The
Chickasaw
Home Short Stories Poetry Articles Humor Links
Anna Scotti: A former contributing
editor to Buzz Magazine and ThatGlow.com, Anna has written for InStyle, People, YM, Redbook, and many other national and
international magazines. She is the
author of three novels and a slang dictionary, and is a student in the MFA
program at
Kathleen 1959 – 1994
That thing you did
Changed everything.
Oh, not for you. You’re the
same.
Haunted, weeping
Tedious with it, actually.
But there’s your niece
The one you told
It’s okay to be a little crazy.
Except now it’s not. It’s
not.
That thing you did
Changed everything.
Karina’s baby turned sour in her stomach.
Kellen watches me with narrowed eyes, waiting.
I’d like to slap him.
No, I’m not next. No one’s
next!
Damn it, take love, give love
Let’s go about our business
And get through this thing.
Your mother needs a ride to the physiatrist, Kathleen.
Kellen needs a backpack, and a spanking
And money for next week’s field trip.
The dog still sniffs the couch cushions.
I should have saved her a shoe
When the Goodwill guy showed up.
- Anna Scotti
The following is from the works of Sir Gawaine
Ross, a frequent contributor to The Chickasaw Plum and a one-time Irish
Nationalist.
The Mountains of
In the mountains of
By the fog-swept loch, in the deepening green,
I reveled with Alanna, whose soul
was aflame
With the fire of sunsets, and the sapphire gleam
That flashed from her eyes made me quiver with glee.
Drunk with the sunshine on the edge of the kame
We tumbled in meadows and loved in ravines.
We laughed in the rivers and slept in the glens,
And played our bright pipes in the
moon’s silver sheen.
With God’s joy between us I gave her my name.
But the bloodlust of Cromwell roared on the fens
And that Puritan ogre, in an insane wrath,
Quartered Alanna, and butchered my
kin,
Speared running children, and
cackling cracked
The skulls of women, and bludgeoned my friends.
In the mountains of
Like the graves of Alanna,
--Sir Gawaine Ross
Crossing Guard
He waits in his green-webbed lawn chair,
wide brimmed straw hat,
sun sparkling from his bifocals,
passersby wave.
He rises, back bent, and
holds aloft the sign in red and white
that orders STOP!
With hobbled gait he marches
into the crosswalk
armored only with
his Day-Glo vest in lime.
Noisy children trail behind.
Seventy thousand pounds
of diesel truck
jake brakes to a snorting stop.
Cars halt in long procession.
A lonely gull arcs overhead.
Somewhere a dog barks.
Wrinkled brown-green hills beyond
the valley are strewn
with boulders like the lot stones of the
gods.
Crisp morning air moves the
fronds of palms.
Thin clouds like feathers
streak the sky.
Somehow it matters greatly that
beyond the rising sun.
a half moon hangs
in pale and perfect symmetry.
--John R. Guthrie
The
Chickasaw
Home Short Stories Poetry Articles Humor Links