Author’s Note: “We were driving back to Delaware from D.C. along Route 301 one night in November during the Leonid meteor shower. The Eastern Shore contains dark-sky patches along there, so I saw the shooting star. M’sing is a mysterious Lenape figure, somewhat deer and somewhat human, thought to have been a local forest guardian. The poem aims to evoke a disquieting unknowability and our human desire for some bright-lit gate (in this instance, the Delaware City Refinery) to protect us from that, even though it doesn’t, really.”

The Leonids

The earth turns toward darkness. The river a dark lash
outward, slips down toward the vast surrounding ocean.
The sense of down, of something falling. Night falls on
the earth the sky falling down, turning dark. The ground
black, the water unfathomable. Not fathomed.
Its measure cannot be taken. M’sing, guardian
of the forest, recedes now into its fathoms
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa where he will wait.

No way to measure the distance along the path,
whereon each step recedes into darkness. Darkness
rises up, collides with darkness falling. The vast
sky collapses onto the water, the ground dis-
appears. The stars recede into the depths of the
sky, which cannot be fathomed. There was a shooting
star, falling down into some unknown place. You might
not have seen, it slipped so traceless by. On this night
we would be glad to gaze upon that bright-lit gate
across the water, that guards the edge of nothing.

♦

Anne Yarbrough’s recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Delmarva Review, Poet Lore, Gargoyle, Philadelphia Stories, and Amethyst Review. Her new collection, Refinery, is forthcoming from The Broadkill River Press. She lives in New Castle, Delaware.

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from thousands of submissions selected annually from the region, nationally, and beyond. As an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary publication, it is supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Editions are available from Amazon.com, other online booksellers, and from regional specialty bookstores. The 14th annual review is forthcoming in November. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.

Author’s note: “Poetry for me is often a way to write about and cope with things that are emotionally fraught, painful, frightening, things that are too hard to approach head-on. This is one of those poems. I already knew how the octopus can innately absorb the world around it and reflect it back; the New York Times story about whether an octopus could actually dream provided a perfect jumping off point to use this concept as a metaphor to convey the reality of empathy’s great beauty, and its great cost.”

Heidi the Octopus, Dreaming 

“Heidi the octopus is sleeping. Her body is still, eight arms tucked
neatly away.  But her skin is restless.”

           –The New York Times, Oct. 8, 2019

You were floating the first time I saw you,
little-fisted and curled like a sleeping octopus
in the sea of me, the image emerging 

from the deep—a pale shape on the unraveling edge
of darkness, all the parts in place, but a shadow—
just there. No one could explain. A shipwreck?

A sea monster? A shy pilgrim from outer space?
Now I know you were only dreaming.
Even then you were flexing your chromatophores,

your shapeshifting skin absorbing the world
around you and mottling it in gray, in brindled
yellow, in ringed and shimmering blue, and when

the pain became too great you could darken
like a cloud passing over the surface of the sea,
become shadow, mantle a crab and eat it 

with no one seeing. The mirror of empathy
is skin laid open. Deep beneath the wounds
that pulse an otherworldly red against 

the razor gray of the seafloor, you endlessly
render your mosaic of unnamable shades,
your wondrous reflection of ambient light,

as one tendrilled arm seeks another, and another—
even when you dream, even when you hide,
even when you struggle to love this knife bright sea. 

⧫

Wendy Mitman Clarke’s poetry has been published in Blackbird, Rattle, Little Patuxent Review, Summerset Review, Delmarva Review, Blue River Review, and MUSE/A Journal. She won the Pat Nielsen Poetry Prize in 2015 and 2017, and her poem “The Kiss” was a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her nonfiction has been published in River Teeth and Smithsonian. Her novel Still Water Bending was released in October 2017. Website: www.wendymitmanclarke.com.

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. The independent review is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. 

The 14th annual review is forthcoming in November. Most editions are available from Amazon.com, major online booksellers, and from regional specialty bookstores. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.

 

#  #  #

Authors Note: “‘Natalie’ plays with the concept of reality: a highly subjective and individual experience, yet a noun carrying meaning in our collective consciousness. When it loses touch with what most of us agree is the truth, we call this experience a psychosis. My unnamed narrator tells the story of existence from her point of view, and it is up to the reader to pick the version that agrees with them. I hope that I convey my compassion for this lost soul who is temporarily overwhelmed by her shame, fear and the weight of being human.”

Natalie

I COULDN’T VERY WELL TURN HER AWAY⎯not in her state. Her eyes bore imprints of sleepless, anxiety-ridden nights, her lips were dry and chapped, her hair hung unkempt around her face, split ends touching her shoulders. A woman like that was in need of a helping hand, no two ways about it. 

So, I took them in. She was absent, of course, only showed up for drop-off and sometimes not even for that. I would just find her children in my house, her baby boy crawling around curiously, reaching for a toy or other brightly colored item. Her daughter generally found something to play with in my kitchen cupboards, which never ceased to amaze me. If I had expected them to miss her, cry for her, or⎯in the case of the girl⎯ask for her, I was mistaken. They rarely, if ever, spoke of her, but must have been happy to go with her when she finally showed up to collect them. 

The days with the children passed slowly. There was some screaming, of course, that was to be expected from a baby. Sometimes, there were vocal and fierce protests from the girl, but stretches of time also passed in idleness. While they busied themselves, my favorite pastime was to gaze out the window. The leaves had recently turned, and I watched them, one by one, float toward the damp grass below. There was a sad kind of beauty in autumn. I envied the leaves. To know when it was time to let go, to gracefully take the fall toward their own obliteration and land on surprisingly soft grass. 

The baby poked at my bare feet. I hadn’t bothered with socks that day, and his sticky fingers tickled my rough soles. I smiled at him, stroked his few wisps of angel hair. An odor that I couldn’t quite place whiffed past me. I patted his head and rose to boil some more water for tea. It was that kind of day. 

