Assistant Editor Holli Carrell: This week’s flash story examines the physical and emotional repercussions of the Black Hills gold rush on one family. With haunting and visceral imagery, Gleason invites us inside the psyche of a young speaker grappling with grief, greed, and their father’s absence.
Listen to Therese read her piece:
Motherlode
Daddy went to Deadwood and got dead, swallowed up by the Black Hills. Nobody knows where, they just say he’s gone forever. I don’t believe them—he’ll come back one day, rich as a king, bags sagging with gold, pockets bulging with watches, hoops in his ears, bracelets up to his elbow, and a new ring for Mama that won’t turn her finger green. Grandfather mutters in German, lips tight. Uncle coughs and spits blood in a handkerchief: Let them toss him in a pit in the Badlands where he belongs. There’s a graveyard out there, Mount Moriah. I picture a lady angel with granite wings outstretched, sheltering the lonely bones. But not Daddy’s. I toss and turn, straw tick itching my legs. Mama cries silently with her back to me. I reach out to touch her but stop, my hand hovering above her shoulder. She doesn’t want me to notice. I flop onto my back, fall asleep to the baby’s snuffles, his chubby arm flung over my chest. I dream of darkness, heavy and moist: Daddy’s fingernails growing long and sharp in the dirt, spiral claws reaching deep into black earth, still searching for that jugular of gold.
Therese Gleason is author of three chapbooks: Hemicrania (forthcoming, Chestnut Review, 2024); Matrilineal (Finishing Line, 2021), and Libation (South Carolina Poetry Initiative, 2006). Her work appears in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, New Ohio Review, Notre Dame Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she lives in Worcester, MA. More: https://theresegleason.com/.
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