Flowers

I think of each life as a flower

—Mary Oliver

Please don’t hate me for telling you this, but I’ve never much cared for flowers.

Oh, not because I sneeze and wheeze and choke and fuss whenever I’m near them, though that’s certainly a factor, and unlike Baudelaire, I don’t see them as mal

it’s just that (and I’m almost afraid to admit it)

I’ve never quite felt the rapturous rhapsody or drunken delight or blissful beauty or beatific grace that others, especially those who spend lots of time with their chapped hands in the muddy earth, get when prattling on about foliage, perennials, and open buds (the secret women’s places that were O’Keeffe’s raison d’etre)

and it has always made me a little sad.

Flowers are living things and we all want to live, now more than ever, and suddenly I’m basking in a photosynthetic glow. And I think to myself, maybe this time they won’t droop and die so quickly. Maybe they’ll stay around awhile.

(And then she had an epiphany!)

I vow to be partial to peonies à la Mary Oliver. Like the good doctor W.C. Williams, I will kiss every asphodel I meet in all the backyards of Rutherford, New Jersey. I will pray to the heavens about that mighty force that through the green fuse* drove that flower. I will chant, chant, chant to the sunflowers that William Blake adored (and that Allen Ginsberg co-opted while perhaps inhaling them a bit too deeply in his tenement haze).

And as for those resplendent open-mouthed tulips, so cherished in the Netherlands? Yes, yes, I can almost hear them breathing, just as Plath** did from her godforsaken hospital bed.

But without the melancholia.

*Dylan Thomas, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”

** Sylvia Plath, “Tulips”

Cindy Hochman is the founder of “100 Proof Copyediting Services,” the editor emerita of the long-running poetry journal First Literary Review-East, and the author of Telling You Everything (Unleash Press, 2022). Her newest book, I Am the Girl, is slated for publication in 2026 by Rain Mountain Press’s Cassandra Series. Cindy resides in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where she meditates, does tai chi, and studies the Russian language.

On Wishing Wisely 1

Your friend in the frozen wasteland, though not plausible, is true to you. It’s for the love of logic you may defer equally to estimable and inestimable depths. An undamped oscillator, you rise to a point of order or move to amend. Between the Planck time and the fabrication of unnatural intelligence the boundary between real and imaginary interlocutors is blurred. There’s no rotation like the slow rotation of the disbelief that you suspended like a mirrored ball. As one Nastasya Filipovna nestles in another, you only regret what your attention spans. Consider the Beethovens in their heart-shaped boxes. Know they disapprove of what your young have done. The image of the visage of the paragon is suitable for framing. In how many ways will the identical quintuplets be arranged? Does every designated subset of seafarers have a patron saint? Does the inventor of the clarinet at least reside outside of space and time?

On Wishing Wisely 2

One butterfly has the best of intentions therefore all have plausible deniability. Should thy dichotomy prove false just add another option and or change the subject. Should your circumstances baffle or fall flat just add a laugh track. Nature hates a vacuum with a passion then Damascus happens. Beards are brought to breakfast. How wide-eyed am I how wide-eyed am I how wide-eyed am I. The equipage, the archipelago, the random and abandoned, seven of those of whom there might have been ten, they also Doppler shift for whom there is no heavenly reward.

On Wishing Wisely 3

As the revision returns nightly to its chrysalis so every celebration short of heavenly reward is premature and every celebration after that unseemly. Extreme sport the enemy of ordinary sport, I say acceleration do to gravity as gravity would be done to, then guess which expert witness will be called on next. When hope bereft of feathers finds no purchase in lieu of the quantity of quality the quantity is inverse to the quality. If seven pray that I be damned and seven pray that I be saved I’ll have a dozen precedents to point to and be rehabilitated daily. To approach is to repel so to withdraw is to attract. There but for the moving averages go I, but for the ratio of love to loss.

