One son tells of when his baby brother
turned blue, and he and elder sister
say the epoch of our hell is gone,
never happened to them. But
the youngest, the one never blue,
recounts the details of those years,
he then too small to remember,
and how a Gumbi deer tripped
down the attic steps each night
into his charming room with slanted
dormers and Cape Cod curtains
and walls of crisp whitest white.
I never saw his deer but hear his
screams, still think of his determination
to escape that bed, and I remember
a haunted place. Some houses
lock you tight in nightmare,
and still, miracle, hold cherished rooms
and history, a Grimm brothers’
setting for a timeless tale, recast,
retold beyond all reason.
More from Issue #1
Materialism by Carol Hamilton
The things around them turned Dutch painters greedy for light, which could not have come so often, for I, too, lived edged by the North Sea and saw little enough of it.…
Passover Hat by Carol Hamilton
We, thoughtless, had an Easter Parade, the principal a tall, mercurial Irishman, Judy Garland and fashion all playing their part, paper plates, construction paper, paste making up the rest. There in the…
Dig by Carol Hamilton
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Distances by Carol Hamilton
The moon is moving away from us, hitching itself ever higher by its own tuggings at our gravity. It is paling out, like your face, but so gradually, I think you are…