Gerard Coletta
Scotch Mist
Google Santorini and you get lit terraces, infinity pools, everything but the shape of the caldera.
I think that when you die, that’s the end. How much better, though, if the breath mattered more
than the lungs. I could feel the cold drizzle on my skin that morning but I couldn’t for the life of me
see it. The sea off Castle Island looked exactly like tonight’s sky, a sea snail’s ash-foot fire-flecked
with sand, ash everywhere, ash ashing the waters. The ugly simile spread on the water and we all
ignored it, all turned away. It’s laundry day today, everybody in the neighborhood somehow
better-looking in their laundry day clothes, carrying detergent as buckets to a well, anticipating-
their bridegrooms. It’s Monday and I’ve avoided the darts, I haven’t been nuked, I’m wearing white
pants and I am triumphant. Here, tonight, it’s someone’s 1950s. The women wore wigs in those days,
the story goes. I like your hair he said. She pulled off her wig, threw it in his face. You like it?
Have it. This was several scotches in, of course. It’s Victoria Day in Canada, all the Canadians
on vacation posting pictures in Greece. It’s Sunday, always, no matter what the numbers say,
the people, the hours, the rain gull-wheeling overhead, me squatting on the cliff of the present.
Gerard Coletta is originally from Boston, but currently lives in Brooklyn. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Adirondack Review, Boston Review, B O D Y, Open City, Print-Oriented Bastards, and elsewhere.
Return to May 2016 Edition
Google Santorini and you get lit terraces, infinity pools, everything but the shape of the caldera.
I think that when you die, that’s the end. How much better, though, if the breath mattered more
than the lungs. I could feel the cold drizzle on my skin that morning but I couldn’t for the life of me
see it. The sea off Castle Island looked exactly like tonight’s sky, a sea snail’s ash-foot fire-flecked
with sand, ash everywhere, ash ashing the waters. The ugly simile spread on the water and we all
ignored it, all turned away. It’s laundry day today, everybody in the neighborhood somehow
better-looking in their laundry day clothes, carrying detergent as buckets to a well, anticipating-
their bridegrooms. It’s Monday and I’ve avoided the darts, I haven’t been nuked, I’m wearing white
pants and I am triumphant. Here, tonight, it’s someone’s 1950s. The women wore wigs in those days,
the story goes. I like your hair he said. She pulled off her wig, threw it in his face. You like it?
Have it. This was several scotches in, of course. It’s Victoria Day in Canada, all the Canadians
on vacation posting pictures in Greece. It’s Sunday, always, no matter what the numbers say,
the people, the hours, the rain gull-wheeling overhead, me squatting on the cliff of the present.
Gerard Coletta is originally from Boston, but currently lives in Brooklyn. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Adirondack Review, Boston Review, B O D Y, Open City, Print-Oriented Bastards, and elsewhere.
Return to May 2016 Edition