sparkle & blink 73

8/18/2019 sPARKLE & bLINK 73

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QUIET LIGHTNING IS:

a literary nonprofit with a handful of ongoing projects,including a monthly, submission-based reading series

featuring all forms of writing without introductions orauthor banter—of which sparkle + blink is a verbatimtranscript. The series moves around to a different venueevery month, appearing so far in bars, art galleries,music halls, bookstores, night clubs, a greenhouse, aballroom, a theater, a mansion, a sporting goods store, a

pirate store, a print shop, a museum, a hotel, and a cave.

There are only two rules to submit:

1. you have to commit to the date to submit

2. you only get up to 8 minutes

quietlightning.org/submission-details

SUBSCRIBE

quietlightning.org/subscribe

info + updates + video of every reading

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sparkle + blink 73

© 2016 Quiet Lightning

artwork © Sarah Irvin

sarahirvinart.com

“Would You Believe” by Miriam Bird Greenbergfirst appeared in Missouri Review

“Signal to Noise” by Robert Pesich first appeared in HillTromper

book design by j. brandon loberg

set in Absara

Promotional rights only.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any formwithout permission from individual authors.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the

internet or any other means without the permission of theauthor(s) is illegal.

Your support is crucial and appreciated.

quietlightning.org

submit@quietl ightning.org

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CONTENTS

curated by

Meghan Thornton + Ian Tuttle

featured artist Sarah Irvin

PETER BULLEN Author 1

MADELEINE MORI Sa-I-Gu 3

RYAN JOHNSON Fallon, nv 5 Arizona 6 Graceland Cemetery,Chicago, il 8

CASSANDRA DALLETT Fuck for Story 9 Bitch Be Cool 11

CLAIRE MARGINE Butter Lamb 13PETER BULLEN Dinner 19

LISA LOCASCIO Catch Up Over Drinksor Coffee 23

BRIGID HUGHES Cage Free Eggs 25

KIRIN KHAN Only People 33

HANNA PESHA Homage 39

KRISTIN ACREDOLO I Ask 41

CHRISTINE NO Western Ave 45

REI JACKLER Not the Slut You Think She Is 47

MIRIAM BIRD GREENBERG Would You Believe 51

DANNY SCUDERI Dear AJ 55

SARAH HENRY Through the Window 59

EMILY KIERNAN Country Dirt 65

DORIAN MOFFEI Between Two Dogs 69

JASON BUCHHOLZ My Life in 131–2 Interactionswith Law Enforcement 71

ROBERT PESICH Signal to Noise 79

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Q U I E T L

I G H TNING IS SP O N S O R E D

B Y

http://www.sfartscommission.org/http://www.hewlett.org/http://obookspoetry.com/http://lagunitas.com/http://zff.org/


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QUIET LIGHTNING

A 501(c)3, the primary objective and purpose of Quiet

Lightning is to foster a community based on literary

expression and to provide an arena for said expression. QL

produces a monthly, submission-based reading series on

the first Monday of every month, of which these books

(sparkle + blink ) are verbatim transcripts.

Formed as a nonprofit in July 2011, the board of QL is

currently:

Evan Karp executive director

Chris Cole managing director

Josey Lee public relationsMeghan Thornton treasurer

Kelsey Schimmelman secretary

Sarah Ciston director of books

Katie Wheeler-Dubin director of films

Laura Cerón Melo

art director

Christine No

producer/assistant managing director

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in

helping—on any level—please send us a line:

evan@quiet l ightning .org

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9/91

- SET 1

-


10/91

1

P E TE R B U L L E N

A UTHOR

“I love how you do that,” she said.

I was flossing my teeth at the time. I felt the warm

glow of her admiration. You know what that can do. I

got the idea I could teach her things, be the well from

which she might quench her thirst. Her long, shapely

leg rested on the rim of my bathtub. I thought to

myself, that’s my bathtub, that’s her leg.

“What should we do now?” she asked in a seductive

tone.

“I could read you a section from my novel,” I said,

immediately regretting it, immediately sensing howsuch an answer turns your life to shit.

“What’s it about?” she said, the light going out of her

eyes, her leg leaving the rim of my bathtub. I plunged

ahead, thinking who knows what; that I might,

through well formulated self- expression, win back herformer good feelings for me.

“Well it involves a young man, who shall we say

aspires to be other than he presently is, who wants

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2

his life to register as actual, as in...”

“I don’t get it,” she said, interrupting and reaching inher pocket for some gum. “It’s later than I thought,”

she added, checking her phone. I wanted to beg, say

please don’t leave; it’s only nine-thirty and I am not

really a guy who wants to talk about a stupid book. I’m

a guy who wants your leg back resting on the rim of

my bathtub, a guy who wants to be admired for theway I thread that fine cord through my teeth. And I

was just warming up; there are many other aspects of

personal hygiene I’d like to demonstrate for you.

I never got to say it.

The door slammed shut. The click-clacking sound of

her heels got fainter and fainter out in the hallway.


12/91

3

M A D E L E I N E M O R I

S A -I-GU

“Four-Two-Nine,” 1992

Deep in the desiccation of Los Angeles lawns,

everything’s been long half-bloomed.

A cigarette butt, a velvet breeze, now

begins the mid-air humming

of junked refrigerators out the backs of bodegas.

The thin red crime threads are cut,

the lawns gnarl in shadow:

oozing lemonheads glitter on the sidewalk

like the sweat of liquor money

that pools in Uncle Joo’s cash drawer.

I swab shelves of Soju and Goldschlager,

the Camel and chew, saved

behind this metal cage that lets only dust enter,

as a young brown boy drops a six-pack

of Miller High Life on Joo’s counter:

How much?

What do you mean how much?

For this man.

I’m not selling you this.

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4

Why the fuck not?

Because I see you! You steal from here every day!

You don’t know what you’ve seen--that ain’t me!

Of course it’s you!

It’s always you!

Joo screeches and halts like the Florence St. bus,

Boy curdles like a Sunday egg custard,hotbox couple above us fucking, then shrieking,

the hairs on my neck all blazing:

The windows broken, the new guns cocked,

the ribs concave, the ears slashed off,

wings of dried blood, resting like a brown ash moth,swept down the gutter, they’re illuminated,

gone.


