Life is good. Don’t be like a piece of wood— motionless, silenced. Life is good.
Poem
Whale Eye
Watercolor and pastel in wood knot in rainfall in streetlight. Calmly, stoically, her ancient eye bores into mine. I dance upon what could be boards, what could be a plain, uninteresting dock. I dance upon what is an ancient being, a creature of deep wisdom. I dance upon her slick, rainwashed, grooved body. I dance upon the whale. She is far from human yet as complicated as the knotted seaweed of her kingdom. I danced on her yet she danced with me— the squelch squelch of my sneakers and the groans of her song, our music. She glittered in the streetlamp like gold, the curse of man. Whales don’t smile. She is not without emotion; her eye tells emotion in its own subtle ways. I felt the deep drum of her heart. The thud as I landed that reverberated through her rib cage and echoed in her body and the sea-sky beyond pumped blood through her vessels. A whale’s heart can beat twice every minute. Every second her blood was building, beating.
Autumn
As autumn brings a sense of spring, I sigh and eat another peach.
A Day in the Life of a Witch
Toadstools My soft, black cat licks me awake. I eat my breakfast of cold, raw steak. I go out into the dark woods and hunt For ingredients for a potion to make my teeth blunt. And when it grows dark, I look for mushrooms, Soaring up high on my flying broom. These mushrooms will help me with many things— Growing long nails and leathery wings. To tell my future, I see the local seer Then I go back home to break a mirror. They say this brings you good luck, you see, Or perhaps that belief is unique to me. At last I curl up in my spiderweb cot And go on to sleep without a thought.
Ode to Owls
The Fall Impression We wanted to see an owl. My brother took me out into the woods behind our house, the smell of pine needles fresh in our noses as we tramped through the undergrowth, the dead leaves as loud as car horns as I stumbled. Finally, we reached the spot where my brother had seen him, the owl. Twisted oak trees stood like sentries, guarding their patch of forest, their boughs laden with dry pine cones and sticky sap. My brother peered intently at the tree, searching for the bird. But he wasn’t there. Disappointment crashed into me. Suddenly we heard a whoosh as a huge shape swooped above us, alighting on one of the enormous trees. The owl! He performed a shuffling dance with his feet and settled onto the branch. He ruffled his feathers, a mottled mix of gray, brown, and white, and folded his wings. I nearly laughed— he looked so funny with his little white mustache perched above the sharp beak and yellow eyes roving around the forest, finally settling on us. He looked down at us as if to say, “Oh, you humans. Watching me again.” The term “wise owl” popped into my head. Now I understood why people call them wise— the owl was rather like an old man full of secrets and knowledge but unwilling to share. My brother pulled me back to reality, handed me his binoculars. I stuck my eyes to the rubber seals and was rewarded with a close-up view of the beautiful bird, his feathers now in sharp detail. I could even see the wrinkles on his fluffy, feathered feet. My legs started to go numb from standing in one place so long but I didn’t care because I was watching the owl. It was almost like we were in an ancient tomb, yellow light spilling through windows cut into brick walls. Then the owl shook his feathers and flew silently off the branch, into the dusky afternoon sky. He was gone.
Frozen in the Aisle
from Remember the Flowers Winner (Poetry) of the 2021 Stone Soup Book Contest All I knew of the cold was the grocery store— the frozen food aisle where we shivered in our T-shirts while Umma piled gluten-free pizza into our cart, the cardboard covered in frost, disguising the image of promised tomatoes that would thaw and bake in the oven, their warmth exploding in your mouth on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Window of Color We felt we were frozen, you and I, as we passed packaged peas and hardened mango chunks. We huddled beneath our shopping bags, wore them like capes, ignoring the amused smiles of warm, sweatered customers. We distracted our shivering minds with images of chocolate and vanilla ice cream shining from the tops of lids, an image denying reality. We begged Umma to pick one up. The scoops seemed to smile at me. She passed right by the ice cream section— it was cold again. Remember the Flowers was released on September 1, 2022. You can order the book at Barnes & Noble or through our Amazon store: Amazon.com/stonesoup.
