The Game of Departure, by Jennifer Battisti

Darling, she mutters, nocturnal, the wild suburban in her clinging to his departure like a small static sock pulled from the dryer. My father doesn’t reply. The buzzer goes berserk, a hostile Goodnight! I come upon the lion in the kitchen. It licks a circle of bologna suctioned to the linoleum. I tuck my stuffed giraffe beside his gargantuan paws, greasy with nitrates. Next day, my father stares into the abundant yield of the harvest—rows and rows of poker tables. He spins a stack of gaming chips between his nimble fingers, sunlight racing through. My mother watches from the clothesline, the laundry basket on her hip, bone dry. The lion drops stuffing guts at my feet. He leaves the beheaded giraffe for me to repair. 

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Jennifer Battisti is a lifelong Nevadan. She is a Teaching Artist for SPRAT! Her writing has appeared in the Desert Companion, Witness, Brevity, and elsewhere. She created the collage cover art for Star-Tent: A Triptych. She is the author of Echo Bay and Off Boulder Highway (Tolsun Books)