Jennifer Fendya
“Fire Department”
Inspiration piece

Jenny Forrester
Response

My capacity for self-destruction has been breathtaking. I’ve found people who’ve helped me destroy myself, people with destructive ideas, violent behavior, psychic destroyers, reputation-destroyers, people with a narrative need to be victimized by any means necessary, by victimizing, anything to avoid their responsibility to the fires they set. This generation says reputation doesn’t matter, but it invented the blue check mark, glorifies the number of followers and friends a person has, when they grow up, they want to be influencers. They blame prior generations (as all generations do), but theirs is the most resource-intensive in the anthropocene. The Anthropocene! Dismantle it! “Dismantle the Anthropocene” stickers for every fire truck, banners for every department, logos on all the shirts, hats, and gloves. You see it? What I’ve done. I’ve begun the destruction of destruction. I’m the influencer now. I’ve writ the new future dark in the red sky. You see it. Don’t you?

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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.

Jennifer Fendya
“Eat My Words”
Response

Working the Magic
By Jewel Beth Davis
Response

Sylvester stood around a large table made of waterlilies and pearls many, many leagues under the ocean surrounded by all his closest friends that he’d invited to his fifteenth birthday party. Usually, birthdays and parties made him anxious but for some reason he felt unusually calm. He’d been meditating a great deal lately and he credited his new habit with his sense of reassurance and calm. There were fifteen candles around his cake made of seaweed and one in the middle for luck. He didn’t really believe in luck, unless it was the kind that you made yourself. He spent a lot of time speaking positively to himself internally while he meditated because that’s how he believed he created his own best successful future. Sylvester was a Seahorse and he bounced up and down softly in the current taking in the jolly faces of his dear friends.

Rodger the Seadog, his closest friend, stood beside him. Never a beauty, Rodger had an under bite; his pointed lower teeth protruded above his upper lip and jaw. If his skin wasn’t so pink and the insides of his ears so yellow, he would have been terribly intimidating to everyone who came in contact with him. But physical impressions were misleading, and Rodger was a dear, sweet soul and good to everyone he met. To depreciate his impression of intimidation even further, Rodger had had a pronounced lisp since he was a little seapup. Sylvester watched Rodger as he seemed to be counting the numbers of the friends who were attending.

“Rodger, what’s up with the math work at my party? There’s no need for equations. I didn’t invite Mr. Zerosky.” Mr. Zerosky was their math teacher.

“No, I know, Thyl,” Rodger said. I just wanted to make thure everyone you invited hath come.”

“Well, that’s good of you but it really doesn’t matter. If they come, they come. If they don’t, it’s their loss. More seaweed cake for everyone else.”

“Thure, thure,” said Rodger. “Abtholutely. Nothing for you to worry about. You jutht forget about it and have a good time. I hate to mention thith, but I jutht thaw Brututh the TheaMonkey dump a half bottle of Thloe Gin into the punch bowl. He’th taking off out the thide cave entranthe.”

“Hold on, hold it,” said Sylvester. “You just used the word worry at my party? Forget about Brutus and the Sloe Gin. No one uses the word worry anywhere if there’s nothing to worry about. If there weren’t, that word wouldn’t have come up.”

(Here the author intrudes to tell you, now that we know Rodger lisps, the author will no longer type the words with s in them as th. So just assume Rodger is lisping. Thanks.)

Rodger craned his neck towards the other side of the water cave. “I think I see some new party comers just arriving. It looks like the Seaworm twins.” And he took off before Sylvester could grab onto his fur coat. Sylvester thought Rodger was acting very strangely. He watched Rodger greet Sanford and Scroggle the Seaworms with warmth and gently move them into the crowd of attendees. Then he stood near the cave door counting who had come to the party and jotting their names down in his waterproof cell phone. He moved his jaw back and forth with concern and raised his thick, hairy eyebrows up and down.

Sylvester had had just about enough of this anxiety producing mystery. He was about to move to the door to confront Rodger when his good friends Seafluff Flower and Seacardinal Red moved up on either side of him, with celebratory smiles. Seafluff wanted to know when Sylvester was going to make a wish and blow out all those candles.