Their needs weren’t relentless, but constantly humming in the background. She sometimes asked me to play, I sometimes obliged. Now and then, we ventured outside, but it was a challenge finding the appropriate outerwear. They both looked so ill dressed by the end of our hallway scramble that I didn’t have the heart to take them to the park. Luckily, the garden shielded us, and the previous owners had left a sandpit and a swing set. I wondered if they had known her. Did she come around, back then? Perhaps her gaze had been less devoid of life and her appearance more inviting. Where did she live? I only knew her name, Natalie, and her daughter didn’t give me much in the way of answers. 

There was some relief to be had from the monotonous routine of caring from them. From somewhere, perhaps the intricate spidery web connecting women through generations, my mother-in-law had sensed there was a place for her. She came by in the early evenings, gently ushering me to go and rest while she set the table with plastic dinnerware and held the baby. This must have been when Natalie came to fetch them, because by the time I woke up, they were gone. The house was strangely quiet when I sat down to have dinner with him. We still did that, even though I now slept in the guestroom and he in our king-sized bed. I chewed my salad and listened halfheartedly to the voice that had once enveloped me in warmth and a love so overwhelming that I had forced myself to think this union was a mistake. There was the odd question⎯how had my day been, had I been outside? I said that we had been, and no, I wasn’t lonely, I had Natalie’s children. This seemed to shift his gaze somewhat. He looked at me with newly awakened interest. 

“Natalie?” he said. “I like that you have a friend around.” 

I nodded, carefully avoiding letting on that had he caught a glimpse of Natalie, he would likely not have approved of her being my friend. But he hadn’t, and he wouldn’t. 

The guest bedroom in itself didn’t bother me. At times, if I were honest, it was a relief to have my own space. My used clothes strewn on the floor, my bed unmade and messy, my books piled haphazardly on top of each other. No one to tell me to clean up my act. I could just close the door and be done with it, emerging in my nightgown, making my way to the bathroom when I woke up. I had taken to keeping some spare underwear in one of the drawers, so I didn’t need to bother him. 

A while ago, he had spoken about working from home on Mondays and Fridays, but that plan seemed to have evaporated. His face was tired. New lines had appeared, and branches of crow’s feet had left imprints near the corners of his eyes, not looking like they planned to go anywhere. But then again, we were both getting on. At times, I felt guilty for roaming our house while he was stuck under the wheel of fulfilling financial obligations and upholding proper adult standards. I tried to smile at him for putting food on the table. I stroked his cheek to convey my gratitude while he leaned over to clear the table, but this small act seemed to unsettle him. Had I not been able to suppress such worries, I would have let that flickering impulse to recoil from my touch weigh me down all night. As it was, it floated out of my mind, bobbing up and down for a while before sinking to the bottom of my consciousness. Besides, I whispered to myself when I lay in bed that evening, my last bonus alone had been enough to cover an entire year’s worth of mortgage payments. Already in my third year out of university, I had started making more money than I knew how to spend. The hours were ruthless, of course, and the pressure on par with my paycheck, but what else had I expected from corporate law? Many times in my decade-long career had I been hunched over the sleek office toilet, my insides a mess of knotted cords and my head spinning from the potential losses that would follow if this or that massive deal would go haywire. Then I would emerge, and in front of my colleagues and clients, I present a cool, standoffish, effective demeanor that betrayed none of the burning inferno inside. 

“Perhaps we should discuss you going back to work,” he said after dinner one evening. “I mean,” he added, searching my face for clues that would betray how I felt about this, “if you feel you are ready and that it might help.” 

The tone in which he spoke to me was cordial, but there was something simmering underneath our seemingly normal conversation that I did not care to put my finger on. I nodded. Then I nodded again, expecting an answer to form inside that would reveal how I did feel about this, but none was forthcoming. 

“Perhaps,” I said, just to fill the silence.

He nodded, too.

“But we would need to think about childcare, of course. It’s a jungle, from what the guys at work say.”

I chuckled. Discreetly, quietly, but I couldn’t help myself; there had to be limits to what Natalie could expect from us.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I reasoned, “I mean, ultimately, we won’t make that decision.” I rose to put the kettle on, and the aftermath of his confusion followed me to the kitchen sink.

“Green or black?” I called out to him over my shoulder, already knowing his answer. We were falling into a routine, one that could have been called comfortable had it not been so glaringly unlike a marriage. 

Natalie’s children were a comfort, though. I started looking forward to them appearing, to them bringing meaning and chores into my days. I had learned what soothed the baby, when he liked to sleep, and how he wanted his blanket folded around his chin. Besides an unsettling episode when I had allowed him to suck on a cracker that he happened to choke on, he was a joy to feed, devouring the baby food Natalie had stocked in our fridge. The girl was trickier, eyeing most of what I put in front of her suspiciously before taking a tiny mouse bite or pushing the plate away. I tried to coax out of her what her mother usually fed her so I could copy that, but she just looked at me with large eyes, sucking on a strand of hair that I kept meaning to cut but never had the courage to. Perhaps Natalie would think that I had started taking liberties, and I had become wary of losing them, not least because the girl had startled me a few times by calling out for mummy, not looking above our hedge but in my direction. 

“You could take on some contract work to start with or look for in-house positions.” 

It only took a week for him to bring up the question of me working again. This time, we were about to head off to our opposite bedrooms and I was looking forward to picking out a new book to read, having finished one just that afternoon. In truth, his direct approach startled me. 

“Mm-hmm,” I concurred vaguely. He paused for a minute, holding on to the staircase railing. 

“Perhaps you could even find a position locally.” 

