Month: December 2017

The moment my sister was born, I was done for. I could see it in my mother’s eyes, green and wet, how she looked at that pretty little girl. She hadn’t looked at me like that in a long time, or ever. My sister grew up disliking our mother who tried too hard to please. As our family logic would have it, the kid adored me: she cheered me on each time I caused havoc. I hated her guts, of course, her pretty little hands and pink mouth, from the time I smelled her diapers to the time she...

Least we don’t have interstate running through our front yard, she says. Our baby splashes in the blow-up swimming pool behind our trailer. Hard to believe we made something that’s half her, half me. I don’t like her anymore. Not the baby, the woman who made her. We had fun times but this is just living. Scrapping by just so we can eat ring bologna every Friday night and save enough grocery stamps to get this damn pool. I never understood my father until now. His moody silence. Stone face lit by the glow of the television every night....

Awoke to a lonely cockroach, felt him skitter on my soul. He caught me home alone. The drapes hung open. The radiators waited their turn. Prime season from what I’m told. Landlord didn’t even flinch. “Please,” he said. “Let’s call them what they are.” I called the cops instead, provided my address. The officers came in without knocking as they’d been trained to do. One was a woman, the other one was short. “There was a report of a disturbance?” said the woman. “Less a disturbance and more of a reckoning,” I said. The short one cleaned his glasses...

L = (mr2) should procure the desired result → if you know the math, variables & control elements, if you possess the values. Use the calculator on your phone. Download the graphing app. Is the L for his lips like Brando’s, always quivering on the cusp of licked deliciousness? (Wait, is this anatomy / biology / chemistry? Too much study ≠ not enough feeling?) When he leaves, I taste / dream him all night. Maybe I do not know my values. I make notes w/ a No. 2, smearing them over the edge of pink & yellow post-its left...