Perspectives Magazine - Final Issue - July 2020

Perspectives Magazine Where inanimate objects and animals have their say | July 2020

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 1

Perspectives Magazine July 2020 Final Issue INANIMATE OBJECTS Book.....3 Literary Weight/Literary Weightlessness by Christian Hanz Lozada

Rose…..16 Pink Rose by Steven Tutino

Bridge…..30 The Tobin by Jen Mierisch

Seed…..17 Seed of Love by Nancy Lou Henderson

Brownfield Fence…..28 Flint’s Brownfield Fence by Melodie Bolt

Spoon…..8 Spoon by Ed Ahern

Cedar Chest…..6 The Cedar Chest by Nancy Lou Henderson

Timbrel…..25 Making Music by Meryl Baer

Ceiling Fan…..8 Ceiling Fan by Edward Ahern

Tree…..27 Dragon by Virginia Amis

Comforter…..4 Comforter by Eric Rosenbaum

Tote Bag…..19 A Burial by Ann Hultberg

Doorknob…..10 The Hobnobbing Doorknob by Darrell Petska

Venus Flytrap…..17 Venus Flytrap by Sarah Henry

Driveway…..10 Dear Pamela, by Pamela Sinicrope

ANIMALS

Figurine…..12 Anything Nice by Steve Carr

Cat…..32 Cleopatra Speaks her Truth by Joan Mazza

Fried Egg…..14 Fried Egg as Philosopher by Robbi Nester

Cat…..33 A Feline Whine by Jane Blanchard

Golf Ball…..18 The Way Things Turn Out by Mary Marino

Cats…..34 Her Cats by Rikki Santer

Kelly Bag…..20 The Kelly Bag by J L Higgs

Cow…..37 The Cow Who Ate the Wild Mushrooms by Richard Weaver

Kilim…..29 Kilim by paul Bluestein

Crow…..41 Crow by Susan Zeni

LP…..15 LP by Robbi Nester

Dust Mite…..35 Prayer of a Dust Mite by Rick Swann

Marble…..22 Through a Blue Cat’s Eye by Darrell Petska

Hippopotamus…..38 Hippo Noir by Richard Agemo

Mountaintop…..9 Mountaintop by Mark Tulin

Leopard…..43 I Have Become Leopard by Arthur Davis

Painting…..24 Cursed by Kat Terban

Mosquito…..35 Mosquito by Rick Swann

Plaque The Art of Fire by Rebecca Taylor

Raccoon…..40 Night Sharers by Ed Ahern

Playground…..9 Playground Dreams by Mark Tulin Rock…..23 What the Rock Said to the Girl with the Crayons by Lisa Roullard

Raven…..31 Waterfowl Play by Jen Mierisch

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 2

Books

Literary Weight/Literary Weightlessness

By Christian Hanz Lozada I was a book, twice.

The first time I was a book in a big-box bookstore, when I was fresh and new.

The store smelt of coffee, cookies, and plastic a mixture of smells found at a golden hour, young grandma’s house because everything was clean and new, it all lacked the value of depth the cost of everything was literally on the surface, the cover, the skin but there is a joy in having your back cracked parts of you wrinkled, torn, and taped there is a joy in experience.

The second time I was a book in a used bookstore, when I had been aged and used.

The store smelt musky and rotten, like the dark corners of a closet a mixture of smells found in the recesses of every part of the body because everything smelled of its experience, it all had a value everything could be a treasure everything had the possibility to be valuable there is an intimacy to being carefully selected, when the choice overlooks how you’re lightly used slightly wrinkled, torn but patched and stitched but still a first and only edition.

Both times I was a book, I learned a book only rents space sellers evict when I stop paying rent sometimes sold by the pound sometimes boxed and abandoned and mostly, sadly unread.

Rivison - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 3

Comforter

Tomas Garcia - stock.adobe.com

Comforter

By Eric Rosenbaum

Y

ou may call me “bedspread”. Or “quilt”. I’m not saying these names are inaccurate. The problem is they do nothing to describe the most important service I was created to provide. I am a comforter. Let me repeat: a comforter.

This quality of mine, comfort, is so integral to my nature that it occupies the greater part of my very name, conjuring images of a dear friend in times of need. Loss of a loved one.

A broken heart. Deceptions. Setbacks. Failure. I am a faithful, intimate, cozy companion, there to curl up with, to absorb the tears no one will ever see.

Even here in the darkness of this closet, where I sit on the same shelf day after day, I can sense that the hot days have come to an end and the cold days have returned. Every year, well before the true bitter cold set in, they would take me out of hibernation and place me back into service atop the bed.

Why are they leaving me here on the shelf? They have no further use for me. They have replaced me because of what they did to me, how they changed me beyond repair, leaving me a ruin through no fault of my own. Where is the appreciation for all of these years of service? Where does the comforter find comfort?

There’s no benefit to false modesty. I’d say my longstanding contribution to well-being in this household merits appreciation rather than the abandonment that is to be my

fate. I offered so much more than the pretty appearance of my floral patterns and cheery pastels complementing the décor of the bedroom, bringing a touch of class and refinement; so much more than exceeding the warming capacity of blankets on those frigid nights with my feathery down stuffing. It would only be fair for me to receive consideration for all I have done.

I don’t want to come off as a whiner, but the fact of the matter is the love and care I gave over the years was rarely reciprocated. I’m not some pipsqueak pillowcase. That doesn’t mean I am without feelings. Call me over-sensitive, if you will. Should being a comforter be a one way proposition? Shouldn’t I receive my fair share of comforting as well? That thought has taken hold of me in my endless hours of ruminating here in the dark of this closet.

For heaven’s sake, I had to put up with so much for so long. Is a little tidiness too much to ask for? In the morning, when my nightly duties were done, was I not entitled to have the pillows tucked neatly beneath me at my head end? Did they actually need to throw the throw pillows so they landed willy-nilly anywhere but at their appointed location? Was it too extravagant a request to ask them to make the bed every day? I admit it was quite a blow to my self-esteem to spend all day bunched up in a sloppy heap, with stinking, sweaty sheets and scratchy blankets contorted around me. But I understood, even as I suffered, all that came with the territory.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 4

(Continued on page 5)

Some may consider it snobbery, but the natural order of things was for me to be on top. The sheets and blankets knew this full well. How they mocked me when we were all tangled up with each other! “Have a little sweat. On us,” the sheets would say. “Not soft enough for Your Majesty?” the blankets would repeat any time I registered a complaint.

I’m well aware of my limitations. In the heat of summer, what need was there for me? I went along without protest when they would put me away neatly on a closet shelf until the cool of Fall called for me to come out of hibernation. This arrangement was preferable to getting kicked off the foot of the bed, dumped unceremoniously to languish on the floor amid the reek of old slippers. Had I understood how easily they would dismiss my years of service, however, I surely would have forgone my seasonal “vacation”, as the pillows like to call my annual time out from the goings on of bed life.

I might have even leveraged my intimate knowledge of them to maintain my status.

I should have known something was amiss when they didn’t even launder me prior to storing me for the season. The crawling micro-organisms infesting me for months on end have tickled and scratched me, interfering with my ability to rest comfortably; together with the cloying scent of stale perfume, these abominable creatures have become a constant reminder of the negligent treatment I’ve had to endure. I anticipated my return to service as a relief from this condition; I now understand no such relief is in store for me.

I always intuited that the laundry room would be my downfall. But the cause of my obsolescence never occurred to me. I was well aware that, paradoxically, I was punished for my most estimable physical characteristic: I am bulky. I have no qualms about applying this word to my descriptors. Yes, I am bulky. And proud of it. Is bulkiness a crime? Should I be otherwise? Would I have lived up to my name if I were thin and trim? Should the difficulties posed by washing and drying me cancel out the love I’ve earned by virtue of my companionship? It seems the height of hypocrisy that the physical characteristic of bulk I am prized for so often caused them to pass over me on so many laundry days while the insubstantial members of the bedclothes team received unwarranted preferential treatment.

When time would finally roll around for them to select me for laundering, you would think it would have been obvious I was large enough to merit my own dedicated washing machine, wouldn’t you? Even if stuffing bed linens into the wash together with me could be justified – not that I believe it could – what was to be gained when it came to the performance in the dryers? I’ve taken a tumble in my share of them in my day. There hasn’t been a dryer yet with enough power to get the damp out of me in a single cycle. What was the purpose of depriving me of my private space where I could enjoy the hot, circular ride of transformation from wet to dry? Why did they have to fill the cavity with so many skimpy sheets and cutesy pillow cases that no room remained for me to spread out? I don’t just speak in my own selfinterest here, mind you. Those lesser articles would also have gained by drying more quickly and with less wear and tear if they had their own dryer cycle instead of competing with me for hot air. More often than not, the flats would have been done well before the cycle time expired, so if the fitteds had also decided to cooperate (for once in their lives), the remaining minutes could have been donated to taking care of

the modest heat requirements of stockings, bras or other delicates.

Not surprisingly, every time they took me out of the dryer and searched for wet spots, they were bound to discover at least one splotch of dampness right in my midsection.

Happened every time. I won’t guarantee I would have always emerged completely dry if the other items had been subtracted from the load, but if they’d granted me a bit of leftover time from another dryer cycle once the likes of underwear, tee shirts and socks had been taken care of, they wouldn’t have had to drape me across the dining room chairs to air dry for days on end. I knew that was always a source of complaint about me, an excuse for not placing me in a regular rotation of laundering. With all their grunts, groans and threats about my reticence to become dry, I always figured this might be the cause of my eventual demise.

Looking back, I should have anticipated it would be negligence at the opposite end of the drying continuum that would do me in. How could they leave me in the dryer for two full cycles? Two full cycles!? Sure, my resistance to drying eclipsed that of any other article, even the beach towels. But two complete cycles at the hottest setting? I consider myself to have strong powers of resistance to intense heat, but that was entirely too much, even for me.

Inevitably I shrunk. As a result of their leaving me unattended, I became less than I was created to be. I was well aware of my diminishment. I just couldn’t grasp that coming up a little short on the head end or the feet end would negate all the years of services rendered.

Though all the evidence pointed in the other direction, I still held out hope for reinstatement. Until a freshly laundered fitted sheet of my acquaintance was placed on the shelf next to me. There was more than a little vindictive flavor to the news from the outside world it passed along. “Your replacement is doing very well,” it said, as if it was oblivious to the jealousy it was igniting in me. “We bedclothes never wanted to do you harm, so we kept mum,” it continued in a tone of complete equanimity that only intensified the wound of its words. “But we never thought you did a particularly good job of comforting. If you had, don’t you suppose there would have been fewer opportunities for comforting?”

Before I could defend myself, the fitted sheet spoke again. “The new comforter is beige, just like us. Its pattern is half as busy as yours. We all get along famously. And they’ve been having some cheery times there in the bed ever since…”

I know a slight when I hear one. I wasn’t going to dignify this hurtful description with a reply, but one question nagged at me. I couldn’t keep myself from asking: “How does it comfort?”

No reply.

Who knows how long I will occupy this place on the shelf before the day comes along when they notice me: “Isn’t that old comforter taking up an awful lot of space?” they will say.

“Why are we even hanging on to it?”

I sometimes find myself reminiscing about those bygone days of providing comfort. I’ve come to realize the comforting services I provided were an end in themselves.

Had I the opportunity to do it all over again, I would never for even a moment let myself forget my reward was to give comfort, not to receive it. But it’s too late. These memories and the understanding I’ve gained are cold comfort to me now.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 5

Cedar Chest

c Nancy Lou Henderson

The Cedar Chest

By Nancy Lou Henderson

I

am a unique, cedar chest. My purpose is to keep priceless treasures safe and secure. Although other woods may grace my outside, inside, cedarwood lines my walls, bottom, and lid. Cedarwood is a natural preservative that protects by keeping out moths and other insects.

In 1964, a young woman became my new owner.

She refinished my exterior, changing the color to an antique blue, and I became her hope chest. The young woman would always keep me against the footboard of her bed. Periodically, my lid opened, and she placed unique treasures inside my cedar walls. Happiness was all around me, and I could always hear lots of laughter filling the air.

In 1968, my young woman opened me to place in new treasures, but this time with her was a young man.

They seemed so happy and talked about their wedding.

I did not know what to make of these strange new treasures. There were newspaper clippings, tiny rice bags tied with ribbon, small white engraved napkins, and many pictures, but I knew that my job was to do my very best to take care of these things.

Soon, I did not hear my young woman in the house and missed her laughter. It seemed as if a lifetime went by, but then one day, I heard her and the young man's voices again. Laughter filled the air around me, as they picked me up, then carried me to a pickup truck. After a short drive, I was unloaded from the pickup then transported into a little white frame house.

Again, I sat against the footboard of a bed in a bedroom. This time the bed was shared by the young woman and young man.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 6

For days the house was filled with lots of laughter, happiness, and love between the young woman and young man. Music and singing filled the home, and I am reasonably sure that there was dancing too. During this time, the young woman and young man opened my lid one more time and placed many more treasures inside me. Warmth and happiness filled this home.

Suddenly one day, the laughter stopped, and there was only one voice heard in the house; it was the voice of the young woman. A sense of sadness, heartache, and fear seemed to take over the house.

A box sat on my lid, and I could hear it being opened and closed at night. Night after night, I listened to the muffled tears and prayers of the young woman but was helpless to help her. I knew my job was to do my best to take care of the treasures that the young woman and young man had placed inside my lined cedar walls.

Months passed, but the sounds of tears and words of prayers continued until late one night when the phone rang, waking the young woman. The fear in the bedroom skyrocketed to new heights, as she rushed to answer the telephone, but quickly laughter and excitement filled the home again. The young woman danced around the house, thanking God for answering her prayers while getting dressed, then she left.

Soon, I heard the young man's voice in the house again, music played, and I heard singing plus the shuffling sounds of dancing feet. Much too soon, this ended then once again, the sound of tears, heartache, and prayers returned to the home. Again, I heard the box sitting on my lid open and close, over and over.

More months passed, and the house was sad, but I did my job to keep their unique treasures safe.

One evening the phone rang again then the young woman's laughter and excitement filled the house.

The young woman was singing and dancing through the home, repeating three words, "Thank you, God.", over and over. Suddenly, the young woman opened my lid, then placed the box that had sat on top into my cedar lined interior then closed my lid. The next morning, I heard the young man's voice again.

Happiness, music, laughter, and love returned to the house once more.

The young man and woman moved many times through the years, always taking me with them to each new home, where I would have a special place at the foot of their bed. I remained faithful in taking care of their treasures inside me just waiting for the day they

would reopen my lid. Years passed, but they did not open my cedar chest lid again.

One day I felt a terrible sadness fill their home, and many people came for days to visit. I heard many tears from all who entered the house. Once again, the young woman was praying and crying as if her heart had surely broken, and I never heard the young man's voice again. Slowly and with time, the young woman stopped crying as her heart began to mend then she allowed the laughter to return to the home.

For some reason, the young woman moved me into a new place, which was not at the foot of her bed but in a dark new home. Sometimes sunlight would enter my new home, and I could hear her voice and voices of others, young and old, but nobody came to open my lid. Although missing the young woman's voice, I remained faithful, keeping the treasures inside me safe because I knew they were extraordinary.

Early one morning, I heard the young woman's voice as she entered my home. She quickly unstacked the boxes that sat on top of my lid and opened my lid. She opened the box that she had placed so many years before inside me for safekeeping. I heard her exclaim with surprise in her voice, "His letters!" as she quickly closed my lid and left my house.

A few weeks later, two young men would enter my dark house and take me to a new home. In this new home, I would be opened many times by the young woman, and she would thank me, telling me what a fantastic job I had done keeping her treasures safe as she gently cleaned and polished my antique blue exterior.

Now, I listen to music, laughter, and a whole lot of typing going on. Sometimes tears a heartache are heard, but mostly I feel a deep, pure endless love in my new home. Even though I do not understand what has happened to the young man and do not hear the young man's voice, I can feel his presence and his warm love filling the room.

