Category: Hygge (Issue No. XIII)

At the Lake House, We Skip Rocks

Annie Marhefka

At the lake house, we skip flat rocks on flatter liquid surfaces, laugh when the wrist launch goes awry and the rocks skip upwards instead of outwards, kerplunk into the lake’s stomach. We lay flannel blankets on grass and pick at singular blades to see if the others notice one’s been plucked from the fused fabric of their field. We take the boat out and cut the motor. We can hear the slap of the lake’s tongue flicking against the hull. We sip champagne and rock gently, side to side. We tug woolen sweaters over shoulders when the sun dips behind the swaying reeds and the frogs start their throaty croaking. We toss kindling into the firepit and watch the steady swirl of the flames as they churn through our offerings. We press graham crackers into sandwiches and drip marshmallow goo onto fingers and chocolate onto tongues. We dip bare toes into the blackness of water, fishing for a change in temperature, a warmth. We whisper secrets to the trees, tell them we love them, that they’re different from the trees back home. Tell them to remember us when we leave.

Annie Marhefka

Where to Read

Robyn Smith

Robyn Smith

Fire Eater

Karen Sadler

I spend winters gulping candlelight,
let the flames singe my tongue,
wicks hissing in distress.

My throat, coated in wax,
and my lips ringed with ash,
keep the frigid air out.

They give my blood a fighting chance.

But this warmth is fleeting
so I spend nights awake,
ears pricked to the scream
of sirens and I run, then,
starved and panting
through ice-packed streets,
catch the smoke in my nose
and lunge.

I crouch at the base of
burning houses,
the blazing wood a feast.
Let me lick the smoking
bannister, let me drink
the melting hinge.

I would swallow the stars
if I could, in winter.

I would eat the sun,
then beg for more.

Karen Sadler

Coming Home

Yvette Viets Flaten

My father arrived stateside from Thailand
in 1969, just before Thanksgiving.

That night I could hear my parents talking
together all night long, her high giddy laugh
and his burr coming through the gypsum
plaster of our old rented house.

My dad died twenty years ago, my mom
two months ago, during the warmest January
on record. with so little frost in the ground
that opening the grave was hardly work.

Some will credit climate change for loosening
the ground, but I know better. He was waiting,
expectant, happy, when her casket sank against
the shoulder of his.

All I could think was that the ground was softened
by reason of their love; no more wars, no more
oceans, no separations. I imagine they have not
quit talking yet.

Yvette Viets Flaten

Aunt Moonstone

Marie-Louise Eyres

In a house of animals, blind dogs, a three-legged cat,
salamanders posed like statues in a tank,
a couple of kids and a mynah bird who all talk back,
she follows strict Buddhist rules, like never squash an insect.

All along the bookshelves, golden art-deco dancers
bare-breasted, double up as candlesticks.
Cigarettes twirl thick incense from an alabaster dish.
A table is peppered with glasses inked in port.

Baking takes place in bold, red loaves,
purple buns that contrast well with marmalade.
But then there’s the bright green, braided bread
that none of us will touch for thoughts of mould.

Sometimes she re-paints the walls, the paving stones out back
with giant snakes and ladders, hopscotch,
creatures muraled under a brick-dark sea.
Her cottage is thatch-roofed, deep in the country.

Fen violet and greater celandine skirt the old fence
by an open field of defiant, red eye poppies
where dogs and us kids gambol afternoons.
When we reach cacophony, she meditates an hour or two

inside an upstairs room. I peep through the keyhole,
see tie-dyed legs crossed on an Afghan rug.
She drags on her long thin smoke
beside a stick of frankincense burning in a pot.

I just close my eyes, plan to wait for her.
But as I breathe the thick air through the latch,
I rise up from the landing then float downstairs
where I find my cousins curled asleep into the patchwork couch.

The candlesticks begin to sway, a gilded chorus-line
while an octopus slides in from the painted patio
and flops itself across the kitchen floor.
Then the dogs are tangoing on their back legs with the cat

who’s eye-balling the bird that hasn’t said a word all day,
while a single salamander, no longer in his tank,
is circling in perfect figure of eights around the ashtray and a cup,
as he turns a slightly paler shade of grey.

Marie-Louise Eyres

the lonely mountain apotheosis

H. Sanders

In the mountains at night,
eating beans and drinking
whiskey you’ll look at the
fire and the fire is all else.

you make you happy, being
alone for a while, being
the only thing for a while.

Some say God is Fire and is Other
and so for all intents and purposes
it’s you and God in a black space
of no echo, the occasional sleepy
gnat, angel, ghost drifting up and
over with the embers, so synchronized
it seems he’s met them before.
and the ground if you could be sure it still existed would be
black,
and the dampened fallen trees if you could be sure they still existed would be
black
and the static fizzing ocean if you could be sure it still existed would be
black
and the curious ground squirrels black,
the clustered hill flowersblack
and
no sound
passes the popping logs and
no thing
is seen past the smoke but
Suddenly—
there is a fire elsewhere you can see,
in all the blackness, a fire.
there is a blur across it,
an orbiting body. This
body makes you happy,
though you will not test
the blackness to touch it,
but you are glad for more
bodies in your universe
and you wish them well,
you wish them whiskey,
you wish them beans,
and a soft sleep when
the gods burn out.

H. Sanders

Floral Transport

Patricia Davis-Muffett

Glass lily glow, furiously reaching, twisting
into other blooms, seeking a higher shelf
like the ladder slid along the bookshelf–
the one you found to reclaim
this hated room–meant to reach
Bishop Caruth Collins
so far above my lowly station
on the fainting couch, divan,
Craigslist sofa for one woman, one
black dog warming feet, patched leather
where cat clawed, puppy scratched.
Eye to eye with
Olds, Oliver, Paz, Rich,
where my water glass holds court
beads of sweat slicking sides,
where the tiger’s eye protector
gift from my child, childhood
stuffed dog, old nose bleached,
in this place where the quilt covers my legs,
this quilt pieced for me alone, its
raucous colors the colors of my mind.
Overhead, more glass flowers, calm
in whites and purples, orchids
like the ones you buy me
over and over, the orchids
that return me to the garden
where we danced to fiddle,
hammer dulcimer, drove north
into Badlands, into mountains,
into forest, turned to each other
in the silence of backcountry
and reached for each other’s hands.

Patricia Davis-Muffett

Wallpaper

Birdy Odell

Four walls, a floor, a door
A cottage
Nothing more
And beneath the crooked roof
Within
The hearth that warms both kith
And kin
A table worn and
Bookshelves heaving
Clocks keep time to joy
And grieving
A blanket warm
A candle burns
And in the dark of night
Returns
The moon to light the pathway home
Guide the wanderer on their own
While battles rage and bullets fall
Still safe within
These papered walls

Birdy Odell