Metamorphic

by 2021 Prose Poetry contributor Claire Bateman

My writing tends to arise from several sources, all filtered and transformed through the chaotic creative process known as “combinatory play.”

First, there are my own obsessions. I’ve always been fascinated with the phenomenon of sleep, that altered state we enter collectively on a regular basis though each of us experiences it alone—how mystical, how paradoxical, how completely ordinary! And I’ve always loved gems and jewels; in an archetypal sense, they’re like dreams or dream—messages since they speak to us of the hidden world of caves, the underground, and the sea. Though such stones can be cut and shaped, bought and sold, there’s an irreducible otherness about them, an ineradicable feral quality I find compelling, so it made sense to me to link them with sleep. 

Another writing source is direct input from daily life, like the news item I saw last year about eco-wear featuring fashion boots made from mushrooms instead of leather; I suspect that this story lodged in my brain where it underwent the transformation that sparked the idea of clothing created from geological materials. And would I have written this piece if we weren’t in a pandemic, seeking a treatment/cure? I’m not sure. Certainly, though, from our own unfolding ecological disaster comes the subtly ominous undertone as the narrative touches on the ethically ambiguous extraction process that makes the insomnia treatment possible. 

Though I granted my suffering characters relief, something in me didn’t want to let them off too easily, so their previously innocent, unreflective relationship with sleep has been transformed into something new and indeterminate: “Nor do they talk about their sleep, commenting on its quality or recounting dreams; a new diffidence prevails, like the shyness of lovers reunited after an epic absence, as the one who stayed behind, noticing subtle changes in the other, wonders if this is indeed the longed-for union, or perhaps something else entirely.”  While I did mean the narrative to stand on its own as a speculative piece, I may also have been referencing the fact that we’re being changed by the pandemic in ways we can’t yet even identify. I think it’s good to guess but not be too certain about all the layers of thought in the work of writing.

*    *    *

Claire Bateman is the author of nine poetry/prose poetry collections. She is also a visual artist. Learn more about her here.
 

The Landscape Listens

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Poetry contributor Holly M. Hofer

The title, “The Landscape Listens,” comes from “There’s a certain Slant of Light” by Emily Dickinson. 

In a “found words” exercise in my creative writing class in college several years ago I picked a few interesting words out of some journals my professor passed around. I began writing and the piece took shape as a reflection on discontentment, intrusive thoughts, religious ideas, personal history, and included some much-needed reassurance from talking flowers. Years and many edits later, I reflect on some of why I might have written what I wrote . . .

Connections between our feelings and thoughts and how we perceive the natural and human-arranged world are not just the stuff of metaphors and similes. There’s a balance, a mystery -- how much we are projecting our internal thoughts and feelings on to the world around us, and how much the external world around us is influencing our bodies and minds.

If we only listen hard enough or observe more carefully, will we hear or see the answers to console us or lead us to more meaningful lives? Is our external “landscape” attuned to us enough to give us these answers we seek, or to surprise us when we’re not seeking at all? Are we only hearing our own voice, in the end, whether it is condemning or consoling?

We’re not always in proximity to beautiful surroundings to soothe our spirits. And even the lovely things of life can seem sad, or insulting, if we’re in a difficult season.  In my poem, the descriptions of a “sore colored bug with round black bruises” or an arrogant cardinal seem to be distortions of the speaker’s discontent mind more than an accurate depiction of the state of the bug and bird in her garden. The extent to which we do this is perhaps not quantifiable, but I’m pretty sure it happens all the time at different levels.

If the negative perceptions of the speaker are of her own making, how does she get out of it?

The turn of the negative thinking at the end of the poem, with the flowers reminding the speaker that they and she never have flown like the birds or ladybugs, seems to have come from disruptive new source -- so was it the flowers captivating beauty speaking to her? Or was it the speaker’s own mind reacting to some sweets she just ate? Some new will power? Was it deus ex machina or the holy spirit? Does the landscape really listen, and can it respond?

 *    *    *

Holly M. Hofer, a native Floridian, currently works in the building engineering field. She's been published in Welter, The Avenue, and The Flagler College Review.

The House: An Essay on Labor and Loneliness

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Poetry contributor Atreyee Gupta

On certain quiet after-midnight hours I hear the place where I live express itself audibly: wooden joints creak, old pipes groan, wind sifts through cracks. My home comes alive for me during these times. And I become not only an inhabitant and a caretaker of the space, but also a fellow living organism in conversation with the dwelling. In my poem, "The House," I explore the tension of this relationship and the impact labor and loneliness have upon that connection. My abode is "belligerent upon disruption," waiting "to be--cajoled into being." The building itself has expectations of its dweller and the narrator must navigate those burdens.

I was especially inspired by works such as "Pensive Hours" by Bamewawagezhikaquay (also known as Jane Johnston Schoolcraft), "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (born Asa Bundy Sheffey), and "My Grandmother's House" by Kamala Surayya (popularly writing under the name Madhavikutty). These poems deal with the interiority of human lives as they experience kinship, employment, and gender structures.

Joys and griefs are measured through the lens of home. Meditation and the natural world are juxtaposed with isolation and broken bonds within the domicile. For instance, the poet Surayya imbues her grandmother's house with personality. "There is a house now far away where /  once I received love / ... How often I think of going... / [to] pick an armful of / Darkness to bring it here to lie / Behind my bedroom door like a brooding dog." The building becomes more than an enclosure. The love and care experienced within provide character to the four walls.

However, for the person accomplishing the family chores, "Hours stretch --- / ... Days tumble-- / Halls become tunnels through which my life / walks without me." As Schoolcraft writes in "Pensive Hours," a life lived indoors can feel isolating: "The sun had sunk in a glowing ball / As lonely I sat in my father's hall." So often those performing domestic labor go unnoticed, something Hayden expresses beautifully in "Those Winter Sundays," "Sundays too my father got up early / ... then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday ... made / banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him." 

In my poem "The House" I wanted to hold these contradictions of love and loneliness, labor and leisure within tight proximity.

