Photograph by Brent Wiggans | |
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STRANDED
By Julie Valin After a tough day of being a mom with no other aspects of me showing, I am huddled against the kitchen sink, water running to drown out the sound of my daughter crying for something, when all she ever gets is my undivided love. I pretend to wash sippy cups, or the vegetables I should be cooking for dinner, but instead I reach in the freezer behind the Eggo waffles, tucked in there neatly, slide out my bottle of gin, sip right from the lip. On the other side of town, friends gather and drink cheap beer pitchers, laugh and tell stories of their days at the river or their musical nights with new and exciting strangers, wonder where I am for a brief moment. Hopeless, I retreat to the living room where my daughter is now coloring and quiet, learning her letters. I look down and there, under her pink sea and purple seahorses, she has scribbled a message so clear: S…O...S. BUTTERCUPS By Julie Valin Buttercups, their little faces. If you hold one up to your chin, and it glows, my nana said, then you are boy crazy. Mine never didn't glow. Those beautiful weeds. It's hard to pick them, unless you're making a bouquet for a frog, I tell my daughter, her petal-soft fingers pinching the small stems as she arranges a cluster to offer me, unaware of how many frogs she will go through, unaware of how golden they cast a glow before she hands them to me. | 
Aura by Katy Brown |
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FIRST KISS
By Julie Valin When it finally happens it’s a tingle of new blood on the tip of your tongue, a pinpoint, a precise moment frozen hot— singed like an old photograph. The quiet light behind your eyes melting red, your fingertips alive in awareness, the soft flesh inside your mouth stirring. Everything— your whole life, those missed dances, the glances sent elsewhere, the lone walks home, the third wheels, the silent phones, the misplaced compliments, it all blows away in ashes, until all you know in this world, is this long lick of flame— its blue center burns the hottest when his lips finally find their way to yours. GOODNIGHT, MOON By Julie Valin It's time for me to create my own goddamned ambiance.  Julie Valin has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies, and is the co-publisher and founder of the celebrated after hours poetry press, Six Ft. Swells. By day she is a copy editor, book designer, self-publishing specialist, a long-standing board member of the Nevada County Poetry Series, and a committed member of Nevada County Arts’ Literature committee. By night she is a beer-swigging gypsy and avid appreciator of the show “Sons of Anarchy”– after her daughter goes to sleep. Her book of poems, The Distance Between is available on Amazon. |
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