Edenic
Edenic is the first runner up of Paperbark’s Spring 2022 Flash Fiction Contest
by Genelle Chaconas
once the backyard of the new trailer was picked at long last free of weeds though we left the ancestral giants the tallest was a milk thistle which towered like a grand feathered sun serpent suspended six feet in the air and fearsome the most fearsome of which was the bramble twined hopelessly through the fence not only its thorns but the bees that guarded it both she and I agreed that the mire of spines would be better than any razor wire that’s when we saw it wedged deep in the hollow of the oak its little vanished eyes the skull of a youth roe deer its antlers blackened at the tips we searched the whole yard for any more bones finding none she and I realized no there is no way it could have died here it was placed here likely for Halloween we had moved in the first days of October we hoped it wasn’t there for us still we thought why not let’s clean it up try as we might it did not feel at ease atop a bookcase we figured a matter of time but that night or rather morning at six I just couldn’t anymore it didn’t take long digging in the chilly wet earth there was no moon to see with still when I knew it was deep enough I faced the skull towards the horse paddock I’d seen its skittish kin lurk near the now scant berries I hoped if it got lonely they could visit it we had one last rose bush left which I planted over the spot there was nothing to say so I said nothing but simply asked please let that be enough
Genelle Chaconas is nonbinary, queer, is an abuse survivor, thrives with a mood disorder, and is proud. They reside in the wild hinterlands of the Midwest (they took a wrong turn at Albuquerque). Their first novel, Plague City, won the Kenneth Patchen Award for the Innovative Novel from the Journal of Experimental Fiction in 2019. They designed the cover art for Plague. They’re head editor of HockSpitSlurp, which is on hiatus but not forever. Their chapbooks include Fallout, Saints and Dirty Pictures (little m press, 2009) and Yet Wave (the Lune, 2017). They earned an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in 2016. They’ve been published a lot but don’t namedrop. Their artwork has been sold widely and even served as album covers. They enjoy cheap takeout, drone/noise/industrial music, B-rated gangster and horror flicks, and long walks off short piers. Find them on Twitter @h0n3ybdg3rgrrr1