Dora Malech

My mother does not trust women without it. What are they not hiding? Renders the dead living and the living more alive. Everything I say sets the clouds off blubbering like they knew the pretty dead. True, no mascara, no evidence. Blue sky, blank face. Blank face, a faithful liar, false bottom. Sorrow, a rabbit harbored in the head. The skin, a silly one-act, concurs. At the carnival, each child's cheek becomes a rainbow. God, grant me a brighter myself. Each breath, a game called Live Forever. I am small. Don't ask me to reconcile one shadow with another. I admit— paint the dead pink, it does not make them sunrise. Paint the living blue, it does not make them sky, or sea, a berry, clapboard house, or dead. God, leave us our costumes, don't blow in our noses, strip us to the underside of skin. Even the earth claims color once a year, dressed in red leaves as the trees play Grieving.

If by truth you mean hand then yes I hold to be self-evident and hold you in the highest— KO to my OT and bait to my switch, I crown you one-trick pony to my one-horse town, dub you my one-stop shopping, my space heater, juke joint, tourist trap, my peep show, my meter reader, you best batteries-not-included baring all or nothing. Let me begin by saying if he hollers, end with goes the weasel. In between, cream filling.Get over it, meaning,the moon. Tell me you’ll dismember this night forever, you my punch-drunking bag, tar to my feather. More than the sum of our private parts, we are some peekaboo, some peak and valley, some bright equation (if and then but, if er then uh). My fruit bat, my gewgaw. You had me at noduh.

As in,in the, of course. The body knew the drill by now. Was are we there yet and then never been so, then so long. Heart tied with twine, with shorthairs, trip wires—whispered that bind. Drew the short straw, scared herself apart to spit-sweet shards and into time that counted backwards from two lips ago. Said done is done and is between me and those teeth

For Alyssa As anyone is apt to, you began as someone else’s symptom. As in other beginnings: drawn lots, blood, some dancing on the heads of pins and inside needles’ eyes, cellular revelry, hopping of microscopic turnstiles. Lucky guest, grist, leapt long odds to spark the tinder in the dark. Then, the subcommittees met: made merry in duplicate, triplicate and so on, much of themselves, divided and divined and concurred. All sides insides, pre-ambulatory perambulation meant: sure ambit, short orbit in a warm aquarium set to the muffled music of a single sphere. As in other beginnings: parting seas, the future’s violent egress, screams and sutures, aftermath’s average agony on umbilical belay but soon to solo, unfold all those origami limbs to test the inevitable debutante bawl. Wrest from the nest and the rest is you, dear: dressed for the bright lights in bits of my sister.