Prose & Poetry

 
 
I sat in the front, paddling the canoe through the delicate riffles on the Macal River. My boyfriend sat behind me--the rudder--steering us softly along. Vibrant birds chirp in the jungle canopy as we steer into a beach along a quiet eddy, filled with the carefree grace of buttery-yellow water lilies. We leave the canoe there.
 
And then onward we went, the next morning, like the little pilgrims of ruins, foliage, and grace that we were.
 
I stood in that cobbled street in ...

Memory 
 
The light box is a friend this far north in autumn and winter, and even shockingly into spring, and if I’m honest, once, up to the edges of summer.
 
Its brightness vanquishes blackness and shadow, lights me up in a neon-sign-above-the-highway kind of way, even though birds chirp outside the window, and a light-gray glow of dawn is lifting the edges of horizon as if to say, here—come outside!
 
Maybe the bright fresh twists of air carrying their stories ...

 
The stench of acrid smoke rises and spreads.
 
Men cloaked in masks, ski hats, gloves and guns, heat of their anger a contrast to cold whiteness of snow, fog of breath, snap and clatter, pushing and shoving, the caw and screech of madmen.
 
My heart startles—a legal observer for years—I see the one filming who was pushed by madmen and fell as I might have in those years before knees ached and stamina failed, and yet one man rose to help her. It could’ve been me ...