14/91

5

R YA N J O H N S O N

F A LLON, N V

alone at the saloon

cigarette smoke swirlsin wisps of cold light

I ask the bartender

does she have a room

to lie awake in all night

does she get gin

while the gray wool fogis poisoned by the moon

I’m just passing through I said

I’m just like this smoke

breathe and I’ll be gone

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15/91

6

ARIZONA

fingertips on the neck of it

arm resting on the doorshellI don’t know where I dropped that flask

where head out the window I vomited

where it sprayed red as lust all down the interstate

I know my vision warbled as I drove

I know saguaros to lean away

I know coyotes to scatterI know it was somewhere in Arizona

where a woman cut her wrists opening a pineapple

where the low sun took me in his jaws

and almost whispered me the reason why of

everything but for my body on his tongue


16/91

RYAN JOHNS ON 7

GRACELAND CEMETERY, CHICAGO, IL

we wet our fingers and dipped them in the urn but

the ashes were bland

and I felt less than immortal

he poured them into a plastic thermos and noses over

the rimwe inhaled the plume

but it was spoorless

we tried to scatter them

and became cloaked

in her shadow, pale as ghosts

though statues of marble and weeping copper drosscould see us leave, could smell her

could taste her in the air of our wake

that day we died

more than the passing of an hour would allow

walking backwards toward immortality

as time curved onward and awayhoping to meet her somewhere

on the other side of the circle

in a dark so pure that even death

can no longer see to collect

what is not left for him

what else is the body but an object to smelt and pitchand see where dross does not collect?

what else is the body but one more thing to put away

at night?


17/91


18/91

9

C A S

S A ND R A D A L L E T

T

F U C K FOR S TO R Y

I met Jimmy on the block holding a boom box.

We fucked all night in someone’s spare roomit was a narrow bed he was dark skinned

with a gold tooth and a deep and lispy voice.

I liked the way he said icy like there were s’s and h’s

in it

We played H-Town’s Knockin Da Boots

on rewind until we tire till the break of dawnTo this day I think of him when I hear the song

though I barely remember his face.

We were in Western Addition across from the

mortuary

A family business where he worked. A business black folks stay in.

In Jim Crow days blacks were always allowed to bury

their own.

In the ghetto business is still booming.

I was leaving town the next day moving away

but kept his pager # for the next two yearshit him now and again though I think he might have

been married.

When I came back I asked him to pick me up in

Oakland

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19/91

10

while he was collecting bodies.

It was Christmas Eve I needed to get to the cityspend the holiday with my home girls in Chinatown.

He scooped me up in the hearse

We got the corpse in North Oakland

at one of those big funeral homes

that takes up a whole city block

crossed the bridge with the shiny casketme and Jimmy.

We never hooked up again after that.

It was just the fact I could say I’d fucked a mortician

rode with the dead

seemed like an interesting way to show up for the

partyand I wanted to hear the way he lisped in my ear

when I was on top and we were Knockin Da Boots.


20/91

CASSANDRA DALLETT 11

BITCH BE COOL

The Trumping of America means no lives matter

means steal up the walls the fences the razor wire

shoot your neighbor especially brown

asleep in their car minding your business

stab brown berets with eagle beaks and talonstick a flag up their ass for Christ’s sake

rotisserie

no apology rallies chant about guns guns guns

stew up of the masses water board or worse

call Indian people Isis awwww what’s the difference

China, Mexico fuck ‘em all build a wallwhere the hell is Syria Iran Fuck that fucking Pakistan

Bomb the fuck out of the whole shit-uation

this is happening though it’s hard to believe when

the only news on TV comes from comedians

networks love this American Idol election

a more sinister Simon Cowell all cranked upeveryday orange face clown

and I quote

it doesn’t matter what the media says

as long as you have a young beautiful piece of ass

Hair club for assholes calls us gold diggers

calls breast feeding disgusting

He’s going to sue you so

don’t call him an orangutan

don’t call him a liar


21/91

12

definitely don’t call him for help

unless you got your white sheets on

your torches ready to burnbooks borders and bitches

shut up he says security dragging you out

his fans kicking you down

this is red and blue

and oh so white this is for the pigs the dogs the slobs

woman not carved thin and vapid dollhe will talk about your bleeding

say you’re gross call you animal

on podium after podium he will curse you all to hell

which is most likely where we’re headed

in a motherfuckin’ flag-waving cross-burning basket.


22/91

13

C L A I R E M A R G I N E

BUT T ER L A MB

Easter is for children and gluttons and ghosts. Aisles

bloom with chocolate bunnies in pastel foil. A busloadof Catholic school children fill the corner donut

store, buying dollar crullers with ash smeared on their

foreheads. Somewhere, someone else’s son of God rises.

Polish Easter at my friend Layla’s house is family style.

Linen and tweed, flushed bodies in good spring clothes,painted walls suffused with sunlight. Strangers and

friends gather table-side; we tip back our heads and

slurp Buffalo vodka, full of sting and a wet smack of

grass.

Proper Polish, this spread. The hostess, Layla, luminouskitchen minx, serves platters of hand rolled doughs,

stuffed and fried. Her feast makes the table groan

and bend its tired back. Platters of the season’s tender

vegetables, skinned and scrubbed and roasted alive.

Taut crackling skin and flesh basted with lemon juice

and rosemary. Even the butter appears sentient. It’s atraditional Polish Easter butter, delicately molded into

the shape of a lamb.

Together, we strangers scrape and saw, point and

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23/91

14

taste. The magic of bodies at a table: we become

temporary family simply by eating en masse. We have

to brush shoulders, fill glasses. We must put our handsin the same dishes, pass it left and feed a stranger.

Our digestive systems spend a party’s length as twins,

identical pumpernickel and pork fat succumbing to

our bellies’ scientific machinations.

It’s festive and familial—happy Easter, new friends!Today we’re all Polish! Except, of course, I really am.

