For someone who bragged about their off-campus apartment, hers sure had a lot more roaches than mine. A small red one skittered near my feet, and I jumped back.
Lainey opened the door. “Hey girl,” she said. The phrase lacked its usual cheeriness.
“Hey,” I said, walking in.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “We needed to talk.”
She was being all quiet and squirmy, like the tension in the air caused her physical discomfort. She didn’t just express her emotions, she wore them, like a flashy accessory that everybody had to see.
Because we were fighting, I didn’t know if I should assume my typical spot in her green armchair, so I stood awkwardly beside it. I watched her shuffle into her kitchen.
“Well, do you want anything?…
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I crouch in leaves and needles
under pines and water oak. I crashed my way
to this place through the saw-vines and mimosa
avoiding poison ivy and backyards. Vibration
escalation, terror of arrival, noise and
bulk and overwhelming
joy, blur and roar and clack and whistle
fast and loud and large
receding sudden.
Fading, gone.
The noise of startled birds
returns, and the sound of my own breath.
After long enough, I rise,
lift my weight on steady hands and feet.
No rails for me no predetermined route
marked out on maps. No tickets
and no whistle. Crunch of footsteps
chosen, breath. The scratch of nails
on trunks of trees and long-discarded
glass and rusted metal.
Times crashes into me at the crossing
but I will just bend like the river.…
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they tell me I cannot donate, stamping
the word
……………..REJECTED in red across my
wrist like a branding iron, but less superficial.
I had felt an obligation to sign up, because
I was a universal donor—a term which,
I recognized, was quite ego-inflating;
……………..perhaps, I mused, I could play savior,
and be needed, and be one of many.
I thought there might be something poetic in
seeing the blood move from one shriveled
bag to another,
……………..skin like plastic and vice versa,
or at least, I figured it’d make me a better poet,
to say my heart had beat outside of me;
yet, in the reflection of fluorescent
……………..lights on the linoleum floors I saw
……………..……………..my resolve begin to crumble.…
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Elsie sat at the table in the dining room where she was assailed by Polly, the manager of the nursing home where we lived. “You didn’t finish your beets,” Polly said. She was in her thirties, with hair of straw and a face lined beyond her years.
“I don’t want them,” Elsie said.
“But they’re so good,” Polly said, rubbing her stomach as if proof of their goodness.
“I said I don’t want them.”
“You must eat, dear, to keep up your strength.” Polly leaned in, near Elsie’s face, as if a familiar, family, an old friend, when she was none of the above.
“I don’t care,” Elsie said, and promptly overturned the saucer of beets. The juice ran down the table and dripped onto the threadbare carpet beneath.…
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Shah Allah Ditta
The roots of the banyan tree cascade over the ledge, twisting ropes that sway in the breeze and obscure the caves beyond.
The heavy cotton shirt already clings to my back, jeans sticking to my legs in March. As uncomfortable as the stares. My uncovered blonde hair is a beacon, drawing eyes as I pass, and I duck into the cavern.
A single sign tells the truth of this place. The edges withered and cracking, italic writing of the raj almost faded to obscurity. Where Alexander the Great met the King of Taxila.
Above, the banyan canopy rustles, tendrils of long-dead memories reaching out. The march through the pass, fear of invasion running before the endless columns of soldiers. The trumpet of elephants high in the hills, earth rumbling beneath their heavy feet. …
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He was dead—that much was certain.
But, until the moment I stood over his coffin, the hushed murmuring of the mourners behind me, a part of me hadn’t believed it was possible. But there he was, he was dead.
His face looked serene; I had never seen the features so relaxed, so even; he looked as though he had only ever had calm, placid thoughts about flowers or puppies or babies. As though he had never had that sneer, eyes hardened by the anger that flowed out of him like an uncontrollable hurricane.
No, he was dead. There would never be another moment when those merciless eyes would be turned towards me, the eyes that told me that there was no help for me, that the anger was going to be unleashed, that destructive force, because of which, I hadn’t seen or spoken to the man for twenty years.…
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The rain is merciless, has been all day. Beside the wall, the earth has become a quagmire that pulls at Christy’s navvy boots with every step he takes, trying to suck him into the bog. And a thousand years from now, they’ll be burning him in the manor fireplace along with the rest of the turf, reflects Christy. But he doesn’t earn a hapenny for sitting by the fire so the rain lashes him to the bone as he chips, chips, chips, shaping stones for his lordship’s fine demesne wall.
His mood is black as the day. His eldest daughter has been acting out, bringing grief to her mother, threatening to run off down to Dublin, the city. And now, to top it all, the news on the radio when he was having his tea: The King is dead.…
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