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  • about
    • history
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
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  • current issue
    • read Issue 26
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass spring 2023
    • interview with Raina J. Leon
    • interview with Sarah Fawn Montgomery
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • through the looking glass
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2023
    • flash glass 2022
    • flash glass 2021
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
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    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
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Glassworks

A Mermaid Dreams of Shoes by Kathleen McGookey

8/1/2016

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Why not red?  To match her little leather book embossed with a dappled kestrel? To match the wilted poppy twisted in her deep blue hair?
 
She has seen the piles of dolls crowded in roped-together boats, drifting listlessly, seasick and heartsick, anxious as cats. They bleed because now they have blood. The wind eats their foreheads and painted pink smiles. They are the opposite of pure. Salt in their eyes makes them suffer. Their bright kimonos, many-layered, pinch and steal their breath. When they can’t stand the smell, they cast their peach blossoms and rice cakes into the sea. Who would want these dolls now?They are still too precious to touch.
 
The weight of any shoe fits the mermaid’s palm like a clam. Rows of black silk slippers gaze at her like otter eyes.

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Kathleen McGookey’s most recent book is Stay (Press 53).  Her book Heart in a Jar is forthcoming from White Pine Press in Spring 2017.  Her work has appeared in journals including Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, Field, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Quarterly West.  She has received grants from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

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The Rental by Kathleen McGookey

8/1/2016

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I rented an apartment above the bank downtown, where, straight out of the 40’s, an army of women staffed the gleaming counter, dabbing their lips and patting their hair. The children’s footsteps echoed through the light and airy halls. I don’t think we’re any safer here, my husband whispered, eyeing the crumbling black and white tiles, the slow flies buzzing in the windows. Winter was coming. The police would come faster if we lived above a vault. Later, when fall colors were at their finest, we could hold dinner parties at the country house. Now, on our first night, we searched for the hidden staircase to our new quarters. We each held a twin’s hand, but when the baby wailed, we saw yellow jackets crawling all over her teeth and tongue.


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Kathleen McGookey’s most recent book is Stay (Press 53).  Her book Heart in a Jar is forthcoming from White Pine Press in Spring 2017.  Her work has appeared in journals including Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, Field, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Quarterly West.  She has received grants from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

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The Parable of my Clocks by Kathleen McGookey

8/1/2016

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My kitchen clock stopped where I like it, 11:37, morning just blooming into afternoon. My desk clock froze at 10:10—plenty of time to work before lunch. Between kitchen and desk an hour opens: bees disappear into my hydrangeas, a thrush calls from the field, and my creek and the traffic beyond it warble and hiss, braid themselves into a white rush that settles around me. I have clocks of wasps and swans, of hammers and sand, of bridges over mist and the boat-shaped leaves that drift below. My doctor’s appointments never arrive on my clocks of teeth and dice, of napping cats, of thick erasers and combs. The children are always snug at school, learning their times tables and trading pennies for nickels.
 
If I go out, my brother comes and winds my clocks.


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Kathleen McGookey’s most recent book is Stay (Press 53).  Her book Heart in a Jar is forthcoming from White Pine Press in Spring 2017.  Her work has appeared in journals including Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, Field, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Quarterly West.  She has received grants from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

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    FLASH GLASS: A MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF FLASH FICTION, PROSE POETRY, & MICRO ESSAYS


    Categories

    All
    Aficionado
    A Mermaid Dreams Of Shoes
    A Moment
    Anjali Pursai
    Ashley Kunsa
    Claire Day
    Daniel Riddle Rodriguez
    Displaced Person
    Ed McCafferty
    Flash Fiction
    Homecoming
    In The Absence Of Cats
    Kathleen McGookey
    Kathryn Hill
    Kristin Laurel
    Log House
    Micro Essay
    Morning-fog
    Morning-thought
    Motel-life
    Mother
    Prose Poetry
    Rob-hicks
    Tara Deal
    The Parable Of My Clocks
    The Rental
    Vivian Wagner
    Why I Hate Balloons


    Cover Image:
    "Bottled Light"
    Lori Blake | Issue 7


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