“I Exist”
Pippa Possible
Response

Nasturtiums
By Amy Souza
Inspiration piece

Certainly vines had been creeping forth in the days prior to my noticing, but it was as if the nasturtiums appeared out of nowhere. One day barren earth; the next, lush greenery reaching out onto the patio, bright orange and yellow flowers poking heads toward the sky.

The flowers taste peppery and burn floral essence into nasal passages. This I know is true, though I can’t recall a specific instance when I’ve plucked a flower and placed it on my tongue. Glancing out the window that first early day, I felt a jolt at the sight of them, and then I felt crazy. Had I planted nasturtiums? Watered them? Watched them sprout? I wondered if a secret being hid inside me and snuck out to sow seeds as a message: I exist.

While I sleep the nasturtiums travel, furtive, their tendrils seeking support to climb upon. They find the narrow metal stake that holds up a battered, unused screen porch and claim it for themselves. Now I greet them as I turn on the electric kettle each morning. Water begins to boil and I scan the yard to see how far the stems have traveled. Sometimes they grow a foot in one day.

Meanwhile, the world moves around me. I hear cars in the distance and imagine drivers hurrying to important places. Somewhere close by, a shovel scratches loose rock. The whine of a lawn mower. Aroma of cut grass and gasoline.

I remember that feeling of purpose. Once I had things to do, too. Though not old, I feel archaic and worn. Never know how to go on, how to keep waking up. In the morning, when I do rouse, I often surprise myself by still being here. And yet here I am.

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Jim Doran: One
Inspiration Piece

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Jim Doran
Rotten Fruit
Oil on canvas
Response

Linger
By Yolanda Palis
Inspiration piece

There’s the trash – old newspapers, shoeboxes,

an avocado pit, me in family pictures

at my mother’s knee. Lingering salmon smell

of expiring.  Can’t recall –

did I dream; was I gay, bi or hetero?

Pushed away by a boy, and an irritated voice

I still hear “Let me be!”  Now I recall, I chose

to die.  Now limited by coffin space, I linger

in the air, the rotting stink of forgotten berries

and bananas, disturbing like the questions

I asked.  I linger, the anger between puke

and stifled burp, not having done enough

to stop words that hit, that caused,

perhaps, my indifference to the gash

still gurgling purple blood to earth’s gut.

.

.

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Jim Doran
The Gray Lady
Response

Revelation
By Rachel Evans
Inspiration piece

Beloved, when you come to me

You must come to me in color,

Bright in tortured contradictions,

Bearing Baals of blue ablaze with

Yellows dancing unencumbered

In rays of pious purplish light.

From your inner core let pour the

Greens and pinks, forgotten deeds that

Shed unholy hues on hands of

Crimson bound and broken for you.

For in darkness you may hide

And from lightness fall away

But, Love, be hidden not

In shades of endless moaning

Gray.

.

.

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Response – the Fishwife, by Jim Doran

Inspiration Piece by Maureen O’Donnell

The Shadow of Saint-Quentin

Maureen O’Donnell

The fountain twisted high over a pool studded with tiles of blue and yellow and white. Three stone fish with forever-gaping mouths froze in the air, twisted together in mid leap toward the sky. They laughed water. Anna knew the fountain in her mind, well before she saw it in the square of the town that lay just outside Saint-Quentin.  Her black-laced shoes, too-tight from long walks over several days, scuffed over broken cobbles.  She had not planned to come back to the Square, but that morning she stood in line, bought her ticket, and another for her son.  They were not due in Paris until tomorrow.

She followed a near-invisible path, tugged on by something that fell just shy of memory. She chased the mimic of memory, but it danced ahead, easily outpaced her shuffle. It drew her through the remains of a stone arch that presided over weeds and a discarded bottle.

A pair of small feet tapped out hop-skip-jump on the broken road behind her.  Jump.  Thud.  Thud-thud.  She turned and caught sight of the boy, all long limbs and knobby elbows and a mop of brown curls that she couldn’t bear to shear away.

He disappeared behind the tumbled-over wall, and panic squeezed Anna’s chest.  Then she saw him, twisting and leaping through the neglected space.

#

Children dash through the square. They shriek, the fountain laughs, adults whisper words that escape loud anyway. Somewhere a siren complains.  Anna squirms inside the dry, starched weight of a white pinafore.  The crisp white folds lock her down, reflect the sunshine with the cheerful reminder that she’s not to go and play.  Fingers pull her hair into barrettes, but curls and girl resist. She makes a bid for freedom, toward the fountain. A record crackles to life and spills a woman’s voice from above the Square.

“There’ll come a time, now don’t forget it,” she croons around faint crackling sounds.  A record she hasn’t heard before.  Anna looks up, and tries to count the open windows, find the new sound.  One.  Two.

#

Time had battered the windows above the town square into listless black eyes that stared down on an abandoned space that made the grown woman small. She tugged at the lace collar of her dress, and felt the pull of the fountain and the fish.

#

“Non! Anna!”

Her mother’s cry was a thing of the past, a thing to be dodged if she was quick enough.  She felt the collar of her pinafore loosen and laughed.

