Tag: 16

Small Boy

.Reading time 6 minutes.

By Joseph Scapellato

Featured Art: Pepita by Robert Henri

The small boy says to his big sister, “Why did we kill all the Indians?”

They’re in the basement playing a video game. Both of them are white.

“We didn’t kill them,” says his big sister, “our ancestors did.”

“Why did our ancestors kill all the Indians?”

“Okay, not really our ancestors because Dad’s family came in the 20s and Mom’s in the Sixties and the Indians were already totally dead by then, mostly.”

“Why did ancestors kill all the Indians?”

“But I guess you could say it was us, pretty much, because today we’re basically the same culture as the culture of the people who killed the Indians back then. And it’s ‘Native Americans,’ not ‘Indians.’ ‘Indians’ is ignorant.”

The small boy says to his angry stepmom, “Why did we kill all the Native Americans?”

They’re returning from the grocery store in hardly any traffic. Plastic bags stuffed with food rustle in the back seat.

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The Light Factory

.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Sandy Gringras

I work the night shift at the light factory.
The gears of the conveyor belt slip
silently, and emptiness goes by me
one segment at a time. I have to take
the dark in my gloved hands and make
something of it, then connect it to something else.
Someone further along the line bends
it, I think. Nobody really knows much about
the other guy’s job here. We just do our part.

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POOF

.Reading time 1 minute.

By Sandy Gringas

My mother wants her head to be frozen
after she dies. I’m against it, but
there’s no talking to her. She has a brochure.

On the cover, there’s a picture
of a white building with no windows.
I tell her, I go, “I’m never gonna visit you there.”

She says, “Fine, fine,” the way she does.
She reads me the whole brochure.
She’ll be maintained at something-something degrees

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