On Wishing Wisely 4

The president will see you now. The president will hide then find your keys. There is no monster underneath the bed of nails, no accidental rapture past the barefoot path of glowing coals. Antipathy be accurate or default to approval. Give a man a large prime number and be happy for a day but show that man an algorithm and be happy for an hour. I say, Damn the fatuous beatitudes. Don’t red shift angry. Where the bats and hats leave off the heads of hair begin. Have no imaginary friends before me, said the angel to the innocent bystander, What’s an innocent bystander like you doing in a post apocalypse like this. With veterans of foreign wars as with imaginary friends, you’re innocently gliding on the ice, i.e., as by moonlight propelled.

On Wishing Wisely 5

Attractive nuisances converge conditionally and when rearranged appropriately they may sum to what you want. I’ve been completing sentences so you don’t have to. Fear is the thing without feathers that the influencers hold over the heads of ninety-seven percent of the population. Broken eight-hour clocks are right three times a day. Explanatory variables are continuous not categorical, the salad, entree and dessert are served concurrently and the phenomenon is quantum that confirms the rule of thumb. What is created is not necessarily in nature’s way. I’m shouting crowded theater and crisis actors because speech is free. Neither stability nor entropy may grant to consonance the dissonance’s wish, i.e., to be as happy to be happy as they’re happy to be jostled frivolously. As I say to every astronaut who isolates, The past catastrophe is not a guarantee.

Heikki Huotari wrote his first poem the morning after the major died in the adjacent bed. Since retiring from academia/mathematics he has published more than 500 poems in literary journals, including Pleiades, Florida Review and The Journal, and in six chapbooks and six collections. He has won one book prize (Star 82 Press) and two chapbook prizes (Gambling The Aisle and Survision Press). His Erdős number is two.

Only I Can Prevent the Collapse of Society

The morning is a whizz of cardamom grinding with espresso. Whiffs of extravagance. I begin the day sipping an oat milk latte with rose water. Journal, scroll, discover I have read both of my free Harper’s articles for the month. Sit in my armchair, legs atop a heating pad atop a pillow atop an ottoman. The inbox warns there is not much time for me to prevent the collapse of society and save every nonprofit or media organization I’ve ever encountered. Support the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s commitment to building international understanding, ensure dear Kenyon Review’s pages continue to represent a wide range of perspectives (though not my perspective) (which they’ve rejected) (...four times) (!), join Lambda Literary in preventing LGBTQ+ lives from being erased from public life entirely. I check, yup, these emails were indeed intended for me. I don’t click to learn more. What in this world can be done with knowledge alone?

My moment of indulgence ends, I have to go. I pocket a crumpled five-dollar bill, my keys. Bop down two flights of stairs. It’s too early for noise, yet my left knee yells. A teach yourself SQL in 24-hours manual sits in the landing. Does it contain secrets that could steer me towards treasure, stability, purpose? Yesterday the university invited a good percent of staff and faculty to separate. Voluntarily. Years back, for a class project, my nephew interviewed my mom about our ancestors. She told him they were slaves. Huh. He stared. Like volunteers who never signed up to volunteer—volunteers separated from their family. Oohh. He’s never about our ancestors again. A colleague calls the voluntary separation offer ‘consensual decoupling.’ We’re on reality TV. We could, perhaps should, take our silly prizes, head our silly ways. But optimism, delusion, sunk cost fallacy, and an awareness we are unlikely to ever be cast elsewhere convince most of us to continue competing for opportunities to continue competing for opportunities, despite knowing the producers might boot us off at any moment. Leave us involuntary penniless.

This might be the last season.

Someone huffs the train ain’t running because some fool jumped in front of it and didn’t even fucking die. Through dog dump, empty potato chip bags, and the contents of many garbage cans, I hopscotch to another station, where, down more stairs, it rains on the platform. Broken caution tap drowns in pools of brown water. One day the 1-train will no longer run. A woman sings ‘Killing Me Softly’ with her whole body. The Lauryn Hill version. I love New York City. That five-dollar bill passes from my black hand to her black hand, leaving me nothing to offer the next three people who, like the institutions who email me all day and myself and my colleagues, urgently need individual support. I regret not grabbing that SQL manual. We could have passed it back and forth. We could have arrived at our destinations with confidence, demonstrated skillsets, and fluency in whatever SQL is.

