Dialogue with Myself
Many years ago — born — dairy country — grandparents all dead — mother, youngest of thirteen, more cousins than cows — born — same moment when a drop of rain fell, two hands squeezed a bovine teat, a mango toppled from a tree — a cool ocean breeze — the smell of ginger from the nearby factory — all grandparents in the ground — none to pat the baby’s head, none to get drunk in the celebration, slip and stumble on the stairs — even my father, a few months to live — what’s the story? life’s...
Read MoreDinner at Grandma’s
She blinked like mid-June nightfall and the world pruned, wobbled from her as if spilled from a raisin box. She blinked as if the earth and the heavens met in her eyelid’s crease, where beetles hum in reeds and lazy streetlights clack. She blinked as if she whisked the rippled sky orange with her fingers down her tired road to the sun’s festering embers. The same blink each time she handed me from boxes at her feet a chipped figurine, a glass-globed grasshopper, a framed picture of Grandpa. “These are for you.” She wrapped with her hands my hands around each trinket, skin wimpled as...
Read MorePick a Path with Heart
the Chinese fortune cookie fortune said, meaning with all my soul, with all my strength, with all the fortitude I could muster. Just that much courage. I’ve always known this rhythm my feet make, the left, right, left, depending on the pavement with Loose Strife on the shoulders of the road, Robins dotting the margins like emphatic punctuation marks. Mourning doves coo; cardinals provide that vital splash of color. Gravel, asphalt, clay, or dirt, how to choose? When there’s always that fifty-fifty chance for rain, for rubble and construction, for mud and its myriad distractions...
Read MoreWild Violet Featured Works: Week of Nov. 4 (Health)
As health care continues to dominate the national discussion in the United States, our contributors tell stories that all, in some way, relate to health. In Jonathan Persinger’s short story, “Vanishing Twin Syndrome,” a college art student wrestles with family guilt at a party. In Wes Oldham’s “An Hour in Special Ed,” an IT support person gets an inside view of a special needs classroom. In a short story by Shani Thomas, “Christ’s Salvation,” a doctor helping during an ebola outbreak reaches out to a boy orphaned by the...
Read MoreChrist’s Salvation
“Fend for himself?” I gestured at the small boy hunched on the corridor floor nearby. “Madame, a child that age cannot fend for himself.” I guessed the boy to be around seven. He was dressed in grimy shorts and a faded T-shirt. His bare feet were covered in dust; tear tracks ran down his grubby cheeks. “Welcome to Zaire, Dr Finmore.” Nurse Kulungu shrugged. She glanced down at her wrist watch. Her shift had just ended. “It isn’t right, but it happens all the time.” A bead of sweat trickled down my back. The top half of the open galleries that enclosed the single-story,...
Read MoreAn Hour in Special Ed
Here there are four students and three teachers. Here grunts and screams and moans fill the air. Here critical comments fall on inattentive ears. I have entered the Special Ed room at the junior high. I work in a corner, replacing the lead teacher’s computer. I have ample opportunity to watch and listen as I wait for the transfer of data to the network drive. Kept apart by at least a few feet, the students seem almost unaware of each other. There is a boy, a Down syndrome boy, who sits on a sofa in another corner of this room. He holds a large ball and growls and howls for no apparent...
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