UAB Digital Commons (Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham)

Jones, Tayari

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 08 Article 55 
2008 
Some Thing Blue 
Tayari Jones 
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 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Jones, Tayari (2008) "Some Thing Blue," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 08, Article 55. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol08/iss2008/55 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Tayari Jones 
SOME THING BLUE 
In Scottsboro, Alabama, there is a warehouse store that sells everything 
that people leave behind on airplanes. This is where your mother has 
found your wedding dress. 
You are apprehensive. What ever happened to "something old, some-
thing new?" What you have so far is something mortgaged-this would 
be your childhood home. (Storybook weddings are far more costly than 
anyone imagined.) There is also something pawned-your engagement 
ring, one and one third carats, clear as drinking water. (Your fiance 
Marcus, being both book-smart and streetwise, haggled with the pawn 
broker for almost an hour) And now, there is this lovely gown-some-
thing ditched. Because let's face it. No one just loses a dress like this. 
(The designer is famous and photogenic; her picture is printed in gossip 
magazines.) 
But how can you complain? Marcus is a good guy. He is a podia -
trist. More importantly, your mother is happy and she is alive. Only two 
years ago, she lay bald and dying, weeping because she would never be a 
grandmother, never wear the mother-of-the-bride dress she bought six 
years ago on sale at Filene's. 
At the time, she really was dying, not yet in hospice care, but fading, 
so you didn't tell her that lately you'd been dating women and that you 
loved one in particular, an artist who designed elaborate jewelry from 
bottle glass. Who would have benefited from such a confession? 
Instead, you sat beside your dying mother and promised to name any 
son of yours Benjamin, for her father and you'd call any daughter, Iris, in 
her memory. And while you were promising, you promised God you'd be 
a better daughter were you given just another chance. 
And just like that, she recovered. So appealing was your offer that 
God actually took you up on it. Call it a miracle. Call it a contract. 
So now you stand in the makeshift dressing room of the warehouse-
store laced into this gown which was abandoned by a woman whose obli-
gations were far less urgent than your own. The bodice is old-fashioned, 
141 
Jon es 
rigid with whale bone but lush with beadwork. The organza sleeves are 
light and thin as bible paper. 
Your mother waits on the other side of the curtain, eager and restless 
as a child, her face shining with joy and with health. You love her. You 
love her. She is your mother. How dare you, even for one moment, regret 
trading your own life for hers? 
142 


English

Some Thing Blue

Fries, Hannah

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 09 Article 15 
2009 
Night Crawlers 
Hannah Fries 
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 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Fries, Hannah (2009) "Night Crawlers," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 09, Article 15. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol09/iss2009/15 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
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23PMS. .
Hannah Fries
Night Crawlers
Narrow forms, they lengthen, looking
like shadows in the grass: slick moonbathers
come out to work on the glisten, the soap-bubble
sheen of their backs—come out
to find each other, hermaphroditic, perfect 
exchange, bodies side by side. Stretched 
footlong, segmented, expanding
and contracting, breathing across the ground.
No lungs, they breathe through moistened skin.
No eyes, they flinch from light, slide into the dark, 
forgiving underground. When someday they find you, 
there, in the fragrant loam of their castings, 
you will love them, yes, and how tenderly 
they take you in: Ah, 
you think, finally, the tunnel, as you reach 
with what are not your arms, gliding,
smooth swimmer, past one, then another, all five
soft pulsing hearts.


Night Crawlers

Lee, Wendi

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 09 Article 22 
2009 
Nursery Rhymes in the Long Green 
Wendi Lee 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Lee, Wendi (2009) "Nursery Rhymes in the Long Green," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 09, 
Article 22. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol09/iss2009/22 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
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32 PMS. .
Wendi Lee
Nursery Rhymes in the Long Green
A row of angels thrumming their heads against the walls.
Those breadcrumbs,
those goddamn breadcrumbs. 
In winter the screams ricochet through 
every bed, the onion walls. 
Martyred girls 
growing fur bellies to keep warm.
In the winter all rooms stay cold, 
even the lounge,
awash in television colors, frantic
television sounds. 
She bit her hand until ridges grew
like dinosaur scales. 
The rocking that never goes away,
back and forth, shore to shore,
nursery rhymes in the long green.
Deliver us.
Ribbons and kittens. Angels came to me.
No panties, 
just doll pressed prayers: 
Grease putty
dirt crevice, stockings ripped
from toe to knee. 
Paradise, in a way. 


