By M.R. Mandell after “Kissing” by Dorianne Laux Crying as they hope for blood, crying as they flush the strips, crying as they hide their bumps. They are crying in bathroom stalls, behind Sugarland’s Kroger store. They are crying on Houston corners, outside the boarded-up laundromat. They are crying in each other’s arms, at [...]
By Penny Perry For my Aunt Leona Heyert Tarleton who died at age 33 We are looking at the mockingbird in the lemon tree. This is the first day of my cousin’s summer visit. I wriggle closer to her. “I know how my mother died,” my cousin whispers. The gazebo is the place for secrets. [...]
By Erin Edwards It is a simple act to stand in the middle of the road. Simple, but effective. A car either has to stop and wait or run you down—and it just wouldn’t do for a hearse carrying the body of a former government official to accelerate towards a woman in the middle of [...]
By Penny Perry June 5, 1942 Dear Isabel, I drove my sister to the doctor’s in Los Angeles. It all happened so quickly. I promised to bring her a chocolate phosphate when it was over. She joked with the nurses. Told them if she puked from ether she would buy each of them a pair of [...]
Fiction by Kit-Bacon Gressitt You look in the bedroom mirror, small enough to deny self-adoration, and pull your brownish hair into a ponytail. Tight, like Mother used to do it. You turn to the bed. Your clothes are laid out on sheets held in place by perfect hospital corners. You dress in practical layers, to accommodate the [...]
By Penny Perry Mother couldn’t have known what to do. She was only twenty-five, drove her big sister, Leona, six weeks pregnant, to the doctor's in LA. Leona squinted at California bungalows, backyards with orange trees. She thought about her husband home worrying, her baby daughter waiting for her. She told my mother about her [...]
The Other Day I Peed on a Stick and when I peed on the stick I knew my blood was like poison. When I turned 18, I had just started my medication, I peed on a stick, called a number from the phone book to see if I could afford an abortion without anyone knowing. It [...]
