The literary magazine of Hagerstown Community College
A slight taste of bitter
almond beneath the ever-
present pomegranate. You chewed
a seed, eyes far
away, rosined your bow.
Once again it was time
to play for the assembled,
the few who understood
and the masses, whom your every word passed
over like sea waves,
that shatter, endless,
over and again on the shore.
Robert Beveridge makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances include The Literary Yard, Big Windows, and Locust, among others.
Covering a canvas with thick paint, the way it feels in the body is a song.
And the knit and purl of yarn into a garment is a melody. Hands on birch
bark, the rough curl of it coming off in pinky brown strips, a lyric loved
since before birth, waiting voices chorusing through stretched skin.
Rapt, we listen over and over to tunes that blur the lines between what is
our life and what is another life. It’s how we make code to say I won’t forget
about you, or your pain is my pain, or don’t worry, something extraordinary
will happen to you in some tomorrow you have yet to let yourself imagine.
And the rain is music, the rushing stream, the old man asleep and snoring
on the train. Don’t you know there’s always a soundtrack? If we stopped
saying we weren’t musicians and started opening ourselves to the unsung,
what would those bells sound like, rung together like that, and unafraid?
Rebecca Hart Olander holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has appeared recently in Ilanot Review, Mom Egg Review, Plath Poetry Project, Radar Poetry, Virga Magazine, and Yemassee Journal, among others, and her critical work has been published in Rain Taxi Review of Books, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Collaborative work made with Elizabeth Paul is forthcoming in Duende and They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press). She was the winner of the Women’s National Book Association poetry contest and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Rebecca lives in Western Massachusetts where she teaches writing at Westfield State University and is the editor/director of Perugia Press. You can find her at rebeccahartolander.com.
The zucchini is the shmoo of the vegetable world.
Shapeless and non-descript,
it reproduces abundantly, seemingly overnight.
Yesterday’s small orange blossom
is today’s twenty-pound fruit.
Zucchinis can be cooked by any method known to man.
Fried zucchini, steamed zucchini, roasted zucchini,
boiled zucchini, grilled zucchini, broasted zucchini.
Zucchini bread, zucchini butter, zucchini jam.
I’m sure that someone somewhere makes green zucchini and ham.
Need some filler in almost any recipe?
Add a cup of puréed zucchini. No one will ever notice!
And if they do, I’m sure they’ll love you that much better.
After all, who can ever get enough zucchini?
Just ask your neighbors and they’ll tell you.
Better yet, don’t ask.
Just leave the bag on their doorstep and run away!
Marne Wilson lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Her poems have appeared in such places as Poetry East, Atlanta Review, and Cold Mountain Review. She is the author of a chapbook, The Bovine Daycare Center (Finishing Line, 2015).
At half-past seven it is time to take
our seats. Dinner is ready, and good food
should never go to waste. We try to make
light conversation to improve my mood
but find the effort awkward. You consume
the salmon, squash, and baked potato much
more quickly than I do. Throughout the room
long shadows dance in firelight as I clutch
a paper napkin, soon committed to
the trash along with remnants of our meal.
Tonight we fail to bicker over who
does not clean up. False strife has no appeal.
“The fish was really good,” you kindly note.
I still can feel a bone within my throat.
Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia. Her poetry has been published around the world as well as posted online. Her first collection, Unloosed, and her second, Tides & Currents, are both available from Kelsay Books.
knowing the fickleness of toddlers
and that the food might sit untouched
hoping to hear an elusive, “Thank you.”
I mixed, sprinkled, sowed hope
with the seasonings
but the dish cooled untouched
inedible as the seconds passed
it reminded me again
when we get what we ask for
once it’s become fact and
placed fragrant at the table
it’s rarely wanted
Jennifer Courtney (jl courtney) is the aging mom of three young children and the fiction editor for Postcard Poems & Prose. She has been published at Page & Spine, Black Heart Magazine, Feathertale, and others. Some people like her cooking.