Nursery Rhymes in the Long Green

Garvey, Pamela

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 09 Article 24 
2009 
Self-Portrait with Joan of Arc 
Pamela Garvey 
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 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Garvey, Pamela (2009) "Self-Portrait with Joan of Arc," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 09, 
Article 24. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol09/iss2009/24 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
34 PMS. .
Pamela Garvey
Self-Portrait with Joan of Arc
Stalking the saints
my mother worshipped,
I dug out newborn rabbits
from their burrow,
let in the damning light 
and its cold air.
I named each one 
after a different martyr
and plucked Joan from her siblings
to feed to the bees. 
Their hive swelled
from the felled pine’s 
center—a teeming scab
I breached
pushing her closer and closer 
till they feasted on her silent squirm
and I became
a blackout of flame.
Thus I sentenced myself 
to my own burning,
and my mother thought it would comfort me 
to hug me close to her belly
to sleep through the pain—
not me, even throbbing 
with the poison of bees, 
I could sleep in a horse’s stall, nose to shit—
but her, she only slept soundly
while holding me against the cold 
I craved.
35PMS. .
Many years later, I stripped 
and sullied myself
for men too old to love me,
too young to parent me
while she prayed against
AIDS, against cocaine, against my body 
starving to shut out curves. 
According to her, the world’s madness
began during my infancy
with the Manson murders,
followed by the scandals of Nixon.
These shadows draped her,
and I took her darkness for a map.
I wandered those paths even after 
I left for good. Years 
without even my voice 
over the phone, her body reduced 
to flickers of memory.
When the Lord, or some 
acid tripping Jesus, 
some saintly long hair with 
flask and pistol
called, I left her 
spinning along the spikes 
of my absence.
A lesson in the savior’s love.
A Judas betrayal 
as when Joan left her mother
with nothing but piles of her hair. 
Surely the mother knew 
their king would abandon her 
to his enemies. Smiling swarm,
they stripped Joan 
of sword and armor
so women like my mother would pray,
beg really, on their knees. 
36 PMS. .
Still, I courted wounds. 
Pocketed each and every one 
like beads to twirl in nervous fingers
as my body
lurched and cracked into flames.