Sheena Daree Romero is a humorist and doodler based in New York City. Her words have received a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellowship, won the Miriam Chaikin Prose Award, made the Longreads Best of: Reader Favorites list, and been published in outlets such as Taco Bell Quarterly, Autostraddle, and Passages North. Sheena’s visual art has been exhibited at the Massillon Museum and is forthcoming at the Urban Arts Space. She’s currently [pretending to be] writing her first novel.

Home

The place I carry

like a camel’s hump

so enmeshed it is in memory.

Details like the floral wallpaper

the pitch of a stair tread creak

a familiar rumble of water pipes

wind whistling past my window –

all of it stored behind my skull.

Once a farm house on a country lane,

it was swallowed by a city,

its gardens turned to islands in the concrete,

chickens still clucking in the yard.

It was my life, my childhood world

that vanished like a dream,

turned to landfill and chimney smoke.

Sharon Scholl is a retired college teacher (Humanities) who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website, freeprintmusic.com, that donates her compositions to small Libeal churches. Her poetry collections, Seasons, Remains,Classifieds, Ghosts, are availabe via Amazon Books. Her poems are current in Sligo Press and Sea Crow Press periodicals.

Iterations of the Insidious “I”

In this initial iteration it is my intention to instigate the ill-advised vertical pronoun.

In this iteration I will investigate all instances of the irascible and ill-fated vertical pronoun.

In this iteration I will try to interest you in my impish and illicit impulses.

In this iteration I will not be idle, even when I’m iffy, ill, impaired, or invisible.

In this iteration I will insist that idioms are idiosyncratic icons.

In this iteration I will invoke intriguing illusions, even if idiotic, inane, or irrational.

In this iteration I will indicate my impatience with iPhones, iPads, iPods (and their ilk).

In this iteration I will include the incantation “isn’t it ironic?”, which I just heard on iTunes.

In this iteration I’m in Iran, Ireland, India, or Idaho.

In this iteration I’m in Istanbul, Inverness, Innsbruck, or Indianapolis, Indiana.

In this iteration I’m inside my irritable ileum.

In this iteration I’m impetuously imbibing an inspiring Italian intoxicant (Salute!).

In this iteration I’m in the isolated intensity of my itinerant imagination.

In this [ibid.], and in the interim [ad infinitum] … inter alia …inter alia … inter … in …

Cindy Hochman is the founder of “100 Proof Copyediting Services,” the editor emerita of the long-running poetry journal First Literary Review-East, and the author of Telling You Everything (Unleash Press, 2022). Her newest book, I Am the Girl, is slated for publication in 2026 by Rain Mountain Press’s Cassandra Series. Cindy resides in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where she meditates, does tai chi, and studies the Russian language.

Alewives

We’re digging a moat
elbow-deep, for C & T’s castle
near the tide-wash line

where sand’s moist enough
to shape, and the overnight
die-off has scattered.

The odd one’s still silver & shiny,
really pops against
all those grayed-off with rot,

sunbaked as shmears of mayo.
The trench fills, fingers claw & scrape
buried rocks & pebbles,

flecks of sediment & shells
that wedge under my thumb
nail. The stench of die-off kicks up,

& the waves—refill, recede, refill,
cloud it all up into a stirred broth
that settles to a floating lattice.

S.D. Dillon has an MFA from Notre Dame and lives in Michigan. His poetry has appeared recently in SORTES, Last Leaves Magazine, and The Shortlist: Best of BarBar 2024, and he received the 2025 Visual Poetry Award from Bacopa Literary Review. He can be found on Instagram at @sddillon50.

Look, you can see it right over there. You can wave to us at midnight!

It was New Year’s Eve 1985. My mom was pointing out the Sheraton Hotel. You could see it from the second-floor balcony of our house. My oldest sister was 15, my middle sister, 13, and I was 11. My mom and dad were going to the Ricky Nelson concert that night, and they were staying at the Sheraton.

We were excited. We thought this concert would save their marriage. Our happy household had become hugely depressing with closed doors, whispered fights and dad sleeping on the couch. Of course, they thought we had no idea. But we did. Kids know.

