That Which Hath Wings Shall Tell The Matter © Shelagh Davis

 

I swim under the ocean for the deafening effect push cotton into each eye socket keep feeling for you Janine through brief encounters we juggled stacks of bewildered foster mothers, last one’s rhubarb and thick legs startling the damage could be permanent, the judge wrote, so you ran your ten years through gilded twigs, a sea of golden spears, chasing dazzling tendrils of hope, across a field to an art teacher frantic he says keep running I mean keep painting deep blue pine forest meets night time on a sandy beach line, a ship rocks in white blue waters, red caskets under blue, one body glides upwards find me near the finish line an entire wall is canvassed raw steak with a sprig of parsley a rounded crucible of cognac on the floor, that which hath wings shall tell the matter.


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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.

 

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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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