You can probably imagine a husband-not-baby say he’s hungry, and the woman-his-wife Sienna hurry and scurry, her hands and fingers and wrists getting busy with kneads and whisks, mammaries leaking, while the baby-from-him sleeps, because Sienna must be efficient like-cattle-like-poultry, like her-mother-Nannima, and all the women-like-her-married-at-seventeen, like Nannima said to her on the wedding day,…
My husband owns a German bisque doll from the late 1800s. Her name is Clarisa. She has delicate blonde curls that frame her porcelain face and glass blue eyes, both of which my husband polishes every morning with baby wipes gripped in shaking hands. Clarisa came with a frayed yellow booklet detailing an extensive backstory.…
Her Deleted Scenes
Her head was found perpendicular to the lake. The sight almost eventuated a myocardial infarction, that’s a heart attack to you and me. An elderly man walking his dog or being walked by him made the grim discovery. She had always been the bird refusing to fly in formation. Her hair moved with the vibrancy…
Who May Be Left Out: An Interview with Jolene McIlwain
Jolene McIlwain’s Sidle Creek, a collection of flash and short stories, is amazingly balanced between characters we care about and the joy and conflict in the natural world. This book will take you into the heart of the natural world, where it’s easy to imagine the smell and the touch of flora and fauna. In…
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