Wild Greens

To begin the issue, we start with a series of illustrated holiday homes in colored pencil by Melissa Lomax. This project, called “Holiday Houses,” began as an advent project. I like to envision this neighborhood of welcoming homes as a metaphor for Wild Greens.  

Speaking of homes, here’s some behind the scenes of our “home” here at Wild Greens. We’re a small team of volunteers. Hayley is our arts editor; Jacqueline works with all prose submissions, including personal essays and short fiction. Poetry is split between Myra and Jessica. Tim handles music submissions when we have them. As the editor-in-chief, I wear a lot of hats, but one of my main jobs is coordinating the editorial team and assembling the issue at the end of the month. What this means is that there are months where I might not read the issue in full until a day or two before it goes out to you!

All of this is to say, I was stunned to read Carolyn Martin’s poem, “Home Visit,” when I encountered it for the first time yesterday. She writes: “I’m thirty-five and terrified to make mistakes.” This hit…home…because yesterday was my 35th birthday! I’m brand new to 35, but I’m not new to making mistakes, and I still feel afraid of them sometimes. What has certainly not been a mistake is creating this community and sharing it with you.

After Carolyn Martin's poem, we turn to Meghan Woodard’s “Scary Trees, Cozy House” in watercolor, which shows a house in a dark landscape. The short story “Ice Fishing” by Suzanne Miller is about a woman who feels lost and drops everything to return to a place (and miraculously a person) that feels like home. “Remember,” by Irina Tall in pen and ink, depicts the memory of home.

Myra Chappius’s short reflection, “Song of Myself,” meditates on how the places we travel to become part of us. Grace Clark’s watercolor and colored pencil “Cozy Cottage,” drawn while the artist was traveling abroad in Ireland, is in illustration of the sense of home as a universal feeling.

The poem “Is it Home?” by Waseeq Mohammad reflects on the trouble of home when so many people in our war-torn world have been forced out of theirs. In Kristi Schirtzinger’s short story “Mama in the Road,” the narrator sees her own grief in the grief of her mother.

Jasper Glen’s “Searched, Then Sat” in acrylic paint first began as a self-portrait, but became something else.

Jennifer Lagier’s poem, “Soliloquy,” reflects on her sanctuary during the pandemic. Maggie Topel’s digital logo for Wild Greens is a mailbox, inspired by the importance of receiving letters from friends.

Colleen T. Reese’s poem “The best I can do is a love poem” reflects on being within someone else’s home. Melissa Lomax “Mushroom Home for Two” in pencil illustrates two woodland creatures in their adorable mushroom home.

-Rebecca

Home Visit

by Carolyn Martin

Ice Fishing

by Suzanne Miller

Celine sweeps all the files from her desktop straight into an already overflowing trashbin. She stuffs the gallery of framed childhood photos of herself with her dear papa into her emptied briefcase. “Passed over for partner again,” she mutters in disbelief, “Nothing to show for it all but a brass nameplate on this glorified glass box.” Glancing out at the twenty-seventh-story view, Celine is overcome with an almost irresistible urge to jump. 

Her mind reels back to her younger years, when she and her beloved papa would pass seemingly endless days on the vast Norwegian fjords, savoring the frozen stillness and waiting for the fish to bite. But those days had not been endless, her papa taken far too soon. And now, sequestered for more than a decade in her soulless Trondheim office, Celine has begun to doubt whether that companionable solitude with her papa had even been real.

Celine navigates the revolving lobby door, and plods down the bustling midday sidewalk, jostled by the heedless passersby. “I’m invisible in this city,” she thinks, when even the doorman of her own building stares right through her. 

She hastily packs a duffle, and forgoing her usually detailed planning, Celine retrieves her Volvo from the garage and heads northward toward Tennevoll. She mindlessly tracks the white lines on the E6 well into the deepening night, finally driving aboard the Skarberget ferry for the last leg of her journey. As the boat motors across the narrowest point of the glacial sea, her eyes rise heavenward. “I can never go back,” she murmurs into the star-strewn sky.

It is darker here than she remembers, but some long-held sensory memory guides her to the rough-hewn cabin abandoned so many years before. She pries open the door, an otherworldly squeal of hinges startling her amidst the sweeping silence. Inside she finds a dusty heap of scratchy wool blankets, a pile of logs still neatly stacked by the stove. She sets about warming the place, before collapsing onto her old cot fully dressed. She drags the familiar covers up to her chin and drops into a dreamless sleep.

Celine awakens early, shivering in the icy air. Wrapped in blankets, she rekindles the fire. She nibbles dried cod and mushrooms from her pack, bending toward the stove for warmth. Then she loads fishing gear onto her old sled, dons her arctic-wear, and trudges out onto the frozen fjord.

