By KAREN CHASE
my body and
in the morning, it
returns. To exist fully, it
needs more than my body, so
up it goes into the stars, for
sustenance. I open
my eyes and pray—
Things have taken a strange turn since my husband uprooted our family. First I quit my job. Then I stopped eating. And now I’ve begun to receive messages from the dead.
Four months ago, we moved from rural, pastoral Northern California, a place I loved, to southwest Virginia. Over the summer, smoke from the West Coast wildfires has followed us, traveling east across the country, shrouding the Blue Ridge Mountains in a haze made heavier by humidity. I like to look out the window, air purifiers humming behind me, and watch the microscopic remnants of home suspended in air, thinking they’ve been sent here just for me.
For Ana María Alonso
It was late October, and my half-sister, Nikki, and I walked arm in arm with our stepmother through the streets of Caracas. The sweet metallic smell of gasoline, ever-present in the city, mixed with the acrid sourness of tropical flowers decaying at the end of the rainy season to create a pungent indolic scent. The sun had set behind Mount Ávila while we were at the party, so we walked under the glow of streetlights toward our car parked a few blocks away. Even though Nikki and I hadn’t anticipated needing nice clothes for this visit, we’d each thrown a dress into our suitcase at the last minute. The special occasion turned out to be our step-cousin’s son’s second birthday. The click of our high heels echoed through empty streets. Armed robberies, carjackings, gang activity, and police shoot-outs had contributed to a climate of fear and insecurity amongst residents, who no longer went out after dark unless necessary. But our stepmother, Inger, never bothered with such warnings—she entrusted her life (and ours) to fate.
It was a gold-seal ruse. A double-
dealing so sublime the gods ordained
it. Settled into their stadium seats,
they wagered on their favorites. Helen,
the imposter bride, circling and circling
the gifted horse. Her Central Casting
lines to the shadows inside. The numbing
non-reply. War-weary, she fastened her
hair in gold and dressed for a city
ablaze. Nothing to do but wait.
Who can know my despair
at the ones who talk too much.
The ones who don’t speak at all.
The ones who qualify and over-qualify.
The ones who can’t say this without first saying that.
Make them like stubble driven by the wind.
On a rainy morning in late August last year, I stood beneath a wedding-sized tent to observe the Sixth Opening Convocation of the West Virginia School of Home Economics. It was a humid day, and the smell of wet, freshly cut grass mingled with the perfumes of the young women who surrounded me. I was a guest of Sophia Chafin, keynote alumna speaker. She sat on a small wooden stage with her six-year-old daughter, Riley; her two-year-old son, Taylor Jr.; and her husband, Representative Taylor Chafin. Sophia, clad in a floral dress, held Taylor’s hand as the school’s co-founder, Andrea Armstrong, introduced her, describing her as “one of WVSHE’s greatest success stories.”
By TINA CANE
Like yesterday
I could have cried with relief driving around
this little city running errands with mariachi rancheras blasting
on my radio making the everyday feel extravagant like being
in a film about running errands or some other earlier version
I denounced abstract expressionism. I became a realist and portrait painter. I started paying my taxes. I flossed my teeth with regularity. I tied my shoes with punctuality. I wore dress shoes for that matter. I no longer sang in the shower. I stopped skateboarding on the weekend. I threw away my Neil Young & Crazy Horse albums. I tipped my waiter a decent amount. I cut my long hair. I voted early on Tuesday morning. I wore a fitted suit for the job interview. I got a job as a civil servant in Paris. I established good credit and got engaged. I got married in the summertime at sunset on the misty beach. I had half a dozen children. They loved me but worked me to the bone. I fell asleep at a reasonable hour. I started using an alarm clock in the early morning. I ate my breakfast with black coffee and a filter-less cigarette.
It was March 2023, and I was alone in Wellington. The creative writing class I’d traveled there to teach had ended. Antipodean summer was ending too, night falling earlier, rain dripping from the lemonwood trees, the gray surface of the harbor whipped and wrinkled by a wind that roared ceaselessly through the Cook Strait.
—after “My Husband and I Fight about Robots” by Sara Burge
Mother’s on her way back from the Fayette waterpark,
where the kids don’t know how to be lazy in the lazy river.
Mother’s trying to float in her tube,
and they’re knocking into me like we’re bumper cars.
In the background, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.”
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