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blacklilyzine.bsky.social
@blacklilyzine.bsky.social
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blacklilyzine.bsky.social
Cover reveal for Issue 3!! Once again my brilliant friend & our intrepid designer @troy_palmer has absolutely nailed the vibe! #artists #writers ##poet #fiction #fictionwriter #shortstories #flashfiction #creativewriting #creativenonfiction #literarymagazine #litmag #zine #zinemaking 🤘🔥✨
A person standing in a desert environment in black sleeveless shirt w a paper bag over their head w a sad face drawn on it looks at the camera w one hand on their chest & the other by their side. “Black Lily” repeats in white ( until it gets to the top, then it’s black) the background.
July 28, 2025 at 5:36 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
Issue 3 is everything we need right now. It is beauty and rage, tender and brutal, and it’s coming for you late summer! And since I can’t do anything right the 1st time, please share this version of the flyer. ✨🔥✨
A graphic of a hand making the “metal” sign while wearing a spiky bracelet. A jagged black line separates two colors—white with handmade paper type flecks, from a deep salmon color on the bottom. The flyer announces: “BLACK LILY Issue 3 CONTRIBUTORS: JL ABBOTT HEATHER BELL ADAMS DEE ALLEN DAVID BAYLISS EVELYN BERRY GENEVIEVE BETTS CLAYTON BRADSHAW DAVID BRADY JORDON BRIGGS GRAYSON BUCKLEY PIPER CORMAN SHARON DENMARK CALEB EDMONDSON CAL FREEMAN JAMES R. GAPINSKI COURT HARLER KRISTEN HAVENS HUNTER HODKINSON MATTHEW HUMPHREY RONNIE JACKSON LILYANNE KANE JEN KROPINAK JOSHUA LILLIE PAUL LUIKART KRISTINE LANGLEY MAHLER MEGAN MCDERMOTT MIKE MCLELLAND RHEA MELINA IRINA TALL NOVIKOVA VANESA PACHECO JEREMY MICHAEL REED RHY ROBIDOUX RENEE SALMON KATHY LOU SCHULTZ VICTORIA SHEN KARAH TULL MORGAN WRIGHT
July 3, 2025 at 12:47 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
Hey y’all, stay tuned for our Issue 3 contributor announcement coming soon.
A black ink handwritten note with a blue doodle-y frame reads “Dear Black dily Friends - All final decisions on Issue 3 have been made & emails sent. Look for a contributor announcement soon. Were just waiting on confirmation from a few folx! Heart, Betty
June 24, 2025 at 10:51 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
send up to 5 poems, up to 3 micros/flashes/hybrids max 1,000 words total, one story or essay up to 2,500 words, and up to 5 pieces of visual art as an attachment (.docx, google docs, PDFs are prob best) with a short bio to blacklilyzine@gmail.com. If you had work in issue 2, please hang back.
March 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
21. Submission guidelines. Open til 4/1.
Send up to 5 poems, up to 3 micros/flashes/ hybrids max 1,000 words total, one story or essay up to 2,500 words, and up to 5 pieces of visual art as an attachment (docx, google docs, PDFs are prob best) with a short bio to blacklilyzine@gmail.com. More info on what specific readers are looking for in previous posts. And hey, if you haven't ordered either issue, you might want to see what we're all about. $8 each or both for $14 (+ shipping which is usually around $4.55 for media mail). #zine #zineart #artistsoninstagram #writers #litmag #poets #goth #punk
March 11, 2025 at 12:25 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
Here’s how I package the zines. Yes, that’s a lily of the valley seal. It’s both beautiful and poisonous.
