A broken porcelain doll on a mass grave. Small hands, which held the doll. My granddaughter Zahra — Exhumed her name on the casket. Remember how we got lost on Majevica Mountain? Where wild blueberries grow. When I dream, you are always there: White tombstone under a plum tree. As I am fleeing Kalesija, by […]
Grammar school pockmarked with shrapnel holes the year is 1953. Meadow, blue plum, and yellow poplar. Bomb craters filled with rubble, grandmother’s kitchen in Halle 7 short white cotton curtains. Roofless hallway, the Neutraubling refugee settlement, by the Danube River. Bavarian Woods foothills ridge. Wheat fields. Wild sorrel. From your second-floor window Magda’s daughter, the […]
Our heroine just another A & W customer, with a well-stocked purse dangling from her left arm. Husband ba-dum ba-dums behind. Her age-speckled hands – look closely and you’ll note their suppleness and strength – his only portal from this galaxy to the next. She finds them a table, helps with his jacket. She orders […]
The time will come when arms transform into swinging scales to balance our vertical existence. Best memorize the gait, the deliberation a step requires. Best master the crabwalk for mornings on our own, mimic the turtle’s teetering reliance on slide-pull/slide and the snake’s low-belly work. Tottering’s on the agenda, accompanied by downright fear. The ground […]
Of all the pills dispensed by pharmacist October, beauty’s the most bittersweet. For who can live on watered-down dribs and drabs, on discoloured leaves when we’re used to bouquets, hunger for last-minute floral showings. We hunch in sun-funnelled corners, inhaling the vigour of each remaining bloom, hues intensified by near-death experience. We siphon ebbing light […]
