July 2021 | nonfiction
Tucked under a pile of wool sweaters, under the wedding dress that I didn’t let you help me pick out, under the little white sailor outfit that I bought on Etsy for your grandson’s baptism that you missed because you were dead, deep in a corner of the cedar chest that grandma wanted me to have even though what I really wanted was her piano, are your ashes (some of them anyway) in a black velvet bag.
That you wanted to be burned, instead of locked in a box to not-rot under the dirt, was the only thing we knew for certain. We split you up between the three of us, each with our portion, and made our own plans. I used to tell myself that I would scatter your ashes from the roadside overlook where dad took your picture on the way to our wedding, but I kept waiting for the right moment: when I got pregnant, when I had the baby, when he was old enough to come with me. When. I want to stop grieving you.
But there you are, buried in the dark at the bottom of your own mother’s cedar chest, trapped in the smallest room of my house, where dad sleeps when he comes to visit.
Dad told me he can’t find his bag, his share of your burned up bones and flesh. Maybe you got yourself lost? Perhaps I’ll get you out, tell him I found you, and set that part of you (of us) free.
Desi Allevato
Desi Allevato lives with her husband in central Virginia, where they are raising one child, two cats, and a hundred tree saplings in a suburban backyard. She has a brain tumor and an unfinished dissertation about Russian history. Her recent work is published in Longridge Review and mac(ro)mic. Follow her on Twitter, @desirosie.
July 2021 | poetry
Logistics, 2020
How many bodies can
be held in refrigerated
trailers, giving families
time to claim them?
The number of those,
anonymous, buried
at the public cemetery
in New York, increased
five-fold in April.
Outside a Brooklyn
funeral home, dozens
of decomposing bodies
were found in one
tractor-trailer
and one rented U-Haul.
Eighteen thousand dead
in eighteen thousand
body bags are moved
by forklift to one
hundred and fifty
refrigerated trailers,
fifteen rented vans.
Dedicated Carnivore At the TSA
I
watched you
watch her
grab the tape
you had firmly affixed
round the lid of the cooler.
Rip
she went.
You watched
her as she
dove into its white hold
and brought up the brown pork butt.
She
made sure
she knew
what it was,
carefully rotating
each piece before replacing
it,
extract-
ing that
ham then the
Fanestil baloney
and its smoked bacon, vacuum-
packed.
You were
the new
Miriam,
watching such a precious
cargo being lifted out.
E. Laura Golberg
Laura Golberg’s poem Erasure has been nominated for a Pushcart 2021 Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, Laurel Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Spillway, RHINO, and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, among other places. She won first place in the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts Larry Neal Poetry Competition.
July 2021 | poetry
Restless in pleasure’s absence,
I watched when my mother woke,
startled by a rooster
that chimed and paced
on the barbed wire fence.
She pulled the sheet
over her shoulder, sank
into the cushion and lingered
a moment longer
while I pretended to be asleep.
Each morning for the past two years
she turned the crown well
of my father’s watch
how he used to do
before getting out of bed.
My father mostly spoke
the truth, but he lied
when he told me
he liked my jagged bangs
the last time we went to visit.
It took my mother one afternoon
to trim them herself
with a pair of shears
she borrowed from a shepherd
living down the hill.
We both squinted
when we heard a soldier’s whistle.
My father, thinner now, came toward us,
his lips pursed in a frown,
and his hands curled in fists.
Melissa Andres
Melissa Andrés is a poet. Originally from Cuba, she arrived in the United States at the age of six. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in The Laurel Review, Rattle Magazine, The San Antonio Review, Ligeia Magazine, and Inkwell Journal, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
