There are two teams, one that scoops dirt into tubs and one that adds water and stirs it into mud. The consistency is important so they have to be careful, can’t just slop it up.

The Mudslinger

Grandma told us once that great-great grand uncle John lived in the part of the country that gets the coldest… 

I Have Some Notes on the Family Legend

They say there is so much ash that if it was all piled together it would weigh as much as an aircraft carrier, and maybe that is a lot because an aircraft carrier is big, or maybe it is not so much because an aircraft carrier can float.

Fire Season

I am eighteen. I turned nineteen a couple months ago but they tell me to keep saying I’m eighteen, it’s a better age anyway. The singer is twenty-five but really thirty-six. She has stayed twenty-five for years. How many years will I stay eighteen?

Heavy

…everything has sprung up in the places where almonds and asparagus used to grow, where grass and grains grew before that, where the bowling alley was, the bar that smelled like cigarettes and feet but not in that order…

Home, which is far better

I search what can i do with one tree and the answer is nothing, leave it alone. There are more pines on the block, could I build a whole cabin from the trees that line the street? Are they right pines? Can’t every pine be the right one right now?

How much sap can a pine tree make, how can I make it stop

Then I could smirk, like in the movies when the good guy swings at the bad guy but it doesn’t hurt the way it was supposed to, and the good guy gets a look like “oh no” and the bad guy smugly straightens his jaw.

I’m here if you need to talk

“If we break up, at least you can say you learned something,” I say, and we both laugh, and the seagulls wail overhead. They were wailing with us, all joy and triumph. What did they know! What did they know?

Jessica Dawn

Selected work