6.16 / December 2011
Mi Madre
Lisa Lim’s Mi Madre, is presented as a PDF to best preserve the artwork that accompanies each story. Please set your PDF reader to display a two-page view in order to experience the work as intended.
We also have audio for Lisa’s wonderful chapbook.
listen to Wonder Woman
listen to Power Plant [...]
Blue August
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Years ago, I loved a boy named Mathias, a film history student who did coke when he was feeling expansive. At the time, I found this aspect of his behavior normal, yet I imagined film criticism to be a kind of mania. My references were actors, not [...]
The Golden Deer
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I am always lusting after golden deer. It is my fate, my demon. Technically, the Golden Deer that Ravana used to lure Sita away was a demon, but that’s not what I’m saying. Or maybe it is. My best friend isn’t drinking anymore and she’s always talking [...]
Two Poems
The Day Before Yesterday
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It didn’t take much
to rattle our small world.
A dependable sun each morning,
the people we knew.
When we woke in our groggy beds
the sky was gone, obliterated
in humid August fog.
We went walking anyway.
Heart Pine barn hulking
over our shoulders.
Mist a bell-mute, deadened
what we might have said.
The [...]
The Rematch
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I was not a pretty girl. Or thin. I was, according to Master Kim, head of the Kim Do Martial Arts Studio, the toughest young lady he had ever seen in his class. I was eight years old. My chubby cheeks and a nose the shape of [...]
In Fairytales
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In fairy tales, women seldom look
behind the unlocked doors, preferring to open onto secrets
which after all are women’s territory.
Folded away with the sheets, washed
out of the sheets, or left to stain. Bluebeard
had many rooms we never saw, such as the dining room.
The servant’s quarters.
A cloud of [...]
Dr. Moreau’s Pet Shop
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“Is there such a thing as being ‘fresh out of rehab’ when it’s your sixth time?†Annabelle asked as she settled into the bucket seat of her convertible, coaching the B-list reporters who followed her after she’d signed herself out of the facility. “Maybe say ‘rotten out [...]
Four Poems
AndalucÃa I
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When I see Alejandro I do not wear shoes. Because the sand is soft and the soft is always expanding and he likes to look at me! me flickering through all of his rooms, watering over his garden and shushing his child and reading books
I do [...]
Drug Facts
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All You Need Is Love (and a Job (or Maybe Not a Job))
She makes a point of saying the cross-street, across from the building where the famous singer lived, the one across from the park where a nut with a gun killed him, and people still leave him flowers. She used to live there but she left the city for sprawl with [...]
Interior Spaces
Elle finished hooking together the small metal prongs of the bustier. She adjusted the straps and her boobs threatened to spill out of the stiff fabric. The elastic tops of her stockings bit into her thighs. Yeah-no mistaking it. Elle felt like a whore.
The changing room was barely larger than [...]
Two Poems
JESUS DANCES THE CHA-CHA
The city is perfectly
clear beneath him
and there’s not an angel in sight.
He does the steps flawlessly,
a master of the forward and back.
It does seem to give him joy
though his stoic expression
hints at some stubborn sadness.
Ask him and he’d beg off,
insisting he doesn’t know
everything and directing
your attention to [...]
First Time/Four Times
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1.
we planned to lose our virginities
that afternoon. Rashell said she got off on it
how a boy’s body rattles
more than pumps that first time
he hula hoops in a woman’s valley.
we suckled her, all teeth and unclipped nail
calves gone mad for mother’s milk
she laughed. why did no god stop [...]
Then Come Home to Settle
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They called them the Curdies. This white trash family always came in and asked for free courtesy cups so they could split a refillable Coke six ways. Once they were out of the lobby, the employees would all grumble: “Annoying,†the ticket taker would say. “You know [...]
A Small War Has Ended
And I am waiting for the love parade,
the 11 o’clock news to tell us who’s won,
who’s lost. Peace in our time, the papers
promise again, to which the radio answers
with white smoke, the perpetual logic of static.
A girl needs a gun these days on account
of all the resonant memories. We inaugurate
our [...]
Dream Without Hands
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I’m walking, half-waking on my way home,
I’m reaching out my hands before my face
Noticing how soft the skin between my
Fingers and the patterns in my own hands.
It glows like amber. It scours my neck.
The grate in the fire, a net for scorched limbs.
This flame grows on its [...]
Four Pieces from Wake
In addition to reading the poems below, you can enjoy them as a PDF that better preserves the writer’s original intent.
Strawberry Gash
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When my dead sister and I stop leaking and we are inside my dead sister’s mouth. And she works up a good amount of spit. [...]
Four Poems
THE GENIUS GOES TO THE ART MUSEUM
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He enjoys the entrance the most, but not because of the gift shop. He already owns hundreds of magnets and an impressive coffee mug collection that crowds his counters and lines his window sills. He started collecting mugs to hold his [...]
Disappear Behind Us
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Before we began a brief and terrible relationship, when we were new friends, John took me hunting. It was shocking to everyone that I did it-me, this small, liberal, artsy girl. Me, who had never touched, never seen a gun before.
We didn’t kill anything. We were ready [...]
Jerking Off
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I.
I have to admit that mechanically the term
implies a dick. Some grippable skin circumferance, some
handle, a thing which can be jerked on. (Off.) Fuck it.
I don’t have to admit anything. Consider my hands. Jar
lids. Bottle tops. Screws and seals of all kinds. When I
was twelve I learned [...]
Ways to Swim
My sister’s husband looks terrified.
“Does this mean I have to have sex with her?” he asks, pointing at me.
Julie and I turn toward one another, but I can’t look her in the eye, because somewhere between the coffee table and her face is now the image of my brother-in-law, naked. [...]
So, They Are Not Wholly Defenseless
Their four-year-old is in his bedroom getting ready. Since he was three-and-a-half, it has been his choice to climb into his little black suit for dinner with his white shirt-which he’d taught himself to button-and his blue clip-on. He can only wear his cowboy boots to dinner, though, because he [...]