Gina Marie Bernard
Image from Pixabay
Gina Marie Bernard will someday brew mead from honey produced in her apiary. Gina's daughters, Maddie and Parker, share her heart. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best Micro-Fictions, and The Pushcart. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at University of Arkansas, Monticello. She is a heavily tattooed transgender woman, retired roller derby vixen, and lifelong unipolar depressive. She teaches high school English in Bemidji, Minnesota.
Mercy
I am 18. We have just passed through Walker, Minnesota.
We pull behind us a trailer loaded for my dormitory.
Slate sky. Cold drizzle. The steady beat of wiper blades
keeping time to “Smoky Mountain Rain.”
One corner of blue tarpaulin snaps wildly. Father curses
the exposed mattress in his rearview mirror.
A flash of brown! Thwump!
He brakes—we fish tail.
The hood is wrinkled. A thin scream rises from the radiator,
Ronnie Milsap tinny in the lower door speakers.
The fawn sprawls across wet pavement—eyes white with panic.
It scrambles for the trees, but its back legs do not respond.
He puts on his emergency blinkers. Pops the trunk.
Steps out. Opens a tool box. Stands over the yearling.
Shoves the cuff of his sweatshirt past an elbow.
And raises the hammer well above his head.
The song ends. The DJ announces he isn’t sure
when this cold front will pass.
©2021 West Trade Review
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