Miriam Alex

AMERICANA

Baby, it was nothing. In the afternoon, you and I watched the dogs tear through the coop, their maws wet and feathered. The horse lost the race, and the urchins in the gulf tumbled soundlessly. Do you think they knew who was dying? We knew, of course, but we were absolved of being animals. We knew the mare didn't understand it. The predators prowled near, soundless and warm. While she slept, you laid beside me, the sun melting into a jammy yolk, the radium boring into her bones. I watched the gulf. Rising tide, the light sliding over the desert like a slip-dress. I readied the saddle for the next, and she glowed like the sun. Really, it was nothing. All we knew was how to be great.

Miriam Alex is a lover of all things slice-of-life. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2023, Penn Review, Frontier Poetry, and Uncanny Magazine, among others.