Where Silence is the Sound of Change Things simplest sometimes say it best that to the truth so well attest like hallowed tint of verdant spring to hope as song we have to sing where hollowed hull of former nest reminds the living richly blessed of so much looming still to find as former "homes" are left behind... ...each moment lost a moment found on course, albeit homeward bound, a path that offers no return and where so often we discern that things familiar seem so strange where silence is the sound of change. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment.
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Pilgrimage It is a shaky start, but soon you are walking, one hand holding the rail, the other, the moments: your first double-digit birthday, the wooden kayak on the mirrored lake, glass shattering under a gleaming black shoe, babies gleaned and laid upon your chest. Test results that change everything, glass shattering on an asphalt road, the constricting fist around your heart when you can’t find your son, your father’s breath slowing and softening into silence. In silence you walk on, the soles of your feet crosshatched, dodging landslides, skirting sinkholes, stumbling over moments disguised as tree roots, you walk the entire alphabet from angst to Zen and back to ambivalence, through ledgers of gains and losses, of suspicions and uncertainties, and then it is the end. At the end is an ocean, and you strip off all your skins and dip and furl like a sheet of green silk flying from a mast, and your limbs fall away and your head and your heart and you become the current, and there is nothing to hold on to and no need to hold on. There is nowhere to fall but into the waves. Shira Atik Shira Atik is an award-winning poet and a Hebrew-English literary translator. In 2018, she and sculptor Alice Kiderman co-published Stone Word, a book featuring nine of Shira’s poems alongside the sculptures that inspired them. Her poems have been published in Poetica Magazine and The Ekphrastic Review, and were displayed at the Beachwood Jewish Community Center and the Nature Center in Shaker Heights, both in Ohio. Her translations have been published by the Jewish Publication Society, the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, Zeek Magazine, Jewishfiction.net, and individual authors. I found the painting in a cousin’s basement in my home town, Elmira, Ontario, Canada—two old geezers with guns. The taller one had obviously tied his pants up with a cord. Their place looked more like a shack than a proper home. Had they just returned from hunting or were they hillbillies keeping intruders away? Searching for details of the lives of our ancestors involves real detective work. Most databases can only give you names, dates, and places—no real stories. On my first visit to Hastings County, Ontario, in June 2014, Edith McCaw, a local historian in Coe Hill, Ontario, gave me the names and telephone number of a couple of elderly “Irish brothers.” She told me they just might know the whereabouts of the former McKee property. I mentioned the Irish brothers to cousin Kenneth, a sixth-generation co-owner of the pioneer McKee family farm in Wellington County, Southern Ontario, and he remembered a painting that used to hang in our Uncle Gerald’s house in Elmira. My sister Frances (McKee) Gregory had painted it from a photograph Gerald had taken on a hunting trip in the early 1960s—a 25th wedding anniversary present from the family. Gerald, my dad, and most of their brothers, loved blood sports. In July 2016, I returned to Ontario from my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to further investigate the early life and times of my paternal great-grandparents, John and Mary Jane McKee. Although the first-born son, he had left the family farm in Wellington County, which was established by his father, my great-great grandfather, William McKee, and his father Thomas—immigrants from Glasgow, Scotland who arrived in the 1840s. In the mid-1870s, John and Mary Jane married and settled in Hastings County—wilder country to the east, directly north of Belleville, Ontario. I wanted to discover more on what kind of people they were. I had heard stories that they were religious and believed in primary education—they had helped to build a church and school in their new community. But I hoped to learn more about their attitude toward guns. Unlike my father and his brothers, I had no use for firearms since the day I killed two deer when I was around 16 years old. I had discovered stories that my ancestors owned two old muzzle-loading muskets, but they were missing from William McKee’s last will and testament. I wondered if his son John had brought them with him to Hastings County. My great-grandparents didn’t leave a tidy trail to follow. During the earlier visit, I had turned up a few clues, but when I stopped to take photos or knock on doors for information, swarms of mosquitoes attacked me. This second visit in late July, I accurately calculated, would be less tortuous, for mosquito populations usually decrease by then. According to family stories, John and Mary Jane McKee had put down roots in “Rose Island.” On the earlier visit, in Coe’s Hill library I found a short history of the place in a book titled The Loon Calls. It stated that Mary Jane had named the settlement, but I couldn’t find any islands on maps of the area, and if wild roses once grew in this wilderness, they were no longer evident. I couldn’t help but think that Mary Jane had chosen the name “tongue in cheek.” To me it didn’t seem rosy at all. John and Mary Jane were latecomers to the settlement process in Hastings County. They had to be satisfied with available land lots about 86 miles (140 kilometers) north of