{"id":754,"date":"2019-01-19T02:08:48","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T02:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=754"},"modified":"2019-01-12T20:03:59","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T20:03:59","slug":"w-nowell-street-cnf-by-gina-bernard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2019\/01\/19\/w-nowell-street-cnf-by-gina-bernard\/","title":{"rendered":"W. Nowell Street by Gina Bernard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gina Marie Bernard is a heavily tattooed transgender woman, retired roller derby vixen, and full-time English teacher. She lives in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her daughters, Maddie and Parker, own her heart. Her chapbook Naked, Getting Nuder was a 2018-2019 Glass Chapbook series finalist, and is under contract with Clare Songbirds Publications. Her chapbook Taxonomies was a finalist for Thirty West Publishing House’s 2018 Chapbook Contest. Her chapbook I Am This Girl was a semifinalist for the Headmistress Press 2018 Charlotte Mew Poetry Chapbook Contest, and was published by Headmistress Press in October 2018. Her work has recently been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


W. Nowell Street<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rain tapers\nas the Burlington Northern cuts across S. Main, adding its weight to the ponderous\nhumidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pad\nbarefoot from the bedroom at 5:00 and move the fans about strategically, a feat\nworthy of pool hall hustlers. Still, I\u2019ll never get back to sleep. Water from\nthe new fridge perspires onto the living room floor as I double knot my Asics.\nI swipe at the moisture with my palm, and press its coolness to my thigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nworld is empty at this hour. From a neighbor\u2019s backyard a dog barks, but only\nonce, and without conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\ntakes me several minutes to synchronize my posture, the swing of my arms, a\nscything motion in my legs. I hold my breath as I pass the cemetery on my\nright\u2014a childhood superstition handed down from my mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\npavement ends. I feel the pitch of this first graveled incline\u2014the pull in my\nquads. Horseflies sense my heat; they bumble into my hair, seek the sweat at\nthe back my neck. My path now tracks west for nearly a mile, hugged closely on\nboth sides by common milkweed, carpets of wild strawberry, and nodding ox-eye\ndaisies. In the damp soil near the ditch I note I am not the first traveler of\nthe morning\u2014deer have minced cautiously from a deep brake of speckled alder. Farther\nalong, dozens of navy blue swallows knife above my head, their fleet wings slicing\nthe heavy air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I swing\nback east at a 90-degree turn in the road. A sign proclaiming \u201cBrush Only\u201d guards\never-growing mountains of bramble. Racing toward dawn, I meet a pickup pulling\na goose-neck trailer freighted with branches. The driver raises a finger from\nhis steering while sipping coffee from an oversized travel mug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Into\ntown, up the block, down the sidewalk, and I arrive home to my cozy cottage\u2014its\nmustard yellow paint peeling into the yard. I sweep mosquitoes from the screen\ndoor; they whine away to hide amid the nightshade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I\ncome inside and sit down to compose this ode to New York Mills, Minnesota, and\nreturn once more to a course I\u2019d never run before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gina Marie Bernard is a heavily tattooed transgender woman, retired roller derby vixen, and full-time English teacher. She lives in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her daughters, Maddie and Parker, own her heart. Her chapbook Naked, Getting Nuder was a 2018-2019 Glass Chapbook series finalist, and is under contract with Clare Songbirds Publications. Her chapbook Taxonomies was a … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-non-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-ca","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}