by Carol Casey The path is trodden, dusty, level.You know it will take youwhere many have gone. Step off—tangles of brambles,sometimes with blackberries,more often with little clawsthat catch on clothes and skin;and tortuous tree roots—inconvenient, sacred data unearthed—subterranean snakelets somehowsifted into snarls for feet to catch.There are stems that twine…
by donnarkevic Each Holy Week, babas, place orders with Ted, the mailman, for ducks to make Czarnina, soup from the blood. Ted reconnoitered behind enemy lines, his knife slitting throats of Nazis, wounds squirting blood, death draggling a green uniform to the pallor of red clay. In Pittsburgh’s strip district,…
By Donnarkevic I recognize the black balloons, the same kind used at the office party for my fiftieth birthday. Now sixty, I expected something more creative: black homburgs, melanistic leopards, caviar. I would have settled for farfalla schwarz (black bowtie pasta). Instead, I got first pick from a six-foot sub, Black…