I too felt every inch the war nurse.

The old man stepped closer, as though into the porchway of whatever sacrament had started between us. His blazer now covered my strap-and-buckle shoe. My sideways-seated posture felt more like I was lying down. Something private. Like those blond girls on CHiPs with Eric Estrada.

“That carry on,” Mamma would sometimes mutter.

But it seemed so ordinary too.

I wanted that kind of ordinary.

The old man—his whole head trembling—asked again,
“Will you marry me?”

This was something he asked every girl and woman in the parish. Indeed, the only name anyone had for him was will you marry me.

Yet, I grew in anticipation.

If he thought me special, even his strange kind of special, the kind everyone mocked—”Oh, there goes will you marry me, no wife by him yet”—which, even as a youngster, I could understand, his whole getup head-to-toe, skin-to-bone ugly, still, he saw something in me.

And he was asking me.

It was the asking.

This was what excited me.

My belly fluttered like when the lads at school chased after me for the football. How I’d run faster. Dodge and duck right up to the goal. Kick it in. Scream in victory.
–
My older sisters did that too. Made me run after things. Waved a favorite hair slide or Jackie magazine before me, and just as I’d put my fingertips on it, they’d snap it away, say, “No, not earned yet. Go make me a cup of tea, and then you can have it.”

Like they were the boss of me.

Now, I was the boss.

The old man’s hand inched past my knee. My dress slipped up with his effort. He squeezed. I knew this kind of squeezing. It wasn’t so bad once you knew what was coming. His eyes started to dance in his head. If I were to give Auntie a word, I’d say they were glassy.

My own head felt a bit dizzy. My heart hammered fast in my chest.

This will teach him, I thought. But I couldn’t say what it would teach him.

“I don’t think I want to marry you,” I said.

My answer pleased him.

“I have money at home,” he said. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

My voice was bolder now. It surprised me. What in God’s name would my sisters say if they saw me? They’d make breakfast, dinner, and supper out of the whole thing. Already they had me paired with every ugly sod in the place, Mrs. This or Mrs. That at every meal. Never a nice man. Only other goms like this one.

“I can make an extra bob at the bog,” he said. His hand slid along to my thigh as though his talk might distract me from his journey.

I half smiled, pulled my dress back an inch or so.

This was the best feeling in the whole world, to be in charge like this.

“Not enough,” I said. “What else do you have?”

I was beginning to imagine things now, like maybe I’d get a field from him, or a cow. Not that I’d be allowed to keep them. But still.

Village sounds came in and out. Close. Far away. Hounds groused at the back of Auntie’s. A distant car on the low road drilled round some bend.

But not a person stirred. Just us.

Me and him.

Our own back door opened the next house over. Mamma taking a look at the clothesline to see if any breeze was stirring the sheets. Mamma did this, went from front door to back door to barometer, eyes constantly on the weather, low pressure, high pressure, rain on the way, her hourly reports to everyone and no one all at the same time.

“I’ll buy you a new dress,” the old man said.

His feet shifted beneath him, like he’d lost his balance. His hand slipped, too, and the suddenness of his movement shook me from my reverie.

“Clear away,” a voice roared from behind us.

I jumped to my feet. Color drained from my face.

The old man swung his head just as the woman from the bar landed beside us.

Her whole face fumed. I couldn’t tell who she was more disgusted by, me or him.

“You.” She poked his shoulder. “Go home, you boyo.”

“And you,” she jabbed the air in my direction, “go home.”

Her words broke into two long sentences.

Go.

Home.

Beneath her words, another one, unspoken but right there, on her twisted face.

This exact look freighted with such meaning that I could, from five or six, pick the word tramp from Mamma’s features. Dadda’s, too, him sometimes muttering, “Tinkerish” at the sight of a certain woman in town, the very glimpse of her striding down the footpath in her above-the-knee skirts that left no room for forgiveness, and flowery, too-tight blouses, her large breasts free of all harnessing, enough to cloud Dadda’s face—
Mamma’s, too—with pure repulsion.

Cheap, the air between them said.

Not in a good way like five cans of peach slices in syrup for fifty pence, but cheap in head-to-toe bad. Especially when news broke that the garish woman with her bright blue eye shadow was doing a line with Dadda’s cousin, a fact that might drag us all to the devil’s door with them.

This was the look from the barwoman that day.

Cheap, it said.

My ears scalded. I knew I had done something. I knew that.

Hadn’t I been carrying on with that old lad, waiting to see if he’d get bolder, go for the squeeze in the broad daylight? Was that what I was after? Him to do it out in the open? Thoughts tumbled round and round in my head even as the barwoman’s fury scalded a patch of something terrible into my skin. Some secret she might now whisper to the whole place.

Mind your husband round that young one.

