Under the Tree

  • Under the Tree

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Under the Tree

    By Mary O’Brien

    You wake me with coffee –

    I wrapped gifts ‘til three.

    “Ten minutes,” I moan

    into my pajama sleeve.

     

    Sugar plums danced

    round the chimney with care,

    ten minutes later

    your hand on my hair.

     

    It’s now 5 AM,

    there’s a turkey to splay.

    It’s a terrible, horrible,

    wonderful day.

     

    A giggle of memory

    tickles my mind.

    The one with twin bikes,

    trusty training wheels behind.

     

    When what to my bleary

    eyes should appear,

    you’re under the tree,

    shedding a tear.

     

    The loss of your mother

    now freshly pricked.

    All ornaments she gifted us

    tenderly tick

     

    on a tree heavy with memories,

    some cold tonight.

    Others thick in the throat,

    hot with tears of hindsight.

     

    The babies we lost,

    the parents we buried,

    the day that we met,

    the day we were married.

     

    The daughter, the ballerina,

    the fiddler, the teen,

    your year of retirement

    and all in between,

     

    are enwrapped in these trinkets

    that emerge every year.

    I silently thank the giver

    and kiss away your tear.

    Mary O’Brien writes from the comfort of her Celebrated Art Cave (spare bedroom) near Boise, Idaho. She writes weekly with Jumpstart Writing Workshops, as well as a smattering of smaller groups. She revels in looking for opportunities to capture memories and imaginings via daily life, nature and her impossibly bright grandchildren.

    You can read more of Mary’s writing:

    Reality’s Ruse

    Marlene C

  • A Brick Path

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    A Brick Path

    By Douglas Newcomb

    I often tell the children that they must be afraid before they can be brave.

    Courage doesn’t travel alone, aimlessly,

    And doesn’t just drift anywhere it pleases.

    It follows fear and despair

    Quietly.

    I had courage enough to roar once,

    but was interrupted,

    and forgot what it was I was there to say.

     Now I don’t remember how I got here, or which direction I was headed.

    Out here the road stretches left and right as if arms unfolding.

    Douglas Newcomb lives in Petaluma, California, and grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

    Marlene C

  • Do Not Be Afraid to Write What You Know

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    Do Not Be Afraid to Write What You Know

    By Mashaw McGuinnis 

    An acquaintance of mine texted after reading some of my novel-in-progress. “Don’t try so hard with stereotypical language and trailer park folks . . . I don’t buy it.” I wanted to disappear into the furniture, but instead I texted back a bumbling explanation that I wasn’t trying too hard, that the people in my stories are the people that I know, and I know them well.

    I always dread sharing my work because my middle-class friends never believe me when I say my characters, experiences, and vernacular come directly from my own dysfunctional, lower-class upbringing.

    By “lower class,” I mean more than low income or under-educated. I was raised by Dust Bowl migrant grandparents. Two generations back, only one had more than a seventh-grade education. Californians called them “Arkies” when they’d arrived hungry from Arkansas in the late 30s, searching for work. Like Steinbeck’s Joads, they picked fruit and cotton and slept in government camps in the Central Valley.

    Eventually, my grandfather secured a union factory job, but their hardscrabble roots ran deep. My clan put the “hard” in hardscrabble. One aunt died from an overdose, leaving eight kids behind—two came to live with us. My spitfire grandmother went to jail for shooting three neighbors, and one Sunday fried chicken supper was interrupted with a drug-withdrawal seizure requiring an ambulance. When my grandparents died, they left nothing but a family tradition of grit.

    These experiences—not unusual in my family—made for a wealth of material once I learned to write. But nothing prepared me for the responses I received from my fellow writers.

    Over and over, I heard “you’re exaggerating” or “your characters are hyperboles.” (The first time I heard that I was too ashamed to ask what “hyperbole” meant.) In critique groups, workshops and conferences, I think of those people as “normies”—middle-class people, or often, upper-middle class people, who grew up wearing braces and taking college prep classes in high school, raised by parents who never threatened to kill each other or send the kids to foster homes. Their parents were either college-educated professionals, or they raised their kids to become that.

    Normies in my workshops didn’t know the person sitting next to them resorted to winning TV game shows to pay for teeth that looked like theirs. Most would never suspect she’d barely squeaked by in high school with a “C” average or understand why she stumbled over the pronunciation of “cacophony.”

