by Anne Cheilek
Oracle
A woman named for a dead grandmother crossed her arms across her chest in a conscious attempt to hide her trembling. She thought the birds up in the trees sounded like they were asking, “Hey, you all right?” Most of her communications with the world were strained or superficial. It took a while before she realized that everything she was interested in saying was contained somewhere in a book. Now when she closes her eyes, she can see flowers, fire creatures, viruses leaping from the cracked tarmac. She hesitates to call them visitors. More like chasing pink, she found red.
Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.
Anne Cheilek is an artist, writer, and musician living in Silicon Valley. Her work has appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, DMQ Review, Gone Lawn, Reed Magazine, and elsewhere. She is an MFA candidate at San José State University, where she is currently serving as the Poetry Editor for Reed Magazine.