Celine had helped her papa make fishing camp here a hundred times, but now she sets about the task alone. She’d bought a flip-over tent at the last backcountry store she passed before her ferry crossing, and now it makes for an easy shelter. She drills and chisels through the ice, drops a line and sets her tip-up. She settles onto her camp chair with a heavy sigh. Contentment spreads through her at long last, and she can almost feel her father by her side.

Darkness falls early so far north, and after only a few hours in the hut, Celine drags her chair out to watch as the familiar Northern Lights bloom in the early evening sky. The dancing greens with fringes of pink light take her breath away. She blinks hard as strange vivid spirals of gold and purple appear in the center of the aurora. She gasps when a shimmering orb separates from the swirling colors and descends onto the ice.

Just as suddenly, the orb launches upward again, disappearing from sight. In its wake she spots a distant figure advancing in her direction. Frozen in place, she watches intently but feels no fear. As the form comes nearer, Celine sees it is a man. Lanky and tall, with blond windblown hair, he seems to radiate serenity. The closer he comes, the calmer she feels, and the more eagerly she anticipates his arrival.

The blond man feels somehow familiar, and taking his hand, she leads him back to the shelter of her cabin. He watches with interest as she lights the fire. She offers to share the last of her provisions, brown bread and apples, but he refuses with a slight shake of his head. She points to herself. “Celine,” she says, then turning her finger toward him, asks his name. He meets her eyes but gives no response.

She finishes her meager meal, and crawls exhausted under the bedcovers. Soon the man lays down on the second cot that had once been her papa’s. In an instant Celine is asleep, blissful images from her youth animating her dreams.

Morning dawns. Celine rises, again loads the sled, and signals the man to follow. They traipse out onto the ice, where to her surprise, the man kneels down and falls to work drilling a new fishing hole. Though unsure if he understands her words, Celine sits back and begins to spill bottled-up memories of her gentle papa, and the sweetness of their unhurried days ice fishing on this very spot.

She is heartened to notice the man nodding and smiling, so she carries on with her telling. As the day draws to a close, he again meets her eyes and, in a halting voice, reveals that he knows much about her life, for her papa often spoke longingly of his beloved Celine. She peppers him with questions. “Where are you from? Where is my papa now? Why are you here?” But the man says nothing more.

As the sun descends, the pair work in unison to break camp. Celine leans in to hear the man whisper that their time together on the fjord is almost at an end. “The orb will soon return to reclaim its stranded kin,” he tells her, and she clings to him, nearly paralyzed by the thought of losing this kindred spirit.

Determined to savor what little remains of their time together, the two huddle side by side far out on the bare ice. As darkness claims another day, the Aurora Borealis again appears, and from its center the orb. Before she even has time to bid the man farewell, her papa appears before her. He is older than she remembered, his fair hair now stark white. Overcome, she turns toward her mysterious companion, but the man is gone.

Celine’s papa smiles radiantly down at her as he reaches out his timeworn hand. Weeping, she grasps it in her own, and together they disappear into the night.

Song of Myself

by Myra Chappius

I’ve sailed through quite a few seas—the North, the Mediterranean, the Norwegian. I’ve had my feet planted on the chilly shores of Alaska, the historic streets of Amsterdam, the dusty remains of Rome’s Colosseum. I’ve traversed the skies of the Northern Hemisphere. None of these places have been home, and yet they all have been.  

All of these places—they live in me now. They’re not what I say when someone asks me, “Where are you from?”, but as I stood on them, and in them, breathing their air and seeing their stars, I took in something from them. Something that never leaves. Something I can call upon when I return. 

“I've learned that home is not a place, it's a feeling.” ― Cecelia Ahern, Love, Rosie

The first time I stood on Icelandic soil, I felt at home. I had never been to Iceland. Hadn’t dreamt of going there all my life. I don’t have any relatives there, no history. In fact, I’d be surprised if anyone in all of my African and Hispanic lineage has ever set foot there. There is no reason why it should set my soul at ease. And yet, it does. Each time I return there, the pieces lock into place and I feel myself again. I understand something new about myself each time. It is clear to me that at some point, in some life, this was home. 

The physical concept of home is difficult for me. I can feel content in so many places. I can find peace in the French countryside of Lourmarin, or wholeness in Getxo on the Spanish coast, or spirituality under cover of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Nevertheless, I can feel unmoored lying in bed beneath the roof I’ve lived under for two decades. The place is not what creates the comfort…not really. 

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” — James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

We absorb—through experience, through time spent—the particles of each land we exist upon, however temporarily. We take with us—when we leave it—more than just souvenirs and memories. We are more. We are changed. And even though we go back to the square-shaped building we call “home”, we go back different. Those particles take root. They accompany us wherever we go after—to the next land, and the next—moving over, making room. Home always is, and ever becomes, the collection of it all inside us.

Is it Home?

by Waseeq Mohammad

Mama in the Road 

by Kristi Schirtzinger

There she was, flat out on our gravel road, arms outstretched like Jesus in a blue floral dress. My foot jammed on the brake pedal even as my mind lingered on what I could pull from the freezer to thaw and what time Asa would be home from work. The view from my windshield didn’t make sense.

