Making Safe to Tell
The only way I know —| I ask him if his faith is beside him. For I am about to tell him news precious to me, her name unspoken for so long. Fragile like the skull of a sparrow, grapes. Mother’s cut glass decanter crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a marked box. Spider web, tissue paper and butterfly wing, a rose in the moment before its petals fall all at once. Like a camel’s back, bridge over water, tibia of horses. Like painting in sand, a thin blue shell, like peace and ego, the underbelly of things. Reminded, he gentles himself to listen, folding his rough-skinned...
Read MoreLeap Away
I have given away a herd. Come to this late, I long for lift and flight and the hard touching down. Barbaro snaps his leg at the gate. What rivets and burns in memory is the image of running on. Yes, he runs on three legs and a heart. Life changes. That fast and gasped, all bets are off, put down. A small death here. A big death there. And there. And there. I have stepped out onto a remote island the sea is reclaiming, bringing the grass to sodden weeds. These horses will all drown if they do not bend and grow armor, hide among the eels. The aging actress cannot play the ingenue. No rescue...
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