“There’ll come a time, when you’ll regret it…” The music rambled on. The little girl wove between people great and small, and burst through a knot of children gathered around the tiled pool. She dipped her hands into clear, cold water, and it flew off her fingertips and over their heads. Motors coughed and sputtered; bodies twitched; people and sirens screamed.

A woman sang, en Anglaise, “when you grow lonely, Your heart will break like…”

The record skipped to a stop. Anna clung to the fountain and stared, wild-eyed, at knees and shoes. The world was motion, all but her.  She was frozen, mouth gaping, frozen like the fish above her head.

#

Her fingers scrabble dust. The world explodes into fire and became a cheerful afternoon. She tastes grit and metal in her mouth, realizes her lower lip is between her teeth. Phantoms tug at her messy, little-girl curls. They run across the square, shout like people, then ghosts, then like people again.  Planes drone overhead, through the thick cotton-fuzz she now feels in her ears.  It is Sunday, but Anna cannot hear the bells of Saint Quentin, or the singing.

#

Loam-brown eyes, mimics of her own, meet hers. She clings to a fountain that today has neither fish nor tiles.

“Maman,” the young boy says. “Maman, do you know this place? Do you know it from before the war?”

They are in the Square: she sits, he stands, in the broken space that makes her feel small again. Open windows eye them suspiciously. It is 1914 in the town outside Saint-Quentin, and pointed helmets wink at the sun. It’s 1918, and bombs strip skin from buildings and shatter foundations of men, and the world becomes just a little more like hell. 1934, and her son stares at her with a child’s eyes, eyes that can never know war.

“Do you know this place, Maman?” he asks her.  She clutches a fountain that is hers but has no fish.

October of 1918, the Germans run: she is a child, one of many refugees. One of many and all alone. Music plays in a funny-smelling army tent while she sits on a cot and swings her feet, asks for her mother.  Still alone.

Summer of 1934, somewhere in the town that is not so empty, an old jazz record spins to life, and the American woman sings. The boy doesn’t seem to notice.

“Your heart will break like mine and you’ll want me only, After you’ve gone…”

“No,” Anna says to her son.

The singer answers, “after you’ve gone away.”

—

“After you’ve gone.” (1918) Music by Turner Layton, lyrics by Henry Creamer. Broadway Music Corporation, New York. (Public Domain)

Jim Doran
Inspiration Piece

The Naiads
By Maureen O’Donnell
Response

A thunderstorm rages high above the glass-gray surface of the lake. Plink, plunk, plink in quick-time. Beneath the surface, the storm is a muted roar.  And They dance.

Long hair ripples behind Them.  Supple, slender arms and legs, graceful as reeds, wave with the motion of the water.  They spin and twirl, ebb and swirl, until the last clap of thunder echoes and the world above is calm.

The lake grows warm and lethargy tugs at them, sucks movement down into the mud.  The storms are not gone, but there are fewer.  They sink to the bottom, nestle into beds beneath sunken logs and tilted rocks, and They sleep.

The warm season comes and there are new sounds.

Shrieks.  Sometimes sharp, piercing.  Sometimes rounded, welling like bubbles do as they wobble toward the top of the lake.  It is in the late afternoon, the calm after a storm, that They see the new noise made flesh.

—

Instinct should have driven her inside when the lightning came, but Lucy Carver danced.  She galloped across the grass lawn that surrounded the house at the lake until she reached the path.  She stuck out her tongue at him and caught the rain, fresh and cold, tasting like the summer earth smelled.  Thomas hung back, until she turned toward him, made a face and darted down the bluff, out of sight.

He stood up on the railing, craned his neck, but the embankment was so steep he couldn’t see his sister on the shore.  When it became clear that she wasn’t coming back, Thomas forced himself from under the safety of the porch and followed.

Delighted at his appearance, Lucy flung a handful of mud and nearly hit him.  He grew bolder, and chased after her.

Lucy and Thomas played until a fierce thunderclap shook the ground beneath them, and then took refuge beneath an overhang in the embankment. A space large enough for two small children.

—

“This is our house.” Lucy tossed her head as she made the announcement, hands on her hips.  Typical July morning, the air was already thick, heavy, warm.

“Our house is up there,” Thomas said.

“No, that’s not our house – just for the summer. Then we give it back.  But this one’s ours.”

“Doesn’t look like a house.”

The little girl sighed, waved a plump brown arm at the overhang.  “Look harder,” she said.  “See?”

“Then this… is our front yard?”  Thomas glanced out over the water, broken only by phantom ripples.  Snapping turtles.  Or fish not yet made lazy by the day.

“Yup.  And this is the front door.”  Lucy dragged her toe through the sand, and then stepped across.  “Kitchen.  See there?  That flat rock’s the stove.  We’ll need to cook things.”

“Where do we sleep?” he asked, unconvinced.

“What about there?” She pointed to a spot against the base of the hollow, where they had hidden from the storm.

“That’s in the kitchen,” he said.

“Is not.”

“Is too!”

“Fine.”  Her breath wooshed out.  “It’s not done yet.”

