Author: Mickie Kennedy
-
Birds of a Feather
Count backwards from 99. What’s the first thing you remember waking up? Back from permanent loan, a temporary tattoo on your forearm, you pour whiskey over ice, two fingers deep— the temperature on the front of the local bank the first sign that something was amiss in the month of October. Jobs are coming or…
-
Oasis
My mother smoked Camels, the animal, not the cigarettes. Men would slit the throat and hang it from a palm tree until it had been drained of blood, had its stomach swept of entrails and organs. She would gather wood, mostly cedar, and brood a small fire from which to cook. She was the kindest…
-
Barometer Leaking Brass
I have come to expect rain, torrential downfalls, the great big shrugs of old men who empty buckets into the streets. I have come to the point in a promise where eyes meet, and there is an injustice of silence between us: The part of the curtain that blocks the sky from this angle on…
-
Mother May I
She stands at the edge of the universe of herself, royalty on permanent loan from the city of Frederick. She adjusts the church spires in her crown and we side-saddle along the sidewalk in front of the art gallery where she hangs. Mother, daughter, queen, where have you been all my lives, but here? An…