*   *   *

Atreyee Gupta explores the liminal spaces in which humans interact with society, geography, and identity. Atreyee's work has been published by Arc Poetry, Blue Cubicle Press, Rigorous, Jaggery Lit, and Shanghai Literary Review among others. For a fictional treatise on isolation and belonging, you can read Atreyee's short story, "Cocoon," published by Apparition Lit in their Wonder Issue. For other works, check out Bespoke Traveler, a digital alcove for curious travelers.

The Healing Wave

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Fiction contributor David Partington

My story "The Healing WAVE" is a coming together of two separate threads. I'd been reading a lot of Saki, the Edwardian short story writer, since the start of the pandemic, and found more than ten instances where he had built a plot around someone telling elaborate lies--often a teen lying to an adult. I wanted to try something similar, but fact checking has become so easy in the internet age that such a plot would hardly be tenable. For this reason I decided to make my protagonist a Luddite around 1999.

The other thread arose from my interest in relics of Catholic saints. Relics taken from the body of a saint (usually hair or a bone) are considered first-degree relics. Something that had belonged to, or was worn by a saint is a second-degree relic, whereas third-degree relics are objects that have been in contact with first- or second-degree relics. 

I love the idea of trickle-down holiness, and thought it would be funny to transfer it to a secular context. Britney Spears was one of the biggest celebrities in 1999, so she became my saint, and a boy who touched her pants thereby became a third-degree relic with healing powers.

The line, "I've seen people wearing the letter 't' on a chain around their necks, but those were never authorized," was problematic for the Bacopa editors, because normally one would have written "the letter T," capitalized without quotation marks. I'm grateful that they retained the lower-case because the letter T needs to look like a crucifix for the joke to work.

*     *     *

David Partington is a newly retired zookeeper who has taken up short story writing as a pandemic pastime.

Emissary on the Wall

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Prose Poetry contributor Danae Younge

I remember sitting on my living room couch at around 1:00 AM, looking at the ceiling and pockets of space where I might find an idea to craft a poem. That part is always the most painful--the waiting, knowing for certain I am going to create something before being able to sleep but not having any clue what it is. Even after the idea comes to me and I'm in the process of putting it into words, this intense itching feeling persists. I don't think I've ever related more to a sentiment about writing than Dorothy Parker's epiphany, "I hate writing, I love having written."

I had zoned out visually at that point, lost in my own 1:00 AM jumbled mind, when my eyes came back in focus, and I realized I had been staring at the painting of a girl hanging above the mantel for over 5 minutes. Maybe I wasn't completely zoning out. Maybe my subconscious was waiting for my thoughts to catch up. Either way, I identified that silent painting as the cause of my itch and began the process of giving it words.

I was inspired by the idea of contrasting motion with stasis--how things we believe to be crystallized in memory are actually constantly adjusting and evolving to accommodate present day. Many people comment on how the past affects the future, but I wanted to illuminate how this relationship is bidirectional, the moments we admire and observe like paintings are constantly looking back at us, affected by our current realities, emotions, and psyches.

. . . Now I notice how her ears perk up to eavesdrop, the spy, like poison weeping from the vial, like an antidote; every word we giggle into handfuls of midnight, hieroglyphic salt stains that whisper on the couch cushions, the shivers annexed from our minds during sleep.

 

As an undergraduate writer, I am beyond honored to be able to share this piece through such a highly regarded literary journal. As of December 2021, I am published/forthcoming in more than thirty literary magazines around the world. Some recent publications include PINK N♀ISE, published in Rust + Moth Magazine and "Nautilus," published in Perhappened Magazine. To read more of my work, head over to my website and subscribe for free updates.

 

After the Harvest

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Fiction contributor Scott Ragland

I was inspired to write "After the Harvest" after hearing an NPR segment about smoke from rice-stubble fires in northern India causing hazardous air-quality conditions in New Delhi. 

That dynamic touched on several interesting themes for me, particularly around the idea of the rural/urban divide and how technology can both save and threaten us. (And frankly, it was fun and stimu-lating to depart from the usual "write what you know" mantra!)

Then, in doing research for the story, I learned more about the history of famines in India, which gave me the idea of weaving some of that history into the story. It also got me thinking about generational family dynamics. 

Kuldeep learned from his father and, for the most part, continues farming the way he did. But his wife's death and his concern for his daughter's future make him realize he needs to break with the past. Baljit carries that further by embracing renewable-energy technologies. 

The story's closing scene of her scattering her father's ashes over the fields is intended to symbolize this evolution, both honoring his legacy (and, ironically, echoing his practice of leaving rice-stubble ashes in these same fields) as well as showing how his willingness to change planted the seed for her to move beyond it.

*    *    *

Scott Ragland has an MFA in Creative Writing (fiction) from UNC Greensboro. His flashes have appeared in Ambit, The Common (online), Fiction International, the minnesota review, and Brilliant Flash Fiction, among others. He lives in Carrboro, N.C., with his wife Ann, two dogs, and a cat.

 

Hunger for a More Fruitful World

 by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Poetry contributor Frederick Livingston

Over the course of several weeks in late winter, I noticed the apples, plums and pears come alive in my new home on the Northern California coast. I struggled to understand the phenomenon at first. It didn't feel like spring yet and I was concerned that an unexpected frost might shatter this frail unfurling. Slowly, I noticed other plants revealing flowers, until eventually the landscape was covered in color. Suddenly spring felt definitive.

I wondered what would have happened if the fruit trees, with their long sense of time and deep roots, never took the first steps from winter to spring. Would the other flowers find that courage themselves or would they stay waiting for a more fruitful earth? It struck me how flowers, not leaves, were the first to emerge from buds, proving dreams precede the means.

Maybe there is a signal the trees feel that I do not, but I could not avoid the parallels between the bravery of this beauty and the question of how societal change occurs in an environment of cold uncertainty. Studying ecology and peacebuilding has shown me many paths to despair, but witnessing this unguarded faith in the future gave me a powerful example of how hope shapes our world.

            Pear Blossom
       Mendocino, California

this tree could be dead
or dreaming
...
what would the Earth look like
if all of us had such courage
to offer our most tender selves
not only when spring is certain
but when we can no longer bear
our hunger for a more fruitful world?

