July is a shit month, and I’ve wanted to die for about three weeks. Last night I dip-dyed my hair bright red to distract me from my broken mind. Unfortunately, it also distracted mi padre from his chicken casserole at supper tonight. He’s calling me to the living room now, away from the fifth Supernatural episode I’ve watched today. I slouch down the staircase, gripping the pinewood railing. I remind myself that under no circumstance will I cry in front of my father. He has no right to calmly observe my emotions like he did two months ago before my graduation. I wander into the living room where he lounges in his worn recliner. My mother sits on the love seat across from him and folds towels.…
“Mama, did you know that when a mother goose sees a fox, she pretends to have a broken wing? She flaps and splashes away into deep water, so the fox follows her and drowns while her chicks hide all safe. Isn’t that brave?”
“I did not know that,” Pari said. She beamed as Alemi ran ahead of her in the wooded park that flanked the suburb’s sole shopping mall.
“I saw it on the nature channel; it’s my favourite.” Alemi slowed down and caught his mother’s hand. “But why do the foxes follow the goose with the broken wing every time? They must be stupid!”
“They must be — everyone knows that you shouldn’t mess with mama geese; we’re the cleverest creatures on the planet.”
She doesn’t know what is she doing there. Or when did she think this whole theater was a good idea. Out of habit, she thinks, she did it out of habit, because Carlos was so tiresome that, in the end, she agreed only for him to close his mouth and leave her alone. She should have sent him to hell, but anyway.
She forces herself to think it isn’t so bad. In less than an hour, she will start drinking until she loses consciousness. She just wants her tongue to be free before they take her to bed so that she can tell everyone what she really thinks of them. She is going to tell her mother all the reproaches she’s been swallowing since she was a teenager, she’s going to throw in her father’s face his visits to “gentlemen clubs”, and then her future in-laws will be next.…
As a student in the Sierra Nevada University MFA program, I recently got to sit down with Suzanne Roberts to discuss her latest book, the memoir Bad Tourist (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). Beyond being a writing instructor, Roberts is an accomplished travel writer, named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National GeographicTraveler Magazine. Her previous book Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Bison Books, 2012) won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award. Roberts has also published four volumes of poetry.
Even though I have had classes with Roberts and have attended literary events where she was in attendance, until I read Bad Tourist, I can’t really say that I knew her. To be honest, she intimidated me: she is a demanding instructor, and while friendly, she is unabashedly forthright.…
David Colodney is the author of the chapbook Mimeograph (Finishing Line Press, 2019). A two-time Pushcart nominee, his poems have appeared in South Carolina Review, Panoply, Gyroscope Review, and The Chaffin Journal. David holds an MFA from Converse College, and lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, where he serves as Associate Editor of South Florida Poetry Journal.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Colodney about Mimeograph, how father/son relationships impact us in general, his upcoming poem (“Turnstiles”), music, and much more!
In my backyard—at night there is a mirror— the American river I walked to the outcropping where they once tried to build a bridge
Remember how I taught you to throw stones here? The angle of your elbow to skip the smooth rock… 1, 2, 3, 4 The ripples of each skip’s epicenter
The sky is a fusion between the living and the dead, as the sunset was fifteen minutes ago
Coyotes howl like a heart skipping stones among ghosts
I feel the years of a rock worn smooth against my fingers delicately kissing the flesh I used to trace over your body, watching the shadow’s outline each ripple in the unmade bed
The stone falls from my waist I don’t care to catch it Clank echoes as the rock abides to the law
This new stone I grab isn’t smooth at all, the edges remind my fingers of broken glass, of after the end of a fairytale and is swallowed by my palm
The rawness is a challenge to skip amidst the clamor of trees in the delta breeze, my only audience
I submarine my hand beneath the elbow chock my shoulder Leaves rustle in anticipation
The sky dies after I cut the tension, flinging the stone into mirror broken glass cascades down the bathroom vanity It falls into the tops of my feet
Where I can no longer see myself I hear all the leaves fall in applause
I am four / and the generator giving us heat has been ruined / by a quiet susurrus / of snow / my mother leaves for help / my father’s whereabouts unknown / I venture out into the white / into the white darkness / barefoot and determined / after five minutes my toes go leather / my eyes harden and scan blankness for life / I’m almost to the neighbor’s house when a deer and her fawn / leap from the drowsing maples / to my right / I stop unsure of the danger / they stop / curiosity overriding fear / I reach out / their two bodies steaming / one cloud of life and / when our eyes meet / I feel something / close to truth / or the first edenic moments / before the fall / then in the space of exhalation / all that remains is the drifting / of snow / pin-pricked with hoofprints / a mother perplexed / and reaching