I can’t tell you what town my grandfather was from, so

little did we dare to trespass the past. Our Polish family

table wasn’t full of the previous generation’s dishes. It

was my grandfather eating tongue-razing hot soup10 full minutes before the rest of us touched a spoon

to our fragile buds. How he swallowed a meal whole

and ate the table out from under our elbows before

we lifted a fork. (We learned. Our Thanksgivings take

20 minutes, at most.) My grandfather loathed rice and

potatoes because he ate them raw when they freed himfrom his last concentration camp. His stomach, tight

with malnourishment, started and seared, a tangle of

nothing split open and lit. It killed a want for common

starches.

Here’s a traditional dish: I don’t know.

Here’s traditional dinner table talk:“You couldn’t just

say Auschwitz canteen?” my uncle and father would

say if they were sitting here, reading over my shoulder.


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CLAIRE MARGINE 15

The room grows warm, thick with our communal

scent---sweating hair and sweet cheese dumplings on

the table, Kielbasa split skin-popping from a grill pan.Someone exclaims, “Layla, where did you get these

butter lambs? They’re adorable!”

Layla is in touch with her Polish roots now. Layla hit

the point in life where she wanted to put her feet on the

ground, dig her fingers into family history and here’swhat she found: Her grandmother’s kitchen. Family

stories. Polish bakeries and delis. Local shopkeepers

and Polish unions and social clubs. A constellation

of cultural connections that brought her, finally, to a

display of the most perfect little almond eared lambs.

It all sounds so fun. I ask her “Are your parents Polish?”

and she laughs. “Oh no, just my grandmother.”

My boyfriend says, “Hey, she’s just as Polish as you!”

I take a piece of bread and eat it roughly. The waning vodka in my blood stream is slowly dragging its crisp

fingernails across my tender brain. My head hurts.

Just as Polish as me.

In high school I wanted to apply for a scholarship froma Polish Social Club---my grandfather was Polish, I

was Polish enough. I wondered what it would feel like

to belong to a culture that wasn’t a liability. I saw my

father’s MySpace page once and it said the people he


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most wants to meet are his grandparents. A Holocaust

speaker once told my class, “Jews can learn how to

speak any language,” when asked how he escapedand leapt from country to country in Europe, an

affectionate shorthand for: “The alternative is death.”

A bottle is passed, a cloud of sweet boozy breath fills

the dining room. Layla’s expectant face wants to

believe we could be cousins. Should she introduce meto her butcher?

Can he make Auschwitz canteen grub? Can the two

of us sit through the truth and meet on the other side?

“I’m so Polish that they killed almost my whole family andeveryone left over was tortured into forever survivors.”

But of course you can’t say that. There is nothing to

say that isn’t strictly unsayable and I, rudderless Pole,

have consumed my first relentless slurps of Buffalo

vodka—-cold, warm, straight, swirled, ice, a fissure ofcranberry cocktail.

She’s just as Polish as me and just look at her. I’ve never

been Polish a day in my life.

Tables are violent. Our rituals are sawing and scrapingand animal flesh in our teeth. Our blood alcohol spikes

and everyone sidesteps around the genocide in the

room. We eat family style, but lord knows we’re not

family.


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CLAIRE MARGINE 17

I don’t think revenge is much of a dish. How do you

serve it when everyone is dead? Who do you serve it

to? Certainly not sweet Layla, proffering poppyseedstrewn bread, warm from the oven, letting us all be

Polish if just for an afternoon.

I stay quiet.

I stay kind.

I do not say Holocaust at Polish Easter.

But when it’s time to cut the head off of the butter

lamb, there is brief violence in my dull table

blade. I slice through the tender butterfat fur,

smash its oily face into a split-open roll

and smear.


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P E TE R B U L L E N

DINNER

All the guests were couples. I was the lone single. I

told myself not to think of it as deeply symbolic. I toldmyself it might have been a coincidence, or maybe an

act of compassion on the part of the couples. I told

myself it would be over soon, like life itself, it would

not go on forever. Even when I had been doubled, I’d

felt single. I didn’t understand why. When I’d said to

my partner Cathy that I felt single, she said: “Wellfuck off then,” which kind of confirmed my feelings.

People say it’s good to have a partner who confirms

your feelings, but in that case it wasn’t so good. The

host of the dinner party had not told me that it would

be a couple’s party so maybe he didn’t see it that way.

Maybe he had an enlightened view, and saw it simplyas a people party, and by virtue of me being a person

I was includable. It’s good to be includable but you

never know how long it’s going to last. And I still felt

like the sole exception to something, which detracted

from any momentary joy associated with feelings of

inclusion. I hate when I have a moment of joy andthen a thought comes along to detract from it. But it

always happens. I wondered if the coupled people

who sat around the table from me also felt, on

occasion at any rate, like sole exceptions of a sort

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and made up for the ensuing discomfort by snuggling

up with another sole exception in a shared bed at the

end of day. I felt like it was a fair enough theory. ButI didn’t feel comfortable testing out my theory with a

question, because it simply wasn’t the sort of question

it felt wise to pose as the one single person in a sea of

couples. What I have noticed, is the good questions

often have to be shelved, or saved for another time,

a time that never comes. Unless of course there wasto come a time when I myself might share a bed with

another person. But by then it might be too late, at

least too late to pose an honest question or get an

honest answer, one that would lend some integrity to

the research. If you want to maintain your integrity, a

shared bed can pose unforeseen challenges.

Two large bowls of noodles slathered in meat sauce

were passed around. This was a cultured crowd

and the food, which came without a salad, or really

without vegetables of any kind seemed orgiastic and

out-of-place. That consoled me since an out-of-placefeeling was one I felt a special kinship with. A very

drunk woman sat across from me, which I have never

really objected to. As a rule, I rather like it at first, then

later not as much. She placed a tremendous pile of

noodles on her plate. I loved the lusty way she did it.

This is food, I’m having some, was the kind of style inwhich she went about accomplishing it. I was starting

to admire this drunken woman, who told me her name

was Sandra. I had not asked her her name. Between

mouthfuls, she just came right out and gave it to me.


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PETER BULLEN 21

Fair enough I thought, and most sociable. I think

she knew things, like how the real questions seldom

get asked. And she probably could tell that I was anappreciator of her appreciations, her relationship to

the noodles being one obvious example.

I felt sure she sensed my growing admiration.

