The Blog

On Dark Days, I Imagine My Parents' Wedding Video

James Allen Hall

I like how my mother, Anita Bryant, waves to the cameras

without looking at the men behind them, keeping her chastity

intact, unassailable as her perfect coiffure, dark as coffee,

the white saucer of her powdered face.  I like the news

conference, its swirling choreography of men and microphones

(always on the periphery, a vulgar joke about to declare itself

in the throng of serious journalists, one of whom is a pretender,

At Squire Point

Julia Anna Morrison

I remember I have a child, vaguely
He wears a raincoat, tiny pine trees on his sailor shoes

I will have to give him away, very slowly
when winter comes. First one night a week, and then two.

Stars on one ceiling: fishes on another

papa is asleep, I say.
I will always want to touch you I said when he left me.

It won’t happen all at once, he said.

First the closets of his winter coats. I braced myself.
It’s a million little things: his skin, the tongues of his shoes

I should have never given birth. I feel a color
he left in my stomach when I am alone, a shovel mark

At quiet hour I hear his papa and I talking before he was born
Our childless voices, our love over the water

But these woods are made of dry paper;
I was right; I could not give birth without losing

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