Prompted Prayers by Sarah Zuidema

Prompted Prayers

The day was bumbling to an end.
The horizon became a taut blue line along a fast darkening ocean.
The sun's fleeing rays cast eerie shadows along lengthy sidewalks and glossy windows.
After the the day's buzzing white gyration,
The cooling fingers of a green dusk seemed to smooth the vicissitudes of life,
and wander through the city with an air of enthusiastic exploration.
The moon rose swiftly as one wide, ecstatic grin,
dragging with it the wearisomeness of night;
which ravenously consumed the gale of hysteria,
left behind by the now shattered golden sun.
Darkness, the abyss of ages,
covered the coast in a heavy molasses cloak;
stretching a somber silence throughout the once bustling city.
Somewhere in an alley, a match was struck.
The tiny flame sliced through the syrupy blackness,
revealing the faintest traces of the riotous colors of civilization.
A breeze weaves behind the towering silent giants,
its current nearly visible in the leadened air.
The small flicker shudders in virtuous recrimination.
The silent oppressor, agonized by indecision,
finally retires over the pink cliff,
plunging toward the ocean,
and leaving the stifling pollutant of disinclination in the street.
Merely by way of baffled commonsense does the math burn on,
permitting its master a glance at the sky above.
Even the stars struggle against the choking weight of darkness,
succeeding in naught but an opalescent speck here and there.
The tiny light wavered and twitched,
rapidly approaching suffocation.
Daylight leaves yearning for night,
But night's unyielding pressure bring fearful chattered prayers.

Creative Non-fiction by Amy Carpenter

Stories From My Mother

Have you eaten potatoes recently? I bet you have. Between mashed potatoes and French fries you’ve probably had at least three servings of potatoes in the past week. My family tends to eat more than that. In my earliest memories I can remember my mother peeling potatoes almost every night for supper. Her thumbs and hands are scarred from cuts and she would give me the carrot peeler to help her. I would stand on the kitchen stool slowly rotating the oblong root, taking off the brown skin and listen to her. Sometimes she would tell me stories about how when she was young, she knew first hand how this vegetable got out of the ground.

My mother would tell me stories about potato harvesting and my aunts and uncles pass down their experiences to me as well. “It’s thing of the past now”, says one of my uncles. Labor laws, machinery, outside competition and chemical pesticides have killed the Maine potato economy and the Maine potato harvest. Children no longer get three weeks off of school in mid-September to bring the harvest in. But they used to. My mother and my aunts’ and uncles’ schools started classes in the middle of August while muggy heat and mosquito swarms still dominated the days and nights. But the cold comes quickly in The County and very soon it’s time for the harvest to be gotten in.

If you were a farm kid, no matter how young, you helped pitch in. My mother started working in the fields at the age of nine for 30 cents a barrel. By her senior year of high school, the amount paid per barrel had only risen 20 cents. At least if you worked on a harvester you got state minimum wage-$3.35 an hour.

One of my aunts tells me, “The one day I worked on a harvester, I felt overwhelmed by the noise and vibration of the machinery and picking potatoes was like a nature walk compared to that.” At least if you worked in the field your greatest danger was a rotten potato in your knee.

“You could loose a finger on a harvester, working in the pit”, my mom said. No one knew anyone who really had lost a finger but there always was that threat.

“You wear layers”, my mom says. Undershirt, t-shirt, long-sleeved shirt and sweatshirt and long johns under your jeans but still you shiver in the early morning frost. Girls wore bandanas to hold their hair back, their ears tucked under the dingy paisley print to protect from frostbite. When I was young my mother would tie my hair up in a bandana with the tips of my ears covered when it was cold. She told me that that was how she wore her hair and I was proud to do the same.

It wasn’t just farmers and farmer’s children who harvested. “You could always tell the Townies apart,” my mom laughs. “They couldn’t pick as fast and always came in the morning clean. For us, we couldn’t get a bath until Saturday night and we didn’t have enough clothes to be wearing clean ones everyday.” Every night before dinner the children would wash their faces and hands like they were wearing white gloves and masks above their real identities.

When you got to the field the field boss was already there. He handed you your tickets, tough pieces of oaktag with a number corresponding to your name, and told you to mark your section. Potato rows were long and you worked across them, not down them. Then you got your basket, a woven wooden one made from brown ash straps. The local Maliseet tribe made these baskets and they held about one fourth of a potato barrel. One Maliseet man brought his entire family every day to the harvesting, all ten children, and he wouldn’t straighten up all day, working furiously for every last cent.

