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Alligator
by Anthony DeGregorio
I dreamed there was
an alligator in the house.
Not this house, my childhood home. By
the back door in the kitchen leading to the backyard. He stood with me at my
side, both of us looking out over the rock littered dirt and grass patches, the
grounds of our games and adventures. The
1/8 acre slanted at a precarious angle leading beyond suburbia’s oblivion,
mapping the path he had travelled to get to my house and would retrace to
return to nowhere. For a moment we were
pals staring into the abyss of the future before we realized we could not be
together like that. Could not peer
either into unshared memory of decades ago when a prehistoric-looking creature
could have been my companion and the fear of his nature never entered my
mind.
Anthony
DeGregorio’s writing has appeared or is scheduled to appear in various
publications, including Libre, Abandoned Mine, Italian America
Magazine, Aromatica Poetica, Bloom, Nowhere, Wales
Haiku Journal, Polu Texni, and So It Goes: The Literary
Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
He
taught
writing at Manhattanville College for twenty years, and in another life or two
or three he worked in various capacities for the Department of Social Services,
much of that time while teaching at night. Prior to that is anyone’s guess, but
don’t let that stop you.
KJ Hannah Greenberg is eclectic.
She’s played oboe, participated in martial arts, learned basket
weaving, and studied Middle Eastern dancing. What’s more, she’s a certified herbalist,
and an AP College Board-authorized teacher of calculus. Her creative efforts have been nominated once for The Best of the Net in
poetry, once for The Best of the Net in art, three times for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for
poetry, once for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for fiction, once for the Million Writers
Award for fiction, and once for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the
Art of the Essay. To boot, Hannah’s had more than forty-five books published and has
served as an editor for several literary journals. Check out her latest short fiction collection, An Orbit of Chairs: https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Chairs-KJ-Hannah-Greenberg/dp/B0CWMMM73T Within its pages are two tales originally published at Yellow Mama: "Alive Another Day" and
"Light Notes." Channie's new art book, Life's Colors, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGCTHJ6Z, just launched (hit "read
sample" button). It contains images originally published by Yellow Mama.
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