When We Lived in the Blue House JC Reilly 1. Our blue house is missing a wall. What faces the street is open, nothing to keep out intruders or weather. We stand in the middle of the room and watch a parade pass by on the street. A lion detours from the parade and comes…
Parable of the Dead Allie Gove My mother used to tell stories late at night, after my dad had finished reading the Bible to us. She fed us hopes of the afterlife as if it were six feet above us: neon stars glued to the popcorn ceiling, just barely out of reach. That maybe when…
All Sharp Teeth and Soft Jessamyn Smyth A naked crone drying her silver hair with a blue towel looks me up and down, glares at my Lava Pants. She’s relentlessly beautiful: strong, weathered, soft, tough-expressioned. She says, gruffly: Why do you wear those. Most people who interrogate me about this I ignore, or deflect…
Through the Bay’s Lace Curtains Vincent Barry Once when we had a wake, a viewing if you prefer, the casket sat solemnly just beneath the bay window of the brownstone’s uppermost floor, where of late we played carefree. And when they lifted me — to kiss the waxy forehead above bone-rimmed sockets so as, dontcha…
Meeting Lael Gold Voodoo had been a required class, something we all attended without really thinking about it. The lecturer tried to induce trance states unawares. We just thought he was boring. We were white and Quaker. The empty driveways and green backyards of rural Pennsylvania held us as we partied and studied, gesticulated, flirted,…
