‘Jessica’, ‘Timide’, ‘Where 28th Ave & 38th St. Meet’, &‘Orange Socks’

Sherri Harvey is an educator, freelance writer, photographer, and eco storyteller. She travels the world for projects that tell the stories of an environment in crisis and the people helping to save it, especially women. Over the past few years, she lived with a sociocracy struggling to find solutions for the water crisis in Spain, traveled to villages throughout West Africa learning about the plight of women in remote villages, worked with Orangutan Odysseys in Borneo to highlight the crisis of deforestation and orangutans, and followed a vet crew around the island of Phuket to create the documentary film, Accidental Advoctes in Phuket. The power of stories can unite cultures, share communion, and promote eco-change. Please see www.sherriharvey.com or @sherricoyote for more info.

Jessica

The cigarette hung effortlessly from your lip while tuning your antique guitar.
I wasn’t sure if I felt desire, envy, or admiration.

Noticing my shivers you pulled your sweater over your head with hair lighter than gold
falling back onto your shoulders and handed it to me.

I had never seen a girl so cool at this point in the 16 years of my life, let alone to be
sharing a smoke with her.

I don’t remember what we did that night - what we listened to, watched, or talked about.
I only remember when leaving you handed me a CD to listen to. It was Burt Bacharach’s
Greatest Hits.

Trying to return your sweater you gestured for me to keep it and said it looked better on
me anyway. So I did.

I listened to that CD until the scratches made it skip and I wore that sweater until the
threads became tattered.

And I loved it.

Timide

“Life’s too short to be shy,” you said, sounding as French as ever while we slurped our
soups in Chinatown.
Sure I knew what that meant but I don’t think I understood it until years later.
Somewhere between shit-talking acquaintances and browsing the cheap trinkets on
Bowery St.
I decided to let you in.
And even though I couldn’t give you everything you needed - we mutually taught each
other how to care for someone else again.
That it was possible.
I may have been too shy to say this back then, or trying too hard to look tough in my
denim jacket.
But I have never been so cold or so scared as I was on the back of your motorcycle as we
flew across the Williamsburg Bridge home.

Where 28th Ave & 38th St. Meet

Sometimes when imagining the future,
you’re still there.
Well a version of you, this is.
Your face is different -you- are different.
But somehow I still know it’s you.
Mostly because of the way it feels.
Similar to the predictable comforts of singing a favorite song or the reruns of a familiar
sitcom.
This new version of you can pick up where the last one left off.
Damages I’ve acquired over the years since don’t go unnoticed.
*You dress my wounds with grace.
The kind of grace that only someone who’s been through the same hell can provide.
*You listen to my fears with sorrow.
The kind of sorrow that accompanies guilt knowing that you helped create this.
*You hold me with tenderness.
The kind of tenderness that only an old lover and friend can offer as it’s adorned with
care.
But maybe it’s not you.
Maybe I just want to feel that again.
The wholeness that came with being one-half of two.

Orange Socks

I felt her standing over me before she even spoke.
‘What are you looking at?’
Turning down my music I explained that - the reservoir is swarming with spiders whose
webs sparkle in the chain-linked fence at sunset.
‘Cool.’ She smiled.

Watching you walk away I wanted to tell you that I thought it was cool you weren’t
listening to music. And that I imagine you are comfortable sitting in the silence of
yourself.

Instead, I said, “I like your socks.”

Katarina Behrmann, a Los Angeles-based creative spirit and author, has a rich history of literary achievements. Her creative journey boasts the production of her stage play off-Broadway, with a segment featured in the Progenitor Art and Literary Journal. Her latest triumphs include the publication of a creative non-fiction piece in GreenPrints, a highlighted blog on Humans of The World, and a personal essay showcased on Drunk Monkeys. Head in clouds and heart on her sleeve, Katarina continues to create.

‘Sonnet on the wind’, ‘Sonnet for a change’, & ‘Sonnet for a crayon’

Sherri Harvey is an educator, freelance writer, photographer, and eco storyteller. She travels the world for projects that tell the stories of an environment in crisis and the people helping to save it, especially women. Over the past few years, she lived with a sociocracy struggling to find solutions for the water crisis in Spain, traveled to villages throughout West Africa learning about the plight of women in remote villages, worked with Orangutan Odysseys in Borneo to highlight the crisis of deforestation and orangutans, and followed a vet crew around the island of Phuket to create the documentary film, Accidental Advoctes in Phuket. The power of stories can unite cultures, share communion, and promote eco-change. Please see www.sherriharvey.com or @sherricoyote for more info.

Sonnet on the wind

“And there arose a great storm of wind,
and the waves beat into the ship,
so that it was now full.”
Mark 4:37

This morn I heard, while meditating, sounds
of weather, marching outside, wind so fierce
with voice both loud and sure, enough to ground
my try at centering my thoughts. It pierced
the calm that I was building, inside, tossed
it like a pile of leaves, and scattered it
among the houses on my block. No loss,
I thought, I’ll simply grab a tiny bit
of time while I’m at work, yet sitting in
my office, now, the wind remains, but here
it’s joined by massive rains that drum my win-
dow, pounding with a ragged rhythm, pierc-
ing every thought before it’s formed, before
to bore a hole and hollow out my core.

