They were plucked out of the bleachers, one by one, like a terrible piecemeal rapture gone before the buzzer sounded as if to get a jump on things. They were all, as people say, good moms. I didn’t know them well enough to say goodbye but I've known their kids almost as long as mine. In the hierarchy of grief I can only send a card. Sometimes I see them out of the corner of my eye, months or years after they were taken: coming out of the Target dressing room, in line at the grocery store. I almost say a name. When I walk my dog during the restless hour— the witching hour, we called it— when everyone is hungry, unsettled, the smell of dinner, almost ready, wafts from every few houses. It’s getting dark earlier, a school night in late fall, and I think I see one in a window. She leans over the table, and then turns away. I don’t know what I owe them, or why I was allowed to stay.
Jennifer Blackledge lives just south of Detroit in an area The New York Times called "the vast suburban-industrial wasteland known as Downriver", a description she begrudgingly acknowledges as accurate. She works at a large automotive company and holds a B.A. from Michigan State University and an M.F.A. from Brown University. Her work has been or will be published in JAMA, I-70 Review, Scientific American, Medmic, The Lake, Verdad, Arboreal, and other places.
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2/7 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Farnaz Fatemi + local writer Fabienne Josaphat / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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