Fiction from Jeffrey Hermann

Photo: József Szabó

How to Be Soft in a Hard World

Imagine aliens on an alien plant. Now imagine them with broken hearts. Now imagine a new shape for a heart. Find someone with a terrible tattoo and tell them you love them for it. Tell them it’s forever. Take pride in lifting something heavy for someone. Then grow old and ask someone younger to do the same for you. When she was 80 my grandmother confessed that when she was a young mother she started drinking a beer in the afternoons while she was ironing or folding. Then it was two beers. Three. Then six. Catching herself drunk when her daughter got home from school, she quit. I can imagine my own mother as a girl, in a poodle skirt and Mary Janes, walking in the front door. I can imagine my grandmother slurring her words and being in love. Now get yourself a pail. Go and pick blackberries from those bushes along the busy road where people you know might see you. Fill the pail. Lick your purple fingers. Never kill anything.
.

.
Jeffrey Hermann‘s poetry and fiction has appeared in Okay Donkey, Electric Lit, Heavy Feather, trampset, and other publications. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.