Tag: micro monday

Detroit Salt | Linda Drach

When my father says, Dress warm. No tube tops or flip flops, I’m flummoxed. He’s one of the good ones – he mows the lawn and pays for my flute lessons and comes home from work at 4:15 every day – but in our world, the care of daughters is the province of mothers. Even a ride-along to K-mart or Jiffy Lube would be surprising. Could he be taking me ice skating? It’s summer, but the Zambonis run all night, keeping indoor rinks pristine for men’s hockey leagues. 

He doesn’t say a word as we drive past the giant Uniroyal Tire and miles of manufacturing plants wrapped in concertina wire, but we’re listening to WJZZ, and when Artie Shaw comes on, he turns it up and drums the wheel with his fingers. His good mood continues as we join a group of middle-aged men – all of us outfitted in hard hats with headlamps – in a cramped elevator that will take us to our final destination 1,000 feet below the city. On the long descent, our guide explains that the salt mine will be closing permanently, and we are among the lucky few who get to see it. Now, I understand why I am here. My father, proud American son of immigrant parents, will never call me a pet name or ask me what I’m reading, but he’ll help me walk into worlds that are bigger than his, even if he’s not sure what they will look like. 

When we reach the bottom, I think about my mother, vacuuming or flipping through a Better Homes and Gardens, unaware of the vast cavern beneath her feet. The mine is cold and clean, and the salt is older than the dinosaurs, formed when fish were just beginning to grow legs. It’s as if I’ve been invited to tour my father’s inner world. The men ask our guide questions about production quotas and drill rig maintenance, the height of the tunnels and the length of the roads snaking into oblivion. My question is different: how dark does it get? The men agree to show me. 

On the count of three, we snap off our lamps, and for a moment, I’m part of a shared emptiness. I grab my father’s arm, and when the light returns, I keep holding on, and he lets me. Together, we watch conveyer belts carry the ancient ocean to the surface, where it will be crushed and sorted and screened and bagged, and some of it will make its way to our garage next winter, where my father – alone, in the frigid pre-dawn – will toss it on our icy driveway and sidewalks to clear a path for us. To keep us from falling.

About the Author:

i use google more than i care to admit | Jessica Hudson

as bluelight stereo / pixelated dictionary / define coruscate / as tree of knowledge / branches laden with every contortion of fruit / i am so curious / unlike my youngest brother / who never read himself into more than basketball &  finances / we don’t talk often / my favorite movies are the ones with women in the title / films split into chapters / i feel the equivalent of marking the fifth box across & yelling bingo / when i can recall the name of that one actor in that one movie / without begging the internet to sherlock it out for me / feels like memory more & more these day is an unlearned skill / yet we pity the elderly for losing theirs / perhaps lost isn’t the right word if what is lost / amazing grace lyrics / can be found by listening to a song / i tell my mother not to call herself old / languid lazy retired yes / word for beauty that doesn’t sound pretty / but not old please not yet / the phrase there’s a spirit in man comes to mind suddenly / some apostle’s quote the teen elders read to me / the last time i walked too slowly past the latter-day saints church / i wonder what words those boys google / how to keep a wife / their faces smooth & soft / not yet whispered or wrinkled or wiry / they look like my brother did in high school / wrists pale, chests narrow  / scriptured breaths hardly filling their pressed shirts / Book of Mormon the musical / two thousand year old words impressed in the same place behind their foreheads that lights up in mine when I recall a poem I memorized in grade school / map of every residence within walking distance / they pressed those words on me when i paused / hesitation mistaken for agreement / the mulberry tree outside our kitchen already in sight / berries dotting the ground like pixels squashed blue / my mother once sang me songs of love & sheep / for now i’ll let that be my definition of heaven / something to look forward to when i can’t / thank google / remember anyone’s name

About the Author:

Jessica Hudson (she/her) received her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Michigan University. Her work has been published in DIAGRAM, New Delta Review, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. She lives in Albuquerque.

On Writing an Obituary While Listening to My Christian Sister and My Jewish Husband Argue about the Speed at Which My Dead Mother Is Being Laid to Rest  |  Shannon Frost Greenstein

They coded my mother for fifteen minutes while her three children debated the definition of “no extraordinary measures.”

Later that night, I fed her geriatric cat in the bowels of her empty condo and felt the blunt blade of grief take up permanent residence behind my xiphoid process.

Then there were meetings and phone calls and a staggering selection of urns, estate lawyers and death certificates and trips to the airport, a convening of my family tree in my hometown of old, a pilgrimage to the past with no hope of reaching Mecca, because Mecca is just another way to say “mother” and my mother is dead. 

Two days later, my apartment is stuffed to bursting with flowers and nephews and the growing pile of laundry with which I cannot bring myself to grapple; and we are checking action items off a list, like a morbid scavenger hunt to erase a human life one credit card statement at a time.

I am the writer. I am elected to pen the obituary. I am daunted by this existential responsibility.

I try to capture in words the woman who bore me, the woman who both fucked me up and loved me at the very same time; backspacing, cutting and pasting, deleting clauses, typing the same sentence over and over again.