Although growing older with age, I will continue to hold old and new treasures for my young woman who has become much older too.

I am a unique, cedar chest. Not only do I hold special treasures, but I have absorbed unique emotions and sounds. I am loved.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 7

Ceiling Fan

Spoon Spoon

By Ed Ruzicka My contours bring comfort to tongues. I shine burnished, without blemish.

I give the unutterable smoothness of stone washed, of glass softened by brooks, in rivers, churned along sea’s shore.

Aren’t I a minor mirror curved back and inward, concave to set the smaller world of the self there.

Let me teach you how to rest content in the dark until needed.

Let form fit your acts Let acts steadily bring morsels, nourishment to the tongue.

Loraine - stock.adobe.com

The Ceiling Fan Brags

By Ed Ruzicka Ah, to have such wings yet go nowhere.

I whirl and fill all the corners of the day cool the set tea wheel pages randomly.

I drench the scene from plumped pillow, made bed to yawning closet door, cat and who-so-ever does pad through.

With my whisper and my gyre I lend a steady gentle relief. kotolmachoff - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 8

Playground

Mountaintop

Playground Dreams

by Mark Tulin I am the playground of children where games are won, the songs are sung, chased and tagged, and the fences climbed

Mountaintop

by Mark Tulin

I am the swing that both hands hold, that is pushed too high, and watched the world from upside down

I am the top of the mountain a balcony in the sky under a bright California sun I look onto the Santa Clara River Valley with small, one-story houses street lights on Main Street bumpy, curvy roads going up hills tracks with an occasional train small private biplanes going in circles dotting the Santa Paula night along the Pacific coastline where the letters SP are carved into my forehead, and freshwater flows from my veins.

I am the playground of dreams, the moments of hide and seek, the sliding down the silvery board, the mazes that children conquer, the silly jokes often told I am the bars that kids dangle from, the kings and queens of the hill, the spinning of the merry-go-round, and the boloney sandwiches at lunchtime, that mothers bring.

jkraft5 - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 9

slworking - stock.adobe.com

Driveway

Doorknob The Hobnobbing Doorknob

By Darrell Petska C’mon people, have I grown warts?

It’s me, Doorknob, your longtime pal, your means for entering new worlds, escaping old ones, or just finding fun.

I’m polished, steady, ergonomically sound.

You want style? My contours are classical, my lineage royal. Cleanliness your thing?

There’s sanitizer next to the door.

A little human contact is all I ask.

A warm touch now and then, a firm how-de-do, a good rattling if I’m stuck in some existential malaise.

Sure, I see what’s trending—those slick automatic doors that whisk you through without a hand raised in greeting.

The world’s too impersonal as it is.

My advice to you? Just get a grip!

Life’s too short to be standoffish.

The road ahead is paved with doorknobs.

Hey, lend me a hand and close the door.

Dear Pamela,

By Pamela Sinicrope Why am I so broken, salted and sanded, blown and thrown into chunks at the bottom of our street?

Why am I so long, so up and down, so El Capitan?

Why did you plant so many evergreens to shade my slide?

In winter, I’m an impossible rink and you must slip on spikes to take out the trash. And I’m sorry that my horde of leaves almost killed your husband. And don’t even start about the top of me, potholed and pounded as if I were built on a sinkhole.

When I think about how you should fix me, I sink deeper. But then I remember how long I’ve held on— the carriages, cars and trucks I’ve carried, the wild violets that peek through my seams and snowmelt.

I see all of your children who bounced balls and chalked pastel hearts all over my back. I feel the beating of your home, furnace water bubbling beneath.

It’s hard to keep all of this going, to persevere through the cracks.

Maybe you just don’t love me the way I thought you did.

I need more than mere resurfacing.

Forgive me for my extremes.

Creatus - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 10

Michele - stock.adobe.com

Plaque The Art of Fire

By Rebecca Taylor

Someone may have even wanted to put pineapple on me.

There’s a lot of controversy about that. My friends used to talk about it a lot.

I

thought I was going to spend my life helping cook delicious pizzas for people. After all, I was a pizza plaque. That was what the manufacturer had stamped on my back before sending me out to be sold to some human, somewhere. I won’t tell you about my humble beginnings.

They weren’t really that interesting. What I want to tell you about is my life changing adventure. A woman took me home. I heard her family refer to her as Genevieve. I spent a few weeks sitting on a shelf in a room that was filled with paints and stencils and crafty things. It was nothing like the store that I came from. There I had been surrounded by cookie cutters, pizza rollers, pans, and knives. In this artsy room, I had no idea what to expect.

One day Genevieve came in and took me off the shelf.

She set me on her craft table and began to draw on me with a pencil. I wasn’t sure what she was doing but later I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection from her computer screen. Genevieve had made a beautiful drawing of a polar bear and two polar bear cubs. They were sitting by a pine tree and snowflakes were falling around them. While I felt more beautiful than I ever had in my life, I couldn’t understand why I had been chosen to be used as a craft instead of for cooking pizzas. I knew that the store where I had been purchased had sold lots of craft things that Genevieve could have used for her art. But instead she had chosen me. I was glad because I liked the way that her drawing looked on me. It was so much more exciting than the life I had expected for myself – being coated in dough, tomato sauce, cheese, mushrooms, and other vegetables.

A few days later, Genevieve came back to me. This time, she had a different looking pen with her. But, instead of drawing on me with ink or lead, this pen had fire in it. She used it to trace the drawing that she had made. The fire didn’t hurt me even though it burned into my wood. I was designed to withstand several hundred degrees of warmth because I had been made to go in the oven or on the barbecue. It took several hours for Genevieve to finish going over her drawing. When she was done, she turned on a fan to help cool me off. It felt refreshing. It had been a long day and I took a nap enjoying the cool air.

Later when I woke up, I saw my reflection in the computer screen again. I was amazed by what I saw. I was beautiful. I had gone from being a boring pizza plaque, to having a pencil drawing on me to a magnificent creation. It was clear to me that Genevieve was an extremely talented woman.

A few days later, Genevieve came to see me again. She carried me into her kitchen and put me up on the wall. That is my new home, where I believe I may live forever. I now get to see and hear about everything that Genevieve and her family are doing. I am also surrounding by kitchen gadgets again, which is where Genevieve had originally found me. It feels like my life has gone full-circle and now I’ve ended up in a really wonderful place. I couldn’t be happier. I’m glad that I got to come and live with Genevieve and be part of her creative process in creating wood burned art.

Steve Johnson - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 11

Figurine

zinovskaya - stock.adobe.com

Anything Nice

by Steve Carr

I

can't help it that I'm beautiful. I was made that way. But being beautiful isn't easy.

I'm sure I deserve better than to be placed next to a ceramic white elephant. If anything, I deserve to have this stand, or any space, all to myself.

But looking around this room, almost every surface is crowded with some objet d'art, knick knack, curio or tchochtke, some of it utterly ghastly. I don't like to discriminate against amphibians, but does anyone really need to see on a daily basis a giant green glass toad complete with a red glass dragonfly on its nose like the one sitting on the mantle amidst a collection of other frogs and toads?

The woman who keeps me dusted constantly rearranges practically everything on a regular basis, except for me. I could take it as a personal affront that my companion, the elephant, has been all over the room while this has been the only place I've been since I arrived here, but being on this stand is a place of honor. It's practically in the middle of the room. I understand the woman's need to move things around. Something is always getting broken by her two sons so she's constantly trying to find the safest spots for her “treasures,” as she calls us.

There is an unspoken bond between she and I. I am undoubtedly her most stunning treasure. If I were regarded with any less admiration I wouldn't be here on the most expensive stand in the room. It's not

like I'm some mantle frog on that bookshelf between the crystal penguins and ceramic puppies. That's the worst. Everyone knows that once you're placed on the bookcase the woman forgets all about you. It's the wasteland of show places. But not me, I'm here in the center of the room.

“

I can't keep anything nice around here,” she always says as she sweeps up a broken Chinese tea cup or tries to glue a chip back onto the damaged spot of a ceramic alligator.

More than once I've been perilously close to being knocked off my stand by one of the boys' elbows or by a thrown sofa pillow. The woman seems impervious to my distress at being so close to ending up on the floor as shattered pieces of porcelain.

All of us in this room knows that you end up in the trash can if you're swept up from the floor. The only thing in the room that has it worse than us is the goldfish in their bowl. When they go belly up, they get flushed down the toilet.

“Rough housing,” she calls it.

She constantly demands the boys stop doing it, but it never does any good. The worst time of day is when the boys come home from school.

Their pent up energy is released in a flurry of rough housing that extends from one end of the house to the other.

This room suffers the most from their behavior. Hardly a school day goes by when either a porcelain egg, glass gargoyle or some other member of our community ends up on the floor.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 12

I've tried to communicate with the woman in the only way I can about my fear of ending up on the floor. I stare at her with my crystal blue eyes and keep my ruby red lips pursed in a show of disdain and keep one slender hand raised, holding a silk parasol above my head. Yet the only attention I get from her is to be tickled by her feather duster. Beauty has its limitations.

I

was brought into this house by the older boy who rescued me from a store shelf of figurines, all exactly like me. I'm sure my inner beauty shone through my porcelain shell and that's why he selected me instead of one of the others. When I was put in the box on a bed of pink tissue paper I was certain I was destined to stand in a very special place. I was given to the woman as a gift and she extolled my virtues, kissed the boy on the cheek, and then placed me on this stand. My first lesson in life beyond the shelf was that being laid in pink tissue paper does not guarantee everlasting happiness.

The woman is pretty but she often looks haggard. That comes from chasing after the boys and serving the man of the house cold beverages while he sits on the sofa and stares at the television. I'm certain he has no idea that I even exist. Thanks to being in the position I am on this stand I can watch the television also. It has extensively increased© my vocabulary, miroo77 - stock.adobe.com but I'm not sure what it has done for the man. He mostly grunts.

He's responsible for the chip on the ear of the ceramic black panther

that sits on the coffee table. He threw an empty beer can during a televised football game and it chipped the panther.

The woman looked all over the carpet for the chip, but never found it.

“Sometimes you're as bad as the boys,” she told him.

Because he's much larger than the boys I live in fear every time he wrestles with them on the Persian carpet in front of the fireplace. The carpet is only a few feet away and this stand vibrates every time. I've tried to express my anxiety to the elephant, but he keeps his trunk raised, his tusks pointed slightly upward, and never says anything. I think he's shy. My looks have that effect on others.

When I was first placed on this stand there was a small mirror right next to me. It had a lovely ornate gold frame. I spent hours upon hours happily gazing at myself. Then during a particularly lengthy and violent session of rough housing, the mirror was knocked from the stand and crashed onto the floor. The woman yelled at the boys who seemed preoccupied with finding ways to ignore her and then she rearranged most of her treasures and placed the elephant here next to me. The absurdity of being a companion to an elephant overwhelms me.

It was brought to my attention during a discussion between the woman and the man that he had won the elephant by shooting mechanical ducks at a carnival. The elephant's background couldn't be any less refined, but I guess I can't blame the pachyderm. I'm sure that when they brought him home he wasn't wrapped in pink tissue paper. Only the most attractive among us have had that pleasure.

Being beautiful has its advantages.

A

number of times the woman has had other women over to sit around the card table and play bridge.

These other women share her interest in collecting things that would gather dust if a dust rag wasn't used frequently. When they come over the first thing they do is wander around the room in search of new additions to the community. They ooh and ah at even the most inelegant piece of bricka-brac as if it belonged in a museum.

How they find delight in a bone china plate with a puppy painted in the center, purchased at a flea market, is

beyond me.

They take into their hands both new and old pieces and pass them around, smudging the pieces with their fingerprints and breathing all manner of noxious odors onto them.

Each time I know my turn to be pawed and fondled will come, because after all, no matter what new addition is made to the community, I remain the most beautiful object in the room.

But as I'm lifted from the stand and passed from hand to hand and observed at every angle, I'm appalled at the liberties the women take as they lift the faux piece of blue lace that covers the bottom part of me and peer at my porcelain legs. All the while that this is happening, the elephant stares up at me mockingly. My only revenge is that no one pays any attention to him in the least. He's been around here a long time. His novelty has worn off.

After the women have gone, the woman gets a clean rag and rubs the smudges and fingerprints from each of us. She is very delicate in how she handles me. She takes my modesty into account and never lifts my skirt to clean my legs without saying, “I hope you don't mind.”

I do, but it's the price I pay for being extremely pretty.

T

he term “yard sale” is wildly misleading.

The day began like any other when the boys didn't have to go to school. They laid on the floor and stared at cartoons being shown on the television. Not surprisingly, the woman has the entire top of the china cabinet cluttered with glass and plastic Disney and Looney Tunes characters. I believe there are at least six Mickey Mouses among them. As the boys like to play with them and destroy them when the woman isn't watching, she is constantly replacing them.

During the commercials, the boys punched, kicked, pounded and head butted each other. The entire floor shook at time.

The woman entered the room carrying two cardboard boxes and announced to the boys, “Go to your room and gather the junk you want to get rid of. We're having a yard sale.”

Why were they selling their yard?

I thought.

Then the most shocking thing I had ever witnessed began. The woman selected treasures from the shelves, table tops, mantle and stands, and put Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 13

them in the box. In the box went the ceramic grasshoppers, wooden nutcrackers, plastic gnomes and tin birds along with many others. By the time she was finished the community had been decimated. I had no idea what was going to happen to them, but I knew it couldn't be good.

The boys came back with their arms loaded with a variety of broken toys and worn out sports equipment and dumped them in the empty cardboard box.

“Take them outside and put the things on the tables,” she told them, then left the room.

The older boy carried out the box of their things.

The younger boy looked around the room, then walked over and grabbed me and put me in the box with the other treasures.

Me! He put me in the box with the others. I was gobsmacked.

I'm certain I heard the elephant trumpet with delight.

Lying on top of all the others I was carried outside and then placed on a long table with everything else. Then I saw the “for sale” sign sticking in the grass in front of the table.

How could anything as beautiful as me be sold in a yard sale?

The woman came out of the house carrying an armload of clothing just as two cars stopped at the curb and people got out. She saw me and dropped the clothing. Whisking me into her arms she rushed me back inside and placed me on the stand.

“Those boys,” she said with a noticeable sigh. “You're my favorite treasure.”

She went back outside.

I would have berated the elephant for his rudeness, but he never listens to me anyway, which is surprising given the size of his ears.

T

he older boy returned to the store where I was rescued from and returned with another figurine exactly like me. Finally the elephant was moved to a spot on the bookshelves.

The bookshelves! The woman kissed the boy on the cheek and placed the new figurine on my stand, only a few inches away from me.

I'm certain she thinks she's more beautiful than me. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Egg

Fried Egg As Philosopher

by Robbi Nester Call me optimistic. I keep my one eye always open, and I have since the beginning of that egg, the world.

At first, there was only a pearly sea covering everything. Darkness and light laid together under a tree and made the stars.

Up close, they were hot and angry, sizzling in the sky’s skillet.

Far away, they were cold and silent.

In the daytime, I watch the clouds, my kin, both solid and liquid, taking shape outside the window.

Sometimes they are small and quiet.

Sometimes the wind whisks them into a loud froth.

They touch the earth with their hungry mouths, devouring houses and cars, cows browsing in the field.

Then the sun’s yolk covers everything, warm and nourishing, and the day begins again.

aimusa - Pixabay.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 14

LP

LP Robbi Nester The needle drops, and music rises from the grooves, the self I never knew I had. Without the stylus prying out the notes, I’m no one, spinning in place around my one true pole. As the notes unfold, I think that this must be the way a nightingale sings, the tune erupting from its throat, announcing “I exist.”

SanderSmit - Pixabay.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 15

Rose Pink Rose

By Steven Tutino

O

nce upon a time, I was a tiny rose. But now I am a fullfledged tree, loving and wild, gentle and serene, bright luscious pink that no eyes have ever seen. While red roses symbolize love and romance, I symbolize gratitude, grace, admiration and joy. I am a token of admiration compared to the typical bright red rose. I will continue to grow. I stand tall thanks to the blessed love of those around me, those who believed in me and gave me a home in rich soil.

