Hues truthfully blended say a bright
Farewell
Shades of masked intentions
Crack
Unspoken smiles
Peel away
Fond ideas, comforting habits
Reveal a heart broken raw
Secure
Behind many translucent folds
Lie
Crumbled pieces tightly bound
Displayed in artful longing
Fearful of reproach
Captive
Soul ensnared
Wild thoughts enthralled
Twisted beautiful dreams
Spiral upwards
Unwind into blazing stellar skies
Nathan Sweem writes novels, short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.
Looking over at Erik, I didn’t think twice about the large, well-wrapped bandage that consumed his leg. It wasn’t unusual for a patient to have a bandage covering either their wrists, thighs, calves or even their neck. It was the middle of the group, and Erik had only just reappeared. He had been present when the group started, but had been pulled out almost immediately after the moderator said, “Today we’re going to be talking about Interpersonal Skills.”
Erik was seated in the back of the room, completely alone in an oversize, heavily used bean bag chair. He kept shuffling around, his sculpted arms moving the bean bag aggressively. I noticed he even let out an occasional grunt, as he couldn’t find a suitable pose.
But the moderator wasn’t phased by Erik’s return, and asked the group, “Does anyone know what F-E-A-R stands for?” The group was heavily medicated, and I could tell not the slightest bit interested in the acronym. But then a hand was raised. It was Jess, who always held a warm glow – despite her cheeks being whiter than a piece of paper, and her dangerously sharp bones always jutting out on display.
She quickly whipped her neck around, and in a screech, pointed directly at Erik and said, “I’m afraid of him!” The group turned.
Although they moved slowly, one by one eyes began to fall on Erik. He was still adjusting himself in the bean bag chair and had yet to sit still.
My eyes also slowly shifted, but then the moderator regained our attention.
“Jess… We can discuss that later. But for now, let’s get back to F-E-A-R. Does anyone know what the F stands for?” The group was once again silent.
The moderator then added, “It stands for, ‘Be Fair’. Not only to yourself, but also to others!” The group let out a collective yawn.
“Does anyone have an example of a time they acted, ‘Fairly’?”
Jess’s voice reappeared. It was even more frantic than earlier, and now had a newfound lividness too.
“Why should I be fair to him?”
Once again her neck craned towards Erik. But this time the group didn’t follow. They remained completely slumbered, and I too began to feel the effects of my mid-day medication regimen.
The moderator also didn’t initially reply – placing her hand-book in her lap and allowing silence to calm the room.
But during this lull, Jess’s grotesquely thin frame began moving with the wind that rattled against the window of our therapy room. And with the moderators lips now seemingly glued shut, Jess didn’t hesitate before continuing her loud, now disgusted assault, “Did no-one else see The-Giant-Fucking-Swastika on his leg?”
The group of somnambulists once again began the arduous task of turning towards Erik. But before the majority could re-adjust their seats and land their eyes on him, the moderator suddenly snapped.
“That’s enough, Jess!”
Her voice stung into our ears. It was the first time I had heard it take on a serious tambour. But then a loud, heavy ringing overtook the ward, and the moderator stood and smiled. She lifted herself up in one quick motion and announced, “It’s fun-tivities time! Who’s excited?” But the group retained its sleepiness and didn’t even let out the slightest inclination of life, until Jess interrupted the moderators professional excitement with a harsh, piercing scream.
It echoed loudly throughout the room, and I noticed a small stream of blood had begun to drip from Jess’s palm. Her overgrown nails were digging deeply into her skin.
But Erik didn’t seem to mind.
Instead, I noticed he had finally found a comfortable position on the bean bag chair. And with his hands now behind his head, had no intention of moving for “Fun-tivities”.
Alex Antiuk is a writer and former vitamin salesman from New York. Alex was also a winner in author Simon Van Booy’s Short Story Competition in 2018.
I didn’t know you
but I’d seen the photos in Hello,
believed in the bloom
of your body next to
your sons’ downy skin.
