In the fields, a girl stumbles on the remains of an antelope. She was hoping for gnomes or gold, not a skull nestled between a rock and a clump of paintbrush as if deliberately composed by some amateur painter. The flesh long since plucked clean by scavengers who, once full, disbanded to stash each bone … Read more

They submit, let the current take them, their bodies a tangle of elbows and knees that smack against the portable pool. In the desert, every ounce of water is coveted. Kids slosh in every direction, oblivious why soil beyond the plush green lawn cracks. On the Pacific, miles of beaches shift, claim entire towns, playgrounds … Read more

She thought the role rubbish but she had agreed to it because he swore there’d be a good part in his next play: It Is What It Is something more than the usual witch, wench, lady in waiting, something, he had hinted, with weapons and the chance to use them. She wasn’t naïve. She knew … Read more

Rain in Los Angeles makes you think about all the lives you don’t lead, the times you didn’t move somewhere with four seasons, of girls who wanted you to follow them back to northern ancestral homes or jobs in fashion, of your parents wishing you lived around the corner for Sunday games and the inevitable … Read more

Calls on a highway home from her evening shift, where she sells clothes rich in silk and cashmere. Last year, I had a miscarriage. Her voice is thick with Kentucky, faith in her husband, her firstborn, and miracles. It turned to cancer. Her body loved the tumor, she says. Loved it so much her belly … Read more

The calm lunatics don their winding sheets and take to the streets to proclaim the inevitable, to sing requiems with tender fervor, to sweep their brooms at life’s debris, tick, tick, the dried leaves of loss and the wayward, crippled love and fear, both faint and staggering. The calm lunatics with stanzas in their eyes, … Read more

Bad little bird in the sky, seeking bones with a sneaky hunger. More insect than winged, more hornet than hawk. What do you know up there, tracing a path, should a child wander out from a gate? What hum will she hear before you deliver the mess of death? Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in … Read more

Shown to be a slice of particular measure framed as construct, named as hour or minute. In the hands of the man at roof’s edge, maybe paper with mundane word, or gospel or small white field. Do birds take notice or mimic curiosity? The man might have forgotten the weight of bread crusts. Never fed … Read more