I always brighten a dull moment. With enough love, tenderness and care, you too can develop your full potential and be a force for good in the world. Give yourself time and trust in your abilities.

In winter, I am sheltered. Winters are harsh, even brutal at times, but I am resilient, I stand mighty and tall, blessed to be in your presence.

c Steve Tutino

Photo: Steven Tutino

Steven Tutino was born in Montréal, Canada, and is a writer, poet, painter and personal trainer. He is currently a graduate student at Concordia University in the process of completing an M.A. in Theological Studies. His poetry has appeared in Concordia University’s Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality, The Paragon Journal, Halcyon Days, Perspectives Magazine, Founder’s Favourites and Anapest: A Journal of Poetry Excellence. His artwork has appeared in numerous journals and magazines including The Minetta Review, TreeHouse Arts, Montréal Writes, Spadina Literary Review, The Montréal Gazette, From Whispers to Roars, The Indianapolis Review, After Happy Hour, Apricity Magazine and Ariel's Dream. Apart from painting, Steven enjoys reading, writing in his diary, going for long meditative walks and hanging out at the gym.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 16

Seed

Venus Flytrap

Seed of Love

By Nancy Lou Henderson

Venus Flytrap

By Sarah Henry

Darkness does surround, waiting in the ground.

Moisture touches me, waking me to flee.

Outer shell has burst, increasing my thirst, Breaking thru the earth, today is my rebirth.

Sunlight on my face, feeling God's amazing grace.

Stand firm and straight, budding flowers await.

Flowers soon to bloom, removing human gloom.

Once a lifeless seed, sharing love in times of need.

i.

I like to have a fat fly in my mouth.

Big stomachs with thin legs hit the spot.

Flies die in my tight embrace. Bigger is better for those of the carnivore race. ii.

Man will steal my home in a hot bog of the Carolinas.

He’ll bring extinction with civilization.

I’ll trap dinner now but not much longer.

The end is near. iii.

I am deadly but man is stronger.

He brings bulldozers and cranes. The jaws of his machines snap alarmingly.

I’ll eat tender flies until I’m ploughed under, a lost cause.

Vera Kuttelvaserova - stock.adobe.com

© Nancy Lou Henderson

Sarah Henry studied with two former U.S. poet laureates at the University of Virginia. She is retired from a major newspaper. Her recent publications include Pure Slush, The Writers' Club, Rue Scribe, Lummox and The American Writers' Review. Sarah writes and lives quietly in a small Pennsylvania town without distractions.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 17

Golf Ball The Way Things Turn Out

By Mary Marino

M

y mother left me on the sixth hole. Perhaps I need to be more precise. I was exactly seven yards off the green in a deep sandy pit.

I remember Mother looked down at me, her blue eyes blazing, and said it was way too much effort for her to climb and get me out. She turned toward her friends and told them I wasn’t dependable, just added dead weight, and she didn’t want me anymore. Then she walked away. It was the last I ever saw of Mother.

All through the night I laid there, dirty and cold. I tried to pass the time by counting the lumps on my back, even the ones on my belly. Then the next morning something unexpected happened. A big man in blue overalls climbed down inside the hole. In his hand was a long metal rake. It looked kind of scary and I thought it could hurt so I scrunched down in the sand as deep as I could. Eventually, it unearthed me and as it drew me toward the big man, I was surprised to discover I wasn’t hurt one little bit.

“What do we have here?” the big man said, as he leaned down for a closer look. Before I knew it, he scooped me up and brushed off some of the dirt. He turned me around in his huge paw of a hand and read the fine print on my head.

Titleist Pro V. “Wow, you’re going to make a mighty fine prize for someone,” he said tucking me into his back pocket.

I spent the rest of the day in the warmth of the big man’s overalls as he went about his duties mowing the grass and watering the greens. Every time he moved granules of sand would drop away from my sides, so by the time he pulled me out, I was almost good as new.

That night before dinner he washed me good, dried me with a soft towel, and held me up to the light. I must have looked spectacular because he whistled an appreciation.

“Boy, come here,” the big man said. A sandy-haired youngster of eleven or twelve bounded off the sofa.

“Watcha got, Dad.?”

The man held out his hand. “Boy, this is the finest ball made yet. Take good care of it and it’ll take care of you.”

“Gee, thanks,” the boy said wrapping me up into his smaller fist. As he was getting ready for bed that night, the boy placed me carefully on his bureau, and then slid under the covers. There was a soft light coming from the hallway and I noticed the boy’s eyes on me before he drifted off to sleep. Was he dreaming of some future feat on the golf course? Was he counting on me to always fly straight and land wherever he wished? Mother’s words came back to me.

I was afraid I would not be worthy of the boy’s love. Maybe the big man should have left me in the sandy pit. Maybe that’s all the life I deserved.

For days I sat on the boy’s bureau happy for a reprieve from not having to prove my worth. Then one day the big man didn’t come home from work. People wore black. The boy cried … a lot. I didn’t understand what was happening.

Days turned into months, then into years. The boy grew. All of this time the boy pretty much ignored me. The only time I was moved was for an occasional dusting which wasn’t very often because … well … really, I was in a boy’s room after all.

One afternoon my importance took a turn. I noticed the boy was dressed in a three-button shirt the crest of his school stitched on the pocket. He picked me up and studied me for a moment. “You were the last thing Dad ever gave me and today we find out if all that he wished for me can come true.”

His words made me nervous. Would I let him down?

Would I be left behind once again? I didn’t know it then but I needn’t have worried. This day was the first in a long line of tournaments the boy would win.

From then on whenever he competed, he would take me from my resting place on the bureau and put me in the side pocket of his golf bag, a safe place that I later learned was only used for very special things. Other balls would come and go. Some could soar to the heavens. Others would get lost in the brambles or high grasses of the many courses the boy would play. All the while I would stay warm and dry in the comfort of my little nest and when we got home, I would be returned to my place of honor in the boy’s room.

The day the letter came the boy sat down on his bed with tears in his eyes. It seemed he was receiving a scholarship to college just because he could hit balls into 18 holes far better than all the other boys. Amazing! He put the letter down and gathered me up into hands now bigger than his dad’s. “You’ve sure been my lucky charm,” he said.

Maybe he felt my worry thinking that I needed to be anyone’s ‘luck.’ That’s so much pressure to put on a little ball.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” the boy said. “See, you’re my connection to Dad. You’ll always make me think of him and the day he brought you home.”

The boy became a man. He has a den of his own which sports many trophies and awards. There are only two things that sit on his desk, though. A picture of his family … and me. “Thank you, Mother.”

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 18

djtaylor - stock.adobe.com

Tote Bag

www.mythirtyone.com/us/en/product/4451/zip-top-organizing-utility-tote-garden-sketchn

A Burial

By Ann Hultberg

I

n the evening, I sit collapsed in the corner of a bedroom, between the closet and night stand, where I have sat in the same position for many years. In the morning I will once again be filled and hauled to a classroom where, once emptied, will be squashed in a cloak closet for eight hours.

Refueled, now weighing ten pounds, I will be carted home, then emptied again and stashed in that bedroom corner until morning. Five days a week, the routine never varies. Back and forth I travel fifty miles a day.

But now, twenty years later, I am worn out from carrying much weight over the years: books, snacks, lunch bags, pens, water bottles, dry erase markers, paper clips, hand sanitizer, Kleenex, keys. My pockets are ripped, stretched; my once white bottom, which held the most bulk, is smeared with red ink stains and cracker crumbs. My straps have shredded and my black and white vinyl fabric has faded.

I have held research proposals, journal entries, handouts, stories of lives: tears, fears, hopes, what or whom they love--hate—question, millions of words all safely encased in my waterproof exterior. I have held the weight of responsibility, holding what needed to be answered-- my dog died, my grandpa died, my boyfriend broke up with me, I don't have any friends, my family is broken, I feel lost-- the

weight of what my carrier had to handle : I have heard her probing them on, giving confidence, leading through the unfamiliar. What is in your heart? On your mind? Say what you mean!

As I listened, their words brought me to tears, to anger, to awe, to laughter, to boredom at times, as I carried their best epiphanies, energy, motivation.

I

was folded and placed in a white kitchen garbage bag along with discarded papers. It’s sort of a burial -surrounded with the familiar--the feel of paper touching my sides (my family so to speak), the swirl of words murmuring their goodbyes. All shredded so the jumble of black ink letters form new words and sentences and nest in the comfort of what was, and cover me lovingly with what it knows. Eight million words give back what I once gave--the paper now cushioning my weight, cocooning me in comfort, like a lullaby.

The white kitchen bag will make its way to the landfill where the paper will disintegrate within a few months, but I a thousand years. More like a casket, I will take my place within the hills of colorful refuse, near the tractor that pushes the mound higher and higher, below the squawking birds of prey, above the years of trash that came before me, holding whispers of their thoughts, their stories, forever embedded within my lining.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 19

Kelly Bag

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Kelly_Bag.jpg

The Kelly Bag

by J L Higgs

I

t had been a typical Friday. Only a few potential customers roaming the vintage clothing store to the sounds of smooth jazz over its audio system.

Her dress was ocean blue with large white and yellow flowers. Like something you’d see in Hawaii, it was featherweight, loose, and reached down to the straps on her leather sandals.

Head tipped, her river of long curly blond hair fell to one side as she slid one hangar after another along the tubular dress rack. Now and then she paused, furrowing her brow, frowning, and sighing. Reaching the end of the rack, she straightened up, shook her head, and murmured, “Nothing.”

She appeared to be on the verge of leaving, but then stopped, facing in my direction. After a moment or two, she walked over. Plucking me off the shelf, she blew on me repeatedly before using her hand to wipe away the last bit of dust covering me. Then she turned me this way and that, checking my outside and inside. Frowning, she put me back on the shelf and turned as if to go. But then she spun around, shrugged, grabbed me off the shelf and marched to the front of the store. “ Did you find everything you were looking for?” asked the young cashier with the nose ring.

“I was actually looking for a dress.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell,” said the young woman, stuffing me in a paper bag while smiling conspiratorially.

My original owner, Phyllis, had worked the perfume counter at Bergdorf Goodman. Like the woman who’d just purchased me, the first time she saw me, she’d been in her 20s. She had to save for years before she could

afford both me, a Kelly Bag, and a coveted bottle of Number Nine perfume.

Throughout our years together Phyllis took good care of me and I of her. But when she passed away at 88, God rest her soul, her daughter didn’t realize how truly special and exceptional I was. Wanting to wrap up her mother’s affairs as quickly as possible, she dispensed of me along with the rest of her mother’s belongings in an estate sale.

That’s how I ended up spending the past few years gathering dust on a shelf.

A startling rumble, crackle, and boom sounded overhead and then I heard rain slapping the pavement. I was bouncing around in the bag and a wet spot above me began to spread. We’d obviously left the store and the woman must have been running with the paper bag above her head. This situation was clearly unacceptable.

A loud thunk of bodies colliding brought us to a sudden stop.

“Sorry, I was… Oh, you have umbrellas,” said the woman.

Dah Dah. Situation resolved. For the rest of the trip to her home we were nice and dry beneath the bright pink umbrella she bought from the street vendor.

The next morning, as I was adjusting to my new surroundings, she stalked the apartment, cellphone in hand. Her conversation was peppered with the words “Tasha,” “fundraiser,” and “garden party.” After that, she sat down in front of a mirror and applied makeup.

When she finished, she filled me with lipstick, tissues, breath mints, a wallet, sunglasses, apartment keys, and a host of other items. She removed a diaphanous dress from her closet, its bands of blue, red, and yellow melting into each other like a sunset in an abstract post-impressionist painting. She shimmied into it, checked her appearance in a full-length mirror, fluffed her hair, and then we headed out.

The stately stone and multi-turreted mansion where the fundraising party was being held was beautiful.

Sculpted hedgerows and flowering gardens bordered both sides of its lush green acres of gently rolling hills. At various intervals along the grounds, large white tents had been set up marking where stations with china plates and silver trays of canapes cut like triangles were located. All throughout the vast landscape, waiters in white jackets floated among the well-dressed attendees with trays of fluted crystal glasses full of sparkling champagne.

As we approached what looked like a pool house, a tall dark-haired man approached carrying a glass of champagne. Stopping in front of us, he put a hand on his hip, sweeping his sport coat aside. “Rather eye-catching dress, Angela,” he said. “A new acquisition?”

“No,” replied my new owner, taking a glass from a tray passing by. She took a sip of champagne, then ran a finger along the glass’s rim, smudging the red lipstick on it.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 20

“Angela,” called out a woman, rushing over. They exchanged cheek-to-cheek air kisses. “Malcolm,” said the woman, addressing the man. “You don’t mind if I borrow her?”

Raising his eyebrows and making a slight bow, he replied, “Of course not.”

As she reapplied her lipstick in the pool house women’s changing room mirror, Angela thanked the woman for rescuing her.

“Running into an ex at one of these affairs is the worst,” said the woman, setting her champagne glass on the counter beside Angela’s. Looking in the mirror, she patted her cornrows braids, then adjusted her silver necklace. “Personally, I’m glad you broke it off with Malcolm. He always struck me as rather pompous.”

Angela laughed. “This is quite the affair. Thanks for inviting me to be your plus one, Tash.”

“Girl, hitting up these folks for money is my least favorite thing when it comes to working for the museum.

Might as well have my BFF along.”

Angela shook her head and laughed.

“Nice bag,” said Tasha, noticing me as she picked up her champagne glass and took a sip. Then she set the glass back down on the counter.

“Thanks. I got it at the vintage clothing store downtown.”

Still checking herself in the mirror, Angela put the cap back on her lipstick, then went to put it back inside me. Her hand brushed her champagne glass and it toppled into Tasha’s. Angela tried to catch it, but the glass struck the counter and shattered.

“That looks bad,” said Tasha, seeing shards of glass in Angela’s hand. She shoved a handful of paper towels toward her friend.

Angela gingerly pulled out the jagged pieces. Then she grabbed some towels and used them to put pressure on the cuts.

“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“You better make it quick,” said Angela, tossing the blood-soaked towels into the sink. She placed her hand beneath the faucet, turned on the cold water, and watched the bloody water swirl down the drain.

Grabbing hold of me with her other hand, Angela turned me upside down. Everything within me clattered onto the counter. Nothing there was of use in such an emergency. As I felt her nausea and lightheadedness increasing, I knew something had to be done.

The changing room’s door suddenly opened. Seeing the blood pouring from Angela’s hand, the woman who entered asked if she was OK and what had happened.

“I accidentally broke a glass and cut my hand,” replied Angela.

“That’s going to need stitches,” said the woman, noting the blood splattered on the counter, purse, and sink. “I’m an OBG. There’s some medical supplies in my car.”

Dah Dah. Situation resolved.

The following morning, Angela’s cell phone rang.

After a brief conversation with Tasha, it rang again.

Angela told the caller that her hand had throbbed during the night, so she’d taken some Percocet and planned to spend the day relaxing. Head nodding, she agreed that the Dr.’s arrival the prior afternoon had been timely.

Then she thanked the Dr. for checking on her and hung up.

Spying me on the floor where she’d left me, Angela walked over and picked me up. After rechecking that she’d emptied me, she looked me over, shaking her head at the streaks of blood. Sighing, she then took me outside. She placed me on top of the trash in a garbage can and wheeled it to the curb.

As she settled the can upright, a little girl with pigtails rode up on a bike.

“Hi Angela,” said the little girl, stopping.

“Hey, Molly. New bike?”

“No. It was with the Peterson’s trash last week.”

Angela nodded.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Oh,” said Angela, looking at her heavily wrapped hand. “I cut it and had to get stitches.”

“My brother had stitches, once,” replied Molly. She walked her bike closer to the trash can. “You throwing this away?” she asked, lifting me from atop the trash.

