Emily Ate the Wind, Peter Conners

Emily in the Hallway

There are no night-lights here, but the shades are up on all the windows and the anemic moon bleeds into the hallway. Little feet. The lime green carpet is scratchy and stiff and a few forlorn pictures hang on the wall. Emily pauses to look up at one – a man with unbelievably sad eyes and a ring of sharp wood encircling his forehead. Yawns. Blue light flickers through the stairway railing slats illuminating the green carpet where the pale moonlight gives way. Emily presses her face between two slats. Fits all the way up to her ears. Puffy emerald eyes sweep across the den. No one. On the television a man with three distinct sections of strawberry blonde hair allows a grin to spread with immaculate, slow control across his face until it seems to protrude past his cheeks. Applause. Drum Roll. Laughter. The strawberry blonde man steps back, steps forward, fans his arms out to either side and then swings two karate chops down in front of him. Emily lays her head down on the carpet, drowsily watching the man. Her knees creep closer to her chest. Her thumb finds her mouth. Her little toes curl, release. Her little toes curl, release.


Copyright © 2005-2008 Marick Press All Rights Reserved

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"Sparks of brilliant images light up the compressed worlds Peter Conners creates with words. Music is made with whispers and curses, belches and laughter, pronouncements and asides and sly retorts. Startling lists transform into unsettling truths. The performances in Emily Ate the Wind are dazzling."

—Joanna Scott

Peter Conners is editor of PP/FF: An Anthology (Starcherone Books, 2006), founding co-editor of the literary journal, Double Room, and a contributing editor to Del Sol Review. His third collection of poetry and prose, Of Whiskey and Winter, is forthcoming from White Pine Press. His poetry and prose appear in such journals as Mississippi Review, Fiction International, American Book Review, Salt Hill, and, in several anthologies. He lives in Rochester, NY where he works as Editor/Marketing Director for the literary publisher BOA Editions.