The Bookends Review

they huddle in the doorway
of a dark abandoned building,
smoking what might
be a cigarette,
beneath shreds
of blankets
goodwill coats
and cardboard.
we pass as the light
moves on from red
to the green
of seaglass caught
in sun,
and they
do not watch
as we pass
from their lives
so freely,
as if there were
more
worlds than one.

– Thomas Higgins…

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Dream Sequences Phase One

Dream Sequences Phase Two

Act IV of the Unruly Hair Portraits…

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It is too hot for a sweater, but I can’t reach the clasp on the back of my dress to close it; so fuck it, I’m wearing a sweater. I try to tell myself that drinking more gin and tonics will keep me cool and not make me look like a lush at a baby shower. I shuffle in my seat and sip my drink.

I know four people here, plus the dog. I feel guilty drinking, even though I am successfully convincing myself these G and T’s are keeping me cool when in reality I am actually drenched in sweat, with clammy hands.

There is a tap on my shoulder and a voice yelling in my ear, “Dance with me! Dance with me!” Lia, my niece – who is six – demands.…

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Today we are playing basketball in PE. “Maestro, look!” Alberto shouts as he hoists the ball into the air underhand. Grandma style we call it. Slowly, slowly the ball fulfills its potential, surrendering to gravity and swishing neatly through the hoop. “Did you see? Did you see?” he asks.

I nod and his pudgy, red-cheeked face gleams. He’s an important ally. Alberto is my classroom translator.

It’s 1998 and California is in the midst of a massive teacher shortage. Alongside other college-fresh idealists, the state fast tracks me into the public school system with an emergency credential. My classroom experience consists of one year tutoring and a stint co-teaching summer school.

Right off the bat, I get a full-time gig teaching fourth grade in muggy, industrial San Jose.…

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Dixon Hearne writes the American South. He is the author of seven books of fiction and poetry. His work has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as the PEN/Hemingway and PEN/Faulkner awards. From Tickfaw to Shongaloo was awarded Second Place in the 2014 Faulkner Novella Competition, judged by Moira Crone. His latest book is Plainspeak: New and Selected Poems. Other work appears in Oxford American, New Orleans Review, Tulane Review, Louisiana Literature, Potomac Review, Wisconsin Review, New Plains Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, and elsewhere. He has published five books of fiction, three anthologies, and innumerable short stories in magazines and journals. He is a frequent presenter at conferences and book events, including the 2009, 2015, and 2016 Louisiana Book Festivals. …

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Sleep like it’s all beginning.
Let your body in.
Think of her fingers.
Pace your insides.

Sit under the tree.
Flicker like the end
of a chrysanthemum

firework. Climb that tetanus
nightmare playground equipment.

Laugh at the pigwolves. Laugh
at the elfhorses. Look
at me. Please remember.
Let the silence pass through.
Smell the woods, keep
Quiet sleep.

– Sarah-Kathryn Bryan…

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For a year he cut the lawn, and I never
knew his last name. I had to ask

the neighbor in the yellow
house after he vanished, her roses
dormant witnesses in the dark. When I’d tried
in terrible Spanish to explain where to plant the lavender,
my macete stumbled out machete
and he’d laughed behind black
cheap glasses, said, Police, bad,
they don’t like it. Words fall out
clumsy, twisted, and his surname—
we only cared when he’d gone. Then,

it was knocks on doors, furtive
asks in the night. For a week I watched
the online detainee locator site,
made calls that never came back.
The neighbor patrolled his church, carried
back stories of an avocado orchard
outside Tancítaro,unravelling
acres of drug cartels with fuerte-slick lips
where his father-in-law was murdered
last month.…

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