Jessie Carty

Habit Forming

Becky was a scab picker,
her skin: white divots.

On the bus no one sat with her,
saying "lice ridden" "rat bitten"

"so poor she shares a bed
with her brother" which was

somehow such a bad thing.
I'd sit in the back of the bus

where the older kids played
Truth or Dare; where, behind

raised jackets, I touched
a boy's pale penis; where

whispers started about what
you would do for a quarter—

voices that began to say
chew your hair, your nails,

the inside skin of your lip.

CP

Jessie Carty is the author of three poetry collections but she also chisels away at prose in between teaching at RCCC in Concord, NC. You can find her taking photos and editing Referential Magazine or blogging at http://jessiecarty.com.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

 

POEM BETWEEN SOBS

Some things do go wrong, just not in a way I can explain.
Shirts go missing. Red balloons escape
the fat hands of toddlers. Things like that. On any given Friday,

there is a fourth-grade sleepover somewhere, gradually
going awry.  Jonae Smilax and her mother are fighting again.
The screen door has a hole in it so the bugs come in.

Pale women everywhere hastily apply sunscreen.
An important post-it note falls into the heat register.
Things go wrong so regularly, and no one stops

to bemoan the mishappenings. My big wolf tears,
I assume that is what they are doing.
I have no other explanation.

HOW TO DIE

First, you must rise very early in the morning for thirty-five years.
Consider how much your body would weigh without a heart inside

to keep it down. You must feel okay with this figure. Get rid of your
books. Stop thinking your marginal notes will be found useful by others;

waterlog them. However many will fit in your bathtub. Forget
the quadratic formula. Forget all those phone numbers you still remember

from when you were a kid. Gradually erase other, more important things:
your mother's middle name, family recipes, your social security number.

Lose your favorite coat, your Bible, your car keys. Don't look for them.
Get your gallbladder removed. Schedule an amputation.

Think away your top layer of skin cells. Then the next layer. Your skin
will begin to redden (it's just the blood cells showing, no need to worry).

Remove the rest of the skin at a comfortable pace. These layers
no one has touched, no unwashed kisses here, those were gone

long before this. Hit bone. The rest of you will fit in bags and boxes.
Take apart your feet first and work your way up like you're putting

away a puzzle. Pack the bones tightly together; the smaller ones will fall
to the bottom, there. Before you know it, you've finished.

Someone will be along shortly to pack up your hands.

CP

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins currently lives and writes in Albert Lea, MN with her husband and no children. Look for her poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, elimae, PANK, Neon, and elsewhere.

Manisha Anand

----

SKINWRITING

I have words on my skin. Years worth of language, loved and jealously guarded.

The first time I read the word ephemeral, I couldn't bring myself to look away from the page. I traced every letter slowly with my finger, trying to burn it onto my brain. Trying to, somehow, indelibly associate it with myself. It was so beautiful that I simply wanted it. I wrote it on my arm for a few days, over and over with a black felt-tipped pen, but somehow it was never quite enough. I wanted that word with as much desire and longing that an eight year old could muster. So, one evening after dinner, I unscrewed the blade from my Mickey Mouse sharpener and cut it into my thigh. E-P-H-E-M-E-R-A-L. After that, there was no turning back.

For my tenth birthday, I had a star-shaped cake with white icing and chocolate sprinkles, and a party for all my friends. There were silver balloons that bounced slightly against the ceiling, and a sign that spelled out 'Happy Birthday' in red, green and yellow. I didn't wear the new dress my mother bought for me because it had a v-neck, and if you looked closely enough you could see the first two letters of reverie slowly healing under my collarbone. Propinquity and lugubrious followed in quick succession, and by August I couldn't go anywhere without a cardigan on.

My dad lost his job when I was in high school, and we had to move. My mum lost her big kitchen and her quick, cheery laugh. My grandmother lost her free healthcare privileges and the pastor who dropped by every Tuesday just to listen to her. My little sister lost her front tooth and the tooth fairy. Me, I never lost anything. I was a skinwriter and no one could take what I loved away from me.

My teenage years were fairly predictable, with a flurry of likes, hates and loves. Esurient on my hip and vapid on my chest. A heart that broke far too often. Friends who came and went. Looking back now, I wonder why my mother never noticed anything. All the tiny pinpricks of blood my clothes had. Those quick tugs at my sleeve to hide the clumsily etched translucent on my arm. My stubborn insistence on always being fully clothed. She should have known.

I moved away from home after school, and joined a university in the neighbouring town. For a while, there were no words. Then a bent safety pin and I sat together in the dark and scratched lachrymose onto my wrist after my father's funeral. Erudite after I passed second year Maths, and luminous for that wonderful, wonderful boy who thought my words and I were beautiful.

Exacerbate. Profane. Stanza. Quagmire. So many years, so many memories.

Growing up isn't that sudden, dramatic change you think it will be when you are a child. It slowly creeps in. Seeps in. You eventually become the person you are now, and everything else starts to feel like someone else's life. Scars fade, you forget. But every now and then, the silvery outline of a favourite word on my skin takes me back.

[an editor's favorite, 2011]

CP

Manisha Anand lives in London and excels at being a starving writer, trying (rather hopelessly) to find enough part-time jobs to pay the rent. Having an MA in Creative Writing doesn't seem to help matters at all, drat. Anand's writing has appeared in the anthology LiveJournal: The First Decade, Assembly Journal, and various post-its here and there.

Jimmy Chen

 

The Deer, the Dad, Etc...

The deer was not an impossible idea; in fact, it was more than probable. The deer, dead, tied to the hood of the car, its neck limp and swaying with each curve of the road back home. The son would look at his dad. "Why did you kill him?" The dad wouldn't answer with words.

The dad wanted his son to understand death early on. He made the son touch the deer's neck, to feel its last warm pulses under his palm. The deer's eyes, still moist with shock, reflecting a pale cloudless sky, frost gathering around its nostrils. The son would compare the deer's pulse with his own.

Dear was not used in the dad's letters to his son, nor did the son use that word either. The strained letters between them during the war began simply with their names. "Dear Son," the son would think, and laugh a laugh that is only funny after years. What an impossible idea.

The dead is what's inside, some forlorn tumor that never quite killed you. Each morning you wake up and survey all those lost years and neversaid words in the mirror. Your face got older until it finally froze, every denied expression still tingling on your skull. You are the dad and I am the ghost, your son who died before he died in war. I am the deer, Dear Dad.

—First appeared in 2009 in Bull

CP

Jimmy Chen writes short fiction and essays. He lives in San Francisco, where he is an administrator at a research institution. He can be found online at jimmychenchen.com.

Tres Crow

 

Baby's Gonna Be A Rock Star

When I played the music loud, in the car, in the living room, my son bobbed his head. He was a year old. I was so proud; my boy, gonna be a musician like his poppa. When we danced, his momma and me, danced around him laughing and shouting and carrying on, he'd dance too, bob his head, stomp his feet, shake it.

Two years went by. We danced and I'd play the music loud, and I was so proud. Then he kept doing it, bobbing his head, twitching. I'd turn on the music to give it some context, pretend, shake my own head, pretend.

The doctors say there's no way we could've known, but that's bullshit. I was so proud. Baby's gonna be a rock star. Look at 'im go.

CP

Tres Crow is the world's foremost authority on zombie mating rituals and as such spends most of his time in the field learning human brain recipes. His notes from the field can be found in Emprise Review, decomP, and The Foundling Review. He can be found online at his blog Dog Eat Crow World.