If you ever want to feel real,
even important,
cry on the street.
Sob. Heave. Bum a half-smoked cigarette.
Drunks rally around your wet eyes:
A woman brings a paper cup of soft serve.
A man in a floral shirt puts his hand on your shoulder
to deliver queer advice:
“You’re just going through it, hun.
We’re all always going through it.”
Kevin Hautigan is from South Florida and lives in New York City. He graduated from Georgetown University.
MEGAN PINTO
I sit beside my father and watch his IV drip. Each drop of saline hydrates his veins, his dry cracked skin. Today my father weighs 107 lbs. and is too weak to stand. / I pop an earbud in his ear and keep one in mine. / We listen to love songs.
LAKE ANGELA
Father dragged me by the arm without seeming / to see me, down in Diamondville where his ghosts live. / As if in prayer, he knelt and blessed a knife sharpened / in the setting sun, then bent to file three caustic letters / from his father’s white grave.
FRIDAY READS
Our Editorial Assistants recommend books that match July’s potency: storytelling that dazzles, prose that floods and sweeps away the sane, and historical truths delivered in lightning-bolt cracks.
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