Author Archives: Margery Hannah

“A writer writes, aways.” (Larry Donner, Throw Mama from the Train) The musings of Margery Hannah on an array of subject matter through a literary lens. Every snowflake has a story.

Crystal White

I’ve lived at twelve o’ four Clymouth street for over fifty years. I’ve seen people move in and out and trees grow from saplings into fat telephone poles with umbrellas that shade the streets like canopies. Don’t ask me what kind of trees—I don’t pay much attention if they don’t yield fruit. Lord knows I can’t eat leaves. I’ve seen neighbors become grandmas and grandpas and children become parents. I’ve seen the children I once taught piano become performers, doctors, teachers, and drug addicts. Yes, I’ve seen it all and I’m gonna tell you about one family. Yes, just a one because that’s all you have time for. Life moves so fast these days; I don’t want to take up too much of it. Before you know it, you’ve blinked your eyes and you’ve become grey and toothless like me.

Shard in the Eye

Recently, I reflected on my birth order and whether I fit the associated stereotypes. I am the baby of the bunch: my dad, a young widower nearly ten years my mother’s junior, had two beautiful girls (eight and nine years my senior) when he met and married my mom. My mother had given birth toContinue reading “Shard in the Eye”

Orange Can of Kerosene

I stood out back, with an orange can of kerosene in my right hand, looking at the overgrown grass, hanging tree limbs, and corroding nails through the roof shingle lying at my feet. All times when walking in the yard I was careful; the fallen shake multiplied daily and soon the roof underlayment would be viewable from the street. Snow covered the descended pieces in winter and in autumn they were concealed by leaves. Those were cozier times; I could light a fire. The chimney smoke distracted from the balding roof, deciduous trees and autumn leaves peppering the ground; the celebration of fall transformed my signifying dilapidation into beauty. On summer days the yard was dry enough to discreetly pick the bits up after a day’s work, though it was the type of neighborhood open drapes display the booty of wealth-commitment; earlier in the day someone may have already had a peak.

A Long Way Home

Humility breeds optimism, so we had assurance in loads. Still, it pained me to go. The heartland, like the heart, is sick and deceitful; it cannot be trusted. The heart is what kept us in Wichita for two long years and had I continued to follow it, the girls and I would still be some fifteen hundred miles behind, away from the world’s best city.

Before I paved still air

to my place of bread
I was unpleasant

unpleasantly duressed by lack
of water
I could wash neither body

nor favorite dress

nor feed my yielding inedible
plant, nor swallow it

240 minutes waterless

On Pride, Not Prejudice

I’m a cocky son of a bitch. Instead of heeding to the eternal wisdom of God, humbling myself under His mighty hand so at the proper time He might exalt me (1 Peter 5:6), I’ve been busy luxuriating on a delusional high horse. I’ve got the heart of integrity and the blood of the enslavedContinue reading “On Pride, Not Prejudice”

Harlem Shuffle

And the time came to let go of my white people on a residential rooftop view and waterfront backyard with a baseball field on the side. With all its man-buns, diverse restaurants, bars, Polish culture and consignment shops, Greenpoint couldn’t compete with uptown Manhattan, where a renaissance of black excellence ascends history at more counts than Basie. Long held my heart has Harlem Word.