Jonathan Ottke

Response

Special Places

All places have their memories,

Places now and those of long ago.

In each place are glimpses of the past,

Some happy, and some woe.

Memories grow stronger

As towns, homes, and forests grow old,

So any place full of memories

Must remain to have and hold.

Old places have their stories

That can again and again be told,

And old stories spawn new stories,

Some silver, and some gold.

Lily Stejskal

Inspiration piece

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Bridget Fahey O’Brien
Pop Art
Inspiration Piece

Post No Bills
Annmarie Lockhart
Response

Words don’t tell the story
any better than pictures,
icons and fantasies.

Black paint on yellow brick
evokes a tintype telegraph
but fuchsia
swirled around Sophia
suggests a time
between wars.

A monster skull with one eye
and a full set of teeth
obliterates
an indoor playground,
but the snake-bitten eagle
still wears his crown

and this, I’m afraid,
doesn’t bode well
for owls or pussycats
who sit behind locked
metal doors
waiting to feel
exceptional.

———————————————————————-

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Bridget Fahey O’Brien
East River Run
Response

Winter Station, Heading North
Annmarie Lockhart
Inspiration Piece

Tonight, drunk on rum
that will not freeze and water
that will not burn

a friend told me
that iced rivers were once
the road to freedom

and this is joyous news
in a joyless time of waiting on Sunday
for Monday’s broken promise.

———————————————————————-

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Animated image here: Breathe
Breathe
by Greg Lippert
Inspiration

Force of Nature
by Robert Haydon Jones
Response

This is about a heinous, rape-murder.

If I were writing this expecting to get money for it, (expecting you to pay money for the magazine carrying this story like the Police Gazette or the National Enquirer), then I would be writing this in the third person narrative that pro writers use these days because in the words of one pro writer I know, “When the Readers at the big houses see a manuscript written in the first person, they just throw it straight to the reject pile.”

Honestly, I tried telling this story out in the third person, but it came out hollow. Like Hemmingway said, “The most important tool a writer can have is a built-in, shock proof, crap detector.”

I want to get money for telling this story out to you, but the problem with the third person narrative is that it could be anybody. I am the perpetrator. I need to spit this thing out of me to be rid of it. And somehow I have to do that and keep you engaged so you don’t throw me on the reject pile because I am using the first person and spitting things up in front of you.

Like I said, this is about a heinous, rape-murder.

Kim Donnelly was a wiry, brown-haired, freckled nineteen year-old sophomore, from Ashtabula, who was best friends with Amanda Jackson a chubby, blonde junior from Akron, with beautiful, fluffy breasts the size of airplane head pillows, who I had relentlessly ravished day after day and night after night for nigh on to three weeks until I told her firmly that I couldn’t see her any more, not even once more, because I had a fiancée I had promised to marry, waiting for me back East, when I graduated in two months,

I was a vet, come back from the Marine Corps, finishing college on the G.I. Bill at a state school with a Georgian campus set in a rural farm town in southeastern Ohio.

This university featured some pretty darn good football teams over the years. Even so, it always had far more female than male students. In fact this university graduated more elementary school teachers than any other school in the Midwest.

When I arrived there from the Marines as a 22 year-old junior, I felt like a wolf in the henhouse. And, believe me, when I tell you, I behaved just like I was a wolf in the henhouse.

Because that is precisely what I was. I had returned with nary a scratch from terrifying times in shit hole after shit hole. I morphed from a green idiot expecting the certain death I deserved for being a green idiot to a hardened, merciless, survivor counting down the days till I came improbably to the final sleep and wakeup and then miraculously I marched aboard a silver aircraft and was borne away from the final shit hole to the craven glory of honorable discharge and safety from the certain death and/or disfigurement I no doubt did deserve.

I had left the pretty girl who wrote me every week while I was in the Marines back East because she was finishing college back there and we had both promised our parents we wouldn’t get married until each of us was graduated.

