IHLR 2024 PhotoFinish

photofinish’24

Editor-in-Chief

Leslie Jill Patterson Fiction Editor

Marcus Burke Poetry Editor

Geoffrey Davis Nonfiction Editor

Elena Passarello Sr. Managing Editor

Jennessa Hester

PhotoFinish 2024

Managing Editors

Naveed Alam Brock Allen Bibiana Ossai

Cover Photo: Svetlana Lukienko Copyright © 2024 Iron Horse Literary Review. All rights reserved.

Iron Horse Literary Review is a national journal of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. IHLR publishes three print issues and three electronic issues per year, at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, through the support of the TTU President’s Office, Provost’s Office, Graduate College, College of Arts & Sciences, and English Department.

Iron Horse accepts electronic submissions only. Unsolicited manuscripts are read between August 15 and April 15; information regarding thematic issues, production dates, and submission deadlines, as well as the submission portal itself, is available on our website: http://www.ironhorsereview.com.

The opinions expressed in the journal are to be attributed to the writers, not to the editors nor to Texas Tech University.

NEW YEAR’S EVE

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PHOTOFINISH 2024

Foreword / LESLIE JILL PATTERSON

WINNER

Jute / SANDRA FEES

5 FINALISTS

7 10

Strawberries / KELLY GRANITO

Confessions of the Rope / FARAH ART GRIFFIN

12 17 20 24 27 30 33

Afternoon Nap / DAWN TASAKA STEFFLER

Washed in the Blood of the Lamb / BV LAWSON

Last Dance / MARY L. TABOR

So Close / LISA MULLENNEAUX

Self-Satisfaction / BARBARA KRASNER

The God of Rope / SUSAN CARROLL JEWELL

Meaning / PURBASHA ROY

MISCELLANY

Contributors

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ack in May 2024, we saw all the metaphorical potential in this year’s IHLR PhotoFinish prompt: two halves of a rope, hanging together by one little strand. Every possible scenario—personal, domestic, professional, environmental, psychological—that a severed rope could represent. In July and August, we received the wide range of subjects we expected, and, in September, we narrowed down to ten finalists and then declared Sandra Fee’s poem, “Jute,” this year’s winner. The poem reminds us of the beauty found in a single, quiet moment. One image.

One stanza. The poem is as lean as a vine, solid as a ripe tomato. It’s simplicity spoke to our hope for a calm future.

B

Inside this issue, in the nine finalists, you’ll also find baths, blankets, caregivers, kitchens, DNA entanglements, drought, gardens, identity, kids (grown and young), immigrants, laundry, motherhood, movies, myths, naps, old age, parental anxiety, twins, wreckage, an ass, a drowning, a poet’s treatise, and two confessions. Such great range.

In May, when we planned this issue, we were filled with hope. In August and September, our hope grew. Today, as we enter 2025, I see our prompt “rope” differently. Now, it’s a reminder of the daily angst I felt between 2017 and 2020—a hitch that immediately yanked taut again,

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Foreword

early morning, November 5, 2024, when news outlets declared Donald Trump our next president—again. Outside, the sun still hid from the results, and as I lay in bed, confirming the status of America on my phone, my Texas neighborhood exploded with celebratory gunfire.

For another four years, the threat of our unraveling will tinge every day. It’s a rickety bridge we’re asked to walk across, moving from 2024 into 2025. Who can know what lies ahead? My mind cannot imagine the possibilities. Not really. But it’s midnight, and here we go. . . .

LESLIE JILL PATTERSON EDITOR

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SANDRA FEES

Jute I tie the tomato plants to wooden stakes, the weave of twine holding the leaves aloft like green marionettes.

Soon the first tomatoes will redden to juicy hearts.

Some will be gutted by July sun; others by the neighboring groundhog.

But a few will surrender to my ripe touch, their skin pressed to mine, taut with possibility, both of us tethered briefly to the bare and fragrant earth.

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Poetry

Sandra Fees

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Poetry

Kelly Granito

Confessions of

the Rope

FARAH ART GRIFFIN unpiece me/ break me apart into mere flickering threads/ break me apart into lone tattering specks/ for I am a whip of the hands of others/ for I am a lash of the hands of others/ chop me from the cold spaces of their days/ chop me from the cold spaces of their nights/ for I am a strike of the hands of others/ for I am a blow of the hands of others/ scissor me from the winter of their minds/ scissor me from the winter of their hearts/ for I am tired/ for I am tired/ unpiece me/

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Afternoon Nap DAWN TASAKA STEFFLER

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he parks, hits the remote, and the white-hot brightness is guillotined inch by inch. While the minivan doors are still sliding open, her fourand six-year-olds slip out, screaming, I’m on the Wii first! No, I am! Meanwhile, in the rearview mirror, the eyes of her youngest wait breathlessly for hers to land on him. When she does, he squeals with delight.

