Sippizine - Volume 3: Running

A creative literary frolic along the Massachusetts South Coast Volume

Krista Allen Lenore Balliro

Anne-Marie Grillo Heather Heath Reed

Amanda Lawrence Carla Reynolds

Charlie Duane Ellen Flynn

Contributors: Gavin Santos

Lorene Sweeney

Sippizine Scoops

It runs in our family, the “pun-ny” bone. That probably explains why the theme “Running” tickles me so. A dozen creatives from Marion to Fall River explore the ways that word is part of our lives. Krista Allen, Amanda Lawrence and Heather Heath Reed are on a streak. They’ve contributed to all three issues - hats off!

In the Sippizine undercurrent is the creativity that flows at the Writer’s Prompt Sessions. Writing is often a solitary task. Trying different techniques and connecting with other people is a great way to spend 90 minutes. Check out the Sippizine website for the next sessions.

By popular request, you can now buy a beautifully printed copy of Sippizine. Our world may spin on the internet, but clearly the tactile also sustains our world. Purchase it online or buy it at a South Coast shop near you.

I’m off and running (couldn’t resist),

Alanna Nelson Editor

Prose by Ellen P. Flynn

How I Run

Running by the Hudson River for Miss Hyde Park

Capturing runner up beauty queen at nineteen.

Running for political office Hyde Park New York.

Run Adult Education Programs for Hyde Park School District.

To design a Culinary arts dessert course for junior high schoolers.

Ran for Vice President for Hyde Park Historical Society.

Now by the Sea

Running Woman’s club programs for gardeners and seniors

Foreign policy discussions groups both as President and Chair.

Before my win of the Wanderer’s 2013 Keel Award for volunteer services;

I ran staff development programs for Vassar College Academic Library, writing groups, studying poetry, memoirs, and Chapbooks.

Now I run local land trust educational programs for children.

And for the local library, I produced under a rainbow beach umbrella, an Outdoor Summer Reading Theatre, during several summers.

Equipped with a red oriental rug covering the cement sidewalk to be their runway.

“What is Outdoor Theatre,” one daring young child begs the question?

I wonder, is it like Runnymead at the River Thames?

I bring them to read stories in the forests, near the rippling running lake. At the Pine Island ponds we learn about the life of oysters and aquaculture.

I run them to Nantucket and Cuttyhunk Islands and to Cape Cod Canal.

We study historical bridges and explore the fading Buzzards Bay Shore.

I remind them to investigate their surroundings from door to door.

Not just to wash away the sadness of losing clear running water,

And to witness how undulating river banks, flooding seas, and high tides take away their beaches.

We run to reflect the clean basin, that prue lily pad, that crystal vision beneath the tormented sea.

I run with the children toward the shelter of the black double crested cormorant, my sanctuary from the angry seas.

I search beneath the rapid run of the waterfalls to again, gain hope and a vision in the treasured sea.

Comic by Gavin Santos College

Prose by Lenore Balliro

The Earth, Flat

Every day, a glimpse over the precipice. Ah, that’s where I could land? Or not, if I make it, solid, on two healthy feet, unencumbered by neuropathy. Orthotic inserts in my Nikes to boost stability, to

keep me balanced around the track, the pond, the walkways near the shore, this coast and that: South Coast, Back Shore, Kapa’a, Jamaica Pond, to keep me balanced enough to reach the arms of my girl, in Edinburgh, to run backwards to the place I keep leaving.

Remember the lurch forward is an illusion, remember Achilles and the tortoise. Zeno nailed it. Who shoots the starting gun? It’s not a race, the running from place to place. Detours are not derailments. Someone told me: Each journey’s a balancing act, filled with live wires, trip plates, heaves in the road, black ice.

Pushing 70, I see that world below the edge of flat earth like a sunken heaven, a fern world, a world of palms, of psalms, smelling like the Sunday before Easter, palms my father wove into crosses that hung on the back of my bedroom door for years, until they went brittle, until I escaped.

