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A Joyous Memory…

by Marshall Jamison

…Of Sunday morning in the little town where my mother was born and my brother and I first saw the light literally and spiritually.

My great aunt Mame used to worship our Lord at the top of her rich, contralto voice out on her front porch across the street from our house. For an hour before she and Uncle Will walked across the green to church she sang the glorious old hymns, Rock of Ages, Onward Christian Soldiers, Lead, Kindly Light, The Old, Rugged Cross and other favorites.

Occasionally passersby would pause to listen, eyeing the Doctor’s sign beside the door, weather-beaten by the passing years. Uncle Will had been a true horse and buggy practitioner in his early days. Later he drove his ancient Nash with great care on his round of house calls. When he sometimes took my brother and me with him, we would sing the hymns we learned from Aunt Mame on Sunday.

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The Judge's Decision

by Marshall Jamison

He was a tall man, proud, and at seventy-eight
The Judge, his eyes steel blue, held a steady gaze
As he looked down at me, he stood ramrod straight.
Without raising his voice he revealed my fate. To me,
It seemed a fair if severe one, at the age of eight.
My crime? The third grade teacher had reported to my
Mother my one day’s absence from his class. There,
When riding my new bike to school, I had eyed
In the rippling water under the river bridge, a truly enormous bass.
And as I told the Judge, the chance for such a
Magnificent catch drove all thoughts of proceeding to class to pass.
The Judge, who was himself a fisherman of note,
Had often taken me on the Delaware River in his old rowboat
So to the river I raced for my gear, pole, and bait.
After a long careful casting, an interminable wait,
The allure of my lures spelled that big bass’ fate.
My own, the judge decided would rest on my reply
To his wish for a piece of that magnificent, glorious fish to cook!
So supplied, with a grin, my grandfather let me
off the hook.

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A Month of Terror

by Marshall Jamison

The Time: January 1944.

Men who’d sailed the North Atlantic in convoy for up to four or more years began to breathe a little easier on the crossings from Boston and Halifax to the waiting ports in England. It looked then as if the U-Boat Wolfpack that had used the merchant ships as targets for their torpedoes for those years were almost cleared from the North Atlantic.

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Scar Tissue

by Janet Hanna

I don’t want to talk about the bruises.
I don’t want to talk about the wounds.
I want to talk about the scar tissue,
the angry, dark red, thin lines
that go deep,

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The Stranger

by Janet Hanna

As you stepped from the train,
your dress billowed out
in the underdraft
Your arms were bare
and white
against the dark
background of the coach

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Falling Off the Cliff

by Janet Hanna

In the evenings,
on alternate Tuesdays,
in neat, even rows,
Old Mike would arrange the chairs,
borrowed from Greenlawn Arms,
and the townspeople would come
to watch her fall off the cliff.
Each Tuesday she would wear
a different color scarf
as a kind of cape.
But the black jumpsuit
and the ballet slippers
were always the same.

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The Pomegranate

by Janet Hanna

Demeter could be demanding
In her sloe-eyed witchcraft ways,
Always threatening to dry up the spring rains
Or divert Zephirus’ warm breath.
You never knew from one year to the next
If she could be trusted to give the pomegranates juice
Or make the sap in the fig trees run.
But then her belly grew ripe
Like the oval melons she nourished,
And all the islanders wondered
What horny Olympian or rough farmer
Had placed his hands on her thighs.
There were wagers, of course.
Siphnos’ patriarchs put their entire fields of grain
Against Crete’s annual venison run
That she’d been coupled by Apollo.
On Santorini they whispered dirty jokes
And the Athenians sent an envoy to Delphi
To seek the ancient wisdom of the old woman
With dried milk on her breasts who sat chewing
Juniper berries in her steamy rock.

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Odysseus' Arrival

by Janet Hanna

The jewelled grotto sparkles
Where clear, icy waters spray
The deep green ferns and
Thick, spongy mosses.
Overhead a shaft of warm sunlight
Falls willingly on sweet, purple grapes
That hang in clusters
from their strong vines.

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Calypso's Defiance

by Janet Hanna

I sang the eternal song of desire
And made him rich with my gift.
I sweetened his days with crumbcakes and wine.
At night, I made him forget
His barren, rock-strewn Ithaca.
Who breaks the Jungian code of silence is punished.
My head is shaved,
My man torn from me,
My mantle, which you willed me, shredded and cursed.
I pay for your maleness, Zeus, with my womb.

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Grace

by Alma Johnson

Read: 2 Corinthians 12:9

“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

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