Bryan D Price

Jessie

I was holding the mail in
my hand some of it wasn’t
even for me I was holding
the mail in my hand and
watching two women
trying to light a car on fire
one stood on the hood holding
a can of lighter fluid while
the other held a propane torch
they say death smells like an
old suitcase like two purple
hands pressed against the glass
this was different—softer and
more like two children playing
toy recorders but with an
elegance reserved for Carmelites
one of the pieces was addressed
to me in a way that made me
want to drop everything and
locate the sender no one wrote
my name like that anymore—
printed lightly carefully not like a
machine does it and written with
genuine care—not care but
warmth as if they wanted
me to come protect them from
some evil ex-boyfriend who
had sworn allegiance to the
wrong pope whoever did it was
sensitive to thunderclouds had
a healthy libido and read folklore
I never opened it instead I wrote
please remain a mystery on it in a
script so neat I wouldn’t recognize
it if it came to my door and
sang the first two verses of “By
the Time I Get to Phoenix”

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Bryan D Price is the author of A Plea for Secular Gods: Elegies (What Books, 2023). His stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Santa Monica Review, Diagram, Mississippi Review, Boulevard and elsewhere. He lives in San Diego, California.