Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
You can get your driver’s license at fifteen, if you live so far from town that there’s no school bus. Spend an entire year watching your friends drive themselves into the school parking lot and for the first time in your life wish you lived way out on a ranch. When you turn sixteen, discover you have to get this bullshit learner’s permit. Spend the…
Things that are long The year it felt like everyone was dying The year everyone actually died The years 2016 to 2020, also 2015, and January, always The five days before your parents can get a Covid test after you exposed them The apology while smoking after court the day we got divorced Thirteen years in the length of one cigarette My thoughts, spilling across…
Motherland Bucia rode a boat from Polska before she was babushka and birthed American dolls: mother and grandmother. I call them “Nonnie” and “Mommy” like …
But have you ever heard such quietness as aftermath: senility of fight, diminuendo truth, that slow regress? June. Whole world “can’t breathe.” Vicarious sufferers. All swallowed fire. Bright. But have you ever heard such quietness as four months later? Protests in undress. White badge of courage earned. Click mute on cries. Diminuendo truth (that slow regress). My country ’tis of thee, the passiveness of fast-expiring…
Lisa says food is sad, hasn’t eaten in three days. Jan is made of matchsticks, wants the boys to light her, light her, light her. Sean gives herself a buzz cut, grows girl tired. Mae chews bubblegum and paints a perfect smoky eye. Lu stays home, keeps mother company, draws open-faced camellias and hums ice-cream-truck music. Mela packs her suitcase, drives Arizona, finds the boy…