“The Immaculate Heart of Mary,” by Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Steel City, 1910 Magda descends on Polish Hill like so much of the metal whose siren song lured our fathers and grandfathers away from their matki and motherland. Within a week, she is selling newspapers on the street corners. Within two, she has us organised. We wear our brothers’ clothing, we cut our hair. She teaches us to spit; we forget our breasts. She brings us papers and we sell them. We take our pennies, she takes a...
“The Street Artist,” by Judith Janeway
I don’t do that old trapped-in-a-box routine. Uh-huh. I’m an artist. I grow a giant flower from a seed. The tourists at the cable car turnaround love it. Makes them forget how cold they are in their shorts and sandals, fog whipping around their knees. Don’t know why the lady cop picked that moment to bust me. Came right up, her cop stuff hanging off a black belt. Made her hips look huge. She goes, “I want to talk to you.” Like...
“The Spinning Field,” by Lisa Nikolidakis
We are silk people. That’s what I tell the dipshits at my new high school, but they call me Spider-Girl. They yell, Hey, Spider-Girl! Tarantula-Breath! Arachne! Because in Tarpon Springs, everyone’s Greek. A tourist might think it’s a sweet nickname, but the rest of us know that before becoming a spider, Arachne hung herself, which is exactly what I’d do if it wouldn’t give them all globs of satisfaction. They’re sponge people, the...
“Of Possible War,” by Caitlin Scarano
When I wake up and come in to make coffee, my dead brother sits at the kitchen table. He doesn’t look much different than he looked before, except his skin seems a bit thinner. As the florescent light buzzes on, I think I can see the whole blue-green cartography of his circulatory system. He is naked. I’m cold. You must be, I reply, making a point not to look at his genitalia piled there between his legs on our mother’s nice mahogany...
“Bus Ride to the City,” by Marsha Mathews
Afghanistan, 2013 Father’s beard twitches whenever my older sister, Mezhgan, comes into the room. His eyes glaze the way they do when they fall on a flower in the snow. I have tried and tried to elicit that same response. I have trimmed my dark brows like Mezhgan’s, I walk slow and purposefully like Mezghan. I have a bright purple banqa like Mezghan. Last summer, I learned to make minced lamb like Mezhgan, and pistachio dessert, too,...
“The Boardwalk, 1969,” by Helen Jones
Well I took my three youngest kids and their friends to Santa Cruz. Bought them sodas at the boardwalk, played in the waves, had a great day. And then shit, the real fun begins. When it’s time to go Alice and I get in a tiff cuz she doesn’t want to leave and finally I say “Fine you can walk home.” Home is twenty miles over the mountains, and damned if that brat doesn’t start walking. I figure she’ll be back soon, tail between her...
“Nitza Kosher Pizza,” by Annie Dawid
Nitza Kosher Pizza 1977- 1978 Elbow-deep in warm suds, pressed against the stainless steel sink, I feel my boss’s muscular arms envelop me. “Quit it, Sam.” “Kisses sweet in wine, kisses sweet in wine,” he says, kissing the back of my neck. Or is it “kisses sweet and wine?” “Sam, leave me alone.” His wife, Marie, does the books in one of the booths while I scrub pots and bowls, the remainders of Sam’s private time in the kitchen; no...
“The Smell of Other People’s Houses,” by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock
In 9th grade my boyfriend was Jason Johanson. His father was a dentist and a hunting guide in the Bush. They built a new house on Campbell Lake where they could park their float plane and we could snow machine all the way down Campbell creek in the winter. The whole house was made of fresh cut cedar. All of Jason’s clothes smelled like cedar, and it made me sneeze when I got close to him, but I got close anyway. To this day,...
“Write this Down,” by Amy Silverberg
I’m on the phone with my best friend, while she dumps her boyfriend over e-mail. I am dictating what to type, and I hear the keys click in another state, me holding on the line while she breaks a heart. She lives by the beach, my friend, and at times I think I can hear the water in her voice, frothy and transcendent. I know, because I once lived there too. Time passes differently by the beach, sometimes not at all, because sun and...
“A Woman’s Glory,” by Ashley Kunsa
She’s at the island with a knife. Body bent over the cutting board, like a diver taking leave of the land. In one hand, the golden bale of her hair; in the other, her santoku. “Oh,” I say. “No.” A rush of warmth washes over me as I think of the softness of those strands in my fingers, on my breasts, my lips. “It has to go,” she says, face flush with the wooden plank. “Let’s talk about it.” I edge a painted toenail onto the kitchen’s...
“Mouth,” by Malene Kai Bell
The girl sat at the table with a twisted mouth. The brussel sprouts, cold knobs on her plate; the baked chicken, cooled, from her refusal to open up. Her mother, having had enough of the girls ways, barked at her across the table; her mouth moving like a cow, her tone , a shrill blow horn. “Eat the food, Hen.” The girl earned the name after she’d dug up two juicy earthworms and shared them with the dog, Pluto. Her mother, when she...
“Buoys,” by CJ Hauser
I have two lobsters in my bathtub and I’m not sure I can kill them. New England will know if I don’t. Henry is from Maine, which I found charming, until we moved here post-honeymoon. I am sitting on the rim of my bathtub. It has curled, porcelain feet with flaky rust between the toes. Everything is anthropomorphized in this house- that’s my first problem. My second problem is that I pet the lobsters. I roll up a sleeve and run my...
“Tin Man Tick-Tock,” by Alyssa Cooper
It’s like someone forcing you wide open with metal hands that can’t feel. (I sure do love redheads, sweetheart.) It’s like that Tin Man grabbing around on your insides and wrapping your intestines all in his hard cold fingers that never numb you but just slice like ice. (You’re just pink and red everywhere, aren’t you now?) You reach out to grab him back but his razor sharp skin leaves shrapnel in your fingertips that grabs onto your...
“The Rings,” by Jennifer Woodworth
“The Rings” My husband was a carpenter with hands so big he could wrap them all the way around me. Since I had put off getting my husband’s wedding ring until the day before the wedding, the artist made it for me in one day. He was not a jeweler. He made art with metal and stone. He made my husband a thick, wide, rounded ring.This ring will always feel good on his hand, even when he’s working. I inscribed it in my own hand. I...
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Witness Nov 29, 2024