“Yeah. I got blood all over it when I cut my hand.”

“Can I have it?”

“Well, it’s kind of messed up… given the blood.”

“I don’t care.”

Angela shrugged.

“Thanks,” said Molly, grinning as she put me in the basket attached to the bike’s handlebars. She rolled the bike forward and pedaled away. Halfway down the street, she turned her head back toward Angela and called out, “See ya.”

On the opposite side of the street, a car was backing out of its driveway.

“Molly! Car!” yelled Angela, pointing.

Seeing the car, Molly swerved out of its path.

Since leaving the vintage clothing store I’d had a busy couple of days. What might I have to do next?

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 21

Marble Through a Blue Cat’s Eye Darrell Petska

“

Badly’s coming!” sparked a chorus of groans from the players circling us in the marble ring. Any chance at joy sailed wide.

It was Bradley, or “Badly” to us, because bullying proved his only skill.

There I lay in the dirt—vulnerable outside my customary summer home, Spencer’s jeans pocket. My brilliant blue cat’s eye sparkled. Bradley arrived, pushed into our circle, and insisted we play for keepsies. The game ended just minutes later when Bradley cried “cheater!”—creating disarray while he scooped up scattered mibs.

He targeted me, shoving Spencer aside as he stormed off, later to deposit me in a marble jar on his dresser. Would I ever see Spencer’s jeans pocket again?

Except for a jasper aggie and me, which he sometimes held up to the light, Bradley paid little attention to his marble collection. He appeared to have few interests and looked alone and small in his large bedroom.

I sorely missed the click-clacking of marbles skipping and streaking across the dirt, hurried on by our shooters! But Spencer hadn’t forgotten me. Not long after our separation, I heard him talking to Bradley’s mom, who shortly accompanied him into Bradley’s room.

“Do you see it in his marble jar over there?”

Spencer spotted me immediately.

“I’m so sorry Brad took your marble. He’ll get a good talking-to when he gets back, and I’ll be sure he apologizes.”

So back to Spencer I went, comfortable once more in his

jeans pocket.

No apology followed. Spencer avoided Bradley, and except for the bad luck of being grouped in the same swim class, all might have been forgotten.

While Spencer showered off after class one morning, Bradley patted down Spencer’s jeans, discovering me—and back to Bradley’s house I went, this time confined to Bradley’s locked treasure box containing a few ball cards, a silver dollar, a Lego figure, and matches.

I seldom glimpsed daylight. Bradley never reached in for me. As seasons crawled by, he no longer turned to his treasure box. When finally he did, I couldn’t believe how much he’d grown! His long fingers rummaged through the contents of the box, threw away several items, then rolled me about his fingers.

“My bad. Forgot about you!”

Had he grown a conscience? With me in his pocket, he biked over to Spencer’s house, furtively flipped me onto the front porch, and hurried off.

Badly played! Spencer no longer lived there. No one did.

Soon after, the city leveled the house and paved the lot— burying me eight inches below daylight.

The end of me? I play the long game. They don’t make concrete like they used to. Already a crack has formed overhead—my voice, freed! A glass marble like me can survive several hundred thousand years. Though, by then, will people still be playing marbles? Will there even be people?

Certainly it’ll be a brave new world. Who better suited to see it than a blue cat’s eye?

© InspiredImages - Pixabay.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 22

Rock

What the Rock Said to the Girl with the Crayons

By Lisa Roullard A rectangular frog! you said as you greened me.

I now dream as pond.

Patch of lawn.

You knew—you knew!

I wanted to be blanketed green.

Then you gave me a cat!

I love that.

Drew his back on my back; I’ve named him Red. His tail hugs my sides with twitch and tickle.

Again, the warm shade of your hands. More crayon and Red’s face peeks from my front.

Black eyes keeping watch for mice with whiskers like stars, you said.

I am motored with purring.

The ground is still mine.

Tanya - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 23

Painting

She wriggled her fingers and the world around me swirled ever smaller.

I became flattened to the wall, my lines filled with the smell of Winton oils.

Ultramarine blue filled my background, and a gold-threaded McNelis knotwork frame grasped my edges.

I had begun to object when her nose twitched. My Cadmium red lips stoppered, my movements stilled. And all I had left was the ability to watch what passed before me.

Now I hang here in this museum where people just sit and stare at me, never even telling me what year it is or whether Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritzky won the match.

Sergii Moscaliuk - stock.adobe.com

luchschenF - stock.adobe.com

Cursed

By Kat Terban Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 24

Timbrel

Mark Pierce - stock.adobe.com

Making Music

By Meryl Baer

I

long to dance. I love helping my partner’s mind wander far afield as she escapes sensible boundaries. But now I feel forgotten. I sit on a shelf in her room in plain sight, ignored. Direct sunlight never embraces me. Fake light and shadow surround me, day after day, as I lie still. I need to move. Timbrels are made to dance, never alone of course, always with human partners. Nowadays they call me a tambourine, but that doesn’t matter. Whatever called, I move and make music.

I don’t remember when my human and I got together.

Years ago. I was newly created, my bells silvery and shiny, their jangle, jangle loud and strong, my membrane tightly fastened to my plastic rim. She would don one of her long multi-colored gypsy skirts and bohemian blouse, grab me off the shelf and take off. As soon as the music blared we began to dance, prancing around the room, adding a shimmy and a spin, leaping about and laughing.

We were a team creating joyful noise and dance, in sync with the music, and, if only for a few minutes, nothing else mattered. We didn’t care if we were good, because we weren’t. We enjoyed the carefree sense of freedom movement produced. Following precise choreographed steps was less important than delighting in the moment, except when she danced with her group. Then she got nervous and annoyed at herself when she mis-stepped.

One day I heard them – the zills, those metal round things attached to her fingers that she clanged together. She was practicing and never realized how sad they made me.

She could use both of us, but not at the same time. But like me, the zills now sit silent and motionless in a plastic bag in her drawer.

Her life altered course and she left her last group, the Daughters of Terpsichore, for other activities, some taking her far away from me for days or weeks at a time. I lost her.

She got too busy with unimportant stuff and consigned me to the bookshelf. She forgot about the music and the lightness and sheer joy of movement.

She could still dance. I know she could. She has slowed down, sleeps more, doesn’t stand up straight, makes funny groaning sounds especially when something bothers her, like her back. Her energy level is not what it used to be, but I don’t mind. I wish she would pick me up and use me. I want to play my music again.

I became hopeful we would dance together again a few months ago. She bought tap shoes and began to learn a new way to move. I know she liked it. She seemed happy and calm and yes – joyful – when returning from a lesson.

But suddenly the classes stopped. Almost everything she did stopped. Home a lot now, she rarely dances. I overhear bits and pieces about a sickness, but she isn’t sick, and how she must stay away from people. So sad.

How much time before she can’t dance even if she tried? No matter how much she wants to. I wish I could shout, “Pick me up and shake me, dance with me, have fun with me. I am a timbrel born to move.”

What will become of me? Will she get rid of me, relegate me to a Goodwill bag one day? I see her glance at me, and infrequently she picks me up and runs her hands over my bells. Recently she took me out of my prison room and into the light – the kitchen. I heard voices sing and on a screen people clapped, moved their heads and smiled. She began rocking back and forth and once again held me high.

We made a festive racket and were, for a few fleeting minutes, as one again.

I miss our togetherness, and I know she does too.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 25

Virginia Amis - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 26

Tree Dragon

By Virginia Amis

“

Come on down. I promise I won’t hurt you again.”

Even as I spoke the words I could not be sure they were true. My instincts to release a fiery breath, which grew more prominent each passing hour, fought with my strong desire to keep a small defenseless friend. I twisted my long, scaly neck upward from the unearthed cedar roots that had freed me into life, straining to see movement in the canopy above, hoping my expression conveyed friendliness. A bit of sky peaked through, giving me a better view. Was that him? My heart pounded. Nothing. Where had he gone?

Hunger gnawed at my belly. I needed food, but I did not want to leave this place to hunt. I had to fight the urge. We could forage together later, Squirrel and me, after he came back. After he forgave me. He could teach me to like seeds and nuts. If he would only come back.

All had been dark for me before two days and nights ago when a fierce storm’s winds pushed at a one hundredfoot tree’s branches so hard that the old girl, whose snarling roots held me beneath the earth, gave away to defeat, her tall trunk crashing to the forest floor, snapping saplings in its path, dark green ferns crushed under its girth. I remembered the blinding flash of my awakening. I had been asleep for fifty years, a forced slumber. The spell broke when the tree fell.

A group of small gray squirrels dove from the tree before it concussed, saving themselves, relocating to more stable accommodations on the adjacent maple, shorter but able to withstand the tempest. One of them had become my friend, at least until last night.

My initial waking moments had been quiet, as though all creation was holding its breath to see what I would do. I’d unfurled my contorted shape and rediscovered my body, sleek neck, long tail, stubby arms with sharp claws, powerful legs. My back itched where broad wings expanded.

“I’m a dragon,” I remembered, suddenly proud. “A magnificent being.”

“You’re one of a kind,” a brave squirrel with black paws had said on my second day. It stood on its hind legs a good distance away, next to a hole in the maple it had adopted. Other squirrels squawked and barked warnings at the black-pawed one, who seemed the bravest of them all.

“What did you say?” I’d demanded, testing my voice. It came out as a crackling roar. The brave squirrel ran away at first, startled by my voice, but crept slowly back to its original branch, curiosity overcoming fear. I named him Squirrel.

I’d thought him brave to speak to me, a large beast who could devour him in single lick. “How can that be,” I’d asked, wanting to engage after so long a silence. “There are lots of squirrels in this forest. Why aren’t there lots of dragons?” My voice steadied the more I used it.

“All gone a long time ago,” was all Squirrel said. “Don’t you remember?”

I didn’t remember. “What do you know? Can you tell me what happened?”

Squirrel chattered something unintelligible. The other squirrels joined him, adding barks. “I’m far too young to remember fifty years ago,” he said. “I only know from the stories I’ve heard. Dragons were a menace, destroying the woods with their burning breath. Then, the story goes, a

huge machine came and took them all away. I don’t know what happened to them.”

Sorrow gripped my heart. No other dragons! How could that be true? Who would be my mate, raise a family with me? How could I be the last?

My throat ached for a drink. Turning my back on the squirrel, I pushed through the forest growth and followed the sound of water coming from a creek. Bending my snout low, I drank the cool liquid, tasting its sweetness. When I’d quenched my thirst I returned to the upturned cedar tree. Squirrel remained on his perch.

“If dragons were so fierce, why aren’t you afraid of me?” I asked my new acquaintance in a tone too harsh, but understandable from the news I’d been given.

“I don’t know yet,” Squirrel replied. “I’m still gauging. Everyone else says I should run for my life.”

I scratched my scales against a rock, fighting the urge to rumble a sound of pure satisfaction for fear it would make Squirrel run. No matter what, it felt good to have a conversation after fifty years of silence.

“Sometimes, I scratch my back against a tree. It feels good.” Squirrel demonstrated by rubbing his fur on the maple. “I liked the cedar better, though. Rougher makes a better scratch.”

He looked comical, but I could not laugh. One of a kind. That thought began to take up residence in my brain.

Alone. None like me left. What had I expected after fifty years?

Last night Squirrel had come down from the tree. We’d been talking for two days. I’d urged him to trust me, assured him I wouldn’t harm him. Finally convinced, he came slowly. I kept still. His small body shook with fear, but his bravery let him come closer until his little nose touched the tip of mine. I tried not to move, letting him gain confidence. I had laid my face on the ground, letting him touch my ear with his black paws. So small, the feeling barely registered. He came closer, stretching so his front paws reached upwards on my face and his small belly fell against my skin.

Before I realized it, a warmth spread throughout my body, the memory of my mother stroking my face. My heart beat faster. I could not contain my joy. It had been fifty years since another had touched me. Before I knew it, I’d stood up on my hind legs and roared in pure delight, knocking Squirrel into the undergrowth, fire escaping from my snout singing the branches of Squirrel’s new tree. Sparks sent his fellow squirrels racing into the night. One of them fell lifeless from the tree.

I had not seen Squirrel since. He and the others had moved to another tree, I guessed. He’d never come to say good bye. I’d never had the chance to say “I’m sorry.” Regret, longing and loneliness seeped into my coldblooded limbs as I inhaled the forest scents. No more dragons. One of a kind. A friend made and lost. All felt lifeless.

A week later, another storm came to the woods. I found refuge in a depression at the base of a solid, sturdy cedar. Crawling in, I turned my head away from the rest of the forest, and accepted my fate, knowing I would never have another friend.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 27

Brownfield Fence

Flint’s Brownfield Fence

By Melodie Bolt I perch on the corner regarding your messy bun, loose and lopsided, fingers tucking henna strands in place. When the light flicks Kelly, your rusty-quarter-panel Impala surges forward. To work, I imagine.

Once my inner acres brimmed with booted feet, the stamping of metal, and bright spark welds. So much time dressed my building’s windows and auto windshields as though my plant would stand forever— the winter dark held at bay by headlights on drowsy snow; the summer rays searing cigarette corpses on concrete.

But now at night, I see Orion working among the union of constellations across the dark flocked sky. During the day, cars like yours, once built within my bricks, drive onward like seeds of a tree scattered on the road.

Silent Corners - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 28

Kilim

Kilim By paul Bluestein Go ahead.

Walk all over me.

I don’t mind.

I promise not to think of you as unkind.

But I do wish you would wipe off your shoes so as to not muddy my yellows and blues.

I’ve come all the way from a far, foreign land wishing only to give you a warm place to stand.

I’ve been trod on by claw, by paw and by hoof but still have preserved my warp and my woof.

So if you mistreat me, I bid you beware lest the floors of your house find themselves bare.

EnginKorkmaz-stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 29

Bridge The Tobin

by Jen Mierisch

G

arrett wasn’t what Susan expected. Obviously. Humans are hilarious if you ask me. They think they’re so in control of themselves, but their faces show everything. It’s one of my greatest sources of entertainment. That, and the way they behave on boats after a few Coronas.

Ninety meters below us, the Mystic River glittered. Susan clung to my railing and looked Garrett up and down. She’d expected Death. Her face said it all: Since when does Death wear jeans and work boots?

Well, I got news for ya, sweetheart. Death doesn’t come for you unless you actually jump off. Believe me, I know.

Garrett knew her, though. I’d heard him talking to the other guys from the MDOT crew.

They were all standing around, looking up at me, when Garrett arrived. Even McCarthy. If Slave Driver McCarthy was standing around, you knew something was wrong.

Garrett squinted into the sunlight.

“Shit,” he said. “SHIT.” “Garry? Whaddya know her or something?” His buddy, Rick.

“Yeah, man.” Garrett exhaled, wiped a hand over his face.

“That’s Susan Barducci. You know. Dale Barducci’s wife.”

“Dale Barducci? That asshole that left his family and ran off with the…”

“Yep.” “How do you know her?”

“From the block, when we were kids. She used to babysit me and Henry.”

“Aw, shit. Sorry, man.”

“You need to go up there.” McCarthy.

“What?”

“If you know her, get up there right now. Get her down.”

“Get her down? What… you mean, like, talk her out of it?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean, smarty. Get your ass up there.”

Garrett sputtered. “Me? I … Shouldn’t the police get her down?”

The look on McCarthy’s face shut Garrett up. The project was eight weeks behind schedule. They both knew what impact a bridge closure would have. Or a crime scene investigation.

Garrett’s face was priceless. I tell ya, I heard it like he said it right to me. This shit is not in my job description.

He climbed up, though.

Sat above her.

Said her name.

She was so surprised, she almost tumbled off my steel right then and there.

“SHIT.” His body tensed to spring. But she caught herself.

He took a breath.

“Sorry,” he said. “Hey. I’m Garrett. Remember me?”

Her eyes closed. Her fingers gripped the rails. He could see her face, stained with salty tracks where tears had been.

“Fuck you,” she said.

