BATMOBILE

Caroline Maun

is what I called it in self-defense. My father was dying by then, but we didn’t quite know it, or maybe he knew something was pivoting in him, traveling up the bloodand-lymph highway from lungs into his brain, remapping it so that he couldn’t tell his shoe from the phone in three months. Soon enough everything he did would be maybe the last time.

But that May, he was still alive and helping me buy a car. He dismissed the Chevette, a tin can. He picked the black ’75 Lincoln Continental instead, full of pine needles, crumpled leather, the dashboard all green, liquid light. It drove like it had a sail, the wheel a half-turn of play. I kept hitting things with it, swiping curbs, leaving whole hunks of trim behind at the drive-through. On the way to college, it wove gently in the gusts over the Sunshine Skyway, just before they had to fix it, before that boat smashed it and all those cars drove without once hitting their brakes, straight up and over into the night sky.

By the end of September, my Dad was dead. The Lincoln was ridiculous, but it was the last gift he gave me, five thousand pounds of metal carapace.

A Head Of His Time

Betsy Martin

Dad in his eighties had a summer hat he found at a yard sale.

It was a women’s hat with a broad brim and a bright pink-and-orange ribbon.

Mom told him, that’s a woman’s hat, as did I.

This? he said and patted the brim. Nooo... It fit him well, his hat.

Elephant

Lynn Cohen

My mother used to drive carpools to Hebrew school. Now she asks for the fifth time, “Where are we going?” I could tell her anything, anything at all.

First, she lost her car, then her wallet, not misplaced (though that too), but absconded by adult children concerned for scams, safety. In the early days, forgetting upset her. Now she sits in the sun and looks at clouds. “There’s an elephant!” Delighted as a child.

Is that really so bad?

“Fine Arts”

GRIEF IS AN EMPTY MAILBOX Madeline Gauthier

I was an archive of well wishes, Of Merry Christmases and birthday kisses, And you were a purple pen That found every small thing noteworthy.

Looking back on the cards you sent, It’s easy to recognize you in the Crisp columns of your consonants That stood like sentries at the start.

But as I move through the miles of memories, I can barely stand to see how The solid swipe of your L’s became shaky, And the twist of your T’s toppled over.

Like a shadow cast long at the end of the day, Your name looms black from the final card, Written in charcoal pencil by Your nurse’s unfamiliar hand.

Now I am a long-empty mailbox, and you Are nothing more than the slant of your signature, Destined to spend the rest of eternity Buried in a box beneath my bed.

Visiting In Winter

Laura Schulkind

The leaves have fallen, revealing the year’s comings and goings, stories heard more than seen in the leafy privacy of summer— the arrival of hungry chicks and rat-a-tat of woodpeckers. The bickering squirrels and sharp crack of tired limbs.

Now all there to see—

An empty warblers’ nest anchored in the nearest alder, above it an abandoned squirrel drey, wedged in the highest fork. Puckered woundwood in the sycamore surrounding a series of new, dark holes. A fallen branch, caught in the arms of lower boughs.

And in the tallest of the alders across the creek, the twisted, silent chimes, hung impossibly high. Only on seeing them, I realize how long it has been since they kept me company in the garden.

But you are here, and follow the crooks and toeholds you used last summer to hang them there, the tapering upper trunk bending with your weight as you reach up and gently comb out the tangles.

And I hold my breath— all of me exhilarated, all of me terrified. You have always reached for the highest branch, while I watch rooted to this earth, heart soaring, arms aching.

Freed, the chimes sing again. Greeting and farewell, greeting and farewell. And I know that soon you will be off, the wind their muse and yours.

Advent Again

Jane Costain

Like remnants of snow forgotten in the shade of buildings and trees vague longings linger still in our seasonal offerings.

Long ago, the angels folded their wings unto themselves. Silent now as shadows they have nothing more to say.

Once they even sang to us, multitudes of them, appearing in the startled night sky. We listened then and ran to see.

Now we content ourselves with icons, decorative but mute. Our expectations, reminiscent flames in the candles we light.

Maya Sapped Of The Power To Comfort Her Daughter

Marc Tretin

You are my daughter’s voice Inside my squealing tinnitus, And though I ascend on shaky legs To the slammed door of her bedroom, And though I know my clammy hands Will be limp at my sides, Afraid to knock, And though I’d recall how afraid I was to hold her head, Her head always slipping From the crook of my arm, And hear, But then she’d upchuck My milk and squall

And I could not put her down Fast enough, And now she’s calling, “Daddy, Daddy,”

I want to keep going up the steps, But call out, “Mommy is not feeling well. I’m going to rest in the basement,” Because You speak to me In the squealing tinnitus

That feels like her voice saying, “Get out of here. Go. Go.”

I slink to the basement to complete A sculpture Of a false God from Egypt Who does not scare me The way she does