*     *    *

Frederick Livingston plants seeds in the liminal space between food justice, ecology, and peace. His work has appeared in literary magazines, academic journals, public parks, and bathroom stalls. Compelled by the power of metaphor to shape our world, he hopes to share in telling new stories.

Our Connection to Ancestors

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Poetry contributor M. Cynthia Cheung

The Eyrbyggja Saga survives in fragmentary manuscripts written in Old Norse, the oldest part of which is thought to date from the thirteenth century. The Saga mentions the two berserkers that appear in my poem "Sightseeing," and anyone who travels to Iceland today can see the Berserkjahraun lava field, including the path the men were said to have made. 

Icelanders today can still read the Sagas directly in the original language. Just imagine the equivalent for modern English speakers like ourselves--being able to understand and savor Beowulf, or even Chaucer, without any translation! How do we, as individuals, cope with the inevitable changes that time brings to memory, myth, and language? Should we strive to maintain a connection to our ancestors--whether linguistic, cultural, spiritual, or biological--and if so how do we go about it?

I have no answers, of course. What I do know is that the time my husband and I spent walking along that path is now one of my most treasured memories!

 *     *     *

M. Cynthia Cheung is a physician whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO, Sugar House Review, Zócalo Public Square, NOON: the journal of the short poem, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and others. Find her on Instagram @zoologicapoetry.

Writing "Dream Catcher"

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Fiction contributor Elizabeth Christopher

I started writing "Dream Catcher" a couple of months into the pandemic. We had been nestled at home together for weeks--my three kids, my husband, and I. My husband soon returned to work outside the house, but I never did. Rather, my office became a refinished room in the attic, where I wrote copy for a technology company during the day and worked at my fiction before sunrise and late at night.

When we had a COVID scare, I also slept in that attic room. Though I was self-sequestered, I became aware that I wasn't alone. I heard "wings beating behind plaster and lath" in the wee hours of the morning. One time, I got out of bed, crept across the dark room, tapped on the wall, and waited for a response. None came. But eventually a story did.

The story was about a woman older than I am. Her house was an empty nest, unlike mine. Her children no longer "fluttered around these rooms" like mine still do. Yet, alone in my attic space, I could feel her loss, her grief for her grown children who had flown off to faraway places, and I imagined the regret she might feel for those times she resented them, when they were small and "their presence felt heavy."

They were always climbing into my lap pulling at my arms. The air in these rooms was thick with their wanting. It was like gravity.

The guilt from her belief that she drove them away weighed on this woman, as did the guilt of killing the mice whose feces she found in her muffin tins, "like some miniature game of Mancala." But she would not make that mistake again. She'd protect those "small downy bodies huddled in a thatch of leaves and insulation" within her walls, those mice whose teeth made "sunbursts" in her cereal bag, and that bird that crashed into her window like "a tennis ball's thwack."

It's no wonder that birds flew into many of the pieces published in the 2021 edition of Bacopa Literary Review as the editors noted in their foreword. The pandemic sent us indoors, leaving us to look out at a smaller, more intimate world from our windows. What I saw, and I guess what many others did too, were birds--birds persisting in their nest building, in their singing, in their fluttering--day after day, season after season. How their small, nearly weightless forms unsteadied me and filled me with hope, just like stories do.

*     *     *

Elizabeth Christopher is a freelance writer living in Melrose, MA. Her stories and essays have been published in HuffPost, The Writer, Obelus Journal, and elsewhere. See more at Elizabeth Christopher's website.

 

"Virtual Season: 2020"

by Bacopa Literary Review 2022 Poetry contributor Helen Bournas-Ney

In the first year of the pandemic, before there were vaccines and therapies, or anything we thought could help—we were careful and in retreat from the world most of the time in our apartment in New York City. During this period, my husband and I would sometimes venture forth to the open spaces behind our apartment building to get some sun and to see our masked friends and neighbors walk by. We would take our retro folding chairs with us and try to enjoy what we could during those stressful days.

As the afternoons wore on and this grassy area was thrown into shade, we would pick up our folding chairs and follow the sun, moving to our parking lot, which was unshaded by trees and so much warmer.

In that parking lot, the sun would warm us and we would feel the joy of the day, an extended day. This felt like a short-lived but lovely escape from the chaos and fear surrounding us in the early months of lockdown. Here you could forget about it all and just lift your face to the sun.

Small pleasures. And looking where to find them—to figure out just where to put my chair. / I think it must be anywhere that sun allows.

*     *     *

Helen Bournas-Ney was born in Ikaria, Greece, and grew up in New York City. She received the Anais Nin Award for her work on Rimbaud and George Seferis. Most recently, her work has appeared in Plume Online, The Ekphrastic Review, Ekphrastic Writing Responses: Edward Hopper (18th poem down on the page), One Sentence Poems, Mom Egg Review, and the anthology "Plume Poetry, 7."

Read Bournas-Ney's "Virtual Season: 2020" and other fine Poetry, Prose Poetry,
Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

 

Not Naming, Not Knowing

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Fiction contributor Shuly Xóchitl Cawood

I never know where a story will go when I sit down to write. All I ever have is a situation. I don't know the backstories of the characters--I learn as I write, figuring out their secrets, their fears, their losses, and what brought them to the situation in the first place.

When I started to write “Not Naming It” (which was of course untitled at the start since I didn’t know what the story was about), all I knew was there was this young couple, Marisol and Elton, and they were buying a farm in the middle of nowhere after being city dwellers, and there was a cat involved—a cat that one member of the couple didn’t want. Even in the first draft I wrote, this was the first line I set down on the page: “The cat came with the farm. A stipulation.”

Why was this cat important? And what would make two people give up the life they had and move to the middle of nowhere?

I found out as I wrote. Now this story is part of my second short story collection, and the stories are all linked. In some cases it took me a while to figure out how some of these characters knew each other.

Not knowing is the fun of writing to me. In all other areas of my life, I want to know as far in advance as possible about everything. I can’t stand not knowing. When I was in the dating world, I would try and guess what would be the reason for the breakup that was likely to come eventually. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t guess correctly. When I met my husband, I couldn’t figure out what would break us up—though I did try.

