Author: Sarah Russell

Retired professor and editor, now writing poetry and short fiction.

Harbor Woman

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The third poem published in the wonderful Rusty Truck this week.

Harbor Woman

She takes them in — the peddler,
minstrel, gypsy. Townsfolk speak
in wanton whispers, how she beds
each one. They rebuke their budding
daughters who mime her loose-hipped
stroll. Addled by her lustered hair, full lips,
boys are whipped for where their hands go
in the night. But the same wives who beat
their sons, go in darkness for her herbs
so they will bleed again. Men, lured by musk
and breasts that push beneath her shawl,
dream her while astride those dowdy wives,
conjure her cries in their grinding. Beside
her hearth, sojourners tell of war and greed
and mutiny, of realms where she could dance
for kings, wear silks, call maids to brush her hair.
They tempt her to break free, but she knows
her place is here, knows she is the wellspring
of sweet water for parched village tongues.

Havana

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Here is the second poem published by Rusty Truck.

Havana

Early morning on the wharf, sharing a thermos
with Juan Pablo. He’s brown and scuffed
as old boots, tough like that too, eyes squinted
with age and sun. He knows the ocean
like his woman’s face, reads stars, wind,
waves, like poems. He’s mending a net, hands
stiff and scarred, sorting gnarls and frays,
ash falling from a Camel held square
between his teeth. A tourist interrupts,
though no one’s talking, wants to hire
the boat to fish tarpon. Juan Pablo grunts
and nods toward a salt-soaked sign
with hourly rates. The guy says he’ll be back
with his wife and kid. Juan Pablo watches him
stride toward a hotel, New York cadence
out of step with the lap of water on pilings.
He snorts, then gathers up the net, half done,
stands with a stumble to favor his bum knee.
He jerks his head toward the seamless join
of sea and sky. C’mon, he says, taking the stub
of Camel and grinding it under his heel.
That cabrón can hire another boat.

All that Remains

Sarah Russell12 Comments

Just had THREE poems picked up at the wonderful Rusty Truck. Thanks, Scot! Here’s the first one.

All that Remains

I rush upstairs when it starts, rain and wind
pummeling the old apple tree, branches cracking.

I had opened the windows wide this morning—
airing out, Mom called it—letting the stale of winter

escape into April. Now this—a storm threshing
the forsythia, shredding yellow blossoms on the lawn.

The landscape blurs through windows as I close them,
drops filling small pores in the screens, collecting dust

in muddy puddles on the sill. There’d been a storm like this
the day Mom was buried. It hurried the pastor’s homily,

made a mire of dirt, fresh-turned beside the grave. I thought
how Dad and I were like the gray, beading drops as we stood

bare-headed, not touching; how we evaporated that day
leaving only grime on the sill.

Thinking About Faith

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My poem is up at the wonderful Poetry Breakfast this morning. My thanks to editor Kay Kestner.

Thinking about Faith

I’m not talking religion here, 
although it’s nice to have that too. 
I’m thinking of the sun-rising-every-day 

kind of faith we take for granted—
that cars coming at me will stay 
in their lanes, that planes 

will land. It’s deeper than expectation—
that the dinner party will go well, 
or the Amazon delivery will arrive 

on Tuesday. It’s more akin 
to assurance—that when my friend 
says she understands, she does. 

Faith is more solid than Emily’s hope, 
more bedrock, but it’s beautiful 
like her feathery allusion—

that you’ll come home every evening,
that we will share our day, 
that you will hold my hand.

Mother’s Recipe Box

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My thanks to Your Daily Poem for publishing my poem this morning as part of their Poetry Parade for Poetry Month.

Mother’s Recipe Box

Friday night baked beans with salt pork, molasses, 
and just enough water to keep them covered, 
simmering in the bean pot her mother used. 

Refrigerator rolls, dusted with flour, punched down, 
rolled out to rise again as doughnuts, cloverleaf rolls 
for company, hamburger buns for picnics. The dough 

kept a week in a big bowl covered with wax paper 
that took up most of a shelf in the icebox, its recipe card 
with Mother’s school teacher penmanship, splotched 

from yeasty hands and buttered fingers. And oh my, 
the Jello concoctions—celery, slivered carrots 
and pineapple in jiggly lime or orange with a mayo 

and sour cream topping. And the congealed 
Christmas staple of cranberries from the grinder 
with orange bits and that ubiquitous celery. 

Some of the cards have friends’ names—Hilda’s cherry pie, 
Wilma’s meatloaf. Some have culinary graphics in a corner—
wooden spoons, checked aprons, Italian chefs winking. 

My daughter asked for the box awhile back. It blesses 
her kitchen from a high shelf. I doubt she has ever used 
the recipes, but she knows its legacy, its secrets.   


 

Enclosure

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My poem “Inconvenient Cemetery” was just published in a British poetry anthology called Enclosure, exploring how we partition land for the public good or private use. It’s available on Amazon, and has a wonderful selection of poetry. Here’s my contribution, previously published in Red River Review.

Inconvenient Cemetery

 
At a corner where two 6-lane highways cross
lies a 32-soul cemetery. 
Bindweed crawls on crooked markers
reading Beloved Mother, Cherished Child
Too Soon Gone, R.I.P. George Lindstrom 1842-1905.
Around it sprawls a shopping mall
with Neiman Marcus and Forever 21.
Home Depot is across the street
and a Landmark 12 Screen Cinema’s nearby. 