“Garrett. From Front Street,” he barreled on. His face said it all. What the hell am I doing? Making small talk with a woman who’s about to kill herself?

“Please go away,” she said.

“Remember when you used to come over and play cards with me and Henry?” he blurted.

Her eyes stayed shut.

“You always won. Well, you woulda won, but you usually let me win… Hey, remember those cupcakes you used to make for us? Dang, those were good. Nobody ever cooked for us like that. I bet your kids love it when you make those.”

She started crying.

“You told the best jokes,” he said. “I swear I learned half my jokes from you. Remember how Henry asked for dirty jokes? And you said, ‘You better straighten up and fly right, mister’.”

Her face crumpled. But she wasn’t jumping.

“Look,” he said suddenly. “Screw Dale. He’s a scumbag, allright? If he doesn’t know what he’s got, well… he’s an idiot. But he’s not worth jumping off a bridge for. Don’t do that. You’re better than that. You are worth more than that.

Okay?”

She was crying hard now. But still not jumping.

Brazenly, he reached out a hand. “Come on, okay? Let’s go. Let’s get you back to your kids.”

She looked at Garrett, then at the water.

“Remember when you used to get me down off the monkey bars, all those times Henry dared me to climb up there?

Well, I guess today it’s my turn, allright?”

She looked at his hand.

“Come on, Susan. Let’s go home.”

L

ike I said, humans are funny. They do the dumbest stuff.

Yet they seem to understand what it means to be on a precipice, unable to move, stretched between what went before and what might be next. They feel the power of that inbetween space. Sometimes, they jump. Other times, the last one they expect is the first one to help them down.

Overall, I’ll take humans any day of the week.

Now don’t get me started on seagulls.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 30

kankankavee - stock.adobe.com

Raven Waterfowl Play

by Jen Mierisch

I

t was a beautiful evening for an ugly assignment. The setting sun gleamed off the pond, painted the willows gold, and deepened the shadows in the woods.

Landing several yards away, I approached the ducks slowly, to show I wasn’t after their juveniles. I caught a few glares from the elders. Word was, this flock wasn’t fond of outsiders, particularly if that outsider was a raven.

“Detective Corva Kazynski,” I introduced myself. “I’m here to—" The scene burst into chaos as the ducks leaped into the air, screeching. Feathers whirled as the flock climbed sloppily into the sky.

Nice to meet you, too, I thought, rapidly taking flight myself. From an evergreen branch, I observed what had broken up the party. Two red foxes skidded to a stop on the empty grass, then skulked away. Goddamn foxes. Now I’d have to wait hours until the flock recovered its collective wits.

I tried not to take it as a sign of how this case was going to go. Investigating a murder was unpleasant enough without predators adding to the body count.

I’d already ruled out foxes as the perps this time. The mallard, Algernon, age 4, father of thirty, had been mauled, his corpse dropped from the air to hit the dirt next to his sleeping family. Someone wanted that guy dead, not for dinner.

Guess I was moving on to my next potential eyewitnesses, a flock of mute swans. I sighed. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get those guys to talk.

One of them was chatty, though. Maybe she had some trumpeter swan in her lineage somewhere. Or maybe she was just bored.

“Yeah, I’ve seen those ducks,” she said, neck arching as she regarded me.

Her mate hovered nearby, giving me the side-eye. Man, these guys were uptight.

“Algernon. Yes. He was not around often,” she said. “Left Hermione to raise the hatchlings alone.”

“Have you seen him recently? Say, the night of August 17?”

Moonlight gleamed off her white feathers as she glided through the water.

“How could I see him? He takes off for weeks. It was the same with Julianne, and Maline before her. He would mate with anything if it had a cute tail. Switching partners every season. It’s disgusting.”

I shrugged. “Not everybody mates for life.”

“Hmph,” she replied, bill in the air.

This was going nowhere. I thanked the dame and took off to find a roost for the night.

While preening my feathers, I mulled things over. What if a human had done the deed? We’d found no hunters’ bullets in Algernon. But I’d seen those metal boxes people used for flight. Those rotating pieces could do serious damage to a bird. I shuddered.

Then I realized I wasn’t alone. “That you, Joe?” “In the flesh.”

It was pitch black now, clouds masking the moon. Not that I could have seen his silky black feathers anyway.

“Good to hear your voice, Joe.”

“How’s the case coming?”

I told him about my chat with the swan. “Maybe she’s onto something,” I said. “A jealous mate? Algernon seemed to have quite a few of those.”

“Could be.” His voice dropped. “I know I’d be jealous of you.”

“Flirting, Joe? Thought this was a business trip for you?”

He chuckled. “Listen, I came to give you a tip. Head west and talk to some of those domesticated folks. We got a report of a disturbance in that area.”

I left at dawn, passing the end of the forest and some open land leading to a farm. From the air, I could see a cow, pigs, chickens, a small pond.

I landed on the railing of the pigs’ pen, noting their forlorn faces.

“Did you folks have some trouble?” I inquired.

“They got cooked last night. All of them,” said a sow, eyes wide, nodding at the smokehouse, where a thin gray plume curled heavenward.

“Who, honey?”

“We had four,” she said. “Until the killers came from the sky. I can’t bear to look at that empty pond.”

That’s when the pieces fell into place. He would mate with anything. Killers from the sky. The scowls on the faces of the ducks’ elders.

They fessed right up when I cornered them. Seemed almost proud of what they’d done. “We do not mate with domestics. The bloodline must be pure! Algernon was a monster. Good instinct gone bad!”

They’re better off behind bars. Say what you will about instinct, this wasn’t the first time my intuition helped me solve a case. Sometimes, you just have to wing it.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 31

Lulz - stock.adobe.com

Cat Cleopatra Speaks Her Truth

By Joan Mazza The humans tending my farm call me Cleo, don’t know my birth name is Cleopatra. From the top of my favorite post, I survey my kingdom, high above the mice that provide me exercise and the occasional prize instead of canned food.

(The humans wouldn’t dare to serve dry kibble.)

These hundred acres, milking cows, and steers are mine, twenty chickens, two geese to warn intruders off. My sleeping spots are myriad, warm and dry in hay or where Old Dog shares his bed on snowy nights. You tell me I’m a lucky cat to be free to roam, safe among others of my species.

To be clear: I am Queen. That little moose who came to smooch—closing in without an invitation is a juvenile delinquent who’s yet to learn my rules. Riled, I swiped him with my claws to let him know his place. I say this so you’ll take it as a warning. You’re trespassing.

fotokate—stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 32

Cat

A Feline Whine

By Jane Blanchard You used to leave me home alone While you were off at work.

I bided time here on my own Yet never went berserk.

Now you stay with me night and day Week after endless week.

We get in one another’s way, Then fall out, so to speak.

Such constant human company Is more than I deserve.

Your calls and conferences, you see, Disturb me nerve by nerve.

You do keep fresh food in my bowl, Clean litter in my box.

With luck, we each may reach the goal Of living past this pox.

September - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 33

Cats Her Cats

By Rikki Santer Here’s to us— her troika of feline sisters, our days a button jar of naps. Adopted strays, arbitrators of our own plots: Black Persian boyish & coy; Calico a camisole in a larynx; Tortie defiant & cynical, broken from another home.

She’s the straight player who sets up our catitude for canned pea juice, tampon string toys, reruns of Animal Planet’s My Cat From Hell.

She wonders how we roam our forests of thoughts. We, geometry of goddesses worthy of Chekov, Alvarez & Autsin; cat lives lived more honestly than hers.

Evdoha - stock.adobe.com

Rikki Santer’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications both nationally and abroad including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, The Journal of American Poetry, Hotel Amerika, Crab Orchard Review, Grimm, Slipstream and The Main Street Rag. Her work has received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eighth collection, Drop Jaw, inspired by the art of ventriloquism, was published by NightBallet Press in the spring. Please contact her through her website: www.rikkisanter.com Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 34

Dust Mite

Mosquito

Prayer from a Dust Mite

By Rick Swann

Mosquito Koan

By Rick Swann

Dear Human, please hear us as we give our thanks for all you provide: we thank you for our home which is toasty warm; we thank you for the tasty manna from heaven which each night falls and sustains us; and we thank you for the oils and moisture that help us thrive. Your snow-white flakes are the most tender and delectable of any skin. Believe us when we say we eat each one over and over again so that no bit of goodness is ever wasted. We praise you for hearing our prayers and never bringing the cataclysmic floods that would destroy us all.

And we laud you for holding back the searing winds and deathly heat tumblings that usually follow. It is only because of your blessed munificence that we, your followers, proliferate.

As we grow in numbers, believe us when we say we spread your word. We forever tremble in your presence and ask for your continued favor.

Oh, Human, we worship you and only you.

Amen.

I admit I’m a whiner, but I’m stuck in a life I never asked for.

I wanted a life of reflection and choice, not one where I have no control: driven crazy by your breathing, forced into a feeding frenzy, and driven by the need to nourish my babies so they will flourish.

And is that too much to ask? Food for babies?

I’m just a mother trying to provide.

I have a moral code; I do play fair— unlike ticks or fleas you know I’m here, no sneaking bites for me. And I give thanks when thanks are due. So, as I take my leave, I thank you for your blood and so much more, because you’ve answered the riddle that’s been stumping me: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

I now know it’s your incessant slapping.

crevis - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 35

SciePro - stock.adobe.com

NickyPe - Pixabay.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 36

Cow The Cow Who Ate the Wild Mushrooms

By Richard Weaver I was in the field with a herd of others who graze and groan and moan, after the recent rain and subsequent sunshine. Unlike them, I have a theory, a hypothesis, a speculation or suspicion, a sparkling neon Las Vegas dream, a presumption of possibilities, perhaps probables, but more likely a hunch that this field where I linger, loiter, wander and wamble, never saunter or potter, but have been known to roam, said field has grown in size, in stature, has swelled to swallow the moon I have no ambition to leap or eat. Such thinking I keep to myself, safe in a rivulet of consciousness newly fashioned, bereft of afterbirth and affixed to no green menu.

The cow who ate the mushrooms has a methane moment.

After a return to consciousness, she sits down to muse, to ooze, to meander in mind, to reconsider previously chewed thoughts.

In the museum of memories, she swishes her tail to dust and freshen.

Something about a predatory hammer flashes as she grazes, her vision best when head lowest. Such is the life of a prey animal with little depth perception. Tractor, rushing train, or trailing puma, all the same blurry menace. To run away is to go anywhere except ahead, head bobbing up and down in concentration.

Meditation. Contemplation. Bovine divination is never linear.

Always egg-shaped circular. Like the famed matador’s bull they favor longer wavelengths - yellow, orange, and red over blue or green.

The cow who ate snorts awake, wakened to a smell five miles away. The aroma of cheap beer tossed from moving vehicles, brats from a frat, out for a bout of pranking. Cow-tipping they call it. Her mates asleep now, standing up as usual, digesting a bathtub of daylong chewings, mindless at math and the science of the obvious. Oblivious.

The flashing lights echo. Noise accelerates. Pierces the dark.

To kneel on all fours. To bow one’s noble head. To low and moan as if dreaming of winter hay or warm milking fingers. Or to deny the new vision and roar lion-like, to charge as a rogue elephant.

To unleash the bull beast that surely lingers in the deep genes.

Such choices. So little time. So many moments to divide into seconds.

The swirling randomness that says, Choose me. Choose me.

Change now. Evolve. And never look back.

The author lives in Baltimore where he volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit, the Baltimore Book Festival, and is the poet-in-residence at the James Joyce Irish Pub. Recent pubs: Free State, Mad Swirl, Spank the carp, Triggerfish, and Magnolia Review. He is the author of The Stars undone (Duende Press, 1992). Five poems from his Islander MS became the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005), performed 4 times to date. © Africa Studio--stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 37

Hippopotamus

vaclav - stock.adobe.com

Hippo Noir

By Richard Agemo

U

p to my snout in the wet space, I stare at the guys with two legs, smell their sweet odors, hear their weird sounds, their noise still surrounding me as I sink down, down, down. Deep in the murky wetness I search for Mom, anxious to catch her scent, alert for her call. I float up, up, up, wondering where she’s gone.

The two legs who squawks is the one who tosses hay over the trees, trees that are thin, branchless, and hard as rocks, and they stand in a line past which I can’t walk. Mom gets mad at those trees because she can’t push them around. Once she broke a tooth on one and really got mad, and bashed that tree with her head over and over again.

Two legs is throwing more hay, its fragrance pulling me out of the wet space as it flies over the trees, those stiff hard things that trap Mom and me. But

where is she? Maybe she found a path around them or got out some other way—is two legs involved?

I stuff my snout in the hay. As my teeth grind away, my sight stays fixed on the other side of the trees and all the two legs who are laughing at me.

What’s so funny? Get a little closer and I’ll put my teeth on you . . . see? Take a good look at them— they’re strong and sharp, ready to snap, and they’ll drag you into the wet space where you can’t breathe.

Then let’s hear you laugh.

I last saw Mom resting on her side on a pile of hay, which was strange, because her mouth was wide open and her eyes were shut, and I’d never seen her sleep that way. I didn’t want to wake her, so I slept alone in the wet space. When I awoke, she was gone.

Now, I peer beyond the trees to the far side of the dry space, looking for her. The big gray guys are flapping their ears, while weird snakes droop from their faces and scoop hay into their flabby mouths. Maybe the big gray guys found a gap in the trees and snuck in while I was asleep. They took Mom by surprise, knelt on her, and made her their feast.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 38

You, big guys, yeah, you. I’m on to you, see? And given the chance I’ll rip your ears off with my teeth, see?

Mom once showed me how it’s done, and her chomp was so quick I barely saw it coming. She dropped the hairy piece of flesh and scolded, son, that’s your ear, and I’ll tear off the other one if you ever climb on me again. The bite stung for a long time, but Mom and I made up, or so I thought. Maybe she’s still mad at me and decided to leave, but how did she get beyond the row of trees?

I slip into the wet space and swim round and round, and push some dark stuff out of me that makes a dark cloud. I want to sleep, but I can’t, thinking Mom’s still mad at me. Maybe she did push her way through the trees. Maybe the big gray guys had nothing to do with her leaving.

I stop, float, and stare at a bunch of two legs.

One’s yapping while holding something shiny and smooth—wait, is that a tooth?

I leave the wet space and walk to the hard trees, coming as close as I can . . . yes, that is a tooth . . . the curved shape, the large size . . . I’ve seen it before . . . the yellow color, the missing tip . . . no mistake, that tooth is Mom’s.

Hey two legs, where’s the rest of her?

I hate how two legs is pawing the tooth, rubbing it, and letting others rub it, too. I’d like to take all them down, down, down. But they all turn and leave, and I start doubting whether I’ll see Mom ever again, her black eyes and her flab, so beautiful and shiny.

No. Mom is not coming back and somebody’s to blame. Two legs could have grabbed her while I was below in the wet space. Or it was the big gray guys.

Wanting to steal my space, they took Mom out first.

You fatsos over there, want to fight? Well, let’s do it. I’ll take on every one of you.

But the cowards just stare at me as the snakes swing hay into their mouths. I slide into the wetness and go deep. A new sound, a screech, reminds me of the noise made by those strange snakes, and all at once there’s a thud. I float up to see what’s wrong.

On the ground sits a huge rock I’ve never seen before, long and tall with flat sides, and one side is all black, like a hole. I climb out, thinking it may not be a rock but instead some dangerous beast. Ready to attack, I fix my gaze on it and approach slowly. The sweet aroma of hay fills me with hunger, so I keep moving toward it . . . one more step takes me into the hole and, sure enough, there’s the hay.

A couple of two legs begin squawking. I turn around. They’re pointing at me and gawking, but I don’t care because I like this hole. It’s dark. It’s cool.

It’s got hay.

And I must claim it as mine.

I step backwards until my rear pokes out of the hole. Here, you two legs, have a nice view of my butt as I flap my tail and push out some dark stuff. You jump back, good idea, now you know who’s in charge.

Get out of my sight, because this place is mine, all mine, see?

