Night with Gooseberries
By: Per Olvmyr
At night a man filled his garage with gooseberries.
He thought it would be nice to cover a room with an overwhelming variety of green fuzziness.
His wife, on the other hand, immediately suspects something with his repeated visits to the bushes.
The fresh, ripe berries – what could they mean?
Who knows what will happen if a man walks around this light green darkness for too long.
A desire materializes so easily in a hidden space of a house and gradually becomes more and more hairy and sour-tasting.
Not at all like the nice sweat between a woman's thighs, not as sweet and salty.
But if you just squeeze that desire between your fingertips hard enough, she thought, and started pinching all the gooseberries.
Yes, she pinched all the gooseberries. And so she did it again and again and again.
There's nothing like pinching your husband's gooseberries, she thought.
Per Olvmyr lives in Malmö, Sweden, and has been published by Evergreen review, Poetry Wales, Takahē, Baltimore review and other magazines. His work was nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net. He can often be found in parks engaged in long conversations with Basset Hounds.
Audrey-Anna Gamache is a writer and filmmaker based in New England. Her work has appeared in Chestnut Review, Chaotic Merge Magazine, and The Bloomin’ Onion. She can be found on X and Instagram @ScoutyLynch.