decides the fate of every love story, even when a cloth is sodden with wetness. He and she ride to town on a noon bus, she, sitting on his handkerchief. They have been sent for groceries, he, one week new, friend to her father, under him at the Consulate. Packed in with peeling leather bags, chickens, goats, dark-eyed men speaking Spanish, not one seat bare. Bruised mango fruit, split. Sticky floor. Her blood, fed by the rules of (her father?) a different country. His heart beating, they must sit very close, a man at the front ordering all windows stay shut. Swollen clouds, his white shirt wet patched, sunned skin peeping through (him?). His arm rims their seat back, whisking her shoulders at each dip in the dirt road. Moss scent and she hears palm trees, feels green-winged birds about them, scattering (her?). The voice inside full-throated, nearly a sob. Air, thrumming with flies. Her tan skirt, it breathes if his bare leg leans. If the invisible (god?) hand—the gold chain, cross at her neck—unclasps.
Further Reading
Three Poems
by Margarita Losada Vargas, Translated from the Spanish by Maddie Kwasnick
PIETÀ i am asking permission to die a little to tear your membrane to expel you from my uterus you will never suffer the weight of light nor the wounds of a scream you will be my most beloved exile you will be the air that nourishes my garden of […]
STATE OF THE UNION
by Michael Meyerhofer
All the news is talking about the lack of surgical masks and ice cream trucks for the dead, how many grandfathers need help to breathe, but today, I can’t seem to stop wondering how oranges smell when they’re burning. For that, too, is something I’ve never known, having missed my one chance to walk a […]
Critic in Residence Program
MAYDAY magazine invites critics of all disciplines to apply for its Critic in Residence Program. This program is a four-month digital residency, and we require no travel or fees on the part of the applicants. The overall aim of the residency program is to help young critics get a foot in the door, provide an […]