Sometimes it’s best not to know in advance. In writing, that is definitely the case for me.

  *   *   *

To learn more about Shuly Xóchitl Cawood, go to www.shulycawood.com.

Read Shuly Xóchitl Cawood's "Not Naming It" (pp. 80-85) and other fine Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, and Prose Poetry in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

Our 2022 Editorial Team

 We're excited at Bacopa Literary Review to introduce a talented and varied team

Editor-in-Chief J.N. Fishhawk is a poet and freelance writer. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks and Postcards from the Darklands--ekphrastic poems accompanying artwork by artist Jose Ibanez. Fishhawk and illustrator Johnny Rocket Ibanez published their first-in-a-series children's book Billy & Tugboat SallyForth in 2020. Information at fishhawkandrocket.com. 

Associate Editor Mary Bast's creative nonfiction, poetry, and flash memoir have appeared in a number of print and online journals, and she's author, co-author, or contributor to eight professional books from her career as a psychologist, leadership consultant, and Enneagram coach. Bast is also a visual artist.

Managing Editor Tessa Walters is a poet, writer, and songwriter living amongst the orange trees. They enjoy writing anything from poetry to fiction to plays. Their favorite work is Shadow, a play they wrote at fifteen and produced at eighteen which explores how depression can feel like purgatory. Whether they're recording original songs in the voice notes on their phone, hosting a Poetry Jam at the CMC, cuddling up with a library book, baking a bundt cake or pulling needle through thread, Tessa is presently enjoying life as a rebel without a clue.

Fiction Editor Alec Kissoondyal is a student at the University of Florida currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in English. He is also a writer for Narrow Magazine and an ambassador for the Florida Hemingway Society. His short story, "Smudge," was published in the 2021 issue of Bacopa Literary Review. He has forthcoming publications to be released in Drunk Monkeys Magazine, The Bookends Review, and The Underground.

Creative Nonfiction/Humor Editor Stephanie Seguin studied English Literature and French at the University of Florida. She has published humor, short fiction, and personal memoir and spent over 15 years as a freelance editor and teacher of languages.

Poetry Co-Editor Oliver Keyhani is a visual and performance artist, poet and writer. He spends his time wondering about the spirits that put objects around us that cause us to stub our toes and funny bones, or those ghosts that pull out the chairs from under us just as we are about to sit. He can be found studying things and drinking hot chocolate. 

Poetry Co-Editor Reinfred Addo is a Ghanaian-American writer. He is the author of the poetry collections Washed Over and The Dedicadas (shortlisted for the GAW Literary Awards and finalist in North Street Book Prize). His work, including his health humanities creative writing, has been published in various publications and by various organizations such as Tampered Press and Signs of Life: An Anthology. Addo's favorite poetry communities in Gainesville are Thursday Night Poetry Jam (at the Civic Media Center), ARTSPEAKS, and Dopen Mic.

Hero's Eyes

by Bacopa Literary Review Fiction contributor William Nuessle

Jessie tipped her gauntleted hand carefully so the peregrine falcon would step off onto the fence post and grip the wood with all six razor-sharp talons. Heronimus settled on her perch, scissoring her blue-gray wings behind her back, studying her master with eyes of yellow-rimmed obsidian.

"You can do this," the falconer-in-training whispered to both of them.

Jessie is the main character in a (so far) unpublished novel written in 2020; by the time that story is taking place she is nineteen and a fully trained falconer. At some point after the manuscript was finished and resting, I realized that I wanted to know about this moment--when she and Hero had their first flight.

Pulling a gobbet of raw meat out of the pocket, she placed it in her gloved fingers where Hero could see and whistled down-up-down like they'd practiced over and over.

Without hesitation Hero leaned off the post, her talons scratching the wood. A rapid whumpwhumpwhump of powerful wings, a lifting of taloned feet later and Hero was feeding, the comforting two pounds returned to Jessie's wrist.

"Well done, my love," she whispered, elated.

The moment in and of itself was worth a close look, but the chance to also further explore the tempestuous relationship between Jessie and her mother offers (one hopes) a layer of depth to an already interesting story.

*    *    *

Will Nuessle holds a third-degree brown belt in ninjitsu, rides a Harley, primary caregives three little boys, and claims he can recite the alphabet backwards in less than thirty seconds. More of his writing may be found at Will's Worldwide Writing -- The Story So Far.

Read William Nuessle's "Hero's Eyes" (pp. 136-138)
and other fine Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, and Prose Poetry
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

 

Warning

 by 2021 Poetry contributor Carolyn Martin

Stories from National Geographic have often inspired my poems including the one published in the 2021 edition.

"Warning" was prompted by a statement in Jodi Cobb's article, "Strange Reflections" (March 2019), which I used as the poem's epigraph:

When confronted with the limits of the known world,
a 16th-century European cartographer inscribed the warning
"Here Be Dragons" on a small copper globe. Beware: What lies
beyond is unexplored--and perilous.

"Warning" begins with the challenge to find a vantage point high enough to see the horizon where we can ". . . wait   for flames   four legs/ a scaly frame. . ."

It ends, however, with the realization that the perils in this century are not unexplored dragons, but they lie in realities ". . . like love/and loss   grief and regret   prejudice and hate . . ." These are "lurking nearby" in the "world-at-hand" and need to be explored.

Here's another poem prompted by the National Geographic and links to poems recently published in The Phare, One Art, and The Headline Review.

*    *    *

Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her poems have appeared in more than 130 journals throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. She is the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation. Find out more at Carolyn's website.

Enjoy Carolyn Martin's "Warning" and other fine Poetry,
Prose Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

 

In Front of the Full-Length Mirror

 by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Creative Nonfiction contributor Jennifer Lang

"In Front of the Full-Length Mirror" was many versions before this one. I started it during my MFA as a rough guide to my body, each scar with its own story, twisting and turning through time. 

Only years later did I understand how un-unique my story is after reading Dana Jennings' "Our Scars Tell the Stories of Our Lives" in The New York Times and David Owen's "Scars: A Life in Injuries" in The New Yorker. 

