look at this tangle of thorns

breannapeck:

I knew it was the last time because
it was the first time since
the first time I was so nervous
to touch you. Not nervous like,
is accepting an escort to my truck
the same thing as accepting a kiss,
will your mouth recognize mine
from a past life, and will you want to
see me again? No, not nervous like that.

More nervous like the story I told you
when I arrived to keep myself from crying-
how every time I left your place
at midnight or morning I’d scrutinize
the front porches of all the complexes
between your apartment and wherever
I found parking, trying to find the wind chimes
that swirled the score the first time
you kissed me. I never found it. Started
to convince myself I made that music up.

But today, with my arms full
of all the tangible ways I could miss you
I saw them everywhere. Swinging
from awnings, overlooking entryways
those dangling front door jellyfish. I can’t remember
if I told you I thought it meant something.
But I do remember asking if I could
be close to you. When you said yes, I leaned
into you like a wave, but you did not hold me.

You were still and told me to breathe.
I put my ear to your chest and practiced
simulating the slow measure. Afraid to smudge
your white sweater with runaway eyeliner,
I turned and rested against you. Put one hand
on your knee and reached behind my back
to find your free hand and pull it forth.
I tried to make your arm respond, but it hung
like an unfastened seatbelt only long enough
for you to say If we’re going to be friends.
This
can’t
happen.

It wasn’t just the pauses. It was the first time
you spoke to me like that. Blunt and cold
connecting like a baseball bat and I was a piñata.
I leapt from the couch spilling pieces of myself.
I kept jumping in the middle of your living room
trying to shake off how much you meant it.

You told me I could yell at you, call you names
and I shook my head, Why would I ever want to say
those things to you? I asked and you said
a lot of people would. I reached into my bag
and pulled out a handful of colored stones
I picked out especially for you. I read you
the meanings and uses for each one while you
arranged them in your open palm.

When you thank me for the gift, the thoughtfulness,
I told you, they’re just rocks.You tilted your head,
Don’t down play it, and with that I knew
you knew. I put on my coat, kissed your cheek,
and told you goodbye.

Walking to my truck I didn’t bother
recounting the wind chimes. Despite the afternoon breeze,
they had the decency
to remain still.

breannapeck:

Initially it was the sting rays
that roused the goose flesh over
my arms and legs. Aquatic kites saucering 
above the reef and the bay, roaming
and rippling like magic carpets. 

They were quickly forgotten 
as I sat on the shore and witnessed
the de-conching. Dozens of shells
piled on the sand with their swirled 
staircase cones and their flared lips
that resemble women’s skirts or genitalia.

I can still hear it. The wet tearing
suck as hands shoved themselves inside
and ripped the animal out. Carcasses
littered the island; shriveled bean bags.
The vacant shell was cleansed
with salt water and a hole was cut
into the spire.

They brought it to their lips
like a chalice, trumpeting into the night.
Attempting to summon bubbles, but Poseidon 
does not respond kindly to threats.
Sometimes he does not respond at all.

And you forget until the day
you are collecting conches and the surface
light is eclipsed by a white belly, an open mouth
and then you remember,
both of you do. 

One-legged unicyclists are few

and far in between. They gather

once every three years with the best

one-legged choreographers and acrobats,

clowns and ringmasters, in a feild

lost in Southern Minnesota. No admission

fee since 1897, but concessions are a little

more pricey. Nothing at the one-legged

circus matches. You can wear your

favorite pink shirt with your favorite

orange pants. Your lime green slippers.

It is said that the one-legged fortuneteller

has been around since the world began,

that she lost her limb in an all-out brawl

with a magical saber tooth tiger, who

upon tasting her flesh was so dissatisfied

he spared her life and cursed her immortal.

She will hold you palm with canyon-cracked hands

and tell your unavoidable fates. Rumors say that

her arms and cheeks are tattooed with small warnings,

one for each soul she has ruptured by telling

the honest truth.

When I find the circus, and there’s got to be

a highway that can get me there, I will ask

the fortune teller to read me. It’s been three years

since you died and I’ve been waiting, wondering.

On the day your heartbeats left me,

where were they going?

-Maddie

My mother’s kitchen is a small museum — not of pretty things, or even interesting things, but of funny ones.  My mother’s kitchen has a different knob on every cabinet door, a bouquet of dried roses hanging from the ceiling, a vase filled with burned-out lightbulbs.  On the division between the kitchen and the hallway are eleven ceramic cows painted in different pastel colors; above the stove, a candle lighter shaped like a cow; cow-print plates and bowls.  The same goes for the iron rooster standing in the corner, and the rooster magnets, and the cow-shaped cookie jar.  In the spaces above the cabinets are false fruits, empty cognac bottles, more cows, more roosters, maracas, old radios, knives, sharpeners, gas range knobs, beads, towels, quilts, stacks of unused cabinet knobs, still all different.  She has put marble-patterned contact paper over the yellow counter tops and above the painting of George Washington over the stove, a fortune cookie fortune in its frame, are small replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Mount Rushmore, and the Louvre.

My friends love my mother’s kitchen because there is always more to discover.  She knows this.  I know this.  I know that they do not see what I see.  My mother is hiding.  My mother is barricading herself inside.  This room is like every other room, mismatched, each wall a different color, disorienting and fat, design magazines stacked like an obstacle course.  She is filling her new house with old things — other people’s things — so that if someone comes again to take her, she can give them this time unimportant things instead of all she loves.  My friends love my mother’s kitchen, but they do not know her.  She prefers this.

How much time did a quarter get you in 1950?

Snap a shot of my mother, and your other daughter.

How many times did girls skin their bare knees back then?

The sidewalk is still cracked in that exact spot on Southview.

Good girls get ice cream cones.

The tightrope shadows of electrical lines criss-cross the concrete.

A fallen, rapidly melting dollop of their sweet treat is left out of frame.

Do not shatter this perfection.

A blurry hand fusses to say

I’m sorry. I will keep still next time.