Self-Portrait with Joan of Arc

Katzenberger, Lisa

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 09 Article 35 
2009 
Silence 
Lisa Katzenberger 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Katzenberger, Lisa (2009) "Silence," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 09, Article 35. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol09/iss2009/35 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
113PMS. .
Lisa Katzenberger
Silence
I’m trying to cut the pizza with a long, serrated steak knife, but I feel like 
cutting off my hand instead. There’s an extra pepperoni on my half of the 
Half Pepperoni/Half Cheese and it pisses me off. I pick it up, pinching it 
with my thumb and index finger. Sweaty, orange grease drips off it onto 
the pizza, which only serves to increase my rage. I throw the pepperoni 
against the wall and watch it stick against the slick green paint for a brief 
second, then slide down in a magnificent oily trail.
I make another slice in the pizza and stare at the four pieces of car-
bohydrates and fat. I look at my left wrist, turning it over and around, 
examining it in the dull kitchen light. My right hand taps the tip of the 
knife against the underside of my left wrist softly. Pizza grease gleams 
along the ridges of the knife. I turn it over to let the grease slide along the 
safe, smooth edge of the utensil. I stick out my tongue and slide it slowly 
against the knife’s flatness. The knife is clean and tapping itself against 
my left wrist again. Somehow.
“Where’s dinner?” Roger says.
“Coming, honey.”
I toss the pizza onto two paper plates. I walk into the living room, 
and notice the knife is still in my hand, but the plates of pizza are not. I 
switch the items appropriately. I have an itch on the back of my neck, and 
as I instinctively reach my right hand up to scratch it, that hand’s worth 
of pizza falls onto the yellow linoleum floor. Pepperoni side down. 
“And bring me another beer,” Roger says.
I flop the pizza back onto the plate, balance both plates in one hand 
and open the fridge. I grab a can of Lite, grasp it delicately under my left 
armpit and make my way out to the living room. The knife winks at me 
from the kitchen counter, glinting in the evening light.
“Can you at least put up the fucking TV trays, my dear?” I ask. The 
paper plates sag from the weight of the pizza.
Roger takes a long drag on his cigarette, considering this. He squints 
his eyes as he inhales which, unfortunately, I find terribly sexy. He slams 
back the foot of the recliner and walks over to me. Grabs the beer out of 
my armpit, then sets up two TV trays and sits down.
114 PMS. .
Katzenbe rg e r
“Thank you, my love,” I say, centering a plate on his tray first, then 
setting down my own.
“You’ve outdone yourself, Marcy. Another delicacy once again.”
We eat and watch TV, and don’t talk, but laugh together at the same 
commercials. “That cat is fucking hysterical,” is all Roger says the entire 
night. He falls asleep in the recliner. I walk past the empty, greasy paper 
plates on the TV trays, head upstairs to bed and think of the kitchen 
knife.
I wake up trying to scream. My mouth is wide open, all stretched out, 
and my throat is parched from the effort. No noise comes out. I grasp at 
the air for something to hold onto, desperately waiting for my scream to 
release itself. I push harder on my lungs, but nothing. 
My flailing arms swipe Roger and he sits up. I can feel him hovering 
over me, like he’s watching a turtle stuck on its back, legs swimming in 
the air, but going nowhere. He reaches his arms out to mine and pulls me 
to sit up.
“It’s okay, babe,” he says. “I’m here.”
He’s holding me and I feel my chest begin to loosen. I give one more 
push on my scream and out comes a whimper.
“There you go,” Roger says. He pats me on the back, smoothes my 
hair. “All better.”
He lays me back on the bed, pulls the covers over me. He slips down 
beneath the sheets and spoons me. 
Friday night, the girls stop by to pick me up for a night out. “Drinking 
beer and playin’ the jukebox,” Roger says. “Hopin’ boys’ll look at you.”
Betty sits on the arm of Roger’s recliner, paying no attention to the 
garter belt exposed from beneath her short skirt. “C’mon now, you just 
jealous. You know us girls gotta get outta the house here and there. If 
you’re lucky, we always come home to the right guy.”
“You say lucky, I say …”
Betty runs her hands over Roger’s bald head. “You say what?”
“You know, like that saying. You say tomato…”
“But you didn’t say tomato. You said lucky,” Betty says, looking at 
me and Rhonda for agreement. Rhonda shrugs, taking a swig of beer. 
“Actually, I said lucky. You didn’t say nothing.”
Roger shakes his head and stands up, unloading Betty in the process. 
115
poemmemoirstory
PMS. .
She pulls down her skirt and balances herself on her heels.
“C’mon, gals, let’s go,” Betty says. “Rhonda, don’t let me drink so 
much as last time. Last time I told you not to let me drink too much, and 
I drank too much.”
“Ain’t your mother,” Rhonda says, sucking down the last of her beer. 
The empty can clinks on the brown coffee table.
“Great friends I have here, don’t I, Roger?” Betty says.
“Roger left,” Rhonda says.
“He ain’t left, Rhonda. He just ain’t in the room anymore.”
“Either way, you can stop flirting,” Rhonda says. She looks at me, but I 
try not to notice by picking my fingernails.
Roger comes back into the living room, opening a fresh can of beer. It 
foams over, spilling on the carpet. He pats it into the floor with the toe of 
his shoe.
“Here goes the party train,” Betty says. “Too bad you ain’t comin’ 
Roger. Your buddies from the factory should be there.”
“Don’t matter,” Roger says. “Game’s on.”
“Game’s on there, just as well as it is here.”
“There ain’t no TV sound at Mugs. Just the music.”
“Then that’s sound. You sure is mixin’ your words up tonight,” Betty 
says.
I tap my foot. 
“Well, Miss Busy over here looks all anxious, we better go,” Betty says. 
She kisses her hand and taps it on Roger’s head. I breeze by him and out 
the door.
At the bar, I dance. I talk to everyone. People I went to high school 
with, guys Roger works with, girls I’ve waitressed with over the years. 
Betty drinks too much, and Rhonda tries to stop her, just like always. 
When Mugs closes, I drive us home.
Roger is asleep in the chair, the television static filling the dead air in 
the room. I tap him on the shoulder and he follows me to bed. I don’t 
sleep that night.
I pull a double at the restaurant, covering for Rhonda’s sister, who is get-
ting an abortion. I make shit tips, and don’t refill the truckers’ coffee cups 
as often as I should. I could make small talk, keep the coffee flowing, 
throw in an extra piece of toast here and there, but I don’t. 
An old man with spry white hair comes in right before my shift ends, 
116 PMS. .
Katzenbe rg e r
about four-thirty. He’s the last one in before the breakfast shift starts and 
the place will get lively again. He has a cup of decaffeinated coffee and a 
stale slice of blueberry pie. He tells me I have pretty eyes. When I leave 
for the night, I find that he’s left at his booth a full cup of coffee and a ten 
dollar tip. The blueberry pie is all gone.
When I get home, Roger is already in the shower. I go into the bath-
room, take off my clothes and get in the shower with him. He washes 
my hair and then I lean him back against the tiled wall. I crouch down, 
finally resting on my knees. Roger’s calves wobble until I’m finished. 
When I stand up, he hugs me slowly, then turns me around. His hand 
reaches down to return the favor, but I push it away. He looks at me for a 
single moment, then steps out of the tub and shaves at the sink. I stay in 
the shower until he leaves. The water runs cold against my skin.
I sleep until Roger comes home from work. When I go downstairs, 
he’s already sitting in the recliner, watching TV and drinking a beer.
“What’s for dinner?” he says.
I head for the kitchen and pull out the knife. I spin it on the counter-
top in front of me. When it stops, the point is facing away from me and 
toward the refrigerator. I take this as a good sign and put the knife back 
in its drawer. I find something in the freezer to reheat. I watch it turn in 
the microwave and try not to cry.
Betty calls later that night and asks me if I want to go out with her 
and Rhonda. 