A month ago, to everyone’s delight, Dad had pulled a Hail Mary. Ricky Nelson was coming to Dallas. Ricky was my mother’s teen idol, her biggest crush. My Dad came home from work and tossed two tickets to his concert on our kitchen table. Mom screamed like a teenager unhinged. It was the first glimpse I ever had of my mother before me. That she existed before I did. That she had been a teenager before she became Mom. I was embarrassed by her girlish outburst. I wanted to remind her who she was. And then again, I didn’t. It was charming for a minute. She was happy and so was my dad. She flung her arms around him. Was this what they used to be like?

The day of the concert, I sat on the counter in my parents’ master bathroom with my legs dangling over the side. My mom stood next to me in front of the mirror which stretched the length of the wall. We played Ricky Nelson songs; we both knew them all. She had sung them to us starting when we were babies as lullabies. I watched as she carefully applied her makeup. She was glorious and glamorous, like a movie star. She spritzed some perfume in the air and walked through its mist to catch its essence. She spritzed the floral cloud in the air for me, and I floated through its light rain just like my mother, I so wanted to be.

The phone rang. My mother and I thought nothing of it. My dad picked it up downstairs. it was James. James was part of the couple my parents were going to the concert with. He asked my dad if he’d seen the news.

No. my dad replied.

Well, we’re not going to the concert. Ricky’s plane crashed. He died. Concert’s canceled.

My Dad called my mom down to the kitchen where he’d put the phone down. The color had drained from his face. He whispered something in my mother’s ear. She let out a gasp.

Who told you that? she accused my dad.

James. He’s on the phone.

My mom picked up the phone. James put Cissy on. Now! Cissy…..

I could hear Cissy wailing on the other end of the line. And then my mom’s wailing mixed in with hers.

My poor Dad, who’d once been the hero, was now the odd man out. He put his hand on my mother’s shoulder. She quickly swatted his affection away.

Mike, Open the freezer. I have some homemade daiquiri in the plastic tub. Just made it yesterday. Pour me one. No, two. There’s plenty. That’s if somebody hasn’t gotten into it already.

I shrank back. We both knew who she was referring to. Me. My mom made daiquiri once a month and she let my sisters and I taste it. She told us we now knew what it tasted like, but it was only for grown-ups. My sisters followed the rules, but I really liked it. I didn’t know it had alcohol. All I knew was it tasted like the Grape Ice I got at Baskin Robbins after church on Sundays except it was lime. And I knew that in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep after the stress of being 10 or 11, the daiquiri tasted wonderful and helped me sleep. It made all my troubles disappear.

Sure enough, my dad scooped out a scoop with deeply lined finger trails. My mom let it cool to a slush and began giving herself a buzz and a brain freeze to forget the pain. I could relate.

My oldest sister told us to go to our rooms, but I stayed,

Did Mom know Ricky Nelson? I asked my oldest sister.

Yes, she said she was going to his concert.

But, I mean, did she know Ricky Nelson? Had she ever met him?

No, He’s famous. When would she have met him?

Then why is she so sad?

My sister sighed and told me again to go to my room. I walked away more disappointed and confused.

Later, I heard my mom’s crying subside into lonely, fragmented lyrics of Garden Party. I heard the stairs creak over my head as my dad carried her up to bed.

I couldn’t sleep. Was this plane crash the end of my parents’ marriage? Why was my mom so heartbroken? My dad’s hero dream had burnt out with a fiery end. I was mad at Ricky Nelson. I was mad at his plane. I was sad about the pain.

The house went quiet; I snuck into the kitchen. I opened the freezer. I pulled out the tub of daiquiri. I sat in front of the closed freezer door on our kitchen parquet floor. Barefoot in my nightgown, tub in my lap, our family dog came and sat next to me. I dipped my fingers and dragged them through the frozen lime ice, freezing and burning them at the same time. That familiar pain before the numb. Alone, I half-sang and hummed to my dog:

I went to a garden party

To reminisce with my old friends

A chance to share old memories

And play our song again…..

