Two Flash Prose Pieces by Kathy Z. Price

 

THE LOVE LESSON

 

 

If I pricked my finger + the last one + the tiniest one + the most useless +  except to pinky promise+ if I pricked + with a needle so faint, + I barely felt it, + could hear + the single drop of rain of blood + from your house + one million miles away + where you lay + outstretched on your bed +  your dog comfortably + beside you like a live + teddy bear  + your holiday glass of margaritas + and something stirring by Bronte + or Lispector+  what would that one + single drop of blood say to you + with every thought + it wanted to say + my hand outspread for you + to stroke my palm +  kiss the lifeline + say this is good + if you felt the drop of blood as rain + would you believe me + if I told you + at the same moment a tear + fell when I thought + of you, pinning my hem badly + because I do not sew + and there’s drop of blood + suddenly every single person + who ever turned + their back stood up to dance + ah,  + if only+  you felt it once +  then maybe you + would have been just a little bit kinder + maybe you would have remembered + that social justice starts with the nearest friend + who is + nearest stranger +who be+ comes  +the next + nearest friend

 

 

 

r/obert & the rabbit

 

i want robt / his

missives on the daily     beginning of sun & 100 thousand new comets or concepts      robt tell me   i          am important                hold to belly my mouth        imagine lips

against skin     conversation      heart thrusts out the chest cavity with each penetration & isn’t that how it shld be

blue skies resolve idle trivia like you are married   we dizzy once on christmas eve, right    & there wasn’t wine, neither    & has since forgot me  in the long ago

in rabbit of eternity    this is end of the zoo’s

tale           skunk flung bee-herder over his tail, sued a rat & rat won by just a flicker

 

it levels out in the end is the lie

karma blurts out in her rem sleep

& yet, yet, yet,

still

want you

 

 

Kathy Z. Price is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. She's also a Hedgebrook and Edward Albee Fellow, a recipient of Archie & Bertha Walker Poetry Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown. Recent work was published by storySouth, and more work is included or forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Rumpus, Cincinnati Review, Bayou, Pleiades, and Prairie Schooner among others.

Kathy Z. Price

Mardi Gras Almost Didn't Come This Year

Simon & Schuster 2022