Has a streak of want in her.

They had names for everyone in our parish, and once you got the name, you couldn’t shake it loose even if you had the vet come to de-hoof you.

I wanted to scream.

To scream something at her, at the old man, at the whole village. But what good would that do, only have Mamma come to the top of the road and see all the commotion. And it wouldn’t matter who said what. Her first words would be: “What did that one do now?”

As though she already expected trouble and knew, as she often said, that her crowd would be neck-high in blame.

What good would it do to scream, though my blood boiled from some other stream building inside me that might, had it found its outlet, sound something like: How well you can see this boyo and not that other boyo staggering out of your bar half dead from drink? How well his whistle across the road to me isn’t heard by you or anyone? How come no one can explain to me why I’m petrified not to do what he says in case what . . . in case he blames me, and no amount of explaining will be enough to not have me branded with all kinds of names—mad, Mary Magdalene, the Lord Himself couldn’t stay clean with that one around the place.

I stood, rooted to the spot.

All of us frozen there, like we had peeled back something rotten.

Now, we didn’t know what to do with it.

I knew full well I couldn’t stop whatever the barwoman had seen of me. A flicker caught my eye across the way, the filthy net curtain dropping closed. The shop owner’s smirking face suddenly gone from what must have been full view. My stomach dropped.

It just went from bad to worse.

I had done something dirty. I couldn’t give it a name, not if you paid me.

But I had been carrying on. Others saw it too. Saw right inside my head to that exact spot where I had asked for it. Hadn’t I? Asked for it?

I took off running, dashed past my own front yard, down the lane to the crossroads. With every thud of one foot, then the other, on stony ground, something new came into view. I would never again play that game. That was a bad game. One that could swoop through our front door, in one report, from that foul grocer, or fuming barwoman, and Dadda would keel over, dead on the kitchen linoleum. All because I was caught, like that trollop in town, asking for it.

And that’d be my name.

There she goes: Asking for it.

And did you hear? Herself and will you marry me are doing a line.

And they’d laugh and laugh and laugh.

⧫

Other writing by Saoirse E. Doyle has appeared in Bryant Literary Review, Agave Magazine, White Wall Review, Sweet Tree Review, Big Muddy, The Ignatian Literary Magazine, Entropy, and The Magic of Memoir. Her work focuses primarily on her Irish upbringing and what she carries inside of a troubled country and its history. She enjoys photography, searching for the elusive “perfect chair,” and public speaking.

“Will You Marry Me?” was republished from the Delmarva Review (Volume 15), a nonprofit literary journal that selects the most compelling new nonfiction, fiction, and poetry from thousands of submissions during the year. It is available worldwide from Amazon.com and other major bookstores. The review is designed by its founders to encourage outstanding new writing from authors everywhere. 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: “How important it is to take care of problems when they’re small! I imagined a friend doing minor maintenance on his house. He’d assess the situation, read instructions, and do a good job. The poem shifts in last five lines and moves beyond the literal fix-it. With his clean hand over his heart, he pledges to take care of what needs close attention to be held together.”

The Practice of Small Repairs

A gap. A man, his caulk gun
at first awkward draws a bead.
He recalls with a flush
to read the directions before
the gush and scrape. Seal
and in the end the colors
match and blend so no one
will know it’s not done by a pro.
Smooth, the man stands, tall.
He walks to the sink for a drink
and a wash and he thinks
hand over heart,
prayer or pledge,
this is a seam that will hold. 

⧫

Jeanine Hathaway is the author of the novel, Motherhouse (NY: Hyperion, 1992), The Self as Constellation (UNT, 2002), winner of the 2001 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, the chapbook The Ex-Nun Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Long after Lauds (Slant Books, 2019) winner of a 2020 Catholic Book Award for Poetry. She is professor emerita of English at Wichita State University and a former mentor in the Seattle Pacific University MFA Creative Writing Program. 

This poem was originally published in the Delmarva Review, Volume 15, a nonprofit literary journal that selects the most compelling new poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction from thousands of submissions during the year. It is available worldwide from Amazon.com and other major bookstores. The review is designed to encourage outstanding new writing. 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: “This is a poem about aging, a topic that often comes to mind now that I am well into my eighth decade. It’s rooted first in the three memories of Camp Rodney, where I went as a boy scout in the 1950s. At my age it’s a commonplace that memories of early life tend to be more vivid than memories of more recent times. As these three ran through my mind, I was startled to realize that they were all about the same time and place because they seemed so separate as they occurred to me. That took me to the notion of dissolution, where I know I am headed, as are we all eventually. One of the better-known poems of this genre is Robert Frost’s ‘An Old Man’s Winter’s Night.’ ”

Entropy

My memories separate.
Lose their arc of identity.
No longer imply a self.
No gravity binds them.
A boy at Camp Rodney
on the North East River
decked by Charlie Eyler’s
longer arm, different from
the boy who swims half a mile
in five-foot, tidewater swells,
different from the boy
who hates living in tents.
They are more separate,
than not, cohering
into momentary self
then ricocheting off
on the way back
to the atoms
I started from,
the collection
containing me,
and not me,
randomly.