Belleville—bushland with a thin layer of soil covering the rock of the Canadian Shield, which had been scraped clean by glaciers during the last Ice Age. In the late 1800s, free grants of 100 acres (40 hectares) were offered to anyone willing to build a house and to keep a minimum of 12 acres (five hectares) under cultivation for five years. I knew from my previous visit that no lots were marked, so their former property was hard to find. With copies of the photo of my sister’s painting in hand, I drove to Madoc, Ontario, to meet Delbert Irish, age 89, a well-known local whittler, and his elder brother Leslie. I had called them to make an appointment and to be sure I’d be welcomed. When I arrived, Delbert was whittling one of his pieces for sale, but he put down his tools and his brother joined us. I showed them the photo and asked, “Do you know these guys?” Delbert replied, “Why that’s Uncle Raymond and Uncle George. Where’d you find this?” I explained the origin of the painting and asked, “Is this at Rose Island?” “Sure is,” Lesley replied. “That’s at the old Irish property.” “They both have shotguns, looks like. Did they keep those for safety in that wilderness?” I asked. Delbert said, “Those are rifles, not shotguns. Our uncles loved to hunt deer and so did we. There’s a lot of deer in that area, still today.” The photo of the painting set off a long discussion about Rose Island, during which I discovered that in the 1930s, Delbert and Leslie with their parents had lived on the former McKee property after the McKees had sold out and left. They told me people still called it the “McKee place” at the time, 20 years after my ancestors had departed. The Irish brothers were most helpful in describing what to look for along Rose Island Road in order to locate the place. From Madoc I drove to Coe Hill, where my ancestors had shopped for provisions and caught the train. I stopped for lunch and bought a T-shirt and baseball cap printed with the words “Coe Hill Billy,” then I headed west on Rose Island Road, a narrow track through the bush. The Loon Calls mentions that John McKee served as postmaster at Rose Island for 25 years. I knew from family stories that he also operated a sawmill and a gristmill. He milled grain for his family, their livestock, and the community. As I drove down the gravel road toward Rose Island, I felt totally alone. I could see no sign of people—no ongoing farming or other economic activities. In places, I saw the remnants of old cedar fences, but no farm animals to enclose. I went past a deserted-looking house on the north side of the road and a broken-down barn with a few old sheds on the south side. The buildings looked like the “McKee place” the Irish brothers had described, but I wasn’t sure so I drove on. It seemed too far from other houses. I finally came to few other houses and small farms, and after crossing the Hastings-Peterborough county line, I saw an old man with a long white beard repairing a hay mower—the first person I had seen on any property. When I drove up the lane, I could see that his face looked younger than I had anticipated. As it turned out, he was Jim Eadie, a farmer who had recently retired from a career as a forensic expert with the Ontario Provincial Police. We engaged in a good conversation on living in the US versus Canada—especially concerning America’s free-wheeling attitudes and lack of laws on guns. He told me that one time he was loaned to the Los Angeles Police Department to help solve the O. J. Simpson murder case. But now, incongruently, he raises sheep. I asked him, “Did you ever hear of the name McKee around here? They used to have a farm and ran the post office.” “Can’t say that I’ve ever heard that name. But you might ask Merle Post in the second house to the left after you cross back over the county line.” He told me he had done a little investigating around the abandoned buildings I had seen on my way in. We discussed the possibility that a sawmill and gristmill had once been there because the place had a water source. I thanked my new forensic expert cum sheep farmer acquaintance and drove to Merle Post’s place. The name “Post” rang a bell. I had read in The Loon Calls that a John Post had been the second person to take over the Post Office—a vocation well suited to his surname—after the McKees left Rose Island. As it turned out, Merle Post knew nothing about a McKee family, but she gave me the number of Mac Wilson in Coe Hill, who had once owned the abandoned farm I’d seen. I was getting a little “warmer” in this search. I returned to the broken-down buildings to investigate. I knocked on the door of the small house on the north side, probably built in the 1940s or 1950s, but no one answered. I walked around to the back and saw something strange—the remains of an old log foundation. I could see that the logs had been partially charred and recalled what the Irish brothers told me, “The McKee place was a big two-story, frame house—kind of T-shaped. But it burned down some years ago.” I had found what I was looking for. Straight back from the house I spotted a small lake—more like a swamp full of old stumps attracting mid-summer frogs and insects. A creek ran from the swamp down alongside the house and under a bridge to the other side of the road—a perfect location for water-powered mills. The old barn beside it had a stone foundation much like that on the McKee home farm. It was built quite high, obviously good for protection against spring floods. The barn appeared to have been built or rebuilt in the mid-1900s. I walked back to the house and used my cell phone to dial the number given to me by Merle Post. Mrs. Wilson answered and passed the phone to her husband, Mac. I told him about my mission and where I was standing.