So there I was in the henhouse with hundreds of beautiful young women fresh out of high school, many of them away from home for the first time. Many of these hens were without a boy friend or even the prospect of a viable date. Most of the men at the university were actually still foolish boys – much more interested in drinking, drugging, and fraternity house activities than women.

So this “older man” the lean Marine, was like a pig at the trough and I helped myself at every opportunity. My years away from my girl friend had supercharged my lust. When we made love on my return, I was swept away with the sheer pleasure of it. I really couldn’t get enough.

Sex was a tonic for me. For some unaccountable reason, I felt bad most of the time. Bad and ashamed of myself. Not of anything in particular. Just ashamed of me. Sex made me feel good about myself. Good and strong and powerful and worthy. And deep down deserving of the long, glorious, orgasms I was having and having and having.

I was smart enough to figure out that to get the sex I needed, I had to have a willing, enthusiastic, partner easily available. So, early on, I decided to be a very considerate lover, even though it took a lot of effort. Actually, once I got the technique down, it wasn’t all that hard to take my girl friend where she had never been before.

She had been around quite a lot before I met her. She told me straight out that I was a genius lover compared to my predecessors. I told her it was because I loved her so much and I guess she accepted that. I liked her all right. She sure acted like she loved me and I was good with that. She was very, very pretty. A real knockout. I really liked having her on my arm. I liked her parents. She liked my parents. She called me; “The Master Marine” and I liked that too.

So at the university, right from the first, I developed a routine and a persona with the girls that I met which enabled me to be intimate with them on a friendly basis rather than as a candidate for a lasting relationship. In fact, this friendly persona enabled me to get closer to them much quicker than if I had been a “regular” suitor.
The fact is they were all horny out of their minds for sex even if quite a few of them weren’t really aware of it. Believe me, once Yours Truly started up with them with my “considerate” technique, almost all of them turned into little freaks. I no longer had to ask them out. They called me. I no longer had to do beer or a movie or a recital up front.

When we met up, our first order of business was finding a place we could go to get it on. In bad weather, we would look for empty classrooms, storage rooms, even remote hallways. Some times we had to go to a motel a few miles away. As a vet, I was one of the few students with a permit to have a car on campus. So, we’d drive to a motel. I always insisted the girl pay $25 toward the room. Since I got the room on an hourly basis, the $25 usually covered it.

In good weather, we used the great outdoors to do the friendliest thing two people can do. I had a poncho from the Marines that rolled up tight and worked real well. Although often, we would roll off the poncho and thrash around on the grass and after a while, I figured just how the title to the song, “Green Sleeves”, had originated.

I treated many a love discourteously. My favorite outdoor venue was an old graveyard that had been filled up in the 19th century. I enjoyed idyllic, bucolic privacy with one exception. One afternoon in early May, I had decided I had come to the end of foreplay and was just about to swing into action when a large brown shoe entered my field of vision. It was a Boy Scout Master with a troop of about 20, strung out single file in back of him.

“Oh, sorry, sir”, I said.

“No worries, young fellow,” he replied.

He was a burly man in his mid forties. He had on the full brown suit, replete with medals and badges. He had a thick black mustache. He pivoted and beckoned to his troop with the same signal we used in the Marines.

“Follow me, lads”, he yelled authoritatively.

He marched away and they followed. It was pretty impressive. I couldn’t help but notice that they kept a proper interval. We waited a little while and then we got down to it. It was better than ever.

So, my routine, my persona, went like this: “I am lonely and I am so happy that I have found you and that we can be friends and be good to each other – but it can’t ever get out of control beyond friendship, which will be so hard because I am so drawn to you, but we must never let that happen because someone very much like you is waiting back East and I promised her I would be back and she said okay than I could have friends like you if I promised on my honor.”

So that was the Holy Ground Rule. It enabled me to have all the wild sex I wanted without any fear of entanglement. I’ll tell you what – it enabled me to really be nice to these women – to really like them – okay, maybe even love some of them – without any fear of being snared. It was a foolproof ticket to genuine abandon.

