I thought I saw my old co-worker standing in line to get coffee
He was one of my favorite people, but I knew that when
I quit my job I would never see him again
Aside for the occasional post on Facebook
I smiled at him on my last day and acted as if it wasn’t a big deal to me
But it was a huge loss.
I looked at the man again and realized
That they looked nothing alike
Except for the wrinkles in his forehead
He used to talk to me through the partition of our cubicle
And got very excited about the littlest things
He would share his voicemails with me
And no one else
He worked with old people
Delivering books to the homebound
Knowing that someday they would be dead
So he saved the voicemails for as long as he had the space to do so…
...continue reading
You belong to a yellow nowhere, the sleepless life in
a broken world—All homeless, soldiers, bullies—Weak and strong,
all the same people in the wrong somewhere, a swirling
cloud—Now. Look, listen. Holes in the sky, crevasse in
the ground. In the yellow nowhere, the between of the
nothing, sleepless and living—Homeless, bully, soldier, whichever you are
now, you were, will be—Listen. Look. The hole in
the sky is a door, the swirling cloud a path,
and now, now, you can leave this wrong somewhere—Now.
Look. Listen. Decide—this is the only now you have.
– Laura Williams…
...continue reading
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. …
...continue reading
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?”…
...continue reading
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…
...continue reading
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.…
...continue reading
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.…
...continue reading