Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

Sometimes

She wanted to keep believing in him but sometimes it was hard when she couldn’t sleep because she was afraid—it got so dark—and she kept checking the candle, her finger to her mouth, to the wick, and then checking again for the slightest flicker or the baby cried and cried with a fervor that wouldn’t be doused by water, little in the cabinets or in her or sometimes the landlord would corner her, press himself against her still swollen belly and say maybe it was time they talked about the rent.

—First appeared in the late, great Ghoti

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Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz lives somewhere in the United States. She blogs about her life at gwennotes.blogspot.com and about her writing life at wwwonewriter.blogspot.com.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

Home on Sunday Morning

It is not guilt you see in your father’s eyes when you enter the kitchen and he looks at you. No regret or whatever it is you’re expecting to be there. Tiptoe in!—you don’t want to disturb him—but he’s close to sober. Showered, freshly shaved. The solemn look on his face as he thoughtfully raises the coffee cup to his lips and looks, once, at you standing in the doorway. Last night the door opening to your bedroom and you thought it was your mother, crawling in afterwards, as she always did, checking to see if you’d survived the blows to her head, the vicious words tearing at your hearts, but your doll house fell—someone stumbling in the darkness—the plastic family and their furniture spilling to the floor. Through the sliver of light from the hall, you could hear her whimpering in their room. And later you thought better than let your whimpering join chorus, remembering your mother’s weekly chant: He was just drunk, he didn’t mean it. And you tell yourself this. Now. For no reason. Because nothing happened. You can see that in your father’s eyes. This is what you tell yourself.

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Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz lives in the desert. She blogs about her life at gwennotes.blogspot.com and about her writing life at wwwonewriter.blogspot.com.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

we are

you and me we
are rabid wanderers comic
strip bubbles shouting i love
you me we
are giraffe-twisted
balloons that refuse to burst echoed
prayer our own
language a jubilant
drum strength invisible-spider-
web strong we are mouths
meeting in quiet song
bone-felt jazz and a drop
of the blues we are you are
me we
are
oh, yes we are

CP

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz lives and writes in New Mexico.  She also designs and handsews teddy bears and blogs about it at www.teddyhugsandthings.blogspot.com.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

Fly Freddie. Fly.

Don’t ever see that nigga till he want something. Mama shushing Daddy. The children, she say. Daddy glancing at us, frowning; his eyes narrow, brows almost touching. He know we love Uncle Freddie. Freddie pockets full of good time and candy. Daddy asking, You gonna pay the dentist bill when they teeth fall out? Uncle Freddie winking at us. In a whisper, he say, We’ll put ‘em right in here. He pats his pocket. Next to the candy. We laugh. Oh Freddie!

Two boys running wild. Gangly dark arms and torn jeans racing down any path till Daddy turn this way. Freddie, come on. But Freddie don’t. Cain’t wait on you. Go’n then. Freddie don’t want Daddy’s road. He say, Man, I gots to fly.

Freddie got a plan. A man with a plan. A man gots to have more than that, Daddy tell him. Gotta have some kinda work to go with it. And what make you think I ain’t working it? Daddy laugh. ‘Cause you sitting up in my house talking it. Freddie get all mad in the face. It pucker like he ate the sour candy he sometime bring. You’ll see, he tell Daddy, as he storm out the door. It snap shut, his footsteps sharp till they go away.

Phone ringing in the middle of the night. Daddy’s face full of sudden tears. I told him, he say, shaking his head. I told him.

A man with a plan. It gonna take him somewheres. This time. For sure.

—First appeared in Black Magnolias, 2009.

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Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is currently working on several projects revolving around the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

Weathering

He didn’t know any better so he wore it and just as proud as
anybody, that garbage bag his mama borrowed from a neighbor,
waking up to find it raining and him without a raincoat and it
would always be so because there was always something else
needed and anyway he’d die in his eighth year because not only
didn’t he own a raincoat, he didn’t own a jacket and certainly not
one that was bulletproof—but that day he didn’t care; he was
happy to be dry like everyone else.

—First appeared in Puerto del Sol, 1991

CP

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is a fiction writer and poet. In other incarnations, she is a teddy bear artist, a comedienne and somebody's mother.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

Tears

He insisted on oatmeal and fried onions for breakfast. Following, he wants to go outside to water the roses.

Nan is at the sink, scrubbing the skillet. Stilled by his request, she takes a breath, reminds herself that it is not an outrageous request, just another request—she does not know how many this morning alone. She lets the cast iron thud to the bottom of the sink before she cuts across his path to the door.

Outside, she dries her hands on her pants as she rounds the house to check the lock on the gate leading out front—to the vast and unfamiliar neighborhood—and then she returns to the backyard, surveys for things he might trip over.

The yard had never seemed "too large" until recently. In fact, when she and Ross first viewed the house, they had had doubts about the size of the backyard—would it comfortably hold the four or five children they were planning?

Nan stands at the edge of the yard, her mind alive with the wild boyish ramblings that had never occurred. The dark braids, wisps of hair escaping, which had never swung upside down from the lowest branch of the oak she and her husband had planted in anticipation.

She shakes herself from the thoughts, reminding herself not to compare what she'd wanted and what she'd received.

She turns to find her father-in-law outside. He stands over the rose bushes, a steady stream of yellow showering.

Nan laughs, afraid of what she might do otherwise.

Her father-in-law appears shaken at her reaction. "I'm sorry. Did I need to put the nozzle on first?" he asks.

She breathes deep. "It's okay, Poppa. Let's just put the hose away and go back inside."

Nan guides his hands as they push his penis back through the slit in his boxer shorts. She watches him tug on the zipper, pulling his pants closed and she's momentarily pleased that he remembers still how to operate the fastener.

"They'll bloom full with a good watering," he tells her as they walk across the patio to the back door, and Nan nods, glancing back to the rose bush, the wetness clinging to petals, like a shimmer of tears in the mid-morning sun.

—From Mother Love

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Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz writes fiction and poetry and is widely published. Her chapbook, Mother Love, is available for free download here.