by K.G. Ricci
We Called It Bat Time
From the peach flesh
hands of childhood, I took my leave; a flight—
from a shelter I mistook
for hell. By then, I had gotten good
at telling myself: I am not
afraid. Even as the moon reddened
& the water rose to break my gaze, even
as the echoes revealed themselves
to be gunshots striking
the veins of the bleeding sunset.
Darkness has a beginning
& an end. One summer night
in 1974 it began with my mother’s
pool light drawn shadow & ended
on the wing of a bat
diving into her depths, nearly sealing her
beneath the water’s
surface.
She doesn’t need to say
the word “afraid” but her shadow
memory tries to teach the word
to mine. I am not afraid
of the bats that made home
from heavens; within the roof
of that dilapidated split level
the color of forget me nots. The first
I ever called mine. There I learned
the flight of dusk, the omen song
spat from summer’s sneered lips.
My friends & I used to dock
ourselves upon the veranda’s rotting
boards. The spliffs between our lips
hovered as executed promises
turning to ash in our mouths.
We awaited the waterfall of funeral veils
as the bats fled for the night. When one
failed its sky shot & fell among us,
we built a raft of palmetto fronds
and hodge podge & set it into the swamp
of our backyard. Such a small loss
in a season brimming
with missing pieces, people.
Magnolia petals
entered genuflections & folded themselves
into letters of witness sealed
& humming echo.
When our vessel floated back to us,
the bat had gone. Whether it fell into
the water or rose again I’ll never know.
My voice, too heavy to join
the bats in song, in search, as they tried
& failed to diffuse the burning sky.
Jozie Konczal is a writer and editor from South Carolina. She earned her MFA from the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins University in 2019. Her work has been featured in Ninth Letter, Open Minds Quarterly, and elsewhere. In 2021, she was a finalist in Palette Poetry’s Emerging Poet Prize. When she’s not writing or reading, Jozie enjoys practicing yoga, making playlists, and shopping for candles. Currently, Jozie lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her partner and pets. To read more of her work, visit http://joziekonczal.squarespace.com/publications.
K.G. Ricci, a self-taught New York City artist, made a collage on a file cabinet in 2015. The creative possibilities of the medium immediately inspired him. Fifty cut and paste panels followed, visual improvisations on 20” x 40” or 2’ X 4’ hardboard. Recently, Ricci sustained his implied narrative focus in Numbered-Not Named, a series of original pieces, 6” x 9” on black stock. His current project, Random Thoughts in the Waiting Room, is a visual flash fiction series of books with a single word or a fragment of text in each collage composition. Ricci has exhibited in 27 galleries including solo shows and many more online galleries. His collages have been published in poetry and literary magazines nationally and internationally online and in print.