Creative Nonfiction by Jan Rinehart

A Thing I Used to Do When I Was Little

by Jan Rinehart

My grandmother, 'Mom,' lived one block from our family home. To walk there alone was always permitted.

Mom raised hollyhocks and snapdragons in her flower bed on the east side of her home. As a child it seemed enormous, but in truth it was about 4' by 4'. As I sat on the ground I felt hidden.

I was a loner, so often wandered to Mom's special flower bed. There I would sit on the ground, hidden and make hollyhock dolls and puppy dogs from the snapdragons.

I could spend hours there as a small child, having tea parties, lengthy conversations and quiet moments with my friends, the hollyhock girls and their puppy dogs.

About the Author: 
Twenty-five years ago Jan Rinehart was accepted to participate in the Oregon Writing Project. She carried those skills to her classroom and taught beginning writing skills to many elementary students. Since then she has 'flirted' with personal writing but is now ready to 'commit' to daily writing. She has endless praise for the Women's Writing Group for the success she is feeling with writing today.

Poetry by Susie Donnelly

What the Mirror Does Not Show
by Susie Donnelly

I am a purple sharpie,
one shade in the sky
just before the green flash.
                                                             I am a single car garage
                                                             with no automatic
                                                             door opener.
                                                             
I am spooled
white thread wound tight,
waiting to mend.

                                                              I am a wooden clothes-pin

                                                              forgotten and grayed,
                                                              hanging useless
                                                              on the backyard line.
I am steaming
black coffee,
rich and acidic,
needing to cool.
                                                              I am a deck of cards,
                                                              worn with bent corners
                                                              and missing the king of hearts.
I am a foreign coin,
valued only in exotic places
with cobblestone streets
and mysterious words.
                                                              I am homemade cornbread
                                                              easily prepared but
                                                              grainy on the palate.
I am a forgotten crystal rosary,
coiled in a corner
of the bottom drawer.
                                                              I am a vine maple leaf
                                                              in chilly October,
                                                              clinging to the limb,
                                                              destined to fall.
I am the sounds
of three a.m.,
hushed, whispered
but always present.

   I am a shadow
   of yesterday’s child;
   a seed of tomorrow’s hope.

About the author: 

Susie Donnelly lives in SE Portland with her husband and their Goldendoodle. She has written poetry off and on (mostly off) for years.

Creative Nonfiction & Poetry by Judith Armatta

On Binaries

by Judith Armatta

He criticized my wearing black. Widow's weeds, he said, and I was only 22. No one close had died except my grandpa. I didn't see it that way. I could hide in black, be almost invisible. Hide an imperfect body. Black moods, not so much. 

At night, blackness revealed the stars’ sparkle, while cloaking wildness trying to live among us, also evil sneaking up.

Black was marshmallows too long in the fire. The bottom of a forgotten pan gone dry on the stove. It was berries in August with vanilla ice cream. And it was my friend’s perfect judo kick.

A Black Maria arriving in early morning brought terror to enemies of the state who disappeared.

My post op face turned black and scared the dentist and all the waiting patients.

Black for funerals, white for weddings and first communions. Chinese tradition requires white for mourning. I wore a black dress at my wedding. White whispered from underneath.

We contrast black with white and pronounce one bad, one good, stuck in binary thought. Black skin, white skin. Where does brown fit? Where beauty? Is not skin deep.

I had three cats, two white, one black. They were not binaries. They were complexities. A gray cat adopted us. The three others were prejudiced. They did not like him.

Black is the absence of . . . red, yellow, green, blue. Black absorbs.

After living eons in the light, we will all disappear into a black hole. Which could be another universe. Or nothing.

Chasing Words

by Judith Armatta

I used to put them in a jar
Uncommon words
Jimjams
Jiggery pokery
Crepuscular
Common and lovely words
Dusk
Courage
Star rain

Just now I went to take them out
Dusty, ignored for years
I shook out words
And a dead fly
More words
And a dead bee
I kept the bee

Snollygoster
Lycanthrope
Dysgenic


Solitude
Death
Joy


They fall out
Or I pull them out with tweezers
Until they all lay scattered on my desk

Is this where they’ve been hiding
As the white page looks at me
Empty
As my mind?


A jar of words
To make a story
Or a life

About the Author: 

Judith Armatta is a lawyer, journalist, and human-rights advocate who monitored the trial of Slobodan Milošević on behalf of the Coalition for International Justice. For over two decades, she has worked to increase awareness of and response to violence against women and children. Armatta currently consults and writes on international humanitarian, human rights, and U.S. Criminal Justice issues. Armatta’s book, Twilight of Impunity: the War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milošević, was published in 2010 by Duke University Press. http://www.juditharmatta.com/

A Gesture

Here's a small, personal story: It was 2016, and we were in a vegetarian café in Eugene, Oregon, where my son was working on his M.A. in Journalism. He was telling us (his dad and me) how he felt about a controversial issue. I was so moved by the eloquence of his hand gestures - and how they mirrored the depths of his heart and mind - that I took this photo while I was listening to him.

Here's another story, one of worldwide significance: In 1970, West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt set a wreath on a memorial for Warsaw ghetto victims. And then, instead of making a speech, he knelt on the steps and bowed his head.

"I looked into the depths of German history, and, under the weight of the millions of those who were murdered, I simply did what men must do when words fail," he wrote in his memoir.*

What gestures - large or small - do you notice around you? A flip of hair. A pat on the head. A furtive exit. What do those actions have to say? Maybe they're the starting place for greater understanding. They could also be the springboard for a story or poem.




*Tyler Marshall, October 9, 1992, "Willy Brandt, Post WWII German Statesman, Dies," Los Angeles Times.