The first bird was made of glass. It stood waiting atop a scuffed dresser in the yard on Lancaster Street, and at once Kay hefted it in her hand. It felt good there, heavier than she’d expected. The owl’s wings were tucked away and its head gazed into some autumnal wisdom that she couldn’t see. […]
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead. —William Blake, from “Proverbs of Hell” She’s washing the dishes after a simple breakfast of fried eggs and tomatoes, looking out the window towards the river winding low and shaded beneath the willow trees, when she sees a man coming up the road […]
Meredith holds the dead bird in both hands. Last week, it was a sparrow, small enough to nestle in the cup of one palm. This morning, it’s a wattlebird. She brushes the dirt from its feathers and smooths its wings to its sides. The lifeless head lolls against her fingers. There are two clear puncture […]
Ell cried as her pathetic whisper gave out. No, no, no. Jac’s brother Raif clacked his strong beak against her flushed cheek. Pushed. Cawed. Shhhh, gal, shhhh. Yellow-orange light flickered through the trailer’s one window, parking lot bonfires gilding the crow boy’s near-sharpest edge. His face-blade pressed close, closer. Black feathers glinted on head and […]
Gillian notices that no one ever closed Mr. Elling’s attic window. A week has passed since the brief swirl of ambulance lights near dawn. Already his house seems decades older. She’s staring across at it when she hears his voice say, “Lord, child, you about run as far as you can get.” He has a […]
Once upon a time, there was a little boy who thought he was cleverer than everyone else. To prove it, he crept away from his mother and father to the darkest part of the woods. He felt cold claws grip his shoulder. “What boy dares to trespass on my land?” hissed the witch in a […]
My sister Nika and I never liked going to Grannie Luvan’s place. She kept an old man in her kitchen who was said to be some relation of sorts to her husband. The old man would sit in a spot near the stove, and though he had no use of his legs at all, he […]
The children’s fight punctured the cordial atmosphere of the old woman’s funeral. Two small boys, opposite sides of the family, had gotten into a full-blown quarrel. And because they had not yet learned to keep their mouths shut, that meant it became a spiderfight. The old woman had not been that old, but that was […]
In those years of sunshine that battered the streets, and deluges that wrinkled fingers and toes, the villagers never suspected Hafeez of anything more than putting holes in their teeth. He made bonbons and baked bread. The bread was his livelihood, the bonbons for the pleasure of the village children. When Hafeez lacked the gumption […]
That midsummer’s night, after we four collapsed in fairy sleep beneath boughs and moon, I roused to see a sprite looping through the flowers. Carrying a single seed in his ant-leg fingers, he ducked beneath Hermia’s skirts. She turned once, in dream. The past is nothing but the shapes and colors that now arise before […]
