New York, the place of my birth,
still hear Streisand’s words of glory—
the city that never sleeps,
even for me as a teen
who slept under stars
with sexy boyfriends and cars.
Each Sunday visited
Rockefeller Center
where dad taught ice skating
they called him Mr. Mark—
unable to pronounce his long last name—
Marquise—invented after immigration
from some French ancestors
which is maybe why I love croissants, espresso,
chestnuts and steamy nuts from street vendors.
I left before I could drive,
but now want to revisit my roots, especially
with dad gone and the city changed faces
more times than I can count.
Queens was my place, Cunningham Park
where hippies puffed joints and concerts
permeated lively words with numbered streets
and houses in rows like soldiers, only colors
setting them apart, one hundred and seventy-third street—
oh the pink shingles dad pained when I was born
to match his pink impala—
the kid mother never wanted, but dad cherished.
She planted a cherry blossom tree
in keeping with theme,
her green thumb also holding the reins of her
favorite four-legged equine partner,
always more important than me.
She’s still there, waiting to die
but never dying to live
I only wish her well— planted
in the city I used to call my own.
Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a poet, memoirist, workshop leader, thought-leader and award-winning author of 14 books and editor of three anthologies. Her work has been widely published and anthologized. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She frequently speaks and writes on writing for healing and transformation.
Her 14th and newest book is Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors, A memoir with reflection and writing prompts (2024).
Raab writes for Psychology Today, The Good Men Project,Sixty and Me, Thrive Global, and is a guest writer for many others. Visit: https:/www.dianaraab.com.
She chased me down, caught me at an intersection, ran behind the car and recorded my plate on a white shopping bag which I thought was maybe from Baked & Wired, or a card shop, card shops I thought, also use those sturdy white bags, but the image of her gray head bent over the squashed bag, paling Eisenhower Building in the background, Potomac sky, 102 in August, etc.; what is called an indelible image, fled with from the scene after she strode around the car to rap the window convinced I had wronged her and I mumbled a denial unconvinced I had not, failing our interaction the same way that I failed my SATs, turning questions of fact into philosophy and so sped away when the light turned green while she shrunk in the rearview blocking E Street looking for the damage she was certain she’d accrued, thinking I’d escaped, which I had, but not with the thing she suspected me of stealing.
Metro Dancer
Requiring an audience to be alone, flat metal strap like a barrette between old school sun faded orange foam headphones, cassette player humming, an arm stretched like a cable to the pole with a cupped hand sliding up, down, bending knees in time jeans hemmed by the carpet worn black as if multitude others had also abandoned convention for slick chrome, every rider vibrating above the groaning clattering, speeding to uncertain landing pretending to read or sleep maintaining proper frowns eyeing the dancer, dreaming lost recalling hand over hand that bottled fizz of youth scratching from tinny headphones rebuking the speeding commute, the functions and titles shuttling up, down, a pump jack drawing the question from where it has settled into seams and every rider watching also reaching, yearning, asking where am I going, and why?
Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer, engineer, and poet. His recent work can be read in Pinhole Poetry, Susurrus Magazine, and elsewhere. Disappearing by the Math, a full-length collection, was published by Silver Boy in 2024. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
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On Wednesdays, she sits at the bar at the pancake cafe. It’s 9:46 a.m., the slice of slow between commuter breakfast and WFH lunch. Straight ahead,
two servers talk, rolling forks into paper napkins. What do they talk about? Her urban regret of never learning Spanish. Faces not flavored with any emotion
or energy from what she can see, their hands circle time with the leisure of untroubled effort. The TV hangs above them, muted. Like the golden rich of polenta
pancakes set before her, a gleaming, silent barter. She joins the men, united in a bubbled moment of her own labor. Careful not to disturb.
Susan Kolon works in health education and writes from Chicago. ‘I hear a song and I can parrot the lyrics in moments. Writing poems takes me infinitely longer.’ She received an M.S. from Northwestern University and a B.A. from Michigan State University, where she was first published as a creative writing student. Her work has appeared with Corporeal Lit Mag, Dulcet LiteraryMagazine, Gnashing Teeth Publishing and Orange Juice, a poetry journal.
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I prefer Place Jacques-Cartier, where I can loll and pretend I’m Hemingway.