In this way she was her own type of sole exception;exceptionally attuned to a particular type of admirer.

She let me know that she was an artist who specialized

in installations, and said she could place me in one

of her installations because her intuition led her to

believe I’d be very installable. I was ready to have her

stick me any old place she wanted. She had formidableteeth, not something that worried me, and also a stain

on her white blouse that did worry me. I wanted the

power not to fall under the spell of that stain, which

had become, in terms of impression, as significant as

the person wearing it, if that’s the proper way to speak

of a stain, as something worn. I made efforts to lookaway but was continuously drawn back. I wanted to

alert her to it, but because of its location that felt too

daring, because as everyone, particularly her partner,

would surely know, her breasts were inside that blouse.

It was really the only place her breasts could be. I

wished that the stain had been on her sleeve, becausea stain on her sleeve would have led me to point out

its exact and fortuitously innocuous location. That

would have been perfectly appropriate and even

useful, and I had this theory that women appreciated


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men who were useful. But a stain shows up where it

wants to, and that’s life as Frank Sinatra once sang,

and a great many other people have come to much thesame conclusion.


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L I S A L O C A S C I O

C A T C H UP O VERD R I NK S OR C OF F E E

Hey. Let’s. You know? I understand you are coming tome dogsleigh across ten thousand miles of tundra, and

I know this is different from what we discussed, but I

hope we can catch up over drinks or coffee.

Hi there! Thanks for the update note. Can I call

you? You had in your mind this vision of the two ofus floating over the city, cocooned in spun sugar and

stuck together at the crotch, but after giving it some

thought I would love it if we could instead just briefly

encounter one another in a crowded elevator at my

office. Seventh floor, one forty-three pm. Be there!

It will be great to hear how you have been! Hope

we can get to everything in the seven seconds I have

allotted our interaction. I know we discussed taking

a room at the five-star hotel for seventy-two hours of

bathing in draughts of each other’s joy and loss, but

it works better for me to spy you from an oppositetrain platform and raise my hand in a wan gesture

of recognition, never entirely sure that it’s you at

whom I am waving. Can’t wait to see you!

We had discussed you painting your name on

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my back with your tongue, but can we instead have

you do an aisle or two with me at the grocery store?

Definitely New Age Drinks, maybe Ethnic. I know

we said we’d descend lost into the city catacombs,grope forward with only desire to guide us. Right

now I’m feeling more of a see each other at the bar

and yell incomprehensibly over the music, meaning to

but never actually talking kind of thing, though. You

know?

When you said that you hoped we could spend time

together, I know what you had in mind. Us driving a

melting black road hellfire down into a void, sunset

optional, our clothes and bags and jobs and lives and

faces burning off and into the nothing behind, until

we are only two energies clinging to the other’s axis, your mouths crying onto my hands and cock until

your tears are what we are and the car is just a bubble

and we evaporate into the unblinking eye of the sun.

I know that’s what you wanted. But the truth is that I

am terrified of you. In my sleep your desire opens upin front of me, a red maw, and I tremble. Whatever

toe or foreskin I once dipped in there was quite the

risk, and now I think the excitement I felt when you

snake-moved until your skin came clean off was in

fact horror. For the rest of my life it’s going to be flat-

front-khakied brunettes with a genetically diminishedcapacity for pleasure for me, I think. I’m lucky, I realize

now, that I got out with my dick and face intact.

I hope you understand. We can talk about it, over

drinks or coffee.


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B R I G I D H U G H E S

C A G E FREE EG G S

The One Where Nagelberg and I Understand Each

Other on a Spiritual Level

Before going to my friend Nagelberg’s place tonight,

I stopped by the Haight Street Whole Foods and

asked a white kid with dreadlocks who worked there

if they had any horchata. The clerk looked at my

mouth instead of my eyes as I talked, which made meuncomfortable, and then he said, “Hmmm, let’s go

check the soy milk aisle,” and I followed him.

I was a little nervous because I had just stolen a

kumquat from the kumquat display for Nagelberg

because, if you ask me, everyone should be surprisedwith a freshly stolen organic kumquat from time to

time. In that same coat pocket I had also brought a

small scentless votive candle to give her. You never

know when the next big earthquake is going to hit,

and I hate to imagine my friends in the dark.

On the way, we walked by a wall of cage-free eggs,

which didn’t make any sense. Presumably the

chickens are cage-free—not the eggs. I imagined

thousands of eggs walking around a large yard and

chuckled to myself.

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“There’s no such thing as cage-free eggs,” I said to the

clerk.

“’Scuse me?” he said.

“Never mind,” I said.

In the soy milk aisle, the kid sighed and explained

that the Whole Foods in Potrero Hill had all sorts ofhorchata, but that they didn’t seem to have any here.

“No horchata?” I yelled. “What kind of bush league

Third World Whole Foods is this?” He gave me what

seemed to be a sincere apology, but I’m not sure because

I have a hard time telling the difference between

sincerity and sarcasm these days. I smiled sincerely andthe kid looked at my mouth again, so I imagined what

it would be like to kiss him. After deciding it might

not be too bad, he said something about how much he

loved hemp milk and I said, “Whatever.”

When I got to Nagelberg’s house and gave her thekumquat and the candle, she said thank you. “Did you

know that you eat the whole kumquat?” she asked.

“Skin and everything?” I said yes, but the truth is I have

never actually eaten a kumquat. No one has ever given

me one.

Then she said, “That’s funny, the candle I was just

trying to light is all burnt out” and she went ahead and

lit the new one I had just given her. I laughed because

I could never light a candle that way. All mine are still

on reserve for the next disaster.


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BRIGID HUGHES 27

The One Where I Realize I’m Doing It All Wrong

Yesterday Nagelberg and I were talking about men,and for some reason “The Helicopter” came up.

“What’s ‘The Helicopter?’” she asked.

“You don’t know what ‘The Helicopter’ is?” I was

stunned. How could a pretty girl like Nagelberg havegone her whole adult life without running into a

Helicopter or two? “It’s when a guy grabs his penis

at the base and then swings it around like a propeller.

You know, like a helicopter.”

I demonstrated with my imaginary dick and madethe ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch sound of a helicopter. Suddenly

I realized how much I was enjoying myself, and then

instantly hated myself for corroborating Freudian

psychology.