Something surged in my stomach, spun my insides around. I waited for it to fall back into the shadows. It didn’t. I tried the breathing technique I had learned, tried waiting it out, tried focusing my thoughts. Still, it persisted. He was watching me intently, but my facial expression gave away none of the performance unraveling inside. I nodded. He finally averted his gaze and disappeared into the bedroom. I could hear the sliding wardrobe doors moving as he undressed, no doubt flinging his used clothes into the beige baskets I had put there years ago. 

I tried reading, I tried the breathing technique again, I tried listening to one of the meditations I had downloaded for when anxiety hit. Still, sleep refused to find me, and the pit burning in my stomach spread slowly, making its way through my intestines towards my head. Before long, everything had turned into a crackling chaos, and I was unable to grasp a single thought in the mayhem that was my mind. The intense, unbearable pressure and raw shame of those final few weeks bore down on me and made me want to recoil, made me want to turn into a speck of nothingness. With the remembering came the weight of understanding my own unspeakable failure to live up to my commitments as a professional. My body remembered the sleepless nights, the guilt, the stress that tore me in two, the omnipresent worry that I had left her in inadequate care while I toiled the days away in my office to cover up the huge fuck-up that only I was guilty of. My body’s untimely nudges and embarrassing fluid production ensured that I couldn’t forget my weepy, needy woman-ness, even if I tried. 

My breath started coming in shallow bursts; I had notably failed at steadying it. No, I thought to myself, not this again. I stood up abruptly and started pacing the floor. There was just me and the room now, just me and these unforgiving, shrinking walls. I sank to my knees, wrapped my arms around them and started counting. 

It didn’t take me long this time. Despite the risk of possibly sleeping through Natalie’s drop-off tomorrow, I made my way to the bathroom, steadying myself by holding on to the walls. My fingers shook slightly as I found the paper box locked in our medicine cabinet, released one pill from plastic captivity, and placed it on my tongue. It could be swallowed without water, though I took several greedy sips from my cupped hands afterwards. Then, I waited, leaning my head against cool porcelain. 

I was out cold the minute I placed my head on the pillow and sank into a dreamless sleep that offered the only remedy I knew. Despite taking in his concerned face surrounded by daylight and attempting to respond to his questions, I sank back into blissful sleep again, not possessing enough vital energy to rouse myself and slice through the thick fog of tiredness. 

Coming out of the smog was now more familiar territory, but it still presented the usual challenges. My eyes wanted to shut every chance they got. My brain was a soggy mess that swam around inside my skull, preferring not to be interrupted in its non-being state. I had to use every energy particle in the room to fight for wakefulness, to force myself to respond accurately to reality. 

Worse than all the physical symptoms was him. His obvious disappointment that I had yet again taken the route to oblivion turned to shame inside. His resentment transformed into anguish, to a self-hatred so filling I had difficulties containing it inside myself. Slicing carrots for Natalie’s daughter, the idea of turning the knife on myself suddenly seemed appealing. If it didn’t kill me, it would divert the pain to a focal point, to a wound I could show to a doctor, a wound he would most likely be able to heal. 

My mother-in-law hovered for a few days in my peripheral vision, minding the children here and there while I lay down on the sofa or napped in my room. Though her presence also shamed me, I secretly revered her kindness. She, too, showed up for Natalie. An interconnected network of female web-keepers, soundlessly appearing when the web vibrated ever so slightly.

The thought of leaving came to me in the same soundless and undramatic fashion. Even as my head started to clear, shame was a constant presence now, wide out in the open, there for everyone to see. Its denseness thickened the air in our house. It threatened to suck in all the remaining humans unlucky enough to be in my proximity. But I wasn’t completely powerless; I could at least save them from perishing with me. Knowing that I could perform an act of grace for them buoyed me somewhat, and before long, I started plotting the practicalities of my escape. It would need to be on a day when I knew that my mother-in-law was coming, which would leave me enough time to disappear while the baby napped after lunch and the girl had some downtime in front of the TV. They would never know I was gone in that time, yet I would possess enough of it to walk down to the train station and get on the next one to London. From there, I would fall into the crowds and into oblivion. London was kind enough to grant it to those who didn’t fight the grayness, the masses, the drudgery of common life. Its streets and tube connections were photocopied into my mind. I would get there and see where my feet took me next. Up to rejoin life above, walking on irrationally from one pavement to the next. Or down, falling weightlessly for a split second until I hit metal and rocks, experiencing excruciating pain for a moment. Many before me had made that same choice for the promise of endless relief beyond. 

Yes. I would go to London. 

It took a few weeks before the perfect conditions presented themselves. Since I had supposedly resurfaced, my mother-in- law pitched in less often to care for Natalie’s children during the daytime and I had to make an actual agreement for her to mind them in the afternoon. 

Throughout the last morning, I mounted the stairs a few times to throw random items into my overnight shoulder bag. When the time came to leave, it sat waiting next to the door, urging me to finish up lunch so I could get on with my plan. I left the dishes in the sink but leaving them proved more difficult. Though the baby quickly fell asleep without much effort on my part and the girl was watching the children’s channel, their mere presence held me back. I lingered for longer than I had planned, tracing the contours of her silhouette, committing it to memory, hovering above his face to feel the dampness of his breath form tiny, condensed drops on my cheek. Something unspoken held me back. I hesitated. A quick glance at my wristwatch confirmed that my mother-in-law was a mere half-hour away and that I was falling behind on my schedule. I started towards the hallway, threw on my coat and gloves, and found my shoes. Then I opened the door, breathing in the musky scent of late autumn, of wet leaves turning to muddy soil. I imagined myself walking briskly across the driveway, saw myself punching the code that would release me from captivity and back into the real, relentless world. I waited for my feet to make the first move. 

I waited. 

I waited.

I waited. 

