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Thunder Sandwich #23 |
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Melissa O'Grady |
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THE MOTHER I saw the two children, their lanky, emaciated bodies, their jagged, distorted faces. They clung closely to long skinny legs, a body surrounded by the desert. I looked on, eyes followed up the limbs and beneath the skirt of a woman, tall and hunched, wiry, dull hair flowing from her scalp to below her shoulders. Her face was gaunt and misshapen too. She curled her pelvis upward, her skirt bowing up, and I saw beneath it her clitoris, open and spread, large-- And within it I could see blue sky and white clouds. She saw that I noticed, then she pointed and smiled. FUTILITY I walk over the fields at dusk each night, under quiet gray skies, through dry and bristling stalks of vegetation. Tonight I hear screams and popping behind me, I look over, above, and I see bright light exploding high in the sky. Fireworks. I stop a moment and watch, think. Man-made stars flashing, igniting in the faces of the gods, and their debris falling back down to the earth, back to us. Man's attempt at reversing the falling star, to send our hopes and dreams on our own tiny flashes of light up to the gods, instead of watching them come falling down from the heavens. Tomorrow the sunlight will shine on the burned and scattered paper, and the scent of smoke will still be in the air. |