“Eye See You,” by Toni Martin
That girl broke down. Back humped up like a kitten, breaths jerky, crouched in the leatherette chair. “You okay?” I say. Loud, to carry over her inward grieving. Head flips up. Scared her. Black hair curtain parts. Looks all around, for someone else. I been here so long, never speak. A big brown statue. Other chairs in the waiting room empty. “You okay?” Yeah, me, I tell her eyes. Black as the hair. She don’t talk. Maybe don’t...
“Under Water,” by Holly Sneeringer
The morning after the lady next door dies in the middle of the night, I go inside my house to tell my mother. “Ronnie is dead,” I say to an empty foyer. I return to the front sidewalk where I had been standing, already warm on my summer bare feet. There is a stillness that I have never, ever felt before as I watch the silent blinking lights of the ambulance parked along the curb. Ronnie’s front door is pushed open by a firefighter...
“Shellacked,” by Jenifer Browne Lawrence
If I step from slick refinished hardwood to concrete draw the door’s body to its jamb with a click, down to the grit where in darkness rows of Camaros Celicas Impalas drowse like horses at the foot of the drooping bougainvillea if I cross the blacktop like a pasture in which no tuft of grass remains unchewed where the potholes are tamped gopher mounds and the scent of ginger rises from planting beds delicate barb driving me into the...
Woman with Crows by Ruth Thompson
Woman With Crows is Ruth Thompson’s second book of poems. It explores her own past from ”hungry ghosts” to the Fool-Crone, “dancing what she does not know to dance.” It was a finalist for AROHO’s To the Lighthouse Poetry Publication Prize and includes poems that won the New Millennium Writings and Harpur Palate awards. The poem “The White Queen” has generated conversation about dementia and multidimensional expansion and a new...
Camp Utopia and the Forgiveness Diet by Jenny Ruden
In a desperate attempt to get out of going to fat camp, sixteen-year-old Baltimore teen Bethany Stern tries what promises to be the last diet she will ever need—The Forgiveness Diet. Where Louise Rennison and My So-Called Life meet John Green, Camp Utopia and the Forgiveness Diet is a contemporary account of a timeless teenage conundrum: how to conquer self-doubt, release grudges, and ultimately, grow up. 2010 was not the best...
WAVES ALIVE |