Afterwards, I gently closed the door and rested my head against the dark wood for a few short seconds. What I had in front of me was small, but it was, at that moment, the only world I knew and existed in. Would my presence here make a difference? I had no way of knowing, and I doubted it would. But I dropped my bag, slid out of my shoes, hung up my ridiculously expensive woolen coat. In my socks, I padded across the hallway, through the open space connecting the kitchen to the living room. There they were, she watching cartoons with her mouth slightly open, popcorn suspended in the midst of traveling from the bowl to her mouth, he sleeping peacefully in his portable cot. I sat down on the sofa and placed my hands in my lap, staring at the TV screen but not taking in the simplified plot. 

Yes, I thought to myself as I felt something I hadn’t experienced in years settle in my stomach and spread throughout my extremities. Here, in this house, in this strange in-between state, was a place for me. 

I would stay. Perhaps, if I were to make a difference, I could even help Natalie, starting by staying awake so I could address her when she came to collect them. It was clear now that I had grown quite attached to the children in the time I had known them, and in truth dreaded their permanent return to her. 

Yes, I nodded to myself as I folded my legs underneath me, making myself more comfortable. Though I was likely the most ill-suited person on earth to help her, I would persist, and perhaps we could stumble forward together, united by her children. Their faces would loom on the hazy horizon, and together we could at last make it so close that we could touch them. And if she couldn’t, I would take her hand and gently, ever so gently, I would place it on his round cheek and then on hers. I hoped that when she felt the warmth of their skin, sensed the presence of life pulsating within, she would cease being Natalie and start being their mother. And I could slip back into the shadows, no longer lingering between sleep and wakefulness but facing the darkness with eyes wide open, poking at the shame and fear until it loosened its grip and disintegrated, merging with the damp soil underfoot. 

⧫

Anna Elin Kristiansen, from Denmark, has a passion for writing psychological drama. She only recently started sharing her work, and Natalie is her first published short story. For many years, she was of a travelling tribe but has now settled in Copenhagen with her husband and two young daughters. During the daytime, she creates content for one of the city’s universities. 

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. Authors may be highly experienced writers, or they may be seeking discovery of their work for the first time. The review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. See the website for information: DelmarvaReview.org. Copies are available from Amazon.com, other major online booksellers, and from regional specialty bookstores.

 

Author’s Note: “When I wrote “Debris” I was working on a series of poems about things we leave behind. When I started to research space junk, I was taken by the notion of something so small being capable of immense damage. The poem took off from there.”

Debris

The boy says, Dad did you know there are half a million pieces
of space junk orbiting the Earth?

We are sitting at the kitchen table.

Then he says, those are just the ones bigger than a marble.

We are sitting together there because his sister has friends over
and his mother is teaching music lessons in the living room.

I say, I am trying to read this. I say, I need to concentrate.

The junk is left over from other missions, he says.

I ask, have you done your homework yet?

Some pieces move 17,000 miles per hour.

Have you cleaned your room?

And that half million is just the pieces large enough to be tracked.

I know you haven’t practiced your cello.
I know you haven’t taken out the trash.

He says, there’s at least a million more pieces of debris
too small for the instruments to see.

Then I look at the boy and say,
I wish for once you would listen to me
and do what you’re supposed to do.

I say, I wish you were more like your sister.

Even tiny flecks of paint decades old are dangerous, he says,
because you can’t see them coming
and they move so fast.

⧫

Matthew Roth is the author of Bird Silence (Woodley Press). His poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Verse, Fence, Birmingham Poetry Review, and many other journals. He teaches creative writing and literature at Messiah University, in Grantham, Pennsylvania.

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. The authors may be well established, like today’s writer, or they may be exceptional new writers seeking discovery of their work. The review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. See the website for information: DelmarvaReview.org.

Author’s Note: “Dostoevsky, Rubenstein, Mussorgsky—Russia’s titans of literature, music & art—have lain in repose in an antique cemetery in Saint Petersburg since the 19th century.  Visitors stroll through, ooh-ing & ahh-ing over the elaborate statuary, and they snap a few pix, but nobody cries. It takes a person with fresh grief to shed tears there. I was that person.”

Alone in the Mist with Tchaikovsky

A COUPLE OF MILLENNIALS WERE TAKING SELFIES with the polished black marble bust of Dostoevsky. I lurked discreetly off to one side of the path so as not to photobomb. It wasn’t exactly like I was waiting in line for my turn to have Dostoevsky all to myself, but the visitors to the Art Masters necropolis in Saint Petersburg seemed to know the drill. They knew to spend a few quiet moments alone before a luminary’s tomb, squarely smack dab standing right there before it, focusing the camera lens or just thinking their thoughts, and then they knew the exact interval of time before they had to move along to allow the next person an uninterrupted chance to snap some pix. 

One couldn’t bogart Dostoevsky. 

Later, people might post their photo montage to Instagram and say, “Honored to pay my respects,” and it would look like they had had a lengthy and private moment before Dostoevsky’s tomb. It would look like they had had the leisure to indulge in meaningful contemplation. It would look like theirs had been an exclusive pilgrimage to the final resting place of this literary icon. The mad tourist mayhem that swept Saint Petersburg up each summer would not be anywhere near the solemnity they had captured in the photograph. 

Not that today was mad.

Today, a soft misting rain had fallen since morning. That alone had driven the cruise ship crowd to indoor delights—the Peter & Paul Fortress, the Cathedral on Spilled Blood, certainly the Hermitage. A cold fog had swirled over the Gulf of Finland, and the Neva River had served as a wick, drawing the fog inland. It was as if all the water bodies of Saint Petersburg were coordinating their mood and moisture level and their look. The day promised an endless palette of wet charcoal gray. 

