Angular

Angie would have been an octopus. Many lengthy fingers to hold with: teacups and geraniums and spiced rum. To move fluidly under a great weight, to be not bound by the pressure of gravity below the firmament.

Her sister, Leanne, believed in the gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Jane: which was actually a new-new testament written by a radical feminist Christian organization. She held prayer circles in the lawn with daffodils, cranberry juice and swung loosely from side to side for the salvation of the sisters round the world, whose gifts were horribly repressed. They painted from pictures they pulled off news websites, and posted those pictures all around their house to humanize many squandered statistical resources. One was a wide-eyed little girl with such a tremor, with such a tremor as to be seen through the veneer of the magazine paper.

Guilty jaundice. Hydrogen peroxide poured (last of it) on the cut, the little foamy noises, a distant sort of wind from the turbine farm across the valley. Angie leaned over the sink and pretended to see the germs in colorful paramecium struggling on the slick white surface. She was almost seven months pregnant. The father vanished, sort of, in a flurry: she heard his black hole scream. No matter. Her sister enveloped her in soft white prayer, little strings of gossamer on her shoulders and sprigs of lavender to hide behind the ears. Baby to be named Aiden, which was mostly an androgynous name. Leanne's partner Rachel built a crib out of pine from her backyard.

In about two months Angie would give birth to an octopus. Then she'd put it in the water, and watch it fly.

the melted ear

THE MELTED EAR

freckle, little on large yellow thigh
wonders?
very, indeed quite hungrily
beneath pants:
to see longingly questionable sun?
sun-tastes, to see browning disasterfeet
in long bare chortles
making dust happen,
then cotton-smothered hidden long
winterly long.