ISSUE 10
OLIVIA MADELINE ABIGAIL
NEVADA-JANE ARLOW
MEG CASS
PEARL-HILL FREEDLAND
RHIENNA RENÉE GUEDRY
SG HUERTA
SILAS JONES
HANTA T. SAMSA
MAIA G VILEYA
VERONICA WASSON
THE ANTIDOTE
-
A hummingbird scoped the great
purple landscape of me, sunning
like wet clothes out to dry
—I don’t recognize me, either
my limbs
learning how to bronzeThe delicious sounds of palms
with their old fronds clacking
Coyote calls
Hammering and
car alarms too
We hear what we need
DESERTSCAPE
Move a chaise lounge twice and it tells the time. Half-sun half-shade, draw her shadows in a sketchbook. Walk at dusk. Fill the humidifier in the bathroom sink. Rise at dawn to bring the dog into bed. Add electrolytes to the water. Re-apply sunscreen, wear an ugly hat that gets the job done. Note the difference between one fast bee and one slow bee, ponder if one is tired or has been fished too many times out of the pool, or whether the other bee is trying too hard to impress the Queen. Slip the drugstore koozie around another ice cold one and crack it open. When it is empty it is an hourglass. Swim until the sun is behind the mountain. Swim until you are hungry. Submerge everything but your hair. It counts as a body of water even if it is chlorinated. Walk at dusk, fill the humidifier. Mist counts. Rise at dawn to listen to forty birds. Lose track of the afternoon drawing the black phoebe perched on the powerline. Half-sun half shade. Wonder why the bougainvillea is dying (do not think about how grief changes you forever). Do not blame the defoliation on the finches. Some things will grow back. This is what time looks like. You are a sundial.
Rhienna Renée Guedry (she/they) is a writer and illustrator from Louisiana based in Portland, Oregon. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and 2022 Tin House Workshop alum, you can find her work in Maudlin House, Southern Humanities Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. Her chapbook
Root Rot is available through Cooper Dillon Books. Rhienna is currently working on her first novel.