Situated on the banks of the Neva, the Art Masters necropolis was, of course, fog bound. Fine beads of rain stippled the surface of the graves and statuary and intensified the vivid green of the leaves on trees and shrubs. An emerald haze practically saturated the damp air. Trunks and limbs of mature maples were a deep shadowless black in contrast to their clouds of lacy foliage. Lime trees spread a canopy of shade over the necropolis, enclosing the realm of human grief like a second sky, one that had dropped down toward us as if intent on sharing our sorrow. 

I was grateful for the companionship. 

Summer had not held out to me a trip to Saint Petersburg at all, because Jammy, my miniature schnauzer of nearly sixteen years, had grown very frail. I knew it would be better for us to be together during this final milestone season in our lengthy shared life. So, I didn’t apply for a travel visa at the Russian embassy. 

Nor did I make reservations, whether hotel or airline. Jammy declined so precipitously fast, however, as if death were bounding energetically toward her, that soon enough a compassionate veterinarian was helping us say goodbye. 

Two syringes lay on the floor near us, the white one, the red one. 

Kneeling beside me, the vet picked up the white syringe. “This will bring a twilight sleep, just a drowsy analgesia.” I nodded, and the vet fitted the needle into the Hicks catheter taped to Jammy’s foreleg. Within seconds, Jam’s shoulders settled back just a bit, as if freed of something. Both paws lay outstretched, and she nosed toward them, eyebrows twitching. Her whole body appeared unburdened all at once. No arthritis. No stiffness. No locked joints. Nothing seizing up. She was feeling the first pain- free moments she had known for years. The vet lay the white syringe aside and picked up the red one, the one that would stop the heart. 

I held up my hand. The vet paused. 

Jammy’s little body, free of pain, looked comfortable and supple. I wanted her to luxuriate in that sensation, to find in it something familiar—the way it had been in our earliest days together. The football, the flippy-flopper Frisbee, the pinkster squeak toy. And certainly, even in our middle years together, when she was ten years old, eleven, twelve, in the thick of our happy halcyon days. She hassled squirrels in the yard and rabbits, played with water balloons. I wanted Jammy to enjoy these pain-free moments before death leapt like something unleashed toward her. 

Soon enough, the vet administered the red syringe.

And that was that.

Days of heaviness and heartache followed. Through tears, I could feel Russia calling. “Come. You can feel sad anywhere, da?” I expedited a travel visa at the embassy and soon enough my grief was not merely a single lone solitary thing—my grief only— but my grief plus Saint Petersburg added to the mix. 

Saint Petersburg was bonkers. The knockout phase of the World Cup had just commenced when my flight touched down. I jostled among throngs of face-painted fútbol hooligans. My grief shifted, as if to receive not only the distance of 6000 miles but also the delirium of Cup-crazed fans. My grief cleared space for all of that and expanded. All of that forced it open. 

I had been to Saint Petersburg a dozen times, and of course I loved Dostoevsky’s writing, loved how he immortalized the city in his books—he was one of my favorite authors—but I had never felt drawn to visit his grave before. There had always been too many other things to do—the opera, the fountains, the canal excursions, the caviar and champagne, the oysters and vodka, the evening walks along the river during the White Nights when the sun never really set. Perhaps I’d saved the necropolis for my summer of inconsolability. 

Broken columns were frequent symbols of death here, also prostrate angels, fainting cherubim lying in lamentation and stone urns sculpted with such flourish and skill as to suggest folds of fabric draping from the urns. I needed the outward manifestation of a statue’s prayerfully clasped hands to say what I suffered. I needed the bowed heads of anguished seraphim whose smooth eyes seemed to focus placidly on a peaceful place that settled their loss. Red granite, pink porphyry, white alabaster, and black marble markers defined the specific plots. Each tomb spoke to the weight of attention the living had lavished upon the dead. There were tiers of mourning, too, somewhat like an airline’s Rewards program—Premium Level, Platinum, Diamond Medallion. Glass tile mosaics and gold leaf filigree stood in contrast to rough unpolished rock. The social status of the deceased hardly mattered to me in the least, I was so primed to receive comfort. Every grave I passed served to remind me how to grieve in case I had forgotten somewhere along the way or just never really cultivated the habit very well. A month after saying goodbye to Jammy, I was not surprised to find myself walking in a gray mist through the carved stone wreckage of a city of death. 

Like many urban cemeteries in old European cities, this one was an intensely arranged jumble of jutting obelisks, slate crosses, and Gothic tablets—a photogenic landscape of tombs well curated over time. Moss-flocked and vine-shrouded, the tombs were succumbing to summer’s vibrant green. Elsewhere in Saint Petersburg fútbol teams were facing each other across the manicured lawn of a World Cup pitch, but I was in a privileged space, like Russia’s Elysian Fields, quiet and unhurried. I floated under the canopy of wet leafy green. A path of crushed gravel guided visitors among the plots, as if moving scene by scene in an unfolding narrative that would culminate in some big reveal. 

Oh, my gosh—Rimsky-Korsakov!

Oh, my gosh—Glinka!

Oh, my gosh—Stravinsky!

It’s not that we didn’t know that Rimsky-Korsakov had passed away, or the others. The revelation lay in the familiarity of these names and the sudden recognition of so many famous Russians lying in repose here. It was like being in a museum that had every Rembrandt. The Rembrandts weren’t scattered among the Louvre in Paris, the Smithsonian in D.C., the Tate in London. The Rembrandts were here, every blessed one of them, every earthen Rembrandt. 

These weren’t Rembrandts, of course, but something equally rare—the most distinguished of artists, composers, architects, and authors that Russia had ever known. The necropolis was a cultural one-stop-shopping spree. A beveled pedestal supported the above-ground vault of Pushkin’s widow, for instance. A scroll-faced marker heralded Carlo Rossi, eighteenth-century architect for an eighteenth-century empire. Death was an ultimate organizing device and the necropolis its well-designed container. 

