Sleetmagazine.com

Volume 3 Number 1 • Spring 2011

Luca Penne

Trip
Words

Trip

Honey, your cellphone is ringing. I say, for once, let it go. Watch the road. Glass glitters in air. What does your mother want? Why can't Shirley do her own laundry? Why doesn't she ask her friends to help her pay for gas? Your sister's back on the bottle, and no one chips in for dinner?

A seagull soars over the billboards. The sun struts behind a curtain, wide as a mouth on gin. The moose licking salt at the edge of the highway looks a little tipsy as he totters back into the woods. Fat as chickens, crows hog the road.

A sharp curve—pears and cookies tumble from our bags. “Slow up, “I demand, but you're in a hurry to get home. The wheel jumps in your hands, tires screech.

Up ahead the retaining wall has collapsed. Red brake lights blink. Cars inch forward, traffic stalled for miles. I take off my shoes and put my feet up. You're tired, Honey. Get a little rest before things get ugly.

Words

A man is talking. He is a big man in a big blue coat. His words come out smoke, and the smoke hangs over the frozen pond, where two boys skate, zigzagging around each other. The pond glints silver. A blue smoke floats in their eyes and then they disappear.

The man wonders where the moon is tonight, why the darkness is so silent, why his words seem so slight. Under the streetlamp, in an orange oval of light, a man is talking, a big man in a big blue coat. His words come out smoke and the smoke turns to white boulders tumbling down mountains of dark air. And nothing he says, nothing he remembers, can help him.

Luca Penne builds barns and runs a ski lift in the Hanover New Hampshire area. His work has appeared in 2River View, Many Mountains Moving, Otoliths, and others.