EASTERN IOWA REVIEW
  • Home
    • About Us
    • Masthead
    • Port Yonder Press >
      • Chapbooks
    • Eastern Iowa Review
  • Guidelines
  • Current Issue
    • Issue 16 - Come, Wander
  • Past Issues
    • Lyric Essay Issues >
      • The Lyric Essay
      • Issue 10 - Spring 2020
      • Issue 8 - Spring 2019
      • Issue 7 - Print Anthology
      • Issue 6 - 2018
      • Issue 3 - 2017 >
        • Editors Note - Issue 3
      • Issue 2 - 2016
      • Issue 1 - 2015
    • Themed Issues >
      • Issue 15 - Love
      • Issue 14 >
        • Those Elves - Origin Story
        • Those Elves - The Collection
      • Issue 13 - Winter
      • Issue 12 - Water
      • Issue 11 - Hope in Renewal (An Intermission)
      • All Things Anne - Issue 9
      • Issue 5 - The SmartApocalypse
      • Issue 4 Contributors & Samples
  • 3 Sisters Awards
    • The Christine Prose Poetry Award
    • Dory Ann Fiction Award
    • Maggie Nonfiction Award
  • More
    • The Prose Poem
    • Fictions >
      • Contemporary Mystery
      • Dark Fiction
      • Debut Fiction
      • Fan Fiction
      • Honorable Mentions
      • Literary Fiction
      • Mythical Fiction
      • Speculative Fiction
      • Woods-Western-Mountain-Appalachian
      • Young Author
      • Unclassifiable
    • Prizes
    • Interviews
    • List of Contributors

Jennifer Ruth Jackson

THE LEAVINGS OF FLAME

We dreamed of flying, before the world ended, before we licked cracked lips with tongues of ash and our beaches became glass, so shiny from our blowtorch bombs. The thought of colonizing Mars used to leave us sick. The black desolation before red deserts with no way home. Now we clamor for seats on a twelve-year journey to stock image oblivion. A trip with no return is sweet on the palate, a tempting morsel compared to burned-out paradise. We describe the vast oceans to our children while they stick their fingers into pitted ground and beg us to repeat the stories of fish and trees, the bedtime tales of mythology. We could tell them of werewolves and Hercules. Things we've never seen with our own eyes. It pains us, now, to relive thoughts of grass and grain. But this is all we can give them. We no longer wish for flight, desire disappearing like nontoxic air. Our hands fumble for broken faces, rubbing whiskers. We wait for time travelers to come for us, send an S.O.S. of screams. We wait, forms scrubbed by howling winds drying our tears. We shouldn't cry. It's the only water we have.

Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Verse Wisconsin, Kaleidoscope Magazine, and more. She runs a blog for disabled and/or neurodivergent writers called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Follow her on Twitter @jenruthjackson
All rights reserved.
© 2012-2023, Port Yonder Press LLC
6332 - 33rd Avenue Drive, Shellsburg IA
www.PortYonderPress.com