Emily Overhears a Mourner
by Stephanie Dickinson
1917. This is where that dog pleasure led. The chickens these days the butcher gives. You scrape down to the bone and you get black. The tiny coffin floats among green walnuts. Should pick those apples before the skins split. A frost day at the start of fall. Air tart crisp as bitten-into apples. The photographer clicks the shutter. Old box camera with hood that drapes his face. That thing actually burns the face into the tin. The horses know nothing except best to be dumb. Best to graze orchard seeping apples. They had to pull the baby away from her. Think I’ll see what kind of apples those are. Worms will be gone with the second frost. They can’t get Emily off her bed. They say she’s out of her head. Lucky they got hold of the baby in time to embalm her. That marshy draw is full of muskrats. Oh, they’ll take her for her woman’s operation. The slough has plenty of ring-necked pheasants. I doubt John will get into her bed again. God will put a stop to it. Emily already spat out four what’s losing one after seven days. You hardly know its name. We’re all heading to the same place sooner or later. I’ll miss the me who loves rolling under barbed wire, and watching the dove moon fly out of a grindstone sky. Sleep. I don’t do it much. I’d rather ride out my night counting freight cars headed to What Cheer, Iowa. Marjorie I guess they named it. The baby got turned around between suckling the breast and scratch of thistle grass? Is this death? I guess none of us have an answer.
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Featured fiction author Stephanie Dickinson was raised in rural Iowa and has passed time in Wyoming, Oregon (where she earned an MFA from the University of Oregon), Minnesota, Texas, and Louisiana. She now lives in New York City. Along with Rob Cook, she publishes and edits the literary journal Skidrow Penthouse. Her publishing credits include, Half Girl, (Spuyten Duyvil), “Lynching in Stereoscope” (Best American Nonrequired Reading), “Love Highway” (New Stories from the South), Heat: An Interview with Jean Seberg (New Michigan Press), and many dozens of credits in literary journals including Glimmertrain, Oxford Review, Mid-American Review, and African-American Review.
by Stephanie Dickinson
1917. This is where that dog pleasure led. The chickens these days the butcher gives. You scrape down to the bone and you get black. The tiny coffin floats among green walnuts. Should pick those apples before the skins split. A frost day at the start of fall. Air tart crisp as bitten-into apples. The photographer clicks the shutter. Old box camera with hood that drapes his face. That thing actually burns the face into the tin. The horses know nothing except best to be dumb. Best to graze orchard seeping apples. They had to pull the baby away from her. Think I’ll see what kind of apples those are. Worms will be gone with the second frost. They can’t get Emily off her bed. They say she’s out of her head. Lucky they got hold of the baby in time to embalm her. That marshy draw is full of muskrats. Oh, they’ll take her for her woman’s operation. The slough has plenty of ring-necked pheasants. I doubt John will get into her bed again. God will put a stop to it. Emily already spat out four what’s losing one after seven days. You hardly know its name. We’re all heading to the same place sooner or later. I’ll miss the me who loves rolling under barbed wire, and watching the dove moon fly out of a grindstone sky. Sleep. I don’t do it much. I’d rather ride out my night counting freight cars headed to What Cheer, Iowa. Marjorie I guess they named it. The baby got turned around between suckling the breast and scratch of thistle grass? Is this death? I guess none of us have an answer.
_____________
Featured fiction author Stephanie Dickinson was raised in rural Iowa and has passed time in Wyoming, Oregon (where she earned an MFA from the University of Oregon), Minnesota, Texas, and Louisiana. She now lives in New York City. Along with Rob Cook, she publishes and edits the literary journal Skidrow Penthouse. Her publishing credits include, Half Girl, (Spuyten Duyvil), “Lynching in Stereoscope” (Best American Nonrequired Reading), “Love Highway” (New Stories from the South), Heat: An Interview with Jean Seberg (New Michigan Press), and many dozens of credits in literary journals including Glimmertrain, Oxford Review, Mid-American Review, and African-American Review.