March 11, 2025 at 12:21 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
20. By Lori Sambol Brody
A photo of a story. TO JANE EYRE, ON THE OCCASION OF HELEN BURNS' DEATH AT LOWOOD SCHOOL - LORI SAMBOL BRODY Lat'e say l work some witchy magic and slip into the pages of Jane Eyre, to be specific, Chapter 9, page 92 in the Enriched Pocket Classic 1977 (used) edition I've hed since high school when Jana says "Good-night, Helen" and they fall asteep, and i bring Helen antiblatics so she doesn't die of consumption (definition of consume: to do away with completely, to use up, to waste or burn away), and Jane wakes up with a healthy Helen in her arms. (Yes, I know that antibiotics don't work like that but this is my story,) It's a miracie, they say, Jane and Helen and Miss Temple and even Mr. Brocklehurst (who is doubtful of any miracle Involving Jane, a girl with so much sin); Jane will even recount the hend of an angel (me) adminiatering strawberry-flavored children's liquid antibiotice to Helen. Let's Bay Jane's uncle, John Eyre, gwoops into Lowood and takes her to Medeire, and she brings her ginger-haired Helen, because John'e wine business has made him generous and Helen's hair reminds him of the color of spilled wine. Let'e say the girls grow up modest and god-fearing but come home at dawn with feet swollen after a night of dancing, glggling about the men they flirted with ("as if; they eay, "wed ever marry them", wearing faathers In their hair and allk dresses like bright tropical flowers opening. Let's say I read Jane Eyre for the first time whon I was 16 and wanted Rochester for my own, and sought him in the faces of everyone I dated, but i am telling a different story now, a story with no dusky pathe, no manipulations in the name of love. Instead, Jane and Helen embark on a Grand Tour (usually reserved for men, but John is happy to Indulge them, as he always does). In French villas on the shores of the Mediterranean (perhape the very villa Rochestar offered to Jane after she learned he was merried), Helen creeps into Jane's bed and sighs at Jane's touch. Let'…
March 11, 2025 at 12:57 AM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
19. By Chel Campbell
A collage where a snail appears to be reaching for a human arm and it reaches back.
March 11, 2025 at 12:54 AM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
18. By Maria Rohde
A photo of part of a story. ANDY MACDONALD IS FUCKING COO- MARIA ROHDE I never got to go to your coffee shop. All the brass knuckles and the pride fleg. You sald the best booke you owned were at the shop, too. Along with your tarot cards. You gave me coolas, and the kitchen sink one really was the best. But I never got to see the magic happen. I never got to see the college kids buy coffee and cooldes, never got to wetch you in action. I dreemed of readina in a comer and wetching everything from behind my book, peeking up when I turned a page or heard your volce. I wanted to see the magic that radiated from inside. "I don't care what you think / I don't care what you say." You had a Black Flag tattoo that made me smile. They were one of the bands l assumed I would never see live and then somehow they got back together and I had the chance. Yes, there was only one original member and who expected Mikey Valley on drums? But I had fun anyway. I got to get drunk and seream lyrics and make a pathetic attempt at a circle pit with the high school kids who had played in the opening bands, I remember smiling brightly at the one and high-fiving him at the end of a song. I hoped he was just as energized by seeing Black Flag as I was, I hoped his band kept playing and creating even all these years later. You would probably scoff at there being only one original member left, but i don't care what you think. You scoffed at Green Day, acting like they sold out when they turned their rock opera, American Idiot, Into a Broadway show. I hate to break it to you, but I think Broadway is punk. I wonder if you know about their Angry Birds-themed phone game or when they had a line of items in Claires. But maybe you think those things are punk? You say Billie Joe never said anything eloquent like Joe Strummer. And sure, I could meet you there. But what about Henry Rollins? Or maybe he was just angry? And if he was, wasn't that the point? Sure, there is more to punk than anger. But isn't t…
March 11, 2025 at 12:52 AM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
17. Professor Raco
A b&w hand drawn comic w the following images: 1). a punk band complete w spiky hair & attitude sit on a bench. 2).The band practices, summer w sticks in air, everyone ROCKING 3).The band standing around drinking & smoking & looking aloof. 4). A 3-way split cell w/ 3 band mates on the phone looking morose. 5). A close-up of a guy w/ spiky hair looking pissed. 6). A 4-way split cell W/ 3 band members walking away & the 4th shrugging why. Text: SO -CAL PUNKS ROFESSOR RAGO IN HIGH SCHOOL I WAS IN A SHITTY PUNK BAND. WE NEVER PLAYED A SINGLE SHOW... WE'D DRINK BEERS AND SMOKE CIGGIES OUTSIDE MY PARENTS' HOUSE. ...BUT WE PRACTICED A LOT. WE HAD SOME INTERNAL ISSUES. THE SINGER SUCKED. THE DRUMMER AND BASSIST AGREED AND DECIDED TO OUST HIM ..INSTEAD THEY JUST MADE ME THE BAD GUY. COWARDS. OBVS, THE SINGER WAS PISSED. WE THEN BROKE UP.
