Women's History Month: Saturday, March 27, 2021: Deborah Edler Brown's "Testament"

 Testament

I, being of sound mind and body, do hereby relinquish all hope of being other than who I am.

She put the pen down and looked at what she had written. It wasn’t her will she was writing, she realized, now that the words had hijacked her. It was her will. The cornerstone of will power and her much vaunted willfulness. Her will and testament: all she had to say about who she was and where she was going. And relinquish…that was the keeper. It sat well on the tongue.

I relinquish all right to opinions that are not mine, and all interest in opinions about me.

I relinquish any and all effort to make someone love me who does not, desire me who does not, or even like me. There is no perfume that will make me smell sweet to the wrong person, no shine that will make me his sunrise, not if he wants the moon. I surrender my need to be right, my need to be perfect, my need to be good.

I relinquish the knight in shining armor, the feeling that I’m owed something, the fear of failure and the fear of success.

I relinquish tomorrow, which will come on its own terms, and I relinquish yesterday, which is only shadow and scent. I empty my hands of all of my maybes and relax my fingers from perpetual grasping.

I relinquish the struggle, the blind cat fight I get into with everything I don’t understand. I surrender to the beauty of my soul’s own dream

This is my will and testament, and my will is thy will – the will of Spirit and my spirit – and I won’t let anything as small as my fearful personality fuck it up.

I sign here in faith and ink.

 

© 2021 Deborah Edler Brown

 

 

Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist, and author. Her work has appeared in such publications as Nimrod, So Luminous the Wildflowers, poeticdiversity, Altered Lanes, Blue Arc West, and Sisters Singing: Blessings, Prayers, Art, Songs, Poetry & Sacred Stories by Women. Her poem “Cubism” won Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize, and her fiction has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Deborah was born in Brazil, raised in Pittsburgh, and earned her degree in Creative Writing from Brown University. She resides in Los Angeles, where she is busy building communities among her characters and readers.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020: National Women's Month: Deborah Edler Brown's flash fiction piece "Big"

Big

Jeffrey said to meet him here at the sawed-off brown fence I am sitting on. It is the

entrance to his father's farm, and I have been in this country two days without

meeting his father. The fence is biting holes in my jeans where they are worn from

scraping along on hard floors with my sister's son. I am tired and small. Smaller than

I have ever been. When I turn my back to the house, the world grows as quickly as

Alice, and I am a dime on the forest floor. The fir trees and evergreens -- so large at

home, so large to me -- are dwarfed here by the earth itself, the high mountain

shoulder where the ground reaches up to God. Oh, I am small. I am from a place

where man can build things that dwarf the landscape. Here, the landscape laughs. 

The clouds make a monk's collar on the mountain top, and the wind whispers, no,

it chants through the branches in a steady drone that enters my elbows and makes

them weak in the echo. How could you build in a place like this, whose looming beauty

undoes everything you do? I want to ask Jeffrey, no, I want to ask his father, who plied

the boards behind me into a house so close to the forest the wood was drawn from.

Did he offend nature or honor it with this formation.

Back in the city, nature is something to go back to, to save, to overcome in

ourselves. Here it breathes through you, assaults your senses, your sense of self.

Does the old man even notice? Does he look up when he walks to the faded well?

Does it give him pause, make him lonely, shake his senses? Or has he accepted

his relative size? Jeffrey says he is a big man, his father. Big like this mountain?

Big like the sky?

 © 2020 Deborah Edler Brown

Bio: Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist and author. Her work has appeared in a range of publications, including Nimrod, So Luminous the Wildflowers, poeticdiversity, Altered Lanes, Blue Arc West, and Sisters Singing: Blessings, Prayers, Art, Songs, Poetry & Sacred Stories by Women. Her poem “Cubism” won Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize, and her fiction has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Deborah was born in Brazil, raised in Pittsburgh, and earned her degree in Creative Writing from Brown University. She resides in Los Angeles, where she is busy building communities among her characters and readers.

Women's History Month: Deborah Edler Brown's "The Hours in Bloom"

The Hours in Bloom

 “Come quick, come quick,” Charlotte cried and clasped his hand. “The hours are in bloom. The midnights are still in bed, but noon and teatime are as big as daisies, and dawns are all pink and purple. Hurry, or we’ll miss them!”

“What are you going on about, child? , the old man asked as he grabbed his cane and followed her mad streak through the house.

“The time garden! Cook says that’s a time garden behind the kitchen, and it’s all in bloom!“

He stopped to ponder the open face before him, so like her mother’s, with cornflower eyes and a bud of a smile.  Since her arrival, she had filled the old house with pixie dances and songs. He found pressed flowers in his dictionaries and small rocks taking "naps" under his sofa cushions. But this was new. He tugged on her hand to slow her down. “Charlotte, do you mean a thyme garden? Parsley, sage, and thyme?”

“No, no,” she said and stomped her foot. “Grandpapa, you are not listening. The hours are in bloom. Time is fleeting, you said. I want to see the purple dawns and the blue noons and the pink teatimes and the red sevens and the dusky eights, and I want to see them with you.”

He surrendered. So like her mother. So little time there. He let her pull him by the hand. The hours were in bloom, she’d said. No hours have bloomed in so long. He let her drag him through the kitchen to the back door. What did that garden hold? One thing he knew: it now held Charlotte. And that was invitation enough. 


(c) 2019 Deborah Edler Brown

Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist and author. Her work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Nimrod, So Luminous the Wildflowers, poeticdiversity, Levure Literraire, Altered Lanes, Blue Arc West, and Sisters Singing: Blessings, Prayers, Art, Songs, Poetry & Sacred Stories by Women. Her poem “Cubism” won Kalliope’s 2005 Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize, and her story “Such Stuff as Dreams,” appeared in From the Four-Chambered Heart: In Tribute to Anais Nin and was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. Deborah was born in Brazil, raised in Pittsburgh, and earned her degree in Creative Writing from Brown University. She loves to dance, play guitar, and take long trips into good novels. Deborah resides in Los Angeles, where she participates in a variety of vibrant communities. She is also busy building communities among her characters and readers.

Link:  www.DeborahEdlerBrown.com