I can taste the silence when they leave, like
copper or dirt and I wonder if they know what it is
to be still and alone. Sometimes I can hear them
when I’m sleeping, a voice in a solemn place.
Their noise echos around the room like the stretch
of flowers, sound searching for light. If I could
gather up their dried overshells that they leave on trees,
behind car tires and on benches, maybe I could hold
their outer layer the way I hold my own bones inside me–
close and pressing. Still, not quite hollow, my bones sleep
cradled within me: the bumps of the spine, the curve of the
ribcage. The thin, pointed fingertip. These are the rocks
I carry within my chest. The locusts have been listening
to my heartbeat; pulsing, sweet. They have been quiet.
They have found the crop. If I asked, they would know the answer.
They would tell me that it’s not death– only bones
like at the church at Kutna Hora with the
40,000 dead all piled and bleached white together.
The locusts stay together and hum. I touch my arms.
I feel the hardness. I will have a garden on my grave.
“Locusts” by Laurel Jones
22 Apr“Duck, Duck, Noose” – John Carr
22 AprThe last time i saw my father he was standing beneath the rafters from which he’d later hang. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in September, it was the last day of summer. He was working in the garage. I remember lumber laid across wooden work horses, and an electric saw; he was building something. The picture painted in my memory places the four of us standing portrait-like looking in on his work. Mom has my little brother in one arm as she holds my hand with the other and on the other side of Mom, my sister stands: her tiny hands clutching something, a doll or a pair of flippers maybe.
“Honey are you sure you don’t want to come?”
He smiles, “No, you guys go ahead without me, I have work to do.”
* * *
We got home and the garage door was closed. We were herded inside by my mother who set the pool bag down by the door and the keys on the kitchen counter as she absent-mindedly picked up a note from the kitchen table. She gently shook as she held the phone to her ear. Almost before she could hang up the phone, our next door neighbor thundered through the door. He caught her before she hit the floor and guided her into a chair at the kitchen table. She was trying not to cry, I wanted to give her my bear. We were taken next door to play with our neighbors kids while necessary services were called. I remember the lights of the ambulance exploding like fireworks on the 4th of July. Continue reading
“Columbines” – Gavin Cross
22 AprAs they sat cramped together on the little taxi speedboat, the two of them smug behind the driver, Colin never looked at his wife, his eyes glued to the red reflection of the setting sun against the Pacific. This was just another job. Some millionaire’s summer cottage that needed a facelift. Lacey didn’t look at him either, pressing her dress to her knees in the wind.
They pulled up to the client’s island, a spoonful of dirt in the sea, and stepped off the boat. The cottage was tall. Four floors, each staggered smaller than the one below, with a tiny room at the top. Pots of various shapes littered the island, each with a single blue flower, a columbine, standing tall.
“I’ll be back to get you in four days,” the driver said.
“Thanks.” Colin paid the man, grabbed their things, and walked up to the house as the speedboat pushed back to the mainland.
“The key’s in the porch light,” Lacey said, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
“I know.” Colin slipped the key in the door. It felt a bit like walking up to their honeymoon villa in Santo Domingo. When he had opened the door that time, he had feigned surprise at the dozens of candles lighting the room. But there were no candles here, just a dusty chandelier above the entryway. He flipped it on. The home had that ancient, lived-in smell, like butterscotch and cigar smoke. Continue reading
“How Not to Break Your Mama’s Heart” by Rachel Sauls
22 AprWhen you grow up in rural West Tennessee knowing you’re gay and go off to college five hours east where you meet the perfect guy, don’t come out to your family members one by one. Go home on a long weekend and gather them up in the living room Sunday after lunch. Tell them all at once. That way if it goes badly, you can just go back to your own apartment in Chattanooga and pretend it didn’t happen.
If you don’t, you’ll meet your dad at Chili’s in Nashville one day after his business meeting, and he’ll trick you into telling him first.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” he says after you tell him. “I know that it’s just the way you are, and you can’t do anything about it. But not everyone feels that way.”
“Death in a Man” – Kyndall Proffitt
22 AprI wonder what Daddy saw in that deer’s eyes
Before he put the bullet through its head.
And how Mother’s heart felt
When she looked at him and smiled
And congratulated him on his kill.
When she lies beside him at night,
Feels his skin and studies his face,
I wonder if she can see that deer’s eyes
Trapped inside of Daddy’s.
Or if she wants to run from his bed
When she feels it kicking through his skin,
Warning her to set herself free.
[untitled] – Kelly Myracle
22 AprMy cousin is an atheist.
He wrote me a letter
explaining the way the earth
moves differently for him
or something similar to that.
I can’t be sure because
some words where rubbed
by his anxious sleeve
almost as if he subconsciously
wanted to erase his thoughts.
I believe our souls are connected,
He wrote.
Do atheists believe in souls these days?
I put the letter down on my table
and feared it like a disease
or a question I knew I could not answer.
A week of the corners ripping
and being smothered by books
and bags and coats.
And then another one came.
Do you hear me clearly?
Am I breaking up?
Yes, you are sounding a bit like static
on this nervous page.
My cousin does not
make me uneasy because of his disbelief.
But I fear the way he tastes
his self-diagnosed insanity
slowly and lovingly
like a warm cup of coffee in the morning.
He wants this for himself.
He wants persecution like Galileo,
but America doesn’t really give a damn.
He thinks his eyes are more wide
than they really are.
He thinks he is being eaten from
the brain out,
but I still like talking with him
about books and movies
and he still makes good jokes.
“Helium” by Vanessa Parks
22 AprAt absolute zero, helium is the only liquid. Here,
it is frictionless, free of viscosity.
I watch grey clouds suck a balloon
into their midst. A toddler cries out for it and
collapses in the sand. Weighed down by
winter clothes, he rolls around, trying to get up.
I am suddenly reminded of Dante’s Satan,
crying and stuck in ice. At any given time,
15% of the world’s oceans are frozen.
As I kayaked around Alaskan glaciers,
I was amazed by the cold that ice emanates,
the kind of cold that works its way inside your
gloves and past the jingling door of
a ginghamed pizzeria. It’s cold the way
I didn’t call out for the balloon too.