I leave the hole, slip into the wet space, and search again for Mom. The big gray guys and the two legs may have worked together to get rid of her, and I’m next on their list. I get it now—they cut a deal to split up this space after I’m gone.

Well, I’m ready, bring it on.

As I leave the wetness, a bunch of two legs creep behind the trees. If I could only put my teeth on them ... but I’ll need food and rest before the fight. I hurry back to the hole and eat a pile of hay, and then close my eyes and dream about Mom. She fills the whole sky and is so huge she can’t move. When our eyes meet, she shakes her ears and shows me her teeth, and I can tell she’s scared because she lets loose a long screech, the kind the snakes make. I tell her, Mom, please stop, and then I wake up, but the screech goes on, and I sense that I’m going go up, up, up. I drop my head, charge, and strike something hard, but nothing budges, so I strike again and again, the way Mom did against the tree.

Now my head hurts. And I’m trapped in the dark.

Everything stops for a moment, even the awful screech, and then starts, but this time I’m moving down, down, down before landing with a thud. A light shines through a hole in the dark, yet when I look I don’t see any more trees. So this is how Mom did it, the big guys weren’t involved after all. No, only a few two legs are there, squawking as usual.

Once I’m out of this hole, the trees won’t trap me anymore. I’ll be with Mom, my snout sniffing her rich aroma, our cheeks stroking each other’s slime as we grunt with joy. Don’t laugh at me, two legs. She may not have all of her teeth, but she’s still my Mom . . . see?

Richard Agemo writes short stories in a variety of genres, novels exploring alternative views of history, and blog posts about Shakespeare. He lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and has frequently visited the National Zoo, which helps him tune out politics.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 39

Raccoon

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Night Sharers

By Ed Ahern

W

ake. New biters under fur. Scratch with hind paw.

Bloody tick drops out. Eat it.

Stretch all four legs. Fur ruffs. Cold seeps in. Cold as frozen water. No wind inside log walls. And no food.

Hungry. Dark soon. Go outside. Hunt. Come back through rot hole first light.

Wail from dead-stink beast in crawl space, hiding until light goes away. Hackles rise, subside. Night sharers. Beast does not hunt this raccoon. Beast hunts man. Kills but does not eat. Not understanding why not. Ignore.

Stretch again, on perch high above flat-wood manground. Stiff scrabble outward on flat branch toward wall of logs. Old. Five cold times lived through, slower now, vision fading. Faint memory of last mating with raccoon sow.

Crack of splintering wood. Stop. Crouch. Listen. Man noises- thudding paw falls, rumbling mouth sounds. Scurry back onto perch, where flat branches come together in middle of open space. Man-grunts below from inside log walls.

“Damn bad idea, Jimmy.”

“Only if he catches us.”

“What if he buried it?”

“Fifty keys of heroin? Not a chance, Al, he had no time. It’s somewhere in this cabin. What the hell is that stink? Smells like stale piss.”

Peek over edge of perch. Two man-males. Spoors of fear-sweat. And smells of man food- burnt fat and sugar.

Drool.

“Got to hurry, Al. We’re the ones brought him here.

Tomorrow morning, we’re not around, he’s looking for us with that knife of his.”

“We’re long gone before then.”

“Al, your mind’s drug rotted. He didn’t put the package next to the front door. We gotta look hard.”

“Okay, but I’m starving. Let’s eat what we brought.

Been a long time since breakfast.”

Men pull food out of pouch. Eat. Odors of meat, sweetness, yeasty wet. Nothing yet rancid.

“Finish your beer, Al. We need to find the dope soon.”

Fading sun through clear parts of log wall. Men pick up black sticks with curved end.

“I’ll jimmy up some floor boards, Al. You take the bedroom.”

Larger man jams point end of hard stick into floor, pushes down. Screeching wood. Makes loud mouth noise.

“Al, you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a crawl space under here. We don’t find the heroin we gotta look down there.”

“Terrific.”

Dead-stink beast wails like cornered possum, but still too light for it to emerge.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 40

(Continued on page 41)

Crow “What the hell was that, Jimmy? Sounded like somebody dying.”

“I didn’t hear nothing, get back to work.”

Beast softly snicks teeth. Men making too noisy, do not hear.

Men paw-clump back and forth, dumping things onto wood ground. Sound of brittle things breaking.

“You search the bathroom?”

“Yeah. Nothing in the bedroom either. Crap, Al, there’s too much dope to hide it easy, where the hell could he have put it?”

“Maybe he split the parcel up. Check the wall logs.”

Men slam sticks into mound walls, splintering wood, Ragged breathing stinks of wet yeast. Beast silent.

Waiting. Men come together in middle of man ground.

“Nothing.”

“Same. All right Jimmy, all that’s left is the crawl space. We can drop down through the hole I made.”

“Hell. You first. It’s getting dark. We’ll need the headlamps.”

Sweeping yellow lights. Larger man bends back legs, goes down onto wood, smaller man does same. Larger man moves back legs and rump down into hole, drops onto dirt, moves into darkness. Smaller man follows.

Beast is bat-shrill keening, fog-shifting. Too high pitched, men cannot hear. Just dark enough for beast notalive. Howls from men.

“Al! Help! Something just cut me! Shoot it” “Shoot what, Jimmy? Shit! Both my legs got sliced” Thunder roars from crawl space. Again. Again. Softer yowls. Silence. Then keening from beast. Shrill-brittle, hurts to hear. Louder still. Beast fog swirls up through floor hole, screeing death as it circles floor. Then back into crawl space.

Wait, no movement. Wait in stillness. Beast is still.

Yellow light from floor hole. Odors of man blood and scat.

And smells of man food. Hungry. Climb down from perch, across flat branch, down log wall. Creep to edge of floor hole. Reek of man blood and flesh. Tasty carrion. But beast lurks. Turn. Go to man-food pouch. Rip open clear nottasty skins. Gorge.

Faint light rising through clear wall parts. Climb back up wall, across flat branch, onto perch. Settle onto thick, clear skin of edged bundle other man put there. Spoor of yellow insides reeks of not to be eaten, thick skin left unripped. Stretch. Scratch. Curl up. Sleep.

Crow

By Susan Zeni Sometimes in winter, I claw through worlds of early dark, peck at the next marauding hawk, pick among leftovers, my head held high, indomitable dustwoman wheeling toward the next meal, the next scrap of regard.

Sometimes in winter, my pals and me, mobs of shrouded nuns, pop the cork at dusk, light up boney trees like candelabra-ed flames, shoulder to shoulder, heart to hottie-heart, rasp out craggy evensongs, caw caw caw against the dying of the light, until our puling hearts fill up again with sunup cockcrow daybreak life.

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over two hundred fifty stories and poems published so far, and six books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of six review editors.

Bruna - stock.adobe.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 41

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Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 42

Leopard I Have Become Leopard

By Arthur Davis

savagely kicked, leaving the right side of my skull reeling in pain.

F

That I have been more successful than injured had lead me to my present path. I have killed so much game there is a blur of squealing and twisting, of feathers and crying froth.

Pulsing squirts of blood crisscrossed my face and shot over my back as I disemboweled my prey. This day, and the next few, will decide if this life will end before I would have liked. I have been many animals before. Flying, swimming, slithering, tunneling, prowling—but never have I been the leopard.

lies. Everywhere flies, biting, taunting, and sucking.

A haunting, whispering cloud following me into sleep, pursuing every living creature long after they've died. They are part of the landscape as are the grassy plains, the wild brushfires, the lion, and rhinoceros—only far less particular about where they graze.

Overhead a female hawk eagle searches for a meal that will sustain her children until they're strong and sufficiently trained to leave the nest. Under the fire of a searing African sun, she will cruise between the valley below and the vultures riding the crest of the warm currents above. Also searching. This is a nomadic life of combing and replenishing, as it has always been. I roll over onto my stomach, split my jaw open, and stretch out my forepaws.

It's time to rise from the night and shake off the moisture from my coat. To beat a trail, though today I will not graze or forage unless game is readily available.

I rest back on my haunches, licking away the fire where the lion's claw ripped into my right hindquarter. Flies again, hunting for their morning meal, find my wound more than they had hoped. I chase them away with my tongue. It is soothing, and will cleanse. If it doesn't heal, I will die. Not quickly, but all too soon.

Had I known the lioness was stalking the young Thomson’s Gazelle, I would not have pursued. I had come upon a fattened, spur-winged goose only the day before and was not grasped with hunger. But my instincts would not permit me to bypass such a satisfying opportunity.

Having wandered off from the herd, the gazelle was grazing indifferently, as if it had abandoned reason and caution.

Possibly, in the turmoil of a chase, as if it had separated from its mother. Or she had been taken by the pack of spotted hyenas I saw canvassing the perimeter of the herd. I crept to the fringe of tall grass and waited, vigilant that the wind might still run against me. I thought the child was alone. I was wrong. Almost fatally so.

I was close enough, and fortunately not so aggressive as to launch myself sooner or I would have run headlong into the lioness who leapt from the bushes just as I did. We converged before either of us knew of the other's presence.

The lioness swung around, sweeping out defensively with her forepaw as I spun and clawed myself to a halt. I've been wounded worse. Once, as a goshawk in an arid land, I lost a vital flight feather when a peregrine falcon shot from the sky in a withering attack. As a crocodile, I ambushed a herd of zebra crossing a swollen river and for my resolve was

I move off from the swarms of flies that are drawn to my wound and lethargy. The sun crested in the sky long ago.

But there will be no relief from the heat and the choking dust sucked up by the swirling winds; not until nightfall when the herds have eaten and satisfied themselves that are safely through another day.

By then I would have ranged at the heels of gazelles, gemsboks, wildebeests, and impalas, waiting along with the lions and cheetahs and pack dogs until my turn and then cut out the weakest, most infirmed. It does not matter if you live in the air or water or roam in the dark for food as I do; the weak, slow and inattentive live out their lives quicker than most. And the lion does not draw a distinction between the unlucky and those with questionable judgment.

I can survive many days without making a kill, though not as long without water. I picked up the scent of water last night but the racking wound forced me to discontinue my drive. I sought refuge, sanctuary. It is too early to judge the measure of my narrow escape. Though today the pain does not feel as threatening. I can still see the lioness's open jaws.

Startled, her instinct was to flail out, defend herself and take down the intruder with one vicious swipe with her paw; indignant, annoyed that I had warned the gazelle, and almost deprived her of an easy meal. Had I not been as agile, had she not been, for just a second, indecisive as to whether she wanted to pursue the gazelle or punish the intruder, I might not be here—wound, hunger, thirst and all.

The wind shifts, a trio of suricates stand lookout on top of their raised mounds searching the horizon for food and danger. These mongooses are too far away and, at the mouth of their burrow, unreachable. I have had them before, but not as a leopard. And this sensation of knowledge rings alone where before there was silence. I recall crushing the neck of the mongoose and watched its life spread red around my paws but only because the taste of it is less desirable than most prey. A distinction I have never made before.

I

also recall slashing the throat of a newborn impala, also not as the three-year-old leopard I am. These memories, (Continued on page 44)

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 43

(Continued from page 43)

events that do not come to mind naturally, are easily misplaced or overwhelmed by the immediacy of my journey on the plains. Yet, there is a difference. If I survive this wound, I might live long enough to understand. Though I do not know what advantage that will give me when evading those who pursue me, or locating those upon who I feed.

What I feel, the spirit of my past is different than before. In the fact that I can recall a before, an image, events, escapes, and kills assuming others forms, is something I have not seen in the eyes of other animals. I have become aware of myself, my life and circumstances and relevance that are being fed by a force that I cannot clearly identify. Perhaps that is best. My struggle must be confined to the present, not distracted by speculation of my past.

Impala ahead! The pungent scent of their musk and droppings is strong on the wind. As it will be for all the great cats and those who plunder in pursuit and scavenge behind their tailings. This lesson I learned from my mother.

Looking up, staring at the blood-soaked coil attached between her shaking legs to a place where I began. It is a vision I will never forget.

And it was in that same instant I recalled the male gharial I was before this birth—and in moments of flight and recent reflection, a bonobo, the pygmy chimpanzee, dancing from limb to tree, delighting between the green canopy and gold sky which left me with a freedom I've seldom found.

Now I am of the earth. Leaving scent and stalking scent.

Tethered to grass, scrub and sand I must make do with the hearts of springbok, gazelle and eland and the ancestors of those I've been. I prefer the sweet, gentle taste of ming berries, the tight thickness of nuts found only high in the forest, the lingering softness of bananas and tang of mangos.

Though springbok and gibbon seem preferable to fish and floating carrion.

She severed the link between us with her teeth and washed me with her tongue. We were one. For many days, we remained close until I learned what she and my ancestors had taken a lifetime to collect, and then, because of a lion's flashing claw, it may not be enough.

I recognized her smell before anything. Her touch was new, only her tongue was strange. I scampered to my feet, momentarily blind, but already alert to her stirring. She was vulnerable because I was at her side. And I, like all children, would be for some time. She brought me kill, sacrificing herself that I may be nourished and grow.

Her insides remained fresh to me until my maturity drove me from the pack, or was it her natural insistence? That day the sky blackened and roared, as would a wounded lion.

Rain fell for days after. I sought protection in a rocky outcropping that sheltered me from the torrent and my loss.

Except for the light in my mother's eyes, I've never seen the sparkle of comprehension in others that I see in pools of watery reflection. The look in the eyes of macaws and giraffes are quite similar. Spirits driven from one dawn to the next dusk to spend the night in seclusion and not succumb by accident or fate to the jaws of a more adept predator. This difference troubles me. When left to my own, to wander, to hunt, to establish my own territory, or to find a mate, it is ever on my mind. Why do I question my succession?

Another leopard joined her. They sniffed after each other but the hesitation was perfunctory. It was her sister. She sniffed me, establishing a link that instantly endowed me to her brood. There were seven of us. Myself, my mother, her sister, and her three offspring.

That is not unusual. Floating as a goshawk, I know that leopards give birth to two or three cubs. Then I noticed the difference. My aunt's twin girls are a season older than the male who is not a week older than I. More protection for us in the future, but a greater handicap now. Two adults torn between five children. Many mouths to feed and protect from lions and worse, and more deadly, the spotted hyenas.

With its solid build, high sloping shoulders, coarse coat, a large muzzle and long teeth it is an ever-present threat. The tan and reddish coat blends in with the scrub and parched underbrush. The spotted hyena will take down a bull wildebeest, and in packs that can range from twelve with eighty in reserve, fear nothing. It is the most ruthless, aggressive pack animal alive. Hyenas will not be intimidated or chased away from a kill. So pervasive is their thirst. An even earlier lesson learned.

My mother prodded me to my feet again and again that day.

I preferred to roll about, taunt my siblings, and dance close to my aunt's tolerant side. She was more severe than my mother. Utterly without emotion. Her children respected and feared her. They stood away, patiently distant until she came to rest, unsure unless she gave them a signal to approach and suckle. I took my mother's milk without permission and stumbled about making whimpering sounds of satisfaction she knew might endanger our safety.

That first day of life passed easily. I fell asleep. The pride did too. A rich land will do this. Food was plentiful. It is told in the eyes of the hunters. As a falcon, I traveled among the currents during storm and famine and watched. I always ate.

When it rained, I feasted.

When there was drought I was nourished by an ample supple of fresh carrion. There is no dry season for those of the air.

(Continued on page 45)

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 44

Thus is my preference driven not by interest but by a thirst for life. Who would not want to be offered such permanency?

There is less danger in the air than anywhere else. Not in the grass, certainly not clinging to the muddy riverbanks.

Am I the only one who is aroused by this conscious distinction? The first year of life told me so. I watched my brothers and sisters, their disorganized scampering preparing them to hunt and track and stalk and cut out the weakest from the herd and to race to that spot where the frightened might be directed. To make the most of each attack as the expenditure in time and energy is too great to waste. Like most cats, except for the lion who will kill and eat once in every four or five hunts, I will eat only one in ten. I will take food from the cheetah and pack dogs while relinquishing my kills to the lion and hyena.

