The Strand

 

by Gay Degani

Six on a beach blanket: a crone, a matron, a woman with child, a virgin, a girl, a baby.

1.     Speckled-egg sparrow skin stretched across bony knobs

2.     Muskmelon arms, legs, breasts hiding thin viney veins

3.     Globe belly shifting like tectonic plates beneath terra firma

4.     Splayed legs, fuzz curling between them, a slender stripe of spandex

5.     Toes interred in sand, steepled knees, Tom Sawyer in the cave with Injun Joe

6.     SPF 80 slathered on chubby limbs, binky-mouthed, cheeks salt-stained

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Gay Degani has had three of her flash pieces nominated for Pushcart consideration and won the 11th Glass Woman Prize. Pure Slush Books released her collection of stories, Rattle of Want, (November 2015). She has a suspense novel, What Came Before, published in 2014, and a short collection, Pomegranate, featuring eight stories around the theme of mothers and daughters. Founder and editor emeritus of Flash Fiction Chronicles, she is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly and blogs at Words in Place, where a list of her published work can be found.