January - February 2010 | Through the Looking Glass
Martha, 1952: After modeling the designer gown in a 1952 Rhodes Department Store fashion show, I place the $500 wedding gown on lay-away, making monthly payments until I am paid in full; I refuse for this fashion show to be the last time I wear the dress.
Try this love.
Made it just for you; get stuck in!
Go on.
“It’s a city that chews people up and spits them out.” She was sitting next to him on the banks of New Jersey, listening to him talk. He was smoking a hand-rolled, flicking the ashes into the rocks fringing the Hudson like a stubbly mustache. She watched his mouth move with smoke and words. She followed his eyes.
Life as it may seem
We talk while I am driving. He says he is busy at work, no time for anything, even for writing a short e-mail to me. He is sorry he did not call yesterday. He promises to call tomorrow and meet me, maybe, tomorrow.
Rachel thought it was a bit cold out to be driving with the window cracked, almost home. She was just finishing up her third cigarette on a two hour drive. She rationalized this as getting her smoking in before seeing her family, who did not know she smoked. At least, they hadn’t said anything to her about it. It was at this point in her life that she really began to consider herself a smoker. It was bleak.
After many hours of driving through the night
she chanced a glance in her rear view mirror
and knew that she had made the right decision.
Last December, I saw Nonyelum and a world of difference between reality and ideality. Whereas the ideal is the very standard of perfection imagined by the mind, the real is the true character of things our minds refuse to accept.
The color of the paint in the bedroom was Alice in Wonderland, a cool blue with a matte finish, like the sea in an oil painting. She had picked the color, before she left. It was all too much, too deep for her.
1
In a sun-filled glade in the wormwood
fleabane torments wolfbane
who howls threats with his painted tongue
at the leopard’s bane chewing on blood flowers
Under skunk cabbage possum grapes play dead
Porcupine grass lays down its quills
Spider lily spins snail vines
ties Canary Island broom
to sweep the place clean
Gopher plant and mole plant
lay out the lawn design
pattern the dance floor […]
Danger in our minds
A touch of lipstick on her lips.
Lashes softly darkened black.
She glances in the looking glass;
a pretty woman stares right back.
Dottie was humming a tune at breakfast, sharing a large round table with Pearl, Olive, Maynard, Myrtle, Fiona, Matilda, and Fern. Despite the impending lukewarm gruel, prunes, and coffee-flavored tepid water being plopped in front of the sagging residents, tunes from long ago were dancing in Dottie’s head. Without realizing it, she was humming “All In and Down and Out Blues.” It came to her after listening to the news of the economy.
in my hands
gift of a smirking friend
sports a red polka-dot
ribbon around her neck
I slept in twisted (music) sheets,
scrambled synapses
of not so sunny side up eggs,
between tosses in the sea
Meg was sitting up in bed, staring at the eggshell-white walls of her room, when she broke the daze to look down at her sleeping husband whom she didn’t love. It was a morning like any morning, and Meg was anxious, but she was accustomed to feeling that way. She thought of her mother, who also didn’t love her husband.
Whistler, who owned the Main Street Kite Shop, had known my father for nearly ten years the summer he gave him a kite that looked like a huge, ugly, black monster flying over the beach. Under a whale-sized shadow, kids gathered around Charlie’s legs and said, “Look at that thing. It looks like it’s up there with the airplanes. Look at it!”
Everything was boxed up and ready to go. All Jill had to do now was wait for the removal van to arrive in the morning. Fireworks crackled in the distance and sparks soared high in the sky, arcing overhead before fanning out in rainbow glory. She almost smiled. In the rush to get it everything done she’d forgotten it was Guy Fawkes night.
Three months ago, with pride tucked neatly in my front pocket and my heart taking refuge in my big toe, I made the long journey home. Three thousand miles and two sleepless days and the highway narrowed, exposing scenery saturated with living things ranging from blood-sucking insects to the occasional roadside alligator.
I spoke for three hundred years
trying to make you understand.
You remained a derivative
of zero.
Amanda Palmer is probably best known as the singer/songwriter of the Dresden Dolls, but she's more than just a fantastic singer.
Gregory is a musician, songwriter, and producer born in London, England to a musical family.
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