Still, I stuck with it. Compelled to write about my marks. Despite numerous iterations, the structure stayed intact: from foot to head, nonlinear, that ended where I intended.

But between the time I started this essay in 2015 and finished it in 2020, I had a wake-up moment that altered the focus and changed the tone: the phone call from my dermatologist about the melanoma, followed by nine stitches and cancer screening. I went back into the story to add the first scar, the hardest one to live with, the one of morbidity and impermanence, adding lines like:

"Death is like looking in the mirror, seeing our deeper selves, the bare-bones truths. I am dying, my wounds evidence of this promise. They remind me of my fragility, my inability to stop nature."

After loads of rejections, I am thrilled my essay found its home in Bacopa Literary Review.

*     *     *

Jennifer Lang's essays have appeared in Under the Sun, Ascent, and Consequence, among other publications. Read more of her work at Israel Writers Studio and reach out to Jennifer on her Facebook and Twitter pages. 

Read Jennifer Lang's "In Front of the Full-Length Mirror" and other
compelling Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, and Prose Poetry
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021.

Oh. There Is No Going Back

 by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 poetry contributor Megan Wildhood

"Oh. There Is No Going Back" came to me in an instant, nearly whole, on the day in April 2021 when I realized that we as a society are never going back to normal. I had long since stopped wiping down every screen and surface with hydrogen peroxide and I wasn't washing my hands raw every 12 hours anymore like I had the previous year, but I had truly thought that the end of this would at least be in view by the second Easter after the dawn of COVID.

It was starting to happen anyway, but the pandemic turbo-charged the demolition of my self-concept politically, which has ended up rewriting everything else about who I thought I was up until the advent of the pandemic era. 

On that unusually clear day, Oh. There Is No Going Back came to me in almost the exact way it was published. I felt my relationship to the future change. It was bigger than no longer being able to walk people up to the gate at the airport. So much was being disfigured about current life and the future.

Too much.

And I hadn't seen it. Until the day Oh. There Is No Going Back came to me. I had still been trusting that there was.

*     *     *

Megan Wildhood is an erinacious, neurodiverse lady writer in Seattle who helps her readers feel genuinely seen as they interact with her dispatches from the junction of extractive economics, mental and emotional distress, disability, and reparative justice. She hopes you will find yourself in her words as well as The Atlantic, Yes! Magazine, Mad in America, The Sun, and elsewhere.

Read Megan Wildhood's "Oh. There Is No Going Back" (p. 1) and other compelling

Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Prose Poetry
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

 

Huitzilin

 by 2021 Fiction First Prize winner Tomas Baiza

I've loved hummingbirds ever since I was a child. I was never obsessed with them, but whenever one buzzed by, I would stop whatever I was doing and watch in mute awe. 

Everyone I knew seemed to infantilize them as cute or adorable, as if they existed for our entertainment. To me, though, they were fast, strong, and courageous. 

Their aggressiveness was somehow benevolent, serious but good-natured, and their jewel-like colors were so bright I could see their sparkling feathers even after I closed my eyes.

We spin and joust. Our kissing shrieks bounce off the kitchen window. Her long beak jabs and thrusts, black eyes wild and dancing in her emerald green crest.

I can't remember when or from whom I learned that the native people of central Mexico venerated hummingbirds as the reincarnated souls of fallen warriors, returned for but a short time. All I know is that it made perfect sense--there could be no better explanation for their furious energy, their frantic need to hurry before being called to their next adventure.

Hummingbirds didn't simply exist. They had a purpose.

I'm trying to teach you," my Papi said. "When we leave this world, He waits. He is patient. Your abuelita taught me that He lets us rest for exactly four years to the day and then brings us back to help Him. Since the beginning, m'ija, He honors us as huitzilin, as hummingbirds, His most honest and loyal warriors."

The first hummingbird I saw after my son died stopped me in my tracks. I stood motionless on the sidewalk near my home, silently pleading for it to come closer. It dipped to drink from a flower in someone's front yard, spinning round often to survey its surroundings. I started to shake with memories of holding my son, of humming a Mexican lullaby to him as the life passed from his body--and then reminded myself that this meeting was a blessing of sorts, that this huitzilin could have chosen anywhere to feed, but it chose this garden just as I walked past. I slowly approached and it rose to hover above the flower bed. The little warrior turned to face me, its wings a blur.

"Hi," I said, and it was gone.

I aim myself at the Sun and race to the only war that was ever worth fighting.

Above Tonatiuh's roar, Papi's last shout comes through. "¡Arriba, m’ija!"

And so, I become light.

*    *    *

 

Tomas Baiza was born and raised in San Jose, California, and now lives in Boise, Idaho. He is a Pushcart-nominated author whose short fiction and poetry have appeared in Parhelion Literary Magazine, Peatsmoke Literary Journal, The Rush Magazine, Obelus, [PANK] Magazine, The Meadow, The Good Life Review, Passengers Journal, Kelp Journal, The Write Launch, and elsewhere.

Read Tomas Baiza's "Huitzilin" (pp. 156-160) and other Fiction,
Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, and Prose Poetry
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

 

Examining Chance and Fastening it with Future

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 contributor Mandira Pattnaik

When I was asked to write what led to my fiction piece "Box," I really had no clue. Did it germinate out of the cookery shows on TV I'd watched as a young girl growing up in India, newly open to global cultures, and international icons through the liberalization of the economy? Or was it fancying an unachievable dream that's bound to collapse, given the constraints under which children in these parts grow up? 

I'm not sure which, but to write it in future tense, as if happening in an imaginary time through the eyes of this motherless boy, felt the most natural thing to do.

The small-town conversations I've heard on my commutes form an essential part of this story:

     Once inside the bus, he'll survey the passengers' faces, boarding and de-boarding, in the dim light of pre-dawn. The 5:45 will snake down the curve of the hill, climb onto the next and next. Most will not bother about the boy travelling alone, but the butcher will recognize him.
     "Where to?" he'll ask. The boy will cook up a story about an ill grandmother.