 Once this was a village crossroads
where The Church of the Nazarene stood. 
Gravestones wore flags and geraniums then.
Kinfolk came to mourn here, and churchfolk
came the day before Palm Sunday with kaiser blades
and trowels so it looked nice for Easter. 

 But the old church burned in ’29, 
and members gravitated to The Church of Christ.
Then the suburbs spread this way, and well,
you know the rest. 

 Developers want the site for Arby’s,
but dead Nazarenes need relatives’ permission,
archeologists and legal briefs to move. 
Not worth the effort, shrugged the planning board. 

 So they’re swapping the rundown Victorian fence— 
iron with rusty curlicues—for a wood one six feet high.
Today they set the posts, and only one guy crossed himself
when a marker that said Always In Our Hearts fell over.

  A privacy fence they call it. 
Once it’s up, we can all get on with life.

Emergence

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My thanks again to Corey Cook and Red Eft Review for publishing “Emergence.”

Today I saw a single silky thread from aspen 
to eaves. I traced it and watched a spider, 
backlit by the sun, weaving precise gossamer 
tendrils, interconnected. There’s a new hatch 
of dragonflies at our pond, the final leg 
of a year’s journey from egg to nymph to adult. 
It’s called Emergence—their last, fruitful days.
It’s what I feel after 80 years—an emergence 
of days, of seasons, each one savored,
and family—eggs, nymphs, adults—the intricacy 
of webs and silken threads.

Autumn

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My thanks again to Corey Cook, who took 3 of my poems to publish in Red Eft Review. Here’s the second one.

Autumn

Sugar maples are the first to turn,
mottled orange and scarlet with the green,
trying on the season. I need a sweater
now for morning walks.

The geese abandon summer ponds
in keening, migrant skeins to follow
shorelines south.

In twilight, remnant fireflies
glint urgent calls to mate, hopeful,
as we are, for one last tryst
before winter.

Ode to my Purse

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My thanks to Corey Cook, editor at Red Eft Review for publishing this poem.

The one that’s 10 years old —
its leather soiled and supple,
lining grayed by a thousand
ins and outs of billfolds, keys,
candy. The purse fits me,
softening with use, sagging
into the middle of itself, scarred
by day to day, but refusing
to concede to age, zippers
still meshing, handle still
carrying its weight, stitching
still strong.

Somewhat of a Christmas Miracle

Sarah Russell13 Comments

Reposting this little Christmas story because everyone needs a chuckle in this hectic week before Christmas.

…..

Uncle Barney had Brillo-y hair he dyed a yellow that isn’t found in nature and a matching handlebar mustache he waxed and curled and kept touching with such fondness that people sometimes looked away. Aunt Myrtle said if he’d spent as much time touching her as he did that damn mustache, maybe they’d have had children. She said this out loud at family gatherings, which made everyone almost as uncomfortable as Uncle Barney’s mustache-fondling.

I was twelve the year Uncle Barney forgot his wax when he came to the farm for Christmas. It had never happened before, like if you forgot your false teeth or underwear. He didn’t notice until the next day when it was time to re-wax the five-inch protrusions to go to church on Christmas Eve. Then all hell broke loose — ranting and pacing and obsessive twirlings of the protrusions trying to will them into the mirror-image, C-shaped curves they would have assumed with wax. In the kitchen, Aunt Myrtle muttered, “Serves him right.” But no amount of twirling would make the sides match. The right side curved forward as if it was hitching a ride somewhere, while the left side wouldn’t hold much of a curl at all and looked as if it was trying to run away.

Uncle Barney didn’t want to go to church with us. We kids told him that God wouldn’t mind, and the Baby Jesus was too little to notice, but I don’t think he cared about heavenly judgments. He got dressed to go but then looked in the hall mirror, twirling and swearing and getting red and even adding spit, which only made the the ends droop more. Finally he gave up. “I can’t go,” he murmured to the mirror. “I just can’t go.”

And poor Aunt Myrtle, who had a new Christmas sweater she’d knitted herself with all three wise men and the gold parts in tinselly yarn that glittered a little too much, Mother said, for church-wearing, decided to stay home too. “I’ve lived with him for 50 years,” she said, “and I’ve never seen him this low,” which made us all raise our eyebrows a little, because we had been to their 45th anniversary party in October.

We didn’t see them after church. But it was nearly midnight when we got back because of a way-too-long sermon from Rev. Funkhouser who should have known better with all the extra carol singing and candle lighting and scripture reading that has to be done at Christmas, so we didn’t think anything of it.

Next morning, Mom and my other aunt, Lydia, and cousin, Rachel, whose kids are bratty and always get into my stuff, were in the kitchen making waffles and pouring orange juice and yelling to Rachel’s kids that they couldn’t open presents until after breakfast and wondering where Uncle Barney and Aunt Myrtle were because it was going on 8 o’clock, and usually they were early risers. Aunt Lydia called up the stairs twice that breakfast was ready, and once Aunt Myrtle called back that they’d be right down.

We finally sat down without them, and Dad said the special long grace that he keeps on tap for holidays, and then we heard a giggle, and there they were in the doorway. We probably wouldn’t have recognized Uncle Barney except for the Brillo-y yellow hair, because the mustache was gone. Completely gone! Nothing under his nose but a scraped-up-looking upper lip.

No one could think of anything to say, but finally Aunt Myrtle, who hadn’t smiled in her whole life, I think, looked up with this big-ass grin on her face, reached over and patted Uncle Barney, who was grinning back at her, and said, “What a lovely Christmas morning!”

Happy Holidays, everyone!

– Sarah Russell
First published in Everyday Fiction

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