So Long at the Fair
By Liz Berry
Smudged the House
“Today feels haunted,” she tells me.
My puppy, startled out of a dead sleep,
Let loose two mournful howls.
Come to think of it, my cat did the same
Last night,
When the wind swept through,
Blowing out the last of the sweltering heat.
“It’s the boy,” I tell her, “The one killed at the fair.”
We called for a blood sacrifice,
A silent pact: That a life might be
Trampled into the dirt —
And we, the bedraggled townsfolk,
Would allow it.
For a breath of cooled air,
Sweaty tendrils lifted
From scorched necks.
We got what we wanted.
But today feels haunted.
He misses his body,
The weight of it,
The warmth of blood moving beneath his skin.
We let him slip,
And now he lingers,
Chilled,
In the wind that brought us relief.
John Jackson, Paris, 2025, fujifilm 100v, 9:6.
Elizabeth Berry is a writer and photographer from Texas whose debut poetry collection, Tell Me This Mattered, was published in April 2025. Her work explores themes of music, memory, and creative transformation. She is currently completing a second poetry collection and co-writing a young adult novel with her husband, Doug. She documents the indie rock scene on Black Lodge Music's blog and shares essays and new writing on Substack.
John Jackson is a photographer based in Southwest Missouri. His work documents nothing more than the world as he sees it. Being fortunate enough to travel extensively for the last two and a half decades has given him the opportunity to share the little things in life that mean so much to him.