     "Never had a Granma, did you? She lived across the border, been dead long, no?"
     "Sorry, she's--she's--an aunt, mother's third sister. Fractured hips."
     "Oh, I see. But where's your father?"
     "Home. Old enough to go alone!"

The picture of an exquisite countryside, the bustling eatery by the roadside, the apple orchard are all drawn from my travels within India.

     The bus will leave the perches of the hills, slither into the plains where the district town the boy has never been before will have just woken up. At a bustling eatery, he'll get off with the others, trailing one particular family with three howling toddlers...

The story ends with a note, open to interpretation:  

     The tight box in life nobody escapes out of.

These themes of fate, choices, and one's own endeavors find expression in several of my published stories available online through my blog. 

*   *   *

Read Mandira Pattnaik's "Box" (pp. 30-32) and other Fiction,
Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, and Prose Poetry
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

Dying Back

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Poetry contributor, Patrick Cabello Hansel

I wrote "Dying Back" after several days of walking through my neighborhood, and sitting on our porch watching the beauty of autumn. It struck me, as I say in the poem, that the process . . .

. . . ordered by an ancient
call: earth and her creatures
loosing what they love to die back
into winter

I don't understand it, and maybe they don't either, but . . .

                               Every autumn
their goodbyes ravish our eyes
with color.

*   *   *

Patrick Cabello Hansel is the author of the poetry collections The Devouring Land (Main Street Rag Publishing) and Quitting Time (Atmosphere Press). He has published poems and prose in more than 70 journals and has received awards from the Loft Literary Center and Minnesota State Arts Board.

Read Patrick Cabello Hansel's poem and other exciting
Poetry, Prose Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

 

Disagreeing with Gandhi

by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 contributor Jessica Barksdale

My poem, "Disagreeing with Gandhi" emerged from an online writing workshop put together by the good folks at Two Sylvias Press.

The prompt asked us to examine a quote, and I found one from Mahatma Gandhi: "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean. If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

At the time, his words did not sit well. Of course, who was I to argue with Gandhi? But it was my feeling that we are all turned from clean to dirty by the acts of a few. Things seemed, at the time, to be going wrong in so many ways: politically, environmentally, personally.

Most pointedly for me was writing about my mother, who continues to slip into a different and new person due to dementia, one who doesn't know who I am. In that way, my connection to her, the world, and the planet seemed to be growing faint. 

My poem lists a number of other wrongs, highlighting the fact that if things are broken, it is our collective fault. I wrote:

Hear the gulls caw
their hunger. Step over
bits of plastic, twists
of dried kelp.

Things are discordant, empty, trashed, but I called for a fix with the last lines: "The ocean is dirty now. / We are all part of the ocean," meaning we are all affected by each other's actions. We are living in "dirty" times, and we have to accept and move onward, together.

As for my mother and my understanding of her and her experience, I keep writing. Recently published in Revolute, my poem "Alice Takes Her Mother to a Funeral" continues my examination of my confused feelings. We are all still in the ocean, swirling together, dirty and living.

*   *   *

Jessica Barksdale's fifteenth novel, The Play's the Thing, and second poetry collection, Grim Honey, were published in Spring, 2021. Recently retired, she taught at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California for thirty-two years and continues to teach novel writing online for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband.

 Read Jessica Barksdale's poem and other exciting
Poetry, Prose Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction
in Bacopa Literary Review 2021

 

 

You Don't Always Know Where a Poem Will Go

 by Bacopa Literary Review 2021 Poetry Second Prize winner Shoshauna Shy

When I began the poem "Key Lime Pie," I had no inkling of where I wanted it to go, not even what I needed to say. I just knew I wanted to capture an overwhelming happiness that I felt--something I hadn't felt for awhile--before it slipped away. It was that same kind of heady glee that compelled Joni Mitchell to write "Chelsea Morning," so that's what I referred to.

I could not have predicted that in a poem about joy, lone snipers would make an appearance, and manage to fit: . . . another snubbed American male / sprays a school, a theatre, a hot yoga studio with bullets. Nor that Nazis would, as well: . . . when / Anne Frank's diary was yanked from her hands . . . but somehow this poem was about them, too. 

And from there came the bigger references to God's involvement, and a visit from my deceased father: . . . in my joy the way when last December, my dead father joined / me . . . That's what I love about writing poetry: You don't always know where it will take you, nor where you'll end up!  

 

*   *   *

Shoshauna Shy's poems have been published widely, made into videos, displayed inside taxis, and plastered onto the hind quarters of city buses. Author of five collections of poetry, she is the founder of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program, and the Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Awards. Recent publications include "Comfort Words & Cherries;" "No Encore, Christmas Eve at the New Girlfriend's Parents' House," "Tidings of Comfort and Joy;" and "What Happened to My Parents After They Gave Me Up."

There Are No Bad Genres

 by Bacopa Literary Review Associate Editor Mary Bast

". . . realism was the preferred mode of twentieth-century modernism. By relegating fantasy to kiddylit. . . The word genre began to imply something less, something inferior, and came to be commonly misused, not as a description, but as a negative value judgment. . . There are many bad books. There are no bad genres." 

~Ursula K. Le Guin, "Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love," Words Are My Matter

I'll admit, I've been one of those literary elitists who relegated anything but realism to the trash, in spite of being in awe of Ursula le Guin since I was able to read, and a devoted follower of Margaret Atwood since I saw the light of feminism. (Even Atwood has argued that her works are "speculative fiction" and not "science fiction").

As with any change in opinion, only continued expsure will break down the grooves our brains have carefully dug over lifetimes of being influenced by family, teachers, and literary society's votes about the "best" authors (those who vote being part of the social system that has defined "best" in the first place).

That change is now--however slowly--happening. I've recently finished reading Anthony Doerr's  novel, About Grace, whose protagonist wanders the world trying to change the fate his prophetic dreams have proven will come to pass. The New York Times, obviously considering this work a "good" genre (Doerr later won a Pulitzer Prize for All the Light We Cannot See), described About Grace as "an infinitely subtle algebra of resonance and sympathy between minds, lives, objects, light, senses, weather." 

