Une journée aux course

 

Porte D'entrée

 

Mickey J. Corrigan

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Harris Coverley

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Liz DeGregorio

 

Julian Grant

 

Evander Lang

 

Richard Magahiz

 

Frederick Pollack

 

Bill Prindle

 

Tony Reevy

 

Sterling Warner

 

Megan Wildhood

{below}

♥  ♠  ♦  ♣

 

Megan Wildhood

Barefaced

 

My first time grocery shopping 

without a mask after people 

started believing that seeing a smile 

 

would kill them, nothing happened.

I thought I would get thrown out

of the store. Arrested, maybe.

 

At least spit at like a leper.

I celebrated weighing lemons 

in my hand to assess their juiciness,

 

being able to smell the fresh dill,

the whoosh of the mini avalanche

of cashews from the bin 

 

in the finally-reopened bulk section

with a picnic after a stroll along the spine

of the bay hemming in my city. 

 

I spread out my feast on the pullover I brought 

but didn’t need. God bless the heat of the sun, 

the salt clinging to my throat as I breathed full and long.

 

How far into distance I could see.

The border between the Pacific 

and the dusk in the sky was bone white.

 

The things I now miss about the world

I used to criticize to the bone

started wafting through me then,

 

faded since they were never to return

unless I could somehow hold them

gingerly enough to revive and not break them.

 

How were these things—contradancing,

potlucks, health-information privacy—

already so frail in my mind? 

 

Like they were artifacts of childhood?

But artifacts of childhood are things 

like boy bands and playing outside 

 

with the neighbor kids until 

the streetlights spotlighted 

the game of tag or the bike race

 

in dull, evenly spaced white.

Things like homework. Broken bones.

Not hugs and moments without dread.

 

I redirect my resentment from

the fact that I now long for a life

I did not think was enough Before

 

to where it belongs: the pall of fear 

that’s exacting everything. I lean against

 

the shockwhite driftwood, shake cashews like dice. 

I still want More like nothing’s changed forever.

 

But at this point, send me the bones.

 

Megan Wildhood is the author of Long Division, a poetry chapbook. meganwildhood.com

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Danse Macabre

An Online Literary Magazine

Celebrating 15 years 

publishing the finest in noir coloratura letters

from around the world & beyond the grave

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Dedicated to

Saints Oswald, Francis, Cajetan, Donatus, & Ignatius 

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