Scout Locket

Crow taught his specter mother how to sew dresses from what had once been her favorite windowsill. She sewed dresses so unattractive that no one would want them, and she could keep them as her daughters. Each dress with an x of a body, she blew copal over where their ears and their shoulders should be. See how bold your sisters would be, and when the dresses rose and billowed in the cold sun, they drifted away, said good-bye, mother.

Monique Quintana is a Xicana from Fresno, CA, and is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). Her work has been published in Maudlin House, Wildness, Lost Balloon, Okay Donkey, and The Acentos Review, among others. Her work has also been supported by Yaddo, The Sundress Academy for the Arts, The Community of Writers, and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She was the inaugural winner of Amplify’s Writer of Color Fellowship and is a contributing editor at Luna Luna Magazine, where she writes book reviews, artist interviews, and personal essays. You can find her at @quintanagothic and moniquequintana.com.