Rabbit and Rose

beaded rabbit

Ghosts Floating on the Flat White Bed

They say there's a ghost in the bathroom here. I've passed her many times, waiting to hear her cry. That's what she does, cry in the bathroom, like any girl. Like the girls in the bathroom at the Jr. High dance. Like my mother after my father's pale hand would strike her. She only cries for men, someone said.

Outside her prison doors, I wait for those that force this ocean, for the Indian angel I cannot be, for the girl who lives in the bathroom crying for a man that is long dead.

This is where the most intimate truths occur; the ghosts floating on the flat white bed where the words or the hands dance, where the children cry, regardless of their ages, when the things that we say destroy each other.

Erika T. Wurth


contents of issue 8

IN TIME OF TROUBLE
Linda Rodriguez

The Healing Soup
Jaunita Pahdopony

Army of Artists
Raymond Nat Turner

Where Wings once were
Zigi Lowenberg

What they don't tell you when they tell you about cancer
James Mackay

Ghosts Floating on the Flat White Bed
Erika T. Wurth

Remission Dawning
Stephany JT Russell

Fire Garden
Suha Hassan


Erika T. Wurth Biography

Erika T. Wurth's novel is the author of Crazy Horse's Girlfriend. Her collection of poetry, Indian Trains, was published by West End Press. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Boulevard, Fiction, Pembroke, Florida Review, Stand, Cimarron Review, The Cape Rock, Southern California Review, and Drunken Boat. She teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and she's been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She's Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee and was raised outside of Denver.


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