Page 104 - Vol. VI #3

Last Chance (continued from preceding page)
The parishioners looked at one another. A mother helped her son climb up on the wall and other children followed. The widows put their beads to their lips. When the woman reappeared on the other side of the building, a man set his coffee down and clapped his hands. His fellow congre- gants joined in, slowly at first, then with mount- ing enthusiasm.
Martha moved swiftly in her Nikes, sneaker of the gods, and as she passed the crowd, she held the head out in front of her with both hands, and they cheered. Two of the children escaped their mothers’ grasp and followed her. When she came back around, panting but not slowing, a man climbed the wall and joined in, then a woman a few steps back. The widows cried out in wonder. Cars stopped. The third time around, Martha held it over her head and more people joined her, a group of twenty faithful altogether now, running and leaping over the scarred battlefield of boulders and debris that surrounded their
old church, its eyes blacked out with plywood, its yard raw and unrecognizable to everyone but them, who could finally see. Bruce leaned on his horn and let it rip, for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed.
Hart is the author of the novels Float and Addled. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, most recently in Litro, Prime Number Magazine, Talking Writing, anthologies From All Corners, and Black Lives Have Always Mattered.
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Train Wreck
pigmented urethane and rice paper on cotton paper stock 38'' x 50'' by Darryl Hudak