I sprint past borders I used to think were fixed, but someone tells me the end is the beginning.

Photography by Krista Allen Beach

Prose by Krista

Allen

AFLOAT

If I built a boat today, I could sail it in my yard after so much rain. Plastic bottles from the town dump, caps glued on tightly and lashed together like Lego bricks. A mast fashioned of scratched pipe or painted molding from the barn. The sail a composite of colorful tapestries and bed sheets or perhaps that old shower curtain. I’d have to learn to sew.

Maybe it should be a multihull. Balancing between amas would run less risk of turtling. A hammock or the warped screen from the sliding door downstairs for the tramp. Repurpose the badminton stanchions and the ripped roof tarp for downwind running.

Supplies needn’t be complicated. Sunhat. A buoyant water bottle. Salty peanuts. Some fruit. A day trip boat, because it would take an entire day to get anywhere. Along the eastern edge of Gooseberry, accidentally running away to Cuttyhunk if the winds are favorable.

I’d need a paddle. One of those bunk bed steps we never assembled would suffice. Something to push the whole failing endeavor away from sharp rocks loitering near shore. Recycled parts rapidly disassembling in the Buzzards Bay breezes. The plastic will end up there one day anyway, ripped to bits, traveling down the rivers to the ocean. Outliving us all inside the guts of striped bass and corpses of herring drifting, tangled in a jumble of synthetic netting.

An absurd diversion, running with an idea to its unlikely conclusion. A forty-eight hour boat building challenge. Zero to Zille in a weekend with nothing but found objects. Here’s your pile of rubbish to revive into something useful. A social media post or a photo op for the conservation groups.

I could go for a swim instead. Seems like the more responsible option. Besides, I’ve got plenty of plastic inside to keep me afloat.

Photography by Carla Reynalds Racing Across the Sky

Poetry by Anne-Marie Grillo

Ode To The Quequechan

Dedicated to Alfred J. Lima whose research and authorship of “A River and its City” inspired this poem

Formed from kettle-holes of glacial melt your river reserve of fish and fowl sustained its indigenous inhabitants, hands that fashioned fishways and cultivated crops along contours of your coursing waters

Archivist of Viking tales and covert plots of piracy you bore witness to storied encounters with the Crone of Pocasset, whose haunt perched on overhangs of your Great Falls

Chronicler of centuries

Guardian of remains preserved in poetic rhyme

With predicted rhythms and fluctuations, you rose to communal duties, sacramental immersions, and weekly washings your waters quenched thirsts and quelled fires

A relentless provider exploited by millwrights you advanced an industry that now shuns your fouled existence relegated to diminished breadth and lesser presence yet, you persevere

In sinuous travels past granite testaments of earlier affluence along fringes of mill-city tenements through culverts and conduits you endure

Vestiges of cascading falls echo in the silences of urban decline yet you continue to shape the outlines of your centuries-long passage to the Bay.

Rejoice, as newly-rooted dream seekers shine daylight on your shoreline, reclaiming the familiar in a city that bears your name. Stay the course and endure.

Poetry

by Lorene Sweeney

TRAPPED

A hard red crustacean that crawls on the sand It’s tasted so good it supports fishing fleets

Lured into traps attached to long ropes steamed in a pot then savored in bisque

But long tethered traps endanger right whales

Getting caught in those ropes now threatens the few.

So, here’s your decision as you order your meal do you think of your palate or the life of a whale?

Will you change your order to boycott the bisque then order clam chowder or local quahogs?

Will those placing traps for catching their prey select the equipment that doesn’t snag whales?

Or, will we be counting another lost species while diners still order crustaceans in bisque?

Prose by Amanda Lawrence

Do not pass GO, do not collect a living wage

The conversation concluded with four exciting words, “Congratulations on your appointment!” I felt happier than I had since I was four, running along the hot, sandy shores of Antassawamock with my family in the summers before everyone died and everything fell apart.

