Nothing Alice’s father did was unconsidered. The way he chose a piece of firewood provides an example. If he had two or more pieces to add to a fire in their woodstove, he would consider whether they needed maximum heat output immediately or later. Perhaps the rest of the family still slept, a frequent occurrence. Best not to waste heat now, better to make the fire hottest just before Alice and her sisters and their mom got out of bed. So, he would save the smaller and drier pieces until he heard the ladies stirring or thought they were about to come downstairs.
In the spring, he planted their corn—with beans, of course—working out from the center of a spiral, while the neighbors planted theirs in rows. …
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Sarah and I tottered to the parade. Thomas had to work and Mother said she “had to finish Mr. Donald’s shirts or we won’t eat tonight.” So we scuttered, hand in hand, down the dusty alleys to Central Street. The first to process were high-plumed soldiers dressed in Imperial Red. Then came trumpeters, drummers, and, finally, the Colonel, mounted on a white stallion. He towered over the crowd, glaring at us through beady eyes. All the children cheered. The adults were tense.
Then came painted clowns with bags of handouts. One strode over to Sarah and me. He handed Sarah a bright Flag-of-the-Empire and gave me a red tin soldier. I gazed at the little figurine: I had never had a real toy.
* * *
“What did you do today?”…
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The maze is a list,
a catalog of ships
left in a garden
& everybody knows
they don’t belong
& everybody knows
if they had been left
on water they would
take us to new places,
but here they are,
all terrible weight
& splinter, pain
& loss, a closed loop
that makes knowledge
another colony.
– Darren C. Demaree…
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From my rear-view window,
filtered through the haze of an overcast sun,
a trail of hand painted signs drift by.
Weathered planks and chipping paint,
promises of produce and shoefly pie,
cutting through the endless blur of
farm and field.
Miles pass by in this way,
undisturbed by the glare of streetlights
and the growing shadow
of billboards waiting down the road.
Who knew there were some many
ways to say the word hate?
One look across the horizon and
I find myself a hundred miles down,
below the mason dixon.
A little red town.…
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At six years old, I found our pet rabbit, Stew, mauled to death in his hutch. His soft, white pelt was streaked with blood, and his face—what was left of it—was a roseate valley of matted fur and wet meat. Bits of chewed-up carrot littered the hutch, like the fox had startled him mid-meal, and a final evacuation of his bowels was stacked sky high.
It was a bitter February morning, close to my birthday, and the ground was crusted with frost that crunched under my wellie boots as I trudged down the garden. I’d filled my beach bucket with carrots, as I did every morning, and was rubbing stars and fireworks into my eyes.
When I came to the hutch, I didn’t realise the rabbit was dead.…
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In a sports bra worn thin by use and sweats that once tight hung were now loose, Jennifer ran five miles before her morning class. It was her second favorite part of the day.
Her bare feet hit the unyielding pavement, shock waves assaulting her feet, ankles, knees, and back. Though the hurt felt good, she vowed that, when she hit 25, she’d stop this. By that time, she’d be totally grown, married, have children, and spending hours in front of an ironing board. She’d be too worried about how the table linens looked to indulge in a hobby as consuming as this.
In the meantime, it was pure bliss: running and running and running. Arms and legs churning. Body floating. Like a waterfall, like Niagara, pouring herself through the sunrise. …
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1.
In the canebrake behind the sea
where at night the crickets
become mute when we get close,
there’s a giant hand ruffling
the canes and the canes are
up again in a moment.
It’s wild boars—an entire
family, descended from the hills.
At the village they say the beasts are
confused, that the climate is
changing—but that is not
why the boars have come down here.…
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