Risk
by Dayna Patterson
Our first and only family game of Risk ended in truce, no one wiped from the board, although I’d conquered half the globe and was poised to annihilate both my daughters, and my spouse of fifteen years. My purple-black troops were everywhere, virus-like. I had artillery guarding every sea line, every possible point of invasion, cavalry in Madagascar and Brazil ready to wipe my eldest’s orange infantry right off the map. A host amassed in Alaska to bully into Kamchatka where my youngest’s green was spread thin. Instead of Mom, they called me Thanos, Darth Vader, Adolf. They skirted off to side rooms, whispered secret pacts, scuttling back to the kitchen with flaring faces, sparks in their eyes. How I would crush them, hailing southward from Iceland, stampeding northward from the Cape of Good Hope. Then my youngest, after ousting her sister from Japan, called for an end. I’m happy with Asia. Bursting both small hands repeatedly over the board, a magician’s gesture, Trees trees trees, we’re planting trees all over to make up for the blood. They sprouted from the game board in time-lapse speed: seed, sapling, twelve-foot trunks punching holes in the roof, letting a star-washed sky peep in.
About the Author:
Dayna Patterson is the author of Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020). Her creative work has appeared recently in Carolina Quarterly, Duende, EcoTheo, and Gulf Coast. She is the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre and a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry. She was a co-winner of the 2019 #DignityNotDetention Poetry Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky. daynapatterson.com. Twitter handle: @TitaniaYellow
About Weekly Flash Prose and Poetry:
CutBank Online features one work of flash prose or prose poetry every Monday. Submissions are free and open year-round. Send us your best work of 750 words or less at https://cutbank.submittable.com/submit.