All posts by Cheryl Louise Snell

 
Fiction & Poetry

My pioneer

Women have no wilderness in them.


 

 

Grandma wore blue mascara
to chop dinner chicken heads. The women
cut her dead, those whispering farmwives.
 
To begin again, she tractored across the prairie
with sons and machines. Wheat fields waved in new opinion.
 
She named her girls after jewels & flowers.
Earmarking the exits for later, she harassed the neighbors
with metaphor.
 
Memories detach from surrounding tissue
as generations of us wait for our lovers.
When they show up, it’s never that great.
 
When Xmas candles ignite the fir tree
shall we remember only light and loveliness?
 
Hardscrabble landscapes breed hardsell seductions:
We stay, but we count on our talent for escape.

Author’s notes:
When I think of International Women’s Day, I remember my great-grandmother, Ida Arsby. She traveled from Norway to marry a man she barely knew, and farmed a parcel of land with him for years. They had 11 children. When her husband began to abuse her, accusing her of having affairs with the neighbors, she was so insulted, she left him. She was past 40 when she rode her tractor into Canada, accompanied by some of her children, and began to farm another parcel of land, this time on her own. That farm had oil on it.
 
I met her when she was 94. She still had blonde hair in her white braid, and bright blue eyes. I asked her what was most important in life. She told me, “Dignity, dear, is everything.” — Cheryl Snell

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Fiction & Poetry

Spin

This lie burns like a candle — at both ends.


[Click here to listen to the poem.]  

 

"Dreamscape" (Janet Snell) 

Artist’s notes:
The spiral staircase effect in "Dreamscape" may make a statement about circular thinking, or maybe it asks a more lyrical question about fantasy. The viewer has to decide. — Janet Snell

At dinner, he tells a lie. It flickers like a candle. It drizzles down its dazzle.
He tries to blow it out. It singes all his fingers. He reaches over to pinch its little wick,
but the lie won’t die. It opens to interpretation, gathers force, spreads like rumor,
hides and seeks. It can’t stop. No one will let it. It’s there on Thanksgiving at Uncle
Bob’s, Easter at Aunt Sylvia’s. It goes on for a day, a month, a year. A spotlight
hovers over it, search beams crisscross it. It begins to run. It passes over asphalt
and swamp, cell towers and landlines. Calls are dropped. The man wasn’t answering
anyway. The lie has confused him. It’s no longer the same. The ending has changed.
All of the details. Some of the names.

A peek inside the creative process
“Spin” got its legs after I tried it as a prose poem. Stanzas slowed it down where I wanted speed, and the block form let it find its own tempo. — Cheryl Snell

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Fiction & Poetry

Outpatient

Healing hands and killing-fields.


[Click here to listen to the poem.]  

Artist’s notes:
“Therapy” shows a corseted head to represent bound-up, traumatic memories. A lot of my work has to do with disorganized thinking, or states of mind. — Janet Snell

From this…

"Outpatient," first draft.

to this…

Once he starts to talk, the therapist
goes on and on comparing the nutrition
in snake to jungle rat.
 
My head screams STOP, but I know he can’t.
 
His pupils dilate to drowning as he knuckles my spine,
and I call on the same God who abandoned his family
to a killing-field floor.
 
I only asked questions out of respect
for his accent. What else should I have done?
 
My gown had come untied. I offered up my stiff back 
in the room mapped with pain, severe with charts
of what can go wrong with a person.
 
Nobody I know, though of that I can’t be certain.
I’ve never recognized a man by his bones.

A peek inside the creative process
"Outpatient" came directly from my first meeting with a new physical therapist, a refugee from Biafra. I had to weed out many of my impressions of the room and the man to get to the heart of the poem, as you can see in the rough draft. — Cheryl Snell
 

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Fiction & Poetry

He peels his love like an apple

All apples sweeten in the dark.


[Click here to listen to the poem.]  

 

"Romance" (Janet Snell) 

Artist’s notes:
“Romance” connects the man’s heart to the woman’s back because the woman often carries the burden of the relationship. I used blue and purple, because to me they are more erotic and unexpected than red and pink. — Janet Snell

The man wants the lady apple. 
It’s unripe, but he’s hungry now,
and there are plenty of other fruits
in the fridge.
 
All apples sweeten in the dark,
so it doesn’t matter which one
he chooses. Peel spirals below his knife.
He brings the flesh to his mouth.
 
A worm’s sudden slither is the last thing
he expects to see — the apple
hollowed out, juice running bitter
down his chin.

A peek inside the creative process
In “He peels his love like an apple,” I was aware of the danger of cliché, so I had the worm — that tiny serpent in the garden — make a surprise appearance in an unusual setting. — Cheryl Snell

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also: