Dan Leach
Fist Fight with Older Sibling
blood back then
tasted like pennies
it was only red
in your mouth
once dried
on your shirt
it looked brown
as any mud
closer in color
to your brother’s hair
remember
you are remembered
as the one
who always lost
hate it but
remember anyway
how closely love
walked with cruelty
how when they said
stay down
they meant
the opposite
Nostalgia
The two girls smoking grapevine
at the bottom
of a dried-up creek
will forever be laughing
in the memory of a boy
who was walking
through the woods
and heard voices
just in time to turn
and see the plumes
from the earth
rising like a song
written in a tongue
long since dead
Dan Leach
Dan Leach has published work in The New Orleans Review, Copper Nickel, and The Sun. He has two collections of short fiction: “Floods and Fires” (University of North Georgia, 2017) and “Dead Mediums” (Trident Press, 2022). An instructor of English at Charleston Southern University, he lives in the lowcountry of South Carolina with his partner and kids.