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JOURNEY
by Erin Farias He was 93 years old and lived long and well his dark leather-like skin formed creases that flowed across his face like a maze at the sides of his gently closed eyes, along the corners of his smooth lips and in every empty space in between— the creases overflow like the life he lived— a life that was 93 years long. As the broken hearted son shrivels to the earth and weeps and the casket is slowly lowered beneath the ground, I fold my hands across my womb and wrap my fingers around a life that is only days old— somewhere between a blastocyst and an embryo I am carrying the absolute beginning of life. And as this father, grandfather, and great grandfather disappears beneath the crumbled soil I marvel at the wonder of life's journey. |
OAXACA IN TECHNICOLOR by Ruben Briseno Reveles |
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WRAPPED
by Erin Farias A package arrived in the mail today dated December 31, 2011— back when I was still pregnant with colorful pictures of smiling infants taped across the box's surface with my breath held and my chest pressing against my skeleton, I grab a knife and cut along the box's ridges— breaking in half the largest picture of a perfectly formed wide eyed infant. with tears streaming down my face, I remove a small onesie and lay it gently across the surface of my empty womb and watch the ink smear across the card that reads, "To Mama and Baby," and grasp a white blanket of feather softness that should have held my child, come September. Instead I wrap it around my shivering body and rock myself in still emptiness as I carry the weight of losing the only thing I have ever wanted. |
VIDA by Ruben Briseno Reveles |
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THE PROCESSION
by Holly Day When we were little, my best friend and I used to hold funerals for roadkill because we had seen adults hold funerals for dead people, and thought everything needed some sort of ceremony to mark its passing—although really we just thought it looked like fun. We threw black winter scarves over our heads wept loudly and noisily as we carefully carried whatever dead bird or cat we saw in the road to the back yard, dumped the body in a hole, covered it with dirt and flowers. Once, a raven we tossed into the hole moved its beak and croaked at us, not yet dead. For the next five or six minutes the funeral turned into a television-ready hospital scene, complete with calls for emergency assistance from imaginary nurses (as we both wanted to be the doctor), fingertip chest compressions, the careful spreading of a bloodied wing. Sometime during this, the raven's head fell backwards, its beak gaped open and we were in the middle of a funeral once again. I can't imagine what the next owner of the house thought of our yard as they overturned earth to make vegetable gardens, perhaps a sandbox. There were so many bodies buried in that yard. They must have found so many bones. |
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