One of my aunts remembers, “Once in the field there are the smells – earth, decaying tops and diesel fumes from the tractor as it chugs by bringing up the first rows of picking for the day. When we were quite young, our Dad would have chocolate bars tucked in his clothing. As he dug the sections his children were responsible to pick, he would drop a chocolate bar into the row to raise our spirits as we came upon it leaning over our potato baskets.” Only the youngest of the children crawled through the dirt to gather the potatoes. Everyone else bent at the waist and got used to the pain by the second or third day.

As every barrel was filled and a ticket squeezed underneath the top band the potato truck would drive by, a young man driving, an even younger boy standing on the flatbed operating the hoists and rolling the barrels as they were brought up onto the truck. “One of the boys sang “You Are My Sunshine” to me every time he came around to my section”, my mom recounts. “I turned red every time which is why he kept doing it.”

And so it went until the crop was in. As it got later in the season my mother remembers crawling inside one of the cedar barrels and pulling another one on top of it to block out the wind. But after all these years, this is what they all remember.

“Autumn leaves… colors bright everywhere…running through the fields. In and out of the trees and up and down the nearby gravel pits. Yelling…screaming…dancing. Weary muscles, bent skeletons, tired, dirty and mashed potatoes for supper.”

These are the stories my aunts and uncles tell me. These are the stories that my mother tells me.

Two Poems by Terri Moody: The Power of a Child & The Wanderlust of Life

The Power of a Child

Sidewalk chalk, Salamanders and Swings,
These are children's things,
Our childhood is pure, white as snow,
Things change as we grow.
Scraping of knees is no longer the definition of pain.
Innocence leaves us just to spite.
I guess it is better this way,
Our knowledge expanding day by day.
Promise me though you will not lose faith,
In the fantastical creatures who used to be our mates
The Fairies who take flight
The Apples that will Poison with a bite
The Mermaids,
The Houses made from Sweets,
The Animals who could speak,
Or
The many people who You could be in an Hour.
Belief will be Your power.

*

The Wanderlust of Life

Is it just because This is something new?
Or is It something more?
It is scaring me, is It scary to You?
We are landing on an unfamiliar shore,
Our spirits bursting, on Our face a smile,
Their voices full of welcome, and cheer,
But will This all be worth Our while?
Once we venture out, there is no coming back Here,
Promise me now, that This is love!
Or tell me that It is lust,
Or, confirm my fears, is it only part of growing up?
Nothing now is certain, Except This peregrination is upon us.

"The worth of cubical probability" by Eric Brown

The worth of cubical probability
The rotation of flat proportions
The numerical extremes of possibility
In other words, chance

That internal emotion of excitement
The slim opportunity of fortune and fame
If things go your way, in good fortune
You could end up lucky

Luck is a distraction
A word for human's incomprehension
The feeling that the stars will align
To have everything go your way

Does it help, probably not.
I guess it's just hope
For movements to preference you
And not someone else

"I seem to be like something new" by Amy Carpenter

I seem to be like something new,
And I don't know what you go through,
As you try to tie your shoe,
But really, I was once like you,
I once, like you, was four
And I can see right through your eyes,
And how you suck at telling lies,
Your gap-tooth grin is your demise,
When you can't pretend anymore.

And I remember how I look,
To those who still can't read a book,
In awe of those whom time has took,
And how my life was severely shook,
'Cause it's not how it's portrayed.
You can't wait to be like me,
Though the future is too far to see,
You think someone like me is free,
But we all have been betrayed.

So go and look for Neverland,
And build your castles in the sand,
Come and take me by the hand,
And I'll try to make you understand
How we're not much different, You and I,
I still long for other days,
To change myself in different ways,
The world is still a maze,
No matter how hard I try.

Red Death at 6:14 by Bethany Sabo-Brisbois

Red Death at 6:14
by Bethany Sabo-Brisbois

I suppose the closest I’ve ever come to falling in love was with a girl named Helene, I can’t recall ever learning her last name; our relationship didn’t require such things. I met her on July 9^th, the sky was beginning to turn a dark shade of grey and the air began to get stiff and damp, a storm was beginning to form. I was walking home especially fast that day, trying to make it home before the rain began to fall; I took the shortcut, through the woods. With my headphones in, Red Death at 6:14, and my hood protecting my head from the slight mist that had arrived. Thunder roared above the tree tops, I looked up hoping the cool splash of rain would hit my face and cool down my body, sweating from the hot summer air that stuck to me, instead of the cool splash of rain, I felt my face meet the ground. A soft chuckle came from my left; I looked up finding a girl laughing at me.

