BURNING CHEMICALS

Dan Chilton

We’re standing out back from the shop and you’re burning chemicals in the old fire pit. Blues and greens. The slight wind picking up the acrid smoke and carrying it over the yard and past the house.

“I don’t think you should be burning chemicals,” I say.

“Why? It’s just gonna end up in a landfill anyways.”

I hesitate, knowing that’s not right, but not having the words to convince you otherwise.

“Well what about mom and the baby? They’re up there,” I point towards the house. “That can’t be good for them.”

“The wind will carry it away,” you say.

We stand looking at the burning fire that smells sharp and tastes like how I imagine cancer would taste like and I try not to breathe. We go back to the shop where you’re showing me how to prep a fender for painting. Clay bricks. Sandpaper. Fine dust kicking up in the air and into our lungs.

“Shouldn’t we be wearing masks?” I ask.

You shake your head.

“I don’t wear a mask when I do that,” you tell me.

I laugh. Not because it’s funny but because you’re so stubborn. I say as much and I work the sandpaper over the primed fender. The dust particles thick around me and I try not to breathe but I know it’s only helping so much.

There’s music on the radio that drifts through the garage. Christian rock. I hate it and think it all sounds the same but I don’t say anything because I rarely hear you listening to music.

After I finish sanding, you look over my work. Looking at the fender from every possible angle. Pointing out spots I missed with the sandpaper.

“You see how it’s still shiny from this angle?” You point to a spot in the middle of the fender. “If you take your time the first time, you won’t have to go over it twice.”

I re-sand the spots and you show me how to clean it so that it’s ready for the first layer of paint.

When I’m done, we stand outside in the sticky sun and you look for other things for me to do.

“The lawn needs to be mowed, the bushes need trimming, and your mom wanted to paint the upstairs hall. I haven’t had time but I have the paint if you feel like doing that.”

“Didn’t you just mow the lawn?” I ask. You look tired. Standing there with your arms folded across your chest. The sunlight catching the silver hairs all throughout your head and beard. The deep canyons beneath your eyes.

“I did and it’s time to do it again.”

There’s a hint of impatience in your tone, threatening to spill over, remnants from when I was still a kid.

“The work never stops. Lots of upkeep on a house like this. If you’d paid more attention when you were younger, you’d know, but it seemed you were too busy playing games and screwing off to know what I did back here.”

I don’t say anything.

“You’ve got to take care of the things you care about,” you tell me with a softer voice now. “Otherwise, they’ll go to shit.”

I nod and tell you that I’ll start on the front lawn.

In the back, I gas up the mower and fiddle with the throttle and choke before getting it started. I remember the time when I was still a teenager that you came back from Hawaii a few days early. When you found my cat had gotten herself stuck in the kitchen where the doors had been locked behind her. How she’d made a mess of the floors. I remember the feelings of my hollow insides when Mom told me that you’d put her outside. The certainty that I’d never see her again. How I never got to say goodbye.

I pull the mower around the garage and start up the drive towards the front lawn. There’s a deep purple-tinted smoke hanging low over the house.

You’re burning chemicals again.

A Lack of Color

lelaina lennon layne Digital photograph.

QUITADO Elena

Gonzalez

this is a touchy subject for me you may not understand or you may my hands shake as i decide how to start something that’s been so hidden from my mouth–to share this, i only ask a few things from you; acknowledge the loud uncomfortableness as i type these words know the intrusive lack of confidence i had before telling this understand absence and its entirety.

my dad left us before my 365 days, now this may not mean much to you but it means everything to me. when he left, he took my identity the ability to be. i was no longer Latina. leaving me with a white mom, in a household that only spoke English. my quinceañera turned into a sweet 16. El Día de los Muertos se vuelve en Halloween. Cinco de Mayo was an excuse to drink. what does it mean to be Latina?—

Have dark skin–

I do not Speak Spanish– I do not yes, i do not carry those qualities but, nothing Let me finish tal— to qualify, you must meet normal requirements.

All my life

I have been white.

All my life i do not miss him i miss what he could have provided the security to be accepted the chance to live without the question of “what are you?” following “no you’re not.” the connection to a world i may never get to call home.

I have been Latina. I love my culture, I love the colors that’s not enough it could have been different If they saw me holding hands with my dad instead.

FLOCK BEHAVIOR (SMALL TALK)

Heather Mars

Do not expect me to perform like a magpie, to trill and chitter, nattering on for your delight.

Fickle like a bushtit busy in my wariness, suspicious of an audience looking for a pat refrain. I wheel and deflect returning your call, a swallow in the eventide gathering in your words like moths drawn to light.

With the satisfaction of a heron, I take my leave, sharing nothing in my wake, moving slowly through the stale waters of a gathering I never wanted to attend.

What Does It Say About Me

Angela Griffin about us, that this morning, when I opened my window to a cacophony of shouts and car horns and screaming, my first thought was that there must have been a shooting? A protest, or at the very least a car crash, rather than rightfully interpreting the clamor as the jubilation of 11,000 students who had just crossed a stage and moved their tassels from right to left?

Have we walked so long in darkness we can’t see a great light? Does not even the real gold glitter?

Yes, I know the world is burning. And yet

I can’t help stopping midsentence, mid-thought, to scan the trees. Even if the magpie is a nuisance. Even if the starling is an invasive species.

Am I wrong to hold desperately to my contributing verse in Whitman’s powerful play? To the dazzling hope of Oliver’s one wild and precious life?

Why? I howl my doubts to the heavens. Why shine at all? When those who need the light refuse to see it?

Oh, bright one, the skies whisper back. Even those who are blind can savor the sunlight.

Even those on the deepest of oceans still navigate by the stars.

Industrial Revolution

nancy gunaWan Digital illustration.