Texting With My College Roommate After 40 Years

Chip: The Bible says we have to bless each other so we can live in love. So, I’m sending you this message. Today is a day of blessing! I bless you. Your heart. Your health. Your home. Your life. In the name of Jesus.

Me:  You going to church now?

Chip: Yes, I do go to church. Don’t you go?

Me: No.

Chip: I will pray for you.

Me: Good. I need the prayer and you need the practice.

Chip: Bless you! Do you believe in anything?

Me: It’s all a mystery to me. I know I don’t go for that fundamentalism stuff I was raised on. You still indulge?

Chip: I drink a beer or two.

Me: Ok. You still burn one?

Chip: Sometimes.

Me: Ok. Sounds like you aren’t a fundamentalist, either.

Chip: Oh, I forgot. You’re a Democrat.

Me: And you’re not. I should have known back when you were ordering all of those Brandy Alexanders. Do you believe in science?

Chip: I believe in the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost.

Me: Ok. But, do you believe in science?

Chip: No!

Me: What do you do when you are sick? Do you take any meds? How are you communicating with me right now without science?

Chip: I believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and mine. Do you believe in that?

Me: Ok. Does that mean you can’t believe in science?

Chip: Some of it. But, I believe in Jesus. Don’t you?

Me: Some of it

Chip: There you go!

Greg Clary

Sligo, Pennsylvania 

First published in the Rye and Whisky Review 

LIFE LINES

I looked at my hands today

To examine my life lines

Curious to know how meaningful my life is

I couldn’t decipher what this or that line meant

But what I came to realize was the story of my life

Depicted in my hands as a whole

Not just the coded lines on my palms

Studying my hands, the story unfolded

Barely aged, and hardly worn from labor

Yet scarred here and there with youthful recklessness

I looked over at the hands of my parents

There I saw a better story of my childhood

My father’s hands were large and rough

The knuckles slightly swollen and covered with hair

The palms patched with calluses

Much like the hands of my grandfather

Hard working men and battle-scarred war veterans

My grandfather’s index and middle finger of his right hand

Stained a dark yellow from countless years of smoking

Father’s just starting to darken,

He holds his cigarettes the same way

My mother has smaller hand, almost child size like mine

Our knuckles are hairless and smooth

Her fingers are bruised and swollen from all the blood sugar tests

Diabetes runs on both sides of my family

My mother’s hands are not that aged

Not like my grandmother’s whose hands

Pulse with thick purple veins

Covered in the wrinkles of her wisdom and age

Forever stained with the scent of onions and raw meat

My mother’s hands scented with a fainter chef’s scent

Lastly, I look upon my niece’s baby hands

Untouched by time

Hairless, wrinkle-less, and scarless

A sight of the pure perfection, of innocence

The life lines on her hands much longer

and more crisscrossed than mine

I take this as a good sign

I believe she will have a full and happy life

As I have had,

Thanks to the caring hands of my ancestors

Octavia Knight

Punxsutawney, PA

First published in The Watershed Journal

Sugar

Sugar

Returning home to West Virginia and hearing

“Hey Baby”, “Darlin”, “Honey”. 

“What can I get you?”

“How you doing?”

From unfamiliar women.

How I miss those sweet terms of affection. 

But, Sugar is what gets me.

Every time.

Tips are automatically doubled,

Purchases are made that weren’t intended.

My face goes from grim to grin. 

Every time.

Today, sitting alone in the woods,

I got to thinking. 

Sugar. Why sugar?

Then, a vision. An awareness. An image.

My mother died as I turned 3, and

her oldest sister, my Aunt June, 

would stop by, pick me up, 

turn me upside down,

rough me up, make me laugh. 

And call me Sugar.

Every time.

Something I needed, but could not name.

Something I still need.

When grin needs help conquering grim.

When I come home each day.

Every time.

-Greg Clary

Sligo, PA

Appalachia

Within the arms of Appalachia
Those hills that will never die
Among the skies of our humble seasons
In knowing we must always try

Looking forward to better places
Those meanings within our lives
In the simplicity of simple sorrows
Our Appalachia always survives

Like the roots of a steady forest
Mountains that will never grow old
In all of the vibrancy before us
Through the stories we’ve all been told

The many mysterious creations
By the mists that were crossing those hills
In the stories about our humanity
By a spirit that always wills...


-Kirke Wise
Clarion, PA