Sara Castaneda is a poet/writer. Her poetry collection, Underdog Bet, was published in 2025 by Pegasus/Vanguard Press. Her work has been featured in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Morsus Vitae and Space & Time Magazine. She is a contributor of poems and flash fiction in A Pot Of Basil, edited by Lorette Luzajic published by The Ekphrastic Review imprint. Sara lives in Dallas, TX with her husband, Scott. They are proudly owned by their dog and three cats.

Self-portrait with a dozen breasts

I am all of us. Spaced apart. Cushioned chairs a color we called mauve in the nineties. Waiting. Quietest whispers. Water cooler and Keurig machine. Plastic thickening our air’s carcinogenic load. A (pink) Christmas tree with (pink) lights and (pink) glowing orbs its only ornaments, one-day landfill. A row of (pink) bulbs backlights the check-in desk and a column of (pink) curves requests our IDs and insurance information. Our thumbs doomscroll. Our shoulders hunch in anticipation of the contortion to come: cold plates tortilla press dense tissue with twenty pounds of pressure in hot pursuit of the money shot. One of us wipes a tear from below her (pink) right lid. A (pink) nurse calls three of us back. A (pink) sign reminds us our breasts may be undergoing a range of procedures today so breasts that arrived after yours may be called back before yours. Mine are called back in a herd, reminding me of those New York auditions – “cattle calls” – where the directors knew within five seconds whether they wanted you. Here, it’s less rushed. No less degrading. I am a self, we tell ourselves. Early detection saves life, we internalize. This is care, we hope, trailing behind our breasts, headed to their interrogation.

Edith-Nicole Cameron (she/they) writes, teaches, and mothers in Minneapolis. She used to be a lawyer and before that an actor. They feel lucky to have had work published in various journals, including Literary Mama, elsewhere magazine, Brevity Blog, and River Teeth’s Beautiful Things.

panic unto oblivion

wandering into the gray zone

this bottomless well of unwellness

not quite rayless or stygian,

but you know it wants to head in that direction

one iota better than lassitude or languish

but on its way to inertia

you know a lot of things about it

(but the explanation gets tangled in your tongue)

and you know what it wants to do

(lead you in that direction)

and when it rages like a recalcitrant child

you must let it have its way

until the huff & hissy passes

(I’m warning you

get back in your cage, back in your cage!)

though you know full well

that it will head in that direction again

by 8:00 tonight

Cindy Hochman is the founder of “100 Proof Copyediting Services,” the editor emerita of the long-running poetry journal First Literary Review-East, and the author of Telling You Everything (Unleash Press, 2022). Her newest book, I Am the Girl, is slated for publication in 2026 by Rain Mountain Press’s Cassandra Series. Cindy resides in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where she meditates, does tai chi, and studies the Russian language.

Teaching Persona

When my students say 
I’m their favorite, we’re talking, 
off topic, all avoiding 

our essay work, laughing 
on a Friday afternoon 

brainstorming a nickname 
for an endless chirping cricket
outside my classroom window.

I don’t believe their claims
when they’ve all gone
home or when they skip

my class and nothing has been 
turned in. I’m weeks behind 
on grading and I’ve lost 

count of how many 
papers still wait. 
I pull myself into 

our school parking lot 
on Saturday, sweatpants, glasses, 
my hair in a ponytail—

my students never see this 
side, the impossibility: Clark Kent 
tired of being Superman.

Bio: Megan Munger is a Pacific University MFA Candidate and high school English teacher. Her poetry has been published in Epistemic Literary, The Paddock Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, The Closed Eye Open, Porcupine Literary, and Tipton Poetry Journal. Her work can also be found in other literary magazines and anthologies.

Ariel Alexander Fiore is a Cleveland-based writer, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary artist whose work blends spiritual introspection with lived experience. His poetry has been featured in The Hessler Street Fair Collection as well as The Voices of Real (Issues 6 and 10). With over two decades of writing, Fiore’s work explores themes of grief, faith, memory, and transformation. His creative practice spans film, photography, and literature, grounded in a voice that is both vulnerable and fiercely honest.

