California Poppy Bloom Under Cumulus Clouds
Digital Photography 3024 × 4032 pixels
Lawrence Bridges'photographs have recently appeared in the Las Laguna Art Gallery, the HMVC Gallery in New York, and the ENSO Art Gallery in Malibu. He created a series of documentaries for the NEA’s “Big Read” initiative, including profiles of Ray Bradbury, Tobias Wolff, and Cynthia Ozick. He lives in Los Angeles. You can find him on IG: @larrybridges
A Different Kind of Children's Story
Jamie L. Smith
There was a moment
brief and sudden as a splinter
skewers a heel:
I wanted a child. I was happy
humming along with the slow jazz
of the downstairs tenant
when the thought shot through:
If she’s a girl,
I’ll call her Stasha.
I’d been slipping
into a prickly kind of love
with a woman I knew
would never want a family
and I wanted to lose
my fingers in her dark curls
and trace the constellation
of tiny red stars
tattooed across her shoulder.
What is the half-life of happiness
compared to
the life I did not give you? Stasha,
I can’t say
I’m sorry.