SELF PORTRAIT by Allyson Seconds |
|
POOR SOUL
by Gale Acuff I could die at any time. Miss Hooker says so. She's my Sunday School teacher so she should know, she knows the straight dope about God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost, and Bible stories to boot. I flunked third grade last year but here we don't have any tests — all I have to do is believe that God sent His Son down here to die for us and believe in Him, Jesus I mean, though I need to believe in God, too, of course, and if I don't sin, at least not on purpose, I get to go to Heaven when I die and I can't wait but I can't snuff myself because that's a sin. Jesus took His life but that's different — God planned it that way and how. What they did was crucify Him, Jesus I mean, but good. He died and rose and lives in Heaven with the angels. That must be sweet. I don't want to die but I have to, but I also want to but don't have to, not really, not for keeps — my soul will leave my body behind to rot but I'll get a new one in Heaven, and fly and sing, and learn to play the harp, and it's a pretty good life, being dead. Sometimes I wish I'd never been born, just to save God all that trouble. But it's too late now. |
BEDROOM CLOSET DOOR by Allyson Seconds |
| THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
by David Thornbrugh We never know we are living the best years of our lives until they’re memories, rows and rows of silver warbirds packed in supermarket aisles so we’re forced to pole vault them on our crutches to reach the mangoes. Starvation lengthens life but who would trade a Florida of mole skin for the lost baby’s buttons of teenage trampolines? Climbing Vesuvius, I tripped over Betty and Veronica’s thumb-stiff nipples and sprawled across the moon. There is in Australia a marsupial mouse that leads a brief life of fucking twelve hours a day for two weeks then dying of glandular failure, dragging its tiny, shriveled penis through the mud. I have been biologically blocked from any similarly spectacular stupidities, though not for want of trying, not for lack of envy. |
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