“What’s your problem?! Do you just go around laughing at anybody that falls? Who do you think you are?!”

“Kid, you tripped on your own two feet, and took a face dive straight into the dirt. That is pretty funny, I mean you honestly couldn’t tell me that you wouldn’t have done the same.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say back to her, because well, I knew she was right.

“Look, I’m sorry if I offended you in any way, here let me help you up”

She took out her hand expecting me to take it, and to my surprise; I did. Amazingly strong for her tiny stature she was able to get me to my feet in a matter of seconds, I quickly brushed the soggy dirt off of my pant legs, the girl watched me and I could begin to feel myself feeling self conscious. She took out a lighter from her pants pocket and a cigarette out of a different one, she lit it and put it in her mouth, she breathed in the smoke, long, and deep.

“Hey, do you want one?”

“Umm, No thank you. I’ve got to go right home, and my mother would have a fit if I came home smelling like smoke.”

She laughed again, this time louder, “Hey don’t sweat it, truth be told I wasn’t even really asking you.”

To my surprise I began to feel myself get angry, “Well, why even bother asking me then?!” I could here the bitterness in my voice.

“I was being polite.” She smiled at me, not with her mouth, no, she smiled with her eyes. My nerves began to calm after she smiled, and I don’t quite recall thinking clearly.

Shopping with Abe Lincoln by Jaret Sears

Shopping with Abe Lincoln
Jaret Sears

Abe, buddy, could you grab us a basket?
We won’t need a cart, we aren’t buying that much.

Where are you going? We…no… wait… no, we start over here.
Come back over here, don’t go to the deli, we don’t need anything there.

Ok… do you have that shopping list, Abe?

You forgot it? Where? I asked you in the car if you had it and you said you did.

Do you remember any of it?

You could remember the Gettysburg address, but you couldn’t remember a shopping list. Never mind, I think I remember most of it.

Hey. Whoa there. Abe, what are you doing?
Are you smuggling potatoes in your top hat? That’s illegal, Abe. Shoplifting is illegal.
And they called you “Honest Abe”. Ha. I laugh at that. I do.

Oh you were just putting them in there so you could weigh them easier?

Sure, ok. No, I believe you. Why are you giving me that look? Don’t give me that look.

Abe, look at this. Hormel chili is on sale. Ten cans for $10. That’s pretty good.
What? Well… yeah… I know. I know we don’t need it.

But I mean its nonperishable, so we could buy it now when it is on sale, and store it.

Abe, it’s not a stupid idea. That’s realistic. Fine, we won’t get it.
But when football season starts next month and you invite your pal Rathbone over,

Don’t ask me to make dip for you, cause I won’t, cause we won’t have chili.

Ok… we have to pick up Diet Coke. Not regular Coke. NOT regular, Abe.

You know what it does to your stomach, and I’m not going sit there feeding you TUMS. And you groan and you tell me never to let you get regular Coke again…

And then the next day, what do you do? You get regular Coke.

No. Freeze. Right now. What are you doing? You are holding regular Coke.

Put that down, get the Diet Coke. Just do it, Abe.

What else did we need? Anything… is this about it?

We’ve put a few things in our basket… we don’t need much else.

I don’t think so. But I just know that when we get home I am going to find the list,

And I’ll have missed something on it.

But oh well, whatever it is, I’ll pick it up after work tomorrow.

Ok, we don’t have that much stuff. So we’re not using a regular aisle.

Should we use the “Express Lane” or “Self-Checkout”?
You know what, the self-checkout always breaks when I use it, so we’ll just play it safe.

We’re going to use the “Express Lane”. We have ten items or fewer, right? Right?

Alright… ok… I’ll put this stuff on the conveyer belt.

No, you don’t need to help me, Abe. I can do this myself.

What are you doing? No, you aren’t getting that water bottle, put it back.

We have water in the car. I don't care if the car-water is warm. Put the water back, Abe.

No. Hey. Don’t put that on the conveyer belt. Get that off of there! Now! Abe!

Ok… fine… there you go, she scanned it. Too late, we bought it.

Now you have your water. Are you happy? You couldn’t just wait till we got to the car.

It’s funny that you could run an entire democracy “by the people”,

But you won’t listen to anyone else’s opinion while grocery shopping.

Whatever. I don’t make the money. It’s not my money. It’s yours. You can waste it.

What? Oh. I don’t have my “Shaw’s Card”. I didn’t bring my keys ‘cause you drove.

Abe, do you have your “Shaw’s Card”? No, you don’t? You don’t.

Abe Lincoln forgot his “Shaw’s Card”.