I should not have taken this course. I am wounded, no match for an encounter. I am no match for my own curiosity and combativeness. I decide to pull away when the wind shifts again, as it does at this time of year, unpredictably, and recognize the experience of death. I turn back into the wind, crouch down, and step to the fringe of the clearing.

A giant beast of an elephant lies bleeding from a gaping wound in the side of its skull. Three creatures move about on their hind legs cutting away its two giant white teeth. They make quick, high pitched, unsettling noises. They lift the teeth and set them into something I have never seen, which swallows them whole and roars away. I watch apprehensively, as they trail off into a dry riverbed. Soon they are out of sight, though the dust kicked up from their flight can be seen for miles casting a shadow over the land.

This day I am hidden, patient in the underbrush, the wave of grass rises up on both sides protecting me as it did the lions yesterday. A herd of gazelle. Many will give birth in the coming days. Many will die in the coming weeks as hunters pick off the young and feeble. Only those who are born to speed, agility, and good fortune will escape and pass quickly into adolescence. Life in the herd is dangerous, though in the anonymity of such numbers, not without its benefits.

I am left in doubt. Who would want elephant teeth? They have no value, cannot be eaten, or stored for subsequent meals, are of no importance in hunting except for those who first possessed them. How could these creatures benefit from such a conquest? And at the sacrifice of such a magnificent animal.

I have seen these creatures before, not necessarily here, under this sun and not, if memory serves, merely as hunters. I will make an effort to clarify my suspicions, and not for purposes of curiosity, but rather so that I may be assuaged that I have I rest. My hindquarter begins to burn, a sensation that does not not repeated a lifetime in such skin. concern me as long as it is soon relieved. If it is still inflamed by tomorrow, I will not live long. I wait for the scent of cats I get up and examine the carcass. It is a female elephant. The and pack animals, and those who fear them both. I hear only largest animal I have ever seen. The meat is fresh and there is the sweep of wind scratching the top of dry grass. There is moisture in fresh meat. There is also death. The vultures drop safety here, but no prey and no water. But something else. lower. The lions, even members of different prides, may be drawn to a kill of this size. I decide to withdraw downwind.

The wind has shifted. I get up and pace about, still secluded, though unusually pensive. As though I should be moving on. I As I take cover in the grass, I see pack dogs moving in from do not feel threatened as much as curious. There is something behind, their low murmuring howl signaling their intentions. distinct and distant in the air. I knew it from before. From If I stay, I will be caught in the savagery that is close at hand. long ago, though I am uncertain in which life I first I am no match for anything but healing. encountered it.

I track a wide arc back to the trail of the impalas. They will I move slowly away from the underbrush, constantly aware of lead me to water. I must drink today, or tomorrow I may not my injury and limitations. I am the hunter. Wary. Always have the energy to venture out. Without water, even what ready. Now I must think differently. Wild pack dogs, even a remains in a mouthful of fox, I am going to die. The wound is pair of hyenas, might tree me and simply wait for others to not as painful, but it may fester and become deathly. I am join in the kill. I am not who I was yesterday. I cannot concern exhausted and the sun has not yet joined the horizon. The myself with the possibility I may never be again incident with the lion has made me cautious, something unaccustomed to my nature.

The scent intensifies. I pause and crouch, my snout to the soil.

My hesitation is great, but I must not let it cripple me. I crawl My aunt was the first to encounter the maturity of my true closer as flies, once settled in the grass, are roused and swarm spirit when I scent-marked a tree already stained with the into my eyes, nose, and ears. A few lengths every so often. urine of a large male lion. She tried to warn me but I wouldn't There is the smell of death. Of great defeat and greater danger. have any of it. My mother came up after I had urinated and dropped feces at the base of the tree. It was foolish and I was A covey of white-backed vultures begins to gather overhead. dragged away. We never went back to the hillock. I do not That will bring the lions and with them come the hyenas. I recall why I was so defiant, other than the fact that I believed have not much time. I cannot suffer curiosity at the expense of my territory was wherever I pleased to be. my life, which is already in great jeopardy.

(Continued on page 46)

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 45

That was some time ago, and yet my memory reaches further back in time, beyond my life and into the lives of gharials, eagles, and cobras. Among these echoes is an even stronger sensory pattern that I could only speculate upon. There are images, similar to those of the gibbon, but larger, whose habits and speech eludes my recall, but who I am uneasy about.

I come to a band of acacia trees stretching out for some distance. They will allow me to flank the impalas in cover and observe their watering hole. I prefer fruit trees, which attract less attentive parrots, trumpeter hornbills, and starlings. From my vantage point, the sweep of the grassy plains opens up into a vision of ill-tempered animals roaming from one dry lakebed to another. The lush foliage is all but gone.

Either eaten or burned off. Mudflats wither and crack. Even the hardiest will suffer. Some will dig watering holes under dry streambeds, but the brief gurgle will not support many searching tongues. Others will drop off from the herd and cling to strips and patches of forest, unaware that the lion, the most territorial of all animals, rests in their afternoon shadow.

I have hovered above sand dunes, watched great nesting colonies of heron, ibises, and stork blacken out the sky in search of elusive freshwater marshes.

The rest of the afternoon is expended with getting into position, resting, and coating the wound with my tongue.

There is nothing else to do but wait. The herd is made up mostly of impalas, intermingled with zebras and wildebeests.

This is quite common and brings the entire herd into jeopardy as the mass of life grows to cover the grassland. I can live off many kills and, while instinct taught me to accept insects and birds, I've always preferred a chase before a meal.

What I prefer comes as a surprise. I prefer the gentle flush of tidal estuary waves against a mangrove, the small animals that live in the lowland rain forest, the simplicity of taking down a dik-dik, palm thickets that are free of flies, the highlands and verdant plateaus, stalking flamingos in seasonally flooded marshes, the taste of palm-nuts, warm and humid air and heavy rain, dense foliage, scrubby grassland whose only attraction is enormous baobab tress with branches sheltering nesting blue-bellied rollers, parrots, and barbets.Savannah woodlands with wide grassy plains, gallery forests, rivers flanked by borassus palms and thick with duikers, red-fronted gazelles, bushbucks, patas monkeys, scissor-tail kites and cranes. Always cranes, whose flesh I prize above all others.

A large troop of savannah baboons, the largest of its family, advances into the path of the impalas. There are about thirty of them, though troops can amass up to two hundred animals.

There is nervousness among the herd. A new species attracts new predators. The mix is unsettling. However, the baboons, themselves capable fighters, expend their energy cleaning and preening and gathering into clearly defined groups.

The dominant females and males, the children skittering among the elders, searching for approval and acceptance.

They scream, mate, eat, and rest under the broad canopy of branches. It is in those branches I would have taken my next kill. Into those notches in the high branches, I would have carried my prey secured in my jaws. It is in those branches, safe from other cats, I would eat. However, not today. Now I am as earthbound as the rhino, though there the comparison ends.

Soon I am alerted. The wind has not shifted, though there is something close by. I do not fear the intruder but the impalas should. I lift my head and see the thick golden collar of a massive lion. He is shepherding two other males into position.

They are there for the ambush, not for the kill. That will be left for the females waiting on the other side of the herd. A well-orchestrated technique will take down one or two large impalas and will amply feed the lion pride. If they get wind of me and feel I have compromised their hunt, I will be chased down and killed. I drop myself down to the earth as they pass close by.

The two male lions rouse the herd, which stampedes toward the waiting females. As the trap is sprung, I get to my feet. I am taken by their contained stride, by the effortless power of their assault, their graceful arrogance, and the presumption of their heritage. This is their land. Every other creature is here at their sufferance. They will not condone temerity or transgressors. I cannot help but wonder what it would be like to be a lion. To be totally fearless. To be totally feared.

Thoughts like these lead me to question my past, which does not augur toward a successful future. It is at best a point of interest animals do not possess. Then if that is true, what does that make me? Am I more than the leopard? The sum of my past?

The dust settles. Overheated lions decorated with bloodstained muzzles stand triumphant over two dead impala. There are eight lions with enough fresh carrion to keep the pride content. As soon as the herd sees that the kills are complete, they return with excessive energy to grazing and securing their young.

Toward the fringe of the herd is a broad watering hole surrounded by clusters of uprooted junipers that have long succumbed to the elephant's destructive feeding habits. A family of zebra staked out one side of the watering hole, while baboons gather on the other. Impalas slip in between.

I must drink. The thirst is making breathing difficult; my heart races to keep my body cool. I could wait another day, but then I would be weaker, more vulnerable. Less audacious. Then there would be no room for any more miscalculations.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 46

(Continued on page 47)

Under the mask of confidence, I move out of the clearing. At this heightened pace, my injury is deeply uncomfortable.

Before the vultures signal hyena and lion, several impalas notice my presence. They whinny an alarm which sweeps through the herd. I pick up speed, not making for the watering hole at first, but in that general direction. They scatter, reminded of the more fearsome pride that attacked only moments earlier. The baboons pull back from the watering hole, not frightened, though heedfully suspicious. The zebras lift their heads indifferently. A zebra has nothing to fear from leopards. I approach the pool, stop, scan the horizon, growl contemptuously at a clot of frightened elands, and proceed to drink. More than necessary, but anxious that it may be my last.

of grazing animals, flamingo, and stork. A maze of channels, papyrus swamps, wet swales, rocky outcroppings, towering green mountain ranges, and mountaintops covered with stunted woodland, standing over the kill of a golden jackal and red fox. Is it that I am so close to death that my past, and the past of others I have been, wells up so easily? Finally, the image of an adult male impala presents itself. I do not recall details of that life. I am grateful for not recalling the details of that death.

Sometime during the night I am awakened, but not by danger.

I open my eyes and look down. A female African hare moves about in search of nuts and insect burrows at the base of the tree. She is not aware of my presence. This would make a tidy meal but under these circumstances, unable to leap from this The water is cold. I cannot wait too long as my weakness may height without endangering my wound, she is safe. She fills alert others, especially the two young approaching hyenas. her mouth and scurries on into the night. The moon gives They glance over at the muddy waterhole, and then continue away her position, as it would have mine had I not taken to their advance on the lions. In the distance, double their the trees. An adult female topi grazes in her path. She turns to number head toward the lions at a pace that will quickly bring avoid it and disappears in the grass. The topi presented no them into confrontation. I take one last gulp and leave, aware threat. In darkness or light, there is never safety. that I must not let on how difficult this journey has been.

The ones who claimed the elephant reappear in my sleep, as though there was a singular kinship calling me to their side.

From the sky I have watched their stirring, where they wander and how they hunt and the fact that they do not stalk or ambush, rather, simply interpose themselves in the tracks of an animal and the beast succumbs. I do not understand. If this is true, then we all are doomed. Such is the greatness of their hunting skills. There is no sanctuary in the rain forest, the forest or savannahs, in the lush rolling grasslands or stands of evergreen. Not in the air or in the water. I have seen them hunt bird and now the majestic elephant. How easy it is for them.

How strange they never feast on their kill though their exultation was quite evident.

The next morning I am aroused, but it's not by a hungry plains hare. Two hyenas linger where the hare was foraging. They are onto her scent. I cannot stir for fear I will be detected.

They will remain at the base of the acacia until their search is rewarded or they are attracted by other game. They lift their heads. They have caught another scent. Mine. Neither can make a location, but they persist. There is a commotion in the distance, in the direction where the lions made their kills. It Stuart Westmorland/Danita Delimont - stock.adobe.com distracts the hyenas. One draws the other out from under the canopy and together they trot off together toward the rising That night I sleep in the crown of a broad acacia. I have found cloud of dust and opportunity. an old tree with a thick branch that is over three of my lengths from the ground. I am fearful that being too close to the herd A female cheetah stalks an impala. The herd is swelled with newborn. A nursing herd is a favorite killing ground, will draw my enemies to me. I need the herd, for if I am to especially for the cheetah that, although it is the fastest animal live, I will have to make a kill soon. If they leave, I will on the plains, gives up much of its kill to more powerful follow. If not, I will remain here until I heal or die. hunters. The cheetah's small jaw and short canine teeth make Tonight the memories return. A mass of steep canyons. the killing bite, crushing the victim's throat, difficult.

Mountain ranges and the inland plateau edge of a great escarpment. Dry lakebeds. Remnant ponds. Mass migrations

(Continued on page 48)

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 47

The cheetahs, like the wild dog, hunt in the baking heat of the day to avoid what every animal fears most, the lion, and packs of roaming hyenas who are not bound to territory as even the lions are. The cheetah is not outmaneuvered by the impala, which it snares in a thicket. If the hunt is not successful, the cheetah would have to rest after its body overheats from the frantic short chase. The mother examines the lifeless impala then cries a short pattern of barks for the cubs who come running along. Five of them. Two or three or more will be dead soon, as most large litters do not survive their first year.

I survey the kills that were made in the night, the time I once shared with the wild dogs. Roiling plumes of vultures dot the plains fighting over the remains of ibex, impala, wildebeests, topi, and other less fortunate. I am not as hungry as I thought I would be. The rest, not having to charge and replenish, stalk and ambush, the cool water and deep sleep have saved my life.

The piglet races about, frantic with fear. It knows not to bleat and alert nearby predators. Without protection from its mother, it will be picked off. A twinge of hunger. Perhaps I A large scarab beetle advances down the branch toward me. A was wrong. But the distance is too great. Unless the creature small morsel indeed. But as the most adaptable of the big cats, comes directly for me, I will let it go, or watch a lion take it I will eat many animals from termites to antelope. Whatever it down. Then I hear it. takes to stay alive. That is why I can be found from the sultry The mother warthog, a formidable fighter with two razor tusks rain forest, where I am master, to the steaming savannahs, that outweighs most leopards. Still, she is moving in the where I must share my spoils. But to be the most adaptable, I wrong direction. Along the border of the herd and away from have had to give up much. I have not the strength of the lion the watering hole and her child. But the piglet hears her and or speed of the cheetah, nor the communality of the hyenas. I lifts his head and takes up a trot in her direction. hunt alone. A third the size of the lion, my strength is cunning He is moving directly towards me. There is nowhere to crouch agility. or hide. If he sees me slip from the mound, it will distract him A warthog piglet. I rise and loosen my body. The taint of pain and he will run back towards the watering hole that is slowly from my right hindquarter reminds me why I am hungry, filling up with the thirsty and vulnerable. Right towards me. thirsty and in the notch of the tree without a kill to awaken to.

An easy ambush, a quick killing bite, a certain meal.

I turn to inspect the damage. The wound is not completely healed, for that will take more time. But I am well enough not The mother continues her misdirected search as the piglet approaches. By the time he sees me rise, it is too late. He gets to be a banquet for flies and not stifled by pain to be off a sharp squeal and I am upon him. He thrashes about, but I concerned about my stride. I scan the plains. The herd is just am more than I was yesterday and he is no match for my stirring. The mother cheetah has found a spot to hide the powerful, experienced jaws. The killing bite crushes his carcass and watche her cubs eat. throat. He squirms. Gasping for air, his heart pounds to make The warthog piglet skirts the watering hole between giraffes up the deficiency. Soon, the throbbing lessens until there is and elephants. A white rhino shuffles about restlessly, nothing. I get up and drag him to the tree, and then bound up distrusting and alert. There is no reason to the huge snorting into the notch where I spent the previous night. animal's behavior, which seem at odds with order. Unlike the He is larger than I first thought. I am relieved to see my rest of those who live in the herd and are always searching over our shoulder, the rhino, like the elephant, has no natural wound does not limit my aggressiveness. I am exhausted, not by the kill, but by the anticipation of failure. I survey the enemies and no use for energies that might be expended to plains for signs of unrest or curiosity that may have been save its life. stirred from my kill. Secure, I begin to eat. A lioness kills an I climb down, relieved that the pain and weakness has ibex near the watering hole. If she had missed the ibex, she lessened. That I am more who I was, and less fearful of what I would surely have found the scent of the piglet. The mother might have become. I will continue to favor the wound until it warthog's call dissipates until I am left alone, carving out the is completely healed. animal's innards.