I ran my eyes down the contract, scanning the fine print, searching for proof that this was too good to be true. And there it was, plain as day on the page that contained health insurance rates. It seemed to scream, “Let them eat cake!”

Imagine the horror of realizing I’d be expected to pay the same for insurance as a twoincome family of four when I remained the last surviving parent of one. How is that ethical? Or equitable?

Isn’t accessibility essential in all employment areas?

The realization hit me like a hardcover book. I was too poor to accept the job offer. My heart rate accelerated and my stomach plummeted. The roller coaster of life dropped steeply beneath me.

“You could sign up for low-cost insurance through wah-wah-wah,” someone said. I had the vague impression she was repeating herself, having already made a similar suggestion, but the blood rushing to my brain drowned out the refrain. “Wah-wah-why not see if you qualify?”

“No!” I wanted to scream. I’m tired of running through the maze racing after assistance programs. “I’ll look into it,” I said instead, defeated.

After four decades of chasing good grades, scholarships, and all sorts of financial aid, I still slammed into this brick wall. I realized that I’d been sprinting across a tightrope without a circus net trying to outrun the poverty of a past waiting to consume me.

There was nowhere left to go.

The tension moved. My mind spiraled. How am I eternally expected to depend on citizens and the state to subsidize my family’s healthcare? That seems unfair. No matter how hard I work, I won’t ever escape this endless cycle of need.

All I want to know is how that’s okay. And where did all the air go? I’m feeling a little woozy from the acid in my belly. Echoes of “It Takes a Village” ring in my ears. But mine was reduced to rubble and smoldering embers long before it was developmentally feasible for me to comprehend its destruction.

Welcome to my pity party: population, us.

Here, among the wreckage, I hold two degrees and a mountain of student debt, only to discover nobody cares if I can afford to eat. Worst of all, it’s my own fault. I trusted the advice of teachers and professors who doled it out in the best interest of their job security. Not my future.

To add insult to injury, there’s never a shortage of socially conditioned folks waiting to lecture me about fairness. I’m told that naivety and youthful negligence are no excuse for my current predicament.

How foolish of me to be abandoned without a plan. I should have been born years earlier.

Or not at all.

So I ran my lines and practiced saying, “I’m sorry, but I’m too poor to accept the position.” Worse, there’s no financial incentive for me to take it.

With those words in my head, I finally let up, slowed down, and dropped out of the race. It was a giant hamster wheel, anyway. So I won’t get very far. Besides, all that’s out there for me are the fat cats waiting to hunt whoever escapes.

I’m trapped.

Billy Corgan said it best: “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.”

Better to temper my expectations and try applying for more government aid.

Just know I’m so tired of running through this inescapable maze.

Photography by Charlie Duane Gold and Blue

Poetry by Heather Heath Reed Goldfinch

In a patch of Rugosa Rose bound by beach grass and wild sweet pea

Pink blossoms shimmy with unfolding wings like sunlight, rising up, Fluttering, as yellow as lemon drops with wings that sweep across my path.

Morning Wind

There is a shrill whistle outside my window. The house shakes, wind pockets between shrubbery and shingles. It rattles glass panes and my bedroom door.

Last bits of darkness hover, waiting to pounce in step with shudders and whirs, sounds from a lifetime of learning their meanings like eavesdropping on a private conversation –

The rise and fall, ripple to roar to screech, as branches scrape the house and the birdfeeder twirls and twists, finches and chickadees clinging to tiny pegs.

Silence comes as the wind quiets, moves on toward the river, the marshes, out to sea. Light filters through rice paper shades.

Poetry by Krista Allen

SPRING’S PROMISE

Unwinding in winter’s dark

Wait,

Wait.

