Professor Day is drawing drainage

basins on the board, little rills

and gullies. The squiggles and flows

are cupped by black borders, other

land, and the whole thing like a lung

or tongue or lung-tongue, capillaries

kissing.

Now it’s a hot air balloon, the mouth

the basket I never stepped into,

the free ride I always missed

at the Derby breakfast: only up

then down, but still up, still floating

like petals in Albuquerque.

Now: an exclamation mark in bubble

lettering. Excitement is wrinkled but wide

at its noggin. Deep in its delta it makes

a good point. Close tight, it says. Contain

me. Keep me endorheic. 

On the other side of the board,

a set of teeth drawn to explain Q:

stream discharge. Discharge. I can’t

help feeling 14, panties wet with foreign

white goo from my coochie-coo. Then

thinking: the earth is premenstrual,

eventually floods. Hey Aunt Flo!

And this stream! So horny! It loves

the rub of erosion. The action is

hydraulic. There are cliffs, waterfalls.

Plunge into this pool with me, it says.

Let’s get lost in our own forces. 

Back on board one, there are two snakes

zagging in place of erased excitement.

Their bellies touch, merge, widen. Water swirls

and swirls. I swirl into you testing my pressure

points, grabbing just below my heart racing

hipbone. Me, in giggling fits. You, too seriously,

Have you ever wanted to say I love you?

There is too much swirl, chaos, struggle

for equilibrium: the water moves too quickly.

I cut off, I’m sorry, babe. I’m not cut out for this.

Streams’ grazing elbows separate: oxbow lakes.

Oxbow lakes. Alone. Still. Pushing. Oxbow lakes

won’t let themselves be loved. There is ringing,

ringing. The bell is ringing. 

“...that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since –until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another.”

Mid blue mat and a queen, all these hands at the sole of her Asic. Bare legs strong, glistening blond, balancing into scorpion, little shake. Lot of curl: hair helixing high, and the way her back bends back, almost spineless. She’s grabbing her toe and grabbing me elsewhere – thin center of spanx spanking me backward. Cheerleading mamas scream and whap their pom-poms blue and white in competition, fight, fight! I brush long brown behind my ear, listen closer for the name of the floating girl to escape proud ma’s lips, give hint. No cursive stitch in Y.E.S. uniform to declare skinny love, even when I squint. When I squint, gym lights blur into halos and my angel darts upward, higher than goals, lands in the arms of to-be women, not this woman, here without child, here for this child, first seen days ago rolling hills, grass stains on her knees, dirt in laughing teeth, no longer baby. My hands slip as I grip the edge of wooden bleacher. The pops and glitch of the routine’s mix turn from broken robot to Taylor Swift and the girls are so sharp, geometric. Arms triangles, V, clapping. Bodies tiny lines, straight, simple. Void yet of the hips that I wear, worn with man touch, and now different longing. For a second I lose bright star to a switch of formation. But, ah, ah, again she smiles and splits. I split time, fast forward to seesaws, merry-go-rounds, babysitting, collarbones, applesauce, cherries. There must be sweat. It must feel cool on her forehead. There must be a tip to this growing pyramid. A child must be a held. A buzzer must be buzzing.

Because it is close and right now you are lazy, park and shop at “Kroghetto.” Do not trust its loiters, high and scratching, lost words foaming by cracking commissures. Do not trust its brown salads, punctured peppers, Manager’s Specials. 

After mazing aisles, eyes down, approach register three. The light is off, but the chain is not pulled from chip to magazine, so step forth with the rattle of your buggy. 

His scanner is with another customer. Lemonade, beep. Green beans, beep. Aluminum foil, beep. He is hard at work but not too occupied. Slant forward, with politeness. Is it alright if I check out here? 

He shoots you a blank look, lip dangling. Feel dumb. Your eyes awkwardly dart to his name tag: William. Wordless William. Wordless but angry. Feel it in his stare, his glare. 

Well, okay, you mutter defensively. You are obviously a friendly person. Wonder why he hates you and question discrimination. 

Confused and impatient, you start unloading right there, right there at register three. Your business isn’t tough anyway: 15 items or less, no coupons, plus an alternate ID. William will be fine, you assure yourself as you softly place item 12, some sleeping pills, on the rubber. 

Silent, he keeps to his robotic bitching. Hear the creak of his metal joints as he reaches for your Lean Pockets, 10 minutes thawed rolling around the store, immediately refrozen with his cold fingertips. See the ice crystallize the cardboard. 

