Driving highway 50, a bluff that used to hold an oak forest, now
metal structures, framework for new housing. Earthquake proof.
We meet a few people for lunch: pasta and salad. Children play
in the grass. In the distance, a unicorn steps from the trees,
cavorts, tosses its mane, nostrils flare, horn grown overlarge.
This is not your typical beast that lives in Flemish tapestries
adorned with flowers woven around neck and underbelly.
Snarling, “Just because I’m mythic doesn’t mean I’m chaste
or even carnivorous. I could even be androgynous.”
I noticed the smell of turpentine, hooves painted black
studded with red stones. Legs folded under, he gnaws
on a meaty bone. “I have incredible speed, can turn on a dime.”
We need a coffee. Is it decaf? No, Nevada Black, a brew that will
keep us up all night. Driving home we take a side road, stop
at an old country town, not on the map. A man runs out of a
dilapidated shack, “She loves me; she finally says she loves me.”
Jeanine Stevens’ latest publications are No Lunch Among the Day Stars (Cold River Press) and Tea in the Nuns’ Library (Eyewear Publishing, UK.) Work has appeared in Chiron Review, Evansville Review, Rosebud, So it Goes: Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. Jeanine is Professor Emerita at American River College, Sacramento, California.
