Amelie Brashar reposed on the wooden floor. Her bloodless
complexion, and the hair sprawled messily around her head both gave the
impression that she lay in the thralls of death, but Amelie was only taking a
nap. If Mrs. Brashar had been in, she would’ve tutted at the place her child
had chosen to rest, but Mrs. Brashar never did seem to be in. This was not due
to some great recent tragedy, but rather to an infatuation Amelie’s mother
seemed to have developed for wide open streets and adult conversation. It was
rumored that when Amelie’s father left, Mrs. Brashar had first cursed him, then
slunk away to unpack her own suitcase.
With a small sigh, Amelie finally awoke from her catnap. She
looked surprised to find herself on the floor.…
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Jeremy
gazed down at the shapely pale nude woman on the queen bed, her eyes closed,
and her long auburn hair spread about on the flowered pillowcase like a Playboy
centerfold. What’s going on, he
wondered. Just yesterday he and his wife
had fought about the two of them not having sex and here she was stark naked
before him, rather than fast asleep in her usual overlarge white t-shirt that
hung far below her plain white cotton panties.
“So, are you trying to tell me something?” Jeremy asked, with a slight smirk on his face.
Catherine, his wife of 14 years, opened her eyes and with a blank bland expression said, “No, I’m just hot. It’s hot tonight.”
“I see,” he responded, as he stormed out of the bedroom and bolted back downstairs in such a rage that to have remained would have meant an involuntary manslaughter or temporary insanity plea in court.…
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One
hundred ways to speak with a hand fan. Opened slowly, like a demure minuet,
means Wait for me. If the fan is
fully expanded and fluttered wildly, then you mean all is not well and the
meeting is to cease, immediately, in other words Leave the premises now! I am engaged. To let the fan glide along
the cheek means I want you. And to
open and close the fan fitfully means You
are cruel.
Tosca’s fan was black, fringed with emerald green tips that glistened when she snapped the fan open in one swift flick of her tiny wrist. The fan and hand were one, as if she grew silk folds instead of fingers. Her fan swirled and cascaded in the still air of the grey studio, and I was in Restoration England and she had just received a dozen billets-doux from fops and cits and wits and Beaux Street beaux.…
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It used to bother me—the way people
would cut their eyes at us as if they knew
our story. One white, one black, two men.
At first, no one regarded our coupling
as extraordinary. Youth gave us skin
to believe in and the cheapest of beer
to swill. It’s acceptable to buck rules
when you’re beautiful. But now, when our
clothes are out of fashion and our hair is thin
and grey, when one of us walks slower
than the other and the other waits patiently
at the corner, now, people notice:
one white, one black, old men. Our history,
the tilt of our bodies in conversation
reveals a kindness that was promised
but remains unrealized, a whisper
of high yellow, good hair, tan paper bag skin. …
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Your vision is
unfocused, voices and faces distorted, as though you’re watching from beneath
an ocean wave. The surface is in sight, but you’re weighed down with legs like
lead and distracted by your own ceaseless, ticking heart.
Somewhere below,
detached and drifting, you bear witness for the girl with defiant eyes. Your
father paces, turns, scrubs a hand over his face. The air goes quiet. He
demands you stop this, start acting normal again, allow them all to return to
normal. The order is that vague and that explicit. It leaves no room for
maneuvering, and just enough space for crossfire.
The sound of your
mother crying jolts you back into your body, makes you wince. There is nothing
you can say to them to explain yourself.…
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Alle C. Hall’s work appears most recently in Dale Peck’s Evergreen Review, as well as in Tupelo Quarterly, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Brevity (blog), and Literary Orphans. She is Associate Editor at Vestal Review and former Senior Nonfiction Editor for JMWW Journal. “Wins” include: a Best of the Net nomination; First Place in The Richard Hugo House New Works Competition; and finalist or semi-finalist in the contests of Boulevard Magazine, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Hippocampus, and Memoir Magazine.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Hall about her experiences as a journal editor, her experiences shopping around her book, whether or not the current pandemic will help or hurt the eradication of hatred, toxic masculinity, and much more!…
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(In December You Return to Italy)
It took you years
to debut your face
to the social
media masses.
You started
with Christmas
lights and a risk
of death.
It’s no surprise
I’m shadows
and fragments.
You teach me
Sicilian card games
your family plays
at Christmas:
scopa, briscola.
Eventually you
moved on
to two black cats
in the sink.
Their camera
green eyes told you:
mind your own
business.
Bicontinental.
I praise the vast
distance and gift it
everything I have:
the millions of
seconds when
both feet were
off the ground
as I ran. If you
can’t already tell,
this game is
mostly luck.
– Matty Bennett…
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