I am not even distracted or bothered by the flies and notice a A pair of gray kestrels swoops down in pursuit of a vole collection of termite mounds lying between my tree and the caught too far from its earthen den. I have been that female watering hole. I make my way toward them, building kestrel. I have taken that vole back to my family. I have confidence with each new stride. I leap to the crest of a mound watched my children eat what I have set out before them. I do whose height is almost the length of my body. The top is not recall the end of my life as a kestrel. Nor as any other flattened, perfect for resting and surveying. Unlike lions and animal. I just know I have been many. cheetahs that possess great skills of pursuit, leopards prefer to ambush prey. This requires a combination of patience and instincts found in few other plains animals.

(Continued on page 49)

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 48

I should have not been so distracted. It is already too late for me to react as the male lion approaches. He is the leader of the pride. His carriage and bearing tell me so, as it would any other. He looks up at me, not under the tree, but from a comfortable vantage point. A lioness joins him. They wait for my response. This confrontation has happened before.

Once while my mother trained me and another time when I had taken a guinea fowl into a tree like this one. I pause defiantly, then rise and move down from branch to limb until only the drop to the grass remains. I look back at my halfeaten kill.

This is an act of pure arrogance since lions do not climb trees. They simply do not want me trespassing in their territory. And, if I do encroach, not be such an affront as to feed while they are near. The ibex kill brought them to the watering hole and bad luck brought them to me. Had they tracked the scent of the piglet that lead them to me? It does not matter. I hit the grass and walk submissively into the bush without the slightest intimation of injury, knowing they will not pursue. After a while, I turn, giving final notice of impudence and see something that I, nor other leopards I believe, have ever witnessed. The lioness parades around the tree with the arrogance of its breed then, in one vaulting leap, launches herself into the branches and snares the remains of the piglet. A shattered shadow in her massive jaws.

The male waits for the female to descend. She hesitates.

Two other lionesses approach. Finally, she drops to the grass and the male and two other females tear at the tiny morsel dangling from the side of her mouth. In one powerful motion, she twists around and rips it away. A small piece of flesh protrudes from the jaws of the male. The remaining two females act out their frustration in mock combat for their loss of the kill. So powerful is the drive to feed that failure is not dictated by amount, but by prestige.

But I am satisfied and know that I only have to make one more kill soon, to live through my wound. I must have been moving along at a quick pace for I find myself ahead of the grazing herd. It does not concern me. I have passed the scent markings of lions, cheetahs, and hyenas as well as a leopard.

It may be a brother or sister my mother has spawned.

As the land warms and gray clouds wither, territorial boundaries become vague and float to the needs of the predators. Many prides and packs will rather die than leave their territory knowing that it will not be unoccupied when they return.

The rains finally abandon the grasslands. Before the seasons change again, many will perish in the wake of the heat and unbearable thirst. Fires will sear the plains killing grass and in the process, replenishing. Cubs will litter the savannah; a reminder of what parents will sacrifice so that they may live to create another, stronger, more fortunate generation.

Swarms of vultures will outnumber the flies, whose tormenting mass explodes on the bounty of death. I have seen ibex wilt from the heat, elephants driven mad with thirst and exhaustion, and lions with gaping, slashing wounds that could have only been made from one of their own, stagger from the shade of one juniper to the other until they're bled dry. Death has many ways of taking less willful souls such as black crowned cranes, secretary birds, and bustards that follow the great herds in anticipation of the insect life that is kicked up by their hooves.

Soon fur begins to grow beneath the wound and replenish my yellow markings. Like most, I will grow weary of the baking sun. But I will survive the dry times watching from an acacia, a juniper, and from a hillock. Waiting with my memories of fox, impala, fowl, hogs, oryx, and snakes.

Taking whatever I find into the trees and never forgetting the lioness whose instinct carried her beyond the boundaries of her species. I feel a little more vulnerable, slightly less in command of myself. I have passed through the worst of it.

With the end of this season, as I wait for the rains to wash away the scent markings, fill the lagoons and seal the mudflats, rejuvenate the monkeys and giant forest hog, instill hope into vast numbers of cormorants, geese, plovers, sandpipers, gulls, and terns, I am left to think of what may have been. What I may become in my next life—a bird, a bat, a cape buffalo, a predator lurking in the waterways, or raptor in the skies. Possibly a black rhino or wistfully, a lion.

I have no desire to return as what I must once have been— the beast that savors the teeth of the elephant.

There is a calm about me that was not present yesterday, as it was before the encounter with the lion. I will hunt differently now, though I do not know how long that caution will last. I have become more respectful of circumstances the most skilled hunters cannot control. I am aware of this and more; certainly that I was fortunate to survive a wound I have seen hobble greater beasts. These same circumstances favored my recovery, and I have been granted the value of experiences from other lives beyond a mere scattering of unconnected recollection.

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Contributor Bios Ann Hultberg (tote bag) — Ann Hultberg of Western PA and Southwest Fla is a retired high school English teacher and currently an adjunct composition instructor at the local university. She writes nonfiction stories about her family, especially focusing on her father’s escape from Budapest, Hungary, to the United States. Her essays have been accepted by over a dozen magazines and journals including Persimmon Tree, Drunk Monkeys, Thorn Literary Magazine, Her View from Home, Moonchild, and Mothers Always Write. You can follow Ann on Facebook at 60 and writing.

Arthur Davis (leopard) — Arthur Davis is a management consultant who has been quoted in The New York Times and in Crain’s New York Business, taught at The New School and interviewed on New York TV News Channel 1. Over a hundred original tales have been published in eighty journals. He was featured in a single author anthology, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, received the 2018 Write Well Award for excellence in short fiction and, twice nominated, received Honorable Mention in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017.

Additional background at www.talesofourtime.com, (https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Davis/e/ B00VF0GDG4), at the Poets & Writers Organization (https://www.pw.org/content/arthur_davis), and at https://www.facebook.com/arthur.davis.737 Christian Hanz Lozada (book) — Christian Hanz Lozada is the product of an immigrant Filipino and Daughter of the American Revolution and has co-written the poetry book Leave with More Than You Came With and a history book. His poetry has been anthologized in 100 Lives (forthcoming) and Gutters and Alleyways: Poems on Poverty, and his poems and stories have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Dryland: A Literary Journal (forthcoming), A&U Magazine and various other journals. He hosted the Read on till Morning literary series and Harbor College Poetry Night, and has been invited to read or speak at the Autry Museum, the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, and other places throughout Southern California.

Darrell Petska (doorknob; marble) — Darrell Petska’s writing has appeared in The Chiron Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Perspectives Magazine, Verse-Virtual and widely elsewhere. New work will appear soon in Fourth & Sycamore, Loch Raven Review, Amethyst Review, and Soul-Lit. Darrell has tallied thirty years on the academic staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 40 years as a father (seven years a grandfather), and longer still as a husband.

Ed Ruzicka (ceiling fan; spoon) — Ed Ruzicka, an Occupational Therapist, canoes and gardens alongside his wife, Renee, and their doddering bulldog, Tucker, in Baton Rouge, LA. His second book, “My Life in Cars”, will be released later this year. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Rattle, the New Millennium Review, many anthologies and other literary journals. More at: edrpoet.com.

Eric Rosenbaum (comforter) — Eric Rosenbaum has taught writing, adult literacy and English as a Second Language at several campuses of the City University of New York and at the New York Public Library. He received an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Brooklyn College and currently participates in the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute. He has published flash fiction in internet magazines and in a feminist textbook for English language learners. Recently retired, he spends his social distanced time writing and laundering.

J L Higgs (Kelly bag) — J L Higg’s short stories typically focus on life from the perspective of a black American. He has had over 40 publications and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Magazines publishing his work include Indiana Voice Journal, The Writing Disorder, Contrary Magazine, Rigorous, Literally Stories, and The Remembered Arts Journal. He resides outside of Boston.

Jane Blanchard (cat) — Jane Blanchard of Georgia (USA) has recent work in Aethlon, The French

Literary Review, The Lyric, and Third Wednesday. Her fourth collection, In or Out of Season, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 50

Jen Mierisch (bridge; raven) — Jen Mierisch draws inspiration from science fiction, ghost stories, and

the wacky idiosyncrasies of human nature. Her work has appeared in Dream Noir, 50-Word Stories, Fudoki Magazine, Horla, and elsewhere. She lives, works, and writes just outside Chicago, Illinois.

Joan Mazza (cat) — Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught

workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, The Nation, and Crab Orchard Review. She lives in rural central Virginia. www.JoanMazza.com Kat Terban (painting) — Kat Terban is an emerging writer and an AFAB gender-fluid, gray-aromantic, asexual person. Their work has been published in the Plum Tree Tavern, AZE Journal, Open Minds Quarterly, Eunoia Review, Little Death Literature, The Avenue, and Neon Mariposa Magazine. In March 2020 they were shortlisted in the 18th Annual BrainStorm Poetry Contest. They are a member of the Connecticut Poetry Society and of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. In early 2019 they received Manchester Community College's Outstanding Young Poet award. Most recently, they were invited to read their poem "Pandemic - COVID19" to a live audience as a guest on the first of Rattle Poetry Review's weekly Poets Respond Open Mic podcasts and an excerpt of their poem "When the Interviewers Asked What They Did During the Pandemic" was featured on WGBH's In It Together radio broadcast on 4/14/20.

Lisa Roullard (rock) — Born and raised in Seattle, Lisa Roullard holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in various magazines as well as on busses in Boise, Idaho, as part of Poetry in Motion. Her chapbook, An Envelope Waiting, will be published by Finishing Line Press in fall 2020. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with her family. As often as possible she walks in the rain.

Mark Tulin (mountaintop; playground) — Mark Tulin is a former therapist who lives in California. He has two poetry books, Magical Yogis and Awkward Grace. His upcoming book, The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories available in August, 2020. Mark has been featured in Amethyst Review, Strands Publishers, Fiction on the Web, Terror House Magazine, Trembling with Fear, Life In The Time, Still Point Journal, The Writing Disorder, Oddball Magazine, New Readers Magazine, among others. Mark’s website, Crow On The Wire.

Mary Marino (golf ball) — Ms. Marino is a former college coach who has happily discovered the many doors waiting to be opened upon one’s retirement. One new threshold she has stepped through is writing sports stories for the young adult reader. Just weeks ago Ms. Marino left a “wayward” golf ball behind and for a moment felt like a mother who had abandoned her child … but only for a moment.

Melodie Bolt (brownfield fence) — Melodie Bolt earned an MFA—Writing from Pacific University. Her poetry has appeared in Pasque Petals, Verse Wisconsin, Yellow Medicine Review, and Prairie Schooner. She is originally from South Jersey, but calls Flint, Michigan home. She enjoys gardening and watching her Chiweenie sunbathe.

Meryl Baer (timbrel) — Meryl Baer worked for a financial firm, and after years as a financial geek quit her job and moved to the New Jersey shore. Friends and family visit during the summer, but no one stops by in winter, so she writes. Topics include her travels and travails, family and food, and anything she finds interesting, often with humor. Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals (recently Pure Slush anthologies, 'Angel Bumps' and Pomme Journal) and she is a 2014 National Society of Newspaper Columnists award winner. Check out her blog Beach Boomer Bulletin at merylbaer.com.

Nancy Lou Henderson (cedar chest; seed) — Nancy Lou Henderson was born and raised in Texas, where she met and married her soulmate, Frank, when they were both eighteen. Frank was in the Army, so they lived in Massachusetts then Okinawa before Frank went to Vietnam in 1971. After twenty-nine years of marriage, in 1997, Nancy became a forever widow and is still devoted to her soulmate. In 2015, she said a prayer to God for purpose. Her prayer was answered that night through a dream leading to a cedar chest that contained a box of letters. The box of letters through God’s inspiration led her to write a four book memoir including all of Frank's letters. Nancy has since branched out into writing Flash Fiction, Short Stories, and Poetry. One of her favorite things to do is bringing to life inanimate objects through poetry and writing.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 51

Pamela Sinicrope (driveway) — Pamela Sinicrope lives and works in Rochester, MN with her husband, three sons, and a pudelpointer who keeps her going outside, even when temperatures go below zero. Her poetry has appeared in the local paper, 3 Elements Review, the Appalachian Journal and The Talking Stick, among others.

paul Bluestein (kilim) — Paul Bluestein is a physician by profession (still practicing), a self-taught musician (still practicing) and a dedicated Scrabble player (yes, ZAX is a word). He writes poetry when The Muse calls unexpectedly and rings insistently until he answers, even if he doesn't want to talk with her just then. He currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and the two dogs who rescued him.

Rebecca Rose Taylor (plaque) — Rebecca Taylor lives in a small town in the province of Quebec, Canada.

She loves reading, writing, and spending time with her pets and farm animals. She has had two children's books and two novellas published. Rebecca is also a frequent contributor to Perspectives Magazine, and she assists in writing blog posts for Teelie's Fairy Garden and Teelie Turner Author. To learn more about Rebecca, visit her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/authorrebeccarosetaylor.

Rick Swann (mite; mosquito) — Rick Swann is a former children’s librarian and a member of Seattle's Greenwood Poets. His book of linked poems Our School Garden! was awarded the Growing Good Kids Book Award from Junior Master Gardeners. He’s been published in Windfall, Blue Collar Review, and Red Eft Review.

Robbi Nester (fried egg; LP) — Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poems—Balance (White Violet, 2012), A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014), Other-Wise (Kelsay Press, 2017), and Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag). Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies The Liberal Media Made Me Do It (Nine Toes, 2014); Over the Moon:Birds, Beasts, and Trees (published online as a special issue of Poemeleon Poetry Journal in 2017); and The Plague Papers. She is an elected member of the Academy of American Poets and a retired college educator.

Steve Carr (figurine) who lives in Richmond, Virginia, has had over 380 short stories published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals, reviews and anthologies since June, 2016. He has had six collections of his short stories, Sand, Rain, Heat, The Tales of Talker Knock and 50 Short Stories: The Very Best of Steve Carr, and LGBTQ: 33 Stories, published. His paranormal/horror novel Redbird was released in November, 2019. His plays have been produced in several states in the U.S. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice. His Twitter is @carrsteven960. His website is https://www.stevecarr960.com/ He is on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steven.carr.35977 Susan Zeni (crow) — Susan Zeni lived in Manhattan, in the East Village, Chinatown, and Harlem for five years, Seattle for ten, and is now back home in Minneapolis, living four blocks from the recent protests on Lake Street for George Floyd. Publications and honors include a Lucille Medwick Award for a poem with an humanitarian theme, “Black Angel,” published in the New York Quarterly, danced by members of the Erick Hawkins troupe, and read up on stage with Gwendolyn Brooks; a Seattle Weekly article, “Portrait of Ralph and Mary” about an old couple removed from their Second Avenue Hotel digs by the Seattle Art Museum; and “The Street Walker’s Guide to Wealth,” recently published by the Minneapolis StarTribune. Susan gets her kicks playing accordion (and really wishes there were a Vancouver Folk Fest this year), having been in a number of bands, including the Polkastra, and the all grrrl klezmer band, the Tsatskelehs, as well as performing solo at art openings, Quaker events, and farmers’ markets.

Virginia Amis (tree) — Virginia Amis is a fiction writer who loves gardening and practices law to support her writing and gardening passions. An English major before attending law school, she enjoys losing herself in afternoons of writing. She has recently honed her writing skills by studying with Robyn Conley, The Book Doctor, and Sheila Bender of Writing it Real. Ms. Amis has written two novels and is beginning her third in the series.

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 52

I hope you enjoyed the object and animal perspectives.

It’s been a pleasure publishing these inanimate and animal points of view.

Perspective submissions for objects, animals and now—human body parts—will continue in my other magazine: Founder’s Favourites (foundersfavourites.blogspot.com).

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 53

The End

Gerd Altmann - Pixabay.com

Perspectives ~ July 2020 ~ 54