She needs to sneeze.

S

Her sandy boys are playing Mario Kart, sitting on mounds of clean laundry that were spilled on the floor. How had she not noticed that earlier? “Get off!” she yells, shoving no longer clean clothes back into baskets. The sink is full of dishes. There are blueberries on the floor. She gives the blueberries to the baby in his oatmeal-crusted highchair while she cooks boxed mac and cheese. She needs to sneeze. The park was full of flowering trees. All morning, she stood in the sun, pushing boys on swings while her friend sat in the shade. Her friend’s daughters had made pies of sand, pressing leaves onto the top, no doubt copying their mom decorating the tops of apple pies with leaves of crust. She suctions a bowl to the highchair and watches the baby eat with his fingers. For a period of time, she grieved this last one wouldn’t be a girl, but oh well—she is done with babies.

Once the boys are seated and eating, she sneaks away to the bathroom. There’s a turd floating in the toilet.

Back in the kitchen, the boys are feeding the dog mac and cheese.

“Stop!” she yells. “Unless you want to clean up the puke!” She points to

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Fiction

Dawn Tasaka Steffler

where the dog barfed the night before, after eating who knows what. Suddenly, the tickle in her nose takes over her whole body, and she stands frozen, eyes closed, mouth ajar. But the sneeze retreats into her head.

After lunch, the boys try to rebel: “Naps are for babies!”

It’s only the first week of summer, and she has no idea how she’ll make it to September. She drops the baby in his crib and closes the door on his protest cries, then orders the boys into their room. Just a few steps down the hallway, she hears their doorknob turn, and she spins on her heel.

“Don’t you dare!” The door closes.

In her bedroom, she locks the door. I just need a second.

The light looks different when she wakes. Long diagonals on the ceiling. She walks through the house, collecting clothes and tidying toys. Her little men are sweetly curled up like cinnamon rolls. She lingers by the baby’s door and almost leaves, but then she hears him, a question in his voice. She cracks the door, and he’s standing at the rail with a lemon-yellow smile. The stuffed lion held by one little fist falls to the floor when his fingers flex: open close, open close. And she lifts him, heavy like a bag of rice.

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Dawn Tasaka Steffler

Washed in the

Blood of the Lamb BV LAWSON t first, members of her church thought she was bored, then lonely, then mad, but she didn’t care, kept on cleaning. Scrub that corner tile, scrub again, and the next tile, and the next after that, all polished, gleaming, pristine. That he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

Dust the bookshelves Howard made for her, dust the books, dust the pages, dust every little crevice. Spray with lemon, pine, and lavender. No specks, no grains, every inch like a shrine. Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. Pour the water into the bucket, add soap and ammonia, mop the floor, wring it out, mop it again. Mop behind the stove, mop around Howard’s favorite chair, mop away the dark stains of living. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Spray the windows, first upstairs, then downstairs, inside and out, a perfect view to the garden and Howard’s petunia beds. No smudges, no grime, no weeping streaks from

A

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Fiction

BV Lawson

rain, her reflection true and unblemished. You shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.

Hose down the porch with soap, then without soap, and do it all over again. Sweep away the pollen, yard dirt, and seed pods. Carefully polish the swing Howard made just for her, oil the hook for the chains. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Do the laundry, add detergent and bleach, then wash them all over again. Dry them, iron away the creases and wrinkles. Starch Howard’s shirts, hang them in the closet near his suit, the one he wasn’t buried in.

Make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil.

Stand in a scalding shower, scrub away layers of skin burning and raw. Scrub away the night Howard was early—and she wasn’t alone.

Scrub away the sound of the bullet he put in his head. Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away, away. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

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Fiction

BV Lawson

MARY L. TABOR

Last Dance he afghan I knitted when she floated in my womb now lies across my knees. She kneels before the tub to run her wrist beneath the stream of water. Her hair is turning white, turning early. She stands to dry her hands. She takes the afghan from my lap, folds it lengthwise, then in half, runs her hand across the panel I crocheted, smooths the zinnia I cross-stitched in shades of ochre-red and the leaves in mossy greens. The slender bones atop her palm, the small circle of her wrist, define a wisp of bone I let go from deep inside.

She lifts my nightgown. My nakedness. She leans to embrace as if to take a turn on a dance floor from my past.

