Took us out of town, out to the hills and barns and acres stretching beyond our eyes. We never knew where the properties stopped but the split-rail fence on the side of this gravel road reminds me of the nail I forced like a kiss on a stranger through my hand. I couldn’t write for weeks but God, I could drive south out of town…
Briefly Luminous Against the Dark by Stephen Ornes
A few weeks before Frank’s 80th birthday, he and Lucy visited a young doctor – nearly a generation younger than their own children – who said Frank had Alzheimer’s and things could get bad, fast. Lucy cried and Frank held her hand tightly. She drove home, and Frank put his window down and smiled at the white blossoms on the trees, visible from the interstate….
Silent Movie
To rearrange the actors again and want life to imitate art, to want my mother to stop batting her eyelashes and lying upon the train tracks. To want the truth and not some family folklore, not some mythos where, when asked if there were any relatives left in Vienna, my mother said none, when prodded, your grandfather got out, Tante Didi, Wolfie, Ruth survived. Everyone…
Birds by Lizz Huerta
My brother Oscar’s burning sage again. Some new white girl must be over, feeling like she’s about to be one with the sacred wheel of the fucking universe. I look out the window, there’s a hybrid parked out front. This one will be stupid easy; a dream-catcher hangs from the rear-view mirror.“Some people,” Oscar’s told me, “Need to feel they’re more than what they are.”Rolling…
Tanka (The Cursed Sapling) by Jenna Le
I’d rather make a bonfire by heaping the hazel eyes of my dead forebears than break off a branch of that dried-up hazel tree you once straddled like a horse