Grandpa’s Blood
fiction by Justin Rigamonti & Mixed MEdia by Ellen RobinetteFrank Jr. was surprised he took pleasure in the coolness of the dirt. He would have smiled if he could, just to push his cheekbone deeper.
A speck of dust floated up from where his nose pressed flat against the ground. He tried to bring it into focus, gently relaxing and contracting his right eye. Too close for that—it stayed a blurry orb until it passed out of view.
The world began to orient itself according to his adjusted perspective, rotating until his vertical horizon felt level again, earth on his left and sky on his right. He imagined himself divided like that—dirt on one side and light on the other. And running down the middle, like a plumb line, like a splash of tractor oil, was Grandpa’s blood.
The blood was almost black except where surface tension made a rounded lip, and there it looked crimson against the blue sky. It was flecked with dust and the seeds of a dandelion puffball. A brown ant tentatively tacked at the wall with its antennae.
And he could smell it, the blood. Over the sharp perfume of gasoline, over the acrid smoke, he could smell the copper of it, the way it mixed with the soil. Sort of like the smell of the fields after summer rain. And Grandpa himself was close by, in his flannel shirt, just out of view, though different now. Larger.
Frank Jr. was growing too. He could feel the expanded oscillation of each new second, the rising amplitude of his life. Blood and earth and sky began to blur. Someone was shouting in the distance now, closer and closer, and he wished they would hurry so they could feel this too, so they could climb inside the feeling before it was gone.
Justin Rigamonti’s (he/him) poems and stories have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Best New Poets 2025. He helps coordinate the crossgenre music and poetry series, Chatter PDX.
jrigamonti.com - IG @jrigamonti