I prefer Parc du Mont-Royal, because the grounds were designed by the same Frederick Law Olmsted who landscaped Washington and Jackson Parks in my hometown Chicago.
I prefer Rue du St. Catherine, because the street remains lively with people day and night, as if the Internet and TV didn’t exist.
I prefer winding staircases lacing floor to floor on the outside the Montreal flats, leaving more room inside for those Catholic Canadiens with once-upon-a-time large families.
I prefer the island of Montreal, because where could you find such an urban paradise than on an island?
I prefer the St. Lawrence Seaway, the hefty, watery wonder that leads the world to Montreal’s door.
I prefer the Canadiens tolerance of my poor high-school French, entranced when I ask “Quel heure est-il? to answer “Un peu” to their “Parlez-vous francais?”
I prefer the easy road trip from eco-rustic Burlington, Vermont, to the sophisticated, continental world of Montreal.
I prefer how Chicago was once part of Quebec.
I prefer how Quebec farms look as familiar as Illinois’ but with a French twist.
I prefer to see Cirque du Soleil one day though I have listened to several of its show CDs.
I prefer to hear about Montreal’s 40-degree-below-zero winter days while surrounded by its summer flower beds and breezy fountains.
I prefer Old Montreal, a place that more North Americans who can’t afford to go to Europe can visit and get a similar vibe.
I preferred to be on Candid Camera and ended up on Just for Laughs in Montreal, which was so much more fun.
I prefer the microbrews and sorbets of Montreal.
I prefer how Montreal embraces its Native American art.
I prefer the Parisian satellite radio pumped into the Montreal hotel lobbies.
I prefer the Montreal accent, an Anglicized, flatter version that rings more familiar to my ear, with its New Yorker twist.
I prefer Montreal.
Cynthia Gallaher, a Chicago-based poet, is author of four poetry collections, including Epicurean Ecstasy: More Poems About Food, Drink, Herbs and Spices, and three chapbooks, including Drenched. Her award-winning nonfiction/memoir/creativity guide is Frugal Poets’ Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren’t a Poet.One of her poems will be sent on NASA’s flight to the south pole of the moon later this decade.
A study in social discomfort and expensive toast, with explanatory footnotes, to be read at the end
Tonight I went to “Moms’ Night Out” at a pseudo-posh bar in Santa Monica. This was an extra-curricular event through my daughter’s preschool, organized by Sam, a mother who is far more involved and organized than I am. I’m not an un-involved mom, but when I have time to myself, away from the task of keeping another human alive, my first thought is towards my work or a hobby, like running screaming out into the night.2 I went to prove to the other moms, and to myself, that I can be a person.
In the Lyft, I ruminated on my discomfort about social events. I just don’t know HOW to people. What do people talk about?3 On stage, life makes sense. I know where and when things are supposed to happen. I guess my point is, after getting past “Hello fellow human female. I see you have spawned as well. Yes, we all drink more now,” what do I talk to a bunch of effectively random women about? But still, I wanted to give it a chance.
My Lyft pulled up to the curb. I got out. I went into the bar.
Inside the bar, it was dim, but not sinister-dim, like sex-den dim. You know. A heavy, dark, toile curtain hung close to the entrance, obscuring half my view. I took two steps toward the toile, then panned left to right: a table with two women I did not recognize, two women and a man at the bar, also foreign to me, some empty couches and low accent tables, and then there was Sam, the classroom rep and event organizer. I see Sam every week when she volunteers to set up lunch for the teachers, and/or to do other devoted tasks. Sam has three children and does all this. Did I mention she’s also skinny and beautiful? I am automatically a disheveled, out-of-shape, one-kid-having wuss in her presence. Not that she projects that—she’s actually lovely—this is all in my head. Loudly. In my head.
Sam hadn’t seen me yet; she was checking her phone. Seemed confused. She was the only one on the couch. I turned on my mental “extrovert app,” and the mask appeared.
“Hi Sam!”
“Oh hiiiiii!”
She had a half-empty glass of sparkling wine. I sat down on a dark blue, velveteen, tufted couchlet. I didn’t see anyone else I recognized.
Fucking hell. I was the first one there.
