“Thank you, Dad,” Kazhi said when Bruce handed her the bowl of porridge, because that was what he wanted her to say. Day by day, it felt more true. Thank you for only bringing food. Thank you for letting her live.
Beside her, Kazhi’s “sister”—white and blond to her black and brown—said thank you fervently. There was a time, not too many months ago, when Sarah had spoken of escaping. Had spoken of her parents, and the outside world.
Now, she spoke of pleasing their father. Now, she spoke of love.
To Kazhi’s other side, sitting slumped in the same manacles, was a dried-out corpse. Lakisha. Kazhi’s heart panged to remember the girl she had admired for years, the girl she had hoped would someday see her as more than friends, but Kazhi’s eyes were as dry as the stale air around them.…
That cold shock of hot pain blinds, disorients, frenzies the heart so the eyes and ears throb to the same accelerating siren—life hurts, life hurts, life hurts.
My earliest fear-stained memories have nothing to do with ghosts or demons or creaking floors behind flimsy locked closet doors. They’re half-recalled acts of self-destruction, word associations of seemingly innocuous causes and unforgettable effects. Car door, crushed fingers; bike ramp, skinned knees and elbows; katana blade, sliced thigh; oil slick, cracked skull. That which did not kill me did chill me like an injection of embalming fluid to the right carotid artery. How quick we are to deny our injuries, our faults, the potential consequences of what we’ve done. But that whisper of, How bad could it really be?…
With the harsh kiss of midnight, bruises like blooming lilac, the blinding embrace of jasmine, and the ache of beaten-down shoulders, I’ve reached into a hunter’s moon and pulled blood, black as murder, for our Eucharist. I want to preach the sunless morning, invoke the holy rite of the tabby cat’s wandering and the acidic smoke of fireplaces from a dozen neighborhoods, to ease the chilled breeze, the salt air, and the sea. I’ve testified to traffic lights and peeled layers of moonlight, thin as onion skin, so cats and mockingbirds, possums and raccoons, the entire congregation of the nocturnal can raise up a chorus of blood and smoke and blossoms from their sewer dens, their treetops, to your doorstep where we share the spoils of another day.…
Phoebe crept down the path toward the big house. The dirt road parted the grassy field. The white wood of the house was darkened by the night. The windows showed no signs of illumination. A set of columns stood proudly on both sides of the staircase. A sturdy balcony watched over the land.
Homer was hunched on a knee about twenty feet from the stairs. He rubbed his hands across a mound of dirt.
“Homer? What are you doing out so late?” asked Phoebe in a hushed voice.
Homer quickly stood up and brushed the dirt off his hands. “Huh?”
Phoebe glanced at the patch of dirt.
“What are you doing out your quarters?” asked Homer. “Massa could wake up at any moment. He already gave you fair warning last week.”…
Cal LaFountain has published work with Submittable, Information Today, Exterminating Angel Press, and the Electronic Literature Organization. His audiobook, Puddle Is an Ocean to an Ant, was released by Xocord in 2020. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. To connect with Cal, visit callafountain.com
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with LaFountain about the process of recording an audiobook, getting Bam Margera to participate in his book trailer, remixing chapters with producers, the joys of prank calls (and childhood activities in general), and more!
It was that – ‘the value of the painting’, as if it needed repeating – that was most overbearingly pressed upon her. It was an artwork like no other, the collector explained, as he laboriously, reluctantly, and over the course of several hours, handed the oil painting to the conservationist. She nodded politely every few minutes. He seemed nervous to part with the thing.
It wasn’t much to look at, as the collector deprecatingly – perhaps a touch defensively – conceded. A fairly plain, oil-on-canvas representation of a nice day. Cheap oil on cheap canvas, at that. A bright sun, some slapdash trees and their misaligned shadows, people standing gaily at the edge of a lake. Nothing reflected in the water, undisturbed by ripples, ducks, or debris.…