She’s not built for lifting. I’m heavy with my losses. I stand. She swivels, moves me to the bath seat warmed with water from the tub.

We’re awkward in this dance, her head upon my shoulder as she braces to make the move go easy. I feel her fear—that she will drop me—her warm breath against my neck. I move my right hand to her back to tell her, It will be all right.

My hips on the seat, she lifts my legs into the porcelain tub.

“Mama, is it warm enough?”

I nod.

T

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The room has fogged. Strands of hair curl round her smooth, white forehead. I want to lay my hand there. Does she long for the pressure of my hand?

She cannot know, as I sense her fear ease in the details of the washing, how I once feared I’d drop her small, bare body in this tub. She cannot know, as she raises up my limp and sagging arm, how I once cradled her inside the crook of this old elbow. She cannot know, as she squeezes water from the washcloth to drip onto my mottled back, how I made sure my grip was firm and how she curved into my arc. She cannot know, as she soaps my yellowed toes, how the scent of her skin was a confection to my soul and that she’d once lain with perfect ease inside my arm.

She places the cloth in my good hand. She sits on the heels of her bare feet, her knees pressed against the bottom of the tub. Her head bowed, she waits while I wash beneath my hanging breasts, between my legs, averts her eyes until I lay my hand upon her shoulder prepared for our next move. I want to touch her lightly, but gesture no longer mirrors thought.

We wait until the tub is empty so I can get a footing on the rubber mat that lies beneath the bath stool. She wraps a large white towel across my shoulders. She dries my back, rubs talcum on my skin. I raise my right arm, she my left, to lay a gown across my nakedness before we start the awkward dance back to my chair.

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Nonfiction

Mary L. Tabor

LISA MULLENNEAUX

So Close I held on to a piece of the wreckage for six hours. Just a piece of the wooden boat that had picked us up on a Turkish shore.

We could see the lights of Bodrum— the Hilton and Marmara, hear the dance bands, picture guests laughing, sipping their negronis.

We were so close.

Search lights—the dark sea lit up and we were staring at a Greek Coast Guard boat. Rescue us!

But it rammed us at full speed.

I held on, watched the others drown.

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Poetry

Lisa Mullenneaux

SelfSatisfaction BARBARA KRASNER

he shows up as “Self” in my Ancestry DNA matches. My twin sister and I stand the same way at a display counter, one hand behind the back, holding the straps of a purse. We say the same thing at the same time with the same tenor. At a holiday dinner, she recited her line as Pappy Yokum in the summer camp production of Li’l Abner. Except she didn’t play Pappy Yokum. I did.

She was born one Sunday morning, and I came along four minutes later. I bore a red birthmark under one of my eyes. My sister was a little bit bigger, and to this day, she’s one or two inches taller. She weighs sixty pounds less. Her strands of DNA must pull from some ancestor who liked physical activity. Mine must pull from someone happy to read a book. Or write one.

She became a twirler in high school, eager to conform with her friends, and I became my German teacher’s student secretary, not really caring what anyone thought, even when someone said I was “his girl.” My sister leaned toward math and quantitative methods. I leaned toward language and qualitative methods. We were both in MBA programs at

S

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Nonfiction

Barbara Krasner

the same time and had the same case study assignment from different schools. She took out her calculator and started punching keys to determine the net present value; I read the case study slowly and concluded the manager in question should be fired.

She’s obsessed with diet and exercise. I’m obsessed with Below Deck.

She’s always had a thing for Todd Rundgren, and I’m more of an Earth, Wind & Fire aficionado. She’s decided to go vegan, and I’m a definite carnivore.

All along, we’ve recognized our differences and considered ourselves two halves of one whole. I used to say to her, “You’re hamburger, and I’m filet mignon.” In the room we shared, even the paintings hanging above our twin beds showed a girl in blue with a slate and piece of chalk (for me) and a girl in pink, peeling potatoes (for her).

But the world didn’t see us this way. Our mother would never differentiate our talents. When we brought artwork home or made a craft on Saturday mornings, she’d say, “They’re both very nice.” Classmates called us “Twinnie,” not wanting to take the time to know us individually.

Lately, though, as our strands unravel at a faster pace, I think back to the day as five-year-olds when we fell asleep in our aunt’s bed with our arms wrapped around each other, just as we probably did in the womb.

Although we live in different states, we are still reaching for each other.

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The God

of Rope SUSAN CARROLL JEWELL

Ocnus twists straw into rope. Every minute of every day, fiber threads into yarn, twist left twist right, the collective strength of twined strands, sisal and hemp. But in the ancient myth, as fast as Ocnus can make the rope, a donkey eats the other end.

