Rachelle Hanna (a slideshow)
The Whole of Boredom
The Dispeller of All Distress
When the phone rang so late at night at her parents’ house, Angie knew it had to be relatives—either her father’s in India or her mother’s in Baltimore. From her perch at the top of the stairs on the second floor, she heard that it was her mother’s people: a cousin Elizabeth saying that Aunt Pina, her mother’s sister, died… Read more →
morning coffee
rolling ribboned smoke spits sound a breath of thunder calls from the mouth of morning I hear angels who learned to shriek and not to sing every day; I lean over their song I step from beat to beat and sway through repetition and count seconds mirrored between days – one, two, three – cold turns to boil on my… Read more →

muchacha turn yourself into
Thunder Story
Love me some thunder but not when it threatens to crack open the delicate shell of my wedding day to Tootie Miller. Tootie, all swag-haired and sparkletooth and me, my belly full of Tootie’s kid, five months round by now. When Tootie proposed after six years of on and off and other women and then floating back to me, it… Read more →
How to Capture a Summer
The idea of it is to go forward into the trees or what at least we can call phrases and smoke from fire. Two phrases could have burst and have interconnected, too melancholy, a fountain, a fierce sense, that the world is summer and suddenly going to become true. As insects fall like laughter between our words, insects the summer… Read more →

The coin night-minted
Strawberry Sale
My mother texts me a link to a local news story: “8-year-old boy dies after eating strawberries from school fundraiser.” I sit on the toilet, bleeding, as I read this headline. I am 6 weeks postpartum, and my period has already returned. Not just some spotting – a full, heavy period. My body, ready to go. My almost-8-year-old boy just… Read more →