Nostalgia
Why We Did Such a Thing
by Amy Hildreth
I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for
the fascists, the black men with boots on
who stole the hieroglyphics of our culture, train-wrecked
sermons into our mathematics classrooms, dictating "And hell
and hell will come."
We were all merged into Citizens, Kitty said. We were
all happy, clapping. We wore identical
haircuts. We forgot that being Italian could be any different.
We, the boot country, needed boots on to make anything
real. We needed to slap the history books back, to
open the facades up with red banners.
The dust wasn't something to be proud of anymore.
Mussolini changed that. We thought
Mussolini was a patriot, Kitty said.
Youth's Victory
by Sharon Skinner
I marched through childhood on bare feet.
wore tangled pigtails and scraped knees,
as badges of honor among my tribe.
Many a monster we slew or tamed,
captured fairies with swords of flame.
Warriors, we fought side-by-side.
On blackened mountains, showed our mettle
racing beyond forest and meadow,
flying on wings of faith and light.
Through it all, I kept the pace,
and oftentimes I won the race.
No fear or challenge left me behind.
But now that I am grown, I've seen
the meaning of mortality.
Now, prudence is my daily guide.
I've put away my sword and steed.
Become the Queen of cautious deeds,
who reigns oe'r safer times.
But when the shadows come to play,
I miss the me of yesterday
and find a longing in my mind.
Then I escape the grown-up me,
stepping between the light of day
and night time's starlit skies.
I plait my hair in tangled braids,
strap my flaming sword in place
and slip the bonds of time.
When
by Verian Thomas
The vivid colours of sun painted days,
(bright as a Van Gogh cornfield),
charged with children's laughter
carrying miles on the shimmering air.
Shoe soles tacky on the tarmacadam road
that no car travels on days like these,
where we run aimlessly in circles
avoiding each other's outstretched hands.
Sycamore helicopters in the cul-de-sac
thrown high into the cyan sky,
decorate our heads and shoulders,
newly crowned wood nymph princes.
Epic battles burst forth amongst the trees
with two fingers and a thumb for a gun,
dramatic chest clutching arched backed deaths
to the rattling of fat cheeked machine gun fire.
There are bluebells everywhere.
Time Like a Rubber Band
Time like a rubber band
stretches slow--
--ly out snaps
together and speeds
ahead.
Never enough for some things
and others drown in excess.
No compass for direction;
are we walking in the past?
Fling ourselves against the sling,
shot from the band into future tense
we're flying now and memory runs together
until the slowness makes us dense.
Fictitious Reminiscence
by Alli Treman
Before anything else I remember
my mom carrying me
into the kitchen
to look at the calendar.
An event which likely happened
time and again
since she writes everything
on the wall calendar.
I see my feet thumping as I'm
jumping across pale-blue carpet
circled by tall aunts and uncles
sitting in tall chairs.
"I can skip! I can skip!"
Ludington fills up three pages in part 1
of my childhood photo album.
See me running on the pier,
view snapshots of a little blonde girl
smiling by the sunset.
I cannot picture the sunset,
or the pier, instead I see
a Squirt truck handing out free pop
my parents don't seem to recollect.
We had a large shrub
in front of the swing set.
I recall my mom
calling it a dogwood.
But dogwoods are trees with many
pink or while flowers.
Not green leaves on red twigs.
At least, I think the twigs were red.
I'm not sure I remember.
Louisiana
by Amy Hildreth
Foster believed heaven was just
Louisiana with a cooler winter
He said politics left a funny
Feeling in his mouth, a bad aftertaste.
Learning to love it and
Embrace it, Edwards baptized
Him. The Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost all attended, so
the inauguration was a smash hit.
Hollywood, inspired, dug
In the state where you can't dig
All they turned up was mud and vampires.
The lattice gates lured visitors
Longing to place their palms
On history, to make acquaintance
With the state that sold
Souls like they were crawfish
Ugly but edible.
The hospitality here is so warm
That even ghosts may enjoy
The broad verandas, the slats
on the porch swings.
Touch to the Heart
by Chris Patterson
It can look like a house
If you look from outside.
It can vary as houses can,
tudor, colonial, split-level.
Mine is gingerbread,
yellow, bright,
wrapped by a porch
dotted with rockers and a swing.
Appearing ordinary from the outside,
as houses can but more rooms
than physics will allow await within.
Enter the front room.
Sunny, airy, the aroma of
tea and something baked
greets you at the door.
A grand staircase leads
you to a hall.
Look left, look right
there are doors as far
as imagination can stretch them.
Turn left and stop
several doors down.
This particular door
has a Bloom County
cartoon taped to it.
Open to a small room
framed by a loft with
horrid green shag carpet
underneath.
It can only be a dorm room
or a pysch ward,
the carpet is that bad.
An illicit smell permeates
the air, only slightly covered
by incense and clove.
As with each of these rooms,
the details become sharper
the further you walk into the room.
A turntable plays
a new band called
REM or U2 or classics like
The Who or Rickie Lee Jones.
Faces fade in like
materializing ghosts.
Their conversations and
their laughter do not quite
echo but flirt with the threshold
of perceptible sound.
Of all the senses felt
in this house, it's the
touch to the heart
that's hardest to define.
It begins as a feeling
of happiness until
it grows into longing.
Which will not be satifsfied
so it evolves into a dull ache.
Eventually it's tempered
by a melancholy you wear like
a poncho.
Until you close the door, stop
on the front porch and breathe
the present air, the poncho
becoming burdensome.
Though each room has
its own sights, smells
and sounds, the touch
to the heart results in
the same cycle of emotion.
The house is called memory.
The touch is called nostalgia.
A Glare
by Mylinda Campbell
My love is a glare upon a window pane.
No reflection of desire do you see past the rain.
Doused is the window like muddy water from a pond,
unclear, yet hoping to see beyond.
Have I not been there on a cloudy day when there is no light for impression in anyway?
If this glare is all you see, not my bond, my presence, it's only me!
Are you unaware when you look away the window
has no glare?
Or is it only because I am no longer there?
Once, in a garden
by Verian Thomas
Nothing interesting happened,
on the quietest of days
with a bed of grass at my back
and a blanket of sky
a bumble bee flew so close
to my face that I saw
the lump of its sting,
a butterfly weaved in the air
drunk on buddleia, ants
trooped through the hairs
on the back of my hand,
I followed an aeroplane
that stood still in the air
as the world turned until
my eyes were so far up
in my head that they hurt,
nothing interesting happened
but I remember it still
as I walk the concrete
brick and steel of city streets
to the sound of a sighing spine.
Not anymore
There used to be more
To this crazy life
Than what we were taught
And what we had seen
There used to be a shimmer
A bright glance of the wonder
Glowing with all its power
To make us ponder
About the questions in life
That kept our souls from dying
Now the sheen is merely a memory
that is fading slowly
and the satisfying answers
become enigmas incomprehensibly
There used to be more
So much more
Not anymore
"The power to question is the basis of all human progress." Indira Ghandi