Much as I hate to admit it, a few of them, declared it was time to stop before I did. I never argued, although, frankly, it pissed me off. In any event, 95% of the time, it was me that made the announcement that I was being drawn so close that any more would overwhelm me and make me renounce my Holy Promise. I experimented making the announcement before or after love. The best time by far was before. Afterward, there really was nothing left to say. Afterward, almost 100% of the time, we were both very, very happy campers.

The Holy Ground Rule also had another benefit that I had not foreseen. It generated a natural “Daisy-Chain” effect. Since I always parted as the best of friends, my left girls were inclined to pass me on with a golden recommendation as the sort of man any girl would be glad to have as a friend.

That was how I had arrived at my favorite graveyard with Kim Donnelly. Her best friend, Amanda Jackson, had put us together. According to Kim, Amanda said I was a prince of a man and the greatest, most considerate, lover on earth. She had only let me go because I was such a good person who had made a vow to a good young woman back East.

So, I guided us to my favorite spot in the graveyard and spread out my trusty poncho. Kim was in a league of her own as a kisser. I mean she was hot and she was a real expert. She had a hard body but she pushed up at me and I was enveloped by her voluptuousness. She kissed my neck and then licked it slowly and I almost lost control. Then she reached down to my crotch and stroked me. She really knew what she was doing.

I reached under and up to take her panties off but she resisted, so I moved them to the side and started pleasuring her with my fingers with the utmost consideration. She moaned and gave a deep shudder and said my name again and again.

I pulled off my pants real quick and maneuvered so I could get in her but she pushed back with a surprising amount of strength and she said, “No, don’t!”

I knew she wasn’t serious. A lot of girls put up a “No” the first time we do it. As a matter of fact, Amanda Jackson had run a whole string of no’s at me before I got her to say yes, yes, yes.

So I just pushed down steadily. I was holding myself up above her and my hands were by her neck. “No”, she said. “Please don’t. I’ve changed my mind.”

Well, I absolutely knew she couldn’t be serious. So I kept pushing. “No.”, she said again, and I kept pushing – I had been here before. Then she said, “No” again and sort of wriggled under me – so I pushed down real hard and then she stopped.

Well, the time had finally come, but as I made ready to enter her, I looked down and a green, bubbly, foam had seeped from between her lips and she wasn’t moving at all. I rolled right off her and looked again. She lay still. The bubbly green foam drooled off her lips on to her chin. She wasn’t breathing! I put my ear on her breast. There was no heartbeat! I touched her carotid. There was nothing! She was dead!

I was horrified. I was terrified. I was a fucking murderer! My life was over!

I wondered if I could hide her somewhere and go get a shovel and bury her in one of the old graves. But I realized that wouldn’t work. When Lisa went missing, Amanda would tell the police she had introduced us – and where we probably had gone.

Even if I could bury her quick, they would find the fresh grave…. or if I was able to mask the grave, they would probably use dogs who would find poor Kim. She was dead and so was I!

No one would believe me that it was a total accident. I had been a little rough like this in the past to get around the no’s and everything had worked out. No problems.
My only chance was to hide her body, get my car and run fast somewhere far, where maybe I could build a new identity.

About 40 feet deeper in the graveyard from where we were, there was a clump of Rhododendrons that surrounded a little spring. I figured this was the best place to hide Kim.

As I approached her to put her in a fireman’s carry, her eyes started to flutter. It startled me. I must have jumped a foot – I figured it must be rigor mortis starting. But, no, because now she made a gagging sound and then a low moan. She was alive!

Then her eyes suddenly flipped open and she looked right at me and smiled. “Wow,” she said, ”That was intense. I must have passed out. You were pretty rough on me.”

It was the most thrilling moment of my life. I think it still is. It was like two people had come back from the dead.

Yes, it turns out this is not about a heinous rape murder after all!

