by Meta Marie Griffin

 

I will not ask for relief;

only for stamina to make it through the night.

I cannot ask for a convenient belief,

instead an enigmatic mosaic full of darkness and light.

 

I do not desire magic in a bottle.

but the need to pay attention

to the miracle of butterflies and flight,

and all the life around me that is so often unseen.

 

I do not desire a throng of friends,

help me to find love in my own skin

so that when we meet,

you will recognize my face.

 

I will not wish for a cure.

I only need the strength to take that next step

and when I reach the top I will wait for you there.

I will leave behind this little prayer.

by Traci Barr

My grandmother, Verna,

was a true Southern belle,

worried what the neighbors would think,

exquisitely beautiful,

delicate, fragile, willful, vain.

 

My Lord, she had cotillions and corsages,

the vapors, gentleman callers,

the whole damn archetypal nine yards.

 

I imagine she bought her groceries

at the local Piggly Wiggly.

There wasn’t a Whole Foods to shop in –

not back then.

 

When I was little,

I called her long distance every Sunday,

just to hear her sweet Southern drawl.

I had a long list of favorite words

that I would ask her to repeat.

And then I, a budding cook, would beg her to tell me,

for probably the hundredth time,

the story of how hushpuppies got their name.

“Hush, puppy,” she would say, over and over again,

as she described how those little balls of fried cornmeal

were tossed to quell the yapping of hungry Confederate dogs.

 

Ever the paragon of Southern manners,

she always patiently obliged me.

 

Grandma often drank too much

and during the summertime,

when I would visit her in Kentucky,

a universe away from my home at the Jersey shore,

she would creep into the guest room at night where I slept,

wake me and tell me

I was the most beautiful little girl

in the whole wide world,

stroking my hair and slurring her words.

 

Of course,

because she was drunk,

and believing I was, in fact, the ugliest little girl

in the whole wide world,

I did not buy it for a single minute –

the evidence was so distinctly in my favor.

 

Grandma was very radiant and a touch crazy

and her vanity eventually got the best of her.

She faded and slipped further and further away,

refusing to allow even me, her favorite, to see her

when she became completely disfigured by illness.

But in my mind she remained

a true Southern belle to the very end.

 

summer slides

into fall

like dreams of you

when we were young

 

water falls

past my lens

like weeping trees

lonesome for spring

 

water sings

with promise

like our marriage

a gentle tune

 

–Nan Lundeen

 

Brown fur, legs a blur

scurries through tall

grass, goes to ground—

a hole beneath

a storm drain slab.

Round ears

hug his head

like a teddy bear’s.

He didn’t ask for company

this cool August morning

yet

he stares

cautiously wondering.

We are strange companions.

 

–Nan Lundeen

by mary ellen lives

Playing in or around

The river

Is strongly

Discouraged

 

It is not forbidden

It is not illegal

You will not be punished

 

The sign is not my mother

Spreading guilt

Like overflowing water

Brown with silt

 

It is not my father

A boulder

Beneath the white water

Chastising

 

The sign is calm

The sign is quiet

And only

Slightly

Discouraging

 

by chris thackston

Yes, I am the odd number,

It is I, the lonely worm,

Feeling trapped in a flock of birds

They fly through the trees,

Evil eyes staring at me.

 

Yes, I am the odd number,

Alone and rare as a black rose,

The Daisies that surround me,

Are full of color and light,

My darkness, a shadow of life.

 

 

by m.m. griffin

I hear cackles from earlier generations

and echoes of past conversations

in the water’s thucks and bubbles.

The voices are wet branches against the sky.

 

I see images of vaguely familiar faces

and distant places in the foamy water

crashing over rocks and swirling

in the river’s spiral.

 

I want to wade in the shallow water

and revel in the current’s resistance,

but there is not enough time.

 

I watch a man toss his rod into brown water.

After three attempts, he catches a small fish.

 

I try to remember something unseen

and wonder how far the river flows.

I want to stay and play for a while,

but I must go.

 

Summer Solstice Tree

Saluda, North Carolina

by: Nan Lundeen

On Summer Solstice
this Blue Ridge
Mountain
stream
the tumbling
Pacolet
turns white
draped
over Pearson’s Falls,
turns dark
wending between
boulders

rolls under
leaved
limbs

past turtles
orange jewelweed
plantain leaf sedge
hydrangea white and wild
scent of mint

skirts sand
bearing
bobcat prints
black bear
scat
roasting

thrums
his jazz tune
ever improv
whoosh-slap-lap

nudges
a block
of mossy rock
set in by a childlike
God
one day.

Bravely
holding
itself above the fray
a tiny tree
rises
from
the middle of the block

rooted
in such a precarious
spot
eternal
in the now
having chosen
sun.