“Can I assist you in cutting up the cake? You know you get the first piece,” Red chirped with excitement.

Sylvester had to have help since he had no arms. “Sure. Rodger was going to do it but for some reason, he’s been standing by the door all night growling and counting.”
Seafluff glanced over at Rodger. “Yeah, I noticed that. I thought he was acting a little out of the ordinary. Hey, Syl, I know you said no gifts, but I didn’t buy it. I made you something.” She produced a beautiful handmade heart made out of silver sea weeds and she pinned it to his chest. “Hope you like it.”

Sylvester’s eyes bugged out. It was exquisite. He blushed. “Oh, wow. It must have taken you a really long time to make. I totally love it. Thanks, Fluff.”

Something caught their attention. The three of them brought their focus to the albino seabeaver named Scooter swimming hurriedly in and out of the celebrants.

“Hey, wait a second. I didn’t invite him! What’s Scooter doing here?” said Sylvester.
Red the seacardinal hopped from one foot to the other. “It’s a good thing you didn’t invite him. Wherever he goes, the next thing you see is the Seawitch!”

“Oh no!” said Seafluff.

The seawitch was a dangerous, threatening being who was dressed in black from head to toe. Her headdress of glittering black cloth extended about a foot to both the right and the left. All that you could see of her was her pointy, angry features and glittery eyes. All the sea teens avoided running into her as best they could.

The three friends watched as Rodger made a grab for Scooter to stop him from escaping but failed. He was clearly going to report the party to the Seawitch, that she hadn’t been invited to. Sylvester finally figured out what Rodger had been doing all night. The partygoers spontaneously broke into singing Happy Birthday to you!

The three near the cake weren’t singing but were on alert. Then the waters in the cave went black and cold and the singing went silent all at once.

The Seawitch appeared at the party out of nowhere. She had grown in size and loomed large over everyone at the party. Scooter waited beside her, a triumphant grin on his face.

“So,” she screamed, “you have a party, and you have the nerve not to invite me!” She threw sparks of lightning across the room. Party favors blew up or burned even in the water. The guests screamed. Sylvester was horrified. What had happened to his joyful fifteenth birthday party? Rodger was surreptitiously moving towards the witch with low growls, his teeth sparkling as he crept along.

Sylvester saw that she was much younger close up than he’d realized. She must have been a teen like the rest of them.

“I’ll destroy all of you and your paltry cake too!” the Seawitch screeched.

Rodger had crept silently right next to the Seawitch now with his mouth wide open. His teeth flashed and drool dripped nonstop from his mouth. His pink tongue pushed out. He was ready to pounce.

Sylvester abhorred violence and decided to try something else. He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

“Sorry for the oversight,” he said. He gestured to the party. “I didn’t know your address or your name.”

The Seawitch hesitated, then sank down to normal size. “Sonya,” she said.

“Well, Sonya, would you be willing to help me blow out the candles and cut the cake into slices? It’s too much for me to do alone. Considering we seahorses don’t have any arms.” Syl flashed her a smile that seemed an apology for his flaws. It allowed her an opportunity to save face.

The Seawitch thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said.

Seafluff poked Sylvester. “Are you really going to trust her, Syl?”

He responded in a low tone out of the side of his mouth and shrugged. “I really don’t see that I have much choice.”

It must be the meditation changing his life. Whatever it was, it was working. Or so he thought. Sonya blew out the sixteen candles without much effort. Her breath contained some flames and it burned away a little of the frosting. A few sea urchins clapped. She picked up the large knife lying next to the cake and turned with it toward Sylvester. Then she twisted it back and forth under the lights in a sort of weapon choreography. Rodger growled more loudly this time.

And she sunk the big knife deeply into the side of Sylvester’s…cake.

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Matthew Levine
“Whispering Pines”
Response

The Best Christmas Tree Ever
By Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration piece

When Jimmy O’Hara decided on his Christmas tree at the outdoor lot at Home Depot, they gave him a purple ribbon and told him to give it to the outdoor cashier. Someone would help him get the tree over to his car.

