Issue 5, April 2010
+Editor's Note {
} next story+ The Dream
Elana Bell
Once in a village that burned,
before it burned, lived a young woman
who loved a young man and they waltzed
through the streets smelling of horse shit
and bread. (The dogs
loped behind for a scrap)—
All night in separate beds they dreamed
a feast: fat wheat and cows, hills of clean soil, their hands
deep in it, and across the insides of their skulls, the name
in flaming letters, the name of the land.
When she made it there— her arms like strands of hair,
her hair in strings of rotting teeth— she could not see
the young man’s face. Her after-the-war husband
seventeen years older and bald, and their daughters,
who never would have been
if the town hadn’t burned—
Elana Bell
Once in a village that burned,
before it burned, lived a young woman
who loved a young man and they waltzed
through the streets smelling of horse shit
and bread. (The dogs
loped behind for a scrap)—
All night in separate beds they dreamed
a feast: fat wheat and cows, hills of clean soil, their hands
deep in it, and across the insides of their skulls, the name
in flaming letters, the name of the land.
When she made it there— her arms like strands of hair,
her hair in strings of rotting teeth— she could not see
the young man’s face. Her after-the-war husband
seventeen years older and bald, and their daughters,
who never would have been
if the town hadn’t burned—
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