March 11, 2025 at 12:50 AM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
16. By Kate Gehan
A collage w three little girls in pink dresses, one holding a lamb. All are ga king at a partly cloudy sky. There’s a house w lights on in the distance. Text that reads: every day the girl swings and slides 10 the drugstore for a treat the secret hiding on a places taste better drugstore vacation. the to fly girls learn wild in the moonlight.
March 11, 2025 at 12:33 AM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
15. By Alli Thresher (left) & Lee Potts (right)
A two-page spread from the zine: 1–a collage by Alli Thresher w a feminine figure covered in beautiful fabric, hands raised, an old west-looking scene in the background w the words, “A Portal to other Worlds” in white on black at the bottom. 2–THE BEGINNING OF POETRY - LEE POTTS Scaffolding nicked tho sapphire dome that kopt heavon and earth in place, so the gode came to 300 and to tempor their nolsiost creatione vast ambitions. Brick, tile, beams, bodies, and embers foll for days. Once It was stil every human mouth had found Its own name for each thing. Thougands of new sounds for fish, heart stone, I dont understand, i love you. The gods saw all the old prayers to them fractured but could not band tongues back again to call out to them as one.
March 10, 2025 at 9:44 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
14. By Todd Robinson
A photo of a poem: TO BE OLD AND OUT OF LOVE IN OMAHA - TODD ROBINSON The bard of the westem ache holds himself still in the MRI chute. Unlucky as an astronaut, his atoms another pulse for magnets to bend. The unretired nurse who falled to find a vein is reapplying eyeliner. The technician who called him funny says looks aren't everything. In the crackling dark particles resonate like a collapsing bridge. The man wonders what doctors will find in his laboratory abdomen. In a dream last week his gone grandmother wore clown paint, babbled on the edge of sense a waming, indecipherable as love: time is tenseless. In morning's mirror, his features were a chalk outline, another proof that Socrates is mortal. Back in the rented casket, derelict banshees keen their beamy songs. Limbs useless as self, ribbons of minutes spiral, flatten, endlessly expand. Knowing he will one day die, the man wondere how long he can stand to
March 10, 2025 at 9:40 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
13. By Corey Stano
A photo of a page from the zine with a photo of a small white church against a blue sky, entitled “” The Tower”
March 10, 2025 at 9:38 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
12. By Han VanderHart
A photo of a two-page spread in the zine. A partial photo of Frida Kahlo & Chavela Vargas lying in the ground laughing. And the following poem: WITH HANDS OVER OUR FACES AND LAUGHTER IN THE GRASS - HAN VANDERHART Something about Frida's hands over her smile, Chavela behind her on the grass. The portion of guitar in the frame. The small stitching on Fride's dress. You showing me this photograph in bed, playing me a recording of Chavela singing La Lorona. Ghost of their love in the grass. Flowers in Frida's hair and a single rose in Chavele's jecket lapel-you know Frida tucked it there, its scent sweet and sharp. It is a commonplace that queer love is suffering, but Frida's hidden smile and Chavela's open mouth say otherwise. Say summer and blankets and laying your head on your beloved's weist, where you have laid your mouth. When last I saw you, you looked lit Inside by a candie. Lavender and eucalyptus in the air. Oll on our hands.
