The Bookends Review

She always had to run to school. Run fast. If she didn’t wake by 4 am, it meant that she got behind on her chores, of which there were many for a girl of thirteen, and then she had to run. She would get up and put on a pot of water for the tea and porridge. Then she would run a short bath for herself—this was her favourite part of the morning routine because the cold water woke her up – and then she would get her mother out of bed and into her wheelchair.

The girl would take her mother to the bathroom and help her to relieve herself, bathe, and dress. They would finally return to the kitchen where the huge pot was now boiling, making the window above the stove steam up, obscuring the brightening world outside.… ...continue reading

to get to the waterfall
you must go straight up

to go beyond you must
take the trail beside it

there is canopy everywhere
and a rush of noise
to guide you

south are trails
to the interstate
and to the abandoned
bridges that cross them

beyond that the trail
flattens out i hear. i do not know.
i’ve never been
and no one who goes that way returns

the things we miss
we will miss forever

– J.E. O’Leary… ...continue reading

In the weeks following the B-cell, non-Hodgkins Lymphoma diagnosis, Mom sat up in the adjustable hospital bed, lucid, and chipper. Except on shower days. She was distraught about contending with her freshly permed hair. Beside herself on how unnatural kinks following a shower and shampoo would spoil her look.

“I should have my hair straight like yours. It would be much easier to take care of.” You did not just say that. After all those humiliating home perms you inflicted on me? After a lifetime of imitating your burden of having splendidly coiffed hair? Obsessing over split-ends, cowlicks, curl flattening humidity, chemically over-processed frizz, butchered cuts, and mismatched dyes from color blind stylists?

I dried her hair and shaped it with the curling iron, watching out so I didn’t brand her neck or singe my fingers.… ...continue reading

It was barely noticeable when it began, no more than a zephyr, sighing, stirring the dusty ochre earth to eddy around the soles of her boots.  She paid it no mind, the restless air.  Not in this country.  Not in this season.  The sun?  That was different, and she raised a weathered hand against its onslaught as she stepped from what little shade was offered by a torn scrap of faded canvas canopy that hung askew above the entryway.

A red car, a two-door import by the look of it, had rolled to a stop beside the only working pump.  The radio, blaring rock music, went silent when the engine was cut and the driver’s door swung open.  Out stepped a young man, on the shy side of twenty-five, she guessed. … ...continue reading

Walt takes no comfort reminiscing about his youth. Tales of simpler times and way back when settle like pits in his stomach. For those with nothing to hide, perhaps long-ago decades truly were simpler. But for those free only in shadow, secretly living beyond acceptable societal standards, those memories breed only misery.

His grandchildren bring him pictures they find in his wife’s “treasure” boxes. They shove crinkled black and white images in his face and ask him questions about “olden days”. Each one slices open an unhealed wound, a shattered dream, a life dismantled. When he’s on the edge of tears, he picks up a newspaper and pretends to read. Walt’s wife steps in, nudging the children away from his recliner. Grandpa is old, she tells them, his hearing isn’t what it used to be.… ...continue reading

pollen drifts from the oaks, floats down
to the lawn, travels on the breeze

across the grass, turns from yellow-
green to brown, collects in clumps, balls

at the foot of retaining walls
loses stickiness, turns crunchy

blocks gutters & drains, fills cracks
between concrete sidewalk slabs, coats

parked white cars & black trucks, drapes
itself over bushes, hedges

& fences, sticks to black letter-
boxes, clings to the fur of cats

attaches to running shoe soles
& laces, stealthily enters

homes through back doors, insinuates
itself into living rooms, kitchens

bedrooms & bathrooms, irritates
eyes, attacks nostrils, triggers

histamines, sneezing, headaches
brain fog, dripping noses, transports

male oak DNA into gaps
& fissures, fails to fertilize

– Nathanael O’Reilly… ...continue reading

“I’ll call you Tre.”

There’s a little plaque, welded into the base of #273 with its number and a company name. I look up and up at the monstrous pinwheel. I put my hand against its trunk and feel it hum.

Two plus seven is nine plus three is twelve and one plus two is three. Tre. Like the youngest in a line of oil heirs. Only it’s wind power and has no parent. “Hmm.” But a burden. It has a burden, just like the disappointing James or Howard or Colin that can’t even be called his own name because his namesakes live and glower down. I nod at Tre.

I walk back to my car, still running and perched on the gravel shoulder.

***

I often think I’m a piano player but moving words and punctuation around.… ...continue reading