“Gosh, I’m glad you’re okay,” I said dumbly, like I was reading from a nerd script. “I’m real sorry – you’re just so dam sexy – I got carried away.”

“I’m going to have to throw away my undies”, she said. “I soiled myself. Turn your back – I’ve got to clean up.”

So, I turned my back and I could hear her rustling around. Then she said it was okay for me to turn back around and there she was standing there looking at me.

“Are you okay?” I said. Do you want to rest up?”

Well, the minute I said it, I regretted it.

“No”, she said, “I ‘m okay but I want to go back to the dorm and take it easy for a while. You were pretty darn rough on me.”

When she said that, a fear bolt coursed through me. Would she report me?

“Well,” I said, “I sure am sorry. The fact is — we both got carried away.”

Even now, I think it was an absolutely brilliant thing to say.

I saw her consider it.

“Are you okay without your undies?” I asked solicitously.

I saw her consider that too.

“Yeah, I’m okay”, she said. “Things did get out of hand. Are you okay?”

I told her I was okay. I walked her back to her dorm. I never dated her again. Amanda called me and asked me if everything was okay with me and Kim and I said it was – but that I had decided to completely eliminate dating these last two months out of fairness to my girl back East. And that is exactly what I did.

You might say I was scared straight.

So now, many years later, I am a respectable citizen. In addition to working hard at a job I love, I am a volunteer at the prison two exits up I95. I’ve often counseled men doing hard time for sexual assaults not all that different than my near catastrophe with Kim.

I’ve also worked with two men doing life for rape murder. They claim the sex was consensual and they just got carried away.

All I can do is tell them I understand.

©2015, RHJA, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Yonder
by Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration

His first flight happened while he was sleeping – and although he had long nursed a quiet terror of bedtime ever since his father had died in his sleep – Jimmy O’Hara wasn’t at all afraid the first time.

Actually, Jimmy didn’t even remember that he had been flying until two days later when he stood just off the plate as the home team pitcher was completing his warm-ups at the start of a high school baseball game Jimmy was umping.

The pitcher had two more warm-ups left and Jimmy said, “Two more” – and then suddenly, he remembered he had flown for hours two nights back while he was sleeping. Jimmy said, “Jesus, what the hell was I doing?”

The kid catcher said, “What did you say, sir?”

Jimmy said, “I said ‘Bring em in – throw the next pitch down.’ ”

The kid threw down to second and Jimmy brushed the plate off, checked his ump partner at first, and then bellowed, “Play Ball!”

The game commenced and it was a pretty good game. The home team broke a 2-2 tie in the sixth with a triple and a sacrifice fly and then retired the visitors in order for the win. Jimmy was pleased with his performance. With the exception of two borderline third strike calls, he was positive he had gotten them all right.

And that was amazing, because all during the game he had been haunted by his sudden recall of the memory of his flying while sleeping. It had been a quick, crisp, game — so for once he got home early before his wife. He took a long, thoughtful, shower.

Anne, his wife, was still at Memorial, in her office in the old, federal style wing, dispensing advice and meds, as needed, to trauma victims. Jimmy wanted to tell Anne about the flying thing – but there was no way on God’s green earth that he would.

So, when she got in about a half hour after his shower, she was happily surprised he was back from his game and all showered and changed. He told her his game had gone well and that the local high school had won. She said the highlight of her day had been when two of her PTSD grads had come in for an unannounced visit to tell Anne and the staff that happened to be around that they were doing well. They were both working. One had moved back in with his wife. They were clean and sober and still happily attending 12-Step meetings.

Looking back, Jimmy felt that right then, when Anne was feeling good about the two Marines, would have been the perfect time for him to tell her about the flying thing. But he didn’t. His rationalization was that he didn’t want to mess up her happy day. But, of course, that wasn’t really it. Jimmy was worried what she would think.