“I’m beat,” I lie. I won’t be able to sleep for hours. “Did a double yes-
terday. How is Rhonda’s sister?”
“Couldn’t go through with it.”
“Tell her I’m sorry.”
“Rhonda, Marcy says she’s sorry,” Betty says. 
“No, tell that to Kelly,” I say, leaning against the kitchen countertop. 
“If she needs me to do another shift or something.”
“Rhonda, tell Kelly that Marcy will do her shifts,” Betty says. I hear 
mumbling in the background. “Rhonda says okay.”
“Have fun tonight.”
“What are you and hubby up to that’s more fun than going out  
with me?”
“The usual.”
“Try something unusual, honey,” Betty says. “That’s what they like.” 
“Goodbye, Betty.”
117
poemmemoirstory
PMS. .
“Say good night to Roger for me.”
I hang up the phone and go upstairs to take a bath. I pull out a 
warped, dog-eared copy of Parents magazine from beneath the stack of 
towels and read it in the tub. I stay there until my skin is as wrinkled as 
the pages I flip through and the water turns cool. 
When I head to the bedroom for a pair of fresh pajamas, I find Roger 
asleep and snoring. I change my clothes quietly and go back downstairs. 
The recliner is still warm and I curl up in it. I don’t turn on the TV. It 
takes me hours to fall asleep.
Kelly comes with us to Mugs on Saturday. When she orders her third 
beer, I throw a glance at Betty. She pulls a compact from her purse and 
checks her eyeliner. 
I pull Rhonda aside. “Should Kelly really be drinking?”
Rhonda shrugs, takes a drag on her cigarette. “Been a hard week for 
the kid.”
“She’s not even twenty-one.”
“I wouldn’t talk, missy. You been comin’ here since we were sixteen.”
“That’s not what I mean, Rhonda.”
“Just leave her be, okay? She ain’t your problem. We don’t need a…” 
Rhonda’s words trail off. “Just relax, okay?”
I take a puff on Rhonda’s cigarette and go sit at the other end of the 
bar. I watch the game on the TV. Roger’s team wins. I see one of the girls 
from the restaurant heading out the door and hitch a ride home with her.
I wake up again that night, trying to scream. I don’t wake Roger. I 
wait it out, ticking off the seconds. After twenty-seven, I can breathe 
again. I turn onto my side.
“You never talk,” Roger says. The sound of his voice scares me. 
“You don’t either.”
“I mean about … the …. You never talk about it.”
“It’s fine, everything’s fine,” I lie.
“You shouldn’t read those magazines,” he says. 
I do read them though, Parents and American Baby, and the like. I 
keep re-reading them. I’ve got them stashed away in linen closets and in 
corners of the kitchen cabinets that Roger never ventures into.
I prefer to think of a parent’s life like it is in those magazines. Doing 
popsicle art projects with your child, teaching her to read, to ride her 
first bike.
118 PMS. .
Katzenbe rg e r
Nowhere in the magazines did they talk about my moment of moth-
erhood. With half opened eyes, she looks at the baby’s fists balled up 
tightly, tiny arms and legs flailing beneath the scratchy, wet blanket.  
The exhausted mother feels the joy of her child screaming with all her 
might. Then suddenly, nothing. Mouth still open, fingers tightly wound, 
eyes wide. 
This is the first time Roger has mentioned it since he drove me home 
from the hospital that day, six months ago. The baby seat that was in the 
car when we drove to the hospital two days before in frantic anticipation 
was gone. When I gingerly walked into the house, Roger’s palm gently 
and awkwardly pressed against the small of my back, the crib was gone 
from the second bedroom, along with the little dresser and all the little 
clothes in it. Diapers, pacifiers and burping towels were nowhere to be 
found. 
All that was left were the magazines. 
When I woke the next afternoon, dragged myself downstairs in my 
robe, face raw and red, I slunk down into the couch. My arms languished 
out in exhaustion, and my right hand grazed the rack full of magazines I 
read while pregnant. I picked one up, its cover overwhelmed by the face 
of a happy, blue-eyed baby.
In that instant, I took the stack of them from the rack and put them 
away in the linen closet upstairs, as if I’d discovered a poison in my 
home. But it was a poison I didn’t want to eliminate. It was painful, but I 
couldn’t let it go. 
For days, I searched for other signs of our previously planned life that 
Roger forgot to hide away when everything went off course. The maga-
zines were all I could find. I held onto them with obsession and longing, 
torturing myself with the images of happy families, and happy babies, 
and happy mothers.
I tried to read them in secret. An alcoholic sneaking a drink from her 
stash. I never talked about it. Like I never talked about the baby. Born 
on a Tuesday at 10:35 p.m. Died on the same Tuesday, at 10:39 p.m. We 
named her Sarah.
“I just want you to be happy,” Roger says now, lying so still beside me 
in bed.
I thought of how we were before. Roger would come to Mugs with me 
and Betty and Rhonda on Saturdays. I would chatter with my girlfriends 
all night, he would hang out with the guys, watching the game. Betty 
119
poemmemoirstory
PMS. .
would flirt with Roger shamelessly and he would flirt back. Just enough 
to make her feel good about herself, giving her the courage to chat it up 
with someone else next.
We’d come home and make quiet love, and fall asleep naked. After 
hard days at work, we would fight, biting words hitting the air, but for-
gotten the next day when a look or a glance at one another would catch 
our breath. Going through the normal pain of scraping together enough 
money to pay the bills, trying to find something new to talk about during 
dinner. Living life.
“Your screaming,” Roger continues. “It scares me.” He never really 
talked about that before. He would soothe me, shush my silent screams, 
then we would just … move on.
I can’t say anything back. I don’t have an answer. I don’t have any 
other solution but to continue to go through the motions. To wait for 
things to get back to normal.
“We have to move on,” Roger says. 
I can’t have another baby. It’s not that medically, I can’t. Doctors say I 
can. But emotionally, I can’t. Not now. Not ever. 
I toss back the covers and go down to the kitchen. Roger doesn’t  
call after me. I pull out the long, serrated steak knife. I place it on the 
countertop and spin it around until it stops. The moonlight coming 
through the window bounces off the edge of the blade, which points 
directly at me.
I step closer to the countertop, the knife inching nearer my gut as it 
wavers on the slick surface. I place my hands over my fleshy abdomen, 
and suddenly, softly, Roger’s hands are there too. He kisses me on the top 
of my head. 
We stand quietly there together for a longer time than I can count, 
longer than I’ve been near him in months. Roger pulls away from me and 
reaches into the back of a cabinet, behind the piles of Tupperware. He 
pulls out a magazine, holds it up in front of me for a single second, then 
throws it in the trash. 
Roger reaches for my hand and I offer it. He walks me into the dark 
living room and stands me still. He squeezes my hand, then lets it go. 
I circle the room, pulling out magazines from beneath chair cushions, 
behind bookshelves, underneath a plant stand.
I hand them to Roger, then follow the same exercise in the dining 
room, the upstairs bedrooms, the closets. I pull from the corners of my 
120 PMS. .
Katzenbe rg e r
mind the dream I was waiting to revive. The breath I wanted to see and 
hear and feel again. 
As I hand in the last of my shameful hopes to Roger, he stacks them 
neatly in a pile on the table. After a respectful silence, he picks up the 
magazines, takes my hand and walks back into the kitchen. He throws 
the magazines into the garbage.
I stand before him quietly, head hung, heart tired. He takes one step 
toward me and I take one toward him. He wraps his arms around me and 
I fall into his chest. He holds me as I sob and shake against him. 
I don’t know what to say. I’m just relieved that I have to say nothing. 
Roger and I never were talkers. We were quiet lovers, silent friends, yet 
never interested in being outside of each other’s presence. I feel him back 
with me now, with his arms and his heart and his breath. Neither of us 
says it. Neither of us has to.
As the last of my tears spill out, my breath settles to a normal pace, 
and my sighs quiet themselves, Roger leads me upstairs. I go back to 
sleep and I do not scream.