We both made sounds at each other, reflecting the situation. We recounted the facts, as if we were reminiscing about the events of five minutes ago. Almost nostalgic for a distant past, ten minutes ago, back when it was Schrodinger’s Party in our minds, both alive and dead.4
The waiter came by to ask if we’d like to look at the menu. We said yes. We required new activity and stimulation.
Sam said the food at this bar was actually very good, and she put in an order for sliders. I went for the avocado toast. The waiter was patient while we decided how many orders of each we should get. I also ordered an Old Fashioned.
We did mom talk, while the waiter took our orders to the kitchen. Nap strategies, bedtime routines, what do they eat, finding “me time,” and teaching small humans where to poop. My Old Fashioned arrived. I stopped midway to my sip, catching sight of the artisanal-looking orange rind, which set off an overall tangerine effect in the glass. It looked like Dayquil.
Then, Sam asked the introvert’s nuclear question. “How are you?”
It sends me into existential paralysis. How are you physically? Emotionally? How are you finding this incarnation on this plane of existence?10
I told her about my recording project, my album. That’s a thing.
“Mmmm,” she said, and raised her eyebrows, like the information tasted good. There was full eye contact, without a side-glance, and I know that means a human is engaged. Good so far. I told her my husband had been out of town and would be most of the month.
“Mmmmm,” again, but this time with furrowed brow, indicating recognition of the potential hardship of the situation. That’s an empathic facial response. Even if faked, she took the trouble to make it.
I paused, searching for another “thing.” I got distracted because her eyebrows were impeccable. I started wondering about her skin-care regimen. Side-glance. Shit, I’d waited too long to say a thing, and now my presence had become burdensome. She checked her phone. Oh God, I’m an alien. An alien she’s having to babysit, alone, in a bar.
Our conversation was in syndication now, pure re-runs. She had already told me when her kids went to sleep, but I asked again, as if I needed clarification about the specific meaning of 6:30pm. She asked what I was recording. I told her, “my album.” She repeated her face. She apologized about the confusion and tapped on her phone. We alternated head swivels towards the entrance whenever somebody new came in. We repeated the conversation where we told each other what time it was, and how we thought people would’ve been here 30 minutes ago. We confirmed for each other that it was now five minutes later than the last time we checked.
Then silence.
Sam ordered a margarita.
Sam’s margarita arrived, salted.
The table was an embarrassment of sharp-cut, Himalayan salt-crystalled, conically wrapped French fries. In baskets. We ate the sliders and avocado toast. So there we were: two jilted, awkward, skinny-pants-wearing moms-in-a-bar, drinking and scarfing fries, because what the fuck at this point.
If we had chosen, intentionally, to hang out alone together, it wouldn’t have been as awkward. It was only because we had expected a night of perfunctory chit chat, with many people, that we ended up unprepared for genuine social interaction.
Sam looked with concern towards the kitchen. This is when I found out that she’d told the establishment to expect 20 people, and to reserve seating and staff appropriately. This was the social-let-down motherload—when the people you invited aren’t there, and the people you paid to be there are pissed off and glaring.
8:30pm rolled around, and Sam asked how long I had planned to stay. It was clear that truly, nobody else was showing up. I made words about the babysitter. I suggested we have plans with our husbands sometime, maybe a playdate, something intentional.
“Yeah totally!”
“Yeah we totally should!”11
Because the rules are that you must reverse an unintentionally awkward evening with an intentionally awkward one.
So that was Moms’ Night Out—which seemed like a very specific and reductive title, now that the night had passed in the way it did.
So, did I learn anything about how to be a person? Did I prove to myself that I’m a person?13 I learned that sometimes the discomfort goes deeper than me. And sometimes the most prepared, together, responsible folks can still get tapped by the wand of the awkward fairy.14
Footnotes:
2 For the record, “running screaming into the night” is not my hobby. My hobbies are: free-floating anxiety and delusions of grandeur. And watercolor.
3 Aside from Steely Dan, Dark Matter, good/bad use of crash cymbal, Dark Energy, sex, the dishes, more sex, why my software isn’t working, The Singularity, politics, “are changes in emotion metric modulations?”, weird sex, Black people stuff, “where are my earbuds?” Jewish people stuff, Fminor6/9, guys wearing eyeliner, “what are those tiny red spiders called?”, and Star Trek.
