at the gay bar, we ______
I’m trying to say,
we carry the dancing
with us.
I’m trying to say,
there is color
and laughter inside.
families used to living miles
apart
suddenly in one room
touching.
Nature Poem
The Appalachian Trail
SARAH SALA
In 1988 Claudia Brenner and her girlfriend, Rebecca Wight, planned to hike a section of the remote Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. They encountered a stranger who shot both of them, killing Rebecca.
……..
For a little while, there was a black butterfly with us.
……..
X later claimed he thought he was deadening
what was deer
……..
A universe bullet wound creates a cavity that expands and then collapses in the split
atom it takes a summer’s day bullet to blink
……..
X wept in his cell to learn a lesbian had survived his horrific attack.
See you later, he called at the campground.
……..
Rebecca, that May afternoon, we wept reclaimed our bodies in the secluded thicket
when you drove your galaxy pelvis across mine
The same look you flashed the day we met
I felt a lifetime drain from Pennsylvania the sphere
in seconds
……..
What was it made X think since he never found
love
he should X-out someone else’s?
……..
My dear, Rebecca: you bled out in a forest along with me
our futures
I bound your words up in my chest to a songbird
Get behind the tree. Your direction life-giving.
After the massacre, I covered you in the blue sleeping bag
I never wanted you to feel cold.
every drop
of my damned devotion
hesitation
To leave you there, living.
……..
Four blazing miles I retraced our trail like a love letter to the highway
scraped over fallen logs warding off the night
my skull smoke escaping the shooter’s lips
a beehive of shock
an engine of surveillance
a white towel plugging my exit wounds
……..
X’s reckless ammunition designed using calculations and data gathered
from previous testing
perfect for small game .22 barrel action rifle
……..
ER doctors
threw me up against the periodic table of elements
odds
Rebecca, your parents cremated your remains
before I could touch your hair left intensive care.
After the murder,
the third disappearing act.
“Nature Poem” was first published in Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ)
On Our Nightly Walk, She Takes My Hand
Asheville, NC
JESSICA JACOBS
Across the dark street, the dance studio
is a brilliant lamp, a Cornell box
set to music and motion: girls hold each other
in swaying pas de deux, a phrase
first translated for me as piece of God.
That’s wrong, of course,
but not entirely. For what is it to move in time
with another, to acknowledge and learn
a body beside your own—the dancing apart
and the final coming back
together—what is this if not
some kind of grace,
some human-sized serving of God?
“On Our Nightly Walk, She Takes My Hand” from Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (c) 2019 by Jessica Jacobs. Appears with the permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.
Boys and Oil
Western North Dakota
TAYLOR BRORBY
1.
We play army at Tyler’s birthday party. Cream the Carrier, Smear the Queer, King of the Hill—games boys on the prairie play to the swoosh of grass in afternoon heat. Something in the land pulls us towards violence. We tackle our friends, drive our hollow boned bodies into the hard dirt. One team holds fort atop the butte, the other down in the coulee. No mercy, no grace, forget what we learned in Sunday School. The trees echo with screams, cries that ripple across the prairie.
2.
They lived together in a tawny house on the south end of town, across from the Corner Stop. Ms. Voss and Ms. Leingang, the English teacher and the History teacher, volleyball coaches too—they shared a house together. One had curly hair the color of sand, the other straight black hair, typically tied in a bun. We lived two blocks from them before we moved, and my sister had them both in the classroom and on the volleyball court. Later, when I got older, I heard rumors about how they liked to linger in the locker room after games, talked with the players who stripped and got in the shower, washed the sweat and salt from their game-tired bodies. I only knew Ms. Voss and Ms. Leingang in passing—on my way to the library in first grade, marching in alphabetical order for Mrs. Sherwin. We scurried as the bell rang and high schoolers flooded the hallway. I remember that their smiles looked the same—gaps between their front teeth; big, warm grins, mild bemusement behind their spectacles. Later, Ms. Voss and Ms. Leingang moved, together, to a larger town.
3.
We’d peel around the pothole-riddled road, the Corner Stop the finish line—no stop lights or signs to get in the way. Like rockets launching into the sky, we slammed our legs down and up and thought we were headed for the moon. Waxy leaves twitched in the breeze as sweat slid down our faces. We blinked faster to keep it out. Tick tick tick snapped the playing cards in our tires. Jeans, stained with grass, wet and heavy from sloshing in the creek.
We ripped around the corner, the boys and me, heading home from baseball, but stopping first for candy, except—wham—Cale went over the handlebars, knocked out his front two teeth. Like Chiclets stained red, they shined