This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from A Story Interruptedby Connie Soper (Airlie Press 2022).
Loose Ends
I’m at loose ends, he used to say. Like a puppet, I wondered, arms and legs dangling, disconnected from its body? Long strings of yarn unspooled from the skein, a scarf not yet knitted? Perhaps the fray in fabric—the more it’s pulled the more it unravels. Who said it, anyway, ghosting his own un-
finished story? I can’t remember if it was the one married to the purity of his convictions. We slept summer nights in a teepee, rose to mornings soft as feathers. His thread the green of gentle beginnings, organic smell of grass, spring’s energy. Or, maybe the poet who spun words to sonnets, fluid language
rippling to my core—folded on Japanese paper, origami birds he gave to me. His thread bohemian black, dark as ancient river stone. My hands would knot these loose ends, half-scraps and fistful of tangle, but here’s gold thread, circling a bracelet around my wrist, the way our little rented boat circled the bay, loop-
ing netted traps as we hoisted our Dungeness cache to feast on bounty sucked from claws, wild strawberries, sweet amber wine. A long silken filament coursed through him as if he had swallowed the sun, lit from within. I pluck at it still.
Connie Soper is a poet based in Portland, Oregon, who published her first book of poems at the age of 74. Like a collage of memories, this collection delves into the past, always rooted in a strong sense of place. All proceeds from the sale of A Story Interruptedreturn to the press to support the production of future books. Connie is also the author of a non-fiction book, Exploring the Oregon Coast Trail, and her love of the Oregon landscape and all its trails is reflected in her book.
Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from A Story Interruptedby Connie Soper (Airlie Press 2022).
Digging for France
In this photo, I am almost six. My father tells me if I dig deep enough, I will find France. I shovel and scrape with my hands while the wet sand collapses in on itself. As usual, he is distracted, pulling at that pipe the way he always did, gazing towards the Pacific, hand angled over his brow as if to salute some far off place in the distance. Even now, I wonder what it was he saw. Behind us sky, seagulls, and sand. My little gray sturdy brother busy with his toy cars while I am digging for France. With my plastic shovel and pail I scoop my way through the core of Oregon. I want to be sucked into the wet hole and pulled out the other side into a country of light and long loaves of bread. It’s not here, it’s not here, I scream from that sorry ditch as the muck sticks to my hair, eyelids and teeth. My father pulls me onto his lap and wraps me in a sweater smelling faintly of him, of stale tobacco and wet collie. And although he’s never been there, he teaches me words I need to know: Enfant, rouge, pain au chocolat.
Connie Soper is a poet based in Portland, Oregon, who published her first book of poems at the age of 74. Like a collage of memories, this collection delves into the past, always rooted in a strong sense of place. All proceeds from the sale of A Story Interruptedreturn to the press to support the production of future books. Connie is also the author of a non-fiction book, Exploring the Oregon Coast Trail, and her love of the Oregon landscape and all its trails is reflected in her book.
Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from A Story Interruptedby Connie Soper (Airlie Press 2022).
Tree
Starved of light or water— fungus-rot eating it like a cancer from the inside out—even the giant sequoia will topple one day. This shore pine
done in by the fury of winter as I listened to wind that gusted heaving waves over the Pacific. All night that sea-power shuddered and thumped. The tree did not surrender
one branch at a time; an entire body collapsed—trunk and limbs clinging to roots that connected it to earth. Now it waits for chainsaw and cremation. The ground beneath the fallen piney crown is soft and sodden; the air still, silent. Yesterday a house
of branches grew outside my window. Now, the hollow where life uprooted itself yawns like a mouth without a voice. There’s a hole in the landscape, phantom emptiness against the sky.
Connie Soper is a poet based in Portland, Oregon, who published her first book of poems at the age of 74. Like a collage of memories, this collection delves into the past, always rooted in a strong sense of place. All proceeds from the sale of A Story Interruptedreturn to the press to support the production of future books. Connie is also the author of a non-fiction book, Exploring the Oregon Coast Trail, and her love of the Oregon landscape and all its trails is reflected in her book.
Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.
My bookshelf is more of a figurative shelf, one that follows me everywhere. The above bookshelf is the one in my bedroom in my parents’ house, which houses tomes I haven’t chosen to bring with me in my new places.
I moved from my home state, California, when I was twelve. In Montreal, my new home, I moved to two different houses. Now I live in an apartment in Vancouver, the second place I have lived in this new city.
The bookshelf in my parents’ home carries memories from many years. I am a Virgo, which suggests that I am organized, and in most ways, this is true. I tend to organize in a way that works for me only, though. An organized mess, you could say.
My methods are exemplified in the way I ordered the books on my parents’ home bookshelf. On the left side, I have a favorites shelf, and then a second-favorites shelf. These include childhood reads like Cornelia Funke or Philip Pullman, as well as teen favorites, like John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. I have two “to read” shelves, and these grow consistently, particularly around the holidays. One of the new additions is a poetry collection by Mary Oliver.
On the right side, I keep all my academic texts, from high school to CEGEP to university. Within these I have a favorites (and then a second-favorites) shelf as well; notable mentions are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bernard Schlink’s The Reader, and Norman Cantor’s Civilization of the Middle Ages. The organized mess continues here. Every book is where it should be, but some are placed horizontally above a row of others, or leaned strategically against a shelf wall to keep others in place.
In my current apartment is a sporadic collection of library books, academic books, and the select few I brought with me when I moved. Sometimes when I visit my parents for holidays, I bring back others to join that group. Favorites in my apartment include Eve Babitz’s Slow Days, Fast Company, Orion Carloto’s Film For Her, and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. My last library read was Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
Books follow me everywhere. Last week I flew from Montreal to Vancouver, and I was worried all flight long about my new orange leather purse, weighed down well past its limit by the many books I decided must come with me. I have always been someone with things strewn across the world, it seems. Sometimes I forget a title in my childhood best friend’s home in California. Sometimes I lend books, and forget who the lucky recipient was. Sometimes I leave them all around my apartment and then spend a frantic ten minutes running around the place before I leave for class. It’s natural for me, and although it can be frustrating, it feels right that stories would attach to me this way. They’re never really mine, anyway. I just borrow them for little bits of life, learning devoutly from one before becoming enamoured with another.
Isabelle Whittall is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in combined Philosophy and Political Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She co-hosts the radio show Hail! Discordia! on CITR 101.9fm, and is an Editorial Board Member of UBC’s Journal of Philosophical Enquiries.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from A Story Interruptedby Connie Soper (Airlie Press 2022).
Amanda’s Trail
In 1864, Amanda De-Cuys, a blind Coos woman, was removed from her home and forced to walk some 50 miles to be relocated at the Coast Reservation near what is now Yachats, Oregon.
It was her way to embrace circles of seasons in an abundance of bulbs, roots, berries; to harvest mussels in the low and salty estuary— until she became a refugee in her own homeland.
It was her way to lay the dead in canoes hung from branches, always facing west. Those boats would sway in the breeze as souls rowed into the next world. Which of us wouldn’t enter eternity like that?
It was her way to leave gifts for that long journey: basket, knife, blanket— until those gifts were stolen for souvenirs. It was her way to trust the shaman, until the diseases came and there were no more living to tend to the dying.
Today, we lace our boots and ready packs to step into forest’s ripe and sudden smells on the flanks of Cape Perpetua. The same cliffs, chasms, streams, rocks. The same churning waves in the distance.
The path before us curves like the parenthesis of history. We can’t see its end as we cross over a bridge, traverse switchbacks, follow twisting trail to pause at a knoll overlooking the expansive sea. Cedars press green spirit-weave against the sky— dappled with light, rooted in darkness.
Connie Soper is a poet based in Portland, Oregon, who published her first book of poems at the age of 74. Like a collage of memories, this collection delves into the past, always rooted in a strong sense of place. All proceeds from the sale of A Story Interruptedreturn to the press to support the production of future books. Connie is also the author of a non-fiction book, Exploring the Oregon Coast Trail, and her love of the Oregon landscape and all its trails is reflected in her book.
Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from Something Kindredby Nicole Tallman (Southern Collective Experience 2022).
On Grief
Text of poem, fuzzy in the shape of a circle:
Mute Scream Travel Retreat Starve Binge Drink Abstain Shop Save Netflix Hulu Write Read Hot Powered Yoga Kundalini Do Something Drastic to Your Appearance Wear the Same Outfit for Days on End Work Sleep Breathe Repeat
In the middle, upside-down: Grief is a blurry imperfect circle.
Nicole Tallman is the author of three collections: Something Kindred, Poems for the People, and FERSACE. She serves as Miami’s official Poetry Ambassador, Editor of Redacted Books, and Poetry Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal and The Blue Mountain Review. Find her on social media @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.
Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from Something Kindredby Nicole Tallman (Southern Collective Experience 2022).
On Reading Poems, I Now Sympathize With Daughters Of Dead Mothers
For Freida Hughes
It’s hard to look at this picture of Frieda and not feel something tragic— mother, father, brother dead, one by oven, one by cancer, one by hanging.
It’s hard just to look at this picture of Frieda, with her menagerie of pets, poems, and paintings. Yes, I mean the Frieda with an e,
not Frida Kahlo. Frieda Hughes, I want to buy one of your paintings
a green one representing the joy of being able to work on my poetry or something other creative.
Frieda Hughes, I want to eat all of your mother’s poems and all of your paintings.
It’s hard not to look at Frieda and feel something kindred— us daughters of dead mothers.
It’s hard to look at Frieda and feel something so protective, to say to us through our mothers
There, there. You made it.
Nicole Tallman is the author of three collections: Something Kindred, Poems for the People, and FERSACE. She serves as Miami’s official Poetry Ambassador, Editor of Redacted Books, and Poetry Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal and The Blue Mountain Review. Find her on social media @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.
Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from Something Kindredby Nicole Tallman (Southern Collective Experience 2022).
On Finding Your Ashes In My Suitcase
I think you would laugh if I told you, your urn exploded somewhere during my flight back to Miami.
And when I got home, I found you spilled your ashes all over the inside of my luggage. Actually, it was your luggage—
the Liz Claiborne zebra print carry-on with the dragon fruit interior. The flight was oversold, so I was forced
to check you in your luggage. What kind of monster makes a grieving daughter check her own mother?
Nicole Tallman is the author of three collections: Something Kindred, Poems for the People, and FERSACE. She serves as Miami’s official Poetry Ambassador, Editor of Redacted Books, and Poetry Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal and The Blue Mountain Review. Find her on social media @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.
Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from Something Kindredby Nicole Tallman (Southern Collective Experience 2022).
On The Last Moments Leading Up To Your Death
(excerpt)
The Hospice nurse’s name is Natalie. She hands me a book to prepare me for your death. She tells me it won’t be long.
You die around 4:44 p.m. There are four of us in the room: Dad, your twin sisters, and me. It’s too much for your mother, and I’ve asked the others to give us space. It’s too many people for you to let go of. And I know who you really want there. Your heart is strong so it takes long for your body to go. I try walking away to see if that might help you transition. You hold on. I hold your feet at the end of the bed. It isn’t until I whisper in your ear, Thank you for being such a good mother to me. I love you. You can go now. that you finally let yourself go. I count every one of your breaths. Watch the slower and slower rise and fall of your chest. The rattle of each last breath. Until Dad tells me that’s it. I look at the clock. Then I text Natalie to let her know you’re gone.
Nicole Tallman is the author of three collections: Something Kindred, Poems for the People, and FERSACE. She serves as Miami’s official Poetry Ambassador, Editor of Redacted Books, and Poetry Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal and The Blue Mountain Review. Find her on social media @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.
Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.
