SmokeLong Quarterly

Flying pens cross over the caution line, go right through stop signs without a moment’s hesitation, jump through intersections and pull a horde of other moments with them. Moments of fungadillis made by Margaret, and still hot from the deep fryer in her and Henry’s apartment over the 2 bay garage. Moments of discovering box turtles escaped from the swamp all the way on top of the hill. They sit there under the swing set. Flying pens pick up moments of practicing at Margaret’s piano. Of studying Henry’s bulbous nose on the half hour ride home from school. Moments of standing still in the living room as a cigarette is silently slipped from the step-mother’s box of Malboros, palmed until safe in the woods. Moments of walking home the last 1/2 mile, lagging behind sister Daria, let her scare the snakes. Of forgetting the three sisters still have a mother, she just isn’t here with them in this big colonial home, bought by their father for his second wife. Moments of listening to how the house speaks, in creaks and groans, calling pens out of the living room table drawer to fly across paper and walls. Pens out of sticks, out of the shit in a baby’s diaper she smeared on the wall.