by Brandy McKenzie
In the middle of my writer’s block, I send my sister pictures of tattoos, flash, to be specific, giving her the sense of something bright and maybe new, but what I mean is old, from times when gentle ladies didn’t get tattoos, except those few women whose images we still share as extraordinary, the occasional photos we’ve seen each silvered in its own rebellions, laying wide the secrets tucked inside pale linen or striped wool, or even layer upon layer of both, for security, for silence. But hush: now I’m mixing seasons and corrupting the lens, dust and scratch. These women were alive, narrating their bodies in a way few would speak of in their day. And so the flash I’ve chosen hearkens back, a woman lounging on a crescent moon, Edwardian curls just so above selenic skin, bared and curved into the crescent like women do, or did, some private longing language as though it were a ferry, sailing her from this world to the next, or just from one life to another, a sibling’s lifetime apart from her only sister, a body so close to hers that they share a breath, a distant memory of molecular proximity, an eye that blinks in papered memories of recording, a semblance no one speaks but them. Brandy McKenzie is an experienced and award-winning writer who has also been a sandwich slinger, a music purveyor, a bookseller, a fabric slicer, a resale sorter, an art literacy instructor, a college professor, a newsletter editor, a paralegal, a vendor hall coordinator, an educational consultant, a copywriter, a mother, and always, always, since she was 8 years old, a poet.
January House Literary Journal 
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