Every fall, we have the true pleasure of publishing the winning story of the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. This year, it’s Katie M. Flynn’s “Island Rule,” in which an environmental biology professor is haunted by memories of the surreally accelerated evolution and ensuing political violence that expelled her, as a child, from her island […]
Outside my window, a crane breaks / the last jigsaws of ice. Morning comes, / it always does, the rabbits scurry down / their narrow holes to live their underground lives.
What have I // transferred to you, dear listener? Is this / our odyssey together, or have I hitched you // to my now-naked side? I am sorry. Maybe.
How their faces were cut out / then cinched in the center with a drawstring // And how all my ideas, dilemmas, doubts / I held most dear would be erased in five days’ time
with the wainscoting of the field / peopled with crapped out rigs / just some boil wheel ass half implements improving / towards a satisfaction the bog bug bites on / one defamed mange face wanderer
My mother’s house was built into the side of the volcano, where it was green and too thick to take anything but the machete-cut paths. We were field-workers. That is, until the men in uniform came.
We were going to visit Budapest for a vacation. “As long as we’re there, we could visit your grandmother’s village,” he said. “Maybe do a little research. You might find a family member who still lives there.”
Long white-blonde hair in front of the white clapboard chapel. Her body almost invisible in the afternoon sun except for tan legs, bare feet, the straps of sandals held in one hand like an invitation. A small valise at her feet, weathered, blue, hardly big enough for a change of clothing. He noticed her before he saw her thumb, out of place the way she was in front of Phillips Chapel.
Lightning is God / taking pictures of the victims. The present, like your elbow, / bends just one direction.
Listen. The moon could / slice through this dark, this / thick water, that which looks / like dark here