Poetry Selection – G. Travis Regier, AubadeIt's another story when morning
Fiction Selection – Lupe Solis Jr., from The SecretI say a drunk missed my daughter, not killing her hours before. He missed her and hit a tree, I say--my neighbor's. He didn't hit my precious four-year-old who moments before was running in her new Barbie shoes--the pink ones with gold sparkles, the ones that left her feet and flew as if on a string. My wife didn't sink to her knees on the front lawn, slowly, frame by frame. She didn't pound her fists, or pull her hair. She is not sitting across from me with blood on her shirt. No. A circle was/is created and I am there/here holding the threads and...I say that the drunk misses my baby by...oh, four feet, hitting the neighbor's tree. Kills himself instead. The moment before he dies, in the last tingle of life, he realized what he almost did, a flash bulb before his eyes. He sees his life leaking away, and regrets his existence which is about to end--not my daughter's. He looks up and sees me, watching him. The last thing he sees, before his eyes close forever, is me smiling. |


