MLR

The lone patrol car rolls. A commercial trash truck idles. Empty trains rattle below. A stranger quick draws a bird on brick. Suspended without suspense, time is elusive in limbo. Unseen bottles clink, clatter into some recycle bin. A woman scrapes her garbage can to the curb. No thrum from the great city. I might be lost in the forest, slogging through an all white ... Read More

Appropriate Dress Length

If I was a church-going child in 2021, I’d be able to find a midi-length skirt or dress, past my knees no problem. I could have saved so much time in the Belk dressing room. When I flipped through the Delia’s catalogue, I needed a thirty-three inch dress, but all the cute ones were thirty-two. No need ... Read More

The horses thought they were waiting for you to bring them in from the pasture, in from damp night air, where sweet alfalfa, oats, hay, would be, where they always are—the horses names etched in wooden plaques over their stalls: Comet, Midnight, Scarlet, black iron latches securing them in, safely— but they were waiting for you to make them whole ... Read More

The Argument

Sin and Death are guarding the gates of hell when Satan arrives. Sin remembers how she got there, and Satan orders her to open the gates.

– Paradise Lost, Book II

“My babies, oh it hurts!” I cry, as the little hell hounds burst out yet again. They swarm past my face and fly up among the smoky ... Read More