GOING BACK

by Nadia Marie Perez


I am an endless wanderer but there is definitely one place that tugs at my heart strings every so often; it beckons me return to it, to know it once again. The feeling is mutual, of course, and my pulse quickens at the thought of boarding a plane again; engines roaring, speeding down the runway and then the lift off. There is no way to describe the rush of emotion that courses through my veins when a plane lifts off and I'm up in the air again gazing at the beautiful clouds that I often stare at from below.

Being there, in the stratosphere flying and looking down at the earth below eagerly awaiting the place which calls me back to it time and time again. Going over the blue water that is the Caribbean Sea, checking out the islands below and then getting closer and closer to that coast, my beautiful coast. The mountains come into view and I know I am back, back in my gorgeous and wild Venezuela. We touch down and taxi for a few minutes and then it's off to immigration and customs, gathering my cumbersome luggage once again making my way out to meet whomever has come to greet me and driving away down that old renovated highway toward the city which has become my home...Caracas. 

I get to La Candelaria and am greeted by the old familiar noise, faces and scents. The music from Pablo Electronica blaring out onto the street as I make my way to my grandmother's building to open the heavy iron door, I'm back home and ready for a brand new start...again. Until I board that jet plane once again for another destination yet unknown. 

BIO: NADIA MARIE PEREZ;...

ROUTE 13

She slammed the car door and walked a little ways down the dusty road.

He watched her wait for the next car to come along. What started the argument anyway?

She had insisted he put her out along the side of the road.

Maybe if he sat quietly she would return to the car.

This route was a long and lonely one. If she got into the wrong car she wouldn’t be in trouble because he would follow close behind. Making sure the next driver realized what he was doing.

The trunk load of contraband wouldn’t be in jeopardy as long as he made it to the border by half past eleven.

BIO: JEANETTE CHEEZUM; 

TO UPROOT A PECAN TREE [TAKE ME BACK TO THE BALL GAME]

I don’t mind branches; they bare wonderful things like fruit, nuts, flowers, & foliage.  I've lived life being the roots of things, aiding them along and helping them grow.  Most folks forget about what's in the dirt, but I've always known it’s a whole world below affecting everything around it.  I left Phoenix, AZ for Nashville, TN... The prodigal daughter returned to the south after a ten year hiatus.  It gave me fireflies and moonlight, and just before I became too fanciful- a mosquito bite the size of Gibraltar appeared.  Home gives perspective, so I had to reroot myself back to the source because some seeds don't grow everywhere--- if you force it, you'll find you've over watered it with love.  In places of our beginnings we learn who we are; who we used to be; and who we can become.  So I’ve slid home and I don't care if it grounds me.  If I stand with a cruddy face and motley clothing know that I'm no worse for wear when standing to dust myself off.  You just gotta make sure you stand back from the mirror next time you see yourself rounding third, and the people you care for provide shade.


BIO: SOUTHERN QUILL; Kimberley Gladney is a modern day renaissance woman.  She has performed spoken word under the alias "SouthernQuill" in venues across America; sang her heart out in smoke filled rooms and crowded bars; and regularly bares her soul to followers on her blog site Brown Girl in the Red, White, & Blue.  She has hosted open mics, acted in plays, had her paintings up in various galleries, and is currently recording her first album ep.  She currently resides in Nashville, Tn, with a 1940s antique typewriter and a host of family and friends.  

BREAKFAST BUFFET

Russians approach a smorgasbord like a small boy whose parents are not paying attention.  They pile their plates high with food, far more than they possibly can eat.  Sometimes two plates, one in each hand. Perhaps a legacy of food shortages in the Soviet era, or a persistent ancestral  memory of hunger.

The hotel where I stayed in Murmansk offered a buffet breakfast, heavy on protein, eggs and cheese and meat.     Cold, flat, fatty strips of bacon that were eaten, tidily, with knife and fork.  Lots of bread and pastry.  Not much fruit, at least not in  March, when winter still gripped this northern city and it snowed every day, sometimes at blizzard intensity.  

 My Russian-born  father, who  survived the famine in Berlin after World War I and had seen people starving to death in the streets,  could not bear to see food wasted.   I wondered what he would have thought of the towering piles of food that remained uneaten on every table, which seemed to surprise no one but me.

Bio: ANN MINTZ; Ann Mintz has had six careers, five dogs, one husband, and has lived in seven cities, if you count Philadelphia twice. She has written radio scripts, text for museum exhibits,  websites, speeches, grant proposals, numerous articles and one book.  She blogs at 6S, T-10 and Pen Ten. 

THE WORLD IN PIECES

There is a man who sees the world in pieces. He wears an old top hat, and shattered glasses that keep him blind. He sees what is there, and he sees what isn't there, because it is. No one can see him. Pacing, he walks among us; unburdened, he observes. He walks alone, through the days and into the nights, pausing only to stare a while at something that has caught his interest. He leaves no footprints, and is followed by no shadow. It would be easy for him not to exist. It would almost make sense. Still, he walks.

