Nightingale & Sparrow

Category: bonfire (issue no. XIX)

  • Mahaila Smith

    Mahaila Smith

    Mahaila Smith

    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


    Works in Nightingale & Sparrow

    Wildfire

  • The Fjord

    The Fjord

    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.

    Jennifer Skogen

  • Emma Wells

    Emma Wells

    Emma Wells

    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.


    Works in Nightingale & Sparrow

    Autumn Camp

  • Best Friends

    Best Friends

    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.

    Faith Allington

  • Fiery Times

    Fiery Times

    Kaitlyn Dempsey

    Fiery Times

    Kaitlyn Dempsey

  • Immigration

    Immigration

    Robert Okaji

    The hill’s shoulders, slumped under the sky’s glare.
    Hardscrabble and brown grass, insects chirring.
    Voices in the still leaves.
    I ask the boy if he would like water,
    some bread. Fruit. No, he says, I must go.
    The sun flares on the barn’s metal roof. A history
    of stray thoughts, of complicity and calloused hands.
    One tired cloud lingers overhead.
    I sharpen my knives, think of cold beer.
    Of finding home where no one knows me.
    Where snow falls and wood burns cool.
    And other incessant dreams.

    Robert Okaji

  • Sunset Bouquet

    Sunset Bouquet

    Carella Keil

    Sunset Bouquet

    Carella Keil