MAYDAY

Dad Watches Us Walk to School, Watertown, 1959
by Cindy Veach

Contributed By:

It’s pouring. Mom’s pregnant again, on bed rest.

Kindergarten and first grade.

We’re allowed to walk to school. Alone.

 

He says he watched us from the window.

Leave the house in our yellow slickers.

Cross the street. Turn right. Holding hands.

 

He’s brought this memory up so many times—

My big brother. Me. Yellow slickers.

Crossing. Turning right. Holding hands—

 

that I can see us crossing, turning right,

holding hands, yellow slickers.

Does that make his memory mine?

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Poetry

Further Reading

Shortcut
by Sergio Ortiz

There is a pain – so utter – It swallows substance up – Emily Dickinson, poem 599   The windows open to the guardianship of the sun.   But there is distant smoke in its presence, traces of an aftermath,   a landslide of fumes vacating the shredded heart,   a porous sea, a sliding […]

In the Kingdom of Toads & Bones
by Rick White

– CONTENT WARNING: Animal Abuse –

In the mornings — before school — there was always tea. China cups, whistling kettle, hot metal stove. Warm smell of butane, blackened matches, crunch of buttered things. Now there is only steam. It pools on every surface and spit-trickles down black windowpanes, shiny tears.

The Naked and The Damned
by Julia Sirmons

“He was soon to become the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany,” reads the tagline for Luchino Visconti’s 1969 film The Damned. It’s an improbable caption for the image below it: a man in drag.