    Writers like me—blue collar, less-educated, rough around the edges—whatever category we claim, we learn by reading. We may understand definitions, but don’t hear the words pronounced in a real-world scenario. If I ever used “cacophony” in a conversation with my relatives they’d assume I was playing a prank. I wouldn’t attempt to work these terms into conversations at conferences or workshops, lest I mispronounce them to people who tout their MFAs and Pushcart nominations. If only conferences could offer workshops in how to navigate through a roomful of educated, middle-class writers.

    The normies’ families I most admired were upper-middle class—they went on vacations instead of parole. Their homes had real art. Their parents threw dinner parties. Mine had real guns and threw dinner plates. My scrappy upbringing was one of constant chaos. We didn’t have music or literature or own our homes, and we sure didn’t dream of college. We worried the next fist in the wall would get us evicted. Each family member used whatever tools we could to eat, sleep and keep working. Arkies were programed to survive, nothing more.

    Recently, I finally came out in a private Facebook group for women writers. After reading for years about the other members’ publications, fellowships, and acceptance into acclaimed retreats like Hedgebrook, I fessed up. I asked if there were other lower-class writers, like me, who lurked in the shadows of the FB group, feeling like they don’t belong but not wanting to reveal their true roots.

    Many members responded with their own versions of my story. Yes, their “normie” counterparts accused them of hyperbolizing their characters’ vernacular, confronted them on their described scenes, even settings. One woman said her critique group didn’t believe a trailer park would really have so much grass. The acquaintance who’d texted me her opinion of my chapter (and who assumed I was middle-class) once said to me that Pulitzer-Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver did a much better job of writing lower-class characters than I had done.

    Where are the under-educated, lower-class writers with generational trauma supposed to fit? Like transplants from other countries, or people from mixed cultures, we don’t feel at home in either world. I can masquerade as a normie for the short term, but when you’re raised in a family that racks up jail terms like frequent flier miles, others eventually spot the squalor seeping through the cracks.

    When I employed the help of a writing coach to help me craft an entry to a regional contest, he said, “That’s great, but it’s not the kind of award that will change your life.” I cobbled together the courage to respond, while fearing I’d sound like a character from Hee Haw to someone with his background. The coach taught MFA students, he’d won awards, and he was a fellow at some mucky-muck writer place. I struggled to explain how, for someone like me, a regional award felt life changing. (I omitted the part about how much I needed the $900 prize money.)

    Someone in my Facebook discussion offered, “One thing working-class writers have over everyone else is a work ethic.” Now at 61, I realize what I concealed for so long is actually my biggest asset. More than anything to succeed, a writer needs tenacity. And as my tough-as-leather grandma once told me, “You want something bad enough, you’ll fight like a rabid dog to get it.”

    I’m trying, Granny.

    Originally posted as “Blue Collar, Less-Educated, Rough Around the Edges: The Other Marginalized Writers,” Brevity, August 19. 2024.

    Mashaw McGuinnis started writing from bed while fighting chronic Lyme Disease. Her work has appeared in Good Housekeeping, The Sun magazine, and other publications. The opening chapter to her novel-in-progress won first place in women’s fiction at the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association’s writing contest, and her flash memoir, “Taft, Ca.” was a recent winner in Writing by Writers Short Short contest. She has a high school diploma from Hueneme High School. Learn more about her work at Mashaw McGuinniss, Writer.

    Marlene C

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  • It Happened So Fast

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    It Happened So Fast

    By Robin Mills

    It happened so fast. A visit to the doctor. A diagnosis. A very quiet drive home, my mother, my father, my brother, and me.

    “I am so glad I just had my teeth cleaned” my mother said.

    Then six weeks later, just like the doctor said, it was over.

    Those six weeks were the fastest and the slowest.

    At first, she was awake, up, not in bed.

    She sat in her comfortable chair.

    We gathered around, talked, shared.

    Soon, she was tired, too tired.

    She got in bed. Initially sitting up, legs out, blankets over her legs, cats over the blankets.

    Then, soon again, she slid down, head on a pillow, blanket clutched up at her chin, cats on her stomach or riding the side of her body as if they were balancing on a fence or ridgeline.

    Mostly, she slept, but sometimes she wanted to sit in front of the full-length bathroom mirror. Sit, with a pink Afghan her mother had knit over her shoulders, clutched at her sternum by her bony fingers.

    She just sat and looked herself in the eye.

    Sometimes she wanted to sit outside in the coldness of early spring, snow still on the ground.

