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“I heard she ran off with that boyfriend of hers,” I overheard from Ms. Avery as I tried to
get lost in the crowd. “You bet,” she said in response to some mumbling from Mrs. Jorge, “heard it from Jim Francois’ dad.” “Poor Jim,” Mrs. Jorge shook her head. “That boy is good for this town; too good to be have been pining over a girl like that.” “Now that she’s left maybe he’ll get his priorities straight.” I lost the conversation as others filled in the growing space between us; their words overtaken by the hundred others speaking around me. From above, the crowd must have looked like a flock of starlings. There were groups of people talking among themselves, but no group lasted more than ten or fifteen minutes before merging and morphing with a new group and eventually splitting into new circles of gossip. The movement was sustained by the need for everyone to make sure that everyone else knew they were there; lots of big waves across the crowd and “Oh, I just knew I’d find you here!” I finally found Cheryl; a stationary point amid the ever-flowing crowd. She was wearing an old pair of ripped jeans; they could have started blue or black but only she would ever know. Now, they were grey-white and nearing shapelessness. Despite the heat, she had on a thick black hoodie. There was a hole in the shoulder where she had ripped off whatever branding the sweater had. She stood out from the others in the crowd, if not for her clothes, then for her porcelain skin. Everyone else was varying shades of orange or brown, brought on by the dry August sun. I walked up to her without saying a word and gave her a reassuring squeeze on her forearm. She responded by nudging her shoulder into my chest. please tell me what kind of woman
you are looking for. varnish over my body in cold storage, let me suck milk from a ribcage. treading water is fine until a bloated pomegranate needs tending. I could grow plump on horse meat or an allowance of oysters. my passport is a fetal bull. crowning, I offer you memories of apron, horseradish, razor blade, the price is ambivalent to me. my name is not an animal’s head, a cup bearing black tar, a harvest of mink stoles. I would be an intimate citizen, a moonless pursuit, an absolute sculpture. When I was raised, born of the earth
blood-soaked in toil and mirth because Mother demanded blood for life and from which I was raised blood of frozen white, that melts in the spring sun water, blood, for the life of me the death of me Happy, fatal, sorrow-filled spring Those freakish curling redwoods- spiking up from the earth bloody with rainwater dew Now my flowers flecks are stained if the Gods bore me pure; I would retain my whiteness of spring-melted blood, feminine bed sheets soaked into Mother Earth My Father the Sun raised me unclean, and red strained Flowering pink She fed on me; I fed on her.
It was a Queer feeling, Falling. I tasted the fruit, and i choked. Is this how Adam met Eve? Mother orders a martini. It’s her third, but the flight attendant doesn’t know that. Before we
boarded the plane, she downed two in the gaudy airport bar. She crushes the olive between her teeth, which she never does because she hates olives. So, because she’s eating it, I know what that means. I tap the back of her free hand. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” She’s dabbing the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “I’m sure those builders needed a drink every now and again.” Around us, everyone is settled in. The engines’ constant low humming is the only sound. I have the aisle seat, so I can see the bored, empty faces of the other passengers; some read, some type away on laptop keyboards, and some have headphones in while a film plays on the screens fixed into the back of the seats. A few just enjoy the view out the window. It bothers me how Mother always wants the window seat, but never looks out of it. What a waste. I crane my neck to see over her clumsy hands—the thin layer of clouds veiling some rural part of southern Ireland, the sun hanging above us like an ornament, the horizon slicing through the haze. While I’m focused on the view outside, Mother orders another martini. “Less ice this time,” she tells the flight attendant, who obliges with a curt nod. I give Mother a look. She returns it, and for a moment we’re just staring at each other. “Oh, my god, Millie. I’m not getting sloshed. Just a couple drinks. Why are you always on my back?” Trigger Warning: eating disorders
i can feel myself balancing on a ledge, trying not to slip back into who i once was, but the pull of it is almost too much to resist. if i’m not careful, it’ll drag me four stories to the ground, killing me upon impact. i feel it in the morning when the cold water hits my empty stomach. on the days when i open my mother’s sewing box to hem a skirt that once was too small and see a tape measure. when i see walk around the grocery store and see a scale, everything in me longing to step on it and finally know the magic number that could make or break my day. my brain says life would be easier if i was starving, and sometimes i think it’s right. lowly
lonely low-key i miss the old me a girl more carefree less ugly sweet like honey no filter off-kilter please don’t kill her she’s pure, clean serene, sleeping the sleep of a seemingly innocent dream girl don’t scream In this version of history, Marge never went to college / Marge went to college briefly / Marge went to an all-girls college in the Roaring 1920’s / in pre-revolution Iran / in 2022 Afghanistan / in 2005 Harvard, when the school’s President attributed underrepresentation of women in science to:
Controversy arose
when Marge wore pants / rode a bike / drove a car / played baseball / practiced medicine / Marge was jailed / sent to an asylum for reading too much and managing her own finances / Marge was rich and White / Marge was poor and White / Marge was rich and Latina / Jason ambled up the trail with his brother Marc. While Marc led the way, Jason lagged behind.