The notables catalogued in it had cleared a threshold of renown that stood up to the rigors of time and critical judgment. Those collated here under stone had been mourned over enough centuries that mourning itself had acquired a blurred and blunted quality, a well-handled accustomed feel, like the soft curving slope of a marble tombstone whose engravings had nearly dissolved under many decades’ worth of acid rain. 

A bed of rose-colored begonias surrounded Dostoevsky’s monument, and a couple fresh bouquets lay tucked among the bedding plants, too—citrus-colored gladioli clustered with crimson poppies. The author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov had drawn his last breath in 1881 and had lain in this place ever since. Think of the snows drifting upon him, the constellations wheeling above. Think of the summers, the long, sun-kissed White Nights. Someone might say, “Wow— we’ll never have another Dostoevsky!” As a result, that person might feel a sad twinge of regret, a strangely distressed mix of loss and longing. 

It would be a dry emotion, though. 

No one was going to stand before Dostoevsky’s tomb and cry any more than they would stand before a shelf of his books in any library in any country in the world and do so. Literature had already factored Dostoevsky in. He was signed, sealed, and quite literally delivered, six feet under. If there were to be another Dostoevsky, that would be gravy—but there didn’t have to be another. How many Dostoevskys did there need to be? The canon had swallowed up his genius as the grave had swallowed him up. Box duly checked; literature had moved on. Someone could place fresh bouquets before his headstone every day, but there would be no tears. 

The perfume of smoldering wax reached me long before I rounded the corner and saw flame tips leaping from candles that burned on a ledge-like altar in front of Tchaikovsky’s grave. A basket of pastel mums, alstroemeria and Shasta daisies stood near the candles. A bronze-cast angel held a tall cross above a carved bust of Tchaikovsky. Another angel lounged against his marker, paging idly through a stone-sculpted manuscript of his music. Not every legendary composer, conductor, or musician interred in the necropolis had a plot cordoned off with a decorative wrought iron railing, but Tchaikovsky did. Moreover, his railing stood atop an elevated dais of gray funereal granite, his prominence supreme. 

I glanced at Tchaikovsky’s nearest neighbors—Borodin of the opera “Prince Igor” fame, Mussorgsky of Pictures at an Exhibition and Boris Godunov. This was a priceless quadrant of the necropolis, the zip code of heavy hitters. When I bought my ticket at the entrance a while ago, the cashier had given me a map of the layout, too. I unfolded it and took a look. 

Detailed in both Russian and English, it was sensibly laid out. All good maps had a compass rose so that people consulting them could get their bearings, and this map helpfully had one as well. Sometimes called “Rose of the Winds” because medieval cartographers had assigned Italianate wind names to the cardinal directions, the compass rose was a necessary part of nautical charts. This map had an eight-wind compass rose that indicated the four principal directions plus the four equidistant degrees between them. 

Even if you ventured to the farthest reach of the necropolis, to the grave of landscape painter Ivan Shishkin, you could align the compass rose properly and easily make your way back to the entrance. No one was going to get lost here, just as no one was going to cry. A breeze shook down through the wet tree branches above me. Candle-fire spit and spattered in the mist. 

Some obelisks had sunk over time and begun to lean, their pyramid-pointed granite tips angling skyward, compass needles themselves. Lichen-covered birch bark looked like stone— scored and chiseled. Conversely, a carved white marble tree trunk had the texture of a slender birch and bore a striking resemblance to bark. This was Death transcendent, Death enlarged. When stone looked like living trees and trees looked like stone, Death had phase-changed sufficiently to incorporate another dimension, a dimension placed almost out of reach of the human heart. You could walk surrounded by weeping granite angels and statues of praying supplicants, but nothing in the tonnage would prompt raw spiritual sorrow. There was a levelling effect, Death as leveler—deep Death, long-lying, dignified, vetted. After all, nobody had been buried here since 1889. 

The book had closed on this place, just as an obscure collection of Dostoevsky’s essays might stand untouched on a library shelf, uncirculating, forgotten. 

Regardless of how continually a misting rain fell, even a griefscape like this could be parched, inert—museumified, in effect, blank and neutral. Nothing about the place would take you out of your depth. Some visitors might even feel bored here, perhaps sneaking quick peeks at their wristwatches while walking toward yet another imposing monument. That old chestnut came to mind, the one people often uttered—that cemeteries are for the living, not the dead. This one seemed for neither. This cemetery seemed to belong only to the ages. It had a Bring Your Own Tears feel. 

Fortunately, I had packed plenty along with my passport. 

Jammy.

I reached out and gripped a twist of the wrought iron rail encircling Tchaikovsky’s grave. The metal felt cold, its density smoothly forged. It was elegant and strong. Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker Suite. How much did we really think about Tchaikovsky, let alone need him? We whiled away long decades, big boundless stretches of our lives, as spacious as an empty soccer pitch, without a thought or care. Eugene Onegin, the 1812 Overture, Sleeping Beauty. You didn’t need Tchaikovsky until you needed Tchaikovsky—and then you really needed Tchaikovsky. I bowed my head. 

When we took a walk, that fuzzy girl and I, joy was at both ends of the leash. I bestowed upon my comical little baby no fewer than eighteen different nicknames over the years. On our last day, the day with the compassionate vet, during those splendid final pain-free moments after the white syringe but not yet the red syringe, the vet, kneeling beside me, asked, “What does Jammy like?” 

“Popcorn,” I said. “Peanut butter, too. And cheese.” I adored the fact that the vet had phrased her question still in the present tense. What does Jammy like? 

The vet smiled and nodded. Any given day of the week for her at the clinic might include first vaccines for a litter of puppies just as surely as it might include the gift of death for one such as Jam. “Yes,” the vet said. “Popcorn, peanut butter, and cheese. Yes, to all of them.” 