    We helped her out onto the porch into a beam of sun, wrapped her in blankets, a hat on her head.

    Let her sit, just sit, looking out over the garden she had perfected over the many years, out to the stream that ran in front of the home she designed and supervised in its construction, out across the meadow and up to the majestic mountains that rose to 10,000 feet above us.

    Then, again too soon, so soon, she just slept.

    Slept and spoke in her dreams to her parents and others.

    Sometimes she slapped at the air speaking to her mother or father as a small child who didn’t want to do whatever they wanted her to do.

    In the night from my room across the hall, I could hear her breathing.

    In the morning, the first sound I listened for her irregular breaths in, with sometimes a long hold, then out.

    I would wait to see if she would breathe in again.

    She did.

    Until the six weeks came.

    And at that moment, I sat next to her.

    Breath in, breath out, then nothing.

    It happened so fast.

    But at least, at least I was there.

    Robin Mills lives in Petaluma California. By day she is an American Sign Language interpreter. Her non-work hours are spent writing, swimming, hiking, photographing the world around her, traveling, playing in various art forms and swing dancing.

    Marlene C

  • BEE-ING

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    BEE-ING

    By Su Shafer

    I have become a stone.

    A gemstone. Labradorite

    Or Moonstone maybe.

    No – an Orca Agate

    From the Earth, with an affinity with water.

    I am a stationary object.

    My unruly legs have taught me

    The power of stillness,

    How motionlessness invites presence

    In each moment.

     

    Today I watched a bee visit

    All the flowers in my patio planter.

    Her tender attention to each one

    The pollen pantaloons on her legs

    The song of her wings, 

    Humming as she went from floret to floret

    Trailing in the air behind her as she flew off.

     

    Her busy work reminds me

    There are no small lives.

    I think of her and her sisters

    Bustling about in the hive,

    Content in their purposefulness.

    Unlike my quiet house

    There is no stillness in a hive

    Even when they pause for a brief repast

    Of bee bread and honey.

    Su Shafer is a creative crafter, fabricating bits of writing in poetry and short stories, and other bits into characters that appear in paintings or sit on various bookshelves and coffee tables. She lives in a cottage on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, where the tea kettle is always whistling and the biscuits freshly baked. One never knows who might stop by to share a rainy afternoon. And all are welcome!

    Marlene C

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  • I am

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    I am

    By Patricia Morris

    I am made of rich black soil that grows corn and soybeans and wheat and oats and vegetable gardens.

    I am made of love showered upon me by parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles.

    I am made of tallgrass prairies and mighty rivers.

    I am made of grief and loss.

    I am made of Midwestern college campuses, of thick gray and dark green law books.

    I am made of courtrooms and jails, prisons and government office buildings.

    I am made of curiosity and wanderlust, of courage and manners.

    I am made of blood and bone, atoms and molecules, hair and cartilage.

    I am made of brain synapses and aching joints, smiling eyes and laughing mouth.

    I am made of love.

    Who is this “I” I am describing? I learn in Zen that there is no “I.” “I” am a figment of “my” imagination. I am nothing without everything.

    I am nothing without everything

    I am nothing without

    I am nothing

    I am

    I

    Patricia Morris lives in Northern California and writes on Monday nights at Jumpstart Writing Workshops. She loves road trips, the Grateful Dead, and reading Dogen.

    Her writing has appeared in Rand McNally’s Vacation America, the Ultimate Road Atlas and The Write Spot anthologies:  “Possibilities” and “Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year,” edited by Marlene Cullen.

    Marlene C

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  • Stan and the Moon Shadow

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Stan and the Moon Shadow

    By Su Shafer

    It was THE SOLAR ECLIPSE DAY! 

    When he got out of bed, the moon was moving in the sky.

    As it always was, of course, but with more excitement that day than usual. 

     

    It was common place for the moon to be seen in the daytime, but today 

    It would meet the sun face to face and wear its fiery crown, as 

    The Earth looked on, far below.

     

    It was a big day for the moon, but for Stanley, not so much.

    Just another passing shadow added to a life 

    Where everything was painted with a leaden umbra.

     

    When he opened his eyes, his room overflowed with a dull gloom

     

    More than darkness, as if the blackness in his dreams spilled 

    Out of his head and flooded the air, staining the carpet like an oil spill, 

     

    Turning white walls a dirty gray.

    Flipping the light on, the shadows scattered like roaches, 

    Cowering behind the dresser, huddling under the chair. 

     

    Dispersed but not dispelled. 