Sonnet for a change

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.
Proverb

They say tomorrow there’ll be rain, that clouds
will fill the skies and cooler winds will come,
that shirtsleeve days are not quite here; the crowds
that lined the streets will disappear, but some,
like me, will stay to revel in the change
of seasons, cycles turning inside wheels.
I watch as days begin to thin, arrange
the rise and set to maximum appeal,
and like those crowds, feel deep release to walk
about without a coat or jacket, free
to smell the soil, and like the red-tailed hawk
soar higher, higher over warming trees,
to watch the quick retreat of winter snow
as life returns to Mother Earth below.

Sonnet for a crayon

With crayon grasped within his stubby paw,
he lashes out and strikes the paper, red
marks flying back and forth, then searches for
the yellow. Can’t find yellow. Takes instead
the one that’s blue, and colors in the sky,
then grabs the green and adds some leaves for trees,
then adds the darker brown that signifies
the massive trunks that dwarf the sky. Then sees
the yellow, finally, and adds a sun,
a tiny one, up right. Then starts to pick
up random colors, adding flowers, one
by one, until a field emerges. Sticks
his finger in his nose and smiles and laughs
at what his hands have done on his behalf.

William Joel

‘Horse School’, ‘Heart Study’& ‘The Secrets of Water and Air’

Sherri Harvey is an educator, freelance writer, photographer, and eco storyteller. She travels the world for projects that tell the stories of an environment in crisis and the people helping to save it, especially women. Over the past few years, she lived with a sociocracy struggling to find solutions for the water crisis in Spain, traveled to villages throughout West Africa learning about the plight of women in remote villages, worked with Orangutan Odysseys in Borneo to highlight the crisis of deforestation and orangutans, and followed a vet crew around the island of Phuket to create the documentary film, Accidental Advoctes in Phuket. The power of stories can unite cultures, share communion, and promote eco-change. Please see www.sherriharvey.com or @sherricoyote for more info.

Horse School

Joy trailed behind Faith
in elementary school. Older girls
taught them to canter and gallop and trot.
Fierce fillies in bell-bottoms and sneakers,
they pranced across the grass.
Other voices gave way
when their neighs saturated the air.
While they whinnied and nickered,
winter winds whipped
Faith’s hair like a mare’s rippling mane,
bared her slim ankles
with its trouser-tugging teeth.

The following spring
as Joy stood at their playground’s edge,
warming her back in the sun,
Faith arrived with a Boy Scout
ring on her lazy man finger.
“Billy asked me to go steady!” she squealed.
Joy snorted and pawed the ground.
Placing her hand on Joy’s arm,
Faith said with a sigh, “Oh, Joy,
we’re too old for horse school

now.” In the blurry recesses
of her mind, Joy still sees
the yellow yarn Faith wrapped
around the band to make that ring fit,
fiber fraying like the jute halters
horse trainers use
before moving on to the harder tack
of bridles and reins and bits.

Heart Study

Anxious to participate,
I enter the atrium—
all windows and light—
at the National Institutes of Health.
Pulse taken,
blood drawn,
echo- and electro-
cardiograms done,
I complete the stress test, then

proceed to an examination room.
A research nurse in maroon scrubs
slides a heart monitor from a six-inch packet,
places the device
in the space between my breasts,
points to the dime-sized silver circle
sitting like a doorbell button
at the center of my chest,
tells me, “Tap this disk to document

irregularities.” Back home,
I press that button
to record the arrhythmia I feel
each time my daughter leaves the house—
her wavy hair held back from her hopeful face
with a bright butterfly clip.
Beyond our threshold lies
a country where youthful dreams are
flatlined with guns and greed and grift.

The Secrets of Water and Air

Like a sleepwalker,
Delores Marah lumbers
along the trails of Shady Grove,
threads her way through tombstones,
stops at one
bearing her daughter’s name.
Mallory Dawn Marah,
engraved on a granite slab—a birthdate
followed by a dash.
Unrecovered, Mallory’s body
lies at the bottom of Lowe Lake
beyond the cemetery’s edge.

Phantoms fly from their graves.
Haunted whispers of remorse
swirl from inaudible tongues,
stir up summer leaves. Memories
of Mallory in a pink maillot
sprinting across the high dive
vault and spin and crash.
Dolores taught Mallory to tread water.
No one taught Mallory
to paddle fast enough to escape
the man who held her under water so long
she couldn’t swim away.

Never apprehended,
the man fled. The cops
closed the case, convinced
Mallory was just another runaway.
Mute swans snort and hiss.
Dolores trudges to the water’s rim.
She shields her eyes from the white
glare of the morning sun,
watches the swans lift off.
Faint voices buzz and hum,
carried away on the wings
of heavy bodies in flight.

Teresa Burns Murphy is the author of a novel, The Secret to Flying (TigerEye Publications). Her writing has been published in several places, including Chicago Quarterly Review, Evening Street Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Literary Mama, The Literary Nest, The Opiate, Southern Women’s Review, Sparks of Calliope, Stirring: A Literary Collection, and The Write City Review (Volume 4). Visit her at https://www.teresaburnsmurphy.com.