Feel it, too. This ice all around you. Freezing you. Skaters swim across your pond, sharpening their footed knives as you stare into William’s face cut with prematurely picked pimples, scars of something, maybe sorrow, maybe another annoyed customer. 

The longer you stare, glare — his eyebrows a blackening valley, too close; his shirt too loose and wrinkled, by God — the less sturdy the pond’s solid becomes.

Become deliciously malicious, thoughts of: Beating the bastard with your ranch dressing bottle/impromptu paddle. Ripping open the cat food and making him eat it, the little pussy, conveyer belt churning and grabby: What’s got your tongue now, huh? Drowning him in your soda, bubbles of the waves pushing him under, to the bottom of this plastic sea, past shopping carts and snapping sharks, to trash-bin trenches, to absolute darkness. 

Consider calling the manager over when William doesn’t ask for the Kroger Plus Card you don’t even have, doesn’t give the option to save some cents, knowing the devil is intent on ripping you off, looking for your soul to steal. 

As he takes your already-in-hand debit, you wonder where his fingers have been. Dirty fingers. Dirty debt. Your thumb touches his. Goosebumps, cringing belly, vomit impulses, eyes on plastic. 

The receipt machine starts its screeching. It joins the wheezy scream of a baby in the buggy behind you. Your eyes bulge as wide as your soup cans. Think of shoving a Babe Ruth down that babe’s ruthless throat. 

Finally, words. Toneless: Thanks for shopping at Kroger. Because it is his job: Have a good day.  

Snatch your receipt and sarcastically punch: Yeah, you too, Willy. Willy. Willy.  

#shortfiction #copperplateawards #temptation #craycray

Didn’t fly full-wing’ed into Zabriskie Point, not like the lover’s leap in that old movie by the same name. Instead slowly descended into the badlands east beyond Death Valley -- after the firsts of blood rocks and shifty mesquite dunes and a pregnant coyote zagging the road. 

I followed my man Michael down a crushed spine-lookin’ trail so white I felt my nervous system sparking. The tall rock around us was pink as crystallized cotton candy and I thought of Mama Nay Nay (mother nature) at the fair some millions of years ago, game prizes water and wind. Mike and I sat on the lowest flat, listened to the breeze whoosh through rock ripple, open sky. Pointed purple hills in the distance, the aqua erosion, the blonde waves wearing a brown toupee, ain’t that cute. We threw loose rocks down each other’s shirts, and I thought of what the soon full moon over Vegas might mean. 

Sun going down, I went to the top of Zabriskie to stand silhouetted by the biggest star. Shrunk to a shadow stick, Michael took the pic from down below. (We really are such ants, you know?) Up top we read the plaques. How mules used to cart through here 20 at a time hauling borax bather$, how you can walk the ancient river, how the layers came to be, apparently a simple synopsis. 

At rock’s ledge, I stared into the rising and falling, the palette’s striation, to the farthest point. The land seemed so malleable, how was it not squishy? Here, I felt the calming muscle move, and I screamed “hello” into everything.

A mosquito joins me in the shower. It is huge; jurassic, even: the kind fixed in amber. Its legs are shaky as it tries to balance on the ceiling. ‘Must be tough standing against gravity like that,’ I think until it is unsteady and swoops toward the shower head, my head. Now terrified by its presence, I cower in the corner, away from the heat of the water: goosebumps. I momentarily lapse into sentimentality with a ‘Maybe it is lonely’ until I realize that it most likely carries West Nile Disease (because all mosquitoes carry West Nile).

I want to kill it. I want it to go away. But I can’t strike now because it is resting on the shower light, and if I accidentally hit the light too forcefully I may break the light and then lose my security deposit and a mosquito is not worth my security deposit, unless, of course, it carries West Nile. 

Once it settles into the corner opposite of mine, I grab the body wash bottle and take two steps forward and stab but miss and now it is closer and showering with me and I scream and kick in donkey and there has never been this much excitement at 7am.

Landing on the side of the tub, it is either surrendering or regaining stamina, and I cannot face this second option, so I quickly strike once, twice, three times more and its body breaks into various pieces under my plastic pomegranate-smelling force. 

Its legs are first in the liquid funeral procession to drain. And then the rest follows: wings, head, torso (though torso gets stuck on the mat and I must force its direction into the silver lining). 

It is not until several days later, while I am sipping from a glass of water, that I remember water is recycled through pumps, and I choke on mosquito's disintegrated wing.