    But still, this was a victory. Always the goal of his day. 

    There’s no way to rid oneself of shadows, 

     

    But he could, if he tried, keep them at bay. 

     

    They were loitering everywhere:

    Swirled into the black of his coffee, 

     

    Pressed between the newspaper pages 

    As he breakfasted on granola and obituaries. 

    They peeked out of the cat kibble as he poured it in the bowl.

     

    Every step on the porch covered the one below with a cold carpet of shadow. 

    His hand grasping the rail for balance sent a dark portrait of his frailty

    To the concrete canvas of the patio. 

     

    He felt the shadows growing around him, lurking. 

     

    Hovering over him like a Stygian claw, 

    Then slipping back to nonchalance when he turned.

     

    But they would get him one day, he knew. 

    It’s what happened to people his age.

    One day, perhaps soon, he would blink or sneeze, 

     

    And a shadow would rush in like a sneaker wave 

    And swallow him whole. And he’d be gone. 

    Alone and lost in a dark endless void of nothingness.

     

    He didn’t need to look up to know when the trickster moon stole the sun’s blazing crown. 

     

    The day darkened and became the moon’s shadow. Then the show was over.

     

    The moon took off the golden crown with a quick bow and moved off stage.

     

    That’s all we get, Stanley thought. Even the moon. Just one little minute to shine in the sun.

    Su Shafer is a creative crafter, fabricating bits of writing in poetry and short stories, and other bits into characters that appear in paintings or sit on various bookshelves and coffee tables.

    She lives in a cottage on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, where the tea kettle is always whistling and the biscuits freshly baked.

    One never knows who might stop by to share a rainy afternoon.

    Su Shafer’s writing can be enjoyed on the Sparks pages of The Write Spot Blog, The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.

    Marlene C

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  • The reason writers write

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Today’s Sparks is an excerpt from Sally A. Kilgore’s Blog, Daybits.

    Three years ago, I fed Bob Kilgore his breakfast and he hopped up in the kitchen window to sunbathe. I sat at the kitchen table with my cappuccino, wondering what we had done. We had uprooted from a place we’d been for close to twenty years, a shady place of green lawn, a hilly yard, and the comfort of good neighbors. We had decided to downsize our home and build something fresh and new while we were at it. So, I sat in the new kitchen with Bob, sunlight blazing in, a sodded backyard, boxes to be unpacked. Our home – Mildred – was an island in a construction zone, surrounded by mud, with a porta potty next door. We’d been deliriously happy, the house complete, papers signed, movers bringing in our furniture. The rude awakening was, I had this pretty house, in a new place, and knew no one; the prospect of next-door neighbors several months down the line. I’d spent time over the winter drawing a garden plan, ordering drapes, and light fixtures. Now there was a lot on my plate and nothing to do but plow through. A moment of doubt and despondency washed through. I bowed my head for a moment, gathering myself and seeking patience, endurance, and hope.

    As I lifted my head, something caught my eye through the patio door. I’d seen a flash of brilliant color just outside the glass and I wondered what I was seeing. On the patio was a blue, red, and green bird, so bright I thought I was imagining it. It was a mirage, perhaps a colorful angel dropping in to give me a boost. The creature stayed but a moment, flew to the fence post and perched long enough for me to see a bit more colorful plumage. And it was gone. I sat in that moment and thought, “I’ve been sent a wonderful affirmation of encouragement.” Later, I looked up birds and discovered I’d sighted a Painted Bunting. Extraordinary. Incredibly, I was granted another sighting the following spring, and the next.

    This past week I received several emails and comments about the blog. People are reading Daybits and sending notes to share that my words bring smiles, encourage, allow peace to settle. Joyful affirmations which made me mentally sit up a little straighter and lifted my spirit, which for unknown reasons has struggled a bit the past week. Your words reaffirm why I continue to write my brain workings down and share them out to the world. 

    The reason writers write is for someone to read. Putting forth words out into the unknown, feels like jumping into the big, blue ocean, with no dock in sight; invigorating and scary. Imposter syndrome is a browbeater. My brain likes to send messages down the pike that having folks who look forward to reading Daybits each week, a column published, a piece published in a journal; such occurrences are flukes. Some days I speak softly to myself in silent reminder that, someone is receiving my words and benefitting in some way. 

    “Affirmation” was originally posted on Sally A. Kilgore’s Blog, Daybits.

    Click on “Affirmation” to read the rest of this blog post.

