Cherie Hunter Day
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Still Life with Work Boots Snowlight is no longer available to us. We’re in mud season again. His work boots have been left on the porch for several rough years. The leather is cracked and yielding. Each tongue curls into a separate absence. The lugs are worn down like Appalachian hills. We’re among friends. The boots remain paired with their misshapen eyestays—the laces long gone. A fine moss that began as a patch on the left blucher has spread to both sides. Green is the colour of always. The right boot slumps against the cedar siding away from its partner. Stitching on its backstay, collar, and toe box has let loose. We admit our mistakes. We’re still learning how to treat sorrow as a destination. ** By-the-Wind Sailors (Velella velella) The sea keeps its list of broken things. We barely notice the castaways when there’re only a few of them, but this beach is littered with thousands of creatures in the throes of dying. The color is familiar: Prussian blue like it was squeezed from a tube of watercolours. A little goes a long way. We’re assured that we can paint the night’s dark velvet. But these little sailors slowly deflate and fade to blubbery mounds in cataract grey. We know the power of proximity and not to touch. Tentacles dangling beneath the disks have stinging cells. Here among the froth and flotsam we look for contingencies, the shape of abandonment. The wind and tides don’t help. We double up on storage, fasten sails, and forget about steering. Adrift we lose our most endearing qualities: diligence and free agency. In the realm of dreams blue is also a reckoning. ** Rock, Paper, Scissors, Bone Our share lies just beyond the fold. Scissors save bone. What will become of this petrified socket? The finger joint of a saint survives even though his whole life was used in the pointing. We need those shining arguments. Paper covers rock. Equations in white and yellow chalk cover a green board. Scissors cut paper. Obsidian stretches as far as our eyes can see. Rock dulls scissors. There’s a scramble to find some meaning in the unshakable dust on our shoes. Every flintknapper knows that rock shapes bone. These are the beautiful maybes. ** Every House Has One of These I look for you in, of all places, the junk drawer. And there I find: three rusty utility blades minus the handle; a penny with a hole drilled through it; a rubbery ball of mostly red and yellow elastic bands; four small spiral notebooks with short grocery lists with room for more items; a box of wooden safety matches; an assortment of loose, anonymous house keys; five packets of white sugar; thirteen large paper clips, seven binder clips, and four bright plastic chip clips; hand-sanitizer wipes from the law firm; strip of college-lined notebook paper with a network passcode; the black inner gasket from a garden hose; long white plastic twist ties from electronic packaging; a zip-top sandwich bag with miscellaneous roofing nails, deck screws, and metal washers; a magnet with its cluster of straight pins; the business card of the guy who installed our water heater; six extra dress shirt buttons; a hard peppermint candy in its cellophane wrapper; an expired coupon for a lube job, and your pocket watch circa 1973. When I wind it up it still ticks, but for how long. ** This was first published at Unbroken Journal. ** Animal Eyes An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language. Martin Buber My mother said I was suspicious even as a baby. My green eyes fixed in a stare that made some adults uncomfortable. Trust is a lock that hasn’t been tampered with. As it turns out, I was terribly nearsighted, and it took eleven years for someone to notice. Then I became that owlish girl in class with glasses. Four eyes magnified that stay-away vibe. For my engagement photo I removed my glasses, glanced up, and looked right. It was the same soft scowl as in my baby pictures. Some neurobiologists dispute the lying eyes concept—looking right is the truth and looking left is a lie—as too simplistic. The rate of blinking during a story may have more credence. I still don’t know why we close our eyes when we kiss. ** This was first published at Moon City Review, and nominated for the Best Microfiction awards. ** Quarter Hours It’s like an argument in an unmade bed. The confrontation comes out of nowhere and escalates rapidly. This morning’s bird alarms bring us to the window. A clash between scrub jays and their darker cousins the Steller’s jays. It’s loud and raucous, a ruckus, voices embedded in the tree bark like shrapnel for these duff shakers. All this bravado for leftover peanuts put out by our neighbour. Each troupe is adamant that they are the rightful beneficiaries of this plenty. Who gets to fatten their stashes, their survival caches? Winter is measured in quarter hours. We look for assurances and lose the pillow words. Things are made and then unmade. Drawn to the jay’s harangue, a flyby of warblers recalibrates the mob. ** This first appeared at Noon: the journal of the short poem. ** A Rough Translation of Morning Now and then the indelible parts of that December night are shaken free and start falling again. It’s Finals Week and our lithographs are due in 48 hours. With only one time slot left on the sign-up sheet, tonight my printing partner and I must run our editions on the Fuchs & Lang in the basement of the art building. Every minute counts. We carefully choreograph our movements. One works a dollop of ink smooth until it spreads like sticky velvet around the roller. The other keeps the plate damp with a sponge so the ink only clings to the image. Each sheet of creamy white paper is placed on the inked plate and hand-cranked through the press. Early on we realize that one time slot won’t be enough. Three colours take us long into the night. We hide in the dark when the night watchman makes his rounds at 1 a.m. and then again at 3 a.m. We finish cleaning up just before 5 a.m. and push the door open on three inches of new snow. All of that stalling and falling to make every surface so soft and clean and white. We are the only two awake—the only two alive. ** This was originally published in KYSO Flash. ** Fisher Scientific The specimen box comes with premade slides: a housefly’s mouthparts, a human blood smear, and a drop of pond water. To this collection you add cheek cells stained purple, a hair follicle, and a thin section of dog placenta. “Come here,” she said. And you did. You are dutiful to anyone in a white lab coat. There’s a rattling sound the slides make in their individual grooves when the box is moved. The slides are held in order. Handle them by the edges one slide at a time. The oil from your fingers will smudge the specimen. The coverslip isn’t easy to clean. During the final exam someone jostles the scope and the pointer changes from epidermis to dermis. After that everyone gets question 27 wrong. You must bring your slides to every class to receive full credit. Even after your fall in the stairwell—the slide box gets dented on its side near the latch, but the contents are undamaged. Unlike you. There’s a hand on your shoulder, a tug on the leash, and a red X on the question you got wrong. ** This first appeared at Mid-American Review. It was Editors’ Choice in MAR Fineline Competition. ** Cherie Hunter Day lives in the San Francisco Bay Area among some thirsty redwoods. Her work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Moon City Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Unbroken Journal, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction anthologies. Her most recent collection, A House Meant Only for Summer (Red Moon Press, 2023), features haibun and tanka prose. When not writing poetry and micro prose, or making collages, she is outside cleaning up after the aforementioned redwoods. |
