THE MORNING I stole my daddy’s gun, the summer heat had already baked the dew off the grass. I remember the metal felt warm when I wrapped it in my mother’s old shawl—the blue one she’d worn to church every Sunday before the preacher man came to town. Before Jenny disappeared. Before we stopped going to church altogether.
Daddy kept the Colt in his bedside drawer, loaded with five shells, one chamber empty. “Safety first,” he always said, though safety seemed a strange word for a weapon that had taken three men’s lives during his days as a deputy. He’d retired that badge the same week the preacher man arrived, saying he was too old for the job. Now I knew better. He’d seen something in the preacher man’s eyes that scared him more than any outlaw ever had.…
...continue reading
Kyle never knew anything about his wife’s Aunt Mimi. If she ever mentioned her to him, it was nondescript; not enough for Aunt Mimi to be anything other than one more obscure relative. It was a non-issue when she informed him that her aunt was moving in with her mom and dad. That first day he met Aunt Mimi, she looked at him with an expressionless intensity.
“Come downstairs and say hi to my Aunt Mimi,” Heather told him. It was Sunday morning and Kyle had just woken up. When he walked into the kitchen, Mimi’s back was turned to him as she was rinsing out a cup over the sink. Heather was sitting five feet away at their round oak table sipping tea. Mimi turned around as soon as Kyle said, “Hi” Her abrupt response seemed more like a reaction to a command than a reply to a greeting.…
...continue reading
What we leave behind
is not nothing.
It’s a haze around the morning sun.
It’s an unexpected change in direction of the wind.
It’s one frequency in the white noise
of those who came before,
undecipherable static in the background
of the lives of those still in the world.
It’s a shadow in the corner of the wall
in the room where our sons and daughters live.
It’s a small but persistent presence
that shapes what becomes
as surely as hope shapes the coming day.
– Ken Long…
...continue reading
In the land of nowhere the man of America is to be found,
in the pieces of nowhere America is to be found,
in the cares of nowhere America is to be found,
yet something is America that is everywhere,
existing in the madness of the grave itself,
but persisting in the sanctity of birth itself,
seeing that America is more than a name,
but an exhalation of one’s fate,
in which one shall be—
damned and loved,
prayed and screwed,
martyred and championed,
killed and crowned,
sought and left,
wept and laughed,
yet this is the land of truth,
whatever truth is,
meaning,
it shall always be—
forever and more,
eternally free.
– Frederick Schardt…
...continue reading
Here I am. Stuck under the potbelly of a forty-something-year-old, probably corrupt cop. He is squishing my face into the two-inch dense foam mat patterned like a red-and-blue checkered flag across half of the room. This is exactly what I need after the last few weeks of complete chaos. Being squished under an oversized man is the perfect poultice to remove me from the looming future that is sure to come and place me in the current moment. The sound of a decent rap song that has recently been bastardized into a soul R&B rendition, through the use of artificial intelligence, is drowned out every few seconds by the sweat of Potbelly’s rash guard pressing against my ear as I turn my face to the side to avoid being smothered.…
...continue reading
It begins in the garden, where the late afternoon sun casts long golden stripes across the grass. A crooked tree stands nearby, its twisted limbs reaching outward like old hands, a quiet witness to decades of seasons passing. Beneath its shade, an old man kneels with a kind of reverent patience, his hands steady despite their age. A wide-brimmed hat rests atop his head, soft with years of wear. Across from him, a little girl, maybe seven, adjusts a cardboard crown that keeps slipping down her forehead. She clutches a paper towel roll like a sword, her bare feet dusty from the earth.
They are playing make-believe.
“I’m the explorer,” she announces proudly. “And you’re the Genie of the Forest.” He smiles. “A genie, am I?…
...continue reading
I woke up to silence, which should’ve been my first clue something was off. No mom banging on my door with her patented, “Max, it’s 7:15, why aren’t you vertical?” No dad fumbling with the coffee maker downstairs. Just the stupid birds outside my window, chirping like they didn’t get the memo that the world had basically ended and restarted with all the characters in the wrong positions.
7:43, my phone said. Whatever. Not like time had any meaning during the zombie apocalypse of online school we’d been living through.
7:43.
Wait.
School. Real school. Today. With actual humans and fluorescent lights and—
“Mom?” I yelled, rolling my bulk off the bed. COVID had not been kind to my waistline. A year and a half of stress-eating Hot Cheetos while watching teachers freeze on Zoom had left me with what Dad called my “pandemic padding.”…
...continue reading