When your soul is screaming
Like it sometimes does
When your body and mind are in a war
That you can’t remember asking for
But you must have
Because they seem to think
You gave them the permission
Put it in your notebook.
When your head feels three times bigger
Than it did at breakfast this morning
And you’re doing that thing again
That nervous tick you have
You know the one
Yes, that one
Scratch it into your notebook.
When your voice keeps getting louder
So much so that you feel yourself deafening
But no one seems to be listening
When they keep paying no attention
And you’re contemplating your importance
In a world so preoccupied
Scream it at your notebook.
When there are things you need to hide
Things no one can ever see or know
Things you need to acknowledge but
You aren’t quite sure how to
Those vile horrible things
That no one should ever carry
Bury them in your notebook.
When you need a constant friend
An unrelenting confidant
A responsible secret keeper
And binding promise
One trust that can never be betrayed.
Turn to your notebook.
November 14th, 2015 was the first instance I can remember feeling beautiful. Draped in a dark blue gown, the bodice sparkling slightly like faint stars just before dawn, I looked in the mirror and realized: I am pretty. It hit me hard, almost scaring away the thought. It almost made me default to my previous mindset that because I am fat, I’m not allowed to be pretty, and that foreign feeling consumed me for the rest of the evening. For the first time in my life I was undeniably beautiful.
It all started at the age of 6. I had chubby cheeks and more of a tummy than the other kids. We were playing pretend on the playground one afternoon and there had to be a monster to hide from, so the other kids appointed me. When young me protested, I was met with a chorus of laughs. One of my “friends” turned to me and said, “But you look like one!” I asked why they said that and the reply was simple, “Because you’re fat and we’re not, so you’re the monster!” With that, they ran off squealing and giggling like the children we were. Perhaps the intent was innocent, only thinking of wanting to play the game, but I cried anyway. From that day on, the adults on the playground pitied me and would often keep me company as I watched my peers pound upon the asphalt parking lot that served as whatever your imagination made it.
“Kids are mean”
“They’re just jealous, sweetie”
“Well you know what they say, sticks and stones…”
The private Catholic school soon became my personal hell. The teachers, the priests, my parents all preached about a God that loved you. A God that wanted you to be happy. A God that no matter what would watch over you. If all of this was true, one question in my mind remained: Why would God do this to me? Make me like this? Make the people around me so cruel? And while, at the time, I was still wholly devoted to the Church, I grew distant from the idea of “God’s everlasting love.”
By the time I was nine, I was invited to all the parties through the year, and was promptly ignored at every single one. This was also the age of every diet I could get my chubby little fingers on. Protein diets, Smart Ones, not eating at all, and countless Weight Watchers meetings later and my hatred for myself and the people surrounding me only grew deeper.
In third grade, my worst nightmare became a reality: The Presidential Fitness challenge. Push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, pull-ups, sprints, and the dreaded mile run. When the pull-ups challenge came, I tried to hide because we had to go up one by one in front of everyone. The harsh yellow of my shirt, combined with my big stomach, did not lend itself to my cowering.
Soon, I was pushed forward onto the chair and told to hold onto the bar above my head. The chair was dragged from under my feet, my knuckles turning white and I willed myself to tug upward; the next instant my fingers could no longer clasp the cold metal and I fell. My face growing red, tears forming in my eyes as I landed less than gracefully on the dirty gym floor. Not waiting for the teacher to say anything, I ran away, back to my corner. Back to being invisible.
The horror continued when a girl, far more athletic than I, looked at me laughing and said “You’re such a cow.” The rage in my little nine-year-old heart led me to do the unspeakable. I hit her, shoved her against a wall. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks as I was pulled away from her. The girl was ultimately unharmed, and we were both reprimanded with no recess and extra prayer.