While Doerr's brilliance as a writer makes it easier to expand our view of what kind of writing can be considered "literary," it wouldn't be fair to expect all writers who toy with so-called reality to reach his level of eloquence. In fact there are many excellent writers who "speculate" about possibilities, and we offer several in this year's Bacopa Literary Review, including both of our Fiction prize winners.

Fiction First Prize winner Tomas Baiza's "Huitzilin" begins with a rebirth:

Sunlight pools, trickles, and then begins to spill over the edge of the mesa. No sooner am I reborn than I am drawn to it, as I am drawn to the flowers that grow in my father's yard. Sun and nectar, Tonatoih and xochinecutli, both of them fuel for the returned warriors, we who have been summoned to face our shames before being called to fight. . .

Already curious about the nature of these "warriors," readers are given an intimation in the second paragraph that this beautifully rendered story will take us somewhere entirely new:

In the kitchen window, my reflection, an orange spark and wings that slash like the flint knives of our ancestors, the obsidian blades that opened veins of eternal life onto the tongue of the Sun Stone.

 

In "The Vanishing Heart," Fern F. Musselwhite's Fiction Second Prize winning story, the author leads us to believe we're reading about the protagonist's husband Jake's reaction to "the latest variant" that has sickened millions, fifteen years after "the last coronavirus scorched the planet." Only after a page and a half of familiar medical details does she invite a stretch of imagination:

At the hospital they'd cracked open Jake's chest. As they continued to shock and compress, to strain and rotate hands, they noticed Jake's heart was shrinking. Dwindling before their eyes until nothing remained. Nothing to shock or compress. Gone.

In neither story could readers possibly predict what comes next, because we're viewing the world through a different lens that invites us into a deeper truth.

For these and other fine works of Fiction, Creative Nonfiction,
Poetry, and Prose Poetry,
see Bacopa Literary Review 2021

Searching for the Heart of the World

by Associate Editor Mary Bast

Blake Kilgore's "Fluttering Bones of the Fireless Serpent" (below) published in Bacopa Literary Review 2019, is included in his upcoming debut poetry collection, "Leviathan" (12/8/21, Hapless Hip Books, Burlington, New Jersey).

"To enter into the poems of Blake Kilgore's collection Leviathan," writes Ralph Pennell, editor at Midway Journal, "is to be consumed by them, is to all at once race toward exaltation and brace oneself for the fall. At every step, we are met with challenges of faith that invariably become our own, where each of us must 'clamber down into the dark, searching for the heart of the world,' or suffer the consequences of our refusals."

From Jay Armstrong (Bedtime Stories for the Living): "Dripping with the ink of a preacher's Sunday sermon, Kilgore's diction crosses sacred with secular. Exaltation with sadness. Earthiness with the divine. These poems testify while questioning faith, redemption, identity, and love in tightly crafted verses reminiscent of Emily Dickinson."

You can see, in "Fluttering Bones of the Fireless Serpent," these elements of Kilgore's writing--the sacred and the secular: exaltation, earthiness, love--as he has described a sighting of flying geese followed by predators from a cunningly benign distance as a symphony, a light percussion anticipating the big boom, "a sensory marvel, one of those moments that leave you breathless, like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, or rising above the clouds climbing your way to a mountain peak summit."

*    *    *

Blake Kilgore lives in New Jersey with his wife and four sons, where he teaches history to junior high students. You can find some of his stories in Lunch Ticket, Rathalla Review, Midway Journal, and many others. Please visit blakekilgore.com to find more of Blake's prose and poetry.

 

A Well-Told Story of a Small, but Defining Moment

 by Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin

Adam Knight's "Little Bird" in Bacopa Literary Review 2021 is a tender story of an adolescent boy who worries over a baby bird. In this piece, tension is woven through in just the right amounts. I can feel the vulnerability of both the bird and the narrator, in this dugout full of young teenage boys.

      A fluttering movement caught my eye. I looked down. What I had mistaken for some windblown leaves was a bird's nest, probably knocked down from the dugout roof in the previous night's storm. In it lay a baby bird with a bulbous head and wispy feathers. Its beak opened and shut, emitting the tiniest "cheep" that was only audible in the gaps of teenage conversation.

       Hello, I thought. Hello there.

 "Little Bird" is a tight, simple story that is also one of those small moments we build ourselves around, a nugget of self-realization.

      I felt like the bird and I were in a little, private world. He was my secret. I did not know if I could help him, but I could listen to him. You are not alone, I thought. I imagined what it must be like to be the bird, a tiny waif, perhaps days old, disoriented and scared, flailing and crying in a world full of creatures much larger and louder than he. I hear you, little bird. I see you.

The larger metaphor of this story works without being overwrought. I felt this boy, a small bird, trying not to be crushed by the growing expectations of the aggressive masculinity around him. The triumph of this piece, for me, is the exploration of this small defining moment in a life. The realization, "I am different than this."

      Something died that day. Not just a newly hatched sparrow on a high school baseball field, but also something in me. As a boy, I had played baseball on a team with other boys, and though we may have all had different temperaments, we all could play the game we loved. But that morning's events confirmed for me finally that I did not belong. Not on the team and not with other guys. My path to manhood, whatever it might look like, would not look like Nick and Scott's . . .

 *   *   *

Adam Knight is a writer and teacher in northern New Jersey. His debut novel, At the Trough, was published in 2019 by NineStar Press and his fiction and essays have been published in a number of publications, including "Hoping for Red" in Escape Pod, December 2018. He is currently revising a cosmic horror novel about the Titanic.

From The Editors: Bacopa Literary Review 2021

I love the stars because they flicker. I love the stars because they recede.
I love the stars because they trace perfect circles if you plant yourself
on a hill and let the aperture stay open all night, exposed.
—Shana Ross, “If Betelgeuse Explodes, I Will Be Sad”

As we assemble each edition of Bacopa Literary Review, we look for themes. One over-arching focus in both 2020 and 2021 is grief. This theme, pervasive in every aspect of our lives for the last year and a half as we all endure the COVID-19 pandemic, is clearly present in this year’s journal. But some of the other themes this year have surprised us, a fascinating and uplifting set of motifs employed in ways as simultaneously jarring and consoling as the image of the little bird in Emily Dickinson’s famous poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” who sings the tune without the words--/ And never stops—at all--// And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard.  