Standing at Tchaikovsky’s tomb now, anchoring myself to his sturdy iron rail, I felt something catch at the back of my throat. The lace of foliage melted before my eyes into a fog-blurred green, as if the Neva River and the Gulf of Finland had intended something soft like this for me all along. 

A couple Millennials waited off to the side, ready for their quiet moment alone with the Maestro. They shifted from one foot to the other on the crushed gravel path, even glancing back to see if other visitors might be approaching from behind or starting to queue up. Smartphones palmed against their denim slacks, they tried to keep the mist off their electronics, away from the device’s camera lens. They were respectful of me and considerate— obviously an emotional experience was underway here—but I could feel a certain selfie pressure building. 

Everybody needed Tchaikovsky today for something. It wasn’t like I was the only one. 

The compass rose on the map showed True North lying just over my shoulder, and I moved in that direction. 

♦

Barbara Haas is a professor in the English Department of Iowa State University. She began as a fiction writer (MFA, University of California-Irvine) and finds that creative nonfiction essays afford her the best way to address topics related to nature and environment. In addition to the Delmarva Review, her recent essays appear in The MacGuffin, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and The Chariton Review. She is a repeat contributor of nonfiction and fiction to The Hudson Review, North American Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction from thousands of submissions annually. The authors may be well established, like today’s writer, or they may be new writers seeking discovery of their work. The review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. See the website for information: DelmarvaReview.org.

#  #  #

Editor’s Note: Brevity often sharpens the message, as in this concentrated poetic form.

Author’s Note: “Wend is a sijo, a traditional Korean syllabic verse form that emerged in the Goryeo period (918 – 1392) and is still popular today. Themes range from the bucolic to the metaphysical. The standard pattern is three lines (each broken into two half lines) that average 14–16 syllables, for a total of 42–48: theme (3, 4, 4, 4); elaboration (3, 4, 4, 4); counter-theme (3, 5) and completion (4 ,3).”

Wend (After Raymond Carver)

A cobweb hangs from my lamp—

                   Intricate, tethering air. 

I lean close and its thin strand

                   is disturbed by my breathing. 

Before long, before anyone notices,
                  I’ll be gone from this place. 

⧫

Joshua McKinney teaches poetry, writing, and literature at California State University, in Sacramento. His most recent book of poetry is Small Sillion (Parlor Press, 2019). His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, New American Writing, Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, and other journals. He is the recipient of The Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, The Dickinson Prize, The Pavement Saw Chapbook Prize, and Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing. 

Delmarva Review features the most compelling new poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. The authors may be well established (like today’s poet), or they may be new writers seeking discovery from their first significant publication. The review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. See the website for information: DelmarvaReview.org.

Author’s Note: “The rooms we inhabit often inhabit us in ways we may not even realize. ‘Never Room’ is a poem about coping with miscarriage in which place and memory intersect. It tries to capture a moment on the trajectory of loss that also hints at future loss in the form of divorce. I tend to see the gray areas in life, so I avoid using absolutes. But this poem is an attempt to face up to one.”

Never Room

When we first returned to the never room
it was mote-strewn as ever. Its upper
dresser drawer stuck its chin into our
nearly future. The sun rose in the soon
to be rest of our lives, so we tiptoed
around its rose-wallpapered gesture of
not-quite. But on this winter night, I’ve
come to lie here on its glistening hardwood
floor, pray to whatever moon is listening.
To the moon of waning vows. To the moon
of never-moving ultrasound. To the blue
moon of a chance we’ll gently touch down
somewhere past this woven wicker bin of never
read-to bedtimes, breathing its after, after, after.

⧫

Ed Granger’s chapbook, “Voices from the First Gilded Age,” was published in 2019 by Finishing Line Press. He lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he works for a healthcare nonprofit. His poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in THINK Journal, Potomac Review, Little Patuxent Review, Naugatuck River Review, and Rappahannock Review.

Delmarva Review specializes in discovering the most compelling new poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction annually. As a result, the authors may be well established (like today’s poet), or they may be new writers seeking discovery from their first significant publication. The review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. It is sold in paperback and digital editions at Amazon.com and other online booksellers and at specialty regional bookstores. See the website for information: DelmarvaReview.org.

 

Author’s Note: “I live just across a cove from the Delaware City Refinery, so it’s often in my thoughts. It’s been bought and sold several times during its sixty-four years; and in 2009 it was shut down. A buyer was eventually found, and it reopened two years later. I kept thinking about those two years, and so this poem imagines the refinery as a living thing in the process of dying, embraced by the earth, briefly restored to something true, as maybe someday it will be.”

After Peak Oil (November 20, 2009 – October 7, 2011)

Then it sat abandoned empty still
unmoving remnant of the empire
that had reached its outer edges and slowed
and dried and crept back an inch from there.

Nothing flowed
but the air that floated
in and out in slow shallow
breaths after everything was

turned off. Its hollow
frame rusted and thinned. Delicate
patches of light spread
around bolts and crept along seams. Wasps

built nests in dark unswept places. Vines
climbed up. The chain link border
was easily breached.
Lights burned out, and nobody

came to replace them. When the wind was
strong up the bay you could hear
the song of its brittle gray bones
singing.

⧫

Anne Yarbrough lives on the lower Delaware River between a bridge and a refinery. In addition to Delmarva Review, her poetry has recently appeared in Poet Lore, Gargoyle, Philadelphia Stories, and Amethyst Review. This poem is part of a book-length project in progress, Refinery.

Delmarva Review is a national literary publication with strong regional roots. It specializes in discovering compelling new poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from thousands of submissions annually. As a result, the authors may be well established or new, seeking a good home to display their most creative work. The review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. It is sold in paperback and digital editions at Amazon.com and other online booksellers and at specialty regional bookstores. See the website for information: DelmarvaReview.org.

