a literary journal published by the Black Earth Institute dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society

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Section One Earth

Shea Daniels

The Fortune Teller of Shawnee, Ohio For the Tecumseh Theater This is how you wait. This is how you wait some more. And this is how you age, how sunbeams fill themselves dust before your windows are boarded over, how when your windows get boarded over no fiddle tunes itself in darkness, and how much I hope to be forgiven for this silence. For this inability to fulfill my purpose. For the way I was only ever good at acoustics and hallowed moments and how I've been gaping lifeline through the cracks in my second story since 1941. Across Amin Street an antique store burrows itself small-town chakra. In its window an article from 1908 explains the future of solar energy. "We will need coal no more" it declares but so far we do, and it's complicated, and I, well, I am a coal town theater in a coal-less town seven miles south of Corning. Extraction is the color of my longing and I am kettle bottoming against negative space. My wallpaper curls itself gravity across my sycamore ribs, and I am remnants. I am bygone. I am faltering, am almost hillside, my walls tepid and horizontal and bare. So this is how you wait. This is how you wait some more. And this is how you let silence sunbeam the faltering extension of your lifelines. The dark comes earlier every day.
 
 
 
Shea Daniels Ms. Daniels cannot read maps. She can, however, make her own peanut butter.
 
 
 

 

 

 

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