It is hot in the basement. They are dizzy. The air is thick with the sermon. The lesson is everlasting; the food supply is not. The apples are rotting. The minister’s teeth bared, he shrieks about God’s hatred and wrath. He will not let them go. It is hot in the basement.
Shadow Self (poem)
She’s fourteen.
Medium height, slender,
waist-length hair as blue as her eyes.
She once broke her bed
with a baseball bat.
Cuts her arms with kitchen knives.
Pounds the wall until bruises
blossom on her knuckles
like poison flowers.
Misanthrope,
she seethes and boils
at the foolishness of others.
She hates everyone.
Alone at night she cries, sobs out
the busted machinery of her heart.
She wants to be loved,
but pushes people away.
She hates herself most of all.
Peace (poem)
Seeing her lying there
Clean white sheets
Penned in by bars
So small and helpless
I can almost pretend
She’s just napping
Like when she was new.
She needed me then
She needs me now
To be her strength, her mercy
To sever the cord
That connects her to me
Like when she was new.
I sit beside her and stroke her hair
Guiding her to sleep
Like when she was new
Only this time the tears are mine.
I brought her into this world
Knowing someday I’d leave her
But I wasn’t expecting this.
I think the only way I can live
Is to be grateful
That she is not in my position,
Will never be in my position.
I am there for her always
Like when she was new.
Every Day (poem)
Every day I peer into the bathroom mirror, trying to like the woman I see.
I hate my flat, thin hair. My friend has beautiful hair. It dazzles, her beautiful blonde curls haloing her face in soft waves. She has it done professionally; it costs over a hundred dollars and takes three hours.
I’ve lost eighty pounds this year. I run six miles a day and spend hours in the gym. My friend doesn’t eat much during the day, only dinner. She’s thinner than she used to be. Thinner than me.
I try to dress nicely, wear flattering clothes. My girdle squeezes my bulges of fat into submission. By the end of the day, my stomach will cry for release. I think of Victorian women, whose corsets deflated their lungs; I think of the men who sanctioned having women’s ribs removed for the sake of molding waists they could encircle with their hands.
I have boots that give me blisters, heels that cramp my calves. I have a pair of sandals that cut me. But no one can see the scars while I’m wearing them. My big feet disgust me. In China, they once reshaped girls’ feet by breaking their toes and forcing them into tiny shoes. Their options were a few years of pain in youth or a lifetime working in the fields because no man would marry a woman with unbound feet. It was for their own good.
I draw quick eyeliner strokes. My sister has her makeup tattooed on. She’s pleased when the cosmetician congratulates her for not squirming. She still has to apply extra layers of makeup; she says she doesn’t feel it anymore if she pokes herself in the eye.
I glare at my breasts, which are already beginning to sag. My friend is getting hers enlarged. I think of her small, perky chest being sliced open and foreign material shoved inside. I feel nauseous, and something else as well. Envy.
Yum (microfiction)
She sits at the picnic table in their backyard, chewing on a chicken leg. She knows her husband will not approve; he says she has been getting fat. There he is now, in the window. His eyes are bulging, and his pointy teeth are bared. She bares her teeth back at him, and resumes eating.
Red (microfiction)
She remembers his shirt was red, like the paint on his canvas. He had offered to show her more of his work, wanting her opinion. Then nothing. Red behind her eyes. She awakened in a windowless cell. She tried scratching her way out. Now her fingertips were red. She wondered if he’d paint her.
Please (microfiction)
She’s thirsty. Some water, to rid the taste of him in her mouth. She pauses, the cup halfway to her lips. A noise, under his snoring. She sees his arm, stretching impossibly long, coming from the bedroom. “Where are you?” “What are you doing?” Stretching around her, pulling tighter. And tighter. She drops the glass.
Penance (microfiction)
Dinner, the three of them. Mother asks her son-in-law if he ever feels guilty about his past, the mistakes he made, the surgeries when he lost patients. He says nothing but bites his thumb. She hears the crack of bone, sees the blood squirt onto her meatloaf. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Mother says.
The Hornet Field (microfiction)
In the hornet field green and blue are overwhelmed by brown and yellow. All is drone and bustle. In the hornet field eggs are dangerous. Hatchlings fight with deadly precision. I draw my sword and cross the threshold. I hum their tune and ready myself for battle. They’ll never take me alive.
Frogs (microfiction)
Sally was awakened by Rene shouting. Frogs were congregating on the window seat. A dream? But Rene’s grip was pulling her out of bed. A giant frog hurtled toward them. She tried to push it away; her hand sank into hot gummy skin. The flesh on her hand melting, she realized this was no dream.
GhoulieJoe 