STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
CHRISTIAN CHASE GARNER
I always used to kneel down and rub the wax
that the angels painted on the magnolia leaves
when I was sleeping, the butter under my fingernails
half-melted, telling me I should be thankful
I can hold the lemon zester right. My grandparents
always planted perennials because they couldn’t let go easy—
turns out I have a few asters of my own. I would toss
packets of cabbage seeds into the yard like wedding rice
to attract rabbits that never really came, but damn it was nice
to have something that was mine. I found my love
for cornbread and coconut and steel guitar and I never
washed that apron because the smears of blackcurrant and soot
are all I can cling to sometimes. I’d take the two strokes of fiction
and a cup of peppered buttermilk any day to the reality that they were
just a couple of marigolds, destined for a single, brilliant bloom before collapsing
back to the Earth, painting a whole tree of magnolia leaves on the way down.
We laid in the dirt between the verbena, the tarragon, the milkweed and the sagebrush—
plants that rose up against God and sank their teeth into the harsh earth instead.
The embers of the campfire were scornful, reflecting on their past mistakes as we shared
a thermos lid of greased cast iron coffee and a couple cigarettes. We were children
of the canyon walls, lost, cradled, cursing plutocrats and flirting with constellations
as they undressed in our eyes. Glaciers of red clay pulled the river over the horizon,
forming a cocoon around us—a chrysalis to the necessary dawn—and the sun gave birth
to kindred hangovers and three lines of an aubade and dreams of a gazebo
wrapped in Spanish moss, a sentinel over the Alabama ocean that we would decorate
and redecorate in colors just invented. But after one orbit too many, we became each other’s
invasive species, and we were more like the verbena, the tarragon, the milkweed
and the sagebrush than ever before. And we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
Chase is currently a graduate student and received his BA from the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith. His work has been published in Mistake House Magazine and Applause Literary Journal. When he is not writing, he is composing music or baking for his wife and three pups: Paris, Mia, and Sunday.
