Issue #3: "And what about the way hope..." by Liza Porter
March 2025, RHYTHM
Introduction by Leanne Rose Sowul
When I chose the theme of RHYTHM for this month’s issue, I was open to stories about rhythm or writing that had rhythmic cadence. Liza Porter gave me buckets of both! I wrote to her afterward and told her I felt as though “And what about the way hope…” had been written just for me. It is my honor to share it with our readers.
From the first line, Liza calls out hope as a toehold for life’s difficult ladders– broken eggs, deafening sounds, despair and yearning– and establishes hope as a musical theme, twisting through the ladders and finally tying them together into universal truth: We can be together in our aloneness or alone in our togetherness. It is through hope that we attune ourselves to each other’s rhythms while attending to the beats of our own existence.
And now, our chosen piece for “RHYTHM.”
And what about the way hope can suddenly appear out of nowhere outside the kitchen window, a sparrow’s nest falling to the ground, the tiny eggs you know are there somewhere broken and you can’t see, but maybe the mother bird is teaching its babies to fly right now. Or to sing. That’s when you can’t ignore it, it’s the longing that brings it on, the mourning doves coo louder than usual if you wait for the Air Force jets to stop their ear-numbing circles over the valley. And those other birds whose songs you don’t recognize, can’t name, take for granted, it doesn’t matter that you can’t call them by their names, what’s important is the songs. You can’t deny it any longer. Yearning seems the only way to know everything else—despair, tears falling in yellow blossoms from the palo verde tree in a violent wind, hope, the new seed sprouting in damp earth. The yearning always comes before the other. Take the way a fire truck siren lifts you right up out of your car on Broadway as it roars down the wrong side of the street, honking and screeching, and all the cars stop, and it’s rush hour and you love the way all the cars stop, everyone pulling together for once. For one moment on Broadway in the middle of rush hour, all the drivers quit what they’re doing—the petty cell phone arguments, the right-wing talk shows, the crappy so-called rock-n-roll drowning the day’s crises, the bad news clips, one after another it seems. Then someone else’s bad luck makes the whole street pause. You hope they’re all saying a prayer that no one is hurt, that help will get there in time, you hope they’re not all just annoyed by the slowing down, that fucking truck messing with their important plans—the gym, the bar, the mall where they can buy more things no one really needs.. That’s when you hear all the car stereos tuned to the same station, some throwback DJ on community radio dropping the needle onto an album—“For Everyman” or “Imagine” or even Beyonce’s “Freedom” and everyone starts to sing. Every person in every car knows the lyrics, beginning to end, and when you look around, you can see their lips moving in unison through the tinted windows of their air-conditioned SUV’s. Even the lawyers in their tailor-made suits sing, even the surly teenagers wearing dog collars and all black, even the sleeping babies latched into car seats wake up and sing at the top of their lungs as the traffic starts moving again.
after Ellen Bass
Author Spotlight
Leanne: There is rhythm in the content of your piece, but there is also rhythm in its meter—the length of each sentence, the words chosen. What techniques do you use to give each sentence musically?
Liza: There is music in my head. I studied classical music as a child. The rhythm, the notes, the tone, the speed, the volume, the syncopation; and then came rock and roll of course, and I believe all of that music is inside me from every poem I’ve ever heard and every song I’ve listened to or played. So that comes into my writing. I started reading my poems and flash pieces into a recorder during COVID. Listening to my own voice saying the words helps me feel the rhythm inside me and the slant rhymes or assonance or alliteration and whether it works or not. It has to sound right.
Leanne: You made sure to include an homage to Ellen Bass in your submission. When did you first encounter Ellen’s work, or learn from her? How does she inspire you?
Liza: I get obsessed with certain writers and try to read all their work, and absorb what it is they do, how they do it so well, why it moves me. I can’t remember when I discovered Ellen Bass except it was about the time I found Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio, which was probably 25 years ago. Ellen Bass (like Olds, Laux, Addonizio) is so honest and vulnerable in her work and I appreciate that and aspire to it. Poets always seemed to inspire me more than prose writers. But now that there are so many more flash prose pieces, and places to publish them, I read a lot more prose than I used to.