 

 

Author’s Note: “After a retinal tear took me dangerously close to blindness in my right eye, I was instructed to see an ophthalmologist twice a year to ensure the surgical repair that saved my sight was still working.  A fair amount of anxiety accompanies each visit.  Will everything be ok, will I still be able to write, paint, teach – in other words, do all the things I love?  I wrote this essay after one of these visits, when I fantasized a bit about the doctor and how he might approach a story if he were a writer.”

Second Sight

SHE SAYS LEAN FORWARD, and I do what I’m told.

“Stare at the orange light. Don’t look for the flashes, or I’ll have to start the test all over again.”

It’s not easy to keep my eyes fixed, but I follow her instructions and glue my gaze to the small circle in the middle of the screen. I don’t want to do this twice. 

Pinpoints of light flash randomly, some larger, some brighter, others fainter and more peripheral, like distant stars. I travel through the galaxies twice a year, always a little nervous about the trip. 

Ten years ago, I was reading a book and noticed something was off. I covered my eyes, one then the other, and found the vision in my right eye made the letters bulge and beat like little hearts. A hole in the back of the eye was sucking the words through. 

A frightening surgery corrected the retinal tear and prevented blindness. Now I can see well with both eyes. But whenever I look out of my right eye alone, like she’s asking me to do now, I’m reminded of the defect. 

“Doctor will be with you shortly.” It’s always good to hear the test is over. 

I like Dr. Levine. He wears his inner child on the outside. Intensely curious, probably gifted, ageless. He bounces into a room like the words I try to read when I close my left eye. 

“So, what’s new?” he asks. Always the same question. This time, I think, I’ll tell him. 

“I’ve been writing.” 

Levine looks up from his notes and stares at me as though he’d found an anomaly in the imaging. 

“Publish anything?”

I nod.

“I’ve always wanted to write fiction,” he says, pulling the phoropter toward me. “Chin in the cup, forehead against the bar.” 

“Why don’t you try it?”

No answer. He just asks me to lean closer and starts flipping lenses. We’re close enough now to play pass the apple. Too close and too quiet. His silence and intensity remind me that all could turn to shit in an instant.

I distract myself wondering how he’d tackle the act of writing. Oh, yeah, I can see him doing it. Commandeering the visual field tester, taking the sum of all those eyeballs and floating into their spidery redness like an astronaut. Entering the unknown confidently and as quickly as the door slam of anesthesia. He would be lyrical and bold. 

I stare into the hot light, one eye then the next. What will he find this time? I feel my muscles stiffen. He swings the phoropter away. He knows something I don’t. What will he do with it? Write a story? Will it have a happy ending? 

He takes an overly long pause⎯already a writer, I think, deftly employing suspense to intensify the moment⎯before sharing the news. 

♦ 

Michele Rappoport is a writer and artist who divides her time between Arizona and a hill on the western slope in Colorado. Her writing and artwork have been published or are forthcoming in Delmarva Review, High Desert Journal, Right Hand Pointing and The Centifictionist. Michele also holds a certification in small animal massage and teaches basic calming techniques to volunteers at animal shelters. 

Delmarva Review is a national literary journal with strong regional roots. It publishes compelling new creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. As a result, the authors may be well established, or they may be students seeking discovery with their first significant publication. The Review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. It is sold in paperback and electronic editions at Amazon.com and other online booksellers and at specialty regional bookstores. See the website for information: DelmarvaReview.org.

 

 

Author’s Note: “ ‘Stone Sijo’ is my attempt to highlight the materiality of language by using only monosyllabic words. I think of each word as a stone, and the poem itself as an edifice constructed of carefully-placed stones. Sound is foregrounded. The stanza form is that of a sijo, but I linked five of them to create a longer poem where the monosyllabism would become more obvious, more weighty.”

Stone sijo (monosyllabics)

Stones teach us to make things fit,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaas a cairn will make us choose,
as best we can, to form the shape
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaseen in the mind. But shapes can change.
One might say stone in this place or rock in that
aaaaaaaaaaaaaato mark the path of a thought.

One might say rock in this place
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaor stone in that, if the sound sounds
smooth or rough on the lithe tongue,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaahot or cold in the live ear.
And all this is due to what each stone gives
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaor does not give. Stones do not take.

If you learn, you will know this.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaIf you learn, with a quick tongue,
to speak the speech of hard, still stone,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaathen you will know the one earth-truth.
Ask a stone to tell you what it means to be stone,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand you will know. Stone turns to stone.

I have heard some say that stones
aaaaaaaaaaaaaalack mind, lack life—hence we say stone-
cold, stone-deaf, stone-blind, but those whose words
aaaaaaaaaaaaaasay such things do not know stones.
Go, go there, where stones lie, and look
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaat the hill stones, creek stones, sea stones.

Hear each stone—hill stone, creek stone,
aaaaaaaaaaaaaasand stone, sea stone, strong stone, hard stone,
sand or soap stone, bone-of-earth stone—
aaaaaaaaaaaaaatell their stone tales, how they came there.
Then, at last, stone-taught, steeped in stone-fact, sing
aaaaaaaaaaaaaathe first low note of your own stone-song.

♦

Joshua McKinney teaches poetry, writing, and literature at California State University, in Sacramento. His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, New American Writing, Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, and other journals. His most recent book of poetry is Small Sillion (Parlor Press, 2019). He is the recipient of The Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, The Dickinson Prize, The Pavement Saw Chapbook Prize, and Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing.

Delmarva Review is a national literary journal with strong regional roots. It specializes in finding the most compelling new poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from thousands of submissions annually. As a result, the authors may be experienced writers (like today’s poet), or they may be students seeking discovery from their first established public journal. The Review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. It is sold in paperback and electronic editions at Amazon.com and other online booksellers and at specialty regional bookstores. See the website for more information: DelmarvaReview.org.