The way I always pictured ritual sacrifices
Rent from DeepDyve- The way I always pictured ritual sacrifices
I wondered which would give in first, the old man carrying his fern or the fern carried to the street the way I always pictured ritual sacrifices. Knees bent, he hunched above the curb long enough for the patience of gods to wear thin, taking in the uncertain abyss backing up the storm drain and flooding the street inches thick with muck. It could be fake. Plastic if he’s cheap, silk if he bought it to make an impression. Or maybe it’s real, fraught with infections, soil steeped with the kinds of parasites that everyone knows about but doesn’t entirely know how to get rid of. So you cut your losses, rid your home of what you hope attracts the things you can’t yet handle. When at last he let go, the splash was small, and the relief: insignificant almost, the sort of thud you feel in your bones more than you ever see or hear. [End Page 49]
Bhavin Tailor received his mfa in poetry from the University of South Carolina. He is currently working on his PhD in early modern drama at South Carolina, where he was in a past life editor of Yemassee. His work has appeared in the Iron Horse Literary Review and Jabberwock Review, among others.
