Pencil Shavings: Outhouses

Out of the house, outside, in the yard—not on the rug.
[Evangeline Delgado, Bozeman, MT]

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Genny smelled bile, but it was the only place Jacob wouldn’t find her; she could hear him still counting by the oak.
[Kimberly MacCormack, Dover, MA]

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He peeked inside the abyss, thinking of the newspaper he had found that morning telling of a baby that had fallen into the depths of an outhouse.
[Allison Avila-Olivares, Framingham, MA]

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“Well, do we still have the bucket?”
[Daphne Reed, Asheville, NC]

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I have been so long in this thatched basket; little sickle, you are my new moon.
[Gabriella Fee, Lincoln, MA]

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The network of flies and their invisible, charted flights formed the trellis, the pergola, and the braces on which heat and must and stench draped, twisted like vines, bloomed (and were not beautiful, per se, but raw: barbaric spines, stamens like headdresses, petals the color of a bloody earth after a ritual to Ahriman, the oldest god), bulged like a ripe, full fruit.
[Kevin Hong, Needham, MA]

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