That Which Hath Wings Shall Tell The Matter © Shelagh Davis
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Long After Some © Suejin Suh
Auntie
Lil’s our dinner-time queen—silly and flirtatious holding a green, Soju
bottle in her hand. She forgets proper Korean pouring etiquette and refills the
not yet empty cups around her.
She
talks, laughs and jokes louder than usual. Her silver teeth caps flash as
she grabs her brother-in-law’s forearm, gives it a hearty shake. With a country
lilt doused in teenage bravado, she tells her cousin,
“Get
ready to take me singing and dancing.” She
drinks after the table’s been cleared, drinks after everyone else has finished
and left, gone home. Auntie’s fun when she’s drunk some. But it’s long after
some and she’s sobbing on the kitchen floor, asking her dead father why he made
her get married so young instead of sending her to school.
Her
sisters slide open kitchen doors, beg her to stop, “Get to bed! Go to sleep!” She drinks more, cries
more, and talks more. It’s her after party of one ‘til she’s retching in the
toilet.
Next
morning, she grumbles about her headache over
a breakfast bowl of rice wine.
King-sized Mattress © Kyle Moreno
My father is bald. My father is also a very unhappy man. I believe these
two qualities are not unrelated. I have seen old photographs of him when
he was not bald – thick, black curls adorning his boxy head -- and he does not
look unhappy. He is a lonely
man. His lack of hair is the cause of his loneliness, I am sure. If
he had hair, he would have to wash it with shampoo. He would have to go to a pharmacy to purchase the shampoo,
and in the hair care section he would meet a beautiful woman. She would not be beautiful like the
young models that are printed on magazines; she would be beautiful like a
mother, who takes care of you. My father would pretend not to know very
much about shampoo, when in fact he would know a great deal. In his feigned naivety, he would ask
the beautiful woman for advice concerning his choice of shampoo. She
would readily help him, because his hair was so alluring that she had earlier
been fantasizing about running her fingers through it. This is how they
would meet, and anyone who has ever been in love knows that such a meeting of
two people is precisely the beginnings of it. This is what would
definitely happen if my father was not bald. But since he is bald, he is
lonely. And loneliness has been
scientifically proven to be the number one cause of unhappiness. People
want to love each other, but no woman in a store will help a bald man choose a
suitable shampoo. This is because there is no suitable shampoo for a bald
man. Bald men wash their entire
body with a single bar of soap.
And while this may reduce monthly soap expenditures, it only increases
the number of nights my father sleeps alone. He has a king-sized mattress, and
no one who owns a king-sized mattress intended to use it alone. King-sized
mattresses are for sharing; but apparently, mattress sharing is only for people
with hair.
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