by Centaur Lit | Jul 31, 2024 | Summer 2024
The parties were over, and we found a praying mantis in the basement. It was green enough to be a miracle. Two inches of tropical while the snow turned black outside and we tried to sop carpets and make the place smell like anything but sweat and spilled beer. Bigby...
by Centaur Lit | Jul 31, 2024 | Summer 2024
A minimalist Saturn: one near-perfect circle, two parallel lines cutting through for rings. It had been my brother’s. At the viewing, I traced the cold, hard curve of it on his forearm. He died at 29, well before he had a chance to regret this tattoo or any another. I...
by Centaur Lit | Jul 31, 2024 | Summer 2024
Sometimes the want is so bad you think you can trick the devil. You know you gotta step right up, bold as soda glass, run your finger across that pearled glint of devilteeth. Gotta be quick, before devil takes a bite. Blues man on the record player, he makes it sound...
by Centaur Lit | Jul 31, 2024 | Summer 2024
You are nestled deep inside your half-sister’s lap, and everything glows. She loves you like a hundred mothers because you are about to be five, and she adores the new weight of you. From her record player, the sound of French nuns singing. Her thick too-long hair...
by Centaur Lit | Jul 31, 2024 | Summer 2024
When the music stops we’re mid-twerk—legs bent, hands on knees, booties popping out—our faux leather jeggings and hip-hugging denim flares gaining purchase above the low-lying fog that buries our three-inch stilettos in clouds, red and purple glinting off our sequined...
by Centaur Lit | Jul 5, 2024 | Summer 2024
Mother, in the midday sun, smelled of Big Red and Red Door and dyed her crown box red; splattered with freckles and five feet tall, cheeks dented with a gentle nature belying bonfire smoke. Mother, standing in the rays with pollen dusting her, smelled of Sun-In and...