Jimmy handed in the ribbon. It was $49.34. He also paid for four wreaths and six boxes of lights. Jimmy was feeling pretty good. Usually, he worried that he had picked a wrong tree, but this time, maybe for the first time ever, he felt good about his tree. It was just the right height and it was powerfully bushy.

When he had selected the lights, a Home Depot employee, an attractive black girl in her mid-twenties, had helped him out big time. Jimmy was fumbling around with the light displays and she came up and asked if he needed help. He allowed as how he did. He was stuck.

How could he tell which lights to get? They ranged from $2 to $19. She gave a little laugh and said, “Isn’t it something?” She asked him if he was going to use the lights after the holidays. He said he wasn’t.

In that case, she suggested he buy the $2 lights. He was surprised. “I know,” she said. “But the cheap ones are almost the same. They’ll see you through the holidays just fine.”

She helped him gather up the $2 boxes. The name on her nametag was “Amanda.”

He thanked her sincerely. She had really helped him. He asked her, “Do you know what Amanda means?”

She said she didn’t.

“It is from old Roman times,” he told her. “It means worthy of love.”

“Worthy of love,” she repeated. “That’s nice. I never knew.”

“Well, don’t forget. You really deserve that name. Thanks again.”

It was a nice way to start the holiday season.

He paid his bill and took his receipt back to the tree lot. He handed the receipt to a very big, tough-looking black guy who walked over to the fenced in holding area. There was Jimmy’s tree! It really was a beauty.

The black guy snatched the tree up and shouldered it like it was nothing. Jimmy looked at him again. Late thirties. Big shoulders sloped like an athlete.

He was big but he had gone soft in spots. He wasn’t wearing gloves. Jimmy was wearing gloves. It was cold—the wind was up too—like it always was around sundown. It was the coldest day yet.

“Man,” Jimmy said, ‘This has got to be the coldest day yet. The wolf is out there.”

“You got that right. That wind makes it bite.”

He pushed Jimmy’s tree onto a band saw and cut a few inches off. He made a couple of more passes until it was even. Then he guided the trunk into a contraption that enfolded it in a mesh of twine.

“You got a real nice tree,” he said.

“Thanks,” Jimmy said. He felt really good about the tree.

“You know when it gets cold like this? In April, I’m still umpiring baseball, and let me tell you, in April, when that wind comes gusting off the Sound, it feels like it was generated on an iceberg.”

They walked over to the lot. Jimmy’s Mercedes was parked in a Handicap spot.

“Yeah,” the guy said, “but you play anyway even in the cold and rain. You gotta love it.”

“You got that right,” Jimmy said. “You gotta love it. Were you an athlete?”

“I was a football player. I loved it. I played for years. I could have gone on with the game…but life intervened, if you know what I mean.”

The guy had paused for a fraction before he said life had intervened. Jimmy could tell he was new at telling his story out like this.

“Do I ever,” Jimmy said. “I sure do know what you mean.”

He opened the trunk with his key. There was plenty of room for the tree.

“Plenty of room, no need to lash it to the roof,” Jimmy said. “Just slide it in.”

There was plenty of room. The guy slid the tree in easy. Jimmy gave him a five-dollar bill.

“Thanks,” Jimmy said. He was tempted to say more. “Easy does it.” “One day at a time.” But he resisted.

The guy thanked him and walked away. Jimmy was feeling double good. He drove on home with the best Christmas tree ever.

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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.

Matthew Levine
“Longshore, late in the season at 17”
Inspiration piece

Golf By His Lonesome
By Robert Haydon Jones
Response

Rob knew this golf course very well. It was close to his home.

Back when he was a child, Rob had played round after round on this golf course by the sea. He much preferred baseball but he was expected to master golf—and so he did.

It took a couple of years, but by the time he was 13, Rob had locked in the form of an expert golfer. He was left-handed, but his father insisted he learned to play as a right-hander and after a brief rebellion, Rob saw the light.

He starred at baseball player at prep school and in College. But when the baseball season ended, he golfed again. As usual, his father had been right. Golf was perfect for a gentleman in commerce.

