Topics | Parenting | The Sun Magazine #2

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Parenting

Readers Write

Privacy

A coded diary, a box of letters, a closed bedroom door

By Our Readers August 2023
Poetry

Total Solar

We took our kids to City Hall Plaza / with its dead-on view / of South Mountain to watch / the moon eclipse our sun / in a certain way we’d been told / wouldn’t happen again / in our lifetime unless we traveled / to a far-off part of the globe.

By John Bargowski August 2023
Fiction

Sandwoman

My insomnia began just when my baby girl started sleeping through the night. Anytime my head hit the pillow, my heart pounded like a million galloping horses, and I would tremble and sweat and eventually get up and stand on our back porch to beg the gods for peace.

By Maria Kuznetsova July 2023
Fiction

The Normal Force

The waiting room was mostly full of pregnant women that day, and then there were the rest of us. It made me feel sorry for the ultrasound techs, who must spend their days bouncing back and forth between rooms with babies and rooms with not babies.

By Molia Dumbleton July 2023
Poetry

The Only Ones

Poems About Parents

I failed at wisdom, nurture, / nature, separation, and calm. / I excelled at role model, if what / you wanted was wretched.

from “Old Mom,” by Jessica Barksdale

 

What my father didn’t know when he drove / ten-year-old me in the bed of his pickup truck / to gun shows & shooting ranges, initiating me / into the art of the hunt, was that he was actually / teaching me how to write poems

from “Portrait Of The Poet As A Child,” by Elizabeth Knapp

 

In my memories my godfather towers / over me, his deep baritone thundering / above us as we sing hymns during Sunday / service.

from “Small,” by Courtney LeBlanc

 

My brother calls to say he’ll meet us / for lunch in a few hours, not to wait for him / if he’s late. He’s got to pick up Mom. / And though the crematorium / is near our hotel, he’ll take her ashes home / first.

from “Waiting In Cars,” by Jackleen Holton

By Jessica Barksdale , Jackleen Holton , Elizabeth Knapp & Courtney LeBlanc July 2023
Fiction

Dating Profile

What’s on my mind lately: How to survive the winter alone with a roaming catamount who needs a snack. I asked advice from the guy who plows our driveway. “What should I do if I see it?” He stuck his head out of the truck window: “Don’t act like food.”

By Camille Guthrie March 2023
Poetry

The Patron Saint Of Traffic Lights

My child is in the backseat with her mother / and can’t understand what’s happening, / keeps forgetting we’ve already told her / that she fainted and hit her head hard / on our living room’s stone floor

By James Davis May February 2023
Poetry

Selected Poems

My son and I are sitting on his back porch, / early October, the gold locust leaves above his barn / giving the morning light something to shine in. / An unfelt breeze makes itself known / when the leaflets shake and shimmer.

from “The Last Day, Again”

By Robert Cording February 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Captain’s Log

7:17 — Wife yells, Oh, God, look! Dusk now, harder to see. What? I say. Bear! she says. To right, where riverbank gives way to pasture, large beast lurks in shadow of tree. Dark, terrible beast, now moving slightly toward us. Large, dark beast says, Moooo.

By Andrew Johnson February 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Sins Of The Mother

Although I still identify as a Christian, I am endlessly unpacking and discarding the church teachings of my childhood. My belief in God is no longer built on the fear of what will happen to me after I die.

By Anna Gazmarian January 2023