Mac spoke in an enthusiastic and helpful way. “Yes,” he told me, “I owned Lot 30 on Rose Island Road from 1956 to 1972 where the McKee place was. I also owned Lots 31 and 32, which they owned as well. The large house had burned down by then. I purchased the lots from Jerome Campbell, who built the smaller house sometime in the early 50s. I worked the farm there until I retired. Had to close down due to losses.” “What kind of losses?” I asked. “Cattle rustlers, actually.” “In Ontario?” “Yep. You could find thieves anywhere those days.” “Did you have to guard your place with guns?” I asked. Mac laughed, “Nope. We had guns for hunting but let the police deal with thieves.” “Were there any police stationed in Rose Island when my great-grandparents lived here?” Mac paused and then replied, “I doubt it. But it must have been a pretty wild place, even wilder than when we lived there. There’s no real record.” Then I asked, “What about the creek? Did you see any traces of an old mill there?” What he told me was music to my ears. “No, but I recall some stories that the McKees ran their mills with a big waterwheel. They had a gristmill and a sawmill.” “Did you see any sign of a mill powered by a steam engine? The water from the creek wouldn’t power a mill year-round.” “Can’t say I saw anything like that,” Mac said. I was testing a theory. The husband of the helpful local historian in Coe Hill had suggested this possibility on my earlier visit, and it made sense to me because my grandfather Alexander, and his older brother, Harvey, had both become steam locomotive engineers after they left this place. How else could they have learned how to run such technology in the wilderness? After I thanked Mac Wilson and ended our conversation, I stood there staring at the old foundation. During the years they had lived here, my great-grandparents carried on the farm family tradition of populating the land, bringing eight children into the world—four girls and four boys, including my grandfather, born in 1887. Along with operating Rose Island Post Office, John and Mary Jane McKee also earned an income from selling groceries, hardware, and fuel. Most likely Mary Jane and their older daughters looked after the store and post office, while the sons helped their father with running the sawmill and gristmill, clearing, ploughing, and cultivating the land. As it turned out, the land on which my great-grandparents had settled did not match their fecundity. The thin soil required years of lying fallow between crops in order to be productive. In addition, the Coe Hill area did not remain prosperous. An iron mine near town closed in 1885 because the ore contained too much sulphur. None of John and Mary Jane’s children had any interest in carrying on in this desolate place. In 1910, after 35 years of toil and sweat, they decided to sell their land and move back to the McKee family farm in Wellington County, buying it from John’s two younger squabbling bachelor brothers. Eventually, many of the other families who settled along Rose Island Road also sold out and left. The forest advanced and erased most signs of those better times. I could imagine John and Mary Jane packing their belongings, including the old muskets that were missing from his father William’s will, and putting them on the train. The powder horn used to charge those firearms had William’s name etched on it. Probably William thought his son John could make more use of the old guns in this wilder country. Or had there been a disagreement about the need for guns at all? This was pure speculation on my part, as I searched for reasons why John had given up his chance to take over the McKee family farm as a younger man, being the first-born son. I left the ruins of the “McKee place” and drove eastward away from Rose Island. I entered a more forested area where the bush almost enveloped the road. Suddenly, a deer rushed out of the woods from one side and dashed into the undergrowth on the other. As I applied the brakes, I remembered what my father had told me on my one and only deer hunt in November 1961, “Just down the road is the place where your great-grandfather John had a store and post office.” I realized I had been here before. Just like the deer that leapt from the bush, his words darted out of the deep recesses of my memory and images of that day flooded into my mind: For my first deer hunt, a boy not quite 16, my father loaned me his old Lee-Enfield .303 rifle. Stationed on a rock in the middle of a field—so quiet, just a sprinkling of snow on the ground—baying hounds awoke me from a daydream. I surveyed the far hillside, saw a deer, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The animal flinched and then took off. I thought I had missed, but joining Uncle Gerald and the hounds, we followed a dark red trail—so easy to find the doe. Celebrations followed at lunchtime for that first kill of the season: