once mighty

by Kathy Fish

had been beaten had been rocked had been dreamed the snow one summer had been pitied grape Kool-aid government cheese had been long hair & plastic beads had been naked dandelions hurling, hunted, hanged the moth-eaten coats once the mother ran the orange traffic cones up the attic stairs up and once one stole one drank one broke his neck one laced the moonlight behind the sagebrush the drive-in had been once the giant Annette Funicello once in a bikini they’re gone & they’ve gone silver-haired & pot-bellied & wistful had been big ugly Schwinns had been the Shell Rock River had been once the walleye so thick once the father had been once the bull once his hands once a fist

Kathy Fish’s (she/her) stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Guernica, Advanced Creative Nonfiction (Bloomsbury), the Norton Reader, and Flash Fiction America (Norton). Honors include the Copper Nickel Editor’s Prize and a Ragdale Foundation Fellowship. Fish teaches creative writing workshops online and publishes a popular monthly craft newsletter, The Art of Flash Fiction.