THE THINGS YOU SAID AND WHY YOU SAID THEM

by Tyler Corbridge

in the morning when we go swimming in that murky rainwater catch off Crescent Drive you say
“be careful,” and that’s because snapping turtles get most snippy around lunchtime and they
might bite off your goddam pecker. gasoline that’s runoff from the grimy asphalt now smoothes
the surface polychromatic like a fumbled pallette and we watch it squirm under the sun, dizzy as
a kaleidoscope, and you say “don’t touch that” because that might dye your skin and no one
wants to make friends with a watercolor. you say “keep off his lawn” because he’s a drunk with
a mean streak and a mouthful and a real tattoo and a bad kind of Jesus so don’t touch his grass
and don’t say hi. he doesn’t need any friends anyhow. sundown, legs swinging, screen doors
whining, tymbals buckling; soon, under violet sky approaching black, our neighborhood turns
into an old movie and you say “time to come inside” because inside things are simpler and
clearer and outside things begin to change, slowly, surreptitiously, until familiar things are alien;
the way an inadvertently dismissed t-shirt might slouch like a possum in a gutter, or the way the
gutter-water thickens and slows to a stop now black like obsidian with a blush of moonlight; or
how a breeze can personify the night so effectually that you feel eyes following you whichever
way you take. “eat,” you say, because pepper the dog eats too. “sleep,” you say, because it will
stay dark until you do. I wonder, with one hand under my pillow, what the abiding night might
feel like with no tomorrow trailing its heels, my other hand slumps off the bed and out of sight.
“are you still awake?” you say from the doorway, because you hope to wake me. In the morning
when we follow the creek chasing crawdads it is hot outside and we’re happy to roll our pants to
the knee, glad to see gasoline here as well and something new: a bike--erect, not entirely
submerged with its back wheel protruding from the water, tireless--and you say something about

an iceberg and a trick of the eye and I’m not sure why you say it. maybe to sound smart. anyway,
it works, and I feel as though there is something more to today than fishing nets, lunchboxes, and
warm mayonnaise.

Author Bio:

Tyler Corbridge is an Assistant Professor of English at Columbia College and Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. His work has previously appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Salt Hill Journal, Fjords Review, Gravel Literary Magazine, Five Quarterly, New Plains Review, and Elsewhere Magazine, among others. In 2019, he earned an MFA in Fiction from the University of Alabama.

Artist Bio:

Mario Loprete’s new series of concrete sculptures has been giving him more personal and professional satisfaction recently. How was it born? It was the result of an important investigation of his own work. He was looking for that special something he felt was missing. Looking back at his work over the past ten years, he understands that there was a certain semantic and semiotic logic “spoken” by his images.