The Bookends Review

– Anna Frankl…

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Amelie Brashar reposed on the wooden floor. Her bloodless complexion, and the hair sprawled messily around her head both gave the impression that she lay in the thralls of death, but Amelie was only taking a nap. If Mrs. Brashar had been in, she would’ve tutted at the place her child had chosen to rest, but Mrs. Brashar never did seem to be in. This was not due to some great recent tragedy, but rather to an infatuation Amelie’s mother seemed to have developed for wide open streets and adult conversation. It was rumored that when Amelie’s father left, Mrs. Brashar had first cursed him, then slunk away to unpack her own suitcase.

With a small sigh, Amelie finally awoke from her catnap. She looked surprised to find herself on the floor.…

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Jeremy gazed down at the shapely pale nude woman on the queen bed, her eyes closed, and her long auburn hair spread about on the flowered pillowcase like a Playboy centerfold.  What’s going on, he wondered.  Just yesterday he and his wife had fought about the two of them not having sex and here she was stark naked before him, rather than fast asleep in her usual overlarge white t-shirt that hung far below her plain white cotton panties.

“So, are you trying to tell me something?”  Jeremy asked, with a slight smirk on his face.

Catherine, his wife of 14 years, opened her eyes and with a blank bland expression said, “No, I’m just hot.  It’s hot tonight.”

“I see,” he responded, as he stormed out of the bedroom and bolted back downstairs in such a rage that to have remained would have meant an involuntary manslaughter or temporary insanity plea in court.…

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It used to bother me—the way people
              would cut their eyes at us as if they knew

our story.  One white, one black, two men. 
              At first, no one regarded our coupling

as extraordinary.  Youth gave us skin
              to believe in and the cheapest of beer

to swill.  It’s acceptable to buck rules
              when you’re beautiful.  But now, when our

clothes are out of fashion and our hair is thin
              and grey, when one of us walks slower

than the other and the other waits patiently
              at the corner, now, people notice:

one white, one black, old men.  Our history,
              the tilt of our bodies in conversation

reveals a kindness that was promised
              but remains unrealized, a whisper

of high yellow, good hair, tan paper bag skin. …

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Your vision is unfocused, voices and faces distorted, as though you’re watching from beneath an ocean wave. The surface is in sight, but you’re weighed down with legs like lead and distracted by your own ceaseless, ticking heart.

Somewhere below, detached and drifting, you bear witness for the girl with defiant eyes. Your father paces, turns, scrubs a hand over his face. The air goes quiet. He demands you stop this, start acting normal again, allow them all to return to normal. The order is that vague and that explicit. It leaves no room for maneuvering, and just enough space for crossfire.

The sound of your mother crying jolts you back into your body, makes you wince. There is nothing you can say to them to explain yourself.…

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Alle C. Hall’s work appears most recently in Dale Peck’s Evergreen Review, as well as in Tupelo Quarterly, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Brevity (blog), and Literary Orphans. She is Associate Editor at Vestal Review and former Senior Nonfiction Editor for JMWW Journal. “Wins” include: a Best of the Net nomination; First Place in The Richard Hugo House New Works Competition; and finalist or semi-finalist in the contests of Boulevard Magazine, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Hippocampus, and Memoir Magazine.

In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Hall about her experiences as a journal editor, her experiences shopping around her book, whether or not the current pandemic will help or hurt the eradication of hatred, toxic masculinity, and much more!…

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(In December You Return to Italy)

It took you years
to debut your face
to the social
media masses.
You started
with Christmas
lights and a risk
of death.
It’s no surprise
I’m shadows
and fragments.
You teach me
Sicilian card games
your family plays
at Christmas:
scopa, briscola.
Eventually you
moved on
to two black cats
in the sink.
Their camera
green eyes told you:
mind your own
business.
Bicontinental.
I praise the vast
distance and gift it
everything I have:
the millions of
seconds when
both feet were
off the ground
as I ran. If you
can’t already tell,
this game is
mostly luck.

– Matty Bennett…

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