In Maker of Heaven & (Belle Point Press 2023), Jason Myers invites readers into a rich accounting of our brutal world. He draws out moments of distilled wonder, seeking to savor what can be made sacred while also delving into the wreckage of our humanity. The poems in this collection are suffused with awe, mundanity, and the stark truths of destruction that accompany it all, creating an almost mythic dialectic that allows holy to live alongside horror, sacred to mingle with strange. At its core, Maker of Heaven & is deeply rooted in the sensual world; the collection asks readers to take in the music, tastes, and textures of the poems in a new form of prayer, weaving a fine fabric of hope, joy, and frank sorrow throughout.
What is most striking in the collection’s opening is Myers’ ability to braid the mundane with a far more expansive reality of our world. The first poem of the collection, “How To Make a Sound,” describes the experience of waiting for a child to be born in such a blunt way that it becomes almost humorous. Myers writes, “one day, after months of frozen dinners & cheap wine / binged series after binged series / a child arrived” (3). In this way, the poem contracts into a mundane moment, before expanding out into something full of awe:
“So, when I held, for the first time,
our son,
what slipped from my mouth was
part cry, part spill of almost verb, a word
like love, insufficient, immeasurable, & perfect.” (Myers, 4)
Myers’ poems breathe, ebbing and flowing between small, insular moments of savor, sorrow, and even boredom, to then expand out into something bordering on miraculous in how it captures distilled emotion. Particularly sound (and inversely silence) returns as Myers touches on music, language, and where they fail us in accounting for what is beautiful, ugly, and in between in this world. Meyers manages to weave it all together through sound and scene in “Maker of Heaven”:
“on a Thursday evening as you press your tired head to the glass of the bus
moving glacierly down Lexington Avenue past M signs
buskers offering their shattered delight to the harmonica’s incessant need,
a memory of the first time your tongue tasted the sugarsalt of inner thigh
astonishes you with gleeful nostalgia” (43)
The mundane becomes something close to miracle in Maker of Heaven &, drawing the reader into intimate moments of sensual memory that both smart and sing with how bittersweet they are.
Memory is also touched through music, drawing on both shared and personal history to bring together a rich and sorrowful accounting of the past. In the poem “On Learning Langston Hughes Wanted His Funeral To End With ‘Do Nothin’ Til You Hear From Me,’” Myers writes that “we all know a sound that knows us, that calls / & claims each moment of our lives / even in death we want a groove” (30). Myers weaves twentieth century soul and jazz music throughout Maker of Heaven &, bearing witness to the violence of racism that continues to rage in America, while at the same time holding the sweet miracle of song, from Robert Johnson and Johnny Hartman to Billie Holiday and Etta James. Music of the past becomes a way to understand the present and the future, in turn transforming the past into a religious text of its own, as Myers poignantly describes in “The Concord of the Strings”:
“But I am burdened
by stories not my own
that tell me what my own stories mean
& a music sticks, & grows, & rages
like trees carrying, through winter’s paucity,
the violence of spring.” (28)
These lines can’t help but evoke Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” speaking of a violence and oppression that persists today. At the same time, Myers connects this music to his own memories, of records passed down by grandparents and rhythms that have followed him through his life. Myers holds the darkness of history and the intimate pleasure of memory at the same time in this collection, allowing both to exist alongside each other, rather than in spite of each other.
Amidst the music and movement of this collection, moments of silence, stillness, and observation reveal pure awe in the most minute aspects of life, offering readers hope that there are still sacred things to find in the mundane. In “Eucharist,” Myers writes:
“I want the world in my mouth.
Walnut, avocado, nasturtium.
Icewine, edelweiss, dictionary.
Can you swallow sunset
I’ll try.” (67)
Like a dare or a call to action, Myers implores readers to take in as much of this world as they can, and to hold on tight. Finding the wonder, the horror—finding all of it, holding all of it, and in turn, holding hope.
Addie Dodge is a student at Colorado College pursuing a B.A. in psychology with a minor in English. She is a writer currently working as an editor for her college’s literary magazine, Cipher, and is also a clinical intern at a domestic violence shelter in Colorado. She fills her freetime with hiking in the mountains and lots of reading.