March 10, 2025 at 9:36 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
11. Issue 2 table of contents
A photo of Issue 2’s table of contents: BLACK LILY ISSUE 02 - FALL / WINTER •24 - A PORTAL TO TOER WORLDS -ALLI THRESHER - THE BEGINNING OF POETRY - LEE POTTS - PLACEBO - TODD ROBINSON AS MY CHILDREN APPROACH THEIR LATE MIDDLE AGE - LEE POTTE _EON AND OUT OF LOVE IN OMAHA — TODD FOEINSON _ STRANGLER FIG - AMANDA STOVICEK D'ALESSANDRO - RITUAL - AMANDA STOVICEK DALESSANDRO - TREMENDOUS LIGHT — AMANDA STOVICEK D'ALESSANDRO - AT THE CUSP OF MORNING — JESSE MIKSIC — THE HIGH PRIESTESS - COREY STANO — SLEEPING IN OUR CARS, NIGHTMUTE, ALASKA — CHARLES ISRAEL JR 24 - THE TOWER - COREY STANO 23 - NURSERY RH-MORER TANS CATHOLIC - COREY STANO 25 - ON HAIL SATAN — KEEGAN LAWLER 26 - ALTER — LUMINA MILLER 27- GRAY AND RED SELF-PORTRAIT - TAYLOR GOETHE 28 - POWER OF GOD MEME MISUAL DIARY - TAYLOR GOETHE 29 - EVERYONE LOVES A LITTLE GOTH GIRL (UNTIL SHE LOVES YOU BAGK) - MARY BIDDINGER 32 - WASTE AWAY - LEO ROBLEDO 30 — EVERYONE TO THE DANCE FLOOR, THE NIGHT'S NO LONGER YOUNG - MARY BIDDINGER 31 — EVERYONE LEAVES A CONTINGENCY PLAN IN AN OLD DECADE - MARY BIDDINGER 33 - AMONG THE SOULS - DESTINY MATTHIESEN 34 - THE HORNET'S NEST - HANNAH BIRSS 35 — FREQUENCIES — TERRI MCCORD 36 - YOUR BROTHER SURVIVES - NATASHA AKERY 37 - ODE TO THE BEES - AMORAK HUEY 39 - WITH HANDS OVER OUR FACES AND LAUGHTER IN THE GRASS - HAN VANDERMART 40 - LAST NIGHT I WAS SEXTING AND READING JUNE JORDAN - HAN VANDERHART 41 - WHEN SHE GARDENS - SETH BERG 42 - TEA TIME WITH DA VINCI - SETH BERG 49 - CREATION OF SNAIL - CHEL CAMPBELL 44 - IMMACULATE - CHEL CAMPBELL 45 - / CAN SMELL THE PAPYRUS FROM HERE STEPHANIE K MERRILL 48 - CHANNELING BASTET - STEPHANIE K MERRILL 47 - ORACLE AIRLINES FLIGHT 21ST CENTURY CE - STEPHANIE K MERRILL 48 - GROWING OLDER - STEPHANIE K MERRILL 49 - SECOND SIGHT - BENJAMIN WOODARD 50 - TO JANE EYRE, ON THE OCCASION OF HELEN BURNS DEATH AT LOWOOD SCHOOL LORI SAMBOL BRODY 51 - THE DAUGHTER OF THE TV DETECTIVE (SEASON 1) - LORI SAMBOL BRODY 53 - THREE FAILED FAIRYTALES - JOE KAPITAN 5…
March 10, 2025 at 9:32 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
10. What Issue 2 looks like.
A line drawing of a horse skeleton printed on pale gray paper w the words “Black Lily” repeating across it. The issue lays on a colorful background w blues, purple, coral & pink.
March 10, 2025 at 9:30 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
By Chloe N. Clark
A photo of page one of a story: AND BACK by Chloe N. Clark On Mars, looking up at the night sky, the Earth seems like just a particularly bright star. Pedro told me, before he went. The moon and the Earth are just two bright lights out with all the rest. We'd gone outside so he could point out Mars to me, as he'd done a hundred times before, as he trained. I'll be there and you'll be here. We can look up at one another. tht If you fall in love with an astronaut, inevitably people will ask if you are joking when you say what he does. You'll have to google him to show them that, yes, he's really an astronaut. When I met Pedro, it was at the bar where all the astronauts went so it shouldn't have been such a big surprise. But still, when I'd been introduced to him by a friend, and they'd said what he did, I still responded, Really?, with genuine shock. "Astronaut candidate," he corrected, a slight blush creeping at the edge of his face. "Just got selected actually." It was the correction, the blush, that made me give him my number before I left that night. At our first date, a week later, I'd asked him why he wanted to be an astronaut. "When I was a kid, I got scared a lot," he said. "By everything, really, and so I'd wake up a lot in the night, by creaks, by the rain, by a parent walking around downstairs, and I couldn't breathe. I was so scared. So I'd look out the window, see the stars, the only light. It felt so safe, so I became obsessed with space." It was such an honest answer that it took me aback a little. "I don't think I'd ever have thought of space for comfort." He shrugged, "you just have to see it right." Years later, I understood it. The possibilities of space, all the things we didn't know felt exciting. Every new fact Pedro told me felt like a tiny universe in itself. And years later, still, sometimes I'd find myself frustrated with every news story about space. Every comment that showed the minimum amount of research necessary.
