My sister Annick fixed me, locked me in, with cold, blue eyes as she sat down slowly next to me at the table. “I’m a surgeon,” she said, not quite casually, “a board certified surgeon.”

I give her a questioning look.

“I could take your steak knife,” she says, eyeing it, “plunge it into your neck - and oh, sure, there’d be a question or two but in the end - I’d walk away clean.”

“I don’t think,” I start saying…

Tears well to near overflowing in her turquoise eyes. “I came in - officer” she says, sounding stunned and surreal. “She was having a convulsion, she exhibited severe cyanosis, I couldn’t clear her airway, it was a classic tonic-clonic seizure.” she goes on, her voice rising to near panic with the diagnosis.

“You’d never…” I start to interrupt but she gently covers my mouth with her left hand while gathering the handle of the serrated silver steak knife, expertly, into her right hand.

“I attempted to perform a tracheostomy,” she continues in a traumatized but professional voice. “but as I began a transverse incision above the sternal notch,” a tear rolls down her cheek, “Anais suffered a severe generalized-onset seizure and convulsed, forcefully into the knife”

“IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!” I confess suddenly, as if under oath, in court.

There’s a moment of still silence.

“And WHEN,” she asked, wiping away the tear and turning the knife for a downward ******. “Were you going to MENTION IT?!”

“NOW! - before dinner!” I look around the empty room - for help - for a sympathetic jury. “It was an ACCIDENT! - I’m SORRRRYYYY!” I plead.

My sister slowly sets down the knife and says deliberately, purposefully - like a death sentence: “My Valentino sheer floral-lace top is STAINED.”

”I can FIX it!” I insist in a rush.

“Keep OUT of my room - and my stuff.” she grumbles, “And REMEMBER what I said,” she adds as she pats the knife before getting up and leaving the room.

“I WILL’” I promise to her back.

A second later, my mom sweeps in from the opposite direction.
“What’s up” she asks.

“Nothing” I almost whisper, head down.

No reason until.

Reassured and measured.
You take off your buttoned shirt.
Smothered in dead dye.
Left confined, smiling, once.
A murmur.
No place.
Left wanted.
All streaming in haunting.
Let go.
As the back of candles remember, the brain that coursed in
The drip.
The flow.
The pit.
In the stomach.
Just, still.


Garrett Johnson

I lay here and stare at the stitching in my new hat made in Bangladesh.
There are few other things I know about this country.
I imagine the sewing machines and brown fingers and faces working to get by.
Some, I imagine, with mopeds.
I imagine the teams of fabric.
The spools of thread.
Sewing on a tag that they may not be able to read.
Amongst the tropic-like weather.
Annual income less than what I make in a month.
That's about what my paper route paid: $600/year.

I'm manufactured like hand-me-down clothes.
Worn at the seams though I'm not old.
Elastic stretched out,
zipper caught on its own track,
my buttons won't snap.
The threads at my knees tear
revealing scarred skin that won't disappear.

But I can roll the hems,
unlatch the zipper,
replace the buttons.
And truthfully, I like the look of jeans
with rips at the knees
so what if it reveals me?

I wear the clothes of my mother and sisters
what they loved is now mine to claim
for it doesn't quite fit them anymore
and perhaps some seams ripped
but that I can fix so it will fit me.

The clothes I wear may not be new
and hold old hopes that won't come true
but it holds old love too.

you store olden clothes in rear closets
smaller size doesn't fit
but you're slow to release it
you drip golden particles from under the sleeves
blue scent just soaked in
he couldn't move on

red wine bottles grow dusty
waiting for someone
to slop it all over the floor
I see
three-year race was puzzling
five-star, I still chime you
to slip back in my door

laying eyes on all my sweaters
through lens
you scan breaches in my polished facets
sticked out are
the tiniest strings

busy streets are our checkpoints
same curly haircuts
and same curvy outfits
all facets of yours in a walking men

haven't told you
you booked rent-free place
in my wardrobes
when squeezing your hand
but man, you're stale as bread too

**** you blue smell
from that dressing room

We may give them all of us,
                          but they are cheap,
                             ******* around like were
worth 5 cents and not the diamond that we gave them.

But they end up broke,
                                broke up,
                 broke as there on the street.

Clothes on the pavement.
And we were richer without them, no ******* around,
                          begging like were paupers.

But were prosperous without them,
                            there begging on the street.
The only thing they get is middle fingers,
             and your trash your love isn't even worth


the 2 cents to recycle...

Cross your arms in front and grip  

Peel away from your own skin

your 100% cotton exoskeleton

Raise it up, up, up

Let it envelop your head like a cocoon

Up, up, up  

Until you are naked again

Feel the breeze

Shiver

Walk over to the basket  

See how many you's you have been  

(they served you then)  

Walk over to the dresser  

Crawl into a new beginning  

Uncross your arms and relax