Jonathan Riccio
Associate Editor James Ellenberger: What young kid isn’t enthralled with the world of enormous old bones that were once thunder lizards? In mixing dinosaur-themed language and imagery with that of baseball, Jonathan Riccio urges us consider the many histories that make us, well, us. I’m particularly fond of how, in resisting one history for the literal bones of another, Riccio explores the complicated charade of bloodline-as-allegiance, which the father seems to believe in, and the seemingly impossible (though it’s right there; feel your neck ache, craning as it tries to comprehend a single spine) history of the world as framed by these long-dead behemoths.
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Gary, Child Paleontologist, 11
By Jonathan Riccio
Dad thinks I should land a free throw as well as I curate a Tyrannosaurus rex. It’s the Pangaea that counts, I tell opponents good-gaming us after they lost. Cousin Randy dressed as a pterodactyl mascot, ‘peer’ inter- actions like mating an omnivore with an umpire. Ref. My mistake, Dad; plans piecemealing a triceratops while running laps. Arrowhead collections are one thing. A piano bench of saberteeth, there’s an exhibit for that. I toiled the Double Windsor (almost, Dad), landed the twenty-footer. Lay-ups in lieu of mammoths, voices troubling me for the antediluvian time. The brochure underlines it clearly. Dose the docent, says the doctor encouraged to sop his microraptor—Eat it in paleo-slang. There goes Tuesday’s field trip. Nobody else hears the tenor ask about stegosaur plating. Dad’s resolve, a shot clock schizoaffective with swoosh.
Jonathan Riccio is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers where he serves as an associate editor at Mississippi Review. His work appears in Booth, Cleaver, Hawai’i Review, Permafrost, and Waxwing, among others. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona.
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