Collapse

By Ana June

The clothes bar in our closet collapsed last night, the weight of three seasons of clothes for two people drawing it to the earth in a crash we did not hear, for we were away from the house—across the property at my mom’s—living fully this new dream of a family compound, all of us together, supporting each other, my mother, three of my four children, my husband and I: three acres, two houses, a workshop, a trailer that has become our quarantine space now, with a western view of a bright pasture and rolling cottonwood horizon...the river beyond that bringing birds—hawks and egrets and ravens and blackbirds that turn above our postage stamp space, more space than we’ve ever had, which lets us wander and walk, get our steps even without masks, find new views both inside and out...which is why we didn’t hear the crash, our clothing falling in a lump of color to the floor and settling among the shoes we don’t wear, for how many do you need in quarantine—and when we see the disaster in the closet, it’s late and the sky is obsidian outside and I scoop up the clothes, stagger beneath their weight—the dress I wore when I interviewed for my dream job, the job that now assures we can eat and pay the bills; the tank tops I pair with cardigans now that I’m older and my arms have lost their tone because this pairing makes me more comfortable when I stand up in front of my students and…there will be no more standing in front of my students, not for a long while, and so each morning I put on one of three tee shirts, one of four pairs of yoga pants, one of two sweatshirts, depending on the temperatures, and because I don’t really need those patterned tank tops and earthtone cardigans, so I lay them in a pile, smooth them with my hands, tuck them away in a bag for storage and wonder how dusty they’ll get in the dark.

Ana June is an Assistant Professor of English, at the University of New Mexico, and a sometimes-by-the-skin-of-her-teeth writer who has published in The Rumpus, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Santa Fe Noir, among others.

Photo by Ana June.

Channeling

By Adam Gianforcaro

Your mother cursed the town you moved to and the man you moved in with, and that’s how I found out about your death, four years after the fact, when I searched your name online and came across your mother’s posts, hundreds of them, one after the other, as if Facebook was the only way to your spirit, as if this was the only logical way to mourn, post after post, which has somehow shifted my memories of you, because your mother is there now, in the woods where we used to smoke, in your bedroom, wanting more than anything to yell at you about the laundry or the movies from the library you put god-knows-where, but instead, communicating in a language of clairvoyant key stokes, posting to tell you that your cousin had her baby or that the dog learned to give paw, that she did it twice today, and it made her think of you, those brown eyes, that solemn stare after being praised.

Adam Gianforcaro is a writer from Wilmington, Delaware, with stories and poems in The Cincinnati Review (miCRo series), Poet Lore, Maudlin House, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere.

Photo by Adam Gianforcaro.

The Green Pata

By Sarah Marie Kosch

Three years alive and the little girl has begun to demand stories from our heads, devouring them like a beautiful little beast, too hungry to pause for plot or craft she wants them when she wants them “with a mommy horsie and two babies and a green pata” a bribe in exchange for learning how to human: she sits on her tiny pink toilet and I sit on the other spinning sugar fluff and stealing whatever’s handy, wondering how much darkness to let in and when and what’s not mine to tell even disguised in some uncanny form to warn and filter out the worst poisons with my tongue as fast as she picks up words like stones from the ground and tucks them in her cheeks, twice as many as I have ever swallowed; I scratch for old learning my lazy skin has let evaporate (only the easiest and most delicious shards remain: hola, delicioso, rascacielos—pebbles in a whole other way to call things) stumbling with a child’s mouth trying out shapes, I give her a mommy horsie and two babies eating berries and napping in a sun-warmed bed of hay hoping I can distract her from what I don’t know, but only three years alive she already knows stories are better with loss—she claws out the bottom as fast as I build: “… dreaming on their beds of hay… (“They don’t have beds!” she laughs with delight at her theft)…they curled up on the fresh green grass… (“No grass!”)…on the rich brown dirt” (“No dirt!”) and our animal feet keep stamping down through crust and mantle to find the center of the earth.

Sarah Marie Kosch lives in Omaha, edits Random Sample Review and occasionally tweets from @smkosch.

Art by the author's niece.