I’ve got a few new pieces out in the world. Admittedly, some of these have been out longer than others, but better later than never, right?
My essay, Echoes, is featured in After Happy Hour Review. Here’s an excerpt:
My mother became an orphan in a less than a year.
She went home and emptied her childhood home of all possessions. She and my father loaded their car and my grandfather’s car with pain and furniture and sorrow and dishes and grief and tools, and together they built a memorial inside of their house.
But while their house is brimming with the detritus of long lives once lived, there is an absence. My mother has next to nothing from her brother.
Her brother who died two months after their mother. Her brother who fell off a ladder on my sister’s birthday and died on mine. Her brother whose flag sat between us in a crisp triangle on my grandmother’s—soon to be mother’s—table.
My mother had time with her parents. She knew what they wanted.
My grandfather didn’t want my grandmother’s clothes donated. He didn’t want to see her jackets or pants or sweaters walking down the streets of their small town. He wanted my father to take his guns.
My grandmother wanted my sister to have the Wedgwood. She wanted me to have the Mary Gregory. She wanted my mother to have the grandfather clock.
But my uncle was fast, unexpected, and my aunt sold his things quickly. Cleaning out their home in Georgia with a speed that comes only with immense heartbreak. He was gone and his things were gone and my mother was left in despair with a living memorial to only part of her family. Empty spaces in the corners where he should be, filling them up.
My second essay, Before & After is featured in issue 16 of The Account. I am very proud of this piece as it blends two forms I love: lyric essay and poetry:
Lastly, I have placed one of the poems in my ongoing project about Vincent Van Gogh in the latest issue of Permafrost. You can find that poem (an ode to Vincent’s beloved Sunflowers) HERE.
oil on canvas, 95 cm x 73 cm
Brianna Pike 