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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3299 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mentions The Pioneer’s Find Graeme Mullen When I read your letter There was a rumbling. Clouds, deep as cottonfields, and then white light, like the flashbulb bursting on an oldtime camera. Thunderbolts, I thought at first, but when they struck my face, I thought maybe hammers. But no, too sharp, more of a lashing. A whip? A cane? No, it was the stem of your lace umbrella. First it split my cheek, and then my arms, my legs, my gut, striped me red, like being sunburned through wooden window blinds. And the next day, bruises. Dark, like the ruts left by a plough. Over the days, they turned colors with the sky. Black to purple. Brown to pink. Around day twelve, The first fleck of skintone appeared. I beamed and hollered, greedy like a pioneer who sees gold glinting from his creek. I struck my claim, not knowing that my blood had betrayed me, had only carried the color down beneath my skin, grafted it onto spokes beneath my ribcage, where these kinds of memories are stored. I asked a wandering blood clot what the reasons were. He told me that an upstart town inside my chest had ordered a water wheel to keep up with the farmers. So now it churns, mostly in my stomach, and makes me sick to eat or sleep. Today, it is slower than yesterday. But there is still wheat to grind, bread to bake. I wonder how long these things take. I’ve never owned this kind of mill before. |
