“Best in October” as featured on Afterimages
Sophie Kearing
Long walks are best in October. Branches are dressed in finery of red and orange and gold. Ravens call to you, dark and proud, the guardians of the trees.
Turning your face up to the sky is best in October. The blue is vast, and the sun is kind, a splendor to behold.
Falling down an abandoned well is best in October. Your hands claw at walls that are soft with the wet roots and fragrant moss of autumn drizzle.
Landing at the bottom is best in October. The leafy deep is bouncy under your length and limbs. You’ll find random treasures like an old Tootsie Roll or a piece of pumpkin rind, smooth on one side and moldy on the other.
Dying down there is best in October. It’s not the season for insects, nor humidity or snow. You can fade away in peace, embers of distant bonfires floating down
down
down
to light your way through the gossamer veil:
a conspiracy of convenience
for your departing soul.
“When She Was…” as featured on Afterimages
Sean Ennis
WHEN SHE WAS HIGH AT THE SUPERMARKET
and hungry, she imagined crazed recipes and waved at each camera on the ceiling in its black orb. The Black Orbs! she said. She spun and pointed—vinegar? vinegar—and headed to aisle 5. No matter what store we went to, that’s always where it was, she always checked. She was not shopping for vinegar. She zoned out at the butcher counter. She said, doughnuts. It was like 10:30 on a Sunday morning, loud thunder but not much rain. She said, Lover, doughnuts, and pushed herself towards the bakery through the church crowd.
The idea here should remain simple.
She really was pretty normal otherwise. It was a good day.
This is just a fun story. I was high too. We did it on purpose. But this is a difficult story to punctuate.
WHEN SHE WAS HIGH DURING THE POWER OUTAGE
and the severe storm, she suggested we play a card game she called Paradox. It required three decks, which took us forty minutes to find. She was inventing the game on the spot. It seemed like poker mixed with spin the bottle and a drinking game. The rules were contradictory. I drew three of diamonds, and she claimed I had to remove my shirt. The rain and wind were still knocking on the door, and it was getting hot in the house. She didn’t laugh. Then she fell asleep holding her cards. The power came back on, hours later, with a clang. And every light in the house. And the TVs were talking. I woke up upside down, but she remembered everything.
WHEN SHE WAS HIGH AT THE AIRPORT
punctured by paranoia. I don’t remember where we were going. She thought security knew that she was high, that they could see it in her bones, but there were no alarms. I gave her a nudge through the magic threshold. Now I remember where we were going.
We were very young.
“Grandpop Lives Alone” as featured on Afterimages
Tim Lynch
A maple’s branches bangle in soft, Spring gusts, late sunlight sifted through its budding arms. The sound is like a distant, breaking wave, that fathomless breath. Dormant for a season, this tree lives on, here, on the block of the city, as in every city, where district lines become apparent, where potholes lead to Hell, and infected guts of rowhomes spread their sepsis down the line, nothing to do but set plywood on porch windows like pennies on a body’s eyes.
In the liquor store window, a cardboard Easter egg goes on getting pale.
His body stands on the strip mall sidewalk between the parking lot and the road. Sunlight through the latticed branches dapples his cheeks, and the shadow of the maple’s bole blankets him below the neck. Nothing-eyed, his lids hover asymmetrically open, the wider hardly open at all. Cars shush loudly, sharply by. Then, the ballet begins.
First, the bending at the waist, slowly. Slower. Slower even than that. A robin in the maple sings entire operas in staccato chirps of two, its cacophonous flock chirping back, while the torso, impossibly counterweighted by each foot, creaks toward the ground, arms slack, legs stiff in crooked balance, until the fingertips hang finally still and kiss the sidewalk grit.
And then, an old story. A white man in his forties leaves the liquor store and lets the door fall shut, even after noticing an older Black man reaching for the handle. He isn’t quick enough and can only keep pace, fingers trailing just behind. Who tells the story is what matters now.
Slowly, the body on the sidewalk unfurls upright. A woman clops straight-on, talking down to her phone, saying, “—which is fine but—,” then stutters, glancing up, and steps around, continues, “—but she’ll be weird about it, she’ll be, she’ll be like…,” fading down the block.
His body wavers in place, a ghastly shape glimmering in the unfit shade of a gold-lit tree.