by C. Robin Madigan
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"Christ," I say, "let it go."
"Yeah," he says, "I let it go, sure."
Jamaican Jon kept two five shot revolvers stashed with his tools. We'd gone to Liza's farm to shoot. Jon stood proudly six-six—could've sworn he shot in slow film, tired, as hammers clapped fifty-caliber explosion. Liza held her brother-in-law so tight. All six-six of him: beautiful black skin and fierce smiles with such hugs.
Jon came on to me last winter while we washed bus and truck grime from our fingers with lava soap.
"Kiss me, Karen," he said.
"Jon, I couldn't," as I kissed him.
Our mother, Grey, pushed my niece down a flight of steps. Liza came home to congealed darkness seeping into cold basement cement, caking her frozen child's curly dark head and hair to stick. Our mother, slumped, on bathroom floor; praying knees on white tiles in a pool of black, from opening her pale flesh, her thin skin to flood her lap. After that mess Liza became crazy and kind—more kind than crazy to Jon. She wouldn't but glance me with Grey in my face.
Some of Jon's rounds misfired with raw claps of steel-on-nickel, as cement on a child's head.
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