- Olivia Brooks
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Family Portrait: Featuring a Talala, Oklahoma Sunset
Bleeding across a late-July sky like a delicious headwound. Mom is still alive, riding the turn of
the century’s collarbone. Dad skips dinner, to work, but we know the glow from his office’s
window is a World of Warcraft raid. My brother is in the Tulsa County lockup for the night, after
stealing DVDs in the garden section of Walmart. There’s a giant pool that wobbles like a mouth
spilling secrets when my sisters push the sides down. Water fills pockets in the dirt and I scoop
out earth worms, grasshoppers, and roly-polys. I’ve never seen the ocean, but I imagine these are
tidepools. Mom says we’ll move to the coast someday. Maybe we’ll leave Dad and my brother
behind? Thick swarms of mosquitos open blooms like science fair volcanos on our skin. The
birds are molting, hungry, hummingbirds sucking at nectar, chickadees and wrens at the feeder,
killdeer retreating with a cold hotdog. Bats smudge dusk in soft pastels. Lightning bugs emerge
and Mom shows us how to softly fill a jar with eyes. The neighbors are jealous of our leftover
Black Cats. Mom even lets me light one of the fuses. I dive into the tall grass and forget the ticks
when a wail like an uncaged animal fills the night sky. Silence. Then, bursting of color,
slipstream like a little god spent a million dandelion spores.
DANIEL LURIE is a Jewish, rural writer, from eastern Montana. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho. Daniel is co-editor of Outskirts Literary Journal and a Poetry Reader for Chestnut Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Pleiades, North American Review, Sonora Review, and others. He was recently long-listed for Palette Poetry’s Micro Chapbook Prize and awarded a 2025-2026 Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Find him at danielluriepoetry.com.