Not telling Anne was a stupid mistake. From then on, she sensed, no she knew that Jimmy was holding something from her. This was Anne – really Glinda the good witch of PTSD – and you held nothing back from her really – because she already knew everything you were holding even if you didn’t – and even though she knew it all, often way before you did, she was still talking to you and still sleeping with you now and again.

So that’s how the flying thing got to be a secret thing with Jimmy. And somehow it was a secret of something wrong. Jimmy knew that the only possible antidote to this being the secret of something wrong was telling this secret out and standing back and seeing what happened. That explains why, later, although he was terrified of doing it, he did tell the secret out.

But that night was when Jimmy’s flying thing entered their relationship to stay forever.

Anne washed up and changed into a peach colored dress with red polka dots and her very stylish red spike high heels from Florence and they went on out to their favorite Italian restaurant. They dined with a young doctor and his wife from Memorial and Carmine an art director Jimmy used from time to time on freelance marketing jobs and Carmine’s latest squeeze, Amy, a young, red-haired, impossibly buxom Assistant DA.

They had a fabulous dinner. Joe, the garrulous owner chef, was a true genius and the room was jammed with foodies grateful they had enough money to afford such amazing food along with lots and lots of good drink on a lovely night in mid May.

Jimmy didn’t drink. But in his way he got giddy along with everyone else at his table as the night went on. Over desert and the three-drink noise at the restaurant, Jimmy suddenly said, “I flew in my sleep the other night and I’m wondering what it means.”

Carmine said, “Who did you do in your sleep.” Buxom Amy blushed and smiled.

The Doctor said, “What was that Jimmy? What did you do?

Anne said, “What did you say? What are you talking about?”

Just then, Joe, the owner, came over carrying a big bottle of Grappa. He put it in front of Amy and said, “Dump this weirdo and come with me. I have an inexhaustible supply.”

Well, the Grappa whizzed around the table and in the end everyone was glad that Jimmy was a Permanent Designated Driver. He and Anne got home late. They went to bed and had sex like Jimmy knew they would ever since she had selected her dress and shoes. Just before they started, Anne said, “I heard what you said about flying. I really don’t want to hear more. I don’t want you going weird on me. I’ve got way too much on my plate.”

So, from then on, his flying was a secret. And, from then on, he tried to fly every night.

At first, at least for the first three months or so, all of his flying was “blind.” As he drifted into sleep he would sense the acceleration’s presence and then (on a good night) the acceleration would come closer and closer until he gingerly engaged with it and the flying commenced.

In the beginning, every time he started to go really fast, he got frightened and he couldn’t help but pull back a tad – and then he would sort of hang there — flying for sure — but it was more like gliding, until little by little, he would lean into it and his speed would steadily accelerate.

To be clear, Jimmy never felt his body was leaving the bed – but rather his interior. He thought it through and felt real comfortable with the word, “interior”. He could have said “soul” and that might have been just as accurate – but it was no way near as comfortable as interior.

So, he would drift down, engage and start up. After months and months, he learned to push back on his fear reflex as they went to speed and lean right into the acceleration. As he flew, Jimmy was often suffused with rapture. The rapture deepened as his speed increased. Some times he would hear a long, long, attenuated groan in the distance and every time he did, it wasn’t until quite a lot further into the flight that he would realize that the groan was coming from him.

Some times he wept tears of joy. Part of him knew he was weeping tears of joy but he didn’t really know for sure until the morning when he would see that the pillow was all damp and there was salt crusted on his eye lids.

The raptures were wonderful. They didn’t occur every time he flew. The raptures came fairly frequently but not on any schedule that Jimmy could figure. It was a mystery but it sure was wonderful. In time, the raptures left a “feel good” residue with him. He was able to reference them in his waking hours – like taking a breath of fresh air. He was happy.

People began to comment that Jimmy smiled a lot for no particular reason. Jimmy knew that he was smiling for a very particular reason. He felt good. He was good. He could fly.

