ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Poem
by Kristy Bowen



the sugar sequence


1.

Because the sky is a broken telegraph,
our bodies open like flooded fields,
offering up plastic shovels and
the occasional tiny spoon.

My dreams are populated by silver horses,
loosened from their reigns and stomping
through the azaleas. Because the timing
is off, my sister wears a wig and has a mouthful
of blood. Is waving her hand in front of her face
and drowning cats in the river.

She sees god in the tinfoil,
in the fake Christmas trees.
I have a balloon tied to my wrist.
A rope or a burlap sack. I drag
it through three neighborhoods
before a man with a beard stops me.

Offers me a silver star.
A busted milk bottle.



2.

Because of all the trapdoors,
we inspect each limb
every night for trace of damage,
running our hands over each
other like sounding for water.

We’re a little too well fed.
A little too blotchy.
Stuffed with sickness, really.
Frothy with demons and
prone to sleeping too much.

On rare occasions you can fold us
over and over in the sheets
without any screaming. Can woo
us with sugar or the slightest sip of rum.
Can build whole villages behind our teeth.
Devils in all our cavities.



3.

Because my mother’s ghost
has a perfect blue box inside her,
roughly the size of a fist, we make
it no further than the fence line
before our ears go bad. Before the nerves
give out. The tendons in our ankles
humming like a harpsichord.
In the house, we take her
out of her dress, put her back in.
Her nervous staircase. Her voice,
a hooved thing under the tongue.
Blood in the basin. At the hemline.
Where we slur our secrets into the dark
that collects at her hips. Fill her with gin
to keep out the bees. Rig her to the porch
with some driftwood and an ever unwinding
spool of wire. Where we burn
every way out like a bundle of sticks.


4.

Because of the vinegar,
we have the cleanest hands
for miles. Angels in the pillowcases,
in the breakfast milk.
I string fishing line across the windows
to trap them before they come
with their tiny spoons, fingering the knobs
of our spine for sport. Before they get lost
in the narrows between the mattress
and the wall and take to singing
all night like they’re on fire. Take to
living on sawdust and the dark
beneath our beds. We hold them beneath
the water til they drown, til they open
their mouths to our sweet fingers probing.