Saturday Morning Features - 2

(the first one to actually go up on saturday morning!)

this is a weekly feature in which i select ten phenomenal literature deviations that have recently caught my eye. if you have been featured, please this journal and read the other works. now, onto the main event—

junglea jungle is growing
in my mouth,
spreading its roots down
to my heart,
and filling my head
with exotic
with exciting,
intoxicating thoughts, but
vines thick
and tangled hold my tongue
and bind
and stifle,
hush all of the brilliant
all of the attractive
interesting
things about me
i could tell you--
green winds around
and leaves free only
my hands to write
quiet words, that flutter
down and land on the page
and pool like water
in a flower--
invisible unless you're
already looking.
"quiet words, that flutter
down and land on the page
and pool like water
in a flower--"



ElementalNestling into my side on the couch,
she murmurs half-asleep that
“Home always had a fireplace
for the winter,
even when we lived
in the Winnabow boonies.”
Her father would buy dried oak logs
from the beds of pick-ups,
later hauled in by her brothers
to join wood-smoke
with the home-smells
of vanilla candles,
baking bread and Brunswick stew,
drifting outside on wisps
of chimney smoke.
“When we were younger,
we were always dirty,”
she tells me, smiling at her dusty feet
buried in the light, silty soil
of her early-childhood island.
“But in a healthy, little-kid way, you know?”
They did not believe in shoes
and loved digging winter holes
in the dirt-sand beside the garage,
dreaming of China
and pretending to be meerkats
until real dirt and manure
filled the holes with spring garden.
Elbows on the ferry rail,
she leans forward, hair knotting
around her face.
During Oak Island hurricanes,
she would stand outside before the rain
and stretch out her arms
ag
"During Oak Island hurricanes,
I would stand outside before the rain
and stretch out my arms
against the feral gusts,
feeling just a little more weightless,"



The Old Magic is DyingThe Old Magic is Dying
    When my new brother was born, there was a ceremony.  People traveled from miles away. Some of those people didn't even share the same blood as my brother and I, but they obliged my sub-sentient sibling.
    The people that made this pilgrimage did not come for my brother.  Family or not, I can promise you that no one is here for my brother.
    My neighbors are here for their image.  My aunts and uncles are here for my parents.   My father is here for my mother.  My mother is here to prove to her mother she paid attention as a child. My grandparents are here for their legacy.  Worst of all, my new brother is here because he can't walk. He was literally dragged into this.
    My old brother is here for the food afterward.
    The walls are high, too high.  Looking to the ceiling only helps to make me feel insignificant.  The way the windows mutate the sunlight only guides my eyes to pictures of tortured strangers.
    The old man my father's father call
"My neighbors are here for their image.  My aunts and uncles are here for my parents.   My father is here for my mother.  My mother is here to prove to her mother she paid attention as a child."




"a nail in my thumb,
pounding like radio waves
in my veins"



Borrowed SpaceThere’s something about apartments that feels second hand. When we moved, our neighbor gave us plates with apples printed on them. Their colors have faded into a chipped sigh.  They would have gone with our old kitchen—we had red curtains and apple-lined wallpaper. She got those plates from the bank, a gift for opening up a new account. Probably the same bank that took our old house.  Will they want the plates back, too?
I shelved the plates with the tired, mismatched coffee mugs. The blue, flowered ones are from Grandma—she didn’t want them anymore after her husband died. The clouded grey mug came from the machine shop Dad worked before he got laid off. The checkered, lavender mug was a Mother’s Day present to my mom when I was in fourth grade. It was one of the few things she left behind after she moved.
Our thrift store couch looks weary, as if it’s tired of moving from place to place. The dark blue cushions sag in the center and its arm
"Our thrift store couch looks weary, as if it's tired of moving from place to place. The dark blue cushions sag in the center and its arms are molded into a permanent slump. There's black burn mark on the edge of the right arm where someone's cigarette burnt out.  But that's okay though, because dad smokes, too."



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"Odessa is used to standing in front of Rachel during group pictures; it's just the way the height game works.  What she is not used to is Rachel's overwhelming heat, what may be her aura. "



Ocean-wide, Pocket-sizeShe is the perverse whispering of phobias
Shadowing each and every action I take
The capricious heat of the moment decisions
That I almost always come to regret
She is the gathering of tumultuous thunderstorms
Knowing she can bolt my world into Cimmerian  
The tattooing of molten mantras on skin
That pool me from drowning in burns
She is a mouthful of psalms and lucid eulogies
Spreading her disease quicker than cancer
She is ocean-wide
She is pocket-size
I rebuke her- mountains and thread counts at a time
"She is a mouthful of psalms and lucid eulogies
Spreading her disease quicker than cancer"



City of angelssalutations
are that man's best friend
and the dog is
in the corner again
with the baby
crouched over a trap
still squeaking
there is bread
on the chairs
while the table drowns
under dirty dishes
and the Sunday times
that keep coming
on Monday
the sink is polished
like an altar
waiting for the first cut
to decide which god
they are praying to today
and what to say
about the scars
city living
is that man's dead end
"the sink is polished
like an altar
waiting for the first cut
to decide which god
they are praying to today"



sunday morning (lie-in).I love making a cup of tea.
The familiarity of the cupboard's soft wooden frame underneath tired fingerprints; the slight hesitation before the vibrant boxes; the moment of darting forward with speed to caress the cardboard before I change my mind. I like the noise of the kettle as it boils. No longer a traditional hob-and-copper affair, but the hum and trembling hiss and the soft blue glow telling me that the water's uncertain surface hasn't melded with the air quite yet. The way the mug fits into my hand, the cool comfort of palm against china, tracing the designs on it with impatient fingers as steam begins to swirl into the midmorning kitchen air.
And now the roughness of a teabag, and the spicy, exotic scent that seems to pervade through the air in a gentle yet pointed way and travels upon the nerves in my brain. A small heap of sugar – shush – into the mug.
High-pitched click, then one of a lower tenor: I lift the kettle from its throne and the water pucke
"I lift the kettle from its throne and the water puckers its vague plane with a series of splashes and deep, throaty pops. Tracing the lines of grey a third of the way up the inside of the mug with a teaspoon, watching the sugar dissolve, forming tendrils of thicker molecules, like small galaxies, swirling in the amber liquid."



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"Hair today, gone tomorrow," said Theo, working the razor like magic.  He'd been rehearsing for weeks in the produce storeroom, stroking peaches free of vellus with a disposable blade.  Thank god for the practice: Tibby's scalp was the tenderest of territories, and the boys were crowded Roger-Bennett-Sam from showerhead to soap dish to see who would start bleeding first."