Even Neanderthals knew the tensile strength of rope. A snare, a net, and before you know it, George Bailey lassos the moon and Fitzcarraldo drags a ship up a hill in that Herzog movie.

We are the gods of rope, hanging swings from every star.

The rope will break or be eaten. It may fray to a single strand, but Hold on. Sam & Dave are stronger together. Just hold on.

Like Camus’s Sisyphus, Ocnus must be happy making rope.

For the god of wasted time and the god of rope, the struggle is enough to fill our hearts. We’ll always be followed by an ass.

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Poetry

Sarah Carroll Jewell

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PURBASHA ROY

Meaning I can’t think of any poetry for a snapping jute rope.

But it is raining here and the jute plants are full of leaves. Not late I will pick some and cook for lunch.

You will eat and ask when shall I cook it again. I will reply good things shouldn’t be repeated often. I will think over my answer and won’t want it for love. And so I want to disappear from my own future thoughts. Want to peel the moment from the arriving time I may say this to you.

I sit again to write about the last fiber adamant to keep the two ends of the rope joined. When have I understood what poetry is for. That the last fiber has studied the meaning of life.

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Poetry

Purbasha Roy

Contributors SANDRA FEES’s work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Nimrod, River Heron Review, and Witness, among others. Her poetry collection, Wonderwork, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books in December 2024.

About her process for writing her winning poem “Jute,” Fees says, “When I first saw the photo prompt, two words sprung to mind: jute and tethered. I started reflecting on what tethers me, and any of us, to this life—to grief, joy, earth. At the time, I was relishing summer’s juicy, plump tomatoes, and the memory of securing them to stakes with jute when I was growing up shaped the poem.”

KELLY GRANITO is a poet and public education researcher who lives in Michigan. Her poetry has been featured in Burrow Press, Midwestern Gothic, Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere.

Granito explains that her poem “Strawberries” emerged from her “experience with an unfortunate but inevitable parenting moment—dealing with difficult, private matters while in the happy presence of your children. Like much of my recent poetry, it explores the delicate feedback loop between household happenings and my own internal state.”

FARAH ART GRIFFIN’s poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Pleiades, The American Journal of Poetry, Constellations, Storm Cellar, Tipton Poetry Journal, Poetry South, The Perch, Plexus, The New Verse

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News, and elsewhere; it was also featured in exhibition at the North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival. She holds an EdM in Arts in Education from Harvard University and is a recipient of the Altman Writers of Color Scholarship from the Hudson Valley Writers Center and a grant from the Writers Happiness Movement.

In writing her poem “Confessions of the Rope,” Griffin says that she hoped to “peer into some of the historical sorrows of the rope as it breaks . . . seeking its self-disclosures. In using the forward slash, I hoped to create a staccato feel as a symbol representing a literal and visual representation of the breakage as well as a sense of immediacy and urgency for the rope’s confessions.”

SUSAN CARROLL JEWELL lives and writes in Upstate New York. Her poetry can be found in Pleiades, Midwest Quarterly, Fourth River, Stone Canoe, Comstock Review, and other fine journals. She has earned degrees from Keuka College, the University of Virginia, and the University at Albany.

Susan is legally blind from degenerative myopia.

Jewell says that “modern ekphrastic poetry provides the poet with the great joy of being taken on a journey—for an image to prompt the writer to explore more than the visual.” Her journey with this poem began with the question: “Is there a god of rope? Search and you find the myth of Ocnus. ‘The God of Rope’ begins with mythology, considers evolution and popular culture, and lands on absurdist French philosophy, all while Bing Crosby is ‘Swinging on a Star’ in my head. We are the true gods of rope, and, like Sisyphus, will always have something to do.”

BARBARA KRASNER holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Consequence Forum, Michigan Quarterly Review, and the Ekphrastic Review. Nominated for multiple Pushcart Prize awards, she relishes the opportunities to respond to

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Contributors

art and photography through prose and poetry. She lives and teaches in New Jersey.

About her flash essay, “Self-Satisfaction,” Krasner says, “As a certified facilitator in the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method, I lead workshops that use timed prompts. In my Writing the Past workshop, I shared the Iron Horse Photofinish prompt. The image of the rope reminded me that my twin sister comes up as ‘self’ in my Ancestry.com DNA results. We are one strand, yet we’re not. I generated the draft during the workshop and read it aloud in other workshops so I could identify the bumps that needed smoothing out. The ending was the toughest part to nail, especially in a flash piece.”

