Choice Words

We are at Boots, Etc., exit 149 when driving South in Georgia towards New Orleans. We watch as a man hammers hand-wrought silver tips onto Henry’s new red leather boots. The man uses shining little nails, he squints, he moves his hands as delicately as a pianist, as a mother braiding hair. As he works behind

Speaking Eryngos

The sea burning,  the heads of blued Thistles nodding now,   You are drift   Ing across the dry grassy   Field of perception.    Above me, Humming with the   Softness of hands in mud,  Words wing and land,  Clutching the branch of hope That this is finally a sign.   The ache between the dunes, tilted  Towards

Lament of Demeter

Among the silks, I felt for a bare arm. Among the racks of silk and chiffon, I felt for an arm that would be propped tenderly beside the body it belonged to, a body trying to make itself stand in the way of a whisper, or as translucent: a body that was hiding. My fingers

Angel

This story is part of our Summer Fiction Month 2020. Click here to view the stories featured this Fiction Month, as well as past fiction pieces. One morning in late spring, when only the earliest risers of the orchard were awake, a car was found crashed into the milky river that surrounded the town. The man

Icelandic Sunset

She sat on the toilet seat to wait for the dye to set, and while she did she ran a bath to soak her feet in. She poured in mint bath salts. She thumbed through a magazine. There was a spread about women before and after plastic surgery. She no longer thought plastic surgery was vain; she thought it had to do with the autonomy of a woman’s body. She associated it vaguely with the word empowerment.

Icarus

They hit the dirt and their rinds split, cracked like clay pots, and from the cracks came a thick dark red. Blood flowed out and pooled around the fruit, it kept pooling, it filled the grove like a flood, I grew afraid of it –