But, of course, since he was human, Jimmy wanted more. For months he flew blind. As he flew, he couldn’t see anything. He was just sleeping as far as visuals were concerned. He tried to dream in some visuals, but when he came up with a scene — the flying immediately stopped — and he was just asleep and dreaming of something.

So, then he decided to work on the flying itself and that opened up a whole new realm of experience for him. He taught himself how to do loops and barrel rolls and Immelmann Turns and the reverse Split S. Some times he would climb high and then simply dive straight down at great speed until some force would gradually pull Jimmy up before he ran out of space and he would finish off the maneuver with a barrel roll.

Jimmy saw a therapist once a week for many years as part of his after-care for PTSD. Jimmy trusted Walter but he was reluctant to tell him about the flying. It seemed crazy. But he had to tell someone. The secret was becoming toxic because it was a secret. His first impulse at the very first had been to tell Anne – but now, he sure didn’t want her to know. She would chalk him up as a PTSD relapser in need of heavy meds. Right or wrong , Jimmy didn’t want Anne putting down his flying.

So he told Walter. He told him straight out. He talked about his flying for half an hour. When Walter asked him what did he think it meant, Jimmy’s heart sank. Walter was being nice about it — but he didn’t believe that Jimmy was flying.

Jimmy said he didn’t know what it meant. He said he was sad that Walter didn’t believe he was really flying. He said he was a little frightened too. He said he was also frightened and sad that he couldn’t tell Anne that he was flying. He told Walter that the flying made him so happy. That he could feel a residue of goodness in himself now that made him smile.

Walter said he hoped Jimmy knew that Walter would never want to take that goodness away from him. And that maybe he should give Anne some credit too.

At the end of their session, Jimmy shook Walter’s hand like he always did and then gave him a hug like he never had before. He didn’t know if he would ever see Walter again.

That night, he and Anne went out to the Japanese restaurant for a Bento Box. He told her straight out about the flying and what Walter had said and how he had been afraid to tell her all this time and that he was even more afraid now after Walter – but that, of course, now he really had to tell her.

Anne didn’t say anything for a long minute or so. Then she said, “You know, I’ve noticed that you’ve changed. You seem so much happier. Much easier to be around. Even your smile is different. You never used to smile much. Now you smile a lot. For a while I thought it was because we’ve gotten better at being together. I mean you make better love to me now than you did when we first started up – and that’s really something, don’t you think?

“ But I knew there was something. A shadow. I’m so sorry you couldn’t tell me. I don’t blame you. My first reaction right now was, “Oh, oh, he’s going down the tubes again.” But then I had another reaction. I felt your joy. I felt your wonder. So my reaction was, ‘Jimmy may be going down the tubes again – but I sure would like to go with him.’ ”

Jimmy said, “Really Anne?

Anne said, “Really, really. I mean Jimmy you get to fly almost every night. You get a big dose of rapture and no hangover. Does that sound like something that needs fixing?”

So, that’s how the secret came out. Jimmy was grateful. But it wasn’t until that night when he flew again while he was sleeping that he felt utter relief.

Almost from the very first, Jimmy O’Hara knew that if there was one bad thing about the flying it was that he seemed destined to be always flying solo. But that night as he leaned into the familiar acceleration and spiraled up, he felt something new and different. It was a presence. He looped left and the presence looped with him. He did a slow roll and the presence came right along with him. His heart soared with rapture.

This was truly an historic flight. He did an Immelmann Turn nice and easy in celebration. The presence came along. The rapture swelled. What a night! The flying was even better! As Jimmy soared and looped and soared, he wondered what the morning would be like.

