Issue Twenty-Eight - Summer 2016

Navigating the Cultural Practices of Suburban Wisconsinites

By Drew Attana

I learned to listen for the low squeak
of cheese curds between my teeth,

that noise matching the satisfaction
of new flavor and even newer family,

and you and I sat somewhere inside
the expanse of porch and wilderness

watching locally packed bratwursts
sizzle and burst on the grill, letting

your mom talk about men and women
and about what she needed to do next

until both night and he came home —
her man — smelling of dirt and smoke,

and we watched him crack a High Life,
then lug a box of illegal fireworks up

from the basement and insist we all aim
Roman Candles at the crawling tree-line,

the edge of this world guarded by strings
of bird houses and a crumbling faux deer,

the same beast used for target practice,
that one I mistook for flesh and blood.

Copyright Attana 2016

Drew Attana spent over a decade getting into trouble from Tijuana to Portland, before heading South. His fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in Cargo Literary Magazine, Pathos Literary Journal, Eunoia Review, Yellow Chair Review, Drunk Monkeys Magazine, HIV Here and Now Project and is forthcoming in Phoebe Literary Journal, Common Ground Review, HelloHorror Magazine, Merrimack Review, Gulf Stream Literary Journal, West Trade Review, and Apeiron Review. Originally from Las Angeles, he is currently living and writing in Lafayette, Louisiana.

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