July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Fan Death
from Grotesques
I turn the fan on night-times, so
I remember how to breathe while
sleeping, and so never
wake up dead. They think babies might
do this, they call it SIDS. Another country,
across the world, believes the same act
will fell their population, call it
fan death. Somewhere else they lock
cats out of bedrooms so they don’t
suck up souls lost in slumber. In a shack in Florida,
a young girl has her own habit: curl up
in a corner, pull the cotton sheet above
her head, and count her father’s footsteps
on her fingers, hoping that tonight
they fade into the hall. She hasn’t put together
that his steps form bassbeats in her more
twist-inducing dreams, that a nightmare is
two hard-soled shoes dropping closer
while in her sheets she turns. Most times
the sound’s not in her head, but a positive:
some nights, it is. Just a recording below her subconscious
beating background in her sleep.
Those nights she squirms, but she rests.
Any Body
from Grotesques
Close your eyes & any
body’s any other body, un-
light-marked: flesh warm in
the dark yields, tentative,
unsure. All skins brush the same,
raise undistinguished goosebumps
through the night. No one tells you who
you are as you drift by the crowd. One
hand graces someone’s back,
the other one a moth paused on some familiar shoulder,
owner indifferent, name unknown.
Zeno’s Paradox
(where destinations can’t be reached)
from Grotesques
The only way to suffer sadness is by
stretching onionskin elastic over
hipbones, shrinking down. I
will whittle to perfection,
thin as a whippet, as
a curling, snake-
like whip.
E. H. Brogan is a graduate of the University of Delaware with a B.A. in English. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Scissors & Spackle, Corvus, and others. Recently, she won a Brew Haha Short Story Writing Contest for memoir. This summer she is joining Kenning, a literary journal, as a blogger & community outreach. She is also a moderator for an online community of over 200 poets.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Snapshot With Suet
Say, has anyone found the old lorgnettes, those folding opera glasses?
Nice keepsake my musical sisters agree, sorting our dead Mother’s things.
Vissi d’arte, Vissi d’amore they yodel from Tosca.
On to the photographs, my favorite, 3 x 5 b/w, over-exposed edges on fire:
Flyway birds fill the trees, snip buds, litter ground with cuneiform. Late storm, no school. Hurry, we’re losing light, yells urgent brother Michael. I labor in webbed snowshoes, reach for boxes hung in rows above my girly feeder, a high-heeled boot laced with fat, table scraps. Suet for juncos calls Dad, leading pregnant Mom sidesaddle on our snow camel, three humps. Why not? Falling off unhurt, the little sisters, squint, point, hurl wet snowballs at hooded
Mergansers?
No, Grandma and Aunt R in capes, ambushed states our kid brother. See pointing at me, the fat teen Thunder Thighs lumbering across the frame.
I remind him that, inside Mother on the camel, he was not yet born, alive.
Big diff. The huge snow humps, chameleons he insists despite cloven hooves and cud. Who’s that? he asks about the agile boy in yarn hat, trailing seed from sack up frozen hill.
Not you I quip, suddenly too sad to dwell on Michael, his kindness and early death.
So where’s Dad?
There leaning in his deep great-coat, holding up the coffee can of suet while little sisters trip in snow pants, hand-me-downs one size too big.
Those two, now mothers both, still giggle, chorus. Fighting, we fell off the sleigh. The tracks, two thin lines, see they say lower left. Beaded caps stiff with snow, we brushed off our collars, hollered Wait!
But cold, you big kids and the parents lost interest in the game.
Of what?
What else? War, no, Peace. The sisters trump each other, interrupt. We were twin serfs, no, Serbian princesses kidnapped along the Hindi Kush, our camel caravan of sequins and silk high-jacked by hooded bandits.
Musquediento, your Highnesses! We greet in accented Flodge, our secret childhood lingo, curtsy, bow, dodge — all of us laughing now, ready to sit down and relax, napkins in lap, with tea-cakes and whiskey chasers.
Hail, hail we toast the slanted blur.
Tall Dad?
Or giant windfall? Michael’s climbing tree, the ironwood downed by storm, nailed coffee can flattened on one side for suet.
Say, when did juncos last winter here?
I bite my lip — Michael’s eighth-grade feeders, off-camera memories. Mine.
Morning Scrabble
At my brother Michael’s gravesite, others toss handfuls of earth, stones, flowers. I throw small wooden squares with letters, stuffed in my purse and pockets, pieces from his favorite childhood board game — winning words, our excuse for wagers.
Before they dump out drawers at home, let’s see what’s left to play: O B T X R U D Z E S C H I F N A T M A …W. WOMBAT, RATFINK, tags for schoolyard FOES. FAUX, FINCH, short DEFT words like ZED and UR earned quick points. Easy vocab, RUDE, RAIN, SHINE, AFTER, we learned, ate money vowels that better earned their keep in CRUDE, INTRUDE, SHINER, SHAFTED, RAFTER.
For final rounds, our house rules allowed TV, DC, RSVP, abbreviations used as words, also REV (Reverend), RIP (Rest in Peace), even B (Born). No one ever dared to score with D, not even rash Michael, too soon wed to older ex-nun ATAR with STUN gun agenda for success.
Forced ROSE, our ruddy brother skipped FRAT fun, shortcut youth to TUX and BOURSE with her, TRIM in black FACE veil beside his casket — me FAT, DAFT, BORE/BOAR larded with loss, SNIFfling in the nave, WORSE, wanting to RUN like stocking, grasp threads, hasp, catch breath, barge, take charge — my own worst FOE in durable WORSTED serge, suited dirge, first word of MATINS (old Latin office), Dirige, direct us O Lord — gloss at his morning grave, high-point words I lack for grief.
Charlotte M. Porter lives in an old citrus hamlet in north central Florida. A published poet, she was a top finalist for the Rose Metal Press flash fiction chapbook contest in 2012. Her creative nonfiction, as Wanda Legend, has been cited by New Pages.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Death for Sale
He sells death.
Night black pistols,
brassy bullets.
Rifles sardined in
a car trunk.
The house is plaid curtains,
their dust still. In back,
swing set chains rust
without small hands.
The gate squeaks.
He hides the money in the flower pots,
buckets under the sink.
Plastic-covered bricks of bills
float in every toilet tank.
He stuffs cash in his couch,
moving his arm like a thief
probing a vending machine.
Fabric chafes his skin.
He sutures the upholstery
with staples.
He sells death.
Limp rabbits, gun-pocked tree trunks.
Ruptured cans glint in sun.
He sells death.
A sandal waits
for its foot. A bent knee
points to wine red drying
on the sidewalk.
Our Sunday Morning
Your voice is better than sun through a cold window.
Your words are warm socks.
Your sentences sugared coffee.
Watching you is better than clean sheets.
Over the collar of your jacket, the hair on
the back of your neck grows like new grass.
The roots of your hair always look dirty
brown against the blond white strands.
The pockmarks on your cheeks
make your face a pink moon.
I love the holes in your tights
where the butter of your thighs shows through.
I love your clunky black glasses,
the hard candy eyes behind them.
When we’re together, it’ll be the longest Sunday morning.
All white sheets, laughing, and spilled coffee.
And I’ll run my fingers on each of your scars.
Your candy eyes will shine.
Your hair will stick up with sweat and pillows.
We’ll fuzz our teeth with coffee.
We’ll write our love in window steam.
We’ll live in our Sunday morning.
Cara Schiff lives in Denver, CO and works as a professional gardener. Most recently, her work has been selected for Burner Magazine and the forthcoming issues of Emerge Literary Journal and Bookends Review.