March 10, 2025 at 9:24 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
8. By Cassie Williams
A drawing of a tarot card, “The Hanged Man” with two aliens (think gray ones) gazing at a human’s legs on a table. And what appears to be a sun shining in the background. By Cassie Williams
March 10, 2025 at 9:22 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
7. By Jude Marr
A photo of a poem: JUMP CUT, OR A TRANS MAN BREAKS COVER by Jude Marr I am no caged breast: no weathered crone feathers rough but ruddy at the root: I am plucked bird, flushed from cover, fearless transformation seen and done: glimpsed through my spread wings, a universe downtown: in my periphery storm rods run lights as I take the crosswalk: my mind's stubble three-day undisciplined, smudgy and rough against every stranger: every disregarding face a sad-mouth island left behind no jacket, no bags and no backward hooks: only the impact of traveling flesh as i splash through sidewalk blur, through thick, reflected storefront glow, shoestrings clinging to canvas- city lights rearrange rain into knots as I mouth every song until, whatever red remains, being my eye, imagines a god.
March 10, 2025 at 9:19 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
6. By James R. Gapinski
A photo of a story: MY FINGERNAILS ARE HAUNTED by James R. Gapinski I get weekly manicures with thick, armor like nail polish. Gel finish. It requires a special machine to cure the chemicals. These measures keep the ghost happy most of the time. We have a delicate homeostasis. The ghost moans when I do quartery reports tap, tap, tapping on the keyboard in near- rhythmic fashion. Beyond that, we coexist just fine. Daytime is my time. It's an unspoken rule. But at night, the ghost is free to be a ghost. I brush my teeth and wash off my makeup, and the lights flicker. The ghost can't manipulate the environment very well. Just small electrical flashes like that. I wonder if that's common for ghosts. Maybe other ghosts can fling chairs across the room like in movies but those ghosts probably take up residence in pumping hearts, throbbing frontal lobes, the eyes of rabid dogs, the lungs of serial killers breathing free. I don't think the best ghosts wind up in fingernails. I crawl into bed, and the ghost tells me all its sinister, haunting, ghostly things. "Mak is gonna leave you for that hot girl in accounting. Your ass looks flat in those new jeans. There's nothing but sadness after you die. You'll wind up in somebody's fingernails or toenails or eyelashes. You'll hate it. Your mother doesn't love you. And you're going to die soon. I smell the stink on you. Bone cancer. Yes, it's bone cancer. Only a matter of time. No doctor can save you. Also, your crow's feet are getting worse. And your dad lied to you. He doesn't know what it's like to be haunted. But did you know that Linh is haunted? I can tell when another ghost is nearby. Linh's ghost is going to kill her too. Everybody you love is going to die." It's always like this. My fingernails writhe underneath my blanket so do my legs, but I think that's undiagnosed restless leg syndrome. The ghost tires itself out, I get some sleep, and we both repeat the cycle…
March 10, 2025 at 9:18 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
5. By Abigail Kemske
A photo of a story: BAY-BEE by Abigail Kemske The way it hung there, weighing down the giant hyssop stem, periwinkle flowers curted over, finger-like, reaching to cradle the poor bird, I knew the goldfinch had died by unnatural means. Yellon and black feathers blended into the field of white aster and goldenred, petals shying away from the setting sun. Michael's recorded voice droned in my ear. The first in weeks l've heard him speak since he's ghosted me. His own sister. "Hey dork." I left a voice message. "It's Maisey. Again. Telling you, again, that you don't have to do this." Far down the road something glinted in the sun. "All those summers spent hanging in the maple tree. What if I said I forgive you for the time you pushed me out of it?" A car was coming. It didn't turn down the county road. "I guess I'm gonna go tie myself to the boiler or something. Please, Michael. Don't do this." I hung up, then returned my phone to the pocket of my overalls, a pair I found in the attic with Grandma's old belongings. The pockets were ample, the denim worn to butteriness, the pant legs too long, but nothing that a quick cuff couldn't fix. I removed an old pocket knife, which was probably Grandpa's, then untied the handkerchief from around my neck. The powdery scent of Grandma's Avon lotion wafted from the folds. I gripped it tightly so it didn't escape with the wind. Will Michael let me at least keep these things? Crossing the road felt like stepping into a place I didn't belong, a place I shouldn't touch. Disturo. Wispy clouds creeped across the tree tops on the far side of the prairie, bleeding red across the sky as the sun sank lower. No one was here to witness my trespass. The nearest farm was miles away. It was never lonely here for my grandparents. Working the fields left little time to consider their solitude. That is until Grandpa died. With the crop sold, the barn consumed with rot, fields left to the ferocity of nature, and the evenings filled with no more than …
March 10, 2025 at 9:17 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
4. By Kimberly Ann Priest
An image of a poem: ON WANTING TO HAVE A SAY by Kimberly Ann Priest Forgive the minute, down to the second, imagination births discomfort-not of cut or wound or too much imagination, not of body reconciled with another body, unfettered, but of that which cannot be fettered in our wildest imaginations. In fact, forget imagination-assume all of this is fake. There are no fables, nothing is pretend-the stars, the lake imagined; the long yellow grasses, the heartbeat of rabbits pulsing through a waving fieid— it has always been childhood. Imagination thrives in the tent set up in the backyard that has always and never been Home. Darkness is a metaphor for what is unimagined; nothing is a metaphor. We have no need to pray—no need to wish for dreams; they come in forms that we can only imagine.
