ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Five Poems
by Farrah Field


How to Break Into a Storage Facility

Position one sister looking scruffy near the morning clerk
who won’t admit a peppering attraction to young girls.
Everyone has an inward power so severe that it’s not worth
understanding. His shift will end in less than an hour

and he’ll be yawning when the little girl asks him for food.
The clerk will immediately offer his peanut butter and honey
sandwich that he uses to stall a neighbor dog while walking
home. He’ll request that she hold it up to him after every bite,

so he can sniff it, and he’ll quietly plead with himself,
slouching. There’s an endearing bit of dirt beneath her nails.
By now the keys are gone, the power locks are down,
and the clerk feels defeated. The little c of each bite

will fit the little c of her bottom lip, which shuffles
the food in her mouth while he considers getting fired
from his job. She has three crumbs on her chin,
but she can’t let go of the sandwich to wipe them

with her skirt. Nor will she swivel her tongue across
her teeth to fetch collecting honey. She’ll clench her teeth
so her mouth will plead and wash the sticky layer
near her gums. The little girl and the clerk ruin each other

without saying much. She doesn’t know why she’s already
tired of this situation. He won’t remember her prior visits,
the inexplicably stolen clothing from Sector H, or how
the units were disturbed without any broken locks.



Milk of the Wolf

There were no secret instructions among their things.
It was as though their mother’s house collected
empty hairbrushes and white booted roller skates.
There were no girls to match the reading stools
and uneaten noodles. Nothing had fingerprints,
not even the duck eggs the mother threw
from the girls’ window. I guess they won’t need these,
she said. She didn’t refer to the girls by name.

The detective never worked the weirder cases—
kids being raised by wolves or kept hidden.
None of the neighbors knew there were children.
No one saw them go to school. Their mother refused
an APB. Troubles in the orange house were routine.
There were four piles of ashes found beneath the girls’ beds—
their pets. All this time, the detective assumed

children wanted to go home. Parents prepared
sleds or favorite meals. I don’t think you want to go down
there, the mother said when he approached the cellar.
Generally, mothers’ distraught nature enveloped him
and allowed him use of everything in order to bring
their children back. Millicent admitted four unreported,
missing girls. After the detective’s visit,

the gardener’s tongue was removed. Regardless,
information was slipped to him: call the teacher.
At home, he wrote the county for birth certificates,
before feeding his cat and dog. What would you do
if you found the girls. There are thousands of homeschool
teachers. He tried to hang his coat in the refrigerator.
Something in the new is world. From a branch
on the old willow, eight eyes were intent upon the glass.

The Girls Gather Around While He Sleeps

You’re not as smart as you’d like to be, but you’re smarter than you think.
The day has been long and you’ve accomplished less.
The crab-mauling scar on your foot hangs over the bed.
We picture you growing up on a shore.
Once a group moves from its habitat,
another group is changed.
We pushed the Bighorns further out
and we didn’t mean to do that.
We felt lucky to see them.
Living near people is like living inside.
You smell like our teacher.
She wrapped strawberry preserves and Brazilian nuts
in brown paper. You left them in your locked car.
The note that we wrote hangs above the nearby desk.
Helen Gale. We call her Helena. 3691 Coffee Avenue.
You think you might be on to something.
Your arms are crossed as though you fell asleep thinking.
We wonder if you’ll sleep so soundly next to her,
if she’ll make pumpkin pancakes.
It’s easy to know when someone’s in your house:
listen for a tack being pulled from the wall and paper falling.
When you look for people smarter than you, you look for them.
There are four of us and when we move, eight steps are taken.
We can go no further than your pastures
because we arrived without a trace and no one can do that again
unless by vanishing. A mountain lion hunts your land,
but she doesn’t frighten us.
They say no one chooses their own mother,
but they’re wrong. We weren’t born like other people.
Helena will brew tea for you later. Something has to happen.



The Smartest Person in a Room Never Speaks

We don’t know how the sisters crawled out of the window,
the detective said, counting footsteps from the rocking chair
to the window, then from the desk to the window as if the girls,
scattered around the room, one by one got up and left.

The carpet looks as though it’s only been crept upon.
There are no impediments, even under the platform rocker.
Chairs and other furniture sit very wide apart. If a table held
cold drinks, they couldn’t be reached from any chairs.

Lincoln and his son hang above the fireplace hardware.
The girls call him “fourth boy”. They thought they would
catch Tuberculosis from the portrait. There were Revolutionary
soldiers in the family. The girls wanted to register their names.

Child-size chairs made the detective feel tall in an old way.
He stood in the bay near the Gothic Revival windows.
The four sisters were like deer taking a blooming rose
without any sign they had been there or would return.

The girls hung wooden boxes they made. Their teacher
let them work together, creating one piece at a time,
working without talking. Planning how all sisters plan.
They reupholstered a parlor chair with dark green denim.

No one knows how big houses came to exist, how anyone
could walk in on a daily basis, mount a war-period wall clock,
pollute the cold kitchen with pork dumplings, heat the toilet lid.
The detective wondered if the girls knew how to ride bicycles.

Four wool coats were gone. There was no need to console
the cross-armed mother, who made the detective nervous,
even after she suddenly went down to the kitchen, peered over
the Dutch door and sure enough, a porcelain leg.



We Left Before My Turn

We placed the leg outside the door and the rest
twenty miles in the wrong direction. Old doll,
false lead. Running away is easy

when you hardly talk to your mother.
She ate snails once. But did you see her chew them?
I’ve never seen her chew anything.

We didn’t speak until a week underground.
No one was stitchy. We measured time
by plastic cereal bowls. Our mother appeared

in the garden once. She ran a long nail
up my spine. You should keep a back like that
covered, she said. I’m the littlest. I asked her

what she was doing there. She had powder
on her face; I could see it in the hairs.
She said she’d been up for eight days.

I didn’t look in her eyes as she walked
circles around me. She said I’d never guess
what she was going to do with the turtle

wiggling in her hands, gasping for breath.
It was beyond shrinking into its shell, flaying
the air as though it could swim home.

That is the only time I ate dinner with her.
My orange suitcase smells like my duck.
Our mother probably smashed the eggs

by now. I wonder why she never arranged
baby-sitters for us. Because you had me, Matilda says.
She’s returned from the surface. It’s May.