The fact was Rob had to go easy some times. He was far superior to the players he usually encountered. Occasionally, Rob ran into a really good young player and they went at it tooth and nail. Rob usually prevailed. But when he was 17, a young player from California drubbed him two days and three rounds straight. That’s when Rob learned that unless you used your skills to compete, your game would not improve.

Bill McNeely was the villain. Rob looked him up and discovered that as of May 1st, young Bill had already won $81,000 at five PGA tournaments this year. His highest finish had been tenth in Mobile.

But Rob had no interest in competing in PGA events. He enjoyed playing golf. He liked the sport itself and the natural surroundings. His father had understood this. His father also understood that Rob had no interest in joining his brothers at his father’s brokerage. A week after he graduated from college, Rob enlisted in the Marines. He thrived there. He became a Recon Marine. His recon team became so well known that it was disbanded and Rob and the others were dispersed to other teams.

Rob served with three teams and then helped form a special, “hunter–killer” recon team especially designed to work in hostile territory. He loved the work. He was addicted to the savagery and the danger.

He was badly wounded by a “friendly fire” incident when a teammate accidentally discharged his weapon while cleaning it. He was evacuated by an attack helicopter manned by volunteers. He underwent treatment for five months including three months in Maryland.

He was given a 100% disability. Physically, he was okay. However, he was unable to deal with the fears that wracked him every waking hour.

Fortunately, Rob was referred to Basil and Emily Lang, a husband/wife therapy team. Together they showed Rob that, for him, Job #1 was to accept he was just another wounded Marine, who needed comforting.

Rob was smart. He understood the problem right away. But it was hard. He had notched his weapon 73 times. Who was he to plead for mercy?

That was the key question and after a relatively short time, he saw and accepted the answer. He was ready to come home. Warts and all!

He was 28 and he looked okay. But Rob was still very addicted to danger. He had to learn and relearn that his addiction was his lifetime momento. It was hard!

Tomorrow he was flying West to join an “Outward Bound” program. Rob would be guiding young men and women into the deep woods and way up hills and mountains in hopes they would meet themselves.

Now he was enjoying golf by the sea. Golf by his lonesome. But not really.

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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.

Marisa Bevington
Inspiration piece

Resolute
By Sarah Priestman
Response

She’d waited before. Waited outside shul for her father, who’d refused to be rushed since racing from his burning Lithuanian village. Waited in the hall as her parents whispered with the yentl. Waited for her husband to slurp the last of his soup so she could kiss her two boys good night and carry the family’s supper dishes down the stairs to a communal pump and the comfort of gossip, the courtyard enclosure a haven from New York’s bitter winds.

Waited for miracles for these sons, her prayers unheeded that TB summer of 1900, the silence of so many mothers, so much grief, replacing gossip at that same well. They were both buried across the river in Brooklyn, too far to visit. Soon, Ruth waited for the third child, her growing belly a source of envy at the pump: Miriam, rosy cheeked, quick to learn. This prayer, answered.

Ten years passed. Widowed, Miriam now teacher’s pet, they left Mott Street to cross another river, where she took work as a housekeeper with a Teaneck family. They are not from Lithuania, Ruth is warned, but Germany, though Ruth doesn’t know the difference. The husband is a lawyer; the wife, it is explained, active with Sisterhood at the Temple.

Now Ruth waited for Miriam, invited to join the lessons with lawyer’s children. Ruth finishes the household dishes as she waits, leaning against the deep sink, indoors, her hands in water warmed on a stove. In the morning, her fingertips snap against the hot iron used on the husband’s collars, dab polish on the wife’s black boots, worn to meetings, outside the house.

She waited to find a yentl, knowing the poor choice Miriam would make, as what man wanted a smart wife, and then sat, flabbergasted, as the lawyer told her of Douglass College, where his daughter will attend classes while living in a women’s boarding house. With Ruth’s permission, they will pay Miriam’s tuition, and she can share a room with their daughter, Deborah – they have grown to be close as sisters, he reminds Ruth. She is stunned. Her boys were taken from her, then her husband, all by disease, something she understood. What is taking her girl?