Silence

Staff, PoemMemoirStory

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 10 Article 2 
2010 
PMS 10 (Front Matter) 
PoemMemoirStory Staff 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Staff, PoemMemoirStory (2010) "PMS 10 (Front Matter)," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 10, 
Article 2. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol10/iss2010/2 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
poemmemoirs tory Number Ten/2010
p
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2
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Li Yun Alvarado
Lucy Biederman
Wandajune Bishop-Towle
Fabu Carter Brisco
Valor Brown
Rose Bunch
Bryn Chancellor
Sharon Charde
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Garnett Kilberg Cohen
Diane Shipley DeCillis
Karen Duffy
Telaina Morse Eriksen
Kathleen Fagley
Anne C. Fowler
Wendy Fox
Lauren Fuhrmann
Madelyn Garner
Nancy Glaub
Masha Hamilton
Lisa Horner
Katherine Jamieson
Robin K. Johnson
Mary Kaiser
Sandra Kohler
Georgia Kreiger
Elaine Neil Orr
Aimee Parkison
Medeia Starfire
Jeanine Stevens
Donna G. Thomas
Jeanie Thompson
Meredith Trede
Katherine Webb
Lisa Zerkle
PMS. .
poemmemoirstory
2010number ten
Copyright © 2010 by PMS poemmemoirstory
PMS is a journal of women’s poetry, memoir, and short fiction published 
once a year. Subscriptions are $7 per year or $12 for two years; sample cop-
ies are $7. Unsolicited manuscripts of up to five poems or fifteen pages of 
prose are welcome during our reading period (January 1 through March 
30), but must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for 
consideration. Manuscripts received at other times of the year will be re-
turned unread. For submission guidelines, visit us at www.pms-journal.org, 
or send a SASE to the address below. All rights revert to the author upon 
publication. Reprints are permitted with appropriate acknowledgment. Ad-
dress all correspondence to:
PMS poemmemoirstory
HB 217
1530 3rd Avenue South
Birmingham, AL 35294-1260
PMS poemmemoirstory is a member of the Council of Literary Maga-
zines and Presses (CLMP) and the Council of Editors of Learned Journals 
(CELJ). Indexed by the Humanities International Index and in Feminist 
Periodicals: A Current Listing of Contents, PMS poemmemoirstory is dis-
tributed to the trade by Ingram Periodicals, 1226 Heil Quaker Blvd., La 
Vergne, TN 37086-7000.
College of Arts and Sciences
The University of Alabama at Birmingham
The Department of English,  
The University of Alabama at Birmingham
Margaret Harrill
Robert Morris, M.D.
C. Douglas Witherspoon, M.D.
pa t rons
f r i ends
Sandra Agricola
Rebecca Bach
George W. Bates
Peter and Miriam Bellis
Claude and Nancy 
Bennett
Randy Blythe
James Bonner
F.M. Bradley
Mary Flowers Braswell
Karen Brookshaw
Bert Brouwer
Edwin L. Brown
Donna Burgess
Linda Casebeer
John E. Collins
Robert Collins
Jim L. Davidson
Michael Davis
Denise Duhamel
Charles Faust
Grace Finkel
Edward M. Friend III
Andrew Glaze
Robert P. Glaze
Randa Graves
Ron Guthrie
Ward Haarbauer
Ted Haddin
John Haggerty
Richard Hague
Sang Y. Han
Jeff Hansen
Jessica Heflin
Pamela Horn
Jennifer Horne
William Hutchings
Lanier Scott Isom
Joey Kennedy
Sue Kim
Marilyn Kurata
Ruth and Edward 
Lamonte
Beverly Lebouef
Ada Long
Susan Luther
John C. Mayer
James Mersmann
Will Miles
Dail W. Mullins Jr.
Michael R. Payne
Robert Lynn Penny
Lee and Pam Person
William Pogue
Kieran Quinlan
Steven M. Rudd
Rusty Rushton
John Sartain
Janet Sharp
Danny Siegel
Juanita Sizemore
Martha Ann Stevenson
Lou Suarez
Susan Swagler
Drucilla Tyler
Maria Vargas
Daniel Vines
Larry Wharton
Elaine Whitaker
Jacqueline Wood
John M. Yozzo
Carol Prejean Zippert
editors- in-chief
Kerry Madden
Tina Mozelle Harris
assistant editors
Delores Carlito 
Shelly Cato
Alicia K. Clavell
Sue Kim
Heather Martin 
Jared Meals
Laurel Mills
Laura Simpson
Lauren Slaughter
Jessica Terrell
business managers
Heather Martin
administrat ive assistants
Jessica Terrell
Jared Meals
Jamie Walden
Lindy Owens
Laura Clements
Paul Pickering
cover design 
Michael J. Alfano
cover photo
Kiddie Land Coaster by Alvin Hudson 
production/printing
47 Journals, LLC
s t a f f
from the Editor-in-Chief 
poemmemoirstory
Medeia Starfire   Ostrich 5
Lisa Horner   When a Woman Is Really 
    a Constellation 6
    Wearing a Paper Bag Is One Kind 
    of Hide and Seek 7
Kathleen Fagley   Two Weeks after Finding Out 
    about You 8
    When Summer Turned to Ash  9
Georgia Kreiger   Ash, Ash—You Poke and Stir 10
Katherine Webb   The Static Electricity 
    of Playground Equipment 11
Jeanie Thompson  Silence: 
    Montgomery, Alabama 1916 12
    Helen Remembers Peter Fagan: 
    Palm Sunday, 1916 14
Karen Duffy   Pathology of Goodness  15
    Teaching American High School  17
Lisa Zerkle   Stupid Things  19
Madelyn Garner  Hollyhock  21
Mary Kaiser   She Rehearses the Paradiso Shuffle 22
Anne C. Fowler   Namesake 23
Meredith Trede   Working around 
    Peterson’s Field Guide 24
con ten t s
Lauren Fuhrmann   Peeling Away and Melting  26
Lucy Biederman  (It’s a Mighty Thin Line)  27
Aimee Parkison   Immigration Issues 28
Sandra Kohler   Preparing for Winter 29
Robin K. Johnson  On Getting Lemons 32
Fabu Carter Brisco  Clay, Dust and Dirt  34
Jeanine Stevens   Field Mice 35
Wandajune Bishop-Towle Visiting My Stepson on the 
    Staff-Intensive Unit 36
Cathy Linh Che   First Day 37
    Story 38
Valor Brown   How to Be a Battered Woman 40
Li Yun Alvarado  Pelo Bueno 46
Sharon Charde    Coming Out, 1960 47
Afghan Women’s Writing Project
Masha Hamilton  Zarmeena 51
Roya    Remembering Fifteen 54
Seeta    Under Burqa 56
Shogofa    Kill Silence 58
Meena Y   My First Namaz 60
con ten t s . . .
Freshta    I Thought It Was a Dream but 
    When I Woke, I Couldn’t Walk 61
Tabasom   Far from You 64
poemmemoirstory
Donna G. Thomas  Kiddie Land 67
Elaine Neil Orr   Passing the Cups 75
Katherine Jamieson  Ain’t Ready for No Man 80
Telaina Morse Eriksen   Oatmeal Cream Pie 88
Garnett Kilberg Cohen  Alzheimer’s Daughter 93
poemmemoirstory
Diane Shipley DeCillis  The Theory of Everything 107
Bryn Chancellor  All this History at Once 113
Wendy Fox   The House 118
Rose Bunch   Sirenia 127
Nancy Glaub   Rise 129
contributors  141
con ten t s . . .
f r o m  t h e  ed i t o r- in - ch i e f
I am sitting here on a Sunday morning in Birmingham, Alabama waiting 
for a piano to arrive. A crepe myrtle blooms outside our window in this 
new city for me and for my eleven-year-old daughter, Norah, two thou-