“Mama!” I said, falling out of the car. “Mama! Why are you in the road?” Her eyes were fixed on the sky, and I just knew in my bones she was dead. And then she blinked. 

“Oh, thank God,” I said over her. “Thank the Lord.”

“Can you get up?” 

The pulse in my ears drowned out my voice. “We need to get you off of this road.” 

She looked straight through me without recognition, “Go away,” she said. 

I got behind her shoulders and began lifting, but she straightened her back like Jesse used to do when he was having a tantrum. Her palms went flat on the road and the more I tugged, the more she gripped at the loose gravel. 

“I don’t understand what you’re doing, but can we talk about it from the house?”

“I’m not moving, Mae.”

I leaned over her. The inverted face was a wall of defiance. “Mama, come on now, get up. Tommy’s gonna be by with the mail any minute.” Then her eyes caught fire and she began chucking gravel over her shoulders at me.  “Leave me be.” 

“I will not leave you be!” I moved behind her again, jamming my hands under her armpits. “Now get up before you get us both killed.”

“Nobody’s asking you to stay. Let Tommy hit me; I’ll just dent that puny car of his.” She turned her face toward the cornfield. Her bosom heaved under her favorite dress, the one she wanted to be buried in. “When Ellis comes by in his new pickup, I’ll bet he runs me clean over, and he might as well.”

“How do you know Ellis is going to drive by here?”

“He does every afternoon on his way to Charlotte Murphy’s.”

I pictured Ellis coming to our door for the first time in his ironed bootcuts and checkered shirt straight out of Rod’s Western Palace. Mama blushed like a girl when he handed her the gas station bouquet of dyed carnations. Daddy would have brought her hand-picked wildflowers.

“So, this is all about that good-for-nothing?” 

No answer, just more rocks.

“And him running over you is going to accomplish what?” All the while I’m behind her, trying to move a boulder. She was a sturdy woman of German stock, and I was my father’s child, wiry and short.  “Move Mama! I know you can.”

“Go away, Mae. You and Asa don’t need me around anyway. You’ve got your job, and Jesse…”

Just then, I heard the voice of Merle Haggard crooning from Tommy’s car stereo.

“Mama! Tommy is coming down the road!”

“Well, I can very well hear that, Mae.”

Now I’m pulling on her muscular, bread-kneading arms, but it’s like picking a 50-pound feed bag off the ground. Tommy was coming fast between the farms, and I had half a mind to leave her, but the other half loved her and needed to problem-solve quick. I ran down the road toward that US Postal flag, bawling like an orphaned calf. “Stop! Stop!” His Honda screeched, and through the dust, he came running headlong toward me.

“What’s wrong?”

“My mama’s in the road,” I huffed. “She won’t move!” 

He ran beside me down the road. “Is she hurt?”

“No, but not for lack of trying.” He gave me a puzzled look, and I didn’t blame him. “It has something to do with Ellis Grove. Anyway, she’s determined to lay there until he comes by and runs her over.” 

“That’s crazy, Mae.” And then we were standing over her. She clamped her eyes shut, but I knew she hadn’t passed out. A fistful of gravel hit the road in a thousand tiny plinks.

“Put that down, Mama,” I said. “Tommy and I are going to lift you off the road. We’ll work all this out after we’ve had a good supper.”

“Well, don’t expect me to help you,” she said.

And she didn’t. Tommy took her upper half, and I took her lower half, and we moved her into the front yard. We dropped her slowly onto the grass, and she slumped silently over her knees. I had never seen my mother this pathetic. She would be embarrassed when she came to her senses.

I sat gazing out at the cornfield for a long time, trying to conjure Daddy on his combine. During harvest, she sat beside him in the big cab until every last ear was in. As the night would darken, I’d press my forehead against the windowpane, watching their silhouettes become one under an orange moon.

“Do you remember our tea parties out here with Grandma’s wedding China?” I put a hand on her back. I hadn’t touched her in so long. “I thought I was big stuff eating cucumber sandwiches and drinking mint julep tea.”

She buried her head in her knees and began a soft weeping.

I stroked her hair like she used to when I was the one crying. “Nail painting and flipping through Redbook Magazine. I can still see Daddy’s knuckly hands on those tiny cups when he joined us.” 

As I rubbed her back, the weeping grew to sobbing. “Ellis doesn’t want me anymore,” she said. “Why doesn’t he want me anymore?”

I wanted to say, Ellis is a city clown, stupid enough to wear snakeskin boots, and you’re smarter than that, but I remembered a time when I loved a fool. 

She wailed from a place too deep to reason with, so I gathered her up like clean laundry until the shuddering stopped. 

“I miss Daddy too,” I said.

Soliloquy

by Jennifer Lagier

The best I can do is a love poem

by Colleen T. Reese