    Sally A. Kilgore lives in Texas and is nearly a Texan, after all, she’s been there for fifty-five years.  

    When not pounding on the keyboard, you’ll find Sally gardening, filling in at the local flower shop or hanging out with grandkids. She is married to her longtime flame, sometimes referred to as the Big Old Bear, (B.O.B.)

    Sally’s work has been published in The Dallas Morning News, The Blue Ribbon News, and Persimmon Tree.

    Follow her blog, Daybits, and see what develops with her writing. It’s goofy, sometimes gritty and always pretty!

    Marlene C

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  • A Memorable Day

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    A Memorable Day

    By Cheryl Moore

    We had arrived in Mashad, a city in north east Iran, the night before. It is the site of the holy Shrine of Imam Ali Reza, the eighth Imam, a site where the followers of the Shi’a branch of the Islamic faith make pilgrimage.

    The mosque was a beautiful, gleaming white structure with four minarets, one at each corner. Women must cover up with a chador to enter. As I didn’t own one, I had to borrow one, but it only came to my midi-calf, not my ankles, as it did on Iranian women. My pale skin and blue eyes gave me away as a foreigner. I couldn’t just blend in. Before entering we had to take off our shoes and leave them outside on the steps. I hoped mine wouldn’t be stolen, I didn’t fancy walking barefoot on the sun-scorched ground the rest of the day.

    It was beautiful inside, the walls decorated in glowing geometric patterned tiles of dark and light blue, white, tan, yellow, black and green. No human or animal images are allowed. Many heads turned to stare at me as we were swept along around the central Imam’s tomb with the flow of pilgrims. I hadn’t ever been in a mosque before even though there was a tiny neighborhood one very close to where I was living in Tehran. Coming out into the daylight, I was happy to retrieve my shoes.

    Later that day we drove further into the Central Asian steppes to visit an outdoor market where live animals were bought and sold. Turkoman tribesmen dressed in sheep skin and domed hats still used moveable yurts as they followed their herds, speaking a Turkic language unlike the Farsi I was more familiar with in Tehran. For me it was as close as I’ll ever get to the famous Silk Road trade route. I imagined traders crossing these dusty plains day after day with camels, donkeys and their swift ponies, occasionally camping near caravansaries at oases. Such vast open spaces probably unchanged since Marco Polo came this way.

    All too soon it was back to big city Tehran with its crowds, street vendors calling out their wares, and the morning and evening blare of a loudspeaker calling the faithful to prayer.

    When Cheryl Moore came to California in the early 1960’s, she realized she’d found her home. Then moving to Petaluma in the 70’s, she was as close to paradise as she’d ever get. Travel has taken her to Europe and the Middle East, including living four years in Tehran. She has written on these memories as well as on the flora and fauna of the local river and her own garden.

    Marlene C

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  • The Clicking of Heat

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    The Clicking of Heat

    By Robin Mills

    Lying in bed in the early hours of the day, I hear a clicking sound. I know what it is, but what it does is to throw me back to a previous home where the thermostat nudged the heat to come on, making a click clicking as it did. That for years served as my alarm clock. That nudging started the huge monster of a gravity fed heating system that lived in the basement of my 1926 craftsman bungalow. A furnace so large that two grown adults on either side, outstretched arms trying to hug it like a big tree, could not join hands around its massive body. Maybe braise fingertips at best. I had never encountered gravity fed air before. No moving parts. Just rising heat tumbling into the cavernous vents that snaked to the various corners of the house.

    No matter the time of year, there was always a slight singed smell with the onset of the heat. The first few times turning it on at the end of summer and early days of fall, it was dust burning off. That became the smell of fall into winter, cozy in its own way. But even after those first few days, the mornings always had that burnt smell.

    Various people over the years encouraged me to replace the massive beast. Modernize. Get something new. But it wasn’t broken. There was nothing to break. Just hot air rising. What could be simpler. Yes, not the most efficient, but with the flick of a switch I could have warm sweet, singed air engulfing me.

    In my new home, electric, with a heat pump and radiant floor heating, I can’t mandate immediate heat. It takes hours to warm the house. But, in the early hours of the day I still hear the clicking of the heater, and I smell the singed heat. But it isn’t there, only in my memory.

    Robin Mills lives in Petaluma California. By day she is an American Sign Language interpreter. Her non-work hours are spent writing, swimming, hiking, photographing the world around her, traveling, playing in various art forms and swing dancing.

    Marlene C