The Walk

M. E. Riddle

The black and white bugs scampered into the muddy fringe where cultivated lawn meets underbrush. “What else inhabits the dense land?” I wondered. Every step I took on my backyard walk provoked questions despite how I tried to be present in the moment.

Swathes of vibrant green groundcover resembling lily pads blended into the lawn. The herb grew vertically up a fence and horizontally across the grass. I chewed a healing leaf. Moving forward, the earth beneath me squished from a recent rain. The sound pleasant and the scent of moist ground heady… toes, wet. A low branch parted my hair. Shade lay beneath the tree, cooling, while dappled sunlight toasted yellowing grass and exposed skin. A peephole in a peeling fence framed a not quite ripe fig alone in a tangle of vines.

Despite the beauty, I struggled to relax, to enter the wordless state inhabited by intuition, colors and shapes, my indigenous home. Where was the portal to that place I once occupied? My zone where visions are collected and comforted only turning into words when necessary. A space where philosophy arises, and in time, threads its way into written passages or paintings that tell spectacular secrets. A world where flocks of black birds and gusts of wind prompt revelations. Like the day when the ragged silk flag, aged by weather, flapped primal messages through the open door as I lay on the couch staring. Or when I would sit in the sunny patches on the hardwood floor in my childhood home. I spent the day following the warm puddles of light until dusk. The sun spoke to me and had much to say. What use to the world were these missives? Peace would not be won by following the sun. Prose would not heal poverty or rebuild broken homes. Yet, how could I keep these dispatches to myself? Images, my native alphabet, are fading like hieroglyphics. I might evaporate once my language is gone. Into the puddle of sun or the muddy fringe.

Ellen Wells: Untitled

Ellen Wells: Untitled

Daven Reese Brabble

It’s hard to think that someday we’ll be older Our bones will be old with most likely bad shoulders

Us grandmas will have mints in the bottom of our purses And our favorite grandchildren will always be the firsts

We will have that old lady smell And people will love it as far as I can tell

We will cook and clean all day long And sometimes sing an occasional song

So this is my poem about becoming old As all of our childhoods go to unfold

The most important thing about Lola Brewster, the thing that outweighs every other thing, is the discolored, puckered skin on the right side of her face. She was three when she pushed a kitchen chair up to the stove and turned the knob to the right, the burner glowing red. She must’ve kissed that burner with her face. Afterwards, she shook her mother awake. The burner was still on, the smell of burned skin and hair wafting through the trailer.

Lola wasn’t hysterical. There were two fat tears, one on each cheek. The mother filled a plastic bag with ice and carried her to bed. She drove her to the hospital the next day. A third-degree burn, the doctor said, the fiery rings imprinted on her cheek, a jar of silver paste to rub on it. She wasn’t in very much pain. The nerve endings were dead. No, she didn’t know how long her face was on the burner. She didn’t remember.

Today, Lola is sixteen and quiet. She walks with her head down, and knows wherever she goes, people feel sorry for her. This is one of the main reasons she’s a thief. People look away. She can steal nearly anything. Today, she is high on Coke and Pop-Rocks she stole from Bean’s Pharmacy before riding her bike to Woodrow’s Market. It’s Saturday. Lola squats in front of the old concrete market, the door and windows boarded up. A Coca-Cola sign groans from rusted hooks. Lola pulls her sketchpad, stolen from Kmart, from her backpack (also stolen) and settles cross-legged in the dirt. She touches her pencil to her lip and remembers sitting on the chrome and pea-green stool. It swiveled. She was two, an age impossible to remember, but when she sketches or paints, she can remember almost any age. She can see the stool and feel her thighs sticky against the vinyl. She draws the stool and the counter where the red-hot sausages floated in glass. She draws a cigarette burning in a rose-colored ashtray, the smoke rising white and fixing a haze across Woodrow’s face. He is a heap of a man with forearms like Popeye and enormous jowls, a roll of fat under his chin. She can’t see the man at her side, only his arm plunging into the salty sausage brine. She taps the glass to pick the best one.

This is the man she wants to see. This is the father she doesn’t know but wants to remember because there was something good about him.

The page stretches. Lola scribbles hungrily, hard and soft strokes, back and forth, the bar breathing: a Smokey and the Bandit poster on the back wall and a mug of yellow beer. The man’s hands—long fingers and soft palms, raising the glass to his lips. The bottom-half of his face. A good jaw, full lips—the only part of his face she’s seen.