Arnie Yasinski is a retired college administrator, born American and now living in Ireland with his Irish wife. He’s a father and grandfather with a PhD in English and BA from Indiana University. He wrote his first poem at fifty and has published poetry in four dozen US journals. He has two collections, Proposition and God Lives in Norway and Goes by Christie, both published by 21st Century Renaissance press in Ireland. He earned an MBA in finance from University of Michigan.
Website: arnieyasinskipainterpoet.com

“Entrope” was published in the Delmarva Review Volume 15, a nonprofit literary journal that selects the most compelling new poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction from thousands of submissions during the year. It is available worldwide from Amazon.com and other online bookstores. The review is designed to encourage outstanding new writing from authors everywhere. 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 grew up camping on Assateague with my father and brother. I hadn’t camped there in twenty years, then went with a friend and my young daughters. The sounds were so enveloping, and I felt embraced by place, memory, and also newness. I could say so much about how I love this tiny barrier island, but I kept the poem short, with the hope that the reader will feel a sense of the peace and adventure one may find there.”

Assateague, June

Sleep in a curved seashell, opalescent and grey
all night the surf lulling into nicker

our tent leaf-patterned by moonlight
my daughter asks me to name each shell, plant, insect, bird
I might never stop counting all I do not know

bird and surf and moon-high water
wind in low trees all slush and hoof

once we lived
days of sand
wild horses at sunrise

⧫

Lara Payne was once an archeologist and now teaches college-level writing in Maryland to veterans and to children. Her poem “Corn Stand, 10 ears for two dollars” was a winner of the Moving Words Competition and placed on buses in Arlington, Virginia. Her poems explore the environment and the hidden work of women. They have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Mom Egg Review.

Delmarva Review selects the most compelling original poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction from thousands of submissions during the year. The nonprofit literary journal is designed to encourage fine writing from authors everywhere. Over forty percent are from the Delmarva and Chesapeake region. The book is available worldwide in print and electronic 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: “My love for Baltimore is fierce; I’m proud and protective of my city. I’m also impatient for us to improve, for Baltimore to be a place people won’t be so quick to criticize. This vignette captures the discouragement I sometimes feel that we’re so far from where we should, could, be.”

Baltimore Is Where

IF I STOP BELIEVING IN PRAYERS, it’ll be Baltimore’s fault.

Baltimore is where I learned when to pray: before dinner, at bedtime, kneeling during Mass. Back then, it felt like magic, a longer version of the wish I’d make blowing out birthday candles. Praying made me feel powerful. The Creator, Nurturer, Protector of all things was listening to me say I love you. I hope for. I’m afraid of.

Thank you.

At first, I was too young to even imagine receiving a response. But when, eventually, I discovered prayer is supposed to be a dialogue, I became eager for the holy half of the exchange. God doesn’t just hear. God answers.

Even me.

Baltimore is where I learned the quietest part of prayer: how to listen, discern, receive. I practiced waiting instead of willing. Once I’d trained my ear, I delighted in the clarity of these conversations. Even when I didn’t like what I heard, I never again felt like I was talking to myself. Baltimore is where I came to expect divine answers.

Except when Baltimore is why I pray. Then, it’s as though the line has been severed. I’m again alone. While wrapping myself in words, I wonder if there’s a reason these particular prayers don’t seem to make their way to heaven.

dddddGod, I just want blood to stop staining our streets.
ddddddddddGod, please don’t make anyone else choose between eating and electricity.
 ffffddfddfseffefdfdGod, when will our children know they are legends?

I pray any and everywhere. Running before breakfast, waiting in line, leaving work, I pray. I pray I pray I pray.

Sometimes I want to give up—until I remember how much I love. God. Baltimore. People. So, at least for now, I’ll keep saying prayers like they’re candles on a cake.

⧫

Kerry Graham is a Baltimore-based writer, book coach, and former high school English teacher. Her newsletter, Real Quick, is a monthly glimpse into her writer life. Kerry is a Creative-in-Residence at The Baltimore Banner. This “vignette” was published in the current Delmarva Review, Volume 15.

The Review selects the most compelling original nonfiction, poetry, and short fiction from thousands of submissions during the year. The nonprofit literary journal is designed to encourage fine writing from authors everywhere. Over forty percent are from the Delmarva and Chesapeake region. The book is available 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