With each step, his boots squeaked on the damp spring grass. Windflowers and sprouting ferns encircled him with trees that had begun to bud, casting dappled morning sunlight through the forest canopy. The air was cool and crisp. A slight breeze ruffled his hair, carrying the freshness of blooming flowers. It whispered tranquility to his soul. Jason closed his eyes and took a deep breath, savoring the freshness that filled his lungs. I can’t believe it’s been so long, Jason thought as his childhood memory of walking on this trail with his siblings struck him. “Come on! We don’t have all day!” Marc hollered, looking back at him. “Would you cut me some slack? I’m doing my best,” Jason said. Marc chuckled as he watched Jason struggling to keep up. “Looks like you gotta stay a few more days to let the country air detox your body.” “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.” Jason huffed. “There’s a couple dozen clients waiting for me back in the city, and I’m the only one who can—” “Please, don’t start with your banker stuff again. Can’t you take just one week off… for old time’s sake?” for Maddie
You chiffon wrap, you frayed swatch of Marigold and mustard fabric, how you Billowed like a ghost trail behind me as I dashed across The backyard, pretending you were Flaxen waves sprouting from my crown. My four-year-old mouth refused to eat Anything other than the wispy tale of Rapunzel. A fairy, I carried on my imaginary daydreams Of boar hair bristles smoothing my long locks, each stroke counting down the days Until my trips to the barber would come less. But my sister Wasn’t a witch nor was I a pregnant Woman in this story. All I craved was the long hair I was denied. My mom always told me: Fake it till you make it but I was naked in my little boy haircut. All I could rely on was the Eidolon I created for myself. So from my sister’s closet Shelf, I took you, yellow scarf, golden tulle, and wrapped what little Semblance of belief in my gender I could suspend during play hour. “Congratulations.”
That’s what they said. We celebrated the fact that, every month, I now have to stare at scarlet drops running down the bowl. They look at me differently when I walk into class, or down the street... everywhere really, tragically. I won’t lie and say I enjoy their plaudits even though that’s what they think is true. The way they examine me, makes me uncomfortable. I feel the need to hide for fear I will be snatched up, so they can fulfill their desire to get an even closer look and uncover everything I want to keep to myself and protect. Trigger warning: homophobia
late-evening february I am blooming passionately and feared as the shunned on their lonesome patios I am modeling out-of-season christmas socks I am chugging a glass of whole milk and dropping dry cereal in the snow I am dreaming -- —glaring towards to setting sun with unshaded blue eyes of the women forming into wives under the arms of their ballroom men under the banners: last high-school dance under the mistletoe: he collects her lips under the living room ceiling fan: fifty-second anniversary where I sit: watching it on the big screen I am ripping my romance movie ticket into scraps I am dreaming -- —I want to become my father’s daughter he’d carry my arm down the aisle meet my husband when we reach the end clapping for our lives prisoned together (unashamed in this dream: we father and daughter dance) I am dreaming-- —your red-chipped nail polish still holding my shaking hand of waiting at the aisle end turning women in gowns What a Rhinestone Means to Me— Duplex
After Jericho Brown My glamor is my counterculture Holding an x and y, I defy the suit and tie. To my birth, I am not tied But I cinch my waist with a sash of choice. Rhinestones over suede is a choice To persuade a toast in a champagne glass. “To your womanhood,” cheers my mirror’s glass For she knows how hard I fought for my pearls. From one synapse, She grew like a pearl After a grain of estrogen slipped through my lips. When I line my eyes and paint my lips I dot the “i” and cross the “t” in “authentic.” Watch the queen dressed in authenticity because Her glamor is her counterculture. The green dress is stuffed in the back of my closet,
A sign of femininity long ignored. The twine holding the bag together is fraying. The tag is smudged but I know what it says: For graduation. Love, Mom. The green dress laughed at me then. It still does now. A witch’s cackle, a voice painfully familiar. A girl your size? Lipstick on a pig. Every attempt at dressing up was ridiculed. Every nice outfit was replaced by jeans and a tee shirt. The same ones I wore to my graduation party. Black jeans, black shirt, black socks, and dirty Converse. Camouflage to blend into the shadows. To disappear from sight. My sister’s hair, honeyed from the hair salon, fell between us. The tips of it brushed the
