Rolling by Andrea McBride

I used to roll down the hill in my backyard and now that I am a little older and braver I roll down the one at Memorial Park the one where the huge rock stands at the top I roll with my hands clasped arms raised above my head in praise my face tastes the earth, the sun blazes through my closed eyelids, the earth, the sky, the earth, the sky I don’t know in which direction I roll I only know gravity pulls me down I roll faster, faster-my brother is at the bottom already - I close my eyes tight and hope that tree root doesn’t jab me, I hope my way down the hill with my eyes closed, the earth, the sky, the earth, the wide open sky.

Andrea McBride, Florida, USA

Day of the Dead by Sergio Ortiz

On the day of the dead, Pablo put his pants on one mummified foot at a time. It wasn't his fault; rain was the true culprit. Clouds followed his feet for years, poured whenever he tried to cut bread in the city of glass. His soles cracked, sprouted roots. Julia entertained on her balcony, levitated intimate secrets. People on Beaker Street attributed her faculties to a santero visiting her family on the day she was born. She stood tall and elegant like the mountains to the south of Pablo's home. Her face had all the traces of an unforgettable pain. Julia found the last bottle of rum hidden in the trash before the wedding. She bled her life into that gutter. Pablo was one mummified foot at a time closer to banging pots and starvation, orders from the dictator. They are gone, but I keep their marriage vows to read aloud on the day of the dead.

Sergio Ortiz, Puerto Rico
previously published in Yellow Medicine Review

The Cello by Kristina Marie Darling

On nights like this I would play my cello, the snow like tinfoil under a phosphorescent moon. Before I knew it, you were there, with your handkerchiefs and your melancholia. The light on my windowpane, a struck match all aglow. We would take turns cradling the instrument’s long neck, its cavernous belly, watching the cold metal strings shiver and hum. After each chord you’d swallow glittering nerve tablets, whispering: Be still. Be. Still. Its sonorous voice faded with each blue pill. And when the snow eddied and slushed, the cello safe in its towering white box, I took up sainthood to pass the time. On winter mornings my teeth still ache.





Kristina Marie Darling, USA