Heaven hadn’t been invented yet. I stood, or thought I stood, beside my brother, who still clenched the bloody stone as if he full expected the pile of meat and rags to give him further argument. Then I recognized a broken sandal strap, and knew myself the corpse. I’d never seen my […]
He looked like Vincent Price: black suit, pencil mustache, his voice a raven’s croak. If he still loved performing, he kept it secret, blowing his harmonica with his back turned to the audience. He sounded awful, really, and I expected awful. His white hat cast wings of black across his eyes as he slowly […]
Means, liqueur distilled from small, black mascara cherries. Means, cherries preserved in that liqueur. Means, this is going to hurt. Rainiers, Golds, plump Royal Annes are soaked in brine, bleached like bloodstained clothes in calcium chloride and reeking sulfur dioxide until their brightness leaches out and skins are plasticized to snap between the teeth. They […]
Caliber, I couldn’t say, nor make or model, nor how the grip settled snug against the palm— only its ugliness, dark and squat as a poisonous toad. Even Dad didn’t want it; holding it, he wore a look of faint disgust, as if he wished he were wearing gloves—the face of a man collecting […]
I’ve never been sweet, but two dabs behind the ear, and I’m a sugar cookie, a walking confection, light as vanilla meringue. I strolled downtown, past a park where children abandoned slides, tumbled like chimpanzees from the jungle gym, begging their mothers for candy. The ice cream parlors were mobbed for tutti frutti. […]
Double rows of six silver eyelets, strung with black laces, on each of my shoes. One window with one ugly lock. Twelve roses linking vines around my teacup’s rim, ten and an orphaned petal on the saucer, which was chipped and dirty. When Lizzie, sulking, refused to speak to me, I counted up the prison […]
In spring, the smell drove her mad. Those blossoms, airy as lace, stank of fish and rot and something else; she’d heard the neighbor boys snicker, passing by. She locked the casements until the white petals browned and fell, displaced by hard, ungrateful fruits. Then, the days were hot. She raised her bedroom […]
Juliana Gray is the author of three poetry collections, Honeymoon Palsy (Measure Press, 2017), Roleplay (Dream Horse Press, 2012), and The Man Under My Skin (River City Publishing, 2005), as well as the chapbook Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve (Winged City Chapbook Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Birmingham Poetry Review, 32 Poems, […]