“Never seen it,” she shrugged.

“If I had a dime for every time I’d been chased around

a living room by a man doing ‘The Helicopter,’” I said,

“I’d have enough money to pay for an hour of metered

parking in San Francisco.”

“Well,” she said. “I must not be dating the right type of

guys.”

“Sure,” I sighed. “The right type of guys.”


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The One Where We Learn French

The other Saturday night I attended a Bastille Dayparty at the W Hotel. Despite plans for a “Girl’s Night”

guaranteeing drinking, stories about sex, and the men

we’d been having it with, my typical enthusiasm for

these activities eluded me.

I’d spent the afternoon wandering around nakedin my apartment, as I am wont to do, repeating the

word “Bastille,” to myself, bass-tee-yuh, thinking about

that time in Paris six years ago when I was berated

by a crêpe vendor for using incorrect conjugation. I

paused to check my reflection in the mirror, bass-tee-

yuh, remembering how inadequate he’d made me feel.

That evening Nagelberg and I got ready together

the way we always do. I coated my lips in gloss and

complained about the lack of fish in the sea lately.

Nagelberg said it sounded like a good night for a swim.

I told her I hadn’t been interested lately, and she saidshe found that hard to believe.

We arrived at the hotel before the other girls and

headed for the bar. Chandeliers, martini glasses, a

$3 coat check. Nothing like the hollow wood of the

spaces I prefer to hunker down in. Two models inwhite pouf wigs and thigh-highs offered us Mardi Gras

beads or plastic skimmer hats, all of which generated

an immediate internal list of shitty things to say, but I

corked it because the disparities didn’t seem to bother


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BRIGID HUGHES 29

anyone else. Crammed elbow-to-elbow waiting for

the bartender, I heard a hard sniff, then another, and

realized the Suit-and-Tie behind me was doing blowoff his house key. I could see the flex of his jaw, the

tension in his teeth, and for a moment I missed one of

my ex-boyfriends.

I considered ordering a stiff drink but settled on

champagne, suddenly in need of a prop more than abuzz. Nagelberg got water. A gamey fellow mistook

our smiles as an opportunity to grind his pelvis in our

general direction. I yelled over the techno that I’d seen

an episode of Deadliest Catch the night before, and

something about the way the boats got swallowed

by the waves. Nagelberg told me to knock it off andsuggested we wander.

We headed towards the photo area, drawn like bugs to

the bulb. “I’m the photographer,” said a short fat man,

gesturing to black bags of equipment on the floor. “Do

you want your picture taken?”

Behind him on the thinly carpeted floor was a large

bed draped in red and white sheets. Not a pair to

hesitate, Nagelberg and I kicked off our shoes and

climbed on. We arched our backs and batted our lashes

at the camera. “Lift your chins,” the fat man ordered.“Touch your hair.”

When it was over, Nagelberg rolled off in search

of her shoes. I curled around a pillow and closed


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my eyes to watch the electrical parade of floaters

swimming across my lids from the flash. I could feel

the photographer sit down on the edge of the bed. “Ido professional boudoir photography,” he said, hitting

the b hard enough to blow a wisp of my hair from my

face.

“Boudoir?” I cooed, the word betraying the scowl on

my face.

Just then the rest of the girls arrived like a perfumed

missile of clicking heels and swinging ponytails. One

of my friends pecked the photographer on one cheek,

then the other.

“Brilliant,” she said. “I see you’ve met.”

“You two know each other?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” she said, wrapping a long arm around him.

“He’s the one who invited us.”

The One Where Nagelberg and I Deal with the

Cage-Free Egg Issue Once and For All

The other day, Nagelberg called me and told me to

come with her to find some new clothes at the mall.

I didn’t want to, but I had to acknowledge that I’d

been wearing the same dowdy black khakis and blue


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BRIGID HUGHES 31

sweatshirt several days now, and it would be a good

idea to go shopping out of the need for something new

rather than something practical.

When we got there, Nagel said the big, noisy, confusing

maze of a mall made her feel anxious. And as we looked

at the giant five-level color-coded map for a bit of

orientation, I realized that after twenty-nine years of

avoiding malls because they’re banal and coffinesqueand full of bag-toters who think that buying whatever

they want is the same thing as freedom, they also make

me feel anxious as well.

“Let’s head for the elevator,” I said, steering us towards

Nordstrom.

Once again I was trying not to think about the true

definition of “cage free eggs” so I said, “Apparently

maxi dresses are all the rage right now.”

“A Nazi dress? That’s absurd,” Nagelberg said.

“What? No, Nagel. A maxi dress,” I said and pointed one

out from the no less than eight girls toddling around

in the long summer sheath.

“Whew,” she said, clearly relieved, and we laughed likemaniacs just like we always do. “That’s a dumb name.

Sounds like maxipad.”

“Can you even imagine?” I said. “A Nazi dress? I don’t


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care how hip they get, I’m not wearing a Nazi dress.”

“Seriously,” she agreed.

Then we found her some jeans, and I bought a new

sweater, and we went for dinner at our favorite place

and had drinks at The Libertine, where drunk guys hit

on us even though we weren’t wearing maxi dresses.

And in the end it was the kind of night that reminds you everything’s all right, even if cage free eggs are

anything but.


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K I R I N K H A N

O NLY PEOPL E

When they lived in the brick rental house on Osprey

Lane, when she was four or five and just beginning todifferentiate her form from the rest of the world and

its inhabitants, Breshna’s best friend in the whole wide

world was Katy. Katy was everything Breshna was

not—slender limbs to her chubby frame, milky skin

to her walnut brown color, blond waves to Breshna’s

oil slick of straight black hair. And most importantly,at least, so it seemed to Breshna, green eyes—sheen

stargay, that treasured Pashtun feature, featured in

tribal songs of eternal love, eyes that cause madness

and lust and devotion for the ages. Yet somehow, by

some alignment of stars, Katy loved Breshna. They

played together every day—hiding their My LittlePonies in the backyard to discover later, riding bikes

and pretending they were horses, dressing dolls

up and parading them through the doll town in

miniature convertibles to parties in doll mansions,

and playing house, or more specifically, “Husband and

Wife.” “Husband and Wife” involved the removal ofall clothing—underwear included. The two parties

would then lie in bed naked next to each other and

rub their bodies against each other. The individual

performing the role of “Husband” is expected to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIsohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86UnUcnIso


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be the more active participant, and is often “on top”—

both parties are expected to alternate husbandly

duties. No kissing. No real “exploring” with the hands,absolutely no penetration (How? Where? It simply

was not part of their awareness)—more of a kind of

alignment-based frottage, touching as curious animals

do, with the fullness of skin as sensory organ, by feel.