Again Ruth waits for Miriam, who returns home for Rosh Hashanah, Hanukah, Yom Kipper, the husband traveling to New Brunswick to escort them on the train each way. She listens as her daughter chatters about the classes. Maybe she will be a teacher, Miriam says, more animated than ever, or writer. Ruth is horrified. No one will marry such a lively girl. She holds her tongue, waiting for this insanity to pass.

In June of 1922, Ruth climbs into the family’s Roadster for college graduation ceremonies, expecting Miriam to return to the cot next to her mother’s in the room behind the kitchen. She has almost become friends with the husband and wife. Her patience with their younger children, whom she has grown to adore, and her steadiness behind the scenes has cultivated a mutual fondness among them all, but she is still household staff. She knows not to wait for that to change.

Miriam introduces her to the landlady, Mrs. Schwartz. Ruth studies the dining room, six chairs stationed around the table. Sweaters hang from five hooks near the door. Five boxes line a slim foyer table, collecting mail for each boarder. She peeks into the kitchen, noticing a faucet installed above the deep sink.

Miriam and Deborah make introductions, revealing an affection for Mrs. Schwartz. The landlady is cordial with the adults, but shares something special with the girls. Ruth is intrigued, seeing in Mrs. Schwartz a warmth fueled by the comings-and-goings of these young people, a connection with others that Ruth cannot remember since those evenings of gossip at the pump, her young sons safely in bed.

Miriam tells Ruth about the job she has been offered as a secretary at the Rutgers Law School, which, with the boys all home from the war, is growing. She will still live in Mrs. Schwartz’s house, but it won’t be the same. Mrs. Schwartz is selling the house, moving into her son’s in the next town, once she can find a new owner.

Ruth stares out at endless green fields as the Roadster crosses New Jersey back to Teaneck. Days later she asks the husband for a meeting, bringing a pad of paper and pencil to the dining room table where they sit, once she has arranged the black tea, lemon slices, tiny cakes. He is initially curious as she speaks, then pensive, then exuberant.

Yes, a woman can own property in America, he explains, appeasing her concerns. The law was passed in 1848, the same time pogroms raged through her father’s country. He will loan her the money for what he calls a “down payment,” and she will send him a check – he paused here, letting her know that Miriam can help her with checks – to clear her debt.

His wife will miss her, he concludes, but this is good. He repeats himself: “This is good, this is good.” The three of them will take the Roadster back to New Brunswick, he declares, always excited for a reason to drive the car, so Ruth can meet with Mrs. Schwartz. He will serve as Ruth’s lawyer.

The wife gives Ruth an Edwardian-style hat for the meeting. It is slightly out of style, adorned with cabbage roses, coiled ribbon streamers, blue tulle.

Ruth wears it obediently, sitting ramrod at the table while lawyers trade papers, the husband counseling her where to sign, Mrs. Schwartz offers a new fountain pen when Ruth’s smears on the paper. She waits for the moment when the house is hers. She knows how to be resolute more than to be happy, but that will come. She glances up, as if seeing through the office walls, and stares into a future with its promise of Miriam, the voices of young people, her name on this paper, the waiting that thing in her past.

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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.

Marisa Bevington
Response

A Visit from Mom
By Sarah Priestman
Inspiration piece

It’s an overcast Sunday; more Edinburgh than Arlington on what should be a sunny Memorial Day weekend. I pull the New York Times from its blue bag and rest my eyes on the front page, covered with the names of our pandemic’s dead, each with a one-line obit to capture their full lives. My brother died in 1994, so I know the trajectory that is living with loss, the emotional version of an MC Escher drawing: confusing up with down, unsure of one’s footing in space. The winter following his death I’d left a tight community of friends in New York for another in DC, where I’d attended American University, hoping a new beginning would provide solid ground.

