It takes sixty-three days to whelp a puppy. Do that every few months and you’ve got yourself a pack. I’d be the leader, of course, padding after them, teaching them to say I love you. If you were here I’d show you. If you were here, though, I wouldn’t need to.
Cheryl Snell writes as revenge against reality. That’s her story and she’s sticking to it.
Winged shadow blues the snow. Arrows in, drops a key into the window box. Brings you gifts, this crow─ green ribbon, pink pebbles. Remembers your kindness from when he was a chick.
Does he know you’re leaving? Fasten his key to your chain in case one of you gets lost.
Cheryl Snell is fluent in subtext.
Two sisters decide to adopt an old woman. They find one selling roses on the corner. She is entangled in blue weather, crying in the rain. We’ve come to rescue you, the girls say, pulling her into their car, roses and all. The woman stops crying. She begins to scream.
Cheryl Snell writes as revenge against reality.
Flour spilled in the kitchen
is swept outside to merge
with a tossed crust of bread
borne by two rows of ants
going down the hill toward
the underground grotto
where a rabbit holds
a perfect English muffin
between her paws─
her aspirational muffin.
She’d rather starve than eat it.
Cheryl Snell writes poetry and fiction.
After the fluid was sucked from my brain, other systems crashed. A bag on my leg, helmet on my skull. They said I could forget about walking. And then my sister came in, full of our secrets. “Remember when I taught you how to pick a lock? Pick this one.”
Cheryl Snell lives to tell the tale.
It was a pure voice, sweet and musical. I heard the choirboy in it, the sound a flock of birds shimmering along the length of his throat. He was always singing about love. Would he have done that if he’d known how soon it fades, or how quietly it dies?
Cheryl Snell writes stories with at least a grain of truth in them.
Marriage fails. Diamond falls out. Stone resembles tinsel crushed after another drunken Christmas. Not so fast, mother says. Diamond is not metaphor. Pair it with a nice gold chain. Same gem, different context. Pendant arrives; oh my chained neck. Locked in mother’s jewelry box ever after, it sparkles at nothing.
Cheryl Snell’s books include poetry and fiction.
My sister is in pieces under a stone flower vase. She has missed three years and is no older than she was before. Three years of blinking wrists, numbers on radios and ovens, and she is still the thing that’s absent. How brazen time is, proceeding this blithely without her.
Cheryl Snell’s books include poetry and fiction.
veiled dawn
rose and gold
heel heel toe toe
rising wet steam
whiff of coffee
breakfast eats
the hour before
you take off
ready to exist and
feeling the sun’s rays
playing lightly
through time
its complicated systems
the driving beat inside
your own heart pleading
don’t stop keep going.
Cheryl Snell writes poetry and fiction of all sizes. She has recent work in Gone Lawn, Impspired, Pure Slush and elsewhere.
I start with the curls, snip the dark with the silver somersaulting to the floor. If I drop the scissors you’ll say it means one of us is unfaithful, but I’m not superstitious. I know the quirks of scissors: twin arms easily uncoupled but better together, though crossed as swords.
Cheryl Snell’s most recent work is a series called “Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries.” See more at cherylsnell.weebly.com.