It was the watches I wanted, those radium dials
Glowing like bomb sights
When I cupped my palm.
Wisp
Of radioactivity—the hour hand;
Nether-wisp—the second.
For weeks my mother worked the counter at Kresge’s—
Her faded pink smock
As tight as a nurse’s—
As she laid out the bands in their false
Reptilian shines—
The cowboy tans, the avocado greens. This
Was Radium City
And my mother, Marie
Curie, scientist of jewels and hams,
The chunks of meat slapped
Like memory into the knife
And the iridescence sliced to pieces as thin
As winter sky, shaved uranium.
I had to stack them high to tongue the plugs
Of fats, the permeating salts.
The roll breaking in my hands like a ball of
Glass. And the stench of drugstore
Popcorn, its second perfume
Mingling with what my mother wore
As she shoveled out
The bags like spent carnival fortunes.
More money was one we wasted on ourselves.
Or new drapes.
One last snap of the Tupperware over the nightly concoctions
No one ever wanted to eat.
I’d go away and ponder mono/stereo
For the extra buck
In the lp bins, or keep an eye walking
Home for Tarzan—
Weissmuller in a shiny Olds or Cadillac.
And then wait out the summer hours pitching
A 9-inning game
In a chalk box the side of the house.
Ferguson Jenkins for 7 or so,
Then Abernathy for the submarine.
Next door a neighbor would peg out his pet
Skunk and I’d listen as it roiled
With thirst
Or hunkered under diving blue jays,
Their cobalts dipped
In the mouth of the sun
And set out like hour hands
To the shadowed yard.
The Cubs would lose.
Weissmuller never show.
The Mexican kids from Dempster would threaten
To beat my ass into the street
And leave me there
Dented and ringing as a hubcap,
Another rat-faced kid
Waiting for his mother to come home.
Pink smock.
Ham in a pocket.
Singing beyond the genius of the meats,
The radium dials, the gems,
The gold fish
And guppies in their clouds of hopelessness.
The kiss, the mother’s kiss, put like a cure to the child’s face.
Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in Poetry. As a trauma-informed educator, artist, facilitator, and mother; she uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, cultivate healing, and to explore the complex magic of mothering. She has received fellowships and awards from Tin House (now the McCormack Writing Center), the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell, the Brother Thomas Fellowship, and St. Botolph Club Foundation, among others. Tatiana is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, teaches at GrubStreet, and has been on faculty at Emerson College, among other institutions. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and more. She is represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary.
Monica Jimenez is the senior culture & trends editor for Tufts University news and features and assistant editor of Tufts Magazine, and a community ed acting and playwriting instructor. Her work has appeared in publications including Ruminate Magazine and the Mini Plays Review, and her plays have been produced in festivals including the Boston Theater Marathon, Boston Slam Theater, and Short ’N Sweet Hollywood. She is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program and former co-editor-in-chief, fiction editor, and designer of the Stonecoast Review. She was an honorable mention for Ruminate Magazine’s William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and winner of the flash fiction contest at the Boskone sci-fi and fantasy convention.
Dear Readers,
I am so excited to be able to present this issue as Solstice’s new Editor-in-Chief. I started at Solstice earlier this year as Treasurer, and I have been so impressed by this generous and talented community and Solstice’s commitment to publishing underserved writers and writers on the margins.
This issue features the winners and finalists of our annual Summer Writing Contest, chosen by our amazing guest judges, Jessica Treadway (fiction), Porsha Olayiwola (poetry), Sven Birkerts (nonfiction), and John Vasquez Mejias (graphic literature), as well wonderful pieces selected by our editors, poetry in translations, reviews, interviews, photographs, and more.
The winning fiction piece, “Say It Right” by Michael Kane, is in the voice of a narrator whose brother’s storytelling acumen begins to overtake the reality: “Long before death gave him a microphone, he had learned how to stand at the center of a room and let everyone else orbit.”
The winning poem, “eulogy through an unposted Instagram statement” by E’mon Lauren, is full of dynamic turns and frank emotion: “i’m always ahead of time and often feel unappreciated. how many poets wings have i opened?”
The winning nonfiction piece, “A Rarely Sung Song” by Catherine Mauk, begins with the author realizing she is a year old than she thought, and continues on through the complexities of a being a woman aging: “When the man handed me my new driver’s license, I slipped it into my wallet without looking at the picture―sure I would see my own grandmother looking back at me―and walked quickly through the maze of reception chairs into the autumn sun.”
The winning piece in graphic lit, “Sans Peur” by Andi Spark, tells the story of the family motto in a piece filled with both nostalgia and darkness: “I was forbidden to go into Dad’s shed without him. It was a treasure trove of useful stuff, unusual stuff, mysterious stuff, and dangerous things.”
I hope you enjoy these and all the other varied voices you’ll find in this issue. And please share and help us spread the word on these great writers and artists! We also invite you to sign up for our newsletter and keep up with us on social media (Facebook, Instagram) as we move into the Fall season.
Our regular reading period opens September 1st. In the meantime, please consider donating to help us continue bringing such amazing work into the world. Any amount is appreciated and helps us fulfill our mission to promote diverse voices.
Thank you for your support!
With gratitude,
M.P. Carver
NOTE FROM THE SOLSTICE BOARD:
We wish to share our deep enthusiasm in welcoming M.P. Carver as our Editor-in-Chief. The Solstice staff believes she has the expertise and vision to lead us forward as Solstice continues its outreach to marginalized and to emerging and established writers. M.P. is a gifted published poet and also a highly experienced arts administrator; for example, she serves as director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She will bring her energy and charisma to our community.
The Board sends its appreciation to Karen Sherk Chio, who, as EIC, influenced our future plans. We wish her well with her future and well-earned professional success.
We also wish to thank the Weinberg Family Fund for its generous donation to The Solstice Institute which will be a new program of workshops, mentorships and seminars for writers at different stages in their careers. The Weinberg family donation also will be used for other programming and will bring a lasting benefit to Solstice Literary Magazine.
The Solstice Board: Lee Hope, William Betcher, Drai Whitted, Eric Charles May, David Weinberg, and M.P. Carver