I may have digressed.
4 “Schrödinger’s cat” is a thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition. As the story goes,5 there is a cat in a box in the room next to you.6 You do not know how long the cat has been in the box, if the box is ventilated, if the cat has been fed, if the cat has been listening to Joe’s Garage7 or the Best of Celine Dion.8 Any of these variables could render the cat living or dead. Some more than others.9 Until you enter the room and open the box, in your mind, the cat is both alive and dead. Like the party. Before I got there. Get it?
5 Basically.
6 With soundproofing.
7 A three-part rock opera recorded by American musician Frank Zappa in 1979.
8 Please refer to 9
9 Please refer to 8
10 Fine. Needs salt.
11 Scientists estimate that people who suggest “making plans” in Los Angeles have, statistically, a 10 percent chance of actually seeing those plans become reality. Experts theorize that this behavior is due to several common circumstances, such as:
1) Some shit I’ve got to do. 2) “My girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse is sick/a dick/a bitch/in town/out of town/imaginary” 3) Plans with more professionally important people. 4) “Oh, shit I forgot!” 5) Something to do with kids. 6) Having to drive from West side to East side and vice versa, but usually the prior. 7) Having to drive between the hours of 2pm-7pm. Recent studies have shown that Los Angeles people making good on “we should hang out” is less likely than the 405 receiving a hovercraft lane, or a frozen daiquiri blizzard naturally occurring over the Grand Canyon. Though there are differing opinions on how to deal with this social epidemic, 95 percent of experts12 agree that the situation is totally bullshit. 12) The other 5 percent of experts were not available for comment because they “Had a thing, but totally want to get together soon.” 13) No. 14) Different from the Absinthe Fairy, which is a story for another time.
Raya Yarbrough is a writer and singer-songwriter best known for singing the opening song of the TV series Outlander. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Frazzled and MUTHA Magazine. Raya is finishing a humorous memoir about being a parent in a multiracial family while also being a working artist.
Once, when we were visiting the Everglades camp, my second husband Brian sent us into fearful conniptions by stumbling off drunk to lie down and look at the stars. We didn’t know where he was and he wasn’t answering our calls.
This isn’t good, my dad said. People get walking in the wrong direction, he said, loading his gun, and they never come back. Somehow, I knew Brian wasn’t far, but Dad shot twelve rounds into the air nonetheless.
I wonder if it irked Dad that it wasn’t the gun that finally woke Brian, but the continued bellows of me and my sister. He emerged from the sawgrass, tripping over cypress stumps. He begged our forgiveness, trying to explain how the Milky Way had lured him. It was so beautiful.
Though he’s been to the Everglades twice before, those trips started with visits to my parents in Central Florida. Brian hasn’t seen Miami yet. He has only heard my stories. And now he’s dying of pancreatic cancer, in his late forties. We’re traveling the world – Thailand, Laos, Tulum, Cuba – and one of our stops will be the place that shaped me.
We drive, sunshine and air conditioning providing that particular mix I’ve never felt like it feels in Miami. There’s the house on Tenth terrace where I grew up. There’s the Denny’s where I worked – the mini mall now much fancier than it was back then, more landscaping, slick specialty shops.
We’re driving West on Tamiami Trail. I tell him what he probably knows, that an hour on this road would bring us to Monroe Station, where my dad kept his swamp buggy parked. The buggy and the camp were sold to an amiable guy who has shown he’s willing to host our visits out there. My parents sold it without even telling me and my sister. Because we live far away with our families. Because we’re girls. I believe a son would have been afforded right of first refusal. When I said as much to my mom, told her to put Dad on the phone, she panicked, she urged reason, We didn’t want to burden you. How would you fix a swamp buggy, how would you fix anything out there? I’ve known the Everglades since my earliest memories, loved it enough to name my youngest, and Brian’s only child, Cypress. They could have told us, could have given us the smallest say.
I turn off the Trail, driving the circuit. I show Brian the simple stucco box that was my first boyfriend’s home. Memories of salsa parties on the back patio, of the grandmother always sweeping the rug. Here: the Westchester mall where we kids would go for bistec and papas fritas.
Brian, stretching his lips weird because the chemo has left his mouth dry, doesn’t say much. I feel selfish spending time on these memories when time is precious. But then, he’s someone who loves big, and he loves me, so what better way to be in the world right now? Place is a part of us, and so this place will also be a part of our son Cypress, growing with him in mysterious ways. It’s important to see.
Next: Pat’s house, where friends blew a hole in the wall with a military-grade firearm. There’s my elementary school. The sidewalk where, as I biked, a teenager grabbed my ass and then showed me his handgun.
“They kept the boot to your neck,” he says of the violence, of the particular way it was directed at girls.
I’m reminded of another time, when he said, “We’re the devastated generation,” about all the toxins and consumerism and depletion of nature that had been normalized for us. And he said that before he knew about the cancer.
It’s true, the female experience of violence is unique, like the gun that forces declarations of love. We’re supposed to say how we like the boot to the neck, how it suits us.
But also, everything I loved. What the boot couldn’t take from me. The banyans of Coral Way. The beach at night like a black and white movie. The teacher assigning me The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, allowing me to see myself in a grand, artistic way. The deep, pure yearning, emboldened by the crisp blue sky.
And, oh Brian, of the devastated generation. Your dying is proof enough that the boot hurts everyone, that the boot is on everyone’s neck. Every generation and all of us in it. All of us, again and again, bearing the devastation. Repeating the very cycle we’d hoped to disrupt.
Jennifer Bannan’s (jenniferbannan.com) second short story collection, Tamiami Trail, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press Fall 2025. She has had stories in the Autumn House Press anthology, Keeping the Wolves at Bay, the Kenyon Review online, ACM, Passages North, Chicago Quarterly Review and more.
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over the temple encrusted in an exoskeleton of scaffolding and cranes, over the lake bed’s lunar flats where I mistook pickled, half-buried ducks for driftwood and dry grass, over my glass hotel where I scrub white brine dust off my black suede shoes.
I walked and walked across an endless sand and salt plain, between the lot of parked cars and the salt-broth water, tiny scattered people moving as slow and distant from each other as stars in a constellation.
I still hadn’t reached water by the time the sun dipped to the first mountain but I turned around anyway, anxious to outwalk the absolute dark. Tidal forces pull me into the car and back toward the city, moon over its motherboard of lights, mountains like teeth behind it.
Weak sun, bold moon, salt as purifier, salt as punisher. My shoes wear a ring of white, my hair a dry rime of silver down the middle. The moon rises over glittering towers and salt crystals as a low sun slides into unswimmable water. I might be driftwood. I whisper like dry grass. All week people have been distant as stars and shifting like sand. I haven’t seen the same face twice.
Jennifer Blackledge works in the automotive industry and lives just south of Detroit. She has an MFA from Brown University and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in JAMA, I-70 Review, Scientific American, The Lake, Verdad, Kestrel, Twelve Mile Review, SWWIM and elsewhere. Read more at http://www.jenniferblackledge.com.
Helen Geld is a former graphic designer who now enjoys exploring the visual world through photography and art.
Among the publications in which her work appears are, “All Roads Will Lead You Home”, Poppy Road Review, “Still Point Arts Quarterly”, “Loud Coffee Press”, and “Burningword”.
Roger Leege is a photo-artist who draws on his past as a lawn boy, meat cutter, trucker, EMT, carpenter, bass player, painter, embalmer’s assistant, weed-eater, printmaker, union agitator, journalist, videographer, educator, computer scientist, and deep blue Florida man, to tell his tales.
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While walking in Chinatown, Allie says If I had married my college boyfriend, I’d be a single mom on welfare. We are drinking bubble tea, its sunset colors and glistening dark pearls pressed against the cup like faces come to the window. Jason picks up a knob of ginseng, holds it to his nose. We palm lumps of sugared ginger, the transparent moons of lychee candies glow against our skin. Across the street a plant spills itself onto a cement stoop. Above a doorway, like a brass god, a man chokes sound from his guitar, indifferent to us. Three hours until dark. The El arrives and we enter, one by one, into our own lives.
Sarah A. Etlinger is an English professor who lives in Milwaukee, WI.. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of 4 books; most recently, A Bright Wound (Cornerstone Press 2024). Recent work appears in Spoon River Poetry Review, Pithead Chapel, Rattle, and many others.
THE CITY KEY 