Little Crooner
Louis Dennis
Poetry Contributor
ESH Leighton is a writer and wanderer who has lived in six cities in the last fourteen years. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Mookychick, Loud Coffee Press, and Trampoline among others. She currently lives in Las Vegas with her husband where she tends bar, listening to people’s stories and tucking them away for future use. Find her on social media @eshleighton.
My Father Speaking About Monsoons
Nancy Hathaway
We begin with Buxtehude –
a kyrie, a credo – and end
two hours later with Debussy.
How well we know each other,
how one forgets to count the rests,
one can’t seem to learn the high notes,
one gets lost, one can’t slur, one
needs a hearing aid, and no one
ever wants to play the bass.
Warring rhythms and wrong notes
plague us. Dissonance abounds.
And yet at times our separate sounds –
soaring soprano, noonday alto,
consoling tenor, muffled bass –
meld, ornamenting the autumn air
like a line turning into a shape –
invisible, architectural,
as cunning as calculus, gold
edged in silence. And those moments
keep us coming back, and this –
this pastime with good company –
has been going on for years.
Hardarshan Singh Valia
A jogger picked up a fallen glove
From the snow-covered ground
Pinned it to a wire fence near the trail
For it to be claimed by its rightful owner.
On last round of jogging
She stopped by the spot
Placed glove from her right hand
Next to the lonely left-handed glove.
During next week of jogging
She was surprised to find a right-handed glove
Placed next to the original left-handed glove
With a note awaiting to be read.
Curiosity got hold of her,
“Thanks for giving company to my hand;
I will not need these gloves anymore
As tomorrow I’ll be deployed to a desert.”
She gathered the three gloves
Walked slowly to the parking lot
And encountered the silence being pierced
By the siren of an ambulance speeding by.
In the gray sky above she watched
A perfect symmetry of flying geese
Being disturbed by a goose
Seeking to get back into formation.
Lauren Aspery
my mother’s watery lullaby
returns to me whenever I take a bath
emerging from the plughole
and reverberating off the tiles
I like to swim in the water
I like to swim in the water
I like to swim in the water, oh
swim swim swimmy I swim
though I no longer swim in the company
of Do-Re-Mi dolphins or
Winnie the Pooh’s Splash ‘n’ Bubble treehouse
I soak and recall
out-of-tune plastic whistles
and the sharp sting of “no more tears” shampoo
Photography Contributor
Louis Dennis learned photography in a chemical darkroom. He finds surprises where they are least expected. His photographs have recently appeared in The Positive Pandemic experiment, The Hopper, and The Burningword literary journal.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to harmony, the latest issue of Nightingale & Sparrow Literary Magazine! After a chaotic few weeks on a personal front, our team has come together and brought this issue to life. And, as a result, this might just be our favourite issue yet.
For this submissions period, we asked writers and photographers to “surprise us with your own unique harmonies. Share the songs that intersperse your life. Show us the places where discord unites. Let us hear the chords in each image and every line.” As always, our wonderful contributors have brought that vision to life.
From “Morning in the Village” by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee and A. S. Callaghan’s “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” to Lindsey Pucci’s “Rolling In” and “Stuck in the Tape Deck” by Hannah Madonna, you’ll hear harmonies arising in songs both literal and figurative.
Thank you, as always to our N&S team, submitters and contributors, readers, customers, and other supporters who’ve made this issue and all of our efforts possible.
And so, without further ado, welcome to harmony.
Juliette Sebock
Editor-in-Chief, Nightingale & Sparrow
Poetry Contributor
Lauren Aspery is a school librarian from the North East of England. She is a two-time winner of the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize and was named the poet-in-residence commendation at the 2020 Chester Cathedral Young People’s Poetry Competition. She also won the inaugural Loft Books International Poetry Competition. Her poetry has been published by Fragmented Voices, Aloe Mag, Slice of the Moon Books and others.
Poetry Contributor
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of two award-winning collections, Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award. Her poetry has appeared in journals internationally, including The Bitter Oleander, Cimarron Review, Feminist Studies, The Massachusetts Review, and Nightingale & Sparrow.
Susan Barry-Schulz
I’m thinking pussy willows
before they lose their sheen and puddles
of forsythia shouting yellow
from the darkness
at the curb the music
might as well be the blanketed
horse neighing softly at the barn door
behind a swaying fringe of weeping
willow and far away a rooster
crowing no matter the time
a swarm of gnats
a bit of humidity see to it
unless its summer when it happens
in that case maybe watermelon and American flags
fireworks and fireflies a familiar
laugh floating through the screen door
from the front porch where someone
pulls a cold hand up from a cooler
stocked with ice and root beer
while the drone of the neighbor’s lawnmower
rises and falls with smoky trails of citronella on second thought
cancel the American flags
but if it’s fall let there be acorns
and oak leaves crunching beneath
suede shoes fat squirrels
zipping through rows
of whispers and folding chairs
hot cider cinnamon sticks
branches rubbing and in the distance
the high school football game announcer
raising his voice a bass drum
and if it’s winter
just play for them the sound the snowflakes
used to make
as they turned to gold
before our eyes flying
under the faithful street light
all those precious nights
back home.