Death is my business, my bread and butter. So, you’d think, on my day off, I’d want to shut the door on it. But, I can’t help myself. I’m drawn to those newspaper articles. You know, those stories, hidden away amongst life’s trivia, about some poor soul who’s just been given the worst news imaginable; they’re dying. Devastating news for them and their loved ones but, newsworthy? Really?
As depressing as it is, a story about death and dying is compelling. I can’t stop myself. I read it. Diagnosed with some cruel illness which is slowly killing them, the person with the death sentence is quoted as saying, ‘I’m going to use the time I have left to make memories.’ They feel the urge to leave lingering proof that they were physically here.…
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I stood on the shore and watched as Rebecca strode across the surface of the frozen lake, carrying an ax over her shoulder. I didn’t know what she was planning to do with it. When she called and told me to meet her at the park, I thought we would talk or eat lunch in the car. When I saw her walking across the lake, I thought maybe she was planning to do some ice fishing, even though she carried no equipment and had no expertise in the sport.
After she traveled about a hundred yards across the lake, she turned around, cupped her hands over her mouth, and yelled, “Come here, Robert. I have a surprise for you.”
I was freezing and didn’t feel like moving.…
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I was two weeks recovered
when the nest first appeared,
buried in my hanging mint.
More people stopped by:
blew quick breaths and the bird
came home to nest.
First two eggs, then three,
then a sepia-splattered four
hidden deep in the twined pine.
Laid while white women cried
black wolf, an old myth breaking
through so many glass screens.
Then we forgot, fucked seriously
with mouths and I bargained
with god and I cried
after the death of G.F.
whose name isn’t mine to say.
We left for Birmingham
and worried they wouldn’t hatch
or worse – would be stolen by some
Cuckoos, smashing crystalline
brown ovum splattered
on the familiar cement patio.
When we returned, the birds were born
and the riots had begun.
– Alyssa Ross…
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Before the men came through and struck her bald, my mother said, the mountain had been verdant. Green snakes had capered in shadows beneath great green oaks, beetles had squirmed in the wet cavities of overturned rocks. My mother said that there had been whitetail deer that had drunk from streams, that there had been bears in summer and coyotes in spring and turkeys in autumn. My mother told me that this had once been a land alive.
I do not know how true her stories were.
All I know is what I see when I crest the hill, through the arch of two great tree branches that have long been stripped of their leaves and their bark.
And what I see is thus:
Sitting alone atop a hill, behind a house that has raised generations, is the bald and sandy face of a carved-out mountain top.…
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It was a bitter cold night in March 2015 when a certain sage-grouse female’s (SGF) life changed forever. That night she was designated “SGF4601” and thereafter, her movements would be closely monitored for the rest of her life. After being gently captured, she was fitted with a GPS “backpack” and released. Until her death four years later, her life was scrutinized by biologists, adding to our understanding of sage-grouse behaviors and their habitat. –Morelli, “A Year in the Life of an Idaho Sage-Grouse”
When I awoke, I was different. Or the world I lived in had changed. Or both.
Something was behind me, over me, on me. I could not see it, but I could feel it covering me so I knew it was there—something with a thin, hard-edged shape that I could not slip free of or away from, try as I might.…
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and when it touches down, all the meteorologists call it unprecedented.
I wonder when they stopped watching the news and only reported it. No one remembers
how to cry. Is it true that a single generation of monarchs make the return trip north?
That to step on one will change the future? How then, do I
translate the capsized boats? The shadeless neighborhoods? The wooden boxes
made to hold a child? Some days, I think about pockets
lined with milkweed and hemlock. Other days, I follow an old trail
across Texas to scoop sunflower seeds from my grandmother’s hands.
– Amanda Roth…
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I was twenty-two when I drove to the storage unit where my best friend’s belongings were. She was also twenty-two, although unlike me, permanently twenty-two. It had been less than two months since her death, and already a new year. I was there to help her mom sort through her things and empty the unit. On the day we drove there to clear it out, the persistent rain had paused. It was the first day that week without torrential downpour.
We arrived that Friday afternoon at the All-Size to assess the situation. The building consisted of long hallways leading into doorways, a dark motel of belongings. Located on the second floor, the unit was positioned between what felt like endless rows of others. We had an hour before closing to enter the locker and plan our attack.…
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