MAD & MOONLY: SPRING 2020
FEATURING DESTINY PERKINS, JOSEPHINE BIRDSELL, & CHLOE KUFELD
DESTINY PERKINS
APOLOGIES SMELL LIKE OLD SPICE
Week six of my body folded
neatly on the floor of your closet,
I unfold only to pray.
In 7-11, I reach out to touch the haze
of burly women hoarding Slim-Jims at midnight.
Inhale, as I finally ease back into my body.
For a moment, I let your bed sheets carpet the cola caked
tile floor and prepare to expose my ghoulish new form but
I inhale…
This woman, this vision, doesn’t smell of Old Spice.
I sit by the phone, my fingers wrapped
around your sheets, guilt a clamp around my neck.
I should’ve called sooner,
I shouldn’t have fled when your father
came to reap your soiled sheets.
Week umpteen, my trembling fingers press into the worn dials
on the telephone for the third time today. I listen to your dial tone ring,
the distant hum of the trap music booming
next door has come to sound like the saddest symphony.
Your mother picks up the phone.
she asks who I am, my kidneys
burned as I refined
myself to just a friend.
She says you’re sick,
went to go live with your Auntie Ida
down in Idaho, as if I didn’t know,
as if I didn’t watch your beautiful blue body
sink into the virgin snow.
Your bed sheets still smell of Old Spice.
At night, bog bodies resurface in my dreams.
Blue faces ascend their unrestful slumber perfectly
preserved, stories still bubbling at their chapped lips.
I wonder if when you arise, will I still recognize
the round slope of your face?
Will you recognize me, draped in your faded sheets, grains of rice embedded
into the ash that cakes my knees, the true apparition?
Will I recognize you
when you no longer smell of Old Spice?
The summer heat lures me out of your closet.
In the mirror, I see myself—a large brown cicada breaking into the sun.
The snow has defrosted and has given birth the wailing of my new wings,
stifled by your sheets swaddled around my body, drained of Old Spice.
All I can do is inhale…and sink into the burly
plot in your backyard where the grass will no longer grow.
JOSEPHINE BIRDSELL
A FAMILY HISTORY
We called my grandma’s house Titty Pink. She wanted to kill her husband but never did.
It was her next door neighbor who started the name, cried out TITTY, PAINTING THAT HOUSE TITTY FUCKIN’ PINK on painting day. Soon the whole neighborhood caught on, had grade school boys giggling as they passed the house.
Titty fucking Pink.
The husband’s name was TJ but we don’t talk about him anymore. I only met him once. On his deathbed.
My mother’s name is Jenna but Grandma calls her Marge. She hated him too, TJ. Wanted to put rat poison in his weed.
Mom had a sister. Her name was Sarah. They lived in Titty Pink. Called the backyard Teddy Land until that old dog died. Then it was just a yard again.
He wasn’t their dad; TJ wasn’t.
The neighbor beat his wife then smoked on the porch. Grandma left her first husband -- Mom’s dad -- cheated on her then moved next door with his new girl.
Mom used to watch waves on weekends. Tides on lake-top. Sand tracked into the house.
Grandma kicked TJ out. Lived in The Pines. Home of the world’s smallest highway. Fluid intensity and brash silence.
And Mom went to bible college. Owned a church in a warehouse. Smelled like vinegar. Like honey.
Grandma couldn’t go to church anymore. No un-polished shoes on Sundays. No divorced women allowed.
And when we moved to Ohio, Grandma followed. Her home’s my second. Brick, but we still call it Titty Pink.
Our house doesn’t have a name. Our yard was Carly’s until that sweet old dog died.
And I worked at a garden store. A movie theater. A diner. I started college at fifteen.
My aunt lives with Grandma now. With her young son, baby boy.
TJ died when I didn’t know who he was. Didn’t know why Marge and Grandma couldn’t cry. Grandma’s mom died when I was older -- started to get it.
And I liked a man once. Twenty-one when I was sixteen.
I miss Great-Grandma and her green bean casserole. I miss the original Titty Pink and the year-round Christmas lights lining the garage ceiling, back home in The Pines where I hardly lived.
He was shitty, that older boy. Twenty-one.
When she was a girl, my mom used to race down that tiny highway, back in The Pines. When we visit Indiana now, we run through sand on the beach.
My aunt’s son will only ever run through sand. Grow up in a brick house. I’ll graduate college at nineteen, if I stay here. But I think I need to leave.
Leave Carly’s yard and the smell of Great-Grandma’s green beans. Leave tiny highways and older boys. Leave Ohio like we left The Pines. Leave Titty Pink and the church across the street.
Leave like Grandma left.
Find a new home. Track sand on its floors. Like vinegar. Like honey.
CHLOE KUFELD
THREE NEIGHBORHOODS
DESTINY PERKINS is a writer from Pittsburgh, PA. She has previously been featured as a second place winner of Carnegie Mellon's MLK Awards and a Silver Key portfolio winner in the Scholastic Writing Awards. She hopes to continue studying creative writing in college and reserves a passion for visual arts, activism, and history.
JOSEPHINE BIRDSELL is from Columbus, Ohio who studied English and Sociology at The Ohio State University through their high school academy program. Josephine’s creative writing has been published once before in an anthology titled What this is, What this isn't.
CHLOE KUFELD has been taking black & white photos with a traditional camera for years and develops them in a dark room by herself. She won an Honors Convocation award for her series "Three Neighborhoods." She is interested in social justice and plays golf in her spare time.