Answering only the question, “What kind of touch

would feel nice?” and then providing that touch toone’s partner, expecting, and almost always receiving,

that same touch in reciprocity. It was best done in the

late afternoon, when one’s parents were napping or

otherwise engaged, and no one bothered to check on

two little girls “taking a nap” in the bedroom.

Another way of putting it:

The sheets pulled overhead make a secret room,

a flowing, sighing room, shaded but not dark,

feet tucked in, giggling. Skin tingling, glowing,

rippling—is yours?

warm in places—cheeks, the center of chest

flush.

skin feels too tight on hands, tummy hurts a

little bit, cramping, hot breath on neck.

air soft and warm, clean sheets and salt water.

Thigh is touching thigh is touching thigh is

touching thigh. Knees rub against each other.


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KIRIN KHAN 35

Your lips darken and deepen—do mine do that?

Chest flat like mine. Trace fingers on it, mostlyto get you to trace your fingers on mine—

lazy drawings that make skin tingle and bloom.

Bloom.

Mummy reads Breshna’s diary junior year and cries for

days without explanation. She picks Breshna up from

school early in the middle of the week without a word

to Breshna’s father, saying they are going on a “girls

only trip” (he never asks for details regarding girls-

only events, assuming they are of a biological natureso intimate and sacred he cannot dare to breach even

the boundary of inquiry), and drives directly to the

family psychiatrist, silent but shaking, the diary at

her side. Breshna is grateful for the silence, seeing the

diary lying there between the passenger and driver

seats, knowing there are so many reasons containedtherein for her mother to be upset with her, and she

uses the silence to steel herself should this girls-only

trip culminate in a beating. Instead, Mummy pulls her,

gripping her triceps in a solid pinch, into a nondescript,

one story brick building.

She knew her brothers were brought to a psychiatrist

regularly, and that her dad occasionally saw one when

he would stop talking or leaving his room for too long,

but none of the girls were allowed the luxury of a


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36

struggle with their inner selves or outer realities. She

had never been to this building before.

The white-haired man with fleshy red face, the

psychiatrist, sitting behind his desk squints from

behind his narrow rectangle glasses and asks Breshna,

“When did you know you were attracted to women?”

What could she say? “I’m not sure what you mean.”Who else is there?

“When did you notice your, erhm, sexual attraction to

women?” The doctor speaks slowly, as though Breshna

doesn’t speak English. As though she knew the words

for such things in Pashto.

“I don’t suppose I ever really noticed it. Until everyone

else did, I mean. I suppose I pay attention to what

moves me.”

“And women move you. In a way that men do not.”Statements, not questions. Breshna pondered that for

a while, gazing down at the lines in her palms, her

fortune written unintelligibly there. Her parents sent

her here. It is an extravagant expense for them, but

not more costly than the rumors of a lesbian daughter

would be. It is a compassionate response.

“Breshna? Men do not move you?” He presses. She

chews on that while he goes on.


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KIRIN KHAN 37

“Is it the men of your culture? Not all men are like that

you know. Oppressive. Backwards. You’re very lucky

to be in America; there are a lot of good men here, whowould let you work and wear shorts and you wouldn’t

have to wear a headscarf. You could, ahem, have sex

with them, you know, erhm, without judgment. Men

are different here.” He looks at her sympathetically.

Breshna feels her face flush with a brew of anger andshame.

“No, no, not like that, it’s not, I mean, they’re not like

that either, it’s just…they’re just different, is all. It feels

different. Thinking about men makes me tired. Really

tired.” At least that much is true. She looks at the clockbehind his head and hopes that’s enough to get her out

of there today—a little truth in exchange for a sanity

pass, at least for today.

Who else could there possibly be?

When women have been the focal point of attraction,

the ones she has always been closest to, the only

ones she was allowed to be alone with, sleep ‘alone’

with, the ones who whispered with blossoming rose

lips secrets into her blushing shell ear, the ones who

walked by and lingered in the swish of skirt or wave oftrailing dupatta. The ones she touched, who touched

her, before she knew what sex was, what attraction

was, when she only knew who made her feel safe and

who didn’t, who was like her and who wasn’t.


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38

Who else was there but women?

When a man was a heavy plodding weapon, a heavy

hand pushing her head down to prayer or a blowjob, all his secrets, all his sex and all his power, all his

and not hers, men with mustaches seated reclining

on cushions in the men’s room while she sat in the

kitchen or a bedroom with the women, men reclining

with their legs bent and spread apart at the knees just

enough, as though aiming their genitals at her, holdingher hostage while telling her to fetch more ché.

When women, soft and fleshy, shared some of their

fullness with each other, leaving each hollow in her

body fulfilled. When they left and her bed was filled

with silver glistening on her body and the scent ofsalty air and water-soaked flowers in her mouth, hair,

sheets.

When women were the only time and place where

she was allowed to be soft and open, eyes soft, heart

soft to the point of aching, to breathe in and out tomatch them. The only people she had touched before

a man forced himself inside her, splitting her from

the inside out with a growl and weight that paralyzed

her.

Women were the only people.


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39

H A N N A P E S H A

HOM A GE

My skirt unraveled as I wore it, leaving silver sequins

everywhere I wenta slug trail of beauty

an homage to my family.

Listen to the silences of my body.

Where does she wait to be held?

It’s okay if words come slowly, a sentence an hourThis is how the world is put together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grKh_4Uetbc


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- SET 2

-


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41

K

R I S T I N A C R E D O L O

I A SK

I ask but

no one can tell mewhere I’ve been.

I’ve been living outside.

But no one can tell me

where I’ve been.

