We genuflect and then slide into the last pew. My father reminds me, as he does each week, that he cannot kneel. I nod. He sits and leans back, crosses his legs at the ankles and folds his hands in his lap. Leavened each week is his belief that every day might be his last […]
Michelle Reale
Michelle Reale is the author of several poetry and flash collections, including Season of Subtraction (Bordighera Press, 2019) and Blood Memory (Idea Press), and In the Year of Hurricane Agnes (Alien Buddha Press). She is the Founding and Managing Editor for both OVUNQUE SIAMO: New Italian-American Writing and The Red Fern Review.
Siblings, 1972
My sister was a ghost figures in pastel, swimming with the shoals in a plastic wading pool. My mother celebrated her primitive nature, that tempestuous spirit, while I bit my lips to draw blood. I balanced on the sawhorse in our narrow backyard, topography of cracked cement, taut clotheslines tethered to ancient and rusting poles […]