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
Driving Through Alabama
by Katherine Riegel
Spring has dropped purples and yellows like someone with so much abundance they’re careless of loss. Hot pink azalea bushes crouch round across lawns and I dream they wander, peaceful as cows but wiser. I’m not from here, but even I know the movies get it wrong. No, I don’t believe everyone who voted […]
Awkward Little Creatures that Flail About, 1956
by John Brantingham
it’s early June twilight, the bats just now coming out and they stand awkwardly on the gravel of the driveway, crunching it back staring up at the little creatures that flail about until Henry asks Clyde what he wants, which is natural enough but said in a little punk tone that Clyde wants to slap out of his mouth
The Tomato by Mary Quade
A Retelling The forbidden—a tomato, arousing its vine. Sin abides in tendrils— no need for a snake, for the fork in a tongue. She takes her teeth to its skin. Knowledge isn’t crisp; it succumbs to her searching. No need for metaphor— all flesh and seed. Pomodori The ecstasy of green kindling to red— this […]
