by Kaylee Lowe

I swing my leg over the bunk bed I share with my brother Jamie.
I sleep on the top- my nose touches the popcorn ceiling.

I’m eight years old, and our house burnt down last month.
Now we live in a trailer that mom hates. But I like the neighbor boys.

I shove Jamie, “Danny and Chris are probably already at the creek!
I’m leaving without you!” I call over my back as the screen door slams.

I stumble through the tree line, mud flaked across my
sun-tanned face. I see Danny, blonde hair streaked with soil.

Chris is knee-deep in creek water smacking frogs with stones.
He once caught a Copperhead with his bare hands and killed it.

Weeds cling to our skinny frames as we catch tadpoles,
and fireflies go down in the polluted grey and purple sky

I trudge home with the stars, empty my pockets of worms and rocks. When I climb the metal steps of
the camper, the door swings open.

“Where the living hell have you been?” my mother screeches,
“And why are you covered in shit?” I shrink in her shadow.

I only get two slaps with the spoon. Our Rottweiler tries
to nudge his head between us and gets a slap of his own.

“Go hose yourself off and take the damn dog with you.” As I scrub
my leg, a pill bug escapes my shorts. I follow him into the darkness.

by Kaylee Lowe

The summer before college
my mother invited me to her house for tea,
but I know she only drinks whiskey.
Sliding down the narrow driveway,
my stomach spinning
it’s not about tea,
I turn my key in the doorknob,
almost surprised it still fits.
I call her name.
I haven’t said “mom” since the day I left.
No response echoes back,
but I know where she’ll be.
I step onto the back porch
and there’s the cigarette,
circling fumes escaping its head.
nothing has changed
My eyes travel down.
Her growing belly,
stretching out from her blouse,
contrasting her slim frame.
“She’s the size of an avocado”
I watch the ring of smoke.
“I’m due in February”
It dances around the porch light.
“She’s named after your grandmother”
Her eyes flicker for response
All I find is the cigarette,
she draws another breath.

by Bruce Willard

If I was born here, mid-century,
between sun-blistered walls,
after the war and chill layers
of excess that became the heat of hope,
if I was here when the sun rose
from the white star of the night,
when the viscous smell of bananas
and burnt sugar lifts from rain-glazed streets
to iron balconies with their nests
of wires and birds of cracked plaster,
I would still be six.

Six with the sleeping dogs,
in their doorways of burnished wood
and stairs that turn six times,
one for each decade since the Revolution.

Six at first light when the breeze
remembers the day before,
and the Caribbean, salty,
reconstitutes itself from clouds.

Six with the birds of San Juan de Dias
sleeping in the jacaranda trees,
waiting for the sun
to open purple blooms.

Six with the chime of the wall clock
across Calle Emperdrado with its produce
market and dance hall and Chevy BelAirs
that transport riders forward and back.

Six with the dogs of Parque Centrale
scratching their bristly necks, licking
the balls of the day, homeless
and confident, with a nose for memory.

Nelson, videographer at the FAC gallery,
shows a 109-minute film that advances and retreats.
Its soundtrack is the Cuban National Anthem—
3 minutes, 20 seconds of triumph—
stretched the length of its screening,
voice rumbling like a volcano, seismic,
demanding to be heard again.

It’s what makes us feel
like we’re traveling forward by looking back
that moves us to conscience.
Face to the wind, bow to the tide or current,
we ferry across the surge.

If we are lucky, we survive
the flood into which we were born.
I am six—a half a life in dog’s years.
We are sixty-six and there is no change.
We are made by what we re-live.
Revolutions. No beginning. No end.

by Bruce Willard

How typical of me to suggest a wedding
reception on the Green River,
deep in the canyonlands of Utah,
that big, rolling, chocolate river in May
so opaque you couldn’t see 6 inches
through its body to the rock of which it’s made.

At the ceremony under Double Arch
a chipmunk ran across your sneakers.
The mayor who conducted our small recital
left us scrambling for parts, drowning
in a murky stream of words.
Somewhere in the desert our cake melted.

It was the beginning of your third trimester
and you floated in an innertube between rafts,
Bob with his floating cask of tequila,
our kids by prior marriages wide-eyed,
blindsided by irreverence.
Everything looked like a penis to Julio.

We laughed 5 straight days,
and when we stopped, we scrubbed the dirt
from our skin and carried the residue
in our shoes and bags for generations
to re-discover. I wanted its durability,

how it transported what was worn, scraped away, lost
to someplace new. I think it was that dirt
that traveled all the way from the Great Salt Lake
that kept us together. That stuck
between the plastic sleeves of photos
and held together our album of years.

How I’ve come to love that grit. The primordial
feeling of place on the move.
That attaches to everything living
and dead. That carries what’s loose,
mixed and messy downstream
to what it becomes.