Carapace
This is not your mother
This is a chalk outline of a five petaled flower
This is a picture you snuck of your mother’s face when she was sleeping because she looked angry and you wanted to ask why
This is a gift horse
This is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich quartered, the crusts cut off
This is a grainy black and white film of a mother
This is not about you, for once, okay?
This is a fable where the scorpion is the teacher
This is a mermaid spray painted on a brick wall
This is your mother’s birthday passing
This is a boiled egg
This is bleach
This is your last shadow box
This is the confetti cupcake you ate even after you dropped it frosting-side down
This is a gun filled with bath water. Pew. Pew.
This is a lullaby where the bough explodes
This is a video of you and your friends dancing in your mother’s lingerie
This is a question about if you’re flossing enough?
This is a tattoo of an arrow through a cartoon heart that says “mom”
This is a strange man calling you “mommy” in the dark
This is a birthmark you share
This is a picture of your mother when she was young and smiling in front of a cornfield in late Summer
This is a woman swallowing swords
This is not your mother
The Demands of Ceremony
A young woman goes to a Supermarket to buy toilet paper. As she holds up packages of one-ply and three-ply, she considers her asshole—weighing cost versus comfort. Meanwhile, an older man, dressed in black and wise in the ways of ceremony, approaches from down the aisle. The young woman’s brow is uninviting, so as the older man passes, he yells: Smile! Before the young woman can help it, she fixes her face for him, cocks her head—one ear to the ground like a Spaniel. The older man freezes to show his yellowed teeth in both rows. His eyes are bloodshot and swollen, he is smiling, and his cart is full of finger food for his brother’s funeral. They twist the casing of their eyes into waning moons, pretending the under-skin into soft pillows. A baby toddles down the aisle towards them grasping an empty cup in each chubby hand and looks up to catch the measure of teeth; the cups fall to the tile and roll before them. The baby cleaves its mouth open and begins a clap: helpless against the demand of rhythm, the young woman and the old man join in.
***
Terri Linn Davis is the co-editor of Icebreakers Lit, a journal featuring collaborative writing and the host of the podcast Too Lit to Quit: the Podcast for Literary Writers. You can find some of her poems, reviews, and craft talks in Taco Bell Quarterly, Bending Genres, Flypaper Lit, Cultural Daily, The Daily Drunk Mag, Five South, Ghost City Review and elsewhere. She lives in Connecticut with her co-habby and their three children. You can find her on Twitter @TerriLinnDavis and on her website http://www.terrilinndavis.com
***
image: Ashley Beresch. Check out more of her work on Instagram @ashleyberesch
Rejection Letters 