March 10, 2025 at 9:15 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
3. By Rachel Reeher
An image of a story: I CUT MY HAIR [BECAUSE OF A BOY] by Rachel Reeher I lift my mother's kitchen scissors to my jawbone, press cold steel to skin, the kind she uses to trim the fat from slabs of meat, butterfly a chicken. Not for paper, string, hair. When my mother finds me she will mourn my fat ponytail. The thing girls do wrong, I read online, is tolerate abstraction. Make your grief concrete, I read. I read too many things online. I lift the scissors to my cheek, analyze my angles in the filthy mirror, all that potential energy aching to be kinetic. My mother says when the devil came down he landed in a blackberry bush. I don't know what it means. All my hair in my hand, I wink at my ghostface in the mirror, and think, I am a pretty girl. It's a shame, I think. A havoc, I think and think and think. A power I haven't known in any other light-the chh chh of two metal legs coming together. Name a more triumphant sound. A chunk of hair in my fist like a flag. Don't get me wrong— make a good braid. Milkmaid. Dutch dream. But I read something about risk assessment and sunk cost and what I really want is to lose the liability of beauty. I chop my hair to the chin on one side and do not think of [the boyl or [his cinnamon breathl or [my long hair yanked back like it was]. I think of Audrey Hepburn and cut a ragged stretch of bangs across my forehead, high above the brow like 1963, and my mother will cry when she finds me but I am giee-fevered and a little bit ugly. I let my anger flood the bathroom, spill onto the floor like magma. [Here's what I remember: I played dead (the whole time)]. I shear a line along the nape of my neck with my eyes closed and the hair falls to the floor. Have you heard of the brown snake who plays dead when touched? A snake has no hair. What does that say about preservation? Evolution? I twist gobs of hair into tiny tornadoes, clip them from the scalp, bare spots left where they once touched down. My hands buzz electric. I look like a serpent…
March 10, 2025 at 9:01 PM
blacklilyzine.bsky.social
2. By Alison L. Fraser
An image of a French horn in the form of a flier SEEKING: FRENCH HORNIST for a COMMUNITY MARCHING BAND of the PEAD by Alison L Fraser A city where the background noise isn't car horns, sirens, grinding cement, or traffic lights. It's trumpets. The dead brass band haunts the streets in the fog, marching feet on pavement up the steep part of Walnut Street. Play through bloodied feet, hunger, the sucking of their chests. Lungs on fire, splitting holes, a pneumothorax. The first time I saw her standing by the picnic table under the jungle gym. The socond time we were marching down Main Street. Goosey with her trombone, too heavy to carry so she had Greta her greyhound prop it up like a trained seal at the aquarium while she played. Hortense, how long ago she died, no one knew, just played first trumpet, her spit cup always empty, hanging around her neck. Orlan the oboe player, his teeth rotted outwards like a smashed hair brush. Hugo, second trumpet, the brass buttons adhered to his finger tips, as though his hands weaved through the trumpet valves like blood in his veins. Freddy on the share drum, his long straggly hair hung on him like lichen on a stump, squeuzed out of overy pore. And Dottie, newly dead and delighted by it, flute in hands, a smile etched in the brass to never leave her lips. The ghost marching band takes you from your bed in the night, you hear the distant stomps and wonder how many strects over they are, clamoring to get their hands on your hands, their fingers pressing your body cavity for loose echoes, hands crushing your heart back to life just so they can take your breath away. Dotic and I had a pact that if one of us went, the other would follow. Take one to follow us. To join us.
March 10, 2025 at 8:57 PM