I was chased away,and my pursuers were many.

When I stopped running,

I was alone in the forest.

Yellow pine, beetle-dust,

needles and amber.

I slept; I awoke

by a small, cold river,

a river of water;

water the color

the color and keennessof thousands of small cold knives.

I followed a crow, one branch to another, high-

crying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YpZfNK01Qc


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I followed a rabbit and burrowed into quaking grass.

I broke the steel surface and followed an otter;

I slipped up under the bank and I hid.

I dissolved into clouds,

splayed thin over canyons.

I dropped from the sky

and into the earth.

I lived in the earth for seventeen seasons, and thenI crawled out of a hole in the ground

like an ant.

There was a scattering of raindrops

cratering the dirt, and then nothing.

That’s how it is for me.

Nobody knows where I’ve been,

and no one can tell me.

I’ve been living outside.

But where I have been, nobody can tell me.

I heard horses’ hollow hooves

as they ran past me.

But I couldn’t catch them

by their glistening necks,

or their brown manes streaming.

I heard humming, so I followed a honeybee

to the side of a mountain. I found pungent herbs

bruised and clinging to rocks;


52/91

KRISTIN ACREDOLO 43

tangled within their white flowers

were masses of crawling bees,

crawling and crawling, crippled with pollen.

Once a bear on the rocky slope

Shale-slid and tumbled.

I remember hearing

the bear huff-cough

as he struck the earth and slidin a loud flat clamor of clacking shale,

and how silence drew back at the bottom of the slope

until the bear climbed into his skin again and walked

away,

shaking the heat from his enormous shoulders.

That’s how it was for me

when I was living out there.

But nobody knows where I was.

No one can tell me the names of those places,

Not the place by the river,

Nor the place where the bear fell.


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54/91

45

C H R I S T I N E N O

W EST ERN A VE

Todd says the light’s green and we’re not moving.

Todd says love is a cheap trick.Todd says he loves The Germs—but wont play them on

our way to The Roxy. Todd says ‘cause it’s lame.

Todd says he doesn’t believe in boyfriend-girlfriend.

Todd says don’t ruin it the experience.

Todd flicks my hand from the radio dial.

Todd flicks his Parliament out the window.Todd calls Parliaments “P. Funks.”

Todd says noise is the shit.

Todd says Those People move hella slow.

Todd says the shit’s in the static.

Todd says something smells like fish.

Todd says it’s this street. Nah,Todd says it’s Those People. Yea.

Todd says it’s their genes, pocket billfolds, thieves.

Todd adds—green card, green card, passport. Dirt.

Todd says he’s got license.

Todd says—flash ‘em your tits.

Todd says they stare.Todd says I’m boring.

Todd says—and their eight kids; yardbirds.

Todd lights a P Funk.

Todd says punk rock is the noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAcn9kVXeU


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46

Todd says love is some bull::shit.

Todd says—get on the bus, man. Honks.

Todd says he’d rather eat shit.Todd sighs—at theMango Lady.

Todd sighs—at the bouquets and white buckets.

Todd sighs—at all the germs.

Todd says get out and walk, then.

Todd says don’t touch the radio. Anyway, he was

joking. Todd cuts off a rusty Datsun, hauling oldstoves. Honks. Todd gives the finger to the kid

riding shotgun. Honks. Todd says he loves Jeeps.

Todd says he loves The Germs.

Todd says he just loves too hard.

Todd says wait—and picks a blonde strand off the

dash. Todd has a theory:Todd says chicks always leave shit behind.

Todd hands me the strand—

Like, here, those bitches.


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47

R E I J A C K L E R

NOT THE SLU T

Y O U T HINK SHE I S

1.

Foster care is not the slut

You think she is

I know, I know...

Her skirt’s hiked highHer heels bleed red

She’s a real bitch—

I’m not arguing with this!

Sure, Foster CareGot funk, got gunk

Got shit, got splatter,

Foster Care’ll leave you

Naked on a platter, eaten,

All gone (The way You ordered it) if you ask,

But Foster Care, she’s no slut.

She’s just a Junkie—

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvc1OJVmWE


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48

Just wants a fix

Of some home-like substances:

Butterscotch, Christmas Lights,

Whole Roast Family on Vacation, to

Shoot into her veins so hard

It shakes her out of all her

Dresses. Like now. In this bed.

Where you’re kissing me.

2.

There goes the best minds of my incarceration ledHalf starving, wild, wandering for ice cream cones

Through streets of social working busy-beasts:

Off, to the Soda Fountain Juvenile Detention

Feasts!

To the Candy Cane Sacrifice of CPS house calls!

—(Seriously. They took me out for Emporio Rulli’s

Ice Cream before dropping me at my foster home)

because the government knows that no

matter how little Mint Chip you throw atkids before walking us to our lynching line,

we won’t question why they’ve sent us,

we won’t question their crimes—because


58/91

REI JACKLER 49

We just want one sweet mouthful

Before we go quietly

Into our adulthoodsOf numb-tounged,

Homelike-substanceless sobriety.

3.

And now you ask on my pillow About the cravings as if

It’s impossible that

I’m still hungry

For food in this mood,

But I’m famished.

Quick! Someone get me

A cookie, I’m jonesin’

For a sister!

Though, sometimes

Your familiesJust taste like it, too—

Sometimes someone’s sprayed PAM

And added hot sauce

To hide the bitter taste

It’ll leave you, and then You’re lost in the metallic tang

Biting down like a bear clamp

When you try to love again—


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50

So go on, try:

Keep up your slut shaming

While I stand pretty;While I redo your tie;

Shudder as if you’ve discovered

Something might be bitter

In the meat of my thighs,

But don’t mistake this—

Foster Care kids ain’t the Sluts you think we is.

No glittery highs and sequined shoes,

No prancin, techno dancing. Not even

Booze. Just nothing left toTaste, except

You.


