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Q5: How to Take the Hiss Out of a Snake
HOW TO TAKE THE HISS OUT OF A SNAKE Rain.It spillson the window,cursive writinglike hands knottedthat rememberthings I’ve alwayswanted to do. I once worked on an assembly line making flat-pack strawberry boxes. I just wanted someone to talk to while the boys were at school. But talking was forbidden, except during break. The moon.The stars.There’s…
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Day 5: A Book Called The Liar’s Dictionary for GoDogGo Café
THE LIAR’S DICTIONARY … assuming that the liar is weather because you would be forgivenits deception on those evenings when nature’s breath crinklesthe lake with shallow ripples and the moon is at its thinnestand streetlamps glow lime bright. Weather wrote the liar’s dictionary. For Go Dog Go Café . “The Liar’s Dictionary” The title…
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Q5: In and Out of an Imaginary Dream
IN AND OUT OF AN IMAGINARY DREAM A dream.And I wake with a pebble of an idealodged in my brain that there was a tablewith me on one side and on the otherthe unborn and dead. My babies lostbefore term, grandparents, my parents, a husband,three dogs, and that seagull that hitthe window like a stone.…
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Day 5: A Book Called Tastes Like War for GoDogGo Café
TASTES LIKE WAR …assuming war is tartar sauce Signed up and off he went to some place, who knows. I was in high school, always bought myself fries with tartar sauce for the walk home. Can’t eat tartar sauce without thinking of him.
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VV January 2022
The Abduction of a Forsythia-Yellow Duck Saturday night. Bath time. I am deep inrising puffs of steam, between warm breathof fog, lavender salts, and 11 o’clock. My legs, bitten by hot water, seembuoyant and drowning at the same time,and my toes are painted scarlet Sirens. Such wee beauties, my alluring tragedies.Sing, chorus of razor-sharp tonguesfrom…
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Q4: The Grimm Side of Imaginary Dreams
THE GRIMM SIDE OF IMAGINARY DREAMS There’s rolling fog, poison ivy, and there’s a woman in black with a nose like a bat and wings like rhubarb leaves, and there’s these seven little men wearing billy goat chins who juggle seven red apples between them. And my first grade teacher is dressed up like a…
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Day 4: A Book Called “Crying in H Mart”
CRYING IN H MART … and assuming crying’s not a laugh, Love can happen in a hyper-market. There with the waxed juiceless limes, and the fish shimmering like paint, and the brined and rotting eggs with their shells cracked and dyed in tea, and a girl’s tears dropping like heavy pearls when he asks her…
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Q3+1: The Café of Imaginary Dreams
TWO EGGS OF IMAGINARY DREAMS My waitress … is it still waitress or is it a waitperson now… is standing over meand staring across the street.I think she’d ratherbe working over there. And she says,You ready to order? She shifts from one foot…
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Q3: Children’s Menu at the Café of Imaginary Dreams
The Autistic Children’s Menu at the Cafe of Imaginary Dreams It’s the nuggets.Always the nuggets.No sauce.He hates sauce. Can I substitute saucefor waffles, he asks.May I, says his mother.Yes you can, says the waitress. And he hates all the noise.It’s always the noise.Knives and forks and platesand the chewing chewing. May you turn off the…
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Quickly’s Day 3: The Sounds of Imaginary Dreams
Prose: The Sounds of Imaginary Dreams It was either the Goodwill or the Salvation Army, the later being situated on a steep slope toward the lake, and the former making no impression on my memory whatsoever. It was where I bought my first radio. It was silver. Dad painted it blue, from the same pot…
It's Still Life 