Poetry Contributor
Pushpanjali Kumari is a native of Jharkhand, a state in eastern India, and is currently pursuing an MA in English Literature. Her writing has appeared in More than Melanin, gulmohur quarterly, Narrow Road Journal, and elsewhere. Her work chiefly explores lasting impressions of her own rural Indian identity.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for picking up our latest issue of Nightingale & Sparrow Literary Magazine! With summer heat surrounding us, and hints of autumn creeping in, we’re grateful to embrace this season’s theme, bonfire.
Whether through pop culture references or your own experiences, you surely have a fiery image come to mind when you hear this issue’s title. I know I certainly did! Unsurprisingly, our incredible contributors brought just this life, alongside so many nuanced interpretations of the theme.
For this theme, we gave submitters the following prompt: “The crackling wood and the warmth of the flames fill the night air. We sit around at the beach, or maybe the first football game of the season, watching the embers glow in the darkness as the flames lick the sky. Send us work that speaks to the primal allure of the bonfire or reflects on the tales passed down through this timeless gathering.”
From Mahaila Smith’s “Wildfire” and Emma Wells’s “ Autumn Camp” to Pushpanjali Kumari’s “The God in the Hearth” and Kaitlyn Dempsey’s “Fiery Times,” you’ll feel theflames and smell the smoke as you page through this issue.
As always, thank you to the N&S staff, submitters and contributors, readers, and other supporters who make this issue and all we do possible.
Take a seat around the bonfire, and enjoy.
Juliette Sebock
Editor-in-Chief, Nightingale & Sparrow
Poetry Contributor
Robert Okaji lives in Indiana. He holds a BA in history, and has no affiliation with any writing programs. The winner of the 2022 Slipstream Press Annual Chapbook Contest, his work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Vox Populi, Big Windows Review, Evergreen Review, and elsewhere.
Pushpanjali Kumari
You fail to notice the narrowing of the
Passing days until you find yourself at a
Shallow juncture of softening seasons,
Your body, deoxygenated,
Silently urges the fire in the hearth
To linger on like a ghost awaiting
A second death.
It is winter and you still carry the music of
Last summer’s hailstorm,
Its tune a rich hum in your ears.
The outline of your palm, aglow, waits
For its translucence to be rooted
To your memories of that distant
Storybook summer with its tales
Of djinns and draughts.
The embers show you the worlds
They ate up,
In dancing shadows
Of flickering moths and other hidden
Nocturnal,
This unfurling bloom of warmth
Reminds you of the hibiscus
And its fire-crowned pistil
You sucked dry of nectar,
Letting the small bead of stolen sweetness
Diffuse on your tongue.
How magical it is
To consider the possibility of anything
Disappearing in your mouth at all—
A taste, a texture, a truthiness
Of the god that exists within the things
That remind you of nothing but
The grace of tenderness.
Poetry Contributor
Jennifer Skogen is the author of the young adult series, The Haunting of Grey Hills, and her work has been featured in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of San Francisco. Jennifer lives near Seattle, Washington, and tries to go hiking in beautiful places whenever it isn’t raining.
Tricia Knoll
Scritch of metal tines on concrete called
our gang from the fort in the woods.
We abandoned paint-can seats,
acorn cups and mushroom-rotted logs.
Fathers in padded jackets and duckbill hats
raked oak leaves in low October sun.
Scritch of rake – we brought twigs for treats
as fathers whooshed up fire with a little gas
and much damp smoke and shifted us
from one side to the other as the wind eddied.
No one thought of air pollution, climate change
or carbon sequestration. This was ritual,
pretend cook fires on the oxbow of the Platte,
banks of dry waving grasses, tribes circled.
Smoke trending to pale. From the smackling
of a burn pile, this taut smell was fall,
going toward Halloween and shorter days.
Liquid fire tongues leapt. If the men
talked politics, we didn’t listen
as they broomed strays toward the bonfire.
If this was a playdate, we didn’t know it.
If the future would yield up yard debris bins,
we were too deep in rites of fire to imagine it.
When the heaps were ash, we ran
back to our fort, sugared up
on ashy marshmallows,
a wild smell of char in our hair
replacing summer’s mowed lawns.
We’d seen the dragon,
heard it cackle and expected fall
would always be the same.
Fathers. Rakes. And fire.
Poetry Contributor
Mahaila Smith (any pronouns) is a young, femme writer, living and working on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They are one of the co-editors for The Sprawl Mag (thesprawlmag.ca). They like learning theory and writing spec poetry. Their debut chapbook, Claw Machine, was published by Anstruther Press in 2020. You can read more of their work on their website: MahailaSmith.ca
Jennifer Skogen
It was a good memory: visiting Norway,
staying on a farm with my husband’s family,
eating waffles with cream and jam
cooked over a fire on the banks
of a fjord, like I’d stepped
into my own bloodstream and followed it
back in time to where my father’s family lived
years ago, one hundred years at least,
maybe more,
before I appeared on the long chain
of miracles that blood can perform:
love chasing us children down the years,
demanding we exist
despite distance
and time. Despite the great sea
that separated my mother’s ancestors
and my father’s.
It isn’t that I belonged to the cold
Nordic air that carried
sparks from the fire and held the perfect
scent of waffles overflowing the iron,
turning golden and decadent.
My last name couldn’t buy me passage
back to another life
any more than I could stop time
from sweeping me into another decade
past that memory on the beach,
with the grief and joy that rode
in the implacable current beside me.
All this to say
that I ate the waffle
they cooked for me,
jam dripping down my hands.
All this to say that we can live
through miracles.
Fiction Contributor
Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with and by: The World’s Greatest Anthology, The League of Poets, The Lake, The Beckindale Poetry Journal, Dreich Magazine, Drunken Pen Writing, Porridge Magazine, Visual Verse, Littoral Magazine, The Pangolin Review, Derailleur Press, Giving Room Magazine, Chronogram, and for the Ledbury Poetry Festival. She also has published a number of short stories and her first novel, Shelley’s Sisterhood, is due to be published shortly.
Faith Allington
We met on Bonfire Night
before the seasons turned
too likely to ignite.
The stars were affixed
to the velvet dusk
while flames blossomed
on our cheeks.
Bright sparks of laughter,
the arc of your smile,
and dark rich scent of apples
rising from the cup.
We offered the fire
our twigs of hawthorn.
I thought we were gold,
even knowing Robert Frost’s
admonition—
nothing gold can last.
But in that night we remain
etched in firelight,
flickering selves that never
break or rust.