Leanne: I felt so hopeful by the end. Is hope a theme you return to in your writing? What other themes are evergreen for you, whether intentionally or unintentionally?
Liza: I like your use of the word “evergreen!” Hope is something I would like to have more of in my writing. I’ve spent many years writing about my trainwreck of a youth, in fact, I have a collection of essays that covers all that territory which I’m trying to get published. I’ve been advised I need to discover the theme or thread that connects the pieces, and I think hope is that thread. And music. Perhaps because I got most of my hope in my younger years from music. Other themes I seem to write about are, my brother who spent many years in prison; nature seems to sneak in often.
What Our Co-Editors Had To Say
Kate: The world feels especially bleak lately, but “And what about the way hope…” reminds us that hope always surrounds us and sustains us. I loved the impressionistic movement in this piece, the weaving between images of trees and traffic, culminating in a shared moment of the very best humans can be toward each other. Resonating especially deeply for me in this moment, where so many first responders in my beloved California recently raced toward danger to help others, the breathtaking rhythm and beauty of this piece reminds us of the connections we all share.
Casey: There’s alchemy here, in the rambling-yet-focused train of thought that takes readers on a wild journey, from birds outside the kitchen window to fire trucks on Broadway to a singular moment of unity. The captivating use of second person. And this line—“Yearning seems the only way to know everything else”—a dart to the heart that makes us pause just long enough to take it in, push on to see where we’re headed next, then start again. And again.
Nina: I am swept away by the wonder in this piece, the wonder of a sudden movement or sound, and how, when we least expect it, as they interrupt our quotidian activities, they bring hope, if we just let them in and notice. “And what about the way hope…” reminds me that outside of myself and my preoccupations is a whole world filled with creatures, people, energy, intersections and interjections, that just like me, exist, and just like me, can awaken curiosity and hope in someone else.
Cindy: “And what about the way hope…” is an antidote for despair. I’ve read and reread this piece in the manner of lectio divina, and each time a different word or phrase beckons. Like Thomas Merton on the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets, the author shares a mystical moment—on Broadway in the middle of rush hour when all the cars stop, and everyone starts to sing. As a reader, I am transported in time.
Author Bio
Liza Porter’s essays have appeared in Bending Genres, Brevity, Chautauqua, Cimarron Review, Hotel Amerika, In a Flash, Passages North, PRISM International, and The Write Launch. Her personal essay manuscripts have been finalist for the Faulkner Society Faulkner-Wisdom Narrative Nonfiction Book Award, the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award, and the Cleveland State University Essay Collection competition. Three of her essays have been noted in Best American Essays. www.lizaporter.com.
Submission Calls
Enjoyed Liza Porter’s essay? YOU could be our next featured author!
—No submissions in March—
From April 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of LIGHT.
From May 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of HOME.
From June 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of RESISTANCE.
From July 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of HOPE.
From August 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of COMMUNITY.
Before submitting, please refer to our Submission Guidelines page.
What’s Going On With Us
Editor Kate Lewis is teaching a session on writing flash for the Barrelhouse Conference in Washington, D.C. on April 12. With your registration you’ll get: the full-day conference, including three sessions of panel discussions and craft workshops; your choice of 1 of our 4 featured books; more literary stuff from Barrelhouse’s partner presses; 1 ticket to speed dating with editors (which includes Kate on behalf of In a Flash); and a 1-on-1 meeting with a literary magazine or small press editor.
Editor Leanne Rose Sowul is in the midst of penning a 7-part series on “Values” on her personal Substack, Good Character. Check out one of her most popular posts, Want to Live a Purposeful Life? Think About Dying (Value #3).
Editor Casey Mulligan Walsh was featured in Sari Botton’s Memoir Land Author Questionnaire, in part to promote her debut memoir, The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, published by Motina Books on February 18, 2025.
Gorgeous writing. It put me right there on that street, a spectator to the scene but noticing details I would have missed.
So wonderful, Liza. The lips across cars cracked me up. Your observation ... so true--the feeling of connectedness.