I started feeling as if God had truly abandoned me. I prayed and pleaded with Him to make my suffering stop, or at least to give me some guidance to get through it. I continued this for years on end, and rarely did I get a response. I grew distant from the Church as well as my peers.
I was learning quickly that to be fat is to be ugly. To be fat is to be untouchable, unlovable. To be fat is to walk through life a paradox; sticking out like a sore thumb and being completely invisible all at once. We are told that fat is a word filled with venom and hate. “Fat” is one of the many words whispered in the chaos of self-loathing, yet it is screamed to me on the streets. To be fat is to be shamed into only eating in hiding. It is to try and will the pudge off your body. It is to be ashamed of the food you eat, the things you wear, the way you walk and talk. To be fat is to be ashamed to exist.
The years following were about the same. The same self-loathing. The same jeers of disdain from my classmates. Their hatred for the way I looked influenced the way I looked at them, and more so the way I looked at myself. Through the next years, I only ever caught glimpses of happiness, like the time when we ran the mile and I was the last one running, and everyone ran with me to cheer me on until I finished. Or when I was on stage singing and no one could deny that I was talented. Or even when I was taken in by the older kids in my sixth grade year when they saw how estranged I was from my peers.
The next year, with my older friends gone to the high school, my depression only worsened when I found myself, once again, completely alone. I didn’t want to be. I had yet to accept that sometimes being alone because you’re different is okay. I was a square peg being shoved in a circle hole, and the harder I tried to shove myself into it, the more it chipped away at who I was. I came home every night and cried, sometimes for hours. It was the year of true hatred. It was the year of losing weight for all the wrong reasons, and in all the wrong ways. It was the year of promising everyone “I’m fine.” It was the year of too many tears. And it was the year my parents decided that I wouldn’t be returning to the private Catholic school.
Eighth grade was my first year in a public school. It was the first year of healing. The first year of making friends. The first year of figuring out that I really was talented. It was the first year someone told me they loved the way I looked, and meant it. It was the first year of eating when I was hungry, and having no shame about it. It was the first year of finding “my people.” It was the first year the I had fun in a gym class. It was the year I got into Barbara Ingram School for the Arts. It was the first year I felt even a shred of self-worth.
November 14th, 2015 was the first instance I can remember feeling truly beautiful. Draped in a dark blue gown, the bodice sparkling slightly like the faint stars just before dawn, I realized: I am pretty. It hit me hard, almost scaring away the thought. Almost defaulting to the previous mindset that because I am fat, I’m not allowed to be pretty. Looking in the mirror, I decided that I would no longer be a walking paradox. I would no longer be defined by a number on the scale, or the names people called me. I am Beth, and that is enough. I am happy. I am fat. I am undeniably beautiful.
Please, love, do not fear the distance;
For our futures are surely entwined,
The oceans of space how they glisten.
Although I was not raised a Christian,
I still pray to some form of divine,
Please, love, do not fear the distance.
I often feel like a sailor on mission,
Striking out in unwavering line,
The oceans of space how they glisten.
This is not a war of attrition,
But still I fight hard to press forward through grime,
Please, love, do not fear the distance.
Money has not effect on my vision,
The trips will all turn out just fine,
The oceans of space how they glisten.
Separation is a temporary condition,
10,000 miles no object to time,
Please, love, do not fear the distance,
The oceans of space how they glisten.
when I think of that day
it is the soft brown of her eyes
that I remember most vividly,
the setting sun reflecting
in their tearful glistening
it was a warm day in Spring
yet I recall shivering inside
chilled amid an emotional ice storm
I was so young, so impetuous
unprepared to fully consider the future
naïve to the ways of regret
now, from time to time
I walk passed that secluded spot
maybe just to visit with
that part of myself
that I left there
without even realizing it
on that long ago day
under that willow tree
where we said our goodbyes
in sad and quiet voices
there
under that willow
where, like a damn fool
I left her weeping.
-2 Sept 2016
