twisted short short fiction & poetry
Sparkling and paint-splattered, Saturday oversleeps turning into her pillow
Pillow soft Sunday urns for another day and a trenta iced coffee
Coffee carries Monday to work in a fireman’s hold
Holding her promise Tuesday clings to the edge
Edging from the brink Wednesday throws her leg over the hump
Humpback chest Thursday breaks open spilling pages free
Freed Friday shimmies down a fire escape with handfuls of sequins
Door creaks open
Betwixt my legs
Head in the crook of my knee
By my soles
All soft belly and sharp claws
On my curls
A crescent hot pressed into my dreams
You walk across my chest
Flop down to Luxuriate in lethargy
My eyelids flutter against your snores
I awake into your somnolence
Your Eyes open, a hopeful yowl
“Dammit I’m not feeding you.”
Your Eyes shut
This is my hand
Deep in my pocket
Over my heart
Covering my eyes, oh God
Covering my eyes
Laying in bed
Never wanting to get up again
Here is my hand
Another morning
Weighs on my chest pressing
Over my heart
Take this hand
Pinned to the sadness
Deep in
The pocket ripped patched torn
Bleeding precious need
To reach out to rise
How much we love each other
An anniversary surprise
Pictured Rocks
Your gift to me despite your fear of heights
Let me take your photo
Back up you say
Take it all in from
First date to first grand baby
That woman just one of many
That woman you talk to late into the nights she is seconds
Our love is decades
Cool sandstone heavy
No one understands
How much I love you
In this our marriage Indian summer
What we have weathered
Ribbons of iron ore red, copper green, and limonite revel
Our love is stone polished
Back up a little more baby you say
You send me to the edge
I’d go to the edge for us
My knee the one that always gives me troubles gives out
I stumble back
My hand that has reached for yours
In the dark
When I’m afraid
For years
stretches out now
I reach, you run
You kick, I drop
Like a stone
Tumbling to the pebbled shore far below
No one understands
How much you love me
Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas mornings
Watching screamers and starbursts late into the night
Easter baskets and homemade firemen costumes
Plastic t-Rexes and spaceships built with blocks bright
Hollering and hollowed promises deck these halls
Waiting half the night for him to com through that door
Photos laughing in a stack of photo albums
Of a happy family that doesn’t exist anymore
Once upon a time
Damsels in distress
A tower among the clouds
The hero on a quest
True love’s kiss
In the dark a chittering of evil
Tell one more please
Bedtime is princesses and knights
Man eating giants and question filled trolls
Fluffy stuffed bears and race car comforters
Not for me
My dreams were fed on other stories
Sharp knives and trip wires
Snap of a branch
Reading the signs
How not to be seen
Tracking legends urban
Remember there is always one in the chamber
Concrete pillows and a blanket of moonlight
The city’s glittering throat offered up to my touch
Tracking ghosts, hunting hunters
Armed with a backpack of wooden stakes
Thwack!
Even the dead tell stories.
Knowing you’d slip beyond the horizon,
Still you cast your net for my silvery heart
That laughed at romance’s silly clichés.
A spy in the house of love
Feet planted in the shifted sand, I was.
How could you trick me with an unblemished shore?
You held me under ceaseless waves
Naked I washed upon our shoals,
Driven and tossed
Find me
Find me
Driven and tossed
Naked I washed upon our shoals.
You held me under your ceaseless waves.
How could you trick me with an unblemished shore?
Feet planted on the shifted sand, I was
A spy in the house of love
That laughed at romance’s silly clichés.
Still you cast your net for my silvery heart
Knowing you’d slip beyond the horizon
Tell me bout the children
Are the girls okay
Let little Lucy know I would sew her Spring Fling gown if I could
I wanted to
rosebud pink with Swiss dots
Spaghetti straps
No don’t bring them here
I want them to remember Meemaw like I was
Like I’m supposed to be
Don’t ask how I’m doin’
Did Bobby and Jack cover the hay
From the summer rains
Daddy’s gonna be mad if—that’s right some days it’s like he’s still here
Even if you don’t love somebody
They are still yours
You are still theirs
I never had a say in what happened to me
Like an old tree growing with a fence
You can’t break them part
Without one being cut
Don’t ask me about your father
Even in here
I can smell the harvest
It’s a warm sweetish smell
Daddy and me would’ve been forty years
Come October
He done what he did
And I never asked questions
He’d slap me into next week if I did
It’s not fair they blame me for what he done
You know I would never hurt nobody
What could I have done
My seed catalogs came today
I turned the thin pages half the night
Busting with
Choices
The papers say I should’ve known
so many farm hands coming and going
Always leaving their things behind
Us never paying salaries and all
I kept the books
And my mouth shut
Come spring they’ll move me from laundry to gardening
I hope
I’m not the kind that asks questions
I want waffles.
Golden buttery windows
Drizzles of maple syrup
Cheek and jowl, with sausage and eggs
A saucy wink from peaches
I want waffles.
Melted mornings
The day’s sweetness drips
Jostling with solitude and paperbacks
Flirting with a nap
I want waffles
To savor over time
And time to savor over
A morning set on a plate
Curled on the sofa
Unfurling my thoughts
With my favorite mug of possibilities.
A workplace
A dining room
Storage facility
And private library
My shuttle, my shelter, my solace
Ride on
though your front left is capriciously low
Coffee splashed blazons your dash
Bumper love taps, mementos of lessons learned
Ride on
Parking garages be your nemeses
Crushed seltzers carpet your floor
Phone holders will fail at the less opportune time
Ride on
Noble chariot
Through thick and thin
in rain or shine
overpass and underpass recalculating forever we
ride on
circularstaircase 