“It’s ok,” Thomas said, patting her shoulder.  “We can build it.  Easy, see?”  He walked over to the wall, scraped his fingers over it.  Dirt crumbled beneath his fingernails.  He looked back at her, and she smiled.

—

There is laughter every day, small-voice-chatter, and sometimes yelling.  They listen, lazy in the sun-baked water.

Sometimes, They swim close enough to touch toes.  The children never notice.

One of Them, intrepid, wanders nearer to the shore when the light burns out.  Flops out into dry, burning air.  Sees recent scars on the embankment, and a space beneath that has grown deeper.

A space just big enough, like Their rocks and Their logs, to hide, to make a home.  Even the Council dances.  They want the boy and the girl to stay with Them.

—

The boy likes to swim.

The girl, fearless on land, hangs back, content to run through the water up to her knees.  He challenges her.  She chases for a short while, but the lake grass tickles her toes and she retreats.  He swims on.

They follow, feel the water cool as the lake grows deeper.  The boy works harder, and moves slower.  His feet trail downward, heavy like stones.  They circle beneath him.  Fear stains the murky lake water now, and exhaustion.  They grind Their teeth, unable to resist.  The girl is not watching.

Gasp, gulp.

They reach up, grasp his ankles and knees, waist and arms, with slender fingers strong enough to break anchor chains and mooring lines.  They can keep him safe.  They will dance with him.

Beneath the water, though, his sun-browned limbs grow pallid and limp.  He does not laugh.  Does not dance with them.  There is no sound, beneath the water.

—

Thomas woke in the shallow water, coughing.  Lucy stood over him, confusion written on her face and a dusty dessert spoon in her hand.  She waved it at him, annoyed at the blank look in his eyes.

“I’ve been digging,” she said.  “If you’re done swimming, are you ready to help?”

He threw up.

—

The children do not come.  They wait, but the next day is as silent as the first, and the next, the same.

They wonder why the boy and the girl have abandoned them.

—

They will finish it.  And the boy and the girl will return, and dwell in the hollow beneath the bank forever.

At first it is difficult.  They struggle at the shore, gasp, gulp water until They felt right again.  But They dig, stretch long limbs out and scratch at the embankment.  The work grows easier.  They walk the shore at night.  On warmer nights, They dance over sand and clay.

They fall back into the lake, tumble into the lake grass. There They stay until They remember the movement of the water.

They call for the boy and the girl, but there is no answer.  The autumn wind have not seen the children.  The ice is as ignorant as the rain.

They try to count the warm times, but lose track after one and give up.

They nearly miss her return.

—

Her toes squelched in mud as she walked along the lake shore, swathed in a gray sweater and blue jeans rolled up to just below the knee.  Lucy had grown, into a long-legged thing with curves, a pointed chin, and long russet hair.  She let the water lap over her feet, but didn’t venture deeper.

—

It is a pale human, tired and drawn.  Sadness rolls off her, over the lake.  They watch, decide she is not the little girl, and turn away.  Until she speaks.

—

“I don’t remember it so deep,” Lucy said, peering into the hollow beneath the embankment.  Most of the memories of her youth had shrunk as she aged: towering ponies turned into cute things, car rides that lasted eons became routine.  The space beneath the lake bank had grown into a cave, shadowed and forbidding.

How much time had passed?  Years.  The hollow she and Thomas had tried to dig into a dwelling could have always been that big.  She sighed, backed away and turned toward the lake with far-away eyes.

“I miss you.”  The woman had the same voice, sweet, one that could be attached to a small child.  She reached into her pocket and drew out a metal spoon, threw it away.  It splashed into the lake.  She watched the ripples, caught sight of a fat, sleek fish as it darted back into the depths.

She walked up the dirt path without looking back.

—

She said that misses Them.  They will be ready next time.

They have help.

Driving winds come as the air chills and wrinkled leaves – gold, red, orange, brown – dot the surface of the lake, drift to the mud bottom.  The wind blasts against the lake bank.

Rain freezes in cracks and fissures, poised like fingers ready to pry weak points apart.  When the thaw comes, and They stir awake beneath the frozen surface, chunks of mud thud to the shore and run away with spring flood.

—

It starts as a whisper, rises to a plea, pitches in a shriek.  Then the crash.

The lake heaves and They are nearly buried in a wave of dirt.  Once the water calms, They crawl out from beneath the rocks, wriggle through murky depths toward the noise.

They swim over a broken railing, through jagged window panes into a room submerged. They dance beneath open doorways, call for the children.  The house, now beneath the lake, lies empty.

But it is ready.  One day, the children will return and find a place to hide, better than the one before.  A home.

They settle down.  The water cools, and warms, and cools.  Storms begin and patter off into silence.  And in the lake house, They wait.

.

Ancient Learning
Jim Doran
Inspiration piece

Yolanda Palis
Response

Countless desires
too far in the future
too distant in the past
the boyfriend
the career
the huge salary
I wanted all that.

Yet, chose a graveled path
unused, ignored by most.
“… less traveled,” said Frost.

Learned being right does
not bring happiness.  Realized
other desires, yet I fly alone
in the still of night.

.

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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.