Rebecca Dietrich is a photographer and poet from Atlantic City. Her work has been featured in Welter, Seaside Gothic, Third Street Review, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Noyes Museum of Art, where two of her photographs were featured in the Homegrown Expressions: Art Members Unveiled exhibit. Rebecca holds a B.A. in Psychology from Stockton University. You can follow her on Instagram @limericks_and_asphodels

The Waves

I knew our sickness was past cure
When even my old Norton announced 
	—No man is an island—
With the sweet confidence of a man who had never once
Sat marooned at a desk with
Oceanic piles of bills
	rising
		Rising
Like flotsam in the wake of Liberation Day.

And perhaps it’s because
I am not a man on my island
That I doubt men’s confidence 
In our nation holding itself 
	Together
When all I see are ocean waves:

Tariffs installed, 
	tariffs reneged,
Budgets slashed, 
	Tweets like shrapnel
Sent flying from oval offices 
	where polished floors
Await new ballrooms 
	Rising from White House rubble.

All while I sit and stare at the sinking ship of my country 
Where each citizen sits tied to their kitchen tables,	
	Bracing for impact as they
	Count coins for eggs.

Forgive me if I rip out Donne’s poem 
And send it flying over my sea 
Of late notices.

Note from the author: “As a high school educator whose pay is far below my living needs, I struggle with bills, but never more so than this year. With tariff uncertainties, rising food and gas prices, and an unruly housing market in the United States of America, my financial life is stressed, to say the least. “The Waves” was written after I read John Donne’s 17th century poem, “No Man is an Island” in my old Norton Anthology collection when I was looking for comfort. But, instead, I felt rage as I sat at my kitchen table, dealing with bills and late payment notices alone, on my island.”

Madelyn Meyers lives and works under the labels of educator, writer, and wonderer. She has recently published her poetry in Kelp Journal, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Moonstone Arts Center. Updates on her upcoming works can be found at madelynmeyers.com.

When alone except for myself

I wish to linger

studying the textures of seasons

spending time/more time

quiet & un-rushed

no rough edges snagging my attention,

face toward future, eyes wide

here on a meandering path

inclined like a steep stair, getting out of breath

wanting, wanting, wanting to arrive

in field, in meadow

surrounded by wild taking its own course

all of me all of me surging

along the humming

continuum …

Karen Neuberg is the author of the full-length poetry collection, PURSUIT (Kelsay Press), and three chapbooks including “the elephants are asking” (Glass Lyre). Her poetry and collages have appeared in numerous online and print journals and anthologies including 805, Gyroscope, Inflectionist Review, Mackinaw, Nixes Mate, and Unbroken. She holds an MFA from The New School and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

What I’ll Do Instead

I’ll drift.

Carry fire.

Carry rain.

Carve the sizzle so the corners fit.

And I’ll dream as I drift.

Full of punch and pretty. Wind pushing

as I song

what I didn’t know

I intended.

And this is the way I’ll go

without being gone.

Karen Neuberg is the author of the full-length poetry collection, PURSUIT (Kelsay Press), and three chapbooks including “the elephants are asking” (Glass Lyre). Her poetry and collages have appeared in numerous online and print journals and anthologies including 805, Gyroscope, Inflectionist Review, Mackinaw, Nixes Mate, and Unbroken. She holds an MFA from The New School and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Hello, Maddie! Thank you for answering a few questions for Unleash. To kick things off, tell our readers a little about how you came to be a writer across many genres. Congratulations on the newest release, Illegitimate, by the way (one I was honored to blurb).

In 2014 I was going through some old writing tablets—random snippets of stories I someday hoped to write—and found three pages about a dog that we lived next to in our first rental after my husband and I got married. She was always in the yard and had to amuse herself, while her family came and went, walking past her like she wasn’t there. My heart ached for her. So when I ran across the tablet I decided to finish her story and give it a happy ending. In my mind, it was perfect for a children’s book and would provide the message that all dogs need love and attention. That became Ethel the Backyard Dog, an early reader that I shared at schools and libraries. The next year I wrote about my rescue dog, Sammy the Lucky Dog. The rapt attention I saw in the children’s faces while I was reading was very fulfilling. Then, in 2016 I heard a long-held family secret of my German grandmother’s participation in a Nazi eugenics program and I felt strongly compelled to research and write about it. After a few twists and turns, it became a memoir. My interest and reading switched to creative nonfiction, and I fell in love with the essay format.