WAIT

Embracing the cold

Channeling your dormant primate

The months, the minutes creeping by Temporal aggregate

Progress locked in seasonal stasis

A prickling yearning to rejuvenate

Flipping the calendar

Claustrophobia escalates

FROZEN

Suffocating under February’s teasing weight

Then the ice cracking, dripping

Failing to meditate

There’s no more holding back

March light arriving to percolate

Gutters weep

Buds with mauve pigment illuminate

Soil effervesces

Optical cones vibrate

Meltwaters trickle

Zylfee Brook branches accelerate

Merging into Allens Pond

High tide’s anointing salinity abates

Spring is on autopilot

Opening the floodgates

To the promise of renewal each year

We head outside to celebrate

On the muddy trail I am running

Past a field where a tractor is running

Signs stuck in the grass from politicians running

I feel perspiration running

Past beach rivulets running

Sanderlings running

My blood is running

The world reawakens, always

Running

Running RUNNING

Prose by by Lenore Balliro

Running

The Alefish are running, up the steps in the Damariscotta River, and the water is running, dripping from a broken faucet, we can never get it fixed right, and the toilet is running, keep jiggling the chain but no luck. I am running a 5 K for my 65th birthday, and the eels are running under the Perigee moon, the ones from the Sargasso Sea to Lane’s Cove in Gloucester, I mean transparent eels, the ones he points out to me with a flashlight when we brave the elements. Remember when stockings had runs? Were they running when we caught them on something, those nylons held up by garter belts? David Byrne belts it: Run run run run run run run awaaaaaay, and she did, from Boston to St. Louis, and I had to track her down and take her home, but she ran back, no one can stop passion in the young until it runs out and run out it did. Running into someone years later, the man who leaned up against the counter in the bookstore where I worked, running into him near south Station and a few cups of coffee later and then: Oh, now I remember why I ran away, too. I was running late anyway so it was easy to say goodbye again. I was running out of things to say after sifting through so many years, kids born, grown, lovers, spouses, deaths. And the T was almost at my stop, it was running late, but I caught it just in time to stop running, to sit down and rest, finally, to rest.

Artist Biographies

Krista Allen is an author & artist living in Westport, MA. @veganf (link https://www.instagram.com/veganf)

Lenore Balliro is a recent transplant to the South Coast from Gloucester, MA where she writes, makes art, and works as a dog auntie. She has been published in number of literary journals and anthologies including the Louisville Review, the minnesota review, The Hoboken Review, Italian Americana, and others. She is a recipient of the RI State Council on the Arts award for literature and the Gloucester Writers’ Center award for flash fiction.

Charlie Duane’s curiosity leads him along many creative paths. Painting, lettering, photography, writing and sign making are just a few of those trails. Visit the Sippican Historical Society to see his exhibit, “One is Not Like the Other” in the spring/summer of 2024.

Ellen P. Flynn is the Director and Chair of the Mattapoisett Land Trust’s Education Committee.

Anne-Marie Grillo resides in Fall River and has been a member of The Poets’ Table for the past six years.

Heather Heath Reed is retired and lives in Westport, MA. She volunteers weekly at her local library and is a longtime member of the Westport Poetry Workshop. She has published her poems in The Friends Journal, The Plough, Corona Chronicles, local newsletters, and Sippizine. She loves gardening, beach and farm walks, is an avid reader and dabbles in acrylic and watercolor painting.

Amanda Lawrence is a writer becoming more dramatic as she ages like Old Kentucky Bourbon; look out!

Carla Reynolds is a lifelong southcoast resident who loves to share the beauty that is always around & never really noticed. See what I see is my opportunity to portray the everyday in an extraordinary way so everyone can discover & see how lucky we are to live in Southern New England in general. My hope is that I can share the pride that I feel & give others the “glasses” that they need to see what is really here & feel their own sense of pride & awe.

Gavin Santos is a high school senior daydreaming about what to do next...

Lorene Sweeney “I love the natural environment and those who live in it. I frequently write poems, many of which I share with my poetry group.”

Photography by Carla Reynolds Racing Across the Sky