‘Minnows’

Minnows

Truman built the rifle in his kitchen 

Froze the barrel, baked the slide, and ate the bullet. 

In Andromeda, dark matter particles wave across planes. 

His mother shivers, miles away, calling calling. 

The coroner says, behind hardly closed doors, the kid had it bad. You should’a seen it, the whole room like a ruby. 

Truman rang a month or so before, said he was doing alright. 

Said if you’re breathing, you're doin’ alright. But everything's dull.

Everything's so dull, 

except death.

In late summer once, sloshing,

sloshing in half boiled creeks, he tears up stones and stomps on minnows.

He brings a few of them to my house.

What’d you do that for, Truman? I press him, and 

Don't leave those up here, they're leaking guts and stinking, I tell him.

Truman cries, only time I’ve ever seen it, and asks me if I think he can revive them.

I think not. 

I’ll probably pay for this one day, then Truman says. 

We sit together, crouching on the sunbleached porch, prodding at little dead fish. 

All our bodies glisten in the light.

Kinda like it came from a star, huh, Truman?

Snot trails on his arms. A tear ripples down his nose.

Yeah, you said it. 

Maybe everything does.

Artist Kiera Fisher

Angelena Acierno is a writer and mixed media artist from rural Appalachia. Her work picks at subconsciousness and the throb of the past. She currently resides in Ohio and can be found taking long walks in time to EDM beats. 

Kiera Fisher is a Columbus based Muralist / Mixed Media Artist who embraces bold colors, and imagery to create art inspired by her surroundings- incorporating lived experiences into her work! She works with a variety of media and materials, including anything from illustration, to textiles, to fine arts. You can find her work @rainbowfish.art on Instagram.