BV LAWSON’s stories have won the Dillydoun fiction prize, Short Mystery Fiction Society Derringer Award, the Noir Nation Golden Fedora, and a Gemini Magazine Award. Lawson’s Scott Drayco novels have been featured as Library Journal picks and have been named finalists for Shamus, Silver Falchion, Daphne, and Foreword Book Reviews awards. Visit her website at bvlawson.com.

Lawson says her flash story, “Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” is grounded in her roots growing up in evangelical Appalachia, “where guilt becomes part of your DNA, and every aspect of life is viewed through the lens of transgression vs. redemption. Scripture can be used as a weapon as easily as a shield, and those whose souls are frayed through ‘sins’ of omission or commission often hold onto the words of scripture as the last lifeline against the consequences of one’s actions—especially the darkest secrets we hide from the world.”

LISA MULLENNEAUX has published two chapbooks and contributed poems and essays to The New England Review, The Tampa Review, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She specializes in the translation of modern IHLR PhotoFinish

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French and Italian poets, lives in Manhattan, and teaches writing for the University of Maryland GC. Read more at lisamullenneaux.com.

About her poem “So Close,” Mullenneaux says, “In 2020, I began documenting successful and failed attempts by refugees to reach the EU by boat from war-torn countries like Syria and Afghanistan. This exodus was making headlines, and EU countries responded with stricter and stricter measures for preventing their safe arrival. I published an article, ‘The Raft of Medusa,’ and produced a chapbook (unpublished) called The Bow of Exile. My poem describes the attempt of refugees to reach Greece, an EU country, in a wooden vessel and its capsizing by the Greek Coast Guard.

The poem’s title captures the collision, not just of these two ships at sea, but of a myth that the refugees’ rescue was inches away.”

PURBASHA ROY (she/her) is a writer from Jharkhand, India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Logic(s), Strange Horizons, erbacce, Circumference, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net. About her poem “Meaning,” Roy writes, “It took me a few drafts to reach this poem. It was raining that particular noon when I was wondering what to write about in answer to the IHLR photo prompt. And so, the poem began in a way that reflected my smallness in that particular moment. And then the poetry followed.”

MARY L. TABOR is the author of The Woman Who Never Cooked: Short Stories, the novel Who by Fire, and the memoir (Re)Making Love. Recent work has appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Story Magazine, Image, Hayden’s Ferry Review (Prentice Hall Fiction Prize), Chelsea, Missouri Review, Mid-American Review (Sherwood Anderson Fiction Prize), Chautauqua Literary Journal, River City, and American Literary Review.

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Contributors

Find her on Substack at https://marytabor.substack.com and https://innerlifecollaborative.substack.com.

About “Last Dance,” Tabor says, “I wrote this flash essay after my mother had a severe stroke with aphasia. My deep love and empathy for what she was going through without her being able to explain caused me to want to write in her voice.”

DAWN TASAKA STEFFLER is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii, who should have an empty nest by now but her kids keep wanting to move back home. She was a 2023 Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow, and her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, Flash Frog, Ghost Parachute, Moon City Review, Fractured Lit, Mythic Picnic, and more. Find her online at dawntasakasteffler.com, and on X and IG as @dawnsteffler.

About her flash story, “Afternoon Nap,” Tasaka Steffler says, “The second I saw the PhotoFinish prompt, one word sprang into my head: motherhood. Even now, looking at that single fiber that refuses to break, my pulse quickens; it takes me right back. I knew the story structure needed to be in two parts, but what moment would that single fiber be? I returned to a sound palette concept I had been introduced to in a course taught

by Matt Kendrick: he asked us to pair a situation with a single consonant sound on either side of a turning point, and there had to be dissonance between the two. The narrative would move from conflict to resolution not only via story but also sound. I had so much fun layering meaning with sound, remembering my kids when they were small as inspiration, and creating the moment between mother and baby, which is the fiber in the prompt, tenuously but stubbornly holding everything together.”

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Iron Horse Literary Review would like to thank its supporters, without whose generous help we could not publish Iron Horse successfully. In particular, we would like to thank our benefactors and equestrian donors. If you would like to join our network of friends, please contact us at ihlr.mail@gmail.com for information on the various levels of support.

Benefactors ($300) Wendell Aycock Lon and Carol Baugh Beverly and George Cox Richard Crider Madonne Miner in memory of Charles Patterson Gordon Weaver Equestrian ($3,000 and above) TTU English Department, Chair Michael Faris TTU College of Arts & Sciences, Dean Tosha Dupras TTU Graduate School, Dean Mark A. Sheridan TTU Provost’s Office, Provost Ronald L. Hendrick TTU President’s Office, President Lawrence Schovanec