Counting Bats
I tell you we’ve got bats. Not just one, which might be extraordinary—or two, which could be cute—not even three, a vaguely threatening almost-gang. But four. Four of them perch on the mosquito netting above me, claws gripping the fine, flossy strands that wind protectively around my head. Four are points on a pirate-compass, ready...
Fans
1. In St. Thomas, where I live as a child, I stand on the verandah at noon watching heat itself shimmering aluminum flecks across the Caribbean. I cool my face with a fan constructed of small palm fronds – woven strips attached to a wood handle. At dusk, when the trade winds finally gust the...
Choom
Her skin was the color of the old catfish that my father dredged from the bottom of the lake. Her skin was like its skin: mottled and blotchy, a yellow bruise. The yellow-browns and the brown-yellows leaked like watercolor. She said she had been playing so hard at the pool; she said she had just...
Gizzards
“….cheer up, cheer up, cheer up…” * That voice in my head: maybe not my own, but the mutter of my grandmother, or her mother, as they wiped down counters, dressed their children, cut up chickens one by one—cheer up, cheer up, cheer up…. Cheer up, the chop of the cleaver. Cheer up, clean break...
In Our Skin
If she were a boy, she would be an object of male obsession, made immortal like Tadzio in Death in Venice. Her beauty is strangely obscene. Like the portraits of young Truman Capote by Carl Van Vechten, she exudes a titillating, ambiguous sexuality. But the ardent fans of masculine female beauty are women. We are...
The Cruel Country
“Mourning: a cruel country where I’m no longer afraid.” —Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary I study a photograph of my mother taken on her return to the Island as a widow in her forties. What do I see? A woman in a bright red top and black pants, neither smiling nor frowning, posed in front...
Perdition
— Kristen Radtke’s work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Ninth Letter, Fourth Genre, Bellingham Review, Puerto del Sol, and others. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and lives in Louisville where she is the Marketing Director for Sarabande Books. She is currently at work on...
First Bath
His shoulders hang low and his back is bowed. His body is forty pounds lighter than it was a few days ago, before the cancer surgery, before the blood loss that caused his mind to empty its memories. His is a body without strength, without vigor, without lust, without intention, without history. A body taken...
Some Numbers
This is your telephone—not a stylish retro, but a relic rotary, a “space saver.” In the center of the dial is an old area code: 219. Today, if you dial 219, you will reach someone in northwest Indiana, someone who lives in Gary, Hobart, Whiting, Crown Point, or Hammond. For a long time, 219 was...
My Cousin’s Backyard
Leonard thinks he’s a bad-ass walking behind the casino, making his way over to the party. I’m the female answer to him and his Sioux style wrapped up cool in black boots. The music pumps loud and my feet want to fly, but I stay on the earth when I see him coming. He drives...
A Map of the World
When I was in ninth grade, my father ran away from home. One frostbitten New England morning, he climbed into his gray Toyota and drove toward Guatemala. He left a letter for us written in blue pen on a single sheet of my school notebook paper. Somewhere around DC, he turned back. I have always...
Dressing for Shift, circa 1981
Freshly showered, you stand naked—except for the small St. Michael’s medallion around your neck—and pull the next clean uniform out of the closet. Black pants and charcoal shirt, a polyester/cotton blend. Several years later, the Chief will institute a French blue wool blend. Wool—in the swampland heat of Louisiana. You are allergic to wool, although...
The Unsaved
The brief and interminable year that I was involved with the Northwestern Bell repair tech with the clubbed thumbs seemed to include three or more New Year’s Eve parties. Were there three parties on the same night? Were there three December 31s in the same year? I don’t remember. Perhaps it was just that our...
About the Artist / Issue 40
Gabrielle Katina is a recent BFA graduate from Columbia College, Chicago. She enjoys mysterious and enchanting imagery and if you do as well, then please visit her website at www.gabriellekatina.com.
Brevity 40 / Ceiling or Sky?
Our 40th Issue, Ceiling or Sky? Female Nonfictions After the VIDA Count, is focused on the important contribution of female writers to the creative nonfiction movement, with strong new work from Judith Ortiz Cofer, Jenny Boully, Sue William Silverman, Laurie Lynn Drummond, Brenda Miller, Thao Thai, Lynette D’Amico, Diana Cage, Kristen Radtke, Sonya Lea, Debra S....
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