©2015, RHJA, LLC. All Rights Reserved

“Containing Flow”
Jan Irene Miller
Acrylic on paper
Inspiration piece

Motion Wisdom
By Diane Margaret Miller
Response

I have been here many moons on this earth, and even the concept of living many moons has an inkling of motion’s trajectory. I live in the West. Is it the science mind? Thousands of years and civilizations have lived stories born out of understandings of motion and movement. Comets could be evidence of divine anger, children could be healthier if conceived in a north wind, heavenly bodies pushed by gods, earth and water were understood to move downward, fire and air moved upward, all other motion required a soul of a living being. And then came the Western laws of Physics. I love the beauty of the laws of Physics. But if we maintain that all motion proceeds according to the laws of physics is that the happier truth? Where the laws of physics dictate that motion has no need of mind, could it be true what they say – that if unchecked the science mind could produce unwisdom?

As I blossom, I release the trajectories in their many forms of going somewhere, and I enter the stillness of being. When I will have become all in completion and transformed to another aspect, all that I know and remember will have remained all that I know and remember.   And I’d like to think that this life experience is a thousand million moments of experiencing the human and condensed material form, my deep loves, my struggles, my trees and sunsets, my people, my world, and the divine creative essence surround.

My lists are still here but just so I can have days of unfolding. My years are passing but only because I view them as such. I notice my days are marked with ever increasing harmonious incidents. I want to be here without getting swept along in the science mind of motion. Maybe there should be a 4th law of physics regarding motion: that motion has wisdom, a wisdom found not in the destination or trajectory that has built industrialized society, but in its constant seeking of balance and harmony, forever awake and aware of all, near and far. Possibly without the understanding that motion is awake and aware and communicating with all, unwisdom will prevail.

I have grown accustomed to this western way of motion and its seductive comforts and artifacts. But somewhere inside I completely know another way of being age-old and I am experimenting and experiencing.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Jan Irene Miller
Response

Out There
By Diane Margaret Miller
Handwritten image story
Inspiration piece

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Lisa Kilhefner
Inspiration piece

The First Lesson
By Uma Gowrishankar
Response

Seven grains, that was all. Chewed tastelessly
in clear saliva. The coat of husk snagged
his lucent lotus stem of throat, slit the
food pipe shrunk from months of starvation.

Seven weeks the breeze danced on leaves,
light sharp as it streaked river Hiranyavati.
Silence gathered its heavy skirt into a bunch
waited at doorstep of his hermitage, impatient

and demanding. Letters climbed one atop the other,
slung from bars, dropped mid air like trapeze artists,
legs folded in submission but hands still grasping.
He smiled asking, what have you come to learn?

_____________________________

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

John Lewis
“The End of the World”
Inspiration Piece

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

“The Welcome/Unwelcome Guest”
Bobbi Wolcott
Response

Wisdom Bearers
By DiAna Hart Smith
Inspiration piece

Here I am in the little living room of our row house resplendent in my full-skirted tea length dress of baby blue organdy. Two-inch heels have been dyed the exact shade of blue as my dress. Hairspray and hairpins hold my upsweep motionless. This is my first date. The door bell chimes—Bruce is here to take me to the Junior High School dance. He and I are all of fourteen. Mom gently opens the front door.

A woman blows in over our threshold. She takes three giant steps and looms large—like a ringmaster–in the middle of our living room that’s suddenly become smaller. She’s pumping Dad’s hand saying, “I’m Bruce’s mother. I’m Ruth Kramer.” Then, she latches onto my hand, “You must be Brucie’s date, DiAna.” Then Ruth turns her energy onto Mom—still frozen in place not even blinking. Mom’s hand stays tightly wrapped around the door knob. Mom looks stunned. She’s silent. Ruth says, “Hi, I’m Ruth.” in Mom’s general direction.

It’s 1958. Ruth’s hair is cropped and gently colored, suspiciously close to the shade featured on the new TV commercial for the Clairol home coloring kit. Ruth’s suit is black. The sharp edges of its fine tailoring contrasts with the soft gathers of Mom’s pastel shirtwaist dress. Mom has suits but they have peplums, crystal rosette buttons–feminine touches. A sensational eye-grabbing jeweled broach gleams on Ruth’s lapel. Suddenly, Mom’s strand of pearls looks so classically innocent. Mom always looks lovely. Ruth is some new kind of exotic for me. She’s not refined Mom and she’s not glamorous Loretta Young–who hosts her own television show.

