by Minerva Rising Contributor | Jul 17, 2015 | The Keeping Room
I don’t celebrate holidays. “I celebrate every day,” I say if anyone asks. Mostly, I just prefer to avoid crowds and social pressure. My home reflects this choice for solitude and quiet. I live at the end of a gravel road where all but one or two of the houses I pass...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Jun 30, 2015 | The Keeping Room
He wore eyeglasses with thick frames, usually black, sometimes tortoise shell that made him look like a studious raccoon. These spectacles suited him perfectly. He could recall the facts of ancient history and postulate on the fine details of Talmudic...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Jun 26, 2015 | The Keeping Room
My mother is smashing my Jack-in-the-box with a broom. I know not to cry. Toys and games are the work of the Devil. She tells me to find all of Jack’s pieces. She puts them in the can for the garbage man. * My aunt and uncle are here. My mother grows a black...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Jun 21, 2015 | The Keeping Room
Photo Credit: “Father’s Hand” by Gayle George I. My grandfather burned a house down when he was a kid, my dad said, when I was a kid. His father’s father was in the Klan. Pale eyed and thin lipped, I throw acorns. ...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Jun 15, 2015 | The Keeping Room
If I were to write a love song for my father, what it might sound like? A dirge perhaps, dark and lonely, haunting, wistful with what could have been, heavy with emptiness of unrequited love. And the words – they might cry with rage, might swoon with...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Jun 12, 2015 | The Keeping Room
For my father – 1 Higher the swing rose as he pushed. My sister fell backward. He caught her. 2 Hands on the tiller, we steered, the boat heading home on the course he set. Jeanne Julian’s poems have appeared in Naugatuck River...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Jun 5, 2015 | The Keeping Room
The Yesterday Today and Tomorrow Tree grew in the garden of our home in South Africa. It usually flowered for one season, purple and white blooms sending their perfume through my parents’ bedroom window. In the year my father died, it flowered beyond its time...
by Emily Shearer | May 30, 2015 | Poetry2, Staff Blog
Sometime after the heat of singlehandedly dissolving the heart of the iceberg and before the dream of a black man hit by a train in an all-white city, epiphany let herself enter through my midnight window, settled on my windowsill, welcome and messy as an unexpected...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | May 29, 2015 | The Keeping Room
Photo Credit: www.archdavisdesigns.com Dad was more storyteller than mechanic, leaving his wartime occupation as soon as his tour ended. He was a Bible salesman when he met Mom, but before I was in preschool, my parents made a choice that was unusual for...
by Lindsey Grudnicki | May 20, 2015 | Staff Picks
A Review by Lindsey and Emily, Editors of Minerva Rising Through her twenty-one poems that reticulate like stepping stones on a snaky garden path, Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick guides her readers through one woman’s version of Gethsemane. Amid vivid images of lush...