menu we shared. We sat side by side since the booths were comically huge, like everything else at The Cheesecake Factory in Pasadena. I almost tucked her hair behind her ear, my older-sister instincts rearing up even though we weren’t kids anymore and hadn’t been close for years. Her lunch invitation hadn’t been unexpected. It was the summer of 2007. I’d traveled from Florida where I was in graduate school to our home state of California to be the maid of honor in her wedding. The event was three days away and there was so much left to do. Tanning bed appointments, mani-pedis, a champagne brunch, bridesmaid dramas I’d been tasked with diffusing via flip phone, eyebrows to be waxed into thin perfect lines. After we ordered our salads, I thought we would talk about those things. Instead, she stared straight ahead out a picture window that faced onto Colorado Boulevard and roped me into helping her reconstruct the plot of One Magic Christmas. It was her favorite holiday movie as a kid. A father shot to death on Christmas Eve. His children driven off a bridge into an icy river. A mother grieves. The angel Gideon appears. “I need to tell you something,” she said after the waiter left our salads. I perked up, wondering if it had something to do with her fiancée. His favorite things were green smoothies and making fun of ugly people and he always pointed out when my sister had seconds. I put down my fork, hoping for a called-off wedding. She was a quietly intelligent nursing student. A hot girl who had been getting into Jesus. She was only twenty-two. trigger warning: homophobia and then, it was my second time hearing “the l slur” my father was born from a barber shop to the left
of my grandmother’s laundromat. he grew up and grew back and married the hair comb his father and his father’s father wielded, everyday, my nana to be drove him up their holler in an old brown buick —always late, always to pick up my mother. scolding him for his tardy slip, my nana to be wore a cross around her neck: held it, prayed to jesus every morning, lunch, and night. she told me once that she wasn’t irish, she wasn’t catholic. 23 and Me reports she was wrong. 25% ireland, 75% bible belt, I wonder: are You what you grow from? my first daycare was a sunday school. then i was grape juice and crackers. my father dreamt of walking in that church, in my wedding. no one prepared us
for what was to come. our brain, body, and spirit now changed. where curiosity once lived, burdens now lie. was it for the better? a bird in its cage
cannot fathom the ache felt by a girl desiring to create i try and i try ponder and feel peel a tangerine but i still don’t feel real is there something inside of me? a messy note tainted with blood “you could do something bigger than this” repressed from exploding unbeknownst to knowing i am not glowing should i keep flowing? when I die
bury me as a tree grind my bones into the finest ash mixed with fertilizer into that of the weeping willow tree when i die bury me as a tree so i can be reborn to provide shade for the tired passerby shelter for the homeless home to nest wandering robins and swallows and the rope swing that decorates my branch - dad’s gift to his little girl when i die bury me as a tree build a bench underneath my willow curtains to let the elderly couple sit they reminisce their love on their 56th wedding anniversary when i die bury me as a tree my trunk hopes to be carved with hearts and initials of young lovebirds unsure of their own fate after sharing their first kiss under the weeping willow tree She opens the trunk of her car. Trash bags tumble down, coming untied. I glimpse girls’
clothes, probably juniors’ sizes, a flower-print backpack, sandals, and headphones. She crams the bags full again, her eyes narrowed, her face drawn. Her hair’s disheveled. Graying. She reeks of sweat. Seeing me staring at her, she flips the bird, rattling off a string of swearwords. Jerk. She climbs back into her car and peels out of the parking lot, her tires screeching on the hot pavement. I haul her crap inside, all twenty-eight bags of donations, muttering to myself. The job done, I grab today’s newspaper. Reckless driver kills seventeen-year-old girl, the headline shouts. There’s a picture of the victim. She looks just like that woman. |