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EDITORIAL
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LAGNIAPPE
MAST
SUBMISSIONS
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WHY I GAVE UP FORTUNETELLING
by Magdalena
Alagna
Because my shadow lay behind me like a knife and in front of me were
women who drank too much ate too much drugged loved prayed too much
worked too hard women who stayed when they should go and women who left
who were always leaving women who pressed dog-eared pictures into my
hands and pleaded with me to decode the flickering faces nailed into
those frames like moths and the men who thought Tarot was a soliloquy
for the stunted who dashed each cup from their lips hitched swords to
their belts and laid their blazing palms full of fire on my arms.
All
of them wanted the ink of their bodies and brains unraveled from the
blue bag of veins and splayed on the table in images like the Ace of
Wands with its bloody birth or the Death card hooded like an eye and
good as valium.
They
wanted a fortuneteller wearing curled looks in her almond eyes and a
blanket grin which refracted a Hanged Man or a shadowed moon they didn't
feel strung to their bones like Judgement, didn't know what sucked their
guts like thirst was Love diving from a cliff.
My
lips emptied of silver, I dreamt each night of Troy burning and I a
Cassandra with tongue cut out.
Magdalena
Alagna is a freelance writer, and editor at Long
Shot magazine. Her work has appeared in In Our Own Words:
an anthology of Gen X poetry, Bouillabaisse, Prometheus,
The Ever-Dancing Muse, The Bitter Oleander, and Medicinal
Purposes, among others, and online at Clean Sheets, Slow
Trains, and Poetry Bay. |
