Thirteen Myna Birds

19.

Enchanted Forest

~MISH~

*

18.

The Price of Admission

is never just a dime, a glance down at the dirt,
just a half hour of work, a week of saving
found-on-the-street pennies. It’s not
having to touch the hawker’s dirty hand,
choke on cheap cigar smoke and heavy
damp tent air engulfing entrants off the midway.
It’s not standing shoulder to shoulder
with rabble and gap-toothed gapers.
You are one of them, the curious lookers,
waiting for what was promised you
on those gleaming hand-painted posters.
To see what you are not and never will be,
the world’s only, best, something.
The price is your normality, bland as black coffee,
straight teeth that hide the stains on the back,
the sleep you’ll fall into and dream that you
are not worth the price of a dime’s admission.

~Kristin LaTour~

*

17.

The Snake Charmer

It’s the irrational fear of the serpent, Satan as snake
and the woman using her wiles to tame what cannot
be taught. Any man can carry a spear, but we relish
a woman carrying the liquid weight of a scaled monster.

The charmer emerges in green spangled silk, a dancer
tracing the invisible line from behind the curtain to our
wide-open eyes. The recorder in its minor keys plucking
at our thoughts of the feel of snake skin around her shoulders
the sound of the tongue flickering in her ear.
She drapes the snake like fine lace around her body,
describing the chase in the jungle, how she sang the snake
to her side, fed it children’s tears and mice that ran to her feet
as willing sacrifice. Once, the snake tried to bite her wrist
but her song soothed the reptile to sleep. She tells us,
I know what is mine. That is the design of my power.
The women shudder. They will never allow their minds
to know what is theirs. The men guffaw. They believe
everything is theirs. The snake understands these errors. His hiss
as the curtain closes sends shivers of fear through them, too.

~Kristin LaTour~

*

16.

We Madwomen, a Chorus

                                                        based on Elzabeth Packard’s writings

We madwomen tear at seams, sew
buttons backwards, misalign
lefts with rights & part our hair
in zigzag fashion & one-sided braids.


We madwomen get an all-girls education,
“training [us] for the lunatic asylum.”
We are sister spirits in this storage unit
world. They say we go mad because

of our menstrual cycles: too much blood
or not enough; too early
or too late; too painful or not painful
at all. We remember failed ice

baths as tweens. We are imprisoned for
so many crimes including:
“domestic trouble,” “disappointed love,”
“hard study,” & “novel reading.”

But make no mistake: we madwomen are no
Argon virgins fleeing to the mountains.
Submission is no virtue. Inject ice water

into labias & latch leeches
to clits. Scissors or knives, our doctors ask,
when cutting out our pleasure.

~Kara Dorris~

*

15.

Are Our Brains Jelly or is Jelly a Medical Term

Either way, we don’t roll
correctly, our spines spiraling screws

that tighten. Take us apart.
Mechanisms work, but you clean

our uterus gears so it’s never
gummed up with life. Tell our arms

they aren’t meant to hold, oil
joints but don’t allow choice or

control. Our wrists are bats trained
in echolocation, directionality in

a slap or scalpel slicing. The way
you carve into heads like Halloween

jack o’ lanterns, I wonder if
it is pumpkin seeds

spilling from my mouth or vomit.
No horses arrive to pull my carriage.

~Kara Dorris~

*

14.

Reverse Currents

                                            We are all part of the meaning […] Disability is […] always inhabited by culture—Tanya Tichkosky

Call it myth by which you mean
it didn’t happen. Call it a teaching
narrative (she should have seen
it coming). Say it’s a generalization
to take away our faces. Make
a Medusa out of every woman
assaulted. Paint Medusa as a field
of snakes caved by a powerful god—
every narrative is evaluation is
political. Say acquired defenses
are unnatural. Say the snakes deformed
her because women aren’t born
weapons. Ask why didn’t she just
get over it. Say you know better,
lock the doors, electrify the snakes,
drill electrodes into our brains.

~Kara Dorris~

*

13.

Zombie rev 5

~MISH~

*

12.

            Wednesday’s Mail

Suddenly, I know what is in the package. It’s
another piece of child, sent to drive me crazy. The package
is just the right size to hold either
a bunch of little bits
or one big piece, a torso, perhaps,
a well-cushioned head.
I gently pick the package up and put it
in the spare bedroom with the rest of the packages
the tiny finger-sized boxes
the still-sealed shoeboxes concealing bare, uncalloused feet.

The rest of the mail sits waiting to be sorted through
I flip through pizza coupons, form invitations
to local beheadings, a flyer advertising the opening
of a new Baptist church in my neighborhood.
At the very bottom of the stack is a large manila envelope,
thick with paperwork. I open it, curiously, not
recognizing the handwriting, watch in confusion
as photographs of people I don’t know
pour out onto the floor.

~Holly Day~

*

11.

            The Tree

I wake to the choking sound of electric chainsaws ripping
through wet bark and I know
it’s the white birch down the street. I lie in bed
stomach clenched and sick
as the crash of limbs falling against each other
interrupt the morning calls of sparrows and cardinals
in my yard.

I worry about my own birch, how this
will affect the old soul standing guard
surrounded by painted ferns and flowering hostas
once part of a thriving community
of river and paper birch trees, roots reaching to touch
one another beneath tract houses and
old apartment buildings
now the only one of his kind, friends plowed to make room
for parking lots and the new grocery store.

~Holly Day~

*

10.

            Johnny Smoke

The colors of the banner
above the grocery store
do not matter; you perceive
only black and white
with splashes of crimson.
You tried to buy three more
legs than the per-customer
limit and the goons
from prosthetics paid
you a visit. When you
asked them the hue
of their helmets,
the conversation spiralled
out of control. And now
here you are, in front
of the barbecue as always
with your apron that has
“tastes like chicken”
emblazoned on the neck strap.