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Bio:  FABLE LADEN; Fable is a young New Hampshire writer who is just starting to get her feet off the ground. Her work has appeared on FLASHSHOT.

WHAT IF

  Did you ever stop to wonder "What if?"  You're walking along the street when you come upon a shiny new dime.  You stop, pick it up, look at it in the palm of your hand, and read the date.  It's this year.  It's brand new.  How lucky is that?  You reach the street corner, casually looking both ways.  You step out into the street just as a motorcycle whips around the corner and flies by you at an incredible speed.  Wow!  If I had been a second sooner… .  People crowd around you, asking if you are all right.  Yeah, you did stop for the dime.  Man, I'm really lucky!  You cross the street, finally, just in time to miss your usual bus, thanks to the dime.  Maybe I'm not so lucky.  I could keep these steps of "bad luck" up until I get to the part where an ambulance hops the curb and launches you across the street, where you are squashed by a cement truck, as a collapsing building comes down on you and the truck with such force that it causes the street to cave in, just as the subway train runs over you.  Whew!  Wadda trip!  But you get my point.  Well, sometimes I wonder what might have been, if… .

            I have played a lot of pool in my day.  I started out playing at a place called "Toms", in Brooklyn, NY, at 10 cents an hour per stick.  The last time I played regularly, it was about $12.00/hr, and that was over 40 years ago.  I was 21, full of "piss and vinegar", nothing could stop me, and so this is the story.  The "Triple Triangle", a billiard parlor in the west end of Richmond, Va., was a favorite haunt of mine.  I made a modest income there, and continued to frequent the establishment, after beginning my latest stint at "Fuqua and Sheffield Florists".  How are these places related?  Why, through the "Toddle House", of course. 

            We, some friends and I, closed up the pool hall about 11:00PM one evening, and meandered across the street to the Toddle House, an "all-night" breakfast place, for something to eat.  Our food arrived and we ate.  As we were sitting there sipping our coffees, a gentleman walked in and asked if anyone had a driver's license.  I looked at him like he had 2 heads, and finally, with reservation, said that I did.  Now, Mr. Forester was a gentleman in his late 70's if he was a day.  He was dressed in a Chesterfield overcoat and fedora, and a gray suit with tie.  Since he looked quite respectable, I couldn't imagine what he could want with myself, as I appeared quite the ragamuffin.  It was simple, he needed my youthful eyes to drive him in his Cadillac Brougham sedan, to Norlina, NC.  So, I figured, anything for a joke, and I said OK.  The first stop was at his house in Richmond.  Now, I didn't see how anyone could have lived there.  The living room and dining room were literally covered with architectural plans of every description.  He gathered some things, and we were off to his "ranch" in Norlina.  The trip was uneventful.  The house we stayed in that night, was apparently better taken care of than his other house.  I awoke the next day to walls that could not get any whiter, in a very sunny room.  The house, though very old, was in excellent condition.  I am certain he had a staff that catered to at least this house.  On the way home, feeling more at ease with each other, we started chatting.  He told me that the miles of tobacco land that we had just driven through, were only a part of his land, and he was considering sending me to an agricultural college, to learn how to manage his plantation.  He was well up in years, and I assume no relatives, at least, those with which he wished to socialize.  We parted company amicably, and I waited patiently for him to send for me.  A couple of times he stopped by the florist looking for me, in my absence, and the dullards there didn't even bother to get a contact number from him. I felt the pangs of disappointment welling up in me each time.  I never saw him again.  What if… ?

BIO: Jim Hunkele... 

TIME THIEF

She took it.  I knew she was going to the minute she sat down next to me in the airport.  She looked at me with large round eyes and a stupid smile that was probably meant to be cute and disarming.  It may have been cute once upon a time, like when she was around the age of 7, but now, not so much.  I’m thinking that maybe the guy with her had her convinced she was still cute but I didn't think she was cute and I wished she stop looking at me with those big stupid eyes.  She was trying to come off as innocent but I knew, from years of traveling, that she was a practiced beggar and sure enough she took it.  The thing about people like her, they do that sort of thing for so long that they don’t even see it as stealing, maybe just relieving you of something they needed more than you.  I, however, needed mine, and I gave her a hard discouraging stare at the onset but she easily had twenty more years of practice than I did and she didn’t even blink.  Later she dashed off when a voice on a loudspeaker made it’s usual announcement about not leaving your things unattended and not accepting anything from people you don’t know or whatever it is they say exactly, the point was that suddenly she was gone.  I sat there wanting to sink in my chair as I surveyed my magazine and few worldly possessions and I knew I’d been robbed of the thing which had come to mean the most to me after the difficult months I’d just had: my precious time.

BIO: Rhonda M. Smolarek hides writes under the nom de plume of Olive Rosehips, where she makes up things all the while using proper grammer and spell checks.  She generally does this in stiletto's with her pedicure in vivid shades of red. Why? Don't ask me, I just work here. Word is she also does website design/re-design at OliveRosehips.com  and plays at getting absurd songs stuck in people's minds in order to amuse herself... I know, right?