This is all just happening disrespectfully fast, opines my sister, a byproduct of the same Lutheran upbringing that has led me to an atheistic Humanism. Why can’t we take any time to breathe? 

It’s been 48 hours, responds my husband, the former Mrs. Greenstein’s good Jewish boy, sorting through my dead mother’s effects. Why isn’t she buried? Why aren’t we eating yet? 

This is all because of end-of-life expenses, I remind my sister; that’s what you get for marrying a shicksa, I inform my soulmate. 

And as I blunder through a description of my mom’s naval service, her gift for nursing that was really more like a calling, I manage to smile through the tears already soaking my cheeks at the juxtaposition of Judeo and Christian, and the quirky customs we’ve somehow all embraced regarding the best ways to honor our dead.  

But I also really just want my mom back.

About the Author:

Healing Tobacco  |  Amanda Callais

The swing set shines in the South Louisiana sun. Silver. Blue. Mine. It beckons me out of the air-conditioned house into the backyard’s sticky heat. Hand over small hand, I grip the ladder’s warm rails. Not too loose. Not too tight. Just right. I am almost at the top when I feel the sting.  

Pain sears through my hand. Burning. Throbbing. Swelling. My shrill 5-year-old scream pierces the silent summer day, sending Papaw and Mom running. 

The sweet smell of tobacco that is Papaw fills my nostrils as he lifts me screaming from the ladder, setting me down on the bottom of the slide. He kneels beside me.  Eye-level, he lifts my swelling pink hand in his dark calloused one. 

“Wasps,” he mutters. 

I shrink.

“Tobacco,” he tells Mom. 

Reaching into the front pocket of his blue work shirt, he pulls out a clump of loose leaves usually reserved for his pipe. Hand tucked into my lap, I wail louder, gulping hot air. If it bothers him, he doesn’t let on. He just puts the tobacco in his mouth, wetting it with his spit until the leaves transform into a thick paste he spreads over the sting. Tobacco. Spit. Spread. Repeat, until my hand is a brown lump of spit-soaked tobacco. 

My sobs slow as numbness sets in. Clear-eyed, I stare into his work-hardened face. Small beads of sweat dot his olive brow. A large drop slides down his temple. Thinning black and gray hair curls in front, a perfect Q right at the center. His eyes light up his dark skin. 

I breathe in. 

Though he lives next door, I have known him only from afar. Tall. Strong. Stern. Today, I see him for the first time. Up close. I am no longer scared. I am in awe.

About the Author:

Murmuration | Lisa Cooper Ellison

The starlings explode from a nearby tree then dance overhead in a synchronized tangle of chatter and wings. Later that day, I tell my mentor and share a new word: murmuration. It’s his second week of chemo treatment for a second cancer. He’s paying attention to nature and its signs, which makes me pay attention too. We find hope in snapped twigs, grazing deer, and a sunrise refracting off a crystal vase. Past losses have taught us that life is like those birds pirouetting across the sky—art in motion that flies off too soon. 

About the Author:

Dungeons and Dragons is | Ryan Stiehl

calling an upside-down Sonic cup the demon lord Zuggtmoy.

an act of quiet rebellion in the fantasy section of a North Texas Public Library.

a gateway into pulp fiction and bad acting and not caring about either.

a way to begin writing fiction in earnest in high school.

a way of saying hello.

collectively hallucinating that loose change and checker pieces were goblins and heroes around Eva’s dad’s game table when she used to live there.

not worth my family’s distrust, though they’ve gotten better now.

a sanctuary from the intense Texas summer heat outside.

my first experience using they/them to talk to my friend’s barbarian.

finding out my entire first party was gay and/or trans over the course of three years. Well, everyone but me.

where an evil wizard orchestrates his own demise in Castle Ravenloft.

the subject of fierce debate in the Southern Baptist community even today.

finding a clever answer to the 1,500 pound problem of an oncoming, raging stone giant against all odds.

eating Domino’s pepperoni pizza while Sam rolls damage for sneak attack. Needless to say, I have plenty of time to finish my pizza.

being called “culturally gay” for the first time. I still puzzle over what the hell that even means.

slowly realizing I’m the odd one out in my party.

long nights staring at a blank Google document that’s supposed to be ready for tomorrow night’s session.

making Saturday night a sort of holy day.

wishing I were writing for Dungeons and Dragons while I lose my faith in a First Baptist Church.

commemorating Grant’s fallen paladin with an ever-vigilant constellation.

helping a former friend escape their homophobic parents and helping them hide in Washington.

practice calling my friend of eighteen years Ophelia now.

creating the same stories that I’ll treasure dearly for years to come.

realizing that my friends would rather play Thirsty Sword Lesbians or Monster of the Week now.

a way of knowing the glory days are long past

a way of saying, “I’m still glad to have known you all back then.”

About the Author:

Ryan Stiehl is an aspiring creative writer currently living in North Texas. When he is not playing TTRPGs with friends, spending time with his wife and husky-malamute, or working a “real job,” he is fast asleep and would like to remain so, thank you very much.