Ruth tells my parents and me that she and Bruce live in an apartment on Angora Terrace and that she has a career. Few mothers I know work outside the home. Those who do, have part-time jobs, nothing they classify as a career. Ruth begins enumerating on her fingers that: First, she’ll drive Bruce and me to the dance. Second, she’ll pick us up at the front door of the school gym at eleven o’clock sharp. Third, she’ll deliver me back to my front door by eleven twenty-eight at the latest. I almost expect her to say to Dad, “Have you got that?”

Sometime during my slow recovery from the jolt of Ruth, I glimpse Bruce in his mother’s wake just a few inches into our living room. A white oblong corsage box with the telltale cellophane window is tucked under his right arm. Suddenly, it hits me that I have forgotten all about him. My eyes have been riveted on his mother and her broach.

I am witnessing Ruth taking complete control of our situation—so expertly and with such concentrated energy—while dressed in such a serious shade of fashion. Bruce must have slipped the orchid corsage on my wrist at some point but I wasn’t able to divert my attention from Ruth, who has become my date of choice.

Bruce sits next to me in silence in the backseat. I don’t know what to say to him. He doesn’t know what to say to me. I watch Ruth competently maneuver her car through Philadelphia’s complicated traffic patterns. Traditionally, only dads own cars and do all of the driving and delivering of everyone—family, friends, neighbors.

I sit forward and ask Ruth questions from the back seat. Ruth’s eyes meet mine in her rear-view mirror as we talk of the Eisenhower administration, my course load, and the permanent collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Thank goodness for all of those current events assignments and all of those school field trips to the Philadelphia Museum of Art that I adore. The questions Ruth poses makes me feel as though she’s genuinely interested in my opinion. And, she respectfully responds to my questions. I never get to know Ruth’s full story. It isn’t for my lack of trying. She intrigues me.

I’m home at eleven twenty-six—two minutes early. Mom is waiting up for me. She loves how nice my dress looks. She compliments me on not shining on Bruce, “I’m so relieved, DiAna, that you’re not boy crazy. Kathy Russo’s mother tells me that Kathy is boy crazy and she worries so about her.” Curiously, Mom doesn’t mention Ruth. I don’t either. I suspect that Mom doesn’t know what to think—whether to feel sorry for Ruth, admire her, or find her ways pushy and offensive.

I sense from pieces I put together from Ruth’s and my conversation that Bruce’s father isn’t a part of her and Bruce’s family unit, that she alone will fill all gaps. Bruce won’t feel the lack of a father or suffer from their adjusted lifestyle, if Ruth can possibly prevent it. Soon, I don’t remember much about Bruce–other than he was tall and had curly dark hair–or the dance. Bruce’s mother eclipsed him. He faded from my life as fast as the orchid wrist corsage, but Ruth still rattles around in my brain.

I gnaw on Ruth for months. People can really choose different life styles—that’s huge for me. Ruth is single and so brave. She earns the money that pays all of her and Bruce’s expenses. She must have selected her car and paid for it herself. Mom relies on Dad to make big decisions, pay bills, and write checks. Ruth does all the things that dads are expected to do. She didn’t call Dad, act pitiful, and ask him to drive us to the dance. Mom doesn’t drive. Bruce is lucky his mom is devoted to him and will take care of him. Whew! It’s a lot to think about.

Little do I know that fifty-five years later, I’ll still be benefiting from Ruth occupying a crag in my brain. I think of Ruth standing tall, free and brave—doing what had to be done. Ruth planted a feministic seed or two in me. She influenced my choice to have a son, a career, and a life that I crafted.

All those decades ago Ruth put me on alert that wisdom bearers come unannounced in unexpected shapes and in unconventional forms. I still keep my ears and eyes wide open.

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