~Robert Beveridge~

*

9.

            Filibuster

How many of those things your mother,
your classmates, the starlings told you
came true? When you looked up at the sky,
was it crisscrossed with ladders, the rungs
clung to by every black cat north
of Greenpoint? When you positioned
yourself behind the dog, did you see
the next day’s pork belly futures, and did it
matter whether the dog was brindle? (Was she
born with it or was it Maybelline?) When your
brother was born, did the midwife have a caul?
Was she gifted in the harp, the forceps,
the application of torch to sugar to create
the perfect crème brûlée crust? Did that time
when you cursed the very water in its well as false
bring about the invasion, the war, the mushroom
clouds? And after it all, when you looked
up at the sky, were the ladders still
there, and did it sound as if the starlings laughed?

~Robert Beveridge~

*

8.

Oven-Dried Finger Food

~MISH~

*

7.

Ghost

I am the only ghost who
            haunts Debrah’s house.

Invisible as air, but easy
            to sense–I blow smoke
            in her face.

When her daughter lived at
        home, Debrah would ask if
        she, too, smelled the smoke.

She didn’t. Only Debrah experiences me.
        I intend to keep it that way.

Lung cancer killed me. Anger consumed me.
        Body-free, now I can get away
with smoking, and it no
        longer hurts me.

I love my ghost-hood.

The voyeur in me
        likes to watch Debrah play with her dog.

She, too, has endured cancer, yet
        somehow, she lives. Sometimes I ask myself,

        Why?

~Debrah Shenefelt~

*

6.

Beekeeper Dream

It’s dinnertime, so I go fetch my baby brother. I forget he’s dead. I’m sure I’ll find him fooling around in the groves behind my parents’ house.

I come upon him stuffing a plastic baggie into the crotch of an orange tree. He’s wearing a beekeeper’s mask, dark green netting draped over his head, face, and shoulders.

Are you eating dinner with the family? I ask. I can’t see his bloody gunshot forehead because he’s hunched over with his back to me.

No, I’ve got things to do.

But it’s Mother’s Day, I say.

I hate Mother’s Day.

What’s with the beekeeper’s outfit? Do you even know anything about bees? He shakes his head.

I start to ask him about the plastic baggie, when the scene switches.

I’m walking down the street towards my parents’ house when a mile-long, black limousine approaches from the opposite direction. I see my brother’s face through the smoky window-glass.

As the limo purrs past, I wave and scream, but my brother never looks over at me. Soon the black limo is lost in the distance. Where is he going? I cannot say. Not even when I wake up.

~MISH~

*

5.

Central Florida Fruit Stand

I’m a deceased deer, a buck with glassy eyes and brave branching antlers.

My cut-off head is mounted over the checkout counter where I survey the aisles and bins of this fruit stand full of unsterilized honey from unsterilized bees, monster sweet potatoes, and toxic strawberries.

The loudspeaker plays vintage Hank Williams. Can’t say country music is my favorite, but I’m now an “inanimate object” whose opinions don’t matter, while below me, the farmer, a shriveled man, drops a customer’s cash into a metal box—

I know the old codger’s got a gun stashed under the counter, but I don’t care.

He already shot me once.

~MISH~

*

4.

            Watch Me Pull a Rabbit Out of My Hat

is the otherwise obsequious
white-sweatered freshman
with the deep facial scar
the slasher or the only one
on campus who can stop him?
The jury’s still out, but it’s only
just the end of act two, there’s
time. The nerd fraternity’s

drinks and dialectics party
is still casualty-free, and Delta
Gamma’s Akhmatova sing-along
is still going strong. The killer’s
after ones and twos, gratuitous
glove and switchblade
close-ups, modernist red paint

splashes. The probable final girl
can’t keep her eyes off that sweater
even as she hypothesizes she might
have to plant an axe in his skull
rather than a kiss on his lips.
Infatuation plays a dangerous game.

~Robert Beveridge~

*

3.

        Rabbits Eat Spinach
               CW: violent death

I went up to the roof of the building
and you were there, tears on your face
as you looked out over the city
so I sat down next to you
but I didn’t ask what was wrong I just sat
which seemed like the proper thing to do

after a bit you wondered aloud
about all the people in all the other buildings
what their jobs were
whether they had families
if they preferred black or green olives
on their pizzas

whether you could get delivery at 1:30
on a Wednesday morning

then you sang a couple of songs
whose words were largely indecipherable
and at the end of the second one I realized
my building doesn’t have a flat roof
and indeed it has quite a steep pitch
and we both fell to our deaths

~Robert Beveridge~

*

2.

Coming of the Worms

Every so often the worms come.
Thick, slimy, viscous.
Sometimes they’re yellow.
Sometimes they’re chartreuse.
Some are red or even clear.

They slide and slither
through my nasal passages,
exiting out my nostrils.

Some are coughed-up
from my lungs and
coagulate within my throat
before being spat out
in elongated sticky fashion.

Often they cling to my lips,
or my bearded visage,
and then my fingers
as I try to flick them away.

And once one landed
In the nether region
of my sister’s shirt.

~Daniel G. Snethen~

*

1.

I Am Not The Big Bad Wolf

I do not go around huffing and puffing
at defenseless little pigs,
no matter how annoying they are.
I do admit it is tempting. Natural
selection is a process, and I am predator
by nature, leader not follower. I know better
than to build my house out of stick or straw,
understand to a certain extent that point is irrelevant,
as I believe we all live under glass.
I am not completely house broken, consider
domestication a four-letter word. I am, well-groomed
and, for the most part, civilized, though I still give in
to the occasional urge to howl
at random midnight moons.

~A.J. Huffman~