Diane loved anything orange

—cats, lipstick, hunting vests, nail polish, hard hats, life jackets, water guns.
When she slipped through her mother’s legs, almost butting the doctor’s
stomach, her skin turned a yellowish red. I did crave pumpkin, her mother said.
Before my water broke, I ate a whole pie, crust and all. It took eleven days of
being rubbed in olive oil and resin, her mother’s fingers lightly massaging
Diane’s new skin that capitulated to air in March before trout season, before
her father deserted them for Pennsylvania streams. Her eighth Halloween she
painted her nose and toes tangerine and swathed herself in a sheet, RIT-dyed
sunshine orange, that her mother soaked in white vinegar until the bleeding
stopped. Even then in third grade, she knew what they didn’t. How we climb
into our wombs at night, sheets over our heads and wait for the water to float
us back.

—

This selection comes from Chella Courington’s chapbook Girls & Women, available from Burning River. Contact Chella to purchase your own copy!

Chella Courington is a poet, fiction writer and educator. She’s the author of six chapbooks: Love Letter to Biology 250 (forthcoming from Porkbelly Press), Girls & Women, Talking Did Not Come Easily to Diana, Southern Girl Goes Wrong, Paper Covers Rock, and Flying South (forthcoming from A Kind of Hurricane Press).  Her flash fiction has appeared in several anthologies including Up, Do Flash Fiction by Women Writers. Poetry and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong, Nano Fiction, The Collagist, and Fourteen Hills.  She lives in Santa Barbara, CA, with another writer and two cats and teaches at Santa Barbara City College

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

Net Loss of Two

Last year her mother, her uncle Ed, and her best friend Nancy died within nine
months of each other, almost coincident with her sister’s pregnancy. Like
combing your hair, they quit breathing. Slipped away on an April, an August
and a November night. Diana thought their passing miraculous. No coughing,
no stumbling, no shooting pains in their wake. Every day since she was twelve,
she had read the horoscope from Aquarius to Capricorn. She knew when Mars
ran riot or Venus flirted with Diana’s uncle. She knew the stars would never lie
because they gained nothing from an untruth. Only mortals could score another
night on the town by hiding matchbook covers and credit receipts. When
Nancy left on the heels of her mother and uncle, Diane envisioned her best
friend waving the magic wand, topped with a lily so white it illuminated the
dark.

—

This selection comes from Chella Courington’s chapbook Girls & Women, available from Burning River. Contact Chella to purchase your own copy!

Chella Courington is a poet, fiction writer and educator. She’s the author of six chapbooks: Love Letter to Biology 250 (forthcoming from Porkbelly Press), Girls & Women, Talking Did Not Come Easily to Diana, Southern Girl Goes Wrong, Paper Covers Rock, and Flying South (forthcoming from A Kind of Hurricane Press).  Her flash fiction has appeared in several anthologies including Up, Do Flash Fiction by Women Writers. Poetry and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong, Nano Fiction, The Collagist, and Fourteen Hills.  She lives in Santa Barbara, CA, with another writer and two cats and teaches at Santa Barbara City College

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

Blood Moon

Sophie tickles my cheek with her tongue, and I give her my right arm. Like the
Virgin’s mantle sliding over my shoulder, she rolls her muscles to the
drummer’s heartbeat, washing me in light. Mama calls my boa a serpent, and
me a dirty coochie dancer. Jesus lives in covered-dish suppers at the Boaz
Baptist Church. But I believe Jesus lives in Sophie. At the Bottoms Up Bar she
first appeared—eyes milky, scales ghost white. Just slept on a cover under the
sink and refused to eat for six days. On the seventh, clouds evaporated. Clear
dark eyes and bright brown body. Three days later, she rubbed and pushed her
nose against the back screen until the skin broke. All day she pressed against
the linoleum floor, never letting up. At night a translucent ribbon lay on the
quilt—eye caps on top.

—

This selection comes from Chella Courington’s chapbook Girls & Women, available from Burning River. Contact Chella to purchase your own copy!

Chella Courington is a poet, fiction writer and educator. She’s the author of six chapbooks: Love Letter to Biology 250 (forthcoming from Porkbelly Press), Girls & Women, Talking Did Not Come Easily to Diana, Southern Girl Goes Wrong, Paper Covers Rock, and Flying South (forthcoming from A Kind of Hurricane Press).  Her flash fiction has appeared in several anthologies including Up, Do Flash Fiction by Women Writers. Poetry and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong, Nano Fiction, The Collagist, and Fourteen Hills.  She lives in Santa Barbara, CA, with another writer and two cats and teaches at Santa Barbara City College

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

The Bell Rang & They Were Erased

Diane kept thinking she’d turn the corner and her mother would be waiting,
arms filled with purple glads—long stems like her long fingers for arranging
flowers, marriages, bridge parties at 3 pm in the living room. Wearing straight
skirts and sweater sets, twelve women tallied score and sipped coffee from
bone china. Smoke rings rose and circled the cards while Diane hid with Joni
Mitchell in her bedroom and believed songs were like tattoos filling empty
spaces. Emptiness then was being alone in a high school of 500 kids, sitting at
the back of seventh-grade English and watching Miss Davis diagram sentences
as if they were people on a wire—mostly solitary figures dangling on a string.
Logical relationships in terms of their syntactic positions. But nothing of who
they would become when their tongues uncurled and their hearts split.

—

This selection comes from Chella Courington’s chapbook Girls & Women, available from Burning River. Contact Chella to purchase your own copy!

Chella Courington is a poet, fiction writer and educator. She’s the author of six chapbooks: Love Letter to Biology 250 (forthcoming from Porkbelly Press), Girls & Women, Talking Did Not Come Easily to Diana, Southern Girl Goes Wrong, Paper Covers Rock, and Flying South (forthcoming from A Kind of Hurricane Press).  Her flash fiction has appeared in several anthologies including Up, Do Flash Fiction by Women Writers. Poetry and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong, Nano Fiction, The Collagist, and Fourteen Hills.  She lives in Santa Barbara, CA, with another writer and two cats and teaches at Santa Barbara City College

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

The Body Ate Breakfast

For words the body searched Rachel’s vanilla yogurt. For more than Omega-3
DHA and five live cultures. Where were the long thin pods rising from the
blood of Princess Xanat and her mortal lover? Heads rolled into vines of
tropical orchids, earth the color of heat. Before dawn the body spooned
Titian’s Venus. Legs muscular and tight held the body till it slid off into a pool
of salt and sweet gum. No hand covered lips. Black flower, it called, swimming upstream.

—

This selection comes from Chella Courington’s chapbook Girls & Women, available from Burning River. Contact Chella to purchase your own copy!

Chella Courington is a poet, fiction writer and educator. She’s the author of six chapbooks: Love Letter to Biology 250 (forthcoming from Porkbelly Press), Girls & Women, Talking Did Not Come Easily to Diana, Southern Girl Goes Wrong, Paper Covers Rock, and Flying South (forthcoming from A Kind of Hurricane Press).  Her flash fiction has appeared in several anthologies including Up, Do Flash Fiction by Women Writers. Poetry and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong, Nano Fiction, The Collagist, and Fourteen Hills.  She lives in Santa Barbara, CA, with another writer and two cats and teaches at Santa Barbara City College

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.