My mother came to visit that April. Cherry blossoms bloomed. I’d rented a studio apartment in upper Northwest in one of the many buildings designed to attract the “working girls” who’d flocked to DC during the war, launching a housing boom. She had been among those girls, a secretary at the Pentagon. When we took a tour bus, she quizzed the guide about the famous building, and no, he did not know it was the first in the DMV with central air conditioning.

I’d picked her up at National Airport (no security restrictions, no Regan in the name), expecting her to need a nap. Instead, she wanted to go directly to the Smithsonian. Thus launched a week in which my 75 year-old mother exhausted me, traipsing around the Library of Congress, her old neighborhood in Park Fairfax, (a working girl, but living with her parents) and Glen Echo, where she’d ridden a street car to jitterbug with the boys who’d remained in DC. We drove to Fort Belvoir, where Pentagon secretaries had been invited to swim. We talked about the war. We talked about my brother.

She was grateful, she told me, that her generation “let women stay home,” that her life was focused on raising three kids. “That was enough,” she told me when I took her to Old Ebbitt’s Grill, splurging far beyond my means. “I loved it, and I’m proud of you kids.” Mary, with her acceptances into “all state” chorus, a degree in music from NYU. Jerry, building a pioneering career in what we then called “hi-tech.” Her youngest, now constructing a new life in the city her mother had once called home.

And now, in this shared city, we grieved Jerry. We both wept after The Bridges of Madison County at the Avalon Theatre, the loss of a lonely farm wife mirroring our own in the way another’s grief always will, another’s torn heart always returning us to the scars across our own. Like the names in my New York Times remind us: in this pandemic, we all grieve.

My mother would live another twenty years. Within five years from our visit, she’d cradle my adopted baby son with the tenderness she’d held us, and later hoist him onto her lap to draw, read, chatter together. Within ten she’d lose her husband, sitting alongside his body on their bed, my standing with a hand on her shoulder as she called him “Guillame,” his name, Bill, in French. Her fluency had landed her at the Pentagon’s Lend-Lease program, translating communications with our French allies. When she’d met my father, he still drove the recommissioned jeep he’d bought after his discharge (two Purple Hearts); I imagine this name was one she used, flirtatiously, just between them. I’d never heard it before.

Five years later she’d be in that same bed, and I’d slide in next to her, whispering memories: our wandering silently around the Tidal Basin beneath the endless pink blossoms; finding her father’s old entrance at the Department of Agriculture, where he’d taken a position after the depression had left him penniless, moving his family to DC for a new start; the vastness of the Spanish Ballroom, recalling the sweltering summer nights when she danced with the boys who stayed home.

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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.

Victoria Nessen
“Finding Your Way”
Inspiration piece

Six Weeks One Summer
By Mary Lee Hahn
Response

1985

After the first job,
before the second degree.
Between.

Blue Highways

South — tobacco fields
West — Navajo Nation
North — regal mountains

Soundtrack

box of cassette tapes
meadowlark on a fencepost
AM radio

Souvenirs

single finger wave
small town hospitality
sense of direction

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2020

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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.

Amy Souza
“Trail Closed”
Response

Covidian Dreams
By Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration piece

As the isolation and distancing young tree like grows
……and burgeons spitting flowers of solitary time into lysoled air
The music filling the house brings back places and friends
Moments on this planet from freer days
Cafes, Jazz clubs, mountain hikes, and ski chalets
Oceans, lakes, live concerts, and waterfalls of laughs unmasked
Spilling into little dances with remembered partners
These days present frightening choices: dreams or nightmares
As loved ones pass alone and far away
Covidian dreams, saxophonic breezes,and small dances in the kitchen
Zooming with likeminded others halts the silences for the briefest of moments
Yet it is just not quite, not quite, not quite real….
And what of you?
What do you choose?
To wither and weep or to drown in the richness.

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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.

Diane Mayr
“The Elephant and the Jester”
Inspiration piece

A Visit to the Circus
By Meg Max
Response

It was easy to lead her home.

She was willing to accept peanuts 

from you, which you liked after so much 

time in the greedy wild.

That elephant is always

the biggest thing in the room,

sentiment pressed to sediment

sadness sunk into our bones.

We dig her up again and again and again.

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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.