Ink & Oak Literary Magazine

Elsie Jones did not belong here. Despite the soft sunlight that filtered in through her large windows, the lush pillows surrounding her, the gorgeous silk scarf holding her dark curls aloft as she slept, and the inviting platter of tea sitting on the table beside her door, the entirety of Southerby Plantation seemed to constantly ooze a sense of foreboding. It was as if the very structure itself whispered obscenities to her through the walls each night...

Kid crashed his car into the River at 2:03. It was just as the sun came into his eyes and flared that he’d swerved. Or didn’t realize he’d swerved. Not that it mattered.

He comes in those moments before sleep sweeps across my brow, sinks me into nothingness. His words mere whispers. In my ear? My mind? I can never tell. They encoil my heart and steal my breath as terror surges through me, awareness of my mortality palpable. His presence a shroud embracing me. Portending that which lies beyond my end.

Pickles the Clown was calmer than he remembered being in his entire life. Leaning forward in the vanity chair toward the mirror, he carefully drew a rag across his cheek. The thick white makeup and red freckling transferred from his face onto the cloth. He’d been with the traveling carnival for three seasons. During that time, he’d aged from runaway teenager to legal adult. The other members of the troupe had treated him like a grown-up from the beginning.

The city forgets, but the bricks remember, lungs filled with the dust of another man’s wealth. Your laughter dissolved into smoke each September.

I wrote this like Psalms etched in the sand, A message from the soul, so I hope you’ll understand. I used to marvel at your magic like Strange with the hands, Now your spells feel hollow, generic, and bland.

I AM the child of pyramids kissed by the Nile, An heir to the wisdom that stretches infinite miles. I AM the scribe of Ausar, the keeper of stars, Charting paths through Orion, unshaken by scars.

I like to touch your scars in complete darkness, bend my fingers over the battlefield of your back, reading your flesh with my own, pondering the violence of the life before us. The circle scar on your spine,

the Haw slides slow past brick and bramble moss threads the wheel spokes a broken beam leans like a weaver asleep at her frame

Near enough to but not inside of  Kenosha and entirely forgotten  by all records              seven–thousand and eighty-two plastic eggs compress because Jeremiah Bumthwaite      (age seven)     has a sloppy swandive

Some nights, the train rattles off the nightstand, following its tracks to the termite-chewed boards beneath our sleep. I have dreamed my friend a face

After the catastrophe, Persephone craves apples, dreams of them, ripe green and gold and crimson, imagines the first tart bite, juice fleeing down her chin.

Roll, roll, roll deep thunder— patient storm. 

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