Mountain in the Tundra
As I climb up the mountain, I choose to be alone. As I brave the cold, I feel quite bold as I encounter a heaping Boulder. It is a rock the size of a meteor, and I am colder.
Bound for Somewhere
from Remember the Flowers Winner (Poetry) of the 2021 Stone Soup Book Contest When, at ten thirty you took to Turning the knob of the piano bench, Raising it to your height, And sat on the tattered black, On the wooden floor upstairs, I thought, A good day to play Going on vacation. From the cabinet top, I took down The round blue hatbox trimmed with white ribbons And painted ladies on the side Watering potted flowers In little brown straw sun hats Under the summer sky. Inside I packed ten velvet hats. I took the green one out and put it on. Someone’s something bought it Once upon a time At an antique store. While you repeated Hanon Downstairs, I packed Then lugged my box of hats Onto a white Ikea chair And boarded my Steam train Bound For somewhere. Remember the Flowers was released on September 1, 2022. You can order the book at Barnes & Noble or through our Amazon store: Amazon.com/stonesoup.
The Curtain Rod
from Remember the Flowers Winner (Poetry) of the 2021 Stone Soup Book Contest One day she came to school clutching a long black curtain rod, leaning against it like a cane, looking like a wounded soldier. Her foot was injured— that was all. Hurt in a fall from a towering step stool. We sat on the red-brick wall by the playground, wondering what on earth we could play. Recess faded away from our minds as the rusty red wall became a canoe. Hand in hand we rowed our boat, dragging the hollow curtain rod through our sea of wood chips. The game went on all recess. We visited Italy, Spain, and Korea. Two days later I climbed a yellow step stool. Longing to be like her, I mimed a fall and begged my mother ardently for a metal curtain rod. Remember the Flowers was released on September 1, 2022. You can order the book at Barnes & Noble or through our Amazon store: Amazon.com/stonesoup.
Lunch
from Remember the Flowers Winner (Poetry) of the 2021 Stone Soup Book Contest The grass is always greener on the other side. I didn’t understand when Appa first said it but I did understand when she opened one purple container revealing Trader Joe’s lemon yogurt, sweet and sour, so perfectly white, just the right portion, spooned up with plastic . . . I begged and begged Umma to buy the same yogurt at the grocery store then I put it into a bowl, with metal spooned up the white lemon yogurt. But hers looked better in the plastic container. Mine was never the same. At lunch I brought a thermos of rice with seaweed sprinkled over the top. She envied mine and asked her mom till one day, one container contained some rice with seaweed sprinkles too. She made a face— the rice was cold. Remember the Flowers was released on September 1, 2022. You can order the book at Barnes & Noble or through our Amazon store: Amazon.com/stonesoup.
School Days with Selective Mutism
from Remember the Flowers Winner (Poetry) of the 2021 Stone Soup Book Contest Four years old in late September, kindergarten on a weekday. Sometimes I spoke. Those days were rare. The lunch monitor resolved to help, but finding the kids I’d open my mouth for was rolling the dice, again and again. I played with her, I played with him— still no words came forth back then. One day she rolled, and the sides came up even. Go sit with her, she said. I went to the girl by the orange cubbies with that kind of lunch box opening into a tray of purple plastic containers all lined with name-tag stickers in loopy letters and butterflies of pink and blue. I could hear a smile in her voice. And then I looked up. Remember the Flowers was released on September 1, 2022. You can order the book at Barnes & Noble or through our Amazon store: Amazon.com/stonesoup.
The Forest of Clovers
from Remember the Flowers Winner (Poetry) of the 2021 Stone Soup Book Contest Come play with me, Oppa. It rained yesterday, you know. The rain left fields of three-leaf clovers. We kneeled in the damp, weed-blanketed grass. In the forest of clovers there was a clearing. We built a house of twigs there, a stone path winding through the forest up to the empty well of sticks. Fleeting The day after that the gardeners came, their boots trodding on our masterpiece. They weeded and mowed, picked and pruned, crushing our town with rubber daggers. When we returned to the fields, it rained no more. The forest of clovers was gone. Remember the Flowers was released on September 1, 2022. You can order the book at Barnes & Noble or through our Amazon store: Amazon.com/stonesoup.
