Ever since I was a child, the grass irritated my ankles. To combat this, I would wear socks when walking in the grass, leaving green stains on white cotton. Here the world looked safe. The sun was hot, striking my skin until it was a dark red. Blueberries crushed against the pads of my fingers. Their juice became stickier as the heat began to rise. I wanted to feel the grass beneath my feet. So I dumped the bucket of berries on the ground and started jumping on them. The berries became little sticky fireworks. My feet sunk deep into the berries. Grass began to grow between my toes, tangling around my ankles. Eventually roots took hold of my toes, and the grass wound up my wrists.…
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The sun sets lackadaisically like molasses on hot summer nights. Sometimes there is a soft breeze that pushes the pieces of trash across the parking lot, lightly scraping the pavement. The air burns like the cigarette butts pressed into the ground, and it chokes me sometimes. I am grateful for the dripping A/C unit beneath my window and the cool-but-not-cold water that drips from my sink. My landlord still hasn’t addressed these things and probably never will, but I am content with living like this.
There is a man that lives in the apartment complex right across from me and he never closes his windows. His walls are a maddening, insidious shade of red and I can see his tall, lanky figure washing dishes. If this was a Taylor Swift music video, I would hold up a sign that says, ‘You ok?’…
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With one leg not two, he’s a great little hopper.
He has to be. Our knowledge can only be finite says Popper,
a philosopher of whom this little black bopper
has possibly not heard, not even a whisper,
but Karl has a point, a legitimate view:
the bird can’t imagine hopping on two.
From the path to the compost, the rail to the bin,
he’s perfected the art of hopping on one
a hop left then right, like a one-legged trooper
adroitly avoiding coming a cropper,
backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards:
thirteen ways of hopping for a blackbird.
When fate deals you a bad hand or rather a bad leg or rather a non-existent leg it may seem improper
but as mentioned our knowledge can only be finite says Popper:
so when fate deals you an unfair cop,
what can you do but live in hop?…
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Grandmother woke me at 1 a.m. “Eliot, the house is on fire,” she said, looking all around wild-eyed, one hand clutching at the frayed lace collar of her nightgown as if flames might engulf us at any moment. She braced herself against her walker, steadying all but her withered cheeks and sagging arms, which wobbled as she bobbed her head about the room looking for a way out.
“Everything’s fine,” I reassured her as I sat up on a cot near her bedside and took her by an arm, hoping to calm her – but mostly hoping to go back to sleep.
She reared back and pulled her arm away. “You think I lived this long and don’t know a house fire when I see one?”…
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– Paloma Sierra
Author’s Note: Life often exposes us to violent storms, but like the seed of the mangrove tree, we can find a home wherever we drift.…
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I don’t know flowers
so I couldn’t tell you their names
but I passed a cluster of them
on the way to work:
they were light purple long thin buds.
maybe some kind of lavender?
I don’t know
but since the published poets
were always banging on about flowers
I thought, what the hell
let’s see what all the fuss is about
and I bent down
to have a sniff:
I didn’t like them.…
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“Pretty face,” the guard says.
I wipe away some sweat-lined dirt, smile.
“Occupation?”
“Nurse.”
He squints, doubts.
“Drugs?”
I shake my head. He doesn’t want what I have – the sleeping pills, marijuana. He wants antibiotics. He has the disease. His hat and collar hide it. What do I care? We are all going to get sick, had all gotten sick, will always be sick.
“Papers?”
I hand him the water damaged passbook.
If he opens it, he’ll mostly see blossoms and blotches. On one page, there may be enough stamp to reveal a cross. The picture will show just shoulders and a neck. The face is white space.
The train sounds its whistle, bell. Then the wheels clickety, clickety, clack.…
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