After their first child killed herself, the cranes studied all the right books, heads trembling each night as though struggling against some ash-covered morsel working its way down the throat. They treated their remaining daughter the best they could, following the advice of experts: staying tough, no treats unearned, hoping for some sky-road past the … Read more
at the Temple Sagrada Família in Barcelona His thoughts on a nascent spire, Antonio Gaudí steps in front of a speeding tram. He left no blueprints of the temple, only models made of birdshot and clay, whorls to mimic nature’s forms. Eight decades later, staircases corkscrew nowhere as carpenters rev saws and guess the curves … Read more
First position: Your feet behind your mother’s waist, dangling. Music is playing. Your body rests in her arms, your head on her shoulder, your eyes closed. You sway and spin, breathing in and out of gentle pirouettes, dreaming toward the eventual dip into deeper sleep, adagio, adagio, where you remain elevated, where your ankles have … Read more
Decide now, before the next breath, that there is nothing to lose – do it again with the next, and again for summers in winter, till breathing is exposure and expression is breathing Till every pocket is emptied and inside is out and outside is not and mandalas bloom Till the last exhale of the … Read more
Two Hawks Quarterly Editors, Spring 2016 Pictured left to right: Rachel Tenorio, Will Stegemann, Nick Wenzel, Deborah A. Lott, Meg Burby, Amy Ballard, and Ashley Okonma Two Hawks Quarterly Editorial Consultants Deborah A. Lott, M.F.A. Deborah A. Lott is the author of the book In Session. Her creative nonfiction has been published widely in literary journals … Read more
I balanced a cup of strong coffee on the dashboard of my patrol car and watched the transgender woman I knew as “Misty” leave the free medical clinic in the Tenderloin. She walked with a dignified, stiff posture that I admired considering she was 6’2” and wearing a flower print dress with little puffy sleeves … Read more
Though the hall is packed, no one will sit near her in this noisy temple of tables and folding chairs. Surrounded by their clovers and animal feet, their river of cards, they are wary of prophesy. Seduced now by games of chance, Cassandra mutters her madness of letters and numbers, a whispered voice one step … Read more
Sipping the drink named after her, she tells me how each bartender makes it slightly different. All night I listened to her complaints: Not enough Southern Comfort. Inferior brand of cranberry juice. Too much lime. The years have found their tomorrow in her. Her 17″ waist gone to Doritos and Little Debbies, pale skin lost … Read more
I died once. Have you? I can tell you this because I didn’t stay dead for very long; as it were, someone clumsily revived me, and interrupted me from a pleasant stroll down a mist-filled hallway towards the light at the end. As I recall, I was approaching what looked to be a big man … Read more
He said he prepared the space shuttle. Because of him, men walked on the moon. If we were young, we could have worn parachutes or held on to pillows, floating through air, or I’d fly an airplane straight to the Amazon, spanning across countries. I was leaving Regal Heights Nursing Home, waving goodbye to my … Read more
Sometimes at night, we lie awake, windows wide open, shoes by our beds, dreaming about the day before when we could return love so easily. We whisper, “I’m sorry,” our words fall like dust to the floor and rise to the roof into the air we breathe. (My mother said it was from the streets; … Read more
An undertaker in his twenties moved to town with his wife and their brand new baby and silver dog. They made their family home in the upstairs of the funeral chapel where no one had lived in years. They drove the hearse everywhere with that dog’s shimmering head stuck out the front passenger side window. … Read more
Rust-stained but clear in the morning light, the brook fell into the lake, a string of deer bones paying from its mouth; jaw bones algaed, vertebrae sowed among the cobbles, they lay beyond the shadows of our fishing poles and false hellebore that lined the bank. We named the stream “Deer’s Peace” in our awkward … Read more
Every time I kiss you I think about the history of your mouth, your first kiss, the way your lips must have felt, and what other lips felt like to you. Then I think of all the people you have kissed, the lovers, romances, mistakes. I imagine them all kissing you while I am kissing … Read more
When my mother died, Easter was just a few squares away. The day felt like a porcelain basket of fruit dropped to the ground. A thousand bottles of red wine flowed across the living room floor and I felt the miscarriage begin of the child I had carried my entire life. I became someone without … Read more
On an early Friday morning in June of 1946, I started walking down to Mount Pleasant Cemetery with Sonny and Jimmy. My parents were still asleep and I knew my mother wouldn’t like to know her nine year old son was walking all the way down to the end of Seattle’s bus line. We walked … Read more
I tried to focus on the pink lamp, the one my grandmother gave me on my tenth birthday, before she had the stroke. The thing made me think of her, and when I thought of her, I could make it through what my mind said was impossible, like a 30-mile drive on icy roads in … Read more
You told me you were dying only slowly, one cell at a time so we couldn’t see it. You told me four years ago that only slowly, one cell at a time you’ll smear into dust on my palms. You told me four years ago and I almost forgot you’ll smear into dust on my … Read more
She tells me: if you open it, you finish it. The first time wine touched my tongue I was too young to know, in communion you shouldn’t smack your lips and say ahhh when the priest tips the chalice back. Now, 18, I felt the bitter warmth that tasted like Sunday. So similar in memory, … Read more
There is something spectral about sitting cross-legged on the carpet staring into the center of a flame. Washed with darkness of a blown transformer, candlelight licks at unblinking routers, cable boxes. In thick silence, I whisper to St. Cyprian as my fingers slip through heat the way my mother showed me at the dinner table. … Read more
My reading habits are changing, for lately I open the newspaper to the obituary page first. I’ve always been a rather morbid man, but there’s a kind of pride in seeing familiar names and knowing that after seventy-some years I’m still here. This morning, though, was a shocker. Ed’s name was on that page. There … Read more
In our long, accelerating years, adolescence a dot in the rearview mirror, we could not anticipate this return—clandestine bed in a parent’s house, the startled gasp of senses wakened, the breathless stifle of a not-so-secret tryst that even nearing voices cannot uncouple. We are pulled back to youth, this incarnation made sweeter by the swallowing … Read more
In your mouth, I am trying to find it. I want to suck it from you, take it into my mouth and swallow, I want to hold it inside me in the long weeks we are apart. I want to suck it out, hold it in, warm core around which I can huddle, catch the … Read more
To go along dying and singing ~Cesar Vallejo To go along living and breathing into a world that is dying, cloves knocking into lungs, the bloody raincoat of love, that poor shrub of a spouse spilling always, a multitude of whiny details. Misery, complaints, traffic, the cost of things, etcetera etcetera. Forty years, you’d think … Read more
From your pocket so obliquely you pulled me out and readily, I found a comfortable position in your palm. If your voice is heaven, I’ve been acquainted with it for years. Does this mean I’ve died ten thousand times? I just assumed I was dreaming. That it was my midnight which created your mouth and … Read more