Lola has drawn him driving away, the back of his head, and herself alone in his rearview mirror. She imagines him flipping the rearview mirror so as not to see her standing in the dust. According to Deb, Lola’s mother, he left before the incident with the stove, but he came back. That’s what he would do—leave and come back.

Deb has told Lola, I dreamed that happening to you. She means the stove. I thought it was a nightmare. I never imagined it would actually happen. Lola doesn’t blame Deb except that Deb drinks too much and imbibes too many illicit substances, and Lola suspects that if Deb had been sober, she would’ve heard Lola dragging the chair to the stove. She would’ve stopped Lola before she pressed her face to the burner. She would’ve driven her to the hospital right away—not the following morning.

In truth, Deb is a shit mom. However you slice it, Deb is a shit mom.

Lola has drawn the stove. She’s scribbled until the page turned black and the pencil was hot in her hand. She saw the stove, how the burner shone red, and she was attracted to it. She doesn’t remember the sensation or what happened next. She also draws Susie McMurrer, a girl who is homeschooled and works at the herbal stand in town square. Lola doesn’t know Susie, has never spoken to her, but there’s something intoxicating about her. Once, Deb took Lola to the herbal stand to buy an antifungal cream, and Lola watched Susie arrange homemade lip balms. She was stunning, all contrasting colors: lips like a ripe watermelon, skin as white as the moon, and hair like black vinyl. Lola remembers her mother snapping her fingers to break the spell. “Time to go,” her mother said.

Lola was seven or eight when she started watching Susie from across the street at the AG Supermarket. She bought two plastic red-stone rings from the bubble gum machine, one for her and one for Susie. She keeps them in a cloth-lined jewelry box, the kind with the ballerina that twirls when you open the box. Every weekend, this morning included, she thinks about stopping at the herbal stand and introducing herself, but she never does.

This morning, she squats at Woodrowe’s Market, gathering memories of the father she doesn’t know and wishing she were whole. Last week, she painted Susie McMurrer, a pink rope like an umbilical cord hanging down from her tight fist, Lola underneath, the rope knotted around her waist. The painting is like a Salvador Dali. The images mean something. The dreams. The drawings. Everything means something. Figuring it out is the task.

Lola is lost to the world inside Woodrow’s, sitting at the bar with the man and the red-hot sausages, until a deer and her fawn cross the parking lot where gas pumps once stood. She glimpses them out of the corner of her eye, and for a second, it’s like they’re inside Woodrow’s. The light is waning. Hues of orange and pink transform the landscape, all kudzu and oak. Lola remembers her sketchpad and takes a peek. She’s made twenty drawings, and she can only see the lower half of his face and his hairy arm in the salty brine. She packs up her things and checks her Pop-Rocks. All gone. On her way home, she rides past Susie McMurrer and her nana at the herbal stand. She stops at the AG Supermarket across the street and watches Susie McMurrer pull down the herbal stand’s shutters. Maybe tomorrow, she’ll talk to Susie. She thinks that every Saturday, but just so long as she thinks it, there’s the possibility.

The world is all about possibility.

R. Wayne Gray

Sonny and I Caught them as boys On the mud flat West of the Old Wharf.

My grandfather shipped them To Philadelphia and New York To be served in expensive soup, Thick with cream and sherry, In fancy restaurants.

We kept them In the old ice room Lined with cork Until one of the Wanchese Line boats Came for them.

We fed them shrimp and earthworms, Never thinking about their fate. Instead, we made plans For the many bicycle accessories We would order.

We spent hours Counting the rings on the backs Of their diamond shaped plates, Painted by an artist.

R. Wayne Gray

Later, I would always see you From a distance, Never really focusing on you, On your gaze, Your in-person you.

It has been a lifetime Since we let our lives Go to waste, Destroyed by more than Alcohol and infidelity.

It was never said, But we realized There was no way To switch back. There would be No big wins for us. Our changing characters Made sure of that. So we continued On our drifting journey, Our young dreams Exploded and expired, Our silent cries Echoing in a new land.

R. Wayne Gray

Bigger than Selma, Bigger than life, A true legend Until the end, Taken across a bridge Named for a pro slaver By horsedrawn cart, Then by Cadillac To a place he could Finally rest.

From Civil Rights activist To congressman, His was a name that “speaks to the future.”

Working to make the world A better place, With King and Kennedy From ’65 to present, The “boy from Troy” That matter In a struggle Not over.

On the same bridge He stood on in 1965, Connecting the past To the future, He makes his final crossing.