dinner 11-years-old
Danielle Rose
the doorbell is ringing and mother is half-breaking again / not another word she spits through frantic-eyes on the sizzling pan / my sister fidgets with the swiftness of a hare in flight and is then silent / i am absent but for my body unreal and floating / the certain dim kiss of late autumn carries a ravenous cruelty that feasts upon our piling inaction / oil pops / the smell of herring fills the room / outside thin air begs a desire for extending even more patience
Danielle Rose lives in Massachusetts with her partner & their two cats. She is the managing editor of Dovecote Magazine & used to be a boy. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in The Shallow Ends, Barren Magazine, GERTRUDE, Luna Luna Magazine, Empty Mirror, Homology Lit & elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter or at her website here.
my frog alexis
Michael Chang
Hey what are you running from?
I want to be the one you leave behind
Adjacent to greatness
Face blank and appraising
Eyes brown like autumn
Your body fused to my mouth
I take your moisture
I am radiant, glowing
In Italy, they would go to war for me
In France, they would surrender for me
Cannon fodder
Dime-a-dozen gabacho
White jeans
White Ford Bronco
Put you out to pasture
You are one of many
Sir, this is a McDonald’s
no true marxist would allow sentiment to interfere with business
- attributed to Trotsky
Michael Chang
Fire alarm, 3 a.m.
Feet shuffling
Soldiers marching
Ball and chain
Innocent eyes
Central Park Five
Hey, he said, voice thick with sleep
Don’t go out, Blue Shirt warned
He obeyed, he hid
Firefighters and police came and went
Ruse to flush him out
//
He heard that the protests were different this time
Disparate, decentralized
The one who got wacked
Drew the short straw
His parents met him at the airport
Don’t do this, they said
Staring at them, he realized that he was looking at strangers
How had they grown so far apart
He wondered if he had always been this way, or if he had changed
//
He noticed bits of food all over the street
Alkaline noodles here
Errant wing there
He hoped the protesters would get it together
They needed some galvanizing force
A personality to rally around
Attractive, credible, sane-sounding
乱拳打死老师傅
(Random fists that kill the grandmaster)
Sometimes the unskilled win
//
Still a colony, just with a different master
Contract with America
Contract of Adhesion
Talk to the mothership
Naked exploitation
Shocking the conscience
Like when that Swedish pop sensation Nils
Turned out to be a guy from Kentucky
//
He longed for someone he could build a common code with
The same vernacular, vocabulary
He met Blue Shirt
Somewhere in Mid-Levels
Blue Shirt’s hands clasped in prayer
Whiteness folded together
He took Blue Shirt to the same restaurants, the same bars, as if retracing their steps
He couldn’t decide if Blue Shirt’s presence sullied those places or cleansed them, shaman-like
Ward off those evil spirits, you know
Does that make what came before mean less
The thing that bothered him most was the fact that the ex didn’t vote
//
He remembered
强龙不压地头蛇
(Strong dragon doesn’t challenge local snake)
He couldn’t shake the feeling of fraudulence
Most of his friends had come back
Working in the skyscrapers in Central
Clouds and fog blocking out the cries and pleas below
Air-conditioned shops, sparkling clean
$98 for salami
Spanish pig
Treated better than Spanish citizen
He pretended to like Starbursts because they were Blue Shirt’s favorite candy
Tropical, Strawberry Banana, Pina Colada, Cherry Kiwi, Mango Melon, Summer Blast, Original
What are we fighting for, Blue Shirt said, lurching forward as he spoke
Define ‘we,’ he replied, defiant
//
You have to leave, Blue Shirt cautioned
Straight away
As they say in England
He looked bruised, disarmed
The homosexual agenda will have to wait, Blue Shirt joked
No, he insisted
I can’t keep seeing you
My superiors . . . Blue Shirt started, voice trailing off
He remembered their trip to Big Wave Bay
The sun hitting Blue Shirt’s face just so
Hair the color of yuenyeung
I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life, he said haltingly
Trying to convince himself
He got up to leave
He fought the urge to look back
MICHAEL CHANG hopes to win the New Jersey Blueberry Princess pageant one day. Michael strongly suspects that they were born in the wrong decade. A recovering vegan, their favorite ice cream flavor was almost renamed due to scandal.