sand miles away from the home we left in Los Angeles. Norah is the rea-
son I have purchased a piano from a man named Bill Hill who lives on a 
mountain in Hoover, Alabama. I have a worked out a deal with Bill Hill, 
who will let me make a down payment and then nine monthly payments 
until it’s paid off next June. I think of the freedom I have to buy a piano. 
I think of the freedom my daughter has to learn an instrument, and I 
think of the promise I made to her former piano teacher in Los Angeles 
to get a piano and find a teacher. I think of the need to have music in our 
new home, and the freedom of my daughter’s heart and hands to create 
music. 
Welcome to the new issue of PMS 10, which is dedicated to Masha 
Hamilton and the writers of the “Afghan Women’s Writing Project.” It 
was Hamilton’s work in Afghanistan where the freedom for women to 
write stories or make music is strictly forbidden under Taliban rule. 
Hamilton traveled to Afghanistan several times to listen to the stories 
of Afghan women. It was from these trips and meeting the women of 
Afghanistan that she came to establish the “Afghan Women’s Writing 
Project,” giving Afghan women a place to tell their stories, publishing 
only under their first names for reasons of safety. From Seeta’s “Under 
Burqa” to Shogofa’s “Kill Silence” to Meena’s “My First Namaz,” we catch 
a glimpse of what it means to grow up in a world where women’s silence 
is not only mandatory, it is celebrated. But Hamilton’s own determina-
tion to “kill silence” has sparked an underground movement of change. 
She not only found teachers and established secure on-line classrooms 
for Afghan women to study and write, she conceived perhaps the rarest 
freedom of all in Afghanistan —a place for women to unlock their words 
to share with the world. It is our great privilege to celebrate some of these 
stories and poems here with you. 
But freedom isn’t only elusive in Afghanistan as we see in Valor 
Brown’s poem “How to be a Battered Woman” where even making a 
simple phone call is an act of defiance or in the explosive words of Lisa 
Horner’s “When A Woman Is Really A Constellation.” We can also 
linger in Jeanie Thompson poems of Helen Keller in Helen’s world of 
listening and remembering while she waits for a lover who isn’t going 
to arrive. Cathy Linh Che’s “First Day” paints the portrait a Vietnamese 
woman in the garment district of Los Angeles already trapped on her 
first day of work. The secrets and invisible lives of women all over the 
world and throughout time pulse in the poems of our contributors from 
Mary Kaiser’s “She Rehearses the Paradiso Shuffle” to Madeline Garner’s 
“Hollyhock” to Karen Duffy’s “Teaching American High School.”
PMS 10 is also pleased to publish work from new authors like Donna 
Thomas whose essay, “Kiddie Land” captures the world of Birmingham 
when the city’s first amusement park became desegregated, and she was 
there in her Sunday finest to celebrate the freedom white children had 
always taken for granted. Telaina Morse Eriksen’s “Oatmeal Cream Pie” 
and Garnett Kilberg Cohen’s “Alzheimer’s Daughter” explore the themes 
of motherhood, indifference, and loss through dark humor in the blood 
ties of family.
Southern writer Elizabeth Spencer called her memoir Landscapes of 
the Heart, and the fiction pieces in PMS 10 reflect those very words as we 
traverse the landscapes of the hearts of these stories. Bryn Chancellor’s 
“All This History at Once” glitters with mortification and hilarity at 
the chance meeting of an ex-husband at a craft fair while Rose Bunch’s 
“Sirenia” flashes with memory and river. Nancy Glaub’s “Rise” explores 
the unimaginable loss of a child through hummingbirds trapped in a 
skylight, Guitar Hero, and dinner guests caught in the tightrope walk of 
an evening meant to regain some kind of foothold in the world. 
PMS 10 would like to thank all its contributors for the poems, mem-
oirs, and stories, and as a new editor to this magazine, I would especially 
like to thank Linda Frost, who first created PMS. My hope is simply to 
continue the excellent work she began a decade ago. Much like Masha 
Hamilton, Frost created a haven for women to find their voices and sto-
ries on the page. I would also like to thank my co-editor, Tina Harris, 
who has guided me every step of the way, teaching me the myriad details 
that goes into publishing a literary magazine. I am incredibly grateful to 
her for her humor, insight, and great kindness to me in a new city. 
This issue would also not be possible without a staff of careful read-
ers, assistant editors, and interns. I would like to thank Heather Martin 
for her tremendous organizational skills with our subscription base and 
also for her great knowledge of the history of PMS and its contributors. 
I am very grateful to Delores Carlito’s careful eye and attention to detail 
over the last ten years at PMS. I so enjoyed the weekly meetings with 
my tireless interns: Laura Clements, Jamie Walden, and Lindy Owens. I 
would like to extend a huge thanks to Sue Kim, Alicia K. Clavell, Lauren 
Slaughter, Laura Simpson, Laurel Mills, Paul Pickering, Jared Meals, 
Shelly Cato, and Jessica Terrell for their reading and editing from the 
early submission process to the final marathon editing session. I would 
also like to thank Russell Helms, the designer, who has patiently gone 
over the cover design with me and so painstakingly worked on the layout 
for the new work to shine. I also want to thank Dr. Peter Bellis, Chair of 
the English Department for his great belief in PMS, and a warm thank 
you to our interim dean, Dr. Jean Ann Linney, and to the new dean of 
the College Arts & Sciences, Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, and to our provost, 
Dr. Eli Capilouto, who have all shown their support to PMS. 
And I am deeply indebted to Birmingham author, Tim Hollis, of 
“Birmingham Rewound,” who showed me a range of historic pictures of 
the original “Kiddie Land Fair Park” to help us all choose a cover. Thank 
you very much, Tim!
And finally, dear reader, I would like to thank you and end with the 
words of Tabasom, one of Masha Hamilton’s Afghan Women Writers:
Far From You
Far from you,
life is winter.
Far from you, 
the sky of my heart rains.
I am a jungle of burnt trees.
Come, find me here.
Far from you,
I am alone in my cage, 
waiting,
for you.
May you be far from winter and find the freedom and joy to tell your 
stories.
–Kerry Madden
Co-Editor, PMS 10


