On that lawn each morning a little girl’s sandal rests in the grass. Today the flip-flop for weeks became a pink gellie, the color of my skin disease, but lighter. The white truck gassing mosquitoes just whined by in the dark, convincing no one. I wonder, as if to say goodbye, if the driver has a newspaper on his bench seat. I just got bit. After Labor Day, the ice cream van that played the theme from“The Sting” and Bach fugues stopped making its crawling rounds. I just now noticed it gone. Soon it will be summer again, I believe for a moment. Vampires are cool. That’s why they are so cool. I could explain everything, will be my last joke. My arrangements are not up to date. I prefer Basie’s. The rumor around the mill village is that a nuclear scientist haunts my house. I have denied nothing. I like to look at salt even more than I like to use it, it is so clean and chaste, making the heavy water lighter, lighter than the sea that drained from his scalpeled cheek in the midst. That shoe, later it got rained on, almost sweetly, but too late.
Further Reading
Mood Piece
by Alice B. Fogel
The subject of the fan is a mere suggestion, open to interpretation. Painted bat wing, paper leaf, it knows its way in the dark. Both shield against light and quickener of flame, the fan’s act of concealment perfects flirtation, graces grief. Folded in on itself, dipped in clear water, then—flashed and […]
Ghazal for Valley Girl
by Mitali Khanna Sharma
See, what I’m trying to say is that you make sense, being born to this web of mutation & rust like museum jars, ethnopaleobotanical archaeology, drought, & Vitamin C gummies
Clear Skies, Unseasonably Cold
by Jackie Craven
The day Challenger launched, we watched CNN from the bar at Canaveral Pier. Mist rose from icy water. Tourists sipped Piña Coladas with pineapple and paper flags. Giddy voices chanted time in reverse: Twenty-one seconds till liftoff. Or—Did the announcer say we’re down to twelve? My husband’s lips turned blue in the uncertain morning light. […]
