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July 2019 - Issue No. 8

There Are No More Pets in My House

Enza Vynn-Cara

There is death in my house.

“It's gone to a better place,” she says. "Now flush it down the toilet and wash your hands. Breakfast is ready."

Like that, she cans Juju, our goldfish. She did the same with Didi, Ma’s parrot, Brook, the family cat, and Wild E. my she-wolf— and it always happens early in the morning, right before breakfast.

In my home, since she stepped in, pets die at night and are rid of in the morning. Juju’s brother floated in the tank, belly up, the Monday after she hooked up with Pa. Two days later, Didi got eaten by Brook. Some of its feathers are still stuck against the bars, and they’re going to stay there until she cleans it up. It’s her chore. She left the cage open.

Brook herself, too fat with Didi, fell from the barn roof onto a mousetrap, lost a paw, and bled to death overnight. And a few weeks after, I found poor Wild E. dying on our doorstep with a bullet in her left eye.

Imagine that, Wild E. dying, yet seeking me out to say goodbye. That is true loyalty.

There is little loyalty in our house.

Or empathy for one's grief.

Take Pa, he hooked up with her two months after Ma kicked the bucket, and I mean that literally. Ma cut herself on the rusted chicken-feed bucket she,our farmhand from New...

The Goldfinch

Brigitte Whiting

On a Monday afternoon, I carried a bucket of water outdoors to refill the birdbath. A male goldfinch jumped down from the bath’s rim, and hopped away as quickly as he could to creep beneath a nearby spruce branch. I thought how odd he was so unafraid.

Over the next days, he hopped about pecking for seeds and insects in the front and back yards, and crouched on the edge of the birdbath, lifting and shrugging his wings, and then lowering them, wondering perhaps what was amiss. His bright yellow chest feathers turned dusty and dull — he must have longed to bathe. Somehow, he got himself to the top wire of one of the tomato cages I’d set over the taller wildflowers to protect them from the deer, and from there, he reached for the black-eyed Susan’s seed-head.

Each morning, I wondered if he’d survived the night. I wanted to rescue him — he was so quick that was unlikely — and I learned he’d dislocated his shoulder, and even if the wing was reset, he’d never fly again. It seemed cruel to cage him.

On Sunday afternoon, a week after I’d first noticed him, he was perched on a wire cage in the front yard. Then, other goldfinches flew in to join him and sat on the surrounding tomato cages. Somehow, I knew they’d come to say their good-byes. My windows were shut so I couldn’t hear whether they chirped...

Eidolon’s Wind Chimes

Gerardine Gail Baugh

I miss our disagreements, laughter and silent times.

Memories of listening to your deep steady breathing as you slept dying on your living room couch. Curtains were drawn. You were so organized and neat. You worried that your house wouldn’t be cleaned when you were gone.

I opened my door early this morning.

Stirring up cat fur and dust, letting in the cooler morning air. It flowed from room to room until I opened a window and it hurried back out into sunshine. Nesting birds grab bits of cat fur to build up their nests. Currents of fur push over my weak tomatoes. I had set them out to catch some rainwater and sun. Hoping to strengthen their legs so they can hold fruit.

Blue sky glimpses me between hanging smears of misty clouds.

Every year on your birthday I talk to you, to the sky, to the shadows in the trees. You have never answered. I wonder if it’s pain that prevents me from hearing you; I don’t think I will ever let that go. For 364 days I celebrate your life. June 23rd I will mourn your death, birth, and life all in one day.

The air is silent until I open a window or that door.

Wind chimes hang just inside the door, a metal-hat holding tight to blue and silver. Five different lengths of thin silver chain, each end holds a metal idiophone...