PMS 10 (Front Matter)

Thompson, Jeanie

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 10 Article 11 
2010 
Helen Remembers Peter Fagan: Palm Sunday, 1916 
Jeanie Thompson 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Thompson, Jeanie (2010) "Helen Remembers Peter Fagan: Palm Sunday, 1916," PoemMemoirStory 
(literary magazine): Vol. 10, Article 11. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol10/iss2010/11 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
14 PMS. .
Jeanie Thompson
Helen Remembers Peter Fagan: 
Palm Sunday, 1916
Just tell them, the Lord needs it—
just tell them, it’s a simple task you perform.
Today, without you, I am as useless as a broken pot.
Outside Jerusalem, they went looking for a colt.
Could this unbroken animal help them learn,
repeating to themselves, the Lord needs it?
Cutting palms, they spread the branches for his feet.
I know those feet, and how they make me turn.
But today, without you, I am as useless as a broken pot.
Today we are called to the passion, to believe it—
and even a woman, alone, can claim
to tell them, the Lord needs it.
I know I was walking with them, spreading sharp
palm fronds for his feet. I was there, hopeless among 
them, crying, today without you, I am useless as a broken pot.
With you there was an island of joy, but here my heart
must widen past a world of sorrow. There will be freedom
from words that fall in fragments, useless as a broken pot.
Just tell them, of my heart—the Lords needs it.


