amphibi.us

Untitled – Chloe Caldwell

My mother wanted a daughter that looked like Scout from To Kill A
Mockingbird. She expected a daughter like Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird.
She herself had looked like Scout from To Kill A Mocking bird. She loves
Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird.

My mother got me instead. A mess. A mob. I came out happy and loud and with
a maelstrom of blonde hair. Everyone asked how I got that blonde hair. My
parents always responded: “the postman” and I didn’t get that joke until
recently. I know my mother loves me but sometimes I think I disappointed her
for looking the way I do/did.

I looked nothing like Scout. No pixie cut. No straight hair or chicken legs.
Breasts by the time I was thirteen.

Twenty-four years later, I cannot get a grip on my hair. When I lived in
Brooklyn and my friend died, my mother came to visit me. She and I sat in
the living room while she tried to comb the rat’s nest out of the back of my
head. We wouldn’t have been able to do that, had I looked like Scout from To
Kill A Mockingbird the way she’d wanted.

Maybe I will need the large can of Raid – Kyle Brett

Working at an art center as a receptionist is a fun vocation.  Granted this job also has its less than romantic sides as well. Today was one of those less romantic days.

I was hounded by a budding artist about the amount of pesticides that are in the complex’s air system. She can smell and feel these pesticides assaulting her fragile artistic bodice and thus, she believes, these chemicals affect her work greatly. Her voice was calloused and strained from substances of older, freer days. Oils and incense from the seventies stained her skin brown. She complained and kibitzed about liver damage and secret pollutants. I nodded and played the good receptionist. This is not to say that I was not tenderly fingering the giant can of Raid that sat under my desk. Visions of Raid covered sugarplums being forced fed into the artist’s cavity filled mouth danced a nasty tango in my mind. The fumes would cause her to cough out her liver that was allegedly being poisoned. My laughter would drown out death rattles of the homeless looking artist.

Suddenly, I snap back into reality.

“I will make a note of this problem. Have a nice day ma’am.”

Tongues – Sean H. Doyle

Bring back tongue-tooth daughter.

She will not survive out there. Not without her pills. Not without the
proper amount of sleep. How could you do this? A child. She is just a child.
Nobody should’ve taken her anywhere to begin with. Now look at what you’ve
done? Leave me here to figure out a plan. You people can never be trusted.

Love-struck ink runs farther, unstuck tongues cannot regain.

“I’ll wait here for her. Just like this. If I move I might miss her so I
will sit right here and not move. She said she would be here. Two hours ago.
Or was it six? I can wait. For her. I can wait. Maybe I should tell her what
I saw. Maybe I should show her what I cannot tell her. I‘ll just wait.”

So find another way to go.

Don’t go in there. If you go in there, bad things will be waiting. Remember
what I told you about muscle memory. Remember that I told you that you’d be
able to observe other more important things. This is one of those times. I
tell you these things to prepare you for these moments. Find the cracks.
You’ll see.

Before It Dies – Benjamin Imamovic

It will stop the stretch-marks and give you a chance to bond with the little
one, his wife said and passed him a bottle of coconut oil. He said, Sure,
I’ll give it a go. He knelt before her. At first his wife’s stomach was half
a beach-ball, then a swallowed balloon, then a watermelon, then his
childhood dreams. He kept at it and said, Nice. After she gave birth, he
oiled that stomach, when she was asleep or when they would shower or when
they made love his hands kneaded and stroked the woman’s skin. Very nice, he
said and the baby cried and the woman giggled at her husband’s touch. He
bought a calendar and crossed off the days in red pen. He waited. So nice,
so nice, it’s still growing, he said. Soon the baby stopped crying and the
woman stopped moving. When nine months came the woman was as big as his
whole world and he was still there, still kneeling in front of her.
Eventually, the neighbours called triple-zero and the ambulance needed a
crane to remove the obese woman and the man who wanted more oil, please,
just a little more before it dies.

Sometimes What I say Means Something – Iris Rainier

Waiting for the bus and I am so hungry that it has turned into nausea. Smarties are in my purse but I will not eat them because a) I do not like Smarties and b) they will make me feel worse, duh.

There was a startled jogger on my behalf thirty seconds ago.  I was reading a book out loud; that’s what I do lately as entertainment and I was reading a freshly bought book called Man Suit and just as I finished dramatically saying, ‘He sleeps face down every night in a chalk outline of himself’ I looked up and saw the startled jogger. It was funny.

The girl that owns Pilot Books, the store I just left, told me she went to New York City three times this year. Three times, I exclaimed and she said, yes, I love a boy there. That’s when I said, so do I.

We shared something right then, as if one of us had given the other one a tampon, and we both shrugged and stared each other in the eye and I was happy to not hate you right then; I was happy to be able to say so do I.

Long Distance – Shannon Peil

i rolled over and turned my pillow over and kept my face on it and said i feel sick
i brought my legs up to my chest and hugged them and said i feel sick
i poked you in the back with my big toe until you rolled over and said i feel sick

you looked at me and blinked your eyes and put your hand on my face and said shut up
i rolled over again and again and cocooned myself in the blanket and you said shut up
i put my hand on your ass and i don’t feel anything and i asked why and you said shut up

i got up and you sat up and you asked why and i said sorry
and you asked why
and i said sorry
and you asked why i was sorry
and i got back in bed the wrong way and lay with my head towards the tv
and my feet towards the headboard
and i kicked the pillows off the bed

i said i’m sorry that you aren’t real

i rolled over and kicked the blankets away and brought my knees to my chest and said i feel sick.