On your website, you describe copying words with a pencil when you first fell in love with books. How does that early memory influence the way you write today?

As a young rudderless child trying to make sense of my world, words provided a foundation for me. I remember thinking how magical it was that lines drawn on paper can translate into meaning. As those lines became words, then sentences and paragraphs and stories, I began reading and traveled the world, journeyed through time, and was never lonely. I began writing as soon as I could read and created worlds I wrapped around me like a comfortable blanket. I still feel that way today.

How has your time as a business owner influenced your storytelling and creative habits (if at all)? And can you speak a little about the business of writing as you prepare for a book launch.

For years I was in business to business sales and had no problem in promoting whatever product I was selling, whether it was advertising or services. When I first began my own security integration business in 2000, it was myself, a bookkeeper and one technician. We provided plug and play surveillance systems which at that time consisted of analog cameras with a tape recorder. Until the company found a firm foundation and grew to a good size, I was the one who contacted potential customers and “got them to sign on the dotted line.” So I was surprised to find myself shy in promoting my manuscript. Perhaps because it was so personal. The voice in my head kept saying “why would anyone want to read this?” And, I’ve always been camera shy, even as a child. Most of the early photos show me with an indignant scowl, or a pout, as if my personal space was being invaded. In today’s marketing world, everything is up close and personal. I’m working on adjusting to that.

You write about discovering difficult truths about your family’s history in WWII Germany. What emotional or ethical challenges did you face while writing about generational trauma?

As you can imagine, emotions— shock, avoidance, disbelief, sadness—ran rampant not only with myself but my cousins who were affected. Discovering my grandmother’s participation in the Lebensborn program and the influx of genetics we would never know, affected my cousins in ways I can only imagine. It was difficult to accept that our beloved Oma—the woman who raised me until I was six—would deceive her husband and family for “the Fuhrer” and his vision of the Third Reich.

As for me, the journey of finding my father and getting to know him was its own rollercoaster. His family had to accept my sudden appearance, which was not easy for them. My half-brother went through several phases of shock, anger, denial, and finally, acceptance. I felt very fortunate that my father welcomed my sudden appearance after sixty years, but I found myself feeling guilty of creating such turmoil in his life at the age of ninety.

What is the purpose of your writing? How has your writing purpose changed for you over time (if at all)?

What draws us to writing… The love of books and what they give us. I write to share my thoughts and hope that someone, somewhere, finds meaning in my words. I also write for clarity of my own understanding. Being an extremely visual person, I often find answers to inner chaos when I put my thoughts on paper; a different or new meaning presents itself.

You write for both children and adults. How do you decide what to write and when?

Right now I’m more in the adult phase. That may change; who knows! I do have a cool idea for another children’s book: We live on a lake in Central Florida and to go anywhere you have to drive around it to get to a main road. At one of the curves lives a trio that consists of two sand hill cranes and a beautiful duck. They are always together, and a story is forming in my head about how the cranes with their long spindly legs adopted the duck and tried to teach him how to be a crane.

Tell us about Illegitimate and where/when readers can buy it.

ILLEGITIMATE is a braided historical memoir prompted by my aunt’s confession of being a Lebensborn child, which she discovered later in life. She says she always felt different, as if she didn’t belong in the family, and through the years asked her mother if she was adopted. I discovered through my research that many of the Lebensborn children felt this way. As I began researching my family’s history to understand how and why this could have happened to such an average German family, I felt an overwhelming need to finally find my own biological father. My mother effectively severed any ties to him through a court order, and married an American Army officer who adopted me. Decades later I reconnected with my German relatives. Then, right before my 60^th birthday, in a small café in my maternal hometown, my aunt blurted out that she had found her real father, and turned our family history upside down. The revelation stayed with me, and I felt a strong compulsion to write her story. At the same time, I decided it was time to find out who my real father was, to see if I could find closure to my sense of who I was. So, my aunt and I had to know who our fathers were in order to know ourselves.

