Not everyone will understand the appeal of a fingernail. I know this. But when I find myself hunched over the five digits (or sometimes four) of someone who paid me good money to soften their skin, push away their cuticles, notice the nail’s ridges coursing like wood grain, comment on the care they’ve taken (or ignore it if they hadn’t), and cover every arched millimeter with an even coat of paint, I lose myself in that single piece of keratin.
There’s so much history in one nail. The damp fertilizer spread across the lawn this morning, or the BB that a ricochet lodged beneath my brother’s thumb those years ago. He’d said, “Michael, you can name the BB,” so I’d named it after his girlfriend.… ...continue reading
The Man’s rambling thoughts ceased to flow onto the pages. He chose to write exclusively with a Parker fountain pen on Clairefontaine paper, using Waterman black ink, and a wet paper towel to clean up any spills from a clumsy knockover of the bottle. He did not laugh or smile when writing, yet when finished, he let out a guffaw of pent-up frustration and set his precious writing utensil down. His still-hot black coffee waited next to him with steam wafting towards his nostrils; a car honked in the distance.
The pen’s cap had not been placed on the medium-sized nib (which was his preferred size due to its versatility and smoothness of writing), causing a pooling of ink on the paper. The Man stood up, leaving the mess to grow and his coffee to cool.… ...continue reading
She sits there, staring at streaks of soft rain
sliding down the window into nothingness.
Her calves ache from standing for hours,
waiting for the scalpels to fall
and the sun to shine on her.
Her little one, no bigger than a baby seal,
clings to something she doesn’t yet know — life.
Only months ago, among the colours of a newly painted room,
she hurried the baby into the wards.
She waits for the clouds to part,
praying — hoping — for the vending machine
to dispense free cash.
The baby’s father ran the moment he knew.
Alone now, she has thousands waiting to be paid —
due on paper she cannot afford to read.… ...continue reading
I stood at bay—by dark waters.
A mermaid rose up from the sea.
She asked for springtime and white lotus.
I gave her a bird and a bee.
Each tide I came back—but not she.
Our boat
One boat—in it, just you and I.
In storm of world that’s going wry.
Hand in hand – hearts —we synchronize,
Our oars on water—break the ice!
You gave me rarest gift at sea—
A flower—for eternity.
Rites of life
Sweet youth! Sweet dreams!—the rite of spring.
I spent it all in a labyrinth
of life, with shadows and it’s hawks
who hunt, deceive, and take our hopes.
I spent it all – but I have learned:
The summer’s mine—it’s gold—it’s earned.
– Anna Silver
Author’s Note: This poem was inspired by an unsuccessful winter date in New York City.… ...continue reading
When Miguel started tilling their front yard, it confirmed his mother’s fears. Working in the chicken factory had made her son crazy.
“Don’t worry Mama. Just wait until March, then the stench will disappear.” Since her husband’s death, his Mom had ceased cooking, sitting each day at the kitchen table, running her fingers over the woodwork of her deceased husband. She sat with the impassioned face of the bereaved; sunk, overburdened by sadness. Miguel believed she needed nature’s cure: sun, air, oxygen and clover, an aromatherapy though he never called it that. He trusted nature a lot more than her doctor’s antidepressants. To read their side effects, hair loss, suicide, facial tremors–gave him his own case of jitters.
He’d gone to the library and done his research reading that decomposed clover was a neutralizer, capable of masking the most fetid of smells.… ...continue reading
The sniper’s nest above the neighboring CITGO lies silent, for now, save for the crows picking at some unidentifiable carcass baking in the Midwest heat beneath the hothouse of an old, patched tarpaulin, the lonely body surrounded by empty beer bottles and long-spent cartridges and even longer-spent chances. Good luck gone to waste in what remains of what remains. This is the way of the world where leather sags against bent and rusted nails, where a nick is a death sentence. This is what Cole considers, surveying the situation as he stands on the ladder before climbing bodily into the reeking box as the feasting murder scatters. Sleek, funereal bodies croak in frustration as he relocates their meal to the ground below. The busted Timberland boot, exit wound blown out not for want of a nail, and the gangrenous foot within is the last to squelch over the side, the mass of old Mads landing with a dusty thud to his final resting place.… ...continue reading
Paralyzing,
hits like a flood, don’t you feel that?
Sinking inside a wave of minor punctures,
out of breath, gasping, drowning, can’t die,
by all means, it is above each one of our
pay-grades, capabilities, willingness
to raise our heads above it, and see
this is a world of muddy waters,
everywhere is under the waves,
everywhere is a flood-zone, don’t you
feel
that, wherever you look,
don’t you feel paralyzed? Being bitten constantly
by piranhas that are supposed to be everywhere,
attacked, attacked, attacked, constantly,
constantly… constantly…
can’t move, it is everywhere, a siege, don’t
you… feel… that? I do, oh god oh god
I DO,
even when I reach out, when I hold hands
in that mud, I feel the hands of others
that are drowning as I do,
but don’t want to die alone.… ...continue reading