My daughters run across the hard-packed sand, their blonde hair—Maureen's hair—streaming out behind them. They are three little replicas of my wife. As always, the worry grips my heart with icy ... [+]
Stephen Hundley's poem, "Aubade while I Check Your Pulse," is in Short Circuit #05, Short Édition's quarterly review. Stephen is the author of The Aliens Will Come to Georgia First (University of North Georgia Press, 2022).
If you swim before the children waketake me along. Though it is you, Folly Beachlifer, and me, laboring behind apple-pickerstrokes on my side, lagging, rolling to rest, searching the white bottoms of your feetuntil they drip from the neighbor's dockon the far side of this body, our two fingers pressed into one another's throats, breathing the names of seconds. Counting to a minutewith our softest parts exposed while morning launches the osprey, stirs dragon flies, soonbreaches firs to draw mist from black waterlike tea, inching to cool. I feel: blood thrumand shudder breaths beneath muscled ba