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Click title to download microchap
Cover design using
Alabama Media Group article photo
‘Former Selma pastor: Don’t rename
Edmund Pettus Bridge’
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Good Trouble
I was fifteen
in a small Alabama town
when I first heard your name
John Lewis, then
Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Their clubs cracked your bones.
Their tear gas clogged your lungs.
An iron pipe almost ended your life.
But you stood up.
You walked on
for fifty years plus more,
modeling resilience, leaving a trail of hope.
When you died,
the earth slowed
the sun dimmed
the air thinned.
The world would never be the same.
Full smile, baritone voice.
Gone.
But we are not alone.
You left us with your words
a way to persevere.
“Walk with the wind, brothers and sisters,
and let the spirit of peace and the power
of everlasting love be your guide.”
Mama’s Corsage
girl, just look at that flower
all green and yellow swimming together
spilling over the edge like rainbow sherbet
mama made in july and spooned
into glass cups that slipped
from our sticky hands
crashing on the black and white
linoleum she laid when too old
to bear children.
just look at those petals
fringed in lavender a feather boa
she tossed over her shoulder
cascading down
a satin back saturday nights
as daddy dipped her to radio blues
with us praying for long legs
and to stay up past nine
when ella and billie
brought it on home.
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Thirteen
We hate the tall grass by the river
afraid we'll step on a cottonmouth.
But water the color of indigo
waits for us the other side of danger.
We shed jeans shirts underwear
mark our place at the edge
hold hands like Ruth and Naomi
wading into the deep.
With each step water moves higher
chills our new breasts.
I throw my arms around Anna Claire
press against her for warmth.
She pushes away
plunges into the dark blue
surfaces arches
plunges again
swims under me
and cradles my back in her palms
lifting me to the air
so I float on her fingertips.
Her hands move gently
touching my shoulder and thigh
as she kisses my lips
uncloses my eyes with her tongue.
We don't say a word
reach the point of mooring
and venture back through tall grass.
Blackbirds
Like a canopy of darkness
they shadow the ground for miles
on currents that lift them
back to their roosts.
Years later I ask my father
if he gathered us
to watch thousands
swoop down on trees
sit wing to wing
till morning branches cracked
under their weight.
At daybreak
did they leave the oaks
bare?
He says we never saw them abandon
the hollow and catch a new wind
to an unharvested south
but often would see their return
black streaks
on a September afternoon.
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Chella Courington © 2021
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Chella Courington (she/they) is a writer and teacher whose poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals including Lavender Review, Spillway, and Gargoyle. With three chapbooks of flash fiction and six of poetry, she recently published a novella-in-flash, Adele and Tom: The Portrait of a Marriage (Breaking Rules Publishing), featured at Vancouver Flash Fiction. A Pushcart, Best Small Fiction, Best New Poet, and Best of the Net Nominee, Courington was raised in the Appalachian south and now lives in California.