Helen Remembers Peter Fagan: Palm Sunday, 1916

Charde, Sharon

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 10 Article 31 
2010 
Coming Out, 1960 
Sharon Charde 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Charde, Sharon (2010) "Coming Out, 1960," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 10, Article 31. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol10/iss2010/31 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
47PMS. .
Sharon Charde 
Coming Out, 1960
God’s girls 
got a party
fathers paid 
so we could have a ball
just like the Protestants
we made ourselves up
white-gowned debutantes
merry widows pushing
untouched breasts high
roses, escorts, curtseys
love that red on our lips
hair lacquered and twisted 
hymens intact
introduced to society
Christ’s hopeful whores
into a future husband’s hands
we’d graduate 
from girlhood
tongues cut out
eyes excavated 
trying to believe
in the immaculately conceived


Coming Out, 1960

Bunch, Rose

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 10 Article 47 
2010 
Sirenia 
Rose Bunch 
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 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Bunch, Rose (2010) "Sirenia," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 10, Article 47. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol10/iss2010/47 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
127PMS. .
Rose Bunch
Sirenia
There were no skidmarks when, at age 27, Keith drove straight into 
the White river, missing the bridge on a curve of Highway 74. He was 
drunk, or determined. At age nine we were each other’s first kiss. My 
only one for six more years. His lips were wet, rubbery, and he smelled 
of warm earth. We pressed our grimy faces together behind the rusted 
swing sets, out near the river’s edge concealed in the tall grass we 
chewed for sweetness. 
“Want to touch tongues?”
We poked them out at one another like threats, but when tip met tip 
we fell apart in shivering giggles. “She’s my girlfriend,” he said to any-
body. Keith’s Cherokee skin and green eyes made him the prettiest boy at 
school.
The river sometimes over-flowed its banks and made the field we sat 
in a lake, or if it was dry the stones rose from its center and flies gath-
ered on the exposed muck. In early summer we swam, when the water 
was cool and flowing. Limestone shelves along the banks provided warm 
places for us and the cotton mouths to heat our skin. Jumping from the 
low bluffs, the plunge took you down, down, down, darker and colder, 
slowing until your toes touched bottom. Our feet sunk in to mud or 
slipped on the surfaces of rocks when we pushed off in frantic kicks 
to the light. We imagined creatures of myth dwelling under the bluffs, 
wreathed in water grasses and rotting leaves. River sprites or spirits who 
watched and waited for the right time to reveal themselves to impart a 
rare gift or secret, or to reach out and grasp an ankle with an algae-cov-
ered hand. We shivered on the bluffs until dry again, watching bass break 
the surface, and talked about the things that might dwell beneath us.
Keith quit playing with me when he started playing with Debbie, and 
he quit playing with Debbie when he started playing with Sheila, and he 
quit playing with Sheila when he started playing with Lynette, and then 
he moved to another school where he quit playing with many more girls. 
It wasn’t until much later he returned to the narrow valley, twice divorced 
128 PMS. .
Bunch
with three kids and a job at the Tyson chicken processing plant. He rent-
ed an old house out on 74, overlooking the bend in the river. One night 
he planted his truck there in the dark green waters, which would conceal 
its skin for weeks until the water receded. Having moved away, I didn’t 
learn of it until ten years later.
I went away to college, a job, a divorce and never saw him as a man, 
but now I’ve come back as he did. The river is a stinking band of chicken 
litter run-off and sediment. No one would be fool enough to swim. On 
hot days the wind carries the smell of decay, but the fields still contain 
nothing but the sweet grass due to flood zoning. His truck was long since 
hauled from the river, yet I imagine him when I cross that bridge. He’s 
sitting beneath it in the stagnant water, a small boy with green eyes and 
hair the color of mud who can barely peer over the dashboard. I want to 
sit beside him, our hands touching on the seat, the water cooling me, an 
occasional fish bumping its nose against the windshield. We watch and 
wait together for what shifts beyond us, gleaming in the light filtering 
down through suspended silt, to be revealed.


Sirenia

Parker, Mary Elizabeth

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 11 Article 9 
2011 
For the Young Girls 
Mary Elizabeth Parker 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Parker, Mary Elizabeth (2011) "For the Young Girls," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 11, Article 
9. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol11/iss2011/9 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
27PMS. .
Mary Elizabeth Parker
For the Young Girls
In Athens the unclaimed dogs are well fed. No telling how long this state 
will last before the agora fills with feral maws and the balance of civilized 
flesh falls back into hunger. Here women wax big—lifting stiff hennaed 
heads, striding on thick black pumps—but who knows what powdery 
pink spots they shrink to in private rooms? A beautiful face is a beauti-
ful soul and vice versa—insisting against all theology that spirit resides 
in the flesh, that subcutaneous down-sliding is proof of demons in the 
bone. For too many years their tables have sagged with too much. It 
spills, flows, crusts—mountains and canyons of food—the hung haunch-
es and fruits of the markets, intricate salads awaiting flies. You must eat, 
it is good for you, how else will you stay strong? But thelo,	she wants the 
skin of the dancer whose face bears no press of a man’s earnest fingers; 
she wants the lungs of the young diva who sips tendrils of smoke from 
that cigarette just as a plant sucks in tendrils of rain. Oh, she could leach 
every faith, framed like that against the Valencia oranges, the tangle of 
vines where the wild cats creep. She is walking away, voice cherry-red 
as the lipstick that paints her mouth too hard but breaks soft when she 
smiles with her white teeth. The diva will sing later, a tendril of sweat 
from navel to pubis inside her glittery gown—rough-handled by the 
Romany men who play her music, eyes insistent that her beauty will take 
them with her.


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