It would be easy to let grief overwhelm us, in times like these, and some of our selections reflect on that ease. There is the dark, all-encompassing existential agony over the family tragedy expressed in Alec Kissoondyal’s “Smudge.” Its complement, the long slog through the initial stages of grief and into something approximating the rest of life for those left behind, is portrayed in Shuly Cawood’s “Not Naming It.” There is also the gentle, even humorous sense of resignation and peace-making with grief expressed in both Janet Marugg’s fictional vignette “Lila’s Last Day” and Lora Straub’s nonfiction essay “A Fragile Inheritance."

In part as acknowledgement of the need to face and work through the individual and collective sorrows COVID-19 has wrought, we open this year’s collection with Megan Wildhood’s probing, elegiac “Oh. There is No Going Back.” Wildhood’s poem takes up grief and turns it around like a many-faceted gem, examining its dark surfaces and acknowledging the ways it impacts even our memory and understanding of life before the grieving time: the first time I remembered the Before world and it was full/ of holes.

But we’ve noticed plenty of other shared themes in this year’s Bacopa. Most are riffs on the great concerns of human existence, and thereby of most literature—love, joy, struggle, pain, pride, humility, endurance. One motif across genres surprised us, though. Birds—those “things with feathers” and wings.

We invite you to keep an eye out for them as you read your way through this year’s offerings. Some, such as the baby birds in Kissoondyal’s “Smudge,” Adam Knight’s “Little Bird,” and the small bird that crashes into a window at the opening of Elizabeth Christopher’s “Dream Catcher,” show up as emblems of fragility, loss, and, yes, grief. Timi Sanni’s pained, prayerful poem “Orison” even presents us with the antithesis to Dickinson’s eternal, undaunted feathered singer: the bird/ of hope folding its wings, its hollow bones// crushing as they welcome the uncanny force/ of darkness. These birds, and some of the others that flit through the pages that follow, are creatures of night, of darkness or at least a liminal space—the edge of shadow where darkness meets, commingles with light. They remind us that time flows unceasing and life proceeds in all its shades—from drudgery and weariness, pain and fear, through excitement, exultation, and joy—and all those shades are certainly represented in a myriad of tints and tones. 

Artists are grappling with the reality that humanity as a whole, the world over, is undergoing a tremendous cataclysm of collective loss and mourning, at this moment of history. People are mourning lost friends and loved ones, lost jobs and businesses, lost opportunities and experiences—from students missing out on graduations and other rites of passage, to families delaying having children, partners delaying marriage, and so much more. For many of us, the pandemic delayed our ability to be physically present with each other, to collectively express and process these many and varied sorrows. For too many of us, a long-delayed process of grieving has only recently begun in earnest.

Our shadow birds remind us, as Shana Ross’s First Prize poem quoted in the epigraph above so presciently puts it, When you live in too much light you cannot see the stars/ yet they exist. 

But most of Bacopa 2021’s birds fly in the other direction, and beautifully so, as exemplified by the powerful mythical bird that lends its name to Sergio Ortiz’s fierce “Yo soy el Fénix.” Birds—strong, fierce and joyful—are central characters in both William Nuessle’s “Hero’s Eyes” and this year’s Fiction First Prize winner, Tomas Baiza’s “Huitzilin.” Flight, uplift, release—these themes are woven through every category of writing. Though too many of us are still inside the edge of the shadow, many here at home and around the world are beginning to see the gilded limning of the other side.

We hope you will find yourself lifted, energized, and inspired as we were by the tremendous outpouring of talent and creativity we received for our 2021 journal. May we move onward and upward together, like the tiny winged warriors of “Huitzilin,” out of the global shroud of this pandemic and into the blaze of a new day dawning. May we be so blessed as to know the joy and triumph that surges through the closing line of Baiza’s magical tale: And so, I become light.

—J.N. Fishhawk & Mary Bast

  

A Fragile Inheritance: Creative Nonfiction 2nd Prize

  by Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin

A beautiful narrative arc in a very short space

When reading through submissions for creative nonfiction I look for beautiful writing, of course, but also for some sense of connection. I want to feel as though I've gotten to know the narrator a bit. In Lora Straub's Second Prize winning A Fragile Inheritance, I felt a connection to this narrator and her family.

I am also a reader who is charmed by small details. I loved the grandmother with an extensive crystal collection who drinks her chianti out of a favorite plastic juice cup and washes all her dishes by hand even though she has a dishwasher. This family, with their quirks and running jokes, felt familiar.

The other thing that felt special about this piece of writing in Bacopa Literary Review 2021 was the growth of the narrator. Twelve hundred words is precious little storytelling space, yet within that, we see this narrator grow from a young woman who resents talk of death, to a woman who wants to be taken seriously enough to be trusted to wrap up her grandmother's crystal, finally to a woman who understands the gift she has been given by both her mother and grandmother.

When my husband and I unboxed them, six years after Grammar's death, Steve unwrapped each with reverence. Held one after the other up to the light and admired the cut. I buried my nose in a goblet like I was smelling a flower, still caught a whiff of mildewed books and Grammar's warm presence in the stale air caught between the glass and newspaper. Perhaps the stemware summoned the scent.

It had nothing to do with trust. Wrapping that crystal was one of the last things Mom could do for her mother, and that doubled as a gift for her daughters: the unwrapping. Grammar's house, most of her books, dishtowels, the gold carpet, her fake fruit: all gone. But the scent: a momentary return of a singular spirit.

And so in this piece I found that wonderful gift of a story, which is to peek in someone else's window and see something that is wholly different but so familiar. Because I also am a woman, missing my beloved grandmother, whose tiny crystal votive holder has pride of place on my shelf.

  * * *

Lora Straub lives in Boston, MA. Her poetry prose chapbook, Id Est, was released in October 2017 by SpeCt! Books. Her work can be found in Construction Mag, She Explores, The Fem, The Elephants, and Wave Composition, among others. She is currently working on a memoir.