'Texas' and 'Santa Barbara', by Leah Browning
Texas
Where are you sitting when Wheel of Fortune comes on?
When Vanna White crosses the stage in her floor-length gown
and touches her fingers to the bright green tiles
until they become something else?
It could be almost any day of the week. Pat Sajak with his suit
and friendly banter, bending at the waist to spin the wheel.
I used to sit on the green shag carpet in the living room
while you cooked dinner just down the hall.
He died in that kitchen, and now I think how difficult
it must have been to walk in there every day, but what can you do
in this life? I used to sleep in my uncle’s old room with
the bookshelves full of books and the enormous mahogany desk.
The grass in the yard was thick and scratched my ankles
and in summer it was too hot even under the palm trees
but back inside Tom Selleck is young again, gliding across
the screen, and you are in the kitchen, and I wish it would never end.
Santa Barbara
At the hotel in Santa Barbara,
three ducks with pompadours
strutted around the inner courtyard,
passing right outside my window
on the grass next to the water.
All they needed were leather jackets
and pocketknives and a choreographed
dance. Earlier that day, I’d driven past
a store called Wigs and Toupees.
Coincidence? I wanted to laugh
but the ringleader turned toward me,
and I could see that he was the type
who took himself seriously
and expected others to as well.
An arrogant, humorless sort of
person. But then he was so little
and dignified, and I couldn’t help
softening toward him; I didn’t want
to offend him by laughing.
He averted his glossy black eyes
and strode on across the grass
with his dangerous sidekicks,
all three of them tossing their hair
and making a show of just how much
they couldn’t be bothered
with me.
Leah Browning is the author of Two Good Ears, a mini-book of flash fiction published by Silent Station Press in 2021, and six chapbooks of poetry and fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Four Way Review, The Broadkill Review, Oyster River Pages, Forge, Watershed Review, Belletrist Magazine, Poetry South, The Stillwater Review, Superstition Review, and other literary journals and anthologies.
Photography by Stephen