ILLEGITIMATE will be available on all online book platforms and retail sellers on March 10^th. https://vineleavespress.myshopify.com/products/illegitimate-by-maddie-lock

Visit:

https://maddielock.com/

for more information and upcoming giveaways.

What are you working on next?

I have some ideas, but nothing firm yet. It would be fun to do another children’s book—something light!

Thank you, Maddie!

(At a Certain Age, Questions Found Me)

Is longing to blame for my life of catalyst

and cataclysm, and who am I

with this wavering shadow of myself

entrusted to locate engaging pathways

where I create anew; or am I too much

a deer caught in self-reflection, and am I

still who I was as I am now

stumbling along, but trying, trying?

Karen Neuberg is the author of the full-length poetry collection, PURSUIT (Kelsay Press), and three chapbooks including “the elephants are asking” (Glass Lyre). Her poetry and collages have appeared in numerous online and print journals and anthologies including 805, Gyroscope, Inflectionist Review, Mackinaw, Nixes Mate, and Unbroken. She holds an MFA from The New School and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

We recently announced our WORK-IN-PROGRESS winner! She’ll be interviewed here soon. Congratulations, Angie Curneal Palsak!

As a token of gratitude to subscribers and contributions to Unleash, we’d love for you to join us in a Creative Resilience circle on March 28th 2-3 p.m. ET. This is a free event made possible due to supporters of The Resilient Creative and Unleash Lit.

Theme: Creative Potluck - Bring work you’d like to read, or a poem/quote/prompt/idea that inspires you. We’ll share in the creative bounty.

Agenda:

30 min intros and sharing

20 min writing

10 min sharing

This is about feeding each other creatively, potluck-style.

If you’re interested/available in March, RSVP here. https://luma.com/4sjqt6yz

Our next event will focus on ekphrasis and feature two contributors, Alex Stolis and Catherine Arra. RSVP to our June 19th event here. https://luma.com/zjaejkzl

(We will limit space to keep this an intimate group.)

Wishing you prolific days and creative clarity until then!!

Jen

Director / Founder

Unleash, The Resilient Creative

Subscribe now

Memory

We made love all day, our loud

and insistent lives scratching at the door.

Saturday? Sunday? The only thing worth worshiping

was the mole behind your knee.

We made love all day and the next.

Clouds gathered, rained, and moved along.

Trees shed their cover, froze,

came back again green. We thumbed our noses

at time, and every mirror revealed us as dawn flowers,

wide-eyed and damp.

We made love all day,

knowing our lives must

break down the door one day

loud and insistent

and pull us apart.

Dudley Stone’s poetry is Pushcart Prize-nominated and has recently appeared in Neologism Poetry Journal, Written Tales, and The Headlight Review. He has a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Kentucky, studied playwriting at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Kentucky State Poetry Society. Mr. Stone lives in Lexington, KY. More of his work can be found at dudleystone.com.

Girl With a Pearl Earring

(From the Vermeer painting)

You feel unseen eyes

Boring into your back,

Your shoulder

Turning toward the mirror,

A silent word on your lips.

A sudden gesture,

The naked teardrop earring,

The contrapposto

An unforeseen classic pose

Stopped in mid-question.

The hazy light

Muting old Amsterdam,

Lights your eyes.

But there is only one pearl.

A Malay pirate wears the twin.

The artist’s hand

Caresses the canvas.

Lost in paint,

The imprimatura of dreams

Becomes invisible.

Your almost smile stops,

A blush rises quickly

And fades slowly,

The sight of your self

Reflected in his eyes.

Edward Baranosky has painted seascapes since he was seven years old. His focus on marine-scapes, draws him back to visit his native home in the American east coast, for inspiration from the North Atlantic. His work emphasizes the present - in the ever-changing moments of water. As a poet-artist he crosses the channels and pathways between the visual and the textual. He continues to exhibit in the United States and Canada. Baranosky owns a small press EAB Publishing, for poetry chapbooks and related material. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Education: BFA 1969, Rhode Island School of Design, Major in Painting