a toast with sweet red wine, laughter, slaps on my back, my father so proud of me. But all seemed much too easy, with four more days to go. In the afternoon we resumed the hunt. A cold wind had blown in from the north. I sat on a small hill crowned by rock. Again, hounds broke the silence, bushes rustled, hoofs pounded, a startled young buck darted from the woods, leaping up the slope. I fired as he sprung over me, but I missed and cocked the gun. The bullet jammed, then slid in, I swung and pulled the trigger again. The deer dropped close to me—blood gushing from its throat, sputtering, gurgling. Uncle Archie emerged from the woods to shake my hand; his words muffled by those sounds. My stomach churned and I vomited on the ground while Archie shot it in the head. The woods fell silent as we dragged the carcass out. For me that evening, another toast, more pats on the back. I went out with the gang for the rest of the hunt, but never killed another deer and never fired a gun again. Neill McKee This story is adapted from Neill McKee’s new travel memoir, Guns and Gods in My Genes: A 15,000-mile North American search through four centuries of history, to the Mayflower. Neill McKee is a Canadian creative nonfiction writer based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. https://www.neillmckeeauthor.com/ His first travel memoir, Finding Myself in Borneo, https://www.neillmckeeauthor.com/buy-the-book won a bronze medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, 2020, as well as other awards and many 5-star reviews. McKee holds a Bachelor’s Degree, from the University of Calgary and a Master’s Degree in Communication from Florida State University. He worked internationally for 45 years, becoming an expert in the field of communication for social change. He directed and produced a number of award-winning documentary films/videos and multimedia initiatives, and has written numerous articles and books in the field of development communication. During his international career, McKee worked for Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO); Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC); UNICEF; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; Academy for Educational Development and FHI 360, Washington, DC. He worked and lived in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, and Russia for a total of 18 years and traveled to over 80 countries on short-term assignments. In 2015, he settled in New Mexico, using his varied experiences, memories, and imagination in creative writing. Photo of My Dead Son, Taken At The DMV My son’s photo lives on my computer desktop. In it, he stands at the counter of the DMV, redeems himself from too many tickets, pays the fine, receives a second chance. I can tell he’s learned his lesson, the way he stares into the camera, head in hand, a satisfied look on his face. Like the cat who ate the canary, my mother would say. Death, lurking inside my boy, has yet to make an appearance. He looks immortal. Whenever the photo catches my eye my throat tightens, his face atouchstone. A grief-filled pit. Reduced to a thumbnail, one of a hundred on the screen, my son fights for air. I want to click on his face, open him wide to life, but he would drown in my sorrow if not already dead. Yesterday, K’s son, diagnosed with an AVM at 21. Tests, she writes, dozens of tests. Her boy, acting like a trooper. I can see she’s still in that hopeful phase; reality hasn’t yet sunk in. I want to tell her about another friend’s sweet boy, who died of the same, cruel flaw, the same ticking time bomb in his head, but I don’t; I can’t. Instead, I lie awake, night after night, knowing what grief, too, lies in wait, but I can’t save her son. Last night when I finally drifted off, my dead boy covered me with his yellow baby blanket. Sleep now, mama, he said. Alexis Rhone Fancher This poem first appeared in Paterson Literary Review, and was also published in THE DEAD KID POEMS, (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Poetry East, Hobart, VerseDaily, American Journal of Poetry, Duende, Plume, Diode, Pedestal Magazine, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She’s authored five published poetry collections, most recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, from New York Quarterly, and another full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, will both be published in early 2021. Her photographs are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Pithead Chapel, Heyday and Witness. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com Please bear with us- our host is experiencing technical difficulties beyond our site alone, and posts are not currently posting automatically on schedule. I will do my best to post them manually until the issue is resolved, but there may be discrepancies in timing that are beyond my control. Many apologies for this inconvenience!
Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair Why do I call him my Diego? He never was nor ever will be mine. He belongs to himself. Frida Kahlo I can smell her sex even if you are in the doorway. This house is heavy with onion but she still clings to you. Get out, muse. Leave me here with the begonias on the porch. Hands shaking, my voice does not betray me. I touch the stiff tips of my brushes but there is no color for this. I look at my hands on my thighs. Looking to the doorway I find you gone. I loosen the braid taming my hair. I stand at the mirror. You loved my hair, always smoothing it over, burying your nose in the inky strands. I take the heavy scissors out of the drawer. There is no color for this. It’s not easy to cut, this hair. I let it collect in the sink, a bird’s nest without a bird. Sandra Riley Sandra Riley is a community college writing instructor. She holds degrees from Ohio State University, Antioch University Midwest, and The University of Dayton. Her poetry has appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry, Poets Online, and Mock Turtle Zine. Magnetised (after Gregory Crewdson's Untitled) Her father's shed had a gambrel roof that made her think of fairy tales, Flemish crones in lace hats, embroidered tunics: narratives like magnets. It squatted at the bottom of the garden, locked to little girls, sixty steps from bed. One night it throbbed with light, a beam that probed her dreams, drew her from her sleep toward the door. It hung open like it never had before, watched her count the steps across the damp lawn, grass teasing bare toes. Magnetised, she strained to hear pixie mirth or elfin chatter, glimpse a fairy dance. At thirty steps she saw them: confetti wings like cabbage whites, glitter in a snow-globe, or dust-motes twinkling in the yellow light. She felt them in her tummy too, and on her tongue, like ginger: magic that might coax her into fairyland. But something made her stop: cold began to creep up through her foot soles; and in the space between her steps, a magnet shifted poles. ** First Time (after Gregory Crewdson’s The Den) Refuse to accept that this is all there is. The stale wine sofa that isn't quite big enough for lovers after all, the crescent of another person's rear turned toward you, the knotted rope of spine. Be glad you kept your top on, halving your embarrassment, the chill that the other doesn't seem to feel, spooning cushions through the night, a spent white shape. Refuse to accept that the moon was just reflected gold. Turn toward the dawn like a flower, away from his plaster cast body, the carpet strewn with underwear. Clamp your knees together to feel what should be there: womb like a fist, tight enough to trap it. ** Morning On Her Tongue (after Gregory Crewdson's Seated Woman On Bed) From the corner of her bed she ignores the grey dawn bullying the world beyond her window: she knows it too well, the cold gears of morning, their slow shift tightening the flesh beneath her nightdress. Today she’s oblivious to bare feet on laminate, the hessian texture of morning on her tongue. She's caught by an image in the mirror: skin part owned by her history, sleepy white like Lazarus. As her grip scrolls the counterpane, a single question - she asks the mirror, and the mirror asks back: what more do you want from me? ** Dementia Roast (after Gregory Crewdson's photograph, Sunday Roast) Grimy walls, a door's grim departures: you can't place the absent faces now, retrieve the morning's fragments, the broken ritual of family lunch. Sunday’s stunned by raw meat, a lounge that's lost the will to live, empty table set for six. Your own plucked heart is a lunch of blood plated up for all to see... This is what it looks like: dementia in a room, a mute space clenching. Paul McDonald Paul McDonald taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, where he ran the Creative Writing Programme. He took early retirement in 2019 to write full time. He is the author of over twenty books, which cover fiction, poetry, and scholarship. His work has won a number of prizes including the Ottakars/Faber and Faber Poetry Competition, The John Clare Poetry Prize, and the Sentinel Poetry Prize. His academic work includes books on Philip Roth, Allen Ginsberg, Lydia Davis, narratology, and the philosophy of humour. Paul McDonald Amazon Author Page Dans le Lit Was a time when sleep was optional some slumber time but light; kisses or touching could ignite us even deep in darkness lasting ‘til the climax of sunrise. These days not so much; which is not sad or less. We substitute cuddling for arousal and hugs for throated cries, because we remember, embracing memories this bed can not contain. Richard G. Hagen Richard G. Hagen lives in Bloomington, MN, B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College, and graduate work at Kansas University. He has no MFA and doesn't teach. Awards, prizes, and international literary praise has eluded him, but he is working on that. Northography.com, five Talking Stick anthologies, Steam Ticket, Two Review, Whirlwind Review, and Gemini Magazine have shown brilliant insight and published his work. Writing and studying poetry is his escape from the vagaries of Minnesota weather, and the frustrations of his golf game. |
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