I breathed the fragrance
of your motherhood
as you exalted breast feeding
on This Morning
and silenced Katie Hopkins.
I loved the sassy, savvy,
baby-toting grace of you
though sleepless nights
shadowed your cheekbones
and I ached to hug you the way
I’d hugged my daughter
five years earlier; wanted
to walk your boys around the park
while you chilled on the sofa
with a tub of chocolate Haagen-Dazs.
I thought you’d make it
despite the bitter-sweetness
of your last Instagram post-
you in your Mum’s arms
when she was still golden.
I didn’t know you
but I couldn’t believe you’d return
to familiar ghosts,
lift the lid to your heroin stash
and reach inside.
Sheila Jacob was born and raised in Birmingham and lives with her husband in N.E.Wales. Since 2013 she’s had poems published in various U.K. magazines and webzines including One Hand Clapping and Atrium. In 2019 she self-published a small pamphlet of poems about her father’s short life and working-class upbringing.
Greensboro 1948
When we would go home for Christmas,
It was to my mother’s town,
Where I was the cousin with the Yankee accent,
Who didn’t like grits:
A gentle, Southern place:
Gracious lawns, winding drives
In our grandfather’s Buick, past the golf course.
I see a dim American past, parts best forgotten:
Cedar Christmas trees, trackless trolleys,
Water fountains “For Coloured Only”,
Maids summoned from the kitchen with a bell,
Bearing trays of puffy rolls.
Christmas would be over and we’d go back north,
New toys stored away, my mother crying.
Metairie 1977
A child’s Christmas in Metry
We called it then,
Until our girls, teachers’ kids, would catch on.
A plumbing contractor
Lavishes new wealth
To display for children and parents
Along the sidewalks of a subdivision
The lights, the moving creatures of Christmas:
In one room, Santa’s helpers,
In another, an animated crêche:
He watches, approving yet sullen,
Dimly seen behind the picture window.
It does not matter that his home is darkened now,
That other families
Who did not live in Metairie then
Now drive by another spectacle
All the more preposterous
Further up the same street:
Thousands of lights blinking,
Reindeer, elves, angels, God knows what,
A parish policeman sourly chants:
Keep moving, keep moving.
Shreveport 1982
A downtown church on Christmas eve,
Well loved, well cared for,
Worshippers in fine clothes crowd together
In the old walnut pews– it is too warm for furs:
Married daughters, handsome nephews
In from Houston, people we do not know:
Of all the places one could be this night,
As lonely as any bus station or manger.
But there is this:
The particular tears of Christmas,
The precise fragrances, the harmonies
That make it palpable,
That release memory’s stubborn catch
Differ for us each
And for every home far from home.
I hear the sound, thin and sweet,
O Holy Night,
Scored for the voices of teenaged girls,
The white light of candles
Dancing on their faces.
Cedar Trees
Christmas night:
A potato-casserole weariness
Settles in upon the land.
We are ankle-deep in tissue,
Love and Lego,
Lists of who gave what to whom,
And I am wondering what became
Of those cedar trees
We would cut and trim Christmases ago,
Those trips to my mother’s home,
The grits, the black-eyed peas, the puffy rolls.
Cedars gave way to
Scotch pines, then to
Fraser firs that fill a room.
Years later two cedars grow
Outside the door, wider and taller,
With strings of white lights
That do not reach as high
As last year,
Unmindful of the sacrifices
Of their forebears.
The Day After Christmas
Tree smaller this year,
Lights burned out,
Not replaced.
Garbage can only half full
The day after Christmas:
Children grown, gone.
Christmas Night 2007
There are twelve of us for Christmas,
Three generations, ours the oldest.
A benign weariness:
Food and gifts, family jokes and tales,
Small stresses let quietly pass.
Cousins cavort, careen, compete.
Our daughters, friends too, consider vegetables;
Their husbands assemble a soccer goal
While the gravy cools.
As we are leaving, I think I see
Traces of a tear on Julie’s cheek;
Her smile lingers, quiet, faintly moist.
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
You can find more of Bob’s poems here on Ink Pantry.