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51

M I R I A

M BI R D G R E E N B

E R G W O ULD

Y OU BEL I E V E

—Three blocks from the Cyprus Freeway in Oakland,which collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake,

with a line by Sue Moon

We climbed from the mouth of a volcano

all year, the year I moved west with my sweetheart

to live three blocks from where the earth had brokenopen. Men in the Acorn Projects

remembered pulling strangers

trapped in their cars to safety. Brother,

one told me he’d said, we can be afraidof each other again tomorrow. Twenty

years after, they’d made good

on their promise. By then I waited weekly

in a food line

alongside Chinese immigrant women who fished

plastic bottles from the trash, eyes

roving for a coin, a lost prize, at the curb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuTDl-mLs9Q


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52

Sometimes

I’d lift my hand to the lip—

look out over the volcano’s rim, and there,

in a crevice, a scrap of paper, shining:

someone’s private prayer

or prophecy. Everybody held out

hope, tended their small hustle. Women knocked

on the door selling broken-heeled shoes, loquats

picked in an abandoned yard, would try the knob

if no one was home. Could I make change

for a twenty, asked someone, unfolding one

she’d manufactured from a dollar bill.

Would you believe

what lengths I went to, to call myself

happy then? Star of blood that blooms

beneath a bruised fingernail, star

of silence left high in the heart of a room

after the door’s slammed. A couple sits, watching

one another’s reflections in a mirror. The two

talk like this as evening falls

around them, and neither has the heart


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MIRIAM BIRD GREENBERG 53

to get up and turn on the light. “My body’s here

but no one’s in it,” writes a friend; for me

it’s different. I’d spent my childhood

in a house made of bees; on hot days honey

dripped through cracks in the ceiling. Me, I hummed,

coiled tight. It hadn’t been long since I’d slept

in a creosote field while grainers crashedin the switchyard nearby. Actual tumbleweeds

turned like prayer wheels crossing the tracks

and the constellations coyotes called to,

streaked across the night, were more miraculousthan freckles on the face of god. Around then,

hitchhiking past Death Valley, a pair of truckers

stopped for me. I used to haul cattle

to LAX, one said, But I couldn’t take lookinginto their mournful eyes anymore. I guess I wear

my heart

on my sleeve, he said. They were climbing

through the Sierras to pick up a load of honey, telling

jokes,

they both had wild white beards. I hadn’t yet come

in my life to peer over the lip of a volcano,


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54

I wasn’t yet made of a cicada’s coils

and tymbal. Still, I carried a bit of string, a quipu I

used

for eavesdropping on the passage of time.

If someone had put a knife in my hands, even then,

I’d have taken it. I can hear

two birds quarreling, tangled in midair. I’m afraid

one day I’ll find myself trash picking, tearing

corners from a twenty. I’m afraid I’m no longer

lost as the runaway I met hopping a train

out of Colton that summer

who carried a small white jar of her own baby teeth

with her in her pack.


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55

D A N N Y S C U D E R I

DE A R A J

You’ve been gone from this earth

Longer than you were ever on it.The curtain call has been longer than the show itself,

And my heart has been clapping ever since

That day in June

When my dad’s black Cadillac turned the corner,

Slow with the weight of bad news,

And found me on the sidewalk walking with my mom.I had just gotten a haircut.

Long on top, shaved underneath.

It was 1996.

So I felt the breeze on my neck

When he told me you died.That your memorial mass would be on Monday.

He asked me if I was ok.

I think…

I don’t really know.

It’s hard to process never again

When you’re just 10.When the only things that makes sense are

Super Nintendo Mortal Kombat tournaments,

Chicken fingers,

And laser tag.

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We did all of those in one night.

On one of your last nights.

They never told us the cancer was winning from thestart.

You weren’t there for the beginning of 5th grade 9

months earlier.

The teachers came in.

They said you were sickIn a tone heavy with defeat.

They said you had cancer in your bones.

We cried.

I don’t know why.“Cancer” was a word like “universe” or “algebra” or

“girls”—

We kind of knew what it was

But we were too young to really understand,

Too young to know how the chemo

Killed your childhood in slow IV dripsLong before the cancer ever did;

Too young to know that the strands of hair you’d

send in

As you dealt with going bald

Were road markers on a dead-end street shorter than

we ever knew;Too young to know that the trip to France for the

miracle holy water

Was a Hail Mary different than the Hail Mary’s we

said for you at school;


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DANNY SCUDERI 57

But not too young to understand

That watching you fight over those 9 months

Taught me more about livingThan living ever could.

You taught me about time,

About how seconds and hours and days

Are just numbers that we’re living in

With no guarantee for the next one,So take a moment.

You taught about laughing,

That it doesn’t make everything better

Because it’s not supposed to.

It makes everything perfect right then,So do it. Do it often.

You taught me that dreams are taking a few steps

When life is a wheelchair;

And when I saw the pictures of you putting on yourwetsuit

For over an hour because your body

Was more like water than the ocean you wanted to

get into,

You taught me that fighting

Is throwing enough punches with your lungsUntil you breathe enough strength to swim one last

swim.

Your last wish was to ride the Pacific,


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To feel the power of nature carry you again

Before it carried you away.

I wonder if the horizon looked within reach that day.I wonder if you felt your own current.

I wonder what it was like,

To be 10 years old,

Floating in that water,

Knowing what you knew,

About days, and hours, and seconds…


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S A R A H H E N R Y

T H R O UG H THE WIN D O W

We decide that the squirrels are actually fairies because

we want them to be. The afternoons are long and wewant magic. They chatter at us from the trees, we talk

back in earnest. We’re invaders in their kingdom, two

small girls squatting in the dirt, poking sticks into the

ground. Both of us in dirty shorts and T shirts. Maya

and I tilt our heads up, trying to catch sight of them

leaping from branch to branch. There’s a mosquito onher knee but I’m not going to smack it off.

“Come down, we won’t hurt you.”

But we will, we hurt things. Maya knows how to fry an

ant with a magnifying glass. She doesn’t do it in frontof me anymore because I cry like a baby. But I know

how to snap a punch towards my little brother if he

pushes me too far. We are capable of hurt.

The trees stand straight up around us like we’re on the

inside of a matchbox. The ground is matted with deadpine needles and the whole world is brown with the

dead heat of late summer.

***

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Magic doesn’t